Naarmilii, Missiles, Torpedoes...And You (IMTU)

[warwizard]

Now, I see that this post is NOT in the CT section, so other versions of the rules can be brought into this.

Book 5 had 1/2 Dt missiles... using T4's FF&S I've used a fusion power plant and HEPLAR drive at TL=13+ to get 1/2 dt missiles with days of thrust at 10 to 80 g's, depending on exact tech level and configuration. An 80 g TL 16 sprint missile can reach 4 hexes in six minutes. There is no magic involved, the energy comes from fuzing hydrogen, and using the energy produced to accelerate the rocket exhaust like a big ion drive, and hydrogen is very light, so the efficency of the rocket is very high. The therotical maximum g's of a HEPLAR rocket is 200 g's, however the requirement for a 10 MW fusion power plant to power that cubic meter of HEPLAR knocks that down to 18g's at TL 13, 23.5 g's at TL 14, 46g's at TL 15, and 82g's at TL 16. few missiles even come close to these maximums, but at 1/2 of that maximum you can have a very good long range missile with a decent payload. (Adding sensors and communicators and such puts the cost in the millions of credits.) You could place a laser on such a platform with about a 4 hex range, and have the thing pulling 17 g's of evasion while shooting and using 6g's to keep up with the target. What this can't do is pierce armour, the accumulator to be able to punch armour is just too massive. It however would be effective against surface features or unarmoured craft.

A disabled ship that cannot maneuver or shoot is simply surface hit directly by a single missile that's been pulling 40 g's for the last half hour or so,(720 km/s) and weighs in at a metric ton, no nuke needed, no explosive needed, many metric tons of solid material, (armour or freshers, it does not matter), is going to turn into a highly energetic plasma. A Kokoric might need a few more hits, or just back up a bit further and let the missile run 1 1/2 hours... there is your ship killing power, usefull for finishing off a cripple.

 

[mike wightman]

No magic involved?

Lol - you built it using HEPlaR, which is magic tech.

And which version of book 5 has a 1/2 ton missile? Not High Guard so you must mean a different book.

 

[steventirey1985]

And which version of book 5 has a 1/2 ton missile? Not High Guard so you must mean a different book.

After a bit of looking, I found this:

Of the four Classic Traveller sources on missiles, two (Striker and Special Supplement 3) indicate that bay missiles are larger than turret missiles. Book 2 only deals with turret missiles, and High Guard is silent on the question. All the later design rules have missiles that are much larger than those in Classic Traveller turrets. The first step in coming up with larger bay missiles is to decide how much bigger they are, and Striker gives some clear information on this. Striker indicates that turret missiles are 15 cm rounds, and that bay missiles are 25 cm rounds. Dividing the area of bay missiles by the area of turret missiles, the ratio is found to be 2.8. It seems reasonable that a missile with a larger area would have a greater length as well, and 2.8 times as long was chosen. Multiplying the original 0.05 ton volume of the turret missile by the 2.8 ratio of the area and the 2.8 ratio of the length, we get 0.39 tons which is rounded to 0.4 tons

Found here.

 

[Tobias]

IMTU, there are:
500 kg "turret" missiles for use on PC-level ships. These are basically high-tech, rocket-propelled versions of current Harpoon-class SSM in spaaaace. Compared to the larger missiles, they have limited endurance, maneuverability and survivability.
50,000 kg "bay" missiles. SLBM-sized beasties. Heavily armored, highly maneuverable, long-endurance capital ship killers with multiple warheads, either kinetic kill or nuclear.

 

[tater]

Years ago we worked out the damage (TNE) for Kinetic Kill Missiles (KKMs). The damage was a function of the current velocity of the missile (distance from present to future position in a Mayday type system).

They would disperse ball bearings, basically. Civilian versions would basically scrub off surface features (sensor/turret damage), though we also assumed that ships had to have substantial radiators (the problem with spacecraft being getting rid of heat, even just from the people inside). The added plus is that they can disperse farther away, increasing hit chance (under the right target maneuver conditions) at the expense of less damage.

Military versions could use DU, or even hull material for the "shot" inside, increasing damage. Larger versions simply disperse larger shot. Note that damage scales linearly with shot mass, and as the square of the velocity, which makes for easy combat tables.

Sorta fits a HG-like effect of "scrubbing" the targets, not really penetrating.

HE type warheads of course need to actually hit (or VERY near miss), which is pretty difficult. Nukes then have their own place, as qualitatively diferent. Started looking at my old BSCS, and various rules for the first time in years...

