Missile Turrets: Outdated and Obsolete ?

[Patron Zero]

Let me open this with the predicate of not having any 'practical' experience with missiles or related like ordnance, just speaking as an observer and likely not very qualified there.

Specifically looking at 'civilian' ships, merchants, couriers and passenger transports so not to cloud the issue with involving dedicated fighting vessels of any respective navy or regimented militia.

IMTU, private-commercially owned ships armed with missile-firing turrets are an uncommon sight simply for the fact that lasers and other beam weapons are the preferred if not accepted 'sword' in the realm of offensive-defensive armaments.

Missiles are still a reliable and most viable weapon choice but such now residing in fixed launcher 'mini-bays' within a ship's hull, much like the Cold War Polaris submarines or more recently, a contemporary guided missile cruiser.

If the ordnance discharged from a missile turret, specifically such being compact enough to fit into standby-type launcher racks, then why not simply moving such to a more 'hardened' location on a ship and free-up the hardpoint location for other more efficient-effective weapons ?

In no way downplaying the heft a missile launcher brings to ship-to-ship engagements but with such being essentially a fire-and-forget projectile, does one really need to aim the nose of the ordnance at the intended target before firing ?

Maybe it's just how I see ship-to-ship combat as more a business of jinking about popping off a few missiles and reserving line-of-sight engagement for targeted-directed energy weapons.

Ships will always have turrets, just common sense to have a quickly-drawn revolver ready and in reach just in case a situation so demands it, but even better if having missiles on standby as cover-fire to up your odds of surviving the gunfight.

 

[mike wightman]

It is about time missiles in Traveler were either updated and retconned or dumped altogether.

A 50kg package that can deliver a mininuke while accelerating at 6g for a couple of hours?

 

[Carlobrand]

Let me open this with the predicate of not having any 'practical' experience with missiles or related like ordnance, just speaking as an observer and likely not very qualified there.

Specifically looking at 'civilian' ships, merchants, couriers and passenger transports so not to cloud the issue with involving dedicated fighting vessels of any respective navy or regimented militia.

IMTU, private-commercially owned ships armed with missile-firing turrets are an uncommon sight simply for the fact that lasers and other beam weapons are the preferred if not accepted 'sword' in the realm of offensive-defensive armaments.

Missiles are still a reliable and most viable weapon choice but such now residing in fixed launcher 'mini-bays' within a ship's hull, much like the Cold War Polaris submarines or more recently, a contemporary guided missile cruiser.

If the ordnance discharged from a missile turret, specifically such being compact enough to fit into standby-type launcher racks, then why not simply moving such to a more 'hardened' location on a ship and free-up the hardpoint location for other more efficient-effective weapons ?

In no way downplaying the heft a missile launcher brings to ship-to-ship engagements but with such being essentially a fire-and-forget projectile, does one really need to aim the nose of the ordnance at the intended target before firing ?

Maybe it's just how I see ship-to-ship combat as more a business of jinking about popping off a few missiles and reserving line-of-sight engagement for targeted-directed energy weapons.

Ships will always have turrets, just common sense to have a quickly-drawn revolver ready and in reach just in case a situation so demands it, but even better if having missiles on standby as cover-fire to up your odds of surviving the gunfight.

Hmm - kind of a potato-potahto thing.

Whether your 1dT weapon installation is a turret in fact or in name only, you've still got 3 missiles stored in a missile launcher and being launched 1 per turn. Even if your turret's a mixed duty with laser and sandcaster that like to be pointed at their targets, the missile can launch straight out the top and no one's going to complain about it. Makes for a simpler reload mechanism, actually.

Me, I just take it as antiquated language surviving long after the realities change - like talking about "firing" a rifle when we no longer use fire to touch off the powder. The actuall word "turret" evolves from a word meaning "little tower". You're right that it maybe evokes the wrong image in someone unfamiliar with missile weaponry. You could go back to the gunports of old and call these missile ports, because they do evoke that old image.

