Sensors and Engagement Ranges

[kilemall]

As part of the whole work to move HG to a movement system, I acted to get ahold of the Mayday system, a set of rules I glanced over in the early 80s and rejected at the time (my usual resolution was ACS ships moving on graph paper, same as we do Harpoon instead of minis).

I had imagined using the CT detection rules and the 3LS limit, only to find to my surprise that Mayday had an HG ruling in it, the scale is 1 LS hexes, HG short range is 5 hexes and long range is 15 hexes- quite a lot of fuel on board those missiles to make that distance!

And with the resolution firing at 6 LS is the same as firing at 15 LS- not exactly what I had in mind.

The timing is an issue too. The game says 300 minutes per turn, but I believe 300,000 kms of vee in whatever direction will take a 1-G ship 30,000 seconds to perform- or 500 minutes (8.3 hours).

Now given the ranges the scale of 500 minutes to one movement might make sense if one imagines the roll is several shots trying to land a blow.

But the scale when put in an adventure category has something like 3 hexes from planet to 100 D limit- pretty fast resolution and very much over quickly, even with HG rules unless its a full fleet battle.

I have some firm ideas about my tastes in time scale vs. shots fired vs. ship tactics, but the part I wanted to run past you was the engagement range.

The beauty of the CT rules is that even the top military vessels do not detect everything from planetside to 100D limit for most planets, the civilian craft are oblivious until the first incoming, and you have to play a tighter maneuver game in order to match vee or intercept long enough for weapons to succeed.

With a 5 LS short/15 LS long mix, a lot of these fights are going to either be hapless 1/2-G ships pounded into nothing before they can get to jump/escape range, or 5-G/6-G ships will be gone VERY quickly.

I could almost live with it if the -1 rule per LS hex to hit rule was in place, I'm not sure it's applicable given the verbiage whether they can apply in combination with HG rules.

Of course MgT is all about the short range 'reasonable' model, which goes the other direction and practically forces the ships to get very close before landing blows successfully.

Bottom line, what is your sense of how long engagement ranges should be with Traveller weapons?

 

[flykiller]

Bottom line, what is your sense of how long engagement ranges should be with Traveller weapons?

short or long enough, in time and distance, to make a game 1) playable and 2) worth playing.

 

[warwizard]

I look at short range to be the range at which a light speed weapon has a 50% chance or better to contact hull in ideal conditions against a maneuvering target.

Let me define terms here a bit.
A light speed weapon such as a pulse laser fires low power ranging shots through the lensing system, if a pulse is detected coming off the target in the window of allowed times it is assumed that the weapon's last pulse was striking hull and a weapons grade power pulse is fired.
The target now has the speed of light divided distance to accelerate it's hull away from wherever that ranging shot struck it's hull.
The total time of engagement is thusly:

Time of travel of the ranging pulse to the target.
Ranging pulse strikes hull.
<Target current location is determined at this instant>
< Target sensors may have detected location of the ranging pulse on it's hull>
{Target command loop time to start maneuvering to evade. if pulse detected}
Time of travel of the ranging pulse echo returning to the firing platform.
Fire control fire decision time delay.
Time of travel of the weapons pulse to the target.

So the target has time = to two times the light speed time to distance Plus fire control delay - maneuver command delay to get out of the weapon beam's area that it will hit in.
If it is able to get 50% of it's hull's exposed area or less out of that CEP (circular error probability) in this time, then that is short range FOR THAT TARGET. A smaller or more agile, or with a shorter maneuver command time delay target will have a shorter short range, and a larger, or less agile, or poorer commanded ship will have a longer short range. How to quantify these variables?

1st is hull size, 2nd is agility , third is command efficiency

Define a standard target to be a 100dt sphere (13m diameter) with 1 g agility.

This target would need about 2 seconds after it started the evasion burn to pull clear of the incoming shot, so with an auto evade program running you can assume perhaps a second to vector the thruster nozzles or do whatever it needs to do to dodge the shot, so 3 seconds is the total dodge time needed.
so 1LS + a 1 Second fire control delay would be your 3 seconds.

Each additional G of agility reduces the time needed to pull out of the CEP, and larger hulls take longer, you can go do some math to get your ballpark figures but it works out to 6 agility ships start getting auto hit at about .4 light seconds and a sub 1m3 missile with 20 g's of agility may make it to .05ls without ever becoming an auto hit.

 

[mike wightman]

Do you want a wargame/boardgame or a roleplaying game ship combat resolution system?