 

[Carlobrand]

Bigger is not always better. A bigger missile is a bigger target, easier to hit. In the effort to deliver more punch to the target, you reduce the odds of the missile reaching the target. Then you try to figure out penetration aids, improved electronics for evasive maneuvering, and so forth; you spend more, end up with an even bigger and more expensive missile and more incentive by the target to find ways to kill it - like setting a nuke off in its path. At some point, it stops being Traveller and starts being a different game all about missiles and torpedoes and how to stop them or get them through to target.

My IMTU missile was comparatively simple: a standard-build missile with the standard nuclear warhead - and a one-shot nuclear-pumped laser, based on that SDI concept. It was basically a stand-off missile, detonating from well outside the range of the target's missile defenses while aimed at the target, delivering a powerful laser burst. It would therefore avoid most defenses (except sand, which interferes with missiles and lasers alike). It's game characteristics would depend on the ensuing arguments - a house rule is after all not worth much of others won't accept it - but based on the Book-5 rules, its to-hit roll would be that of the missile, it would penetrate sand as an equivalent battery of lasers but with a +1 bonus (same as the +1 for TL13 laser batteries), and it would roll damage as a pulse laser: +2 to the damage roll. Not as devastating as delivering nukes in close but more likely to score the hit, it gave fighters and low-tech ships a bit more punch.

 

[tater]

Missiles are all easy targets. They can be fitted with lateral thrusters, and displace by some radius as they move in, but their course is 100% predictable, and is in fact a 2d firing solution. They must impact target (close enough, anyway). At short ranges (by traveller standards, inside maybe 0.1 ls), hitting becomes automatic for even modern beam directors. With larger numbers of targets the problem is sorting out which laser shoots which missile without overlap, hitting is not an issue.

The target size is not really an issue.

X-ray lasers (and the TNE rationale) make a certain amount of sense, but then again, they are still nukes. That they have rods that disintegrate and lase doesn't make them less nasty if you happen to be near them. Traditionally, nukes are disallowed at higher law levels, and in "polite" society . We wanted to stay away from nukes, and keep them as military weapons.

KKMs make a huge amount of sense, frankly, and particularly for civilian use as they for the most part do sub-critical damage, and might even be considered "defensive" as long as they use warheads within some range of size and density.

Note that a spinning missile could disperse long-rod penetrators held in a fascia-like bundle. Use superdense materials, and you have a weapon capable of critical damage vs smaller ships. Turn missile bays into torpedo launchers (I always thought of them this way IMTU), with substantially larger missiles. Still a group are fired, not just 1 50 or 100 ton missile, but maybe 10-20 5 dton missiles, and you can either use the same small bearings/penetrators dispersed over a wide are for max hit%, or fewer, larger penetrators for more damage if a hit is achieved.

Could make a table with the number of missiles vs velocity. Assuming the counter (containing XX missiles) makes intercept, then the cross referenced result could be the number that hit (in dice, perhaps, to randomize it), and what damage they do per hit.

For player characters, you could have the option of having the gunner (skill) elect to override the detonation on ingress to spread the penetrators, and try for a "skin hit." In that case, you treat the single missile as akin to the penetrators of larger bay missiles, perhaps... could be interesting.

Note that with KKMs, fighters can use their m-drives to up their velocity such that the missile hits with maximum velocity. A Mayday missile with ~30 gturns ends up (at 50kg for missile) with a KE of about 40 MJ. Mass is linear here, so divide by the number of projectiles. That's if it builds up most velocity towards target. If it has to turn and burn, it does far less damage, obviously, only ~10MJ if the impact speed is halved.

Adds some tactics for fighters, actually. You want to use the fighter to steer the missile, then add the delta-v of the missile to the fighter's vector towards the target. Makes a swarm of fighters actually sort of scary, and something you'd want to counter. Ditto large bay missiles that could in fact be small craft, really, with real drives.

perhaps in the traveller universe, a "torpedo" differs from a "missile" in terms of propulsion, not just an arbitrary size difference. Torpedoes are self-guided "small craft" with real PPs and drives (albeit designed to be as cheap as possible, they only need to survive 1 use, so no shielding, metal that degrades fast, etc).

 

[BytePro]

Nice house rule. If nothing else, stand off bomb pumped laser gives it a high tech feel - and the tie in with sand caster defenses is good.

