Orbital Firesupport

[Piper]

Yep, a meson gun makes things a lot easier.
But if you're lower tech or a small ship, this could be a valuable addition to the armory.

Lasers and energy weapons are pin-point systems and both can suffer from range effects. Normal missiles can be subject to point defense systems and nuclear dampers.

A Thor shot could be carried in a missile as Bhoins suggested and launched at the appropriate height and velocity above the target. You might need to hold some G's in reserve for braking thrust.

Point defense systems can be handled in a couple of ways. You could assume that the velocity of the strike was so high that it would effectively be direct fire and not subject to PD or you could treat it as an MRL stike and take only half losses.

You'd need to decide how many and what size rods could be carried by a missile or deployed from a bay. You could also add terminal guidance systems to improve accuracy, possibly at higher tech levels.

I think that this system is a good idea and offers another set of options for orbital fire support.
High Guard teased us with "planetary deadfall ordnance". I think Bhoins has found a way to make it playable.

 

[parmasson]

How about this?
Deadfall

The General Products BM-01 deadfall ordnance. Quality firepower for a reasonable price.
It can be produced using TL-7/8 equipment for next to nothing on a TL-10+ world. If cost is an issue GP can replace the liquid rocket with solid rocket propellant. It will only burn for a minute or two but all you need to do is get it into position. As for guidance a simple TL-8 computer powered by a battery. A laser or radar guidance system adjusts the fins to perform those minor corrections.
[Edit] The green bits represent the computer, avionics and battery.

 

[BetterThanLife]

One other thought on Thor Shots. That energy is going somewhere. You will get a blast wave upon impact. (And a pretty impressive one at that.) Since Blast is the number one damaging factor of a Nuke, with heat being number 2, it shouldn't be discounted.

While Meson guns make things easier, not everyone can carry a Meson Gun. (Certainly a lowly Mercenary Unit.

)

 

[Piper]

Re blast: This link shows the impact effect of a 30mm depleted uranium hit. Apologies in advance for the site being in Italian, but the film clip is universal.

The tank looks like a Walker Bulldog which tops the scales at 28 tons. Takes quite a bit to move one around like that. And that is a single 30mm round; less than a kilo.

Re "Deadfall": That's slick. I was thinking grav drive, but you know; rockets would work for this. Maybe a series of solid fuel thrusters and retros if you wanted to avoid the liquid fuel hassles, but the idea is sound.
And cheap!

 

[Hal]

I think one of the reasons some people do not like the GURPS TRAVELLER version of the rules is that missiles within the game are given a damage rating based on the velocity of the missile relative to its target as to a final velocity based damage rating. According to one extreme case of launching a missile at a target, I computed that the damage was WORSE than a meson gun from the GURPS rules. The idea?

Move a series of fighters towards a target such that they had their target within sensor range, but the missile launching ship was out of the target's range. They would feed the target data to the launching ship via a chain of communicators.

What would then happen is that the launching ship would accellerate towards a target it couldn't see - but its "fighters" could. The ship would launch its missiles and then veer off away from the target before showing up on its scanners. Then, the fighters would take over control of the missiles - and hand the missile off to the fighters nearest to the target ship (Most likely a cruiser or dreadnaught or what have you). The missile would then be guided to the target with both the accumulated velocity of the firing ship and the velocity of its own engines.

Such a tactic would almost require constant course changes and velocity changes of the capital ship so as to preclude such attacks. Who said ships in convoy don't have to zig zag?

 

[parmasson]

Refresh my memory, are these supposed to be highly accurate munitions to strike specific targets or more like old fashioned unguided iron bombs?
(sniper vs. shotgun)

 

[Piper]

Sniper with a shotgun?

There are two theoretical kinetic strike systems: Project Thor and The Rods From God.

Thor was intended to strike surface targets and some versions of it had hundreds of small rods saturating an area. The Rods is a proposed deep-penetration system for underground facilities and relies on large rods and accurate targeting. Either of these could include terminal guidance through GPS or something similar.

These systems are theoretical, and might have unforseen problems (the deep penetration aspect seems unlikely given the previously cited report).

 

[parmasson]

In our setting is seems that they would be an Ecnobomb™ . Cheap, legal to manufacture almost anywhere, ubiquitous fuel supply and accurate enough for merc work. As long as they were cheaper to deploy than a missile of comparable size then they would be in almost every arsenal.

Except for those who have J+ meson spinal mounts.
So they don't get those real deep down bunkers but that is why you invest in a few really good TL-13+ "crustbusters" (my house term for heavy duty planetary bombardment missiles).