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Missile Turrets: Outdated and Obsolete ?

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)

Recently designed some fighters (MgT) with pure starship missile armament. A 20dT fighter can carry a serious amount of missiles and have heavy armour for defence.

With several squadrons of them all firing salvos, there would be enough to potentially overwhelm the point defence weapons of any target(s) even with datalinked fleet based defences.

With a targets saturated point defences it would not be too hard to have a few torpedoes getting through and causing the real damage.
 
Recently designed some fighters (MgT) with pure starship missile armament. A 20dT fighter can carry a serious amount of missiles and have heavy armour for defence.

With several squadrons of them all firing salvos, there would be enough to potentially overwhelm the point defence weapons of any target(s) even with datalinked fleet based defences.

With a targets saturated point defences it would not be too hard to have a few torpedoes getting through and causing the real damage.

See that in MgT missiles are no longer the decisive weapons told about in CT:HG (I guess they are the "Dethroned Queen of the Battle").

If you use CB rules, 2d6 damage (I asume nukes) against heavy armor (Let's asume equal to TL) plus nuc damper plus (possibly) sand, usualy means no damage.

As for barrages (those numbers were run for another thread on a TL 10 ship):

to make numbers easy, let's imagine your 20 missile bays against 16 bearing:

Missiles barrage: 384 - nuclear missile - long - 2

Against an armor 10 ship, in all cases crew quality 3 and FC +2 8maximum for TL A):

Missiles modifier: -10 armor, +2 dice/weapon, +3 crew, +2 FC, - (1d6-11+1) sandcasters, -(1d6-21+1) for lasers= -(2 + (2d6-1)), so, -(2d6+1). So, assuming average dice, no damage (as the dice for PD will offset barrage roll and still leave a -1 result).

I asume PD is under 90% of missiles in both cases

Of course, a lucky missile barrage can be devastating (both PD rolls being 1, so a total of -3 and boxes on the barrage roll would inflict 150%, so 576 damage points, But you need a barrage roll 5 over the PD rolls to inflict any damage (I leave the numbers to anyone else). And again, against fighters things go even worse.

As your TL raises, so does Fire Control (up to +5), but so does enemy's armor, for a net effect of 0 until TL 13 (when Fire Control/5 is reached), and negative for the missiles upwards...

More or less the same happens when diffreent Crew Quality is used (after all, +3 is elite crews according to HG: At Crew quality +2, both PDs (sand and lasers) lose a +1 to the roll, but so does the barrage roll (for a total of +1 for the missiles), while Crew Quality +1 evens it again, as the PDs are unaffected while the missiles lose another +1. Crew Quality +4 will again give a +1 to the missiles and won't affect PDs, giving again a +1 more to the missiles. See that in both cases where the missiles receive this additional +1 for Crew Quality they still need to toll on the barrage roll 4 over the PDs rolls to affect the ship (albeit if they do the damage can be devastating).

And all of this is aside form the cost (both in tonnage and Credits) that the ammo represents...

See that the example in MgT LBB2:HG (pages 74-75) is against an armor 2 ship, and even then it only achieves 50% barrage damage on a barrage roll of 7 and PDs rolls of 4 and 2 (so, barrage roll 1 over PDs ones and against very low armor)
 
One campaign I ran a looong time ago I changed missiles up a bit.

I created a "quick and dirty" missile design system so you could alter fuel, speed, payload, etc.

I also added torpedoes.
 
I saw missile turrets an alternative to power-hungry weps and so always threw a few in, but reading the whole topic, it makes a lot of sense.
 
I created a "quick and dirty" missile design system so you could alter fuel, speed, payload, etc.

I also added torpedoes.


What did you define as the difference between a missile and a torpedo? Just size of the device (i.e. Heavy Missile), or was there a substantive difference?
 
What did you define as the difference between a missile and a torpedo? Just size of the device (i.e. Heavy Missile), or was there a substantive difference?

The missile could fit into the turret (i.e. a triple turret could have 3 missile launchers). The torpedo needed it's own launch mechanism. They were far larger and a lot more powerful. Now this was a long time ago, but as I recall a torpedo was a full dton per torpedo.

The missiles in this setup were far faster than 6G -- I think the slowest was 12G. The torpedo though was 6G. The fastest you could get a missile was 32G.

I set it up so you made a tradeoff, fuel, speed, warhead, etc. It was a slider. Faster missiles meant either less duration or smaller warhead.

The players tended to like super fast missiles with a 1 turn duration.

We did a vector movement space combat (colored pencils, butcher paper) 1mm per G. They'd maneuver and they fire all their 1-turn missiles.
 
I have been trying to do a MgT fleet standard (6G, J-3) patrol and close escort with a gig or boat, and stingers (50 ton meson or PA Barbs, with torp barbs or a bay), and armor 8. I just am not coming up with a good design.
 
Yhea, any craft can mount a missle bay, even a 70 ton bomber (using a tech based space reducing trick). ...