Also, prefer a smaller missile. IMTU, I described missiles as multi-stage penetrators* - envisioning a slim, streamlined warhead and delivery stage. (*Made no special house rules to accommodate them, though.)

 

[tater]

Looking at old FFS notes, an IJN Type 93 torpedo (61cm dia.) is 0.20 dtons (rounded up a hair). The "Long Lance" is a big fish. It gives some notion of how big even a 50 ton bay is. It could have 50% wasted space and still hold 125 missiles of that size. Starting to paint a picture that looks more like anime missiles if you stick with the 50kg variety in bays

As an aside (belongs in the fix HG thread) that the HG surface damage table needs to include some computer hits since as we all know, "computer" includes all avionics and sensors---and sensors require surface area (resolution goes as the distance between detectors, and sensitivity goes as the total sensor area). "Scrubbing" hits degrade sensors, so should degrade "computer" in HG. I'd likely steal the central fuel hit for this comp-1 hit.

The PP should probably also have a surface hit as well. The m-drive uses power, and has surface area already, but all power must be radiated to space (and then some). The hull is likely built with a substrate of radiator, so hull damage = radiator damage. Failure to radiate waste heat kills the crew, so scrubbing hits should force turning down power output. This is even with a lot of hand waving for m-drive and other tech sending energy away from the ship, too, since even the heat from the crew is a heat radiation issue. Steal one of the "weapon" or "maneuver" hits on an 8 or 9 for this.

 

[mike wightman]

Waste heat from the pp is what powers the acceleration compensators and grav plates...

what? Makes as much sense as anything else.

Also the entire hull will be studded with micro-apertures for the sensors so it will take an awful lot of damage to degrade the computer/sensor rating.

After all, damage to the hull doesn't affect the jump drive either...

 

[Whipsnade]

As an aside (belongs in the fix HG thread) that the HG surface damage table needs to include some computer hits since as we all know, "computer" includes all avionics and sensors---and sensors require surface area (resolution goes as the distance between detectors, and sensitivity goes as the total sensor area).

Instead of looking at the "component" itself, perhaps you should look at the the "job" the "component" does instead...

I've been both playing and playing with wargames since Nixon was in the White House, so it's rather automatic for me to look "beneath" a game mechanism and "behind" the labels being used to try and determine what is actually being modeled.

Ask yourself`this question: Why don't larger batteries cause more damage? Whether it's one laser in one turret or enough lasers in enough turrets to create a factor-9 battery, they all cause the same damage. Oddly enough and apart from critical hits, larger batteries only give you a better chance to hit and not more damage.

So, when that Weapon-1 hit drops a laser battery from code 9 to 8, is the hit modeling the loss of a turret or the loss of the various sensors which aim that turret?

Now look at bay and spinal batteries. Again, larger battery codes only mean better chances to hit and not more damage. Again, Weapon-X hits only effect that chance to hit and not the bay's or spinal's ability to shoot. Again, is that Weapon-1 modeling physical damage to the bay or spinal, or is it modeling a degradation in aiming the weapon instead?

It's fairly obvious to anyone who happens to examine the situation that Weapon hits model both physical damage to weapons and the loss of sensors. Because I realize that sensor loss is part of the Weapon hit, I also realize that I don't need to add Computer hits to the Surface Damage table.

Looking beneath and beyond a game's mechanisms can be hard, but it's usually helpful to examine what a mechanism actually does while not getting too hung up on labels.

 

[tater]

Waste heat from the pp is what powers the acceleration compensators and grav plates...

They can be assumed to dissipate energy via gravity waves or something for sure. hence my statement about hand-waving there. Still, I have trouble imaging them running off of steam pipes. "Get me a wrench and some tape, the grave system is leaking!"

After all, damage to the hull doesn't affect the jump drive either...

True, I was thinking from memory of a different table. It should, though

You can stud the hull with small sensors, and you can get resolution that way (the same way interferometry is used in radio telescope arrays like the VLA here where I am). Sensitivity is a function of light gathering, which is area. I always liked sensor rules, even in the traveler universe where it's pretty hard to miss a ship at long distances using current IR sensors because it gives the chance for trickery/escape by players (who can usually be expected to be overmatched, and not in a position to fight it out with craft far superior to themselves (discretion being the better part of player valor).

YMMV.

 

[tater]

We all make whatever assumptions we like to try and justify an arbitrary rules system. Heck, we've all been doing this with traveller since the 70s (those of us who started when the LBBs were brand new, anyway, lol). I'm a tinkerer, though. Can't help it, won't stop.

