Missiles in Traveller....

[warwizard]

Thank you for the complement I was just trying to illuminate the wide differances in performance available at fairly low tech levels.

Yes the missile designs are fun and the real test is flying them around. once the designing is done it allows the ref to get a feel for how to use them in his TU. I know now that I'd never risk getting a TL 10 world mad enough at me for them to start shooting their military stuff at my ship even if I DO have a TL 15 800 ton merc crusier.
Non nuclear warheads cause sufficient damage to cripple but not destroy the average 200 tonner J1 merchant. I figure in velocity effects add 1 DV per KPs per .1 Mt and you can quickly get to truly impressive DV's in a hurry for contact hits (blast frag warhead produces 2d6 hits by .001 KG fragments with the DV of the warhead + 1% of the DV due to base closing velocity) 400 armour value would not stop an average direct contact hit (7 tons, 6 G's for an hour=21.6 KPS produces over 1400 DV without any warhead for 14 major hits- 4 for the AV)

IRL we have tatical battlefield missiles today that can melt a hole through a 10 ft thick (approx. 3m) hardened steel armour plate, so I do allow non nuclear missiles to do more than just surface hits if they manage to overcome all defenses and actually reach the enemy's hull.

 

[Peter Schutze]

>They automatically reduce them

A bit of effort on your part but to get around the resampling by the hosting service try
* trimming the pictures down eg top/bottom whitespace margins
* saving is as black and white/mono
* cutting off the half page without changes

should be do-able in windows without any fancy software

 

[Pagan priest]

Missile pods. Ever read the Honor Harrington books? One of the technologies that they used in the books was a pod that could be dropped from a merchant ship, ready to unleash a salvo of missiles on command. I'd call it a dedicated com link, robot brain, small power plant or batteries, a small maneuver drive and a 50 ton missile bay (equivalent). Should be less than 55 dtons.

Now, I understand that the rules don't actually permit bay weapons in small vessels, but that is a flaw in the rules and a subject for a separate post. Also, this is in no way an accurate portrayal of the missile pods used in the HH books. IIRC, the missiles used in the books would be about 2-3 dtons EACH, and were capable of accelerations of hundreds of g's for several minutes.

 

[Icosahedron]

Nice idea, like an airdrop MRL. Might be a bit of a rule-breaker, though.
I imagine it might be ok if these things act dumb like a sand cloud, but if they follow the ship about, they'd have to be designed as a small craft - and if that small craft can use its 'hold' as a missile bay, why can't the parent craft?