point defense lasers vs missiles

[steventirey1985]

Say, for example, ship 1 fires an USP 6 missile attack (30 missiles if I understand the rules correctly) at ship 2. Ship 2 fires back with one laser in an attempt to destroy the missiles, and succeeds on hitting them. Now to the question:

How many missiles are destroyed?

1. All of them?
2. enough to reduce the missile attack to an USP 5 attack?
or 3. one, leaving 29 missiles heading for the target.

The way I'm reading it (on page 163, under Point Defense Lasers) is that all the missiles are destroyed. Is that correct?

 

[BetterThanLife]

That is the way it is written. They all go down. Of course back in High Guard, and MT that was also the case. So when attacking ships with missile armed fighters, there is not only no benefit to grouping your fighters and firing as a Squadron, it is actually better to fire missiles individually. (So you can overload the defenses.) Though against an Atlantic or anything with that much armor or more, you have to do something to increase your odds of scoring damage. (Laser Heads being your best choice.) Do remember that the die roll for point defense is modified by both the factor of your laser and the factor of the incoming barrage. (But the laser gets all sorts of additional modifiers, so Point Defense is very effective.)

 

[BetterThanLife]

One other point, the only defense against a massive barrage from an Alpha Strike from a Fleet Carrier is Armor. In that situation the Perisher Class (TA-7)Drednaught, simply perishes.

 

[archhealer]

Wait, so, a single small merchant with a single pulse laser can effectively defend intself against almost any size missile barrage? Wow, I'm glad I've avoided starship combat in T20 so far... My players would lynch me if they found that out...

 

[c_osborne]

That seems to be an oversimplification. If the 'barrage' is treated as a single attack, then yes, a single defense goes against a single attack. But if you have multiple turrets firing, I see nothing that says I have to treat it as a single attack. The laser can take out the missiles from one turret attack only.

Chad

 

[ravells]

I suppose the commonsense solution would be to have one roll to determine if the point defence system acquires the targets and another to determine how many incoming missiles it takes out.

It seems a bit odd that you're more likely to overwhelm point defence by firing missiles singly rather than en-masse. I'd have though the opposite would have been the case.

I guess you could make an argument that if fired en-masse the missles are so close together that detonating one would cause some sort of chain reaction and destroy the entire salvo...but I dunno it seems a little far fetched.

Ravs

 

[c_osborne]

I agree that firing them en masse would be more likely to overwhelm the defense. But the real issue here is one of game mechanics only. Fire them en masse, but treat them as multiple simultaneous attacks, and it works fine. I'm not saying the T20 starship combat rules are perfect, or even good, just that they are workable if you approach them right.

Chad

 

[BetterThanLife]

When it comes to large ship combat they are a disaster. Pure and simple.

For smaller ship combat. Yes it seems silly that a single pulse laser would destroy a Missile bay firing at the Player's ship. However, if your characters are in that situation, there is going to be more coming in than a single barrage from a 50T missile bay. Traveller Starship combat is deadly enough without rendering point defense useless.

It does take a rethink on Standard Missile tactics from previous versions of Traveller. However with the number of modifiers allowed, a hit is a virtual certainly as long as you are within sensor range. Something has to stop those missiles.

A Properly run 400T Corvette (Or Corsair for that matter.) will still rip up a 200 Free or Far Trader, even if they find a way to power both turrets with lasers. A Standard SubMerchant or SubLiner won't fair much better against either of those ships. There isn't enough power output to load up with laser turrets. A Squadron of 10-12 10-15 ton light fighters will overwhelm most Player ships in a single pass. (Hell most player ships would have trouble with 4-6 fighters.) Remember a hit that causes even one point of damage rolls on the special damage table. Those 10-12 fighters firing 10-12 missiles at a ship, under 1000Tons will pretty much gut it in one volley. Now against capital ships, especially captial ships with real armor, you need thousands of fighters. But for typical player ships, missiles are deadly. Further the lasers you have designated as point defense are firing at missiles, so they aren't firing at the guy firing them at you.

The rules may seem out of line but they actually work. (As long as you stay out of the Capital Ship range, at that point all bets are off and the system as is is seriously broken.)


The only time a ship, normally, goes down to SI damage is Meson fire. And if your characters are receiving Meson fire it is over even if they are in a Battleship.