I like your observation on sensors WRT gun mounts, but then again, HG ignores some role playing aspects. Should we assume when a player ship loses all weapons it is also completely blind (short of looking out a window with whatever hand-held optics the crew might carry)? We can of course assume that the comp system also has sensors---but they are miraculously hard to take out in a battle between units that do only surface hits (odd since they are by definition hard to harden from attack)---impossible vs anything with some small armor, and armor cannot protect sensors IMO.

I think I'd still prefer an explicit damage result, or even rules for using certain weapons as sensors in the case you outline (which would be an interesting write up, and useful for players who might need to think outside the box and use the laser as a telescope). Clearly laser optics can work just as well as telescopes (all it takes is a mirror to swing in and move the gathered light to a detector). Course on huge military ships, I'd expect to see some larger sensor arrays with greater sensitivity. I'd still assume that the multi-dton "computer" includes other required electronics, some of which are on the hull. I'm big on sensors since I'm an astronomy guy by training.

Regarding the PP surface damage suggestion (which you did not address), I still think that anything that requires energy management makes combat interesting, least for player encounters. Seemingly minor damage can then require their foe to stop shooting at them, slow down, etc, or overtax their LS until they repair the radiators. Maybe on 11-12, actually (both ideas), looking at the tables, finally (was from memory last night).

In short, I'd like more variability on the only damage column that non-military players get to roll more often than not. That one table is a big problem, IMO, since armor is a +DM only really to avoid penetration. Fuel vs weapon hit %s sort of arbitrarily change based on AV of target (i'd have to look at the 2-12 %s for each AV to tell you which if any has a sweet spot for taking weap vs fuel hits, likely the TCS guys know this by heart ).

I've long been in the camp of people that would prefer to have a new HG that is scalable (with player ships in mind here), and consistent with a more thought out set of initial conditions (ballparked damage in joules so new weapons, or KE damage that is easily calculated). Also, as you suggest, the lower hit % not damage done real in HG, but I differ in that I think of it as a problem (since the same weapons do more damage when the target size is arbitrarily 1 dton less than the weapon factor). YMMV, obviously, but this is a IMTU thread.

 

[Carlobrand]

Instead of looking at the "component" itself, perhaps you should look at the the "job" the "component" does instead...
...

Ask yourself`this question: Why don't larger batteries cause more damage? Whether it's one laser in one turret or enough lasers in enough turrets to create a factor-9 battery, they all cause the same damage. Oddly enough and apart from critical hits, larger batteries only give you a better chance to hit and not more damage.

I never thought that odd. I always figured the battery weapons were configured to fire in a pattern to maximize the odds of a hit. For example, one might lead a bit, one trails a bit, one a bit high, one a bit low, one dead center on the anticipated future location, like that. So, if you anticipate perfectly, your dead center laser hits while the rest miss. If you were off high, your high laser might hit - but again the rest miss. If he went more to starboard than you predicted, ... you get the point. The more lasers, the more effectively you cover all his possible maneuver options - but only one laser connects.

Same with missiles. They spread out in a pattern that makes it harder for you to evade one without flying into another - but pretty well guarantees that, depending in which way you turn, most of the rest won't have a chance to catch you. Still, by bracketing you, they increase the chance that one of the set will manage to hit you.

 

[tater]

The lasers depend on range. Vs 6g maneuvering target, even if you assume they can do a full 6g instantly in any direction, lasers become automatic hits at the right range (when they can only displace a part of a ship radius in the flight time of the laser).

Within a 1 second travel time (300,000km range) a 6g ship can displace 29.4m. That's an 8400 dton sphere in volume. Twice that diameter is a ~67kton cruiser sized sphere. So at 1 light second, you basically cannot possibly miss a CA sized target with a laser (certainly if it is capable of discharging more than once per turn).

So if your ship happened to have every single laser as a separate battery, it would get that many damage rolls instead of the 1 it gets.

The B2 ranges can be longer (-5 dm), though that begs handwaving sort of like TNE did with keeping lasers focused. Traveller type (LBB2) ranges really lend themselves to Nivenesque lasers warming the enemy hull til they cannot radiate heat away

This doesn't get rid of to-hit %s, though, since there is still quality to hits. Beam smear on target, etc. So the to-hit can be a measure of hits that actually matter (deliver enough energy/area to do damage). Still, as the range gets closer, even this drops away and becomes automatic "good" hits (target cannot displace enough to smear the beam in a pulse-length). You can also assume a model where many lesser hits are in fact allowed to combine to create "real" damage. The idea being that each laser might hit the target multiple times in a 20 minute turn, but due to beam smear and divergence you need to have XX hits overlapping to do enough to harm a given system. This is a problem since there is a delivered energy cutoff before which all a laser will do is warm the surface. Particle weapons (including missiles dispensing particles) map more easily to this model (tiny craters from penetrators finally overlapping to actually damage something), IMO.

