Overpowering energy weapons

[Tupper]

A MFD allows a gunner to ignore positive diff mods *caused by absolute range and target evasion*. When an energy weapon is overpowered, it is able to ignore 1 or 2 positive diff mods (with no such restriction mentioned). I’ve always “read between the lines” and assumed these had to be due to range or evasion, but I’m curious about how others interpret this rule. Would you allow overpowering diff mod negations to be used to offset

A) a positive diff mod due to target size (e.g. when shooting at a missile)?
B) a positive diff mod due to ship damage (e.g. due to the crew working in vacc suits)?

 

[whartung]

A MFD allows a gunner to ignore positive diff mods *caused by absolute range and target evasion*. When an energy weapon is overpowered, it is able to ignore 1 or 2 positive diff mods (with no such restriction mentioned). I’ve always “read between the lines” and assumed these had to be due to range or evasion, but I’m curious about how others interpret this rule. Would you allow overpowering diff mod negations to be used to offset

A) a positive diff mod due to target size (e.g. when shooting at a missile)?
B) a positive diff mod due to ship damage (e.g. due to the crew working in vacc suits)?

Depends on how you want to model the entire encounter.

The 10,000 foot level says that overpowering the weapons, in general, makes things "easier to hit". This can be because, say, the overpowered weapons are just that much more powerful, given all of the other circumstances that what may have been a marginal hit before is less marginal now. It can be because they get more "shots in" for any given duration.

But that would suggest powerful weapons in general should improve hit ability, or weapons with a higher ROF should be able to hit better in general, not exclusive to the "overpowered mode".

It's been some time, so I don't know what the disadvantage of overpowering a weapon is. That may give some insight in to perhaps where you could constrain the diff mods benefit.

If "it's just easier" to hit with an OP weapon, then, yes, it would compensate for all diff mods, not just those due to range etc. For example, closing the range removes a diff mod, which makes folks in vacc suits that much more likely to hit, because, overall, it's "easier", indirectly, by reducing the penalty for range.

The MFDs are a specific device design to manage the weapons and their mounts, which is why they only compensate for range, not the guy in the chair fat fingering the console because he's in a vacc suit. They simply can't improve the situation any better once range is out of the picture.

It's a fair leap to only apply the OP DM to range/evasion base penalties, but, as written, apparently OP weapons even compensate for gunners wearing oven mitts.

 

[TheDS]

"Overpowering" weapons simply means the weapon fires more frequently. More beams in the air means more chances to hit. It's a lot like having more actual weapons firing.

The only difference being that 10 simultaneous shots can "guarantee" boxing in a target, because the beams are all there at the same time, whereas a single weapon firing 10 times can't "guarantee" it. It's the difference between a jail cell with a dozen bars or one bar moving really fast. Anyone who played Breakout with a paddle controller will instantly understand the difference between having a bar all the way across the bottom of the screen and just twisting your hand back and forth as fast as possible.

But in game terms, there's really no easy way to distinguish these two; both provide the same bonus to hit.

The downside is that if your weapon was not designed from the outset to fire at these higher rates of fire, they have a chance of burning out. (Considering there was no ACTUAL difference in the designs at lower levels, whether or not your weapons had the beefed up stuff was simply a matter of whether you wrote it down or not; there was no higher cost or extra space or anything unless you wanted the REALLY high rates of fire.) And also, you have to provide that much more power. (Ok, I guess if your ship actually had the power to provide, THAT might be how you "prove" your weapon could fire at the faster rate without consequence.)

 

[warwizard]

I've used a house rule for this, you determine a CEP for the weapon then compare the spot size of the beam to the CEP at the range of the target. If the target is out of range the spot size is larger and the energy intensity per cm2 is reduced, an overpowered weapon can add more energy into the beam bringing it back up to damaging intensities, within limits, after all shooting an IR laser through the earth's atmosphere to hit the moon, gives you a spot size roughly 10% of the moon's diameter (using 1980's tech) you did hit the target, but the energy per cm2 was insufficient to do more than perhaps damage some mark 1 eyeballs that were looking at the right place.

CEP = spot size of beam pointer in a perfect universe, add orders of magnitude for being under thrust, for having crew moving, for receiving fire, and so forth.
The tech level of the weapon can act to reduce the CEP due to the levels of difficulty.
For example a TL 5 tank turret (WW1, early WWII) does not have any weapon stabilization, movement across fields would increase your CEP by about 5 orders of magnitude, a long range shot while moving at max speed would have a tiny chance of hitting when comparing target size to CEP.

TL 8 tanks now have computerized weapon stabilization, combined with a linked sensor system that takes into account perceived target motion, reducing the movement CEP enlargement to perhaps .2 orders of magnitude, making long range shots fired at moving targets while you are also moving, common.

Once I have the CEP and the spot size at that range, I can calculate target evasion.

Here target size and evasion g's matters, for example, a 1m sphere pulling 6 g's changes it's future position by 30 m in 1 second, so a beam pointer that is 150,000 km from the target takes 1 second for the round trip, and add a fire control delay (based on tech level) from .01 s to 5 seconds so I'm looking at a 60 m circle where a 1 m target may be located when my beam weapon fires, the tgt may travel another 60 m in the .5 seconds my beam takes to get there, so I have a 180m circle with an engagement time of 1.51 seconds. fill that with 10,000 pulses and you still have only a 1 in 3 chance of a single pulse hitting the target (where spot size is 1 cm dia). At 300,000 km the volume the target may evade into becomes 270m halving your chance of a hit.

Now a 100 dt sphere. some 13m dia, pulling 1 g... moves all of 10 m in that same 1.51 seconds, you hit it 10,000 times, as it was unable to move it's hull out of the beam pointer, at the 300,000 km range it managed to move 50 m, you still hit it 676 times.

And yes my sons designed point defense laser clusters that would put 10,000 pulses into the sky, but the range was only 30,000 km with power set to do 1 damage point. Pretty much a sure mission kill on a standard nuclear detonation laser head missile, but useless against a longer ranged missile (tl 16)

 

[warwizard]

Where the CEP comes in, is if your beam pointing accuracy is bad, your shots get scattered into the area of your CEP(circular error probability) so if you have a 50 m CEP at the tgt's range of 150,000 km, then you only hit the tgt 676 times for the 13m dia target, and the 1 m target, well your CEP causes your shots to scatter an extra 50 meters diameter giving you a 230 m diameter threat so a 1 in 5 chance of a hit instead of a 1 in 3.

 

[Antony]

Can't remember if this was in the rules or not but it is the way we played it. For a weapon to be overpowered the ship had to initially have sufficient power to do this. This represented (in our version of the universe) that the wiring, capacitors etc had been beefed up. If thus was not the case then the wiring had a chance of burning out, capacitors of exploding or turbines shattering, that sort of thing.
I would also imagine that in a system where the weapons are being overpowered as opposed to be being built for the higher rates of fire, then it is going to get much hotter in the weapon fixture.