However, I don't get that "jinking" reference. Technically, all space combat is line of sight, or rather line of sensor since it's often well beyond visual range. Still, it's rather rare to be finding something to hide behind.

And, whether the missile is a fire-and-forget weapon depends on the game system. Special Supplement 3 offers a variety of homing systems but also offers the option of external guidance, allowing the gunner to control the missile. High Guard imposes die modifiers based on the computer power of the firing ship and target ship, implying that the missile is gaining some advantage from the computer back on the ship that launched it.

 

[aramis]

Jinking isn't hiding. In air combat, jinking is a sudden direction change just before the missile would impact, so that the missile misses (and hopefully loses lock-on).

Jinking is impractical in space combat, since the missiles typically have equal or better ability to change directions.

 

[Carlobrand]

Jinking isn't hiding. In air combat, jinking is a sudden direction change just before the missile would impact, so that the missile misses (and hopefully loses lock-on).

Jinking is impractical in space combat, since the missiles typically have equal or better ability to change directions.

You could maybe pull it off if you found some way to briefly blind the sensors so the missile's reaction was delayed. If you could blind it briefly while sideslipping at the right moment, it's have to fight it's own momentum to get back to you.

 

[aramis]

You could maybe pull it off if you found some way to briefly blind the sensors so the missile's reaction was delayed. If you could blind it briefly while sideslipping at the right moment, it's have to fight it's own momentum to get back to you.

Which is a different defense: flare &/or chaff.

Thing is, if you're close enough to make the countermeasures last through predicted intercept point, you're close enough you're not getting far enough out of the way for it to miss.

 

[BlackBat242]

Hmm - kind of a potato-potahto thing.

Whether your 1dT weapon installation is a turret in fact or in name only, you've still got 3 missiles stored in a missile launcher and being launched 1 per turn.

His drawing is a modern VLS cell - every missile is in its own launch tube, and can be launched independently of all the others in the tube.

No need for a separate launcher, or for reloading. This is how modern missile cruisers & destroyers carry their missiles.

A USN DDG-51 class guided missile destroyer carries 90 VLS cells in two groups (29 forward and 61 aft) - and all 90 (96 in later ships, 32 forward and 64 aft)* can be launched in very rapid succession.



The only justification I can see for the Traveller missile turret is if the launcher is more of a "thrower" - a device that imparts an initial high velocity so as to shorten the acceleration time/distance, and to decrease the total flight time for a given distance. This would keep down the volume/mass of each missile.



* The initial installation had a built-in reloading crane in each group that took up the space of 3 cells. The later ships omitted it in favor of more missiles.

 

[Condottiere]

You could ripple-fire off a VLS, creating a barrage. If it's one every five seconds, that's two hundred and forty missiles in twenty minutes.

 

[Patron Zero]

I also see defensive measures on a starship to include VLS-type mounts (mini-hard-points ?) for the aforementioned 'chaff and flares', a given to reflect the technology advancements as being likely sandcasters and devices that mimic the ship's transponder.

That said, a good captain would have a 'layered' defense of several different options to best counter an attack whether by directed energy discharge or 'conventional' ordnance.

 

[Carlobrand]

His drawing is a modern VLS cell - every missile is in its own launch tube, and can be launched independently of all the others in the tube. ...

...The only justification I can see for the Traveller missile turret is if the launcher is more of a "thrower" - a device that imparts an initial high velocity so as to shorten the acceleration time/distance, and to decrease the total flight time for a given distance. This would keep down the volume/mass of each missile. ...

I'm well aware of what it is. Could serve for a 50dT bay on an Imperial destroyer, but he's IMTU'ing it if he puts this in a free trader. I have a suspicion the Imperium would not want a free trader with the ability to ripple-fire 9 missiles at some hapless customs cutter.