 

[Carlobrand]

Within a 1 second travel time (300,000km range) a 6g ship can displace 29.4m. That's an 8400 dton sphere in volume. Twice that diameter is a ~67kton cruiser sized sphere. So at 1 light second, you basically cannot possibly miss a CA sized target with a laser (certainly if it is capable of discharging more than once per turn).

Your analysis presupposes that you have a bullseye fix on the target CA. You don't. You're using your sensors to try to achieve an exact bearing on a target that's 300,000 km away. The long turn times in the game are based on the notion that it's taking you that long to draw a reasonable firing solution out of your sensor data - and even at that, the "reasonable" solution for a single laser involves a less than 50:50 chance at being right (before your DMs and his DMs are figured in). In High Guard, lasers end up being arrayed in batteries of up to 30 firing in set patterns in order to increase the odds that at least one will find the target.

That being said, the target can better be described as a small circle of space in which - somewhere - you believe the target to be, but your not sure exactly where because that's as good as the sensors are giving you - or perhaps that's just as good as you can get when trying to get your turret to line up a beam with an accuracy of a fraction of a second of arc; amounts to the same thing from the target's perspective. (A circle because depth is not an issue - your laser traverses the Z axis, so only the X and Y axes are relevant). Your single laser having roughly a 50:50 shot at a non-evading target, that implies - very roughly - that the circle in question has twice the area of your target.

If we NOW consider the effects of the target's maneuvering, then that maneuvering is like adding a donut ring to that circle - it increases the area in which the target might be. Now, if you took a circle of radius X and added a donut ring 29.4m wide to it, you'd find that the increase in area is much more than the area of a circle of 29.4 m radius. His drive is effective not because he's moving out of the way of the beam, but because he's increasing the area of space in which you have to contend with.

In other words, even though the ship can not move out of the way of your shot in the second before it gets there, that fact depends on you having perfect aim. In reality - well, in game reality - you do not have perfect aim: the limited effectiveness of your sensors (or your turret's tracking) coupled with his movement means that he's decreased the odds of you putting the beam on him by a good bit.

 

[tater]

Your analysis presupposes that you have a bullseye fix on the target CA. You don't. You're using your sensors to try to achieve an exact bearing on a target that's 300,000 km away. The long turn times in the game are based on the notion that it's taking you that long to draw a reasonable firing solution out of your sensor data - and even at that, the "reasonable" solution for a single laser involves a less than 50:50 chance at being right (before your DMs and his DMs are figured in). In High Guard, lasers end up being arrayed in batteries of up to 30 firing in set patterns in order to increase the odds that at least one will find the target.

Ships can't hide. That CA is radiating, what, gigawatts? If it is maneuvering you know the position, and course. Drifting, then you plot course, and it is a sitting duck.

That being said, the target can better be described as a small circle of space in which - somewhere - you believe the target to be, but your not sure exactly where because that's as good as the sensors are giving you - or perhaps that's just as good as you can get when trying to get your turret to line up a beam with an accuracy of a fraction of a second of arc; amounts to the same thing from the target's perspective. (A circle because depth is not an issue - your laser traverses the Z axis, so only the X and Y axes are relevant). Your single laser having roughly a 50:50 shot at a non-evading target, that implies - very roughly - that the circle in question has twice the area of your target.

You just restated my exact math about why the ship must be hit. At 1ls a CA is an impossible to not see object. It is likely a naked eye object, frankly (without question if is is thrusting).

My example was at 1 light second. The shooter knows where the ship was 1 second ago. It knows exactly where the ship was (range doesn't even matter, frankly, past the travel time of the laser). As I said, the CA can only possibly displace itself in that 1 second by 29.4m (in a sphere, actually, not a circle), and that assumed instant lateral gs. I have always assumed it would first need to rotate the m-drive to thrust at 6g. In 1s it could not even rotate, so the 29.4m is ridiculously large for a possible movement of the target.

Even so, that's the only thing that matters. Shoot at the center of target, and if the target is more than 29.4m in every direction, you cannot possibly miss.

