My 2 pence worth on Point Defense

[blackblood]

Ok been thinking about missiles v starships and lasers used in the point defense roll.

Currently the rules state that a successfull Point Defense roll negate the entire volley of missiles.

So whatever you fire for example single beam turret could destroy an entire missile bays worth of incomming missiles.

I have a problem with this as it kind of makes missiles useless against any crew with half decent skills.

So i have come up with the following house rule.

To balance things out once the point defense fire hits it reduces the incomming volleys USP by d/USP (of the point defense).

Example

Tripple missile turret has a USP of 2 tripple beam turret has a USP of 3 and a tripple Pulse turret has a UPS of 2. Now if you read the rules it says that beams are more useful as point defense weapons, keep that in mind.

So a successful hit by Point Defense Beams would reduce the missiles USP of 2 by d3 so at least halfed maybe totally negated
Where as a successful hit by Pulse Lasers would reduce the USP of 2 by d2 so at least halved but less chance to totally negate the incomming volley.

Thoughts Please.

Thanks

Nick

 

[Piper]

Seems like a reasonable and workable rule. Have you considered allowing the roll to be 1 over USP? A facter-3 laser would roll 1d4. This would allow some chance of knocking down higher factor missile attacks.
edit: You also might want to consider multiple dice for larger batteries; a Factor-9 would get 3D3 (or 3D4 if you opt for the higher factor).

uh-oh ... I just noticed this was T20
I'm not sure if T20 has the same battery structure as High Guard. My apologies if this is not the case.

 

[veltyen]

Hmmm. I think just doing the reduction based on the USP would be fine. Cuts out an extra die roll.

That changes the situation from
Successful intercept destroys incoming
to
Successful intercept destroys/reduces incoming

It also gives a reason to fire multiple PD at large incoming volleys.

Even the "best" beam array (30 weapon battery at TL13+) only just cancels the best missile attack, meaning in a lot of cases dribbles of missiles will make it through.

 

[blackblood]

Yes USP will work too instead of a die roll, i think i'll try both and see what happens