As for the launcher being a thrower, both Book 2 and MT have missiles flying over tens of thousands of miles. A thrower is not going to make a bit of difference in a missile designed to fly at 6G for 20 minutes or more. Might be a way to shove it away from the ship far enough so exhaust doesn't damage the turret, but it isn't going to make much difference to the volume/mass of space missiles.

My thought is "turret" is a generic term for any weapons system in a hardpoint. Saves confusing players with multiple different terms for one thing, and you're free to visualize it as a moving turret or, in the case of the missile, as what amounts to a torpedo tube/VLS tube thingie. Key point is however you visualize it, it has to operate within the existing combat rules, or you're making your own IMTU rules for the thing.

The turret is 1dT, but per canon it only houses a half dT crew position and nine missiles or 21 missiles, depending on whether you think those 12 spares are in the turret or the crew station. Missiles are supposedly about 0.1 cubic meter, which means there's room for more than 60 missiles in a half dTon. Ergo, the missile "turret" has something in there in addition to missiles. I like to think that includes a maser communicator to communicate targeting information to a launched missile, and sensor systems to gather information for the missile. Works well for High Guard's view of the computer affecting missile fire; Book-2 offers homing missiles, but these wouldn't be very effective against warship ECM, and civilian vessels likely operate under some sort of legal restrictions on their permitted firepower

Anyone's free to IMTU anything they want of course but, in the context of the milieu, one should keep in mind that civilian ships are going to be dealing with interstellar governments that will likely set restrictions on their firepower so they don't become a threat to local authorities. Also useful to keep in mind that whatever they mount can in turn be mounted by pirates and other adversaries.

 

[GypsyComet]

Consider that the Dragon SDB is defined as having "turrets".

 

[atpollard]

I have no idea whether it has been changed by errata, but Mongoose Traveller seems to imply that ANY craft may have 1 bay weapon ... taken at face value, a SDB could mount one Missile Bay.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

I have no idea whether it has been changed by errata, but Mongoose Traveller seems to imply that ANY craft may have 1 bay weapon ... taken at face value, a SDB could mount one Missile Bay.

Yhea, any craft can mount a missle bay, even a 70 ton bomber (using a tech based space reducing trick)

standard spacecraft can mount 1 per 1000 tons, times their P plant rating (so a 1000 ton ship with a p plant 6 can, in theory, have 6 hundred tons bays).

most of the published designs in Mgt's later works take advantage of this fact, with pretty much all combat themed ships that are not updates of pre-MgT ships having them.

 

[Condottiere]

70 ton smallcraft for a missile bay.

 

[atpollard]

Not to sound like an old grognard, but I don't get how 'missile bays' should be power plant dependent ... I mean, Energy Beam Weapon Bays, ok, but missiles?

 

[pendragonman]

Not to sound like an old grognard, but I don't get how 'missile bays' should be power plant dependent ... I mean, Energy Beam Weapon Bays, ok, but missiles?

stretching a bit, but targeting sensors?

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

*shrugs*

i don't either. theirs extra limits on top of that, about the ratio of energy/non energy bays you can have (basically for a pure energy bay mix you need PP5 or 6, lower and you can only have half/half).


though bear in mind "non energy bays" doesn't just mean missles in Mgt, as they have Railgun bays as well (with autofire attacks, to boot)

 

[Carlobrand]

I have no idea whether it has been changed by errata, but Mongoose Traveller seems to imply that ANY craft may have 1 bay weapon ... taken at face value, a SDB could mount one Missile Bay.

Yhea, any craft can mount a missle bay, even a 70 ton bomber (using a tech based space reducing trick)...

Dagnabit, and I'm stuck with this pea shooter?? :nonono:

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

well, said bomber has no other weapons, and ammo for exactly four savlos, so it has serious limitations, but it does mean that massed smallcraft can pose a threat to bigger ships (enough of one to justify carriers if your tastes run in that direction)

 

[Condottiere]

You could probably have a completely equipped 200 ton SDB with a hundred ton meson bay, though I haven't really calculated it out.