You have to rely entirely on bad pointing to create any chance of a miss. That's fine, I'm not against chances to miss as I said, but the chances are small, and we are doing a pretty long-range example (since a laser could not even be focused at that distance without TNE type handwaving ("grav focus") (not that fits in a turret). (we could use ideal beam divergence which is (1.22*wavelength)/beam_diameter and work it out)

You can also figure out pointing errors. The system has to be accurate to whatever degree to hit targets at all at longer ranges. Look at the % of a hit at some arbitrarily large range, then work backwards. Pick how many shots is reasonable in a turn. Say 100 shots in 20 minutes, which is pretty low. If 17% hit at 10 ls vs agility 0 (non-evading), say, then how many of those 100 hit at 1ls, 0.1ls, etc. The answer quickly becomes 100% if we start with a 2d6 roll with a non-zero chance to hit at the extreme range.

If we NOW consider the effects of the target's maneuvering, then that maneuvering is like adding a donut ring to that circle - it increases the area in which the target might be. Now, if you took a circle of radius X and added a donut ring 29.4m wide to it, you'd find that the increase in area is much more than the area of a circle of 29.4 m radius. His drive is effective not because he's moving out of the way of the beam, but because he's increasing the area of space in which you have to contend with.

The possible target path is a sphere, as I said (we already know the vector of target, we can fix our reference frame on it without maneuver for simplicity (the rest of the universe will then be moving, so what)). For the shooter, it is effectively a circle, orthogonal to the line between shooter and target (which we will call z) since if it moves in z, the beam still hits it. Any component of evasion in the z direction in in fact wasted at 1ls since the beam travels the evasion distance (29m) virtually instantly. All of this assumes instant later 6g evasion, too. Realistically you need to look at how far the ship could rotate and thrust in that 1s, and the evasion likely becomes not a sphere, but fraction of one.

Target evasion plays no role in the beam hitting or not hitting, at that range, for such a huge target or larger. HG admits this, agility is not a DM for lasers.

For smaller targets it matters, clearly---which calibrates hit chances nicely, since 2 ships with identical lateral evasion are in fact different to hit based on their size. If the ship is smaller than the possible displacement radius, there is a real chance of a miss.

All this is looking at a SINGLE SHOT. 1 second out of a combat turn. Maybe we assume that we will treat waste heat more realistically, and that charging up our laser uses some multiple of the energy in the shot that must radiate away. Maybe traveller beam lasers only shoot once in 15-20 minutes. Pulse lasers shoot a handful of pulses in that same period.

Still, if the ships get closer than earth to moon range, it becomes rapidly impossible to miss any ship-sized target. Closer still, and impossible to miss missiles (missiles are easier since they cannot really evade).

In other words, even though the ship can not move out of the way of your shot in the second before it gets there, that fact depends on you having perfect aim. In reality - well, in game reality - you do not have perfect aim: the limited effectiveness of your sensors (or your turret's tracking) coupled with his movement means that he's decreased the odds of you putting the beam on him by a good bit.

The turret tracking error is all you have to go on. Course you have to work that out based on what we could do now (clearly it would be better at TL 12 or 15). We can then add in beam smear as I suggested (target is rotating, and accelerating, so beam is not tracked on target, but a line along target of some length. This is always true, though, so traveller lasers must deliver enough energy to damage most of the time assuming only part of the beam lands in 1 spot. Pulses are shorter duration, so less smear. (this works well with canon, actually).

As I said, I think that the rules can (and do) include the idea that there are likely hits that are sub-damaging energies, and count as misses. We're limited in what lasers are possible in turrets. What you want is something like a big x-ray FEL. Course the beam spreads with distance, and still delivers large energies. Such a weapon is more like a laser spinal mount, actually, and is nasty.

 

[aramis]

Keep in mind: 0°0'1" accuracy is 4.8mm/km. We have slugthrowing turrets now that hit that... which means the "will hit" range for a standard missile is 10.3km. A range at which the missile will have a positional uncertainty measured in fractions of a millimeter.

