Deep - Site Meson Guns Through the Versions

[jcrocker]

I was designing deep-site meson guns with different rule sets and ran into a few questions with T5.

For MegaTraveller, you just pick the biggest meson gun from the table, and build a power plant to supply it. It's buried under a planet's surface, so you can ignore hull, armour, all that stuff. No problem. Sensors I'll ignore for the purposes of this question.

For TNE, Fire Fusion & Steel gives you options, and you work through the equations. It takes longer, but at the end you have a good feel for the abilities of the system.

For T5 I'm having some trouble. I'm guessing a Meson Gun designed for an Adventure-Class Ship wouldn't be a very fearsome deterrent for the Zhodani Hordes approaching the planet, but the table only has those.

But fair enough, I pick a Meson Gun, since they're developed at TL13 so I can get a Modified version at TL 15. Great. And to power it?

I don't know if I'm missing something, but every place I can find in the design sequence where it mentions ship's power, it only mentions powering the drives. The weapon design checklist has steps A thru G but power requirements aren't in there.

Are power plants now only for drives?

I'm used to design sequences in MT & TNE, where balancing power supply & requirements are a big part of your design sequence. If this is subsumed in how many hull spaces your T5 ship has, fair enough, but if you're trying to build a ground installation it could unbalance things.

 

[OjnoTheRed]

I believe (but I'm not sure) that the assumption for ACS is that you match the power plant to the drives and then just hand wave other power requirements as fitting in with whatever power plant you have. However, this doesn't include military considerations about powering weapons. I suspect this will be supplemented in the future.

 

[whulorigan]

For T5 I'm having some trouble. I'm guessing a Meson Gun designed for an Adventure-Class Ship wouldn't be a very fearsome deterrent for the Zhodani Hordes approaching the planet, but the table only has those.

But fair enough, I pick a Meson Gun, since they're developed at TL13 so I can get a Modified version at TL 15. Great. And to power it?

I don't know if I'm missing something, but every place I can find in the design sequence where it mentions ship's power, it only mentions powering the drives. The weapon design checklist has steps A thru G but power requirements aren't in there.

Are power plants now only for drives?

The Rules in the T5 Core Book are explicitly for ACS Ships (i.e. less than 2500 dtons). The Meson weapons there are for "Main Weapon Bay" (i.e 200 dton) Mounts. ACS does not deal with Spinal Mounts (which is what Deep Site Meson Guns are typically equivalent to). Spinal Weapons are to be dealt with in a future supplement for BCS (Battle Class Ships [greater than 2500 dton]). IIRC, the impression I am getting from what little I have heard of BCS is that BCS ships are going to be designed around the Spinal Mount, possibly requiring their own separate dedicated power plant. But that is speculative at this point.

 

[Reban]

Yep you've missed the bit that says all mounts are self powered.

This means that the mount contains the power source for the weapon and does not rely on the ship's PPlant which is for powering the M Drive and J Drive (The G Drive is also a self contained self powered unit).

This has two effects as far as I can see.

1. Knocking out the PPlant does not render the ship incapable of defending itself or fighting. (Just as in the Age of Sail when destroying the rigging and sails did not stop the cannon firing).

2. If you have a manned Mount it effectively becomes a survival shelter able to sustain itself for a period of time (see also the Shelter in ACS).

To use the Main Mount Meson guns from ACS I'd suggest designing a hull big enough to mount it in to represent the underground installation. You can then add the gunners station and whatever accommodation is needed (unless you want to make it a remote station, controlled from the equivalent of a ship's bridge somewhere else).

Main Mount Deep Meson sites probably aren't going to be classic Planetary Defenses but more like the secondary local defenses covering the likes of the Starport.

 

[jcrocker]

Thank you all for your help!

 

[OjnoTheRed]

Yep you've missed the bit that says all mounts are self powered.

This means that the mount contains the power source for the weapon and does not rely on the ship's PPlant which is for powering the M Drive and J Drive (The G Drive is also a self contained self powered unit).

I missed that as well!

That does simplify things for the future. Thanks heaps from me as well.

 

[Reban]

My pleasure. And just for your reference the relevant section can be found on p.387

Mount Power. Mounts are self-contained for battle survivability purposes. They carry their own life support (1 week) and their own power modules. They carry their own operating computer (which is networked to the ship’s main computer).