I have always had two issues with the range of traveller weapons, the first being that any weapon that can hit a maneuver/agility 6 target at one light second should be automatically hitting that target at a range of only a few thousand km (there should be an autohit range) and the second is that if you can cause 1 damage point at 1 light second then at ranges of only a few thousand km you should be inflicting many times that damage.

My solution is to split the ship combat into three scales - system, sensor and combat.
System scale consists of moving units around a system map - I use blank counters or black globes to represent knowing something is out there but you don't know exactly what and you can't shoot it anyway.
Sensor scale is where you start attempting to use passive sensors to establish a firing solution or risk going active - scouts/fighters/drones can be really useful at this scale.
Combat scale is when you get within weapon range - you want to start shooting each other as far away as you can because the closer you get the easier it is to hit and the more damage you suffer on a successful hit.

I've basically cobbled together Star Cruiser, High Guard and a bit of LBB2/Mayday with a little stuff stolen from Brilliant Lances/Battle Rider. It can be played as a wargame/boargame using vector movement on a hex map or it can be simplified to a range band system. For roleplaying the tension is built during the sub-hunt phase and then when the combat starts it is fast a furious.

 

[kilemall]

One subtle aspect I think most miss when approaching the topic your way Warwizard is the angled armor issue.

To wit- the hit must not just contact the hull, but hit the hull square on a more or less horizontally presented surface, else armor angling effects take hold and suddenly you are talking about a Free Trader able to shrug off that hit like an armored battleship.

So if the incoming shot would go through that Striker 40 armor factor (or effective 336mm steel armor), but hits the edge of the ship and gets double the hull for 672 mm, that works out to Striker 48 armor.

Not really an effect in HG terms since starship armor starts in the 60s, but for marginal low battery values like 1-3 lasers, might cause a deflection.

Say a case study for a light cruiser with armor-4, 538mm equivalent steel armor- double it for an edge slope, and that works out to near the Striker of 80, 79 is the result which works out to armor-9.

Heavier armor would likely yield near impervious levels of damage.

Bottom line, that shot has a smaller area for effective to-penetrate then just hull space, and so the margin for evasion is larger then many suppose.

Otherwise I worked out something similar to your presentation, although I must say that if one used the Mayday-HG rules straight out of the box, that the per turn shot roll would likely represent several hours worth of shots and therefore wouldn't be so unlikely to hit cumulatively at multi-LS ranges.

Your figures also assume an accurate target solution, which may be an assumption one should not make.

One of my changes is to make a class of sandcaster-like ordnance that is out to make a multi-spectrum larger/obscured return signal for all the likely sensors so that the target ship is behind a cloud of chaffroc-like countermeasures- it certainly is reflecting more 'brightly' so there is no hiding something is there, but where precisely the hull is to be struck may not be so clear.

I do intend to make sub-100,000 km so terrifyingly lethal that NO ONE EVER approaches a ship to be boarded/captured with anything larger then a gig or shuttle, and the hairs on the back of the neck rise when someone deliberately heads to that sort of range.

Engagement ranges play even more heavily in that sort of scenario. Still interested in hearing from others.

 

[warwizard]

I totally agree that the .3 ls ranges should be quite the case of going to sudden death.
I do not have to penetrate the armor to obtain mission kills on surface features like sensors, communicators, maneuver drives, and weapons. Cooling systems can be degraded as radiator systems are holed and lose their working fluids to vacuum.

I did not address issues like internal vibration of the ship as it performs it's own maneuvers and materials contract and expand as they are illuminated by the local sun or not. All these factors would contribute to CEP being larger. Best case assumes a non-maneuvering drone that is temperature stabilized firing in perfect conditions for a repeat pulse to strike the target with a CEP at the limits of the technology.

Another issue that affects the penetration is target motion at right angles to the weapon pulse. At sufficient velocities you can get the same effect as armor sloping as the energy of the pulse is smeared into a line instead of concentrated at a dot. For hitting surface features this is a good thing.

When a energy pulse strikes armor it either has energy density sufficient to disrupt the armor or it doesn't, the weapon design sequences in the BL/FF&S/T4 FF&S specify these ranges for the weapons you are designing, if your laser spot no longer has damaging energy density due to the spot focus is now 1m in diameter instead of .1cm it does not matter that you hit the target, you are not going to damage it.

 

[kilemall]

Do you want a wargame/boardgame or a roleplaying game ship combat resolution system?

I have always had two issues with the range of traveller weapons, the first being that any weapon that can hit a maneuver/agility 6 target at one light second should be automatically hitting that target at a range of only a few thousand km (there should be an autohit range) and the second is that if you can cause 1 damage point at 1 light second then at ranges of only a few thousand km you should be inflicting many times that damage.