 

[tater]

Back in the days of working on some new combat systems and ffs2, I wanted my "improved" version of BR (the basic BR "Mayday with Task Forces" mechanics work very well for HG-like engagements, minus the TNE-specific combat resolution) to make missile resolution for fleets FAR simpler. The idea was USP factors that could be compared directly. Beam factors tasked to AM fire compared with attacking factors of missiles. Realistically a laser might kill multiple missiles, but even just a 1:1 factor comparison. 10 msl factor 9s attack a ship with 9 factor 9 laser batteries bearing, and they get 1 attack (laser AM fire happens first, then sand, dampers, etc, so only missiles that survive laser AM fire roll to penetrate those screens). Something along those lines, anyway, since it doesn't directly compare to HG resolution. I had bays fire "torpedoes." As such, they'd have factors above 9 (maybe A-D in HG terms). They would represent larger weapons that are more hardened vs laser fire, and either fragment into thousands to millions of KE penetrators, or possibly "mirv" if nukes to try and get 1 within the km needed to do damage. So 1 factor A msl attack vs 1 factor 9 beam defense rolls to-hit as a factor 1 msl attack (again, this is a seat of the pants HG conversion, not thought out past typing it here, not my BR total conversion rules). I'd also allow co-hex TF members to cooperate their point defense fire. Instead of "line" vs "reserve" you have units in a TF together, and they are considered linked for combat purposes.

What I wanted was a system that allowed detailed damage resolution (and tasks for players) that would scale to HG/BR sized battles. In the latter case, broad system degradation (factor reduction), and critical hits. Seems like for units in HG battles, they are nearly fully functional, or hors de combat anyway. In a perfect world a system that could take the TF units, combine them, and make a counter like FFW such that if you fought TF1 vs TF2 in both systems, you'd have roughly the same % wins/losses regardless of system.

 

[Carlobrand]

Ships can't hide. That CA is radiating, what, gigawatts? If it is maneuvering you know the position, and course. Drifting, then you plot course, and it is a sitting duck.

Really? Why do we have EM masking in Megatrav, and sensor lock rolls, and what not? More related to CT and High Guard, why is it taking you in the vicinity of 20 minutes between shots, and why are you hitting with only half of them?

I think the issue here is underlying assumptions. Your statement illustrates one such: you assume ships in space stand out like a sore thumb, and it's just a matter of training your guns accurately enough. Well maybe, maybe not. Fact remains that we're not dealing with real-world assumptions. We're dealing with assumptions within a game. They might be right. They might be wrong - they're probably wrong. Games often make unrealistic assumptions to make for a more balanced and challenging game. However, if you play the game, you play under those assumptions - or else you make or find a game that has different assumptions.

Let's look at Traveller's assumptions:
Book-2: a game turn takes 1000 seconds during which you get one shot - maybe two with "return fire". Odds of a hit are 15/36 plus or minus mods due to your computer, his computer, range, etc. "Agility" plays no role (against beam weapons) except the faster party can to some extent choose his range or break away, given time and luck.

Underlying assumption: either it takes a really long time to line up a single shot - and then it's still less than an even chance - or you've been shooting a lot of times and it's so hard to hit that all of them together over 20 minutes amount to no more than a 15 in 36 chance of hitting.

High Guard: a game turn takes 20 minutes during which you get one shot. Odds of a hit for a single laser are 15/36 plus or minus a variety of mods. Ranges are a nonspecific "short" and "long": lasers are -1 at long range. "Agility" plays a role here, subtracting directly from the roll to hit.

Underlying assumption: either it takes a long time to line up a single shot and it's still only 15 in 36, or - again - you've been shooting a lot and it's so hard to hit that all of them together amount to no more than a 15 in 36 chance of hitting. A new assumption: the targetted player can apply energy to drives to make himself a harder target.

MegaTrav: a game turn takes 20 minutes during which you get one shot. Odds of a hit for a single laser are 3/36 (Difficult task, 11+) plus 3 for the laser (bringing it back up to 15/36) plus or minus a variety of mods. Before you can hit, you've got to find the target with sensors and then lock weapons with a second sensor roll - the farther away, the harder that is. Lasers are -1 at ranges beyond 50 thousand kilometers. "Agility" plays a role here as well but it's defined differently, making it harder to achieve high agility in heavy, armored ships.

Underlying assumption: once more, either it takes a long time to line up a single shot and it's still only 15 in 36, or you've been shooting a lot of times and all of them together amount to no more than a 15 in 36 chance of hitting. MegaTrav is a bit more explicit on that subject: a Rate of Fire table tells us that the laser turrets can fire 30 times per minute in "personal combat" - for example if your ship should happen to be near or on the ground while players are trading shots with their autopistols - but it also says rate of fire is "inconsequential" in the 20 minute space combat turn.

