TNE's Brilliant Lances and Battle Rider actually do cover this.Proximity Nukes will blind both sides equally.And that isn't covered in any Traveller ruleset I have read.
Missiles in traveller combat systems?
- Thread starter The Thing
- Start date
BetterThanLife
SOC-14 1K
Neither of which I have.
But that makes 2 rulesets out of 12?
Well, you could argue that it is just one ruleset. BR was a macro-game derived from BL, which was TNE's space combat system.Neither of which I have.
BL was AFAIK the first Traveller set to address nitty-gritty details such as these at all. Bk2, Mayday, HG, MT (which was a badly cobbled-together HG bastard... the weakest part of the rules IMO) all abstracted these things away.
But I just recalled one other Traveller system which included nuclear explosion effects on sensors (and I can't believe that I, out of all persons, didn't think of it first): Power Projection.
Szurkey,
The 'explanation' of that - and by explanation I mean the handwave that was created after someone bothered to look at the math - is that Traveller beam weapons fire more than one shot during a given combat round and we only treat them all as one shot for game purposes.
I'd like to see the ranges of Traveller beam weapons shaprly curtailed. Using canoncial LBB:2 and Mayday beam weapon ranges, a ship can sit outside Earth's 100D jump limit and shoot at vessels in Earth orbit! We've thirty years of gaming inertia working against that, however.
We should also remember that when GDW had a chance to create a slightly more realistic space combat system with somewhat more realistic beam weapon ranges, they created 2300AD. There, beam weapons act like we believe they should; i.e. only as short ranged point defense-style weapons, and missiles are the ones who reach and a kill somebody!
The OTU setting wouldn't survive such a retcon. That doesn't mean that your personal TU shouldn't however!
Have fun,
Bill
Some food for thought on missiles...
Hi,
While not trying to come down on either side of the debate on missiles in general, reading some of the posts above has gotten me thinking about them in general, and here are some thoughts some of which others may have already alluded to, but probably need to be taken into consideration.
First, the computer and software on a ship is going to have to take all the data from all the different sensors on the ship (and perhaps even from other freindly ships) and fuse it into a single coherent picture of the environment you are in. Using modern naval stuff as an example, as I understand it this isn't impossible, though at the same time it isn't necessarily a trivial matter either because each sensor has its own strenghts and weaknesses and the computer system will have to know how best to put the data together and resolve anomolies between inputs.
The computer and software would then have to identify objects that are potential threats and track them over time to assess if they continue to appear threatening or may instead just be debris, rocks, or other no-threatening items. If a ship is operating in fairly open space this may not seem to be too daunting a task, but if instead it is operating in an asteroid belt, or near a planetary ring system, or in an area with a alot of debris (such as near a ship that appears to have been damaged) there could be alot of items to track.
Items that have little motion, or appear to be on a simple non-controlled trajectory, may potentially be tagged as likely non-threatening, whereas stuff that appears to be on a controlled trajectory may end up getting tagged as items of interest as they could be enemy ship's or missiles, etc.
However it is also important to realize that a) enemy missiles or ship's could be lying in a seemingly dormant trajectory trying to fool the computer inot thinking its not initially a threat and b) you need to address not only the motions of the targets but also the motion of your own ship which may ssem to give the stuff the computer is tracking motion relative to your ship. A big issue here will be not only the distance your ship is moving, but also how fast it may be rotating about its axes (as it tries to bring certain sensors or batteries to bear, or perhaps as it tries to reposition itself so its thrusters are pointed in a certain direction). As such you could argue that a 6G ship already at high velocity isn't going to be changing its direction of travel much in a single combat phase/turn, however if its very agile it could be rolling about its own axes fairly quickly (I believe) and hence the computer will have to account for any relative motion that the targets its tracking will appear to have because of this.