My solution is to split the ship combat into three scales - system, sensor and combat.
System scale consists of moving units around a system map - I use blank counters or black globes to represent knowing something is out there but you don't know exactly what and you can't shoot it anyway.
Sensor scale is where you start attempting to use passive sensors to establish a firing solution or risk going active - scouts/fighters/drones can be really useful at this scale.
Combat scale is when you get within weapon range - you want to start shooting each other as far away as you can because the closer you get the easier it is to hit and the more damage you suffer on a successful hit.

I've basically cobbled together Star Cruiser, High Guard and a bit of LBB2/Mayday with a little stuff stolen from Brilliant Lances/Battle Rider. It can be played as a wargame/boargame using vector movement on a hex map or it can be simplified to a range band system. For roleplaying the tension is built during the sub-hunt phase and then when the combat starts it is fast a furious.

The goal is a fast background HG for large fight resolution, a highly detailed personal Ship Tactics fight for ACS or warship sized craft, and integrating Mayday-simplicity movement into it with weapons and tactics effects.

I too decry the idea that at max range the damage is the same as at point blank. I want fighters and small craft to matter, and ship designs that stand the ultimate Darwinian test of combat.

I want energy allocation.

I want formations that matter.

I don't want auto-destruct auto-marginalization of ACS ships. Combat results where the spinal mount hit doesn't destroy Beowulf in one shot, but can rip the engineering section out or slice the hull in half. Space Hurts.

I want ship designs where you roll ship to present your batteries, and roll away the damaged side because a luck hit through the breached armor means a straight shot at the power plant.

So in all of this, time/shooting scale that makes for meaningful player interaction, and maneuvering counts.

But not too much, like MgT, where G is all because of those short ranges.

15LS and the associated lag/evade is too long, 10-25,000 km is too short.

 

[Timerover51]

You might want to take a look at a basic book on radar to get an understanding of how large an antenna is going to have to be in order to have a reasonable chance of detecting a target at 10,000 kilometers, along with how long it will take to do a 360 degree radar sweep out to that range.

Then there is the question of how accurate is your sensor's angular accuracy and what that equates to at 10,000 kilometers.

In My Traveller Universe, I simply do not allow space combat.

For a reasonably good basic primer on radar, I would recommend Norm Friedman's book, Naval Radar. If you have played Harpoon, that book and Norm's book on US Naval Weapon System was used a lot by Larry Bond for his radar data.

 

[kilemall]

You might want to take a look at a basic book on radar to get an understanding of how large an antenna is going to have to be in order to have a reasonable chance of detecting a target at 10,000 kilometers, along with how long it will take to do a 360 degree radar sweep out to that range.

Then there is the question of how accurate is your sensor's angular accuracy and what that equates to at 10,000 kilometers.

In My Traveller Universe, I simply do not allow space combat.

For a reasonably good basic primer on radar, I would recommend Norm Friedman's book, Naval Radar. If you have played Harpoon, that book and Norm's book on US Naval Weapon System was used a lot by Larry Bond for his radar data.

Not terribly worried about managing dish engineering, figure by tech 9+ we are dealing in hull-wide receptor arrays and two more jumps in computing power, comparable to our current computers over TL5 battleship target solution analog computers.

I did work out a complicated scan routine with the sensor tech concentrating on specific directions possibly at the risk of missing others. This to allow for sneaking around, although a large warship should have multiple scan techs and power to spare for general searches everywhere, this would be applicable more for ACS-level action.

Since I am going the Mayday movement direction I might resurrect that depending on the movement/firing/time/engagement scales and how a sensor game would fit into that.

 

[lostscout5]

For a reasonably good basic primer on radar, I would recommend Norm Friedman's book, Naval Radar. If you have played Harpoon, that book and Norm's book on US Naval Weapon System was used a lot by Larry Bond for his radar data.

I think Tom Clancy used Harpoon when he wrote "The hunt for red October". The first time I tried to play Harpoon it gave me a headache, but it was great!

 

[Timerover51]

I think Tom Clancy used Harpoon when he wrote "The hunt for red October". The first time I tried to play Harpoon it gave me a headache, but it was great!

When he wrote "The Hunt for Red October", Larry Bond was his technical consultant. He co-authored "Red Storm Rising" with Tom Clancy. I have worked with Larry on the Command at Sea series games.

"Harpoon" is much closer to a simulation than a game, which is why is has been used a lot by the US Navy. The data in it is as accurate as possible based on published sources.

 

[aramis]

I think Tom Clancy used Harpoon when he wrote "The hunt for red October". The first time I tried to play Harpoon it gave me a headache, but it was great!