What does all that tell us? Well, among other things, that - in Traveller - it's hard to hit even a nonmoving target at space combat ranges. It is most emphatically not a sitting duck. Is it because our turrets are inaccurate? Maybe. Is it because our sensors aren't giving us pin-point information? Maybe - MegaTrav leans that way.

Let's look at the sensors. Given the inverse square law, how many of those radiated gigawatts are reaching your sensors after travelling 300 million meters? Answer: 1/90 quadrillionth. So, the energy radiating from the ship may start in gigawatts, but by the time it reaches your receivers a light second away, it's measured in millionths of a watt. If I have it right, that's tiny, but not as tiny as it seems - it's about what a naked-eye star looks like, assuming this thing is radiating visible light. Sensors don't really care - they're content with infrared.

Second question: if I'm a warship designer, and I place the radiators so the defender can put the bulk of the ship between you and them, how much of the energy is reaching your sensors now? If you happen to be in the right spot relative to the ship's radiators, your sensors pick up that millionths of a watt trace. If the ship is maneuvering to keep its radiators on the other side and away from your prying eyes, then you're getting a good deal less than that - still a bit, but not much. The little star is masked by the body of the ship, and you're instead seeing whatever infrared a room-temperature ship radiates through an insulated hull.

So let's sum this up. If I tell you that a weapon firing 30 times a minute can only get off one good shot in 20 minutes, and that your target is an energy source measuring sometimes in the millonths of a watt from where you are and sometimes almost nothing - but that a 20th century tech on earth could accurately put and keep a laser on a mirror left on the moon by the Apollo folk, would you assume that the reason it took so long to hit the target was because your turret had accuracy problems? Or would you assume it was because it took a long time to get enough sensor information on the target to get a precise enough shot.

As I said, the CA can only possibly displace itself in that 1 second by 29.4m (in a sphere, actually, not a circle),

True, but moving toward or away make no difference for a laser, so depth can be ignored mathematically.

and that assumed instant lateral gs. I have always assumed it would first need to rotate the m-drive to thrust at 6g. In 1s it could not even rotate, so the 29.4m is ridiculously large for a possible movement of the target.

Point 1: Turns are 16.7 to 20 minutes long, depending on which space combat version you play. One can go quite a long way in 20 minutes. Your laser takes one second to traverse the distance, but first you must have a place to aim at, and he's trying to deny that to you. As I've pointed out above, even seeing him with pinpoint accuracy is a hard trick: you're trying to deduce his precise position and course to tenths of an arc-second based on intermittent bursts of millionth-watt energy traces being received through your sensors. While you're doing that, he's altering course and speed to make your effort even harder - and maybe using that on-again-off-again bit to try to trick your sensors as to his vector (he heads one way while his radiators are exposed, another when he's got the radiators turned away). It's not about how long it takes for the laser to get to him - it's about how difficult it is to figure his location with sufficient precision. Were that one second the only possible consideration, the game would be played in one second turns. It is not.

Point 2: how do you know that a ship equipped with inertial damper systems and grav generators can not execute a 90 degree turn in 1 second? Have you calculated the g-forces at the ship's end points to check your assumption? That math I leave to you; my brain is tired now. I merely point out that you're not considering the potential for the tech to alter your base assumptions. But, again, he's not trying to evade the laser: he's trying to make it harder for you to guess precisely where he is. It's not about 1 second: 16 to 20 minutes leaves a lot of time for course changes and random boosts to make it harder for you to make that guess.

Sure you can miss. Game mechanics clearly say you can miss even if the target obliges and sits absolutely still. All other things being equal, you'll miss more often than you hit. Under High Guard at least, if it chooses not to sit still, then you'll miss even more often - not because it's dodging your perfectly aimed laser blast, but because its erratic movements coupled with the erratic and possibly deliberately misleading sensor signal made it difficult for you to figure out precisely where to point the laser in the first place. Sure, you can hit a bullseye with a rifle at a hundred yards, assuming decent skill, a good rifle and time to aim; now try doing it on a dark cloudy night while someone's randomly moving the target.

Base reality is you're playing a game in which you start with less than a 50:50 shot of hitting a target after 20 minutes of setting up the shot. There's no excuse for that other than some assumed difficulty setting up the shot. The why can be debated till the cows come home, but it's still a fundamental of the game. Your ideas might be sound for a different game based on different assumptions, but they don't fit the underlying assumptions of this game. Not to say this game's underlying assumptions are correct - 35 years has already kicked holes in a lot of the assumptions. However, they are the game assumptions. Impose different assumptions, and you're playing a different game. I might even like to play that game - but it's still different.