This also brings up the issue of what everything is being measured in reference to and what inputs the ship's computer is using to address the ship's own movements. From a modern day stand point this could be analogous to how your cars speedometer may say one thing, but a policeman's radar gun may give a different reading. They are both probably close to the same but there will be some differences that can affect the calcs the computer has to do. Additionally, I'm not smart enough to know if at the speeds we are talking about if relativistic stuff will impact anything. Anyway, using modern day stuff as an analog I've read stuff in books (which may or may not be totally true) about how on some modern warships the computer systems are set up to track potential targets and ID potential threats along similar lines but that at times thay have becaome confused by things like the relative motion of the ship making stationary or slow moving targets seem more threatening than they are.
Anyway, after taking into account all of this there are some other things that I'd suspect must also be considered about the incoming missiles as well.
To begin with, the missile will probably be a fairly small target in comparison to a whole ship, and it may likely have measures taken to make it appear even smaller if possible (such as shaping and/or coating its surface to try and reflect away or absorb radar and laser returns, etc). Additionally, there is a very real possibility that it could dispense decoys along its path that your ship will have to track to ensure that it correctly identifies which of the many returns is the real threat and which isn't. The missile could also potentially have more than one warheard the it ejects upon expending all its fuel so that more than one of the returns from a single missile and decoy group may be an actual threat.
Ontop of this if you hit a missile I'd suspect that it wouldn't fully disintegrate but would rather break up into smaller pieces some of which could potentially still be a threat (especially if the warhead isn't hit). As such if you have multiple missiles inbound and you appear to hit one of them you could potentially wind up giving the targeting computer/software even more targets to have to track and assess, as the missile could be trying to spoof you into thinking it had been destroyed.
Finally, as alluded to above the missile itself will be fairly small and a laser beam will dissapate over distance. I think it was either in the Starship Owner's Manual or an article in JTAS/Challenge that suggested that Traveller must postulate some sort of science fiction means of allowing laser beams to be held focused over a longer distance than now seems theoretically feasible, but even if you can do this just being off a fraction of a degree can be the difference in putting the beam on target or not.
Anyway, just some (additional?) thoughts that may or may not be relevant to maybe ponder.
Regards
PF
Hi,
While not trying to come down on either side of the debate on missiles in general, reading some of the posts above has gotten me thinking about them in general, and here are some thoughts some of which others may have already alluded to, but probably need to be taken into consideration.
First, the computer and software on a ship is going to have to take all the data from all the different sensors on the ship (and perhaps even from other freindly ships) and fuse it into a single coherent picture of the environment you are in. Using modern naval stuff as an example, as I understand it this isn't impossible, though at the same time it isn't necessarily a trivial matter either because each sensor has its own strenghts and weaknesses and the computer system will have to know how best to put the data together and resolve anomolies between inputs.
The computer and software would then have to identify objects that are potential threats and track them over time to assess if they continue to appear threatening or may instead just be debris, rocks, or other no-threatening items. If a ship is operating in fairly open space this may not seem to be too daunting a task, but if instead it is operating in an asteroid belt, or near a planetary ring system, or in an area with a alot of debris (such as near a ship that appears to have been damaged) there could be alot of items to track.
Items that have little motion, or appear to be on a simple non-controlled trajectory, may potentially be tagged as likely non-threatening, whereas stuff that appears to be on a controlled trajectory may end up getting tagged as items of interest as they could be enemy ship's or missiles, etc.
However it is also important to realize that a) enemy missiles or ship's could be lying in a seemingly dormant trajectory trying to fool the computer inot thinking its not initially a threat and b) you need to address not only the motions of the targets but also the motion of your own ship which may ssem to give the stuff the computer is tracking motion relative to your ship. A big issue here will be not only the distance your ship is moving, but also how fast it may be rotating about its axes (as it tries to bring certain sensors or batteries to bear, or perhaps as it tries to reposition itself so its thrusters are pointed in a certain direction). As such you could argue that a 6G ship already at high velocity isn't going to be changing its direction of travel much in a single combat phase/turn, however if its very agile it could be rolling about its own axes fairly quickly (I believe) and hence the computer will have to account for any relative motion that the targets its tracking will appear to have because of this.
