MGT Only: PB fire in HG1

[McPerth]

When one sees the tables for barrages in MgT:HG1, one sees the following modifiers to deensive DM for PB fire:

Sand: +1d6. If they are less than 90% of the missiles/lasers shooting: -2

Lasers: +1d6. If they are less than 90% of the missiles shooting: -1

As I understand them (not an expert in military matters), the sand represents more or less like Chaff in real world, so forming a cloud arround the target that tries to confuse all missiles (or reduce the effect of all lasers in Traveller), while the lasers target each missile individually, more like the CIWS in real life ships.

If so, the sandcasters would be quite less affected by being outnumbered by the attackers, while the lasers should be easier to overload by a massive missile salvo.

So, shouldn't the modifiers for being outnumbered be reversed (if they should be at all for sandcasters)?

 

[hellblock]

The modifier should not be reversed, the reason is (as I see it) that you do not use the values from the main rulebook, just the value (+1d6) from the barrage table. If it was reversed, what would the penalty of not having any active defenses be (-1d6 to your defensive fire would make it easier to hit you, and with no active defense, you would be harder to hit than by shooting just one sandcaster). This is due to the dfensive fire value that you generate being subtracted from the attackers roll to see how well he has hit you.

 

[McPerth]

It seem I expressed myself quite worse than I expected...

I meant to reverse the modifiers of -1 given to lasers and -2 to sandcasters for being outnumbered, giving the -1 to sandcasters and the -2 to lasers, as the sandcasters may affect all incoming fire with the single cloud, while the lasers must target the missiles one by one (hence the comparisons with Chaff and CIWS respectivelly).

 

[hellblock]

Sorry, I misread what you originally said (comes from running two online games and reading a forum at once). I am still going to say that I don't think that the modifiers to the 1d6 roll should be swapped between the two defensive weapons.
My reason is that although sand can affect more than one laser beam, it has it's effect by absorbing the energy of the beam. As it absorbs the energy, it is either going to be turned into smaller pieces (still able to absord some of a beam), or moved away from where the gunner placed the sand cloud (unable to absorb any of the beam). The more beams, a cloud has to absorb, the more dispersed it becomes (at the same time as still needing to absorb more energy).
Although, a laser is only able to hit one missile at once, a destroyed missile may leave pieces of itself behind, which follow on missiles in the swarm can run over, and so destroy themselves.
As such the sand cloud will get weaker the more beams it has to protect against, while the lasers will get a small chaff cloud effect from the destroyed missiles.