Agility - thoughts

[kilemall]

Something like that. The "miniature fusion generators" used in PGMP and FGMP type weapons could be an inspiration here. Use those either to power grav thruster or a small fusion rocket.
Unfortunately, that leaves little room for SS3 unless you massively rework it. I like the idea of a missile design system, but I think missiles in CT need to be re-thought completely. Also unfortunately, if you want to keep things proportional, that would mean missiles would probably cost Cr 50,000 and upwards. Then again, that could also be considered a feature. In Book 2 combat, missiles can be fairly devastating (especially against typical low-acceleration opponents).

Vague idea for IMTU is a turret missile massing 250 kg (should still be small enough to move it through spacecraft corridors if broken down into major components), costing Cr 50,000, and a bay missle ~4 times as much.

Using my system, the turret missiles come in at something like Cr12000 average- you can cut features but it’s not good to.

Bay missiles come in at Cr 150000 or so. If you add the nukes it’s Cr100000 plus for the turret missiles and MCr1 plus for the bay missiles- very much like the supplement.

This is not surprising to me, they obviously tried to hook up Striker to HG, most notable with the lasers.

I went ahead and worked out KEAP vs HEAP warheads- the bay missile HEAP comes in at pen 58, just shy of the initial armor level and easily punching through classic unarmored ACS. So again they definitely had shaped charge warheads in mind- or at least the regular warheads were KEAP and the souped up shaped charge ones were HEAP.

 

[infojunky]

Vague idea for IMTU is a turret missile massing 250 kg (should still be small enough to move it through spacecraft corridors if broken down into major components), costing Cr 50,000, and a bay missle ~4 times as much.

See, in my head this is looks like a missile...

 

[warwizard]

I know, I know, this is classic traveller. So make a small ion drive with perhaps 100g of thrust, add a 12g3 chemical motor for final approach, have some sort of acceleration from the launcher in the turret, then hours or days of .25m/s*s of low observable approach, and nothing, the fight was over many hours ago using energy weapons/lasers. CT does have magic grav drives, but nothing that could power one for a 50kg missile for 16 minutes, at least till you have antimatter batteries. That's not CT, not in the imperium we know and love. Other rulesets can give us some ability to make small and nimble vaccuum going missiles, however the MINIMUM size of the various methods of doing maneuver drives, like thruster plates and grav drives give us small craft sized missiles. We already know about the energy limitations of chemical based rocket motors. The only drive that I have seen that comes close is the HePLAR, and that at TL15 comes in at about 20X the mass of the CT 50kg missiles once you add in a minimum sized fusion power plant. To be USEFUL these missiles may need to come in at 2m3 or so, with 1.2m3 of that being liquid hydrogen. Perhaps we can use Fusion+ to power a HePLAR based small missile, I've not looked at that option in much detail, what I recall is that it had something like 1/6 the energy density of the standard TL15 fusion plant, so perhaps a .1m3 fusion+ for .1MW and a minimum size HePLAR driving a 1g thrust on a 250 Kg missile with a chemical rocket for the final approach sprint to intercept would be possible. Of course IYTU you can chose to do what you want and describe it with handwavium jargon.

 

[punkrabbitt]

DioxyHandwavium it is then!

I like this idea the best.

 

[Carlobrand]

Not helpful for spacecraft, but MT's selection of grav thrusters offered the ability to make some wicked-fast grav-thrust surface to space missiles. Their range depended on the size of the world since their best acceleration was within 10 diameters, but I designed a TL13 model that pulled 12g within 10 diameters and slowed to 6 outside of it with batteries for 2 turns operation.

MT Hard Times' fusion rockets offer some potential but they were quite large, 4 tons and a cubic meter at TL9. You could fudge and make house rules applying MT RM power plant minimum size and scale efficiency to them - I presume one reason it's allowed to be 1/10 the minimum size of a TL9 power plant is because it's blasting most of its power and heat to space and has very little if any stuff for converting that power to electricity, and maybe you could carry that down to the higher tech smaller plants to some degree to make something that would fit a missile - but that only means you've got high tech missiles. Not real helpful if you're trying to field a missile below TL12, but a thought if you're thinking of revising missile rules in a big way. I might try to make one though and see what I end up with.

Add: Oh dear, I seem to have created a line of Estes TL14-15 model fusion rocket motors.

 

[Carlobrand]

So, yes, I can build a nifty missile around a modded high tech fusion drive. Powerful little devil - within about 7000 km. They really chow down on the fuel, so I have to get way bigger than typical missile size to give them anything like reasonable legs, ten or more times bigger. Sigh.

 

[infojunky]

A book5 thought occurred to me, spending points of agility to change range... (there is probably a simple hex based idea in there as well)

Couple that to maybe there should be another range band beyond long where only Missiles and spinal mount can fire...

 

[Grav_Moped]

So, yes, I can build a nifty missile around a modded high tech fusion drive. Powerful little devil - within about 7000 km. They really chow down on the fuel, so I have to get way bigger than typical missile size to give them anything like reasonable legs, ten or more times bigger. Sigh.

Would the rules support using drop tanks or multiple stages?

 

[Meteoric Assault]

But really LBB5 in conjunction with TCS is a competitive design demolition derby.

Amen.. brother preach

 

[Carlobrand]

Would the rules support using drop tanks or multiple stages?

I don't think it matters much in that setting. Point is it becomes too big for your canon launchers, so you have to reimagine the launchers as well as the missiles. Once you're doing that, the rest of it is tweaks.

 

[kilemall]

A book5 thought occurred to me, spending points of agility to change range... (there is probably a simple hex based idea in there as well)

Couple that to maybe there should be another range band beyond long where only Missiles and spinal mount can fire...

I have suicide range at sub 100000km, 100-250000km short range, 250-900000km long range and 900000+km extreme range.

The extreme range is enforced by weapon factors dropping by 1 per 100000km, so by 900000+ there is no damage possible from bays or batteries.

No reason why 100000 km bands wouldn’t work for most purposes, as long as we are talking two fleets/ships in relation to each other.

 

[Carlobrand]

Maybe we should divide missiles into short-range turret missiles and long range bay missiles.

 

[whartung]

Maybe we should divide missiles into short-range turret missiles and long range bay missiles.

It''s all long range at "space contact" ranges.

 

[Marcatlas]

Maybe we should divide missiles into short-range turret missiles and long range bay missiles.

That's what I do. Turret missiles are only for the shortest range. Torpedoes are the longer range but can be fired from a turret if you buy a triple turret (6 tons in size) and dedicate it to launching 1 torp at a time.