Quick Min/Max question

[themink]

from the vehicles design area, it appears that linked weapons are more effective than the equivalent "larger" weapon.

Appart from the ability to improve the "to hit" by firing them individually, if you fire them linked you do an additional dice per extra (upto +3)

so linked Field Arty is more effective than Medium artillary (It's smaller, faster firing, has the same range and uses less ammo)

Quad Medium lasers have the same range and damage as Heavy Pulse Lasers, are less than half the size and a thirtieth of the price.

Is this intentional I wonder.

Note that the gain is offset if you need the extra range of the big weapons. and nothing on the table can compete with the big, high-tech weapons

 

[Libris]

In real life (wonder what that is?) most aircraft carry multiple weapons rather than a single BFG. True most post war aircraft carry the 20mm Vulcan but it's essentially six 20mm cannon.
In air-to-air combat lethality is generally measured in the amount of lead you can put in the air. So multiple weapons are far more lethal.

John Robertson

 

[themink]

Not true - Modern weapon systems have two distinct approaches - one is to increase the "beaten zone" so a gatling gun etc put a lot of rounds down range to increaes the likelyhood of a hit.

The second approach is with a BFG - ie the abrams 120mm hill-leveler

It's true that some very high fire rate weapons are availble which attempt to "sandblast" the target and place multiple round in the same approximate location (ie the 25mm bushmaster chain gun has a very high max rate of fire enabling the 25mm rounds a much higher penetration than usual - the follow on rounds hit an already stressed area, heat hasn;t had chance to disipate etc)

but still the general rule is - if you want to hit more, fire more barrels (or up your ROF) if you want to do more damage, increase the size of your gun.

This isn;t true on the tables.

 

[Ellros]

As Mink said (more or less), more rounds = better chance of a hit. Firing that many rounds through a barrel puts out a lot of heat, hence the many barrels, so you don't have a meltdown.

 

[justacaveman]

There limits to the damage from a BFG. Sabot rounds from a 120mm will go right through a soft target doing little damage. Yet, if you hit the same soft target with ten 25mm sabot rounds you will spread the damage out. Mind you, a 120mm HE round will blow a soft target to bits if it explodes, but "may" go through it without the fuse hittng anything substantial enough to set it off. A bunch of 25mm HE's will spread the damage out, but may not do the catastrophic damage of the 120mm.

As far as the Field artillery vs Medium artillery question, as I read the rules, weapons must be in the same vehicle location and linked in order to increase the damage. In order to address the armor-piercing issues of combined weapons, I made a house rule that limits AP bonuses to 25% of the max damage of any weapon. For area-of-effect weapons (HE) the target makes the save roll before the damage roll, to determine the number of dice rolled before reducing damage due to the target's AR (This makes HE less effective vs armor). I also don't allow massed weapons to overcome the AP limit, so a larger more powerful weapon using AP ammo will always penetrate armor better than a bunch of small ones.

Thiese are just my ideas, and you may have a different/better way. I'm open to any suggestions for improvement.

 

[Uncle Bob]

There is an important differnce between hitting a target and killing it. For a tank gun you want a big mother that will still have the energy to kill at long range.

For lightly armored but rapidly maneuvering targets you want dump as many shots as you can in the area of the target.

As an example, let me take the arcraft of WWII.

At the begining of the war the British used 8 .303 machine guns, which was quite effective against pre-war fighters and light bombers. Up against mid-war fighters with armorlike the FW190 they traded eight light machine guns (1200 bullets/10 sec) for four 20mm cannon (200 much larger shells in ten seconds). The 1940 Hurricane was much more likely to hit a target, the 1944 Typhoon was more likely to kill it if he hit.