Harpoon is a civilianized version of the USNA Naval Wargame. Same authors, process and procedures. Rounding to 2 places, typically, rather than 4. We used the USNANW in my NJROTC unit...

 

[kilemall]

When he wrote "The Hunt for Red October", Larry Bond was his technical consultant. He co-authored "Red Storm Rising" with Tom Clancy. I have worked with Larry on the Command at Sea series games.

"Harpoon" is much closer to a simulation than a game, which is why is has been used a lot by the US Navy. The data in it is as accurate as possible based on published sources.

Hmmm, I'm guessing we know some of the same people, I could have worked for the 360 Pacific people and pointed a friend who did work at it. He ended up being voice talent for Silent Hunter.

Many navies use it for training in basics, and at one point the Russians were trying to influence the computer game stats offering the 'real performance', I think for arms sales.

The post-2000 computer games supposedly have a better sonar model then the miniature game.

Anyhoo, the main thing is that in the case of Harpoon and the better flight sims, we have a specific result set we are modelling. All we have going for us is in this situation is physics, speculation, and the art of game design.

Consider the vast differences shows like Zipang show just between WWII and now-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNzKPYawEAc

While there certainly is a significant power difference between say a TL10 warship and a similarly sized TL15 and a definite 'evolution of ship design' baked into HG, it isn't miles apart like TL2 to TL4, or TL4 to TL6.

That is of course because it is a game and we are interested in nuances of the spaceships, not modelling TL 1-7 in conjunction with that game need in a scientific sense.

But it plays into a game design decision like engagement range.

Whether it is MgT, CT, HG and/or Mayday, there is a set detection, maintaining contact and hit range built in for all techs, with better military sensors available to more or less defined rules and costs.

Should it be that way, or should TL matter?

Some folks have a simple computer model house rule for sensors, perhaps that should determine capability. Encapsulates both tech limit as the highest end computer only goes so far for the military, and most civilian craft will have Model/1-2. Or maybe a combination of base TL of the ship and computer?

Once you 'enhance' such rules, should value differences be graduated or exponential?

Another factor is something I determined right at the start of this little RPG nostalgia trip, and that was I was not going to upend large amounts of base material and the game economy, otherwise might as well just make my own game.

So stretch things to make it 'feel' 'look' and 'play' better yes, wholesale overthrow no.

 

[kilemall]

Heh, and then you get into the whole active/passive/stealth/doggo/behind the planetoid part of detection.

But I'm looking more for a sense of engagement ranges then anything else within the parameters above.

 

[warwizard]

If you opened up a game like Flykiller's only backed up the ship designs, drone designs, and missile designs with T4 FF&S roll your own weapons so you were not locked into tropes from the past you find you have at TL 12 large 10 Dt 10 g missiles, tl 14 you get 1 Dt 20 g missiles tl 15 you get some 30g missiles and at TL 16 you have 40 g missiles, some of which come in at below 10% of a displacement ton. so as you go up in tech level you gain faster, smaller and longer ranged missiles.
Then there are the defenses against missiles that were not seen previously in traveler. Instead of designing laser batteries to reach out 2.4 million kilometers and deliver enormous energy 10 times in a half hour, you take that system and scale it down to reach only 90,000 km but each laser fires every 1.5 seconds with a much smaller energy input, just enough to damage a missile to get a mission kill and instead of one per turret you have 10 to 15 of these, now that's how a point defense laser system really shines! (ps you do not want to tear a missile to shards, that just causes the debris to hit your ship at 1 to 10% of light speed.)

The range of missile systems once you reach TL 15 is truly anywhere in the system, with one little problem, you need to lock on your target, and to do that without getting killed by the enemy's missiles requires you to use drones, small missile chassis with sensors and communicators as payload instead of the boom stuff, command guided and stealthy they are your forward edge of battle, your scouts, your horse forcing a look past screening forces to find the enemy, and fix the enemy, so your missiles can come in and destroy the enemy.

 

[kilemall]

Well as far as fast G missiles are concerned, we've already been there done that with ABM missiles. I expect several of the fast Mach 5+ Russian SAMs are in the same ballpark.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_(missile)#Missiles

Course these are big missiles, even the Russian shipboard ones, but of course Traveller high tech etc etc. The magic of Traveller missiles is so much range and punch in such a small package.

Anti-missile work for lasers and railguns is precisely why I want energy allocation, along with other dramatic power allocation decisions-

("captain, the spinal gun is 400 seconds from being charged to firing, but the missile swarm from the raider squadron will get here in 300"

"steady Guns- conn, cut the power to agility maneuver and charge AML batteries one through ten, rest of the power goes to the spinal gun, we are firing in 200 seconds"

"aye aye!").