This also brings up the issue of what everything is being measured in reference to and what inputs the ship's computer is using to address the ship's own movements. From a modern day stand point this could be analogous to how your cars speedometer may say one thing, but a policeman's radar gun may give a different reading. They are both probably close to the same but there will be some differences that can affect the calcs the computer has to do. Additionally, I'm not smart enough to know if at the speeds we are talking about if relativistic stuff will impact anything. Anyway, using modern day stuff as an analog I've read stuff in books (which may or may not be totally true) about how on some modern warships the computer systems are set up to track potential targets and ID potential threats along similar lines but that at times thay have becaome confused by things like the relative motion of the ship making stationary or slow moving targets seem more threatening than they are.
Anyway, after taking into account all of this there are some other things that I'd suspect must also be considered about the incoming missiles as well.
To begin with, the missile will probably be a fairly small target in comparison to a whole ship, and it may likely have measures taken to make it appear even smaller if possible (such as shaping and/or coating its surface to try and reflect away or absorb radar and laser returns, etc). Additionally, there is a very real possibility that it could dispense decoys along its path that your ship will have to track to ensure that it correctly identifies which of the many returns is the real threat and which isn't. The missile could also potentially have more than one warheard the it ejects upon expending all its fuel so that more than one of the returns from a single missile and decoy group may be an actual threat.
Ontop of this if you hit a missile I'd suspect that it wouldn't fully disintegrate but would rather break up into smaller pieces some of which could potentially still be a threat (especially if the warhead isn't hit). As such if you have multiple missiles inbound and you appear to hit one of them you could potentially wind up giving the targeting computer/software even more targets to have to track and assess, as the missile could be trying to spoof you into thinking it had been destroyed.
Finally, as alluded to above the missile itself will be fairly small and a laser beam will dissapate over distance. I think it was either in the Starship Owner's Manual or an article in JTAS/Challenge that suggested that Traveller must postulate some sort of science fiction means of allowing laser beams to be held focused over a longer distance than now seems theoretically feasible, but even if you can do this just being off a fraction of a degree can be the difference in putting the beam on target or not.
Anyway, just some (additional?) thoughts that may or may not be relevant to maybe ponder.
Regards
PF
Bob Weaver
SOC-12
T:2300 rules?
Since I don't have access to T:2300 rules, could you give a synopsis of what the rules say about beam weapons & ranges? The post above about the needed accuracy at 1 hex range does give one pause. But then it might also help to explain why Traveller ships need such big computers to function.
Since I don't have access to T:2300 rules, could you give a synopsis of what the rules say about beam weapons & ranges? The post above about the needed accuracy at 1 hex range does give one pause. But then it might also help to explain why Traveller ships need such big computers to function.
Heh, this whole debate was beat to death how many times on the old TML?
Ultimately, Whipsnade nailed it. As long as Traveller lasers have the range they do, it is simply not viable for a KE missile to be able to reach it's target. Or even get within the same BL/BR 30k km hex before it is hit. All of my FF&S capital ship designs have at least a portion of the PD lasers capable of going to 100, if not 1000 shots per 30 min round.
The other problem is sensors, detecting them so far out.
This can be alleviated by removing the grav-focusing, which greatly shortens ranges but doesn't entirely eliminate the problem. Another feature 2300 shared with TNE/FF&S was that missiles were not KE weapons. They were detonation missiles, that themselves shot lasers.
Ultimately, Whipsnade nailed it. As long as Traveller lasers have the range they do, it is simply not viable for a KE missile to be able to reach it's target. Or even get within the same BL/BR 30k km hex before it is hit. All of my FF&S capital ship designs have at least a portion of the PD lasers capable of going to 100, if not 1000 shots per 30 min round.
The other problem is sensors, detecting them so far out.
This can be alleviated by removing the grav-focusing, which greatly shortens ranges but doesn't entirely eliminate the problem. Another feature 2300 shared with TNE/FF&S was that missiles were not KE weapons. They were detonation missiles, that themselves shot lasers.