I finally broke down and picked up that Mongoose High Guard from the used book store - still having second thoughts but, oh well. Don't have the Mongoose core, so still no clear idea how it integrates, but -

When the game says 1 per 1000 tons, it allows fractions? You can put a bay on a 70 ton fighter and then put two on a 1070 ton corvette?

...With a targets saturated point defences it would not be too hard to have a few torpedoes getting through and causing the real damage.

The target can't discriminate inbounds? I'd have thought they went for the biggest threats first. Or is it a case of making him stretch his defenses to the point that he's gambling on a given defense stopping this torp so he can put that defense on something else?
 
With a targets saturated point defences it would not be too hard to have a few torpedoes getting through and causing the real damage.

As MgT:HG rules are, PD aren't really become saturated, as the most it can happen is to have a -1 to the point defense roll is you have fewer than 90% when comapring them to missiles.

As told before, missiles are nearly useless, while bomb pumped laser torpedoes (due to their better damage per wapon and the -2 to both PD tables for being so) are more effective, but also larger (so less can be thrown) and more expensive...
 
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When the game says 1 per 1000 tons, it allows fractions? You can put a bay on a 70 ton fighter and then put two on a 1070 ton corvette?

in short, yes. As i have jsut discovered, i was reading that rule slightly wrong, as it's actually phrased "tonnage/1000 * P-plant rating (rounding down, but minimum of one)".

so, a ship can always have one bay, but needs to be over a certian size and power to mount more. The smallest ship that can mount 2 bays is a 400 ton ship with a P-plant of 5.
 
in short, yes. As i have jsut discovered, i was reading that rule slightly wrong, as it's actually phrased "tonnage/1000 * P-plant rating (rounding down, but minimum of one)".

so, a ship can always have one bay, but needs to be over a certian size and power to mount more. The smallest ship that can mount 2 bays is a 400 ton ship with a P-plant of 5.

That makes sense to me (albeit missile bays should not be so limited by PP, as they are less power hungry, more or less like missile turrets do not need a minimum power plant in small crafts design).
 
I assume thats its for balance reasons, to stop people loading out with stupid numbers of missle bays.


also, McPerth, while the barrage rules don't really allow saturation, at adventure scale, it is indeed possible to overload a PD system, with enough missles. if the gunners roll badly enough, it might not even be that many.
 
also, McPerth, while the barrage rules don't really allow saturation, at adventure scale, it is indeed possible to overload a PD system, with enough missles. if the gunners roll badly enough, it might not even be that many.

Agreed, but it can take a lot of missiles to overcome the PD lasers, and, if the ship is arored, missiles will do little damage, unless nukes (and if you polay OTU, nukes are not easy to obtain). Even nukes are quite ineffective against a heavy armored ship (which I guess is what the player will have if they are expected face them).

And sandcastes will reduce the damage even more...
 
I thought it was economic considerations that squelched missile barrages.

Though at least for Mongoose, missiles and torpedoes are unaccountably cheap, possibly below production cost.
 
. . . if the ship is [armored], missiles will do little damage, unless nukes (and if you polay OTU, nukes are not easy to obtain). Even nukes are quite ineffective against a heavy armored ship (which I guess is what the player will have if they are expected face them).


Since MgT seemed to base their Basic Starship Combat damages on the CT: Book 2 "number of hits", perhaps a house rule (and suggestion for upcoming Second Edition MgT Rules publications) would be to have a conventional missile do 1D6 x D6 points (i.e. 1D6 to 6D6), since CT: Book 2 did 1-6 "hits". (Or scale missiles down to 1D3 x D6 points and have Torpedoes do 1D6 x D6 points if those numbers are too large).

Alternately, incorporate the missiles rules from CT: Special Supplement 3 - Missiles in a similar way, converting "hits" to an appropriate # of D6's of damage.
 
Since MgT seemed to base their Basic Starship Combat damages on the CT: Book 2 "number of hits", perhaps a house rule (and suggestion for upcoming Second Edition MgT Rules publications) would be to have a conventional missile do 1D6 x D6 points (i.e. 1D6 to 6D6), since CT: Book 2 did 1-6 "hits". (Or scale missiles down to 1D3 x D6 points and have Torpedoes do 1D6 x D6 points if those numbers are too large).

Alternately, incorporate the missiles rules from CT: Special Supplement 3 - Missiles in a similar way, converting "hits" to an appropriate # of D6's of damage.

See that in MgT:HG (page 48) there already appear some different kinds of missiles.

One of them (the multi warhead missiles) is just told to deliver 1d6 damage 1d6 times (but unfortunattely is not told if this means 1d6X1d6- armor or just as if 1d6 normal missiles had hit. As it is worded, I'm inclined to understand the seccond option, so no great advantage is there against armored ships). Others have more range or are specialized for some specific mission.
 
... Even nukes are quite ineffective against a heavy armored ship ...

And that's just wrong, Wrong, I tell you! :mad:

I mean, nuke - NUUUUKE - 400 gigajoules right on your hull! What force short of neutronium can tolerate that with equanimity? If it can take that, it could run orbits a hundred yards up from a sun.
 
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