I haven't seen FF&S at all, not planning to either, had already come up with the power ranges just working the CT phasing before tackling HG. Can't explain CT LBB2 battle without variable power lasers and multi-shots in a turn.

Speed isn't going to do that much for you getting through defenses IMO, going faster while still having to home in on a known target just means less opportunity for radical maneuver and the decimals for anti-missile fire solution get moved a couple places for lead.

The danger of a 100G missile is kinetic impact and lack of preparation for otherwise allocated power.

I'm not really looking to redesign the whole damn thing, you can read up on my approach to things with that height/weight thread- use what is there cleverly, cut down on overhead while creating more gameplay value.

But I am not averse to making for a game where TL15 ships shred the hell out of TL12 ships while taking little damage- or clever TL 12 ships shredding the TL15 guys that are arrogant and unprepared.

I'm gathering from the subtext of some of those T5 maker threads that there can be some king hell detection ranges going on. Not looking for that either, although certainly a big part of what I am looking for is huge advantage in building up vee for your preferred engagement envelope. But managing a system-sized battle especially for High ACS Drama is not my idea of a right-sized resolution system.

 

[kilemall]

Now interestingly, I find myself thinking the engagement and sensor ranges hinge on how much the ships cost.

Both TCS and Striker have currency/item valuation matrices based on starport and TL between planets. There are apparently local currencies in both systems, which exchange to either the TL15 A 'hard Imperial' for naval tax remittance or whatever the chief polity's legal collection point is rated, or for goods purchase, primarily weapons for mercs.

The latter was obviously a balancing mechanism to keep players honest buying just a few key high tech toys to get that edge their mercs need.

However, I got to thinking about the effect if the goods in question are the most expensive player item going, the ships.

A TL10 Free Trader costs 50% that of a TL15 Free Trader, assuming stats are the same.

For having half the ship payment or sunk investment in, sure doesn't seem to have significant differences for those ships like you would for say spending on a TL9 laser and reflec/cloth armor vs. Battle Dress armor and a PGMP.


So assuming stats are otherwise equal, the TL15 should have advantages- a big one would be greater detection and engagement ranges.

So part of this to me at least is setting the values and any TL/equipment advantages on scale of cost/investment.

If we go with a base cost, hard credits for everything ship related and no funny currency business, then the differences should be gradualist.

If lower tech is bargain basement pricing and higher tech is inherently costlier from currency to systems purchased, so should the performance.

 

[kilemall]

Finally, how far SHOULD a meson gun or PA spinal shoot, vs. bay weapons?

 

[warwizard]

The really fast missiles have one additional advantage, and that is the engagement envelope is really small. if you are putting a lot of cost into a small missile you also want to put penetration aids on some of your volley and really put a lot of stealth systems such that you can get from 50 to 500 times closer than the standard target for both detection and target lock. The lowest level "civilian" class sensors at sens 12.5 passive EMS fails to target lock the missile till it reaches 10,000 m, but the missile set off it's X-ray laser nuclear bomb at 15,000 km.

Heplar rocket has a in theory max g's at 200, you also must have a fusion plant that produces 1 MW, which determines your actual theoretical maximum acceleration.

At TL 16 masses 142 kg, plus the 100kg heplar gives you a minimum mass of .25 mt for 200 kn which gives 800m/s per second or 80 g's without payload, communications controls hull or fuel.
the max for TL 15 is 74 g's and the max for TL 14 is 18 g's TL 13 is the same 18g's but the missile is 3X bigger due to minimum size of the fusion power plant. and TL 12 the max is 9.5g' and the missiles now are nearing a minimum size of 1 dt. TL 11 the missiles are now 20dt minimum but still 9.5g and one should look at different thrust agencies

TL 10 Fusion rocket has minimum size less than 1 Dt and can do 9g's.

(So for your Imperium game both sides would be using fusion rockets for their long range missiles at about 1 Dt per missile, and if you want a 1/2 dt missile you'll need to go to a solid rocket engine.


TL/DR
TL 10,11: 6g missiles 1 Dt Fusion rocket
TL 12, 13: 12g missiles and the size starts dropping to 1/3 of a Dt at TL 12
TL 14 12g missiles but now they are .1 dt or smaller
TL 15 50 g missiles and sub .1 dt
TL 16 60g missiles and sub .1dt

 

[kilemall]

The really fast missiles have one additional advantage, and that is the engagement envelope is really small. if you are putting a lot of cost into a small missile you also want to put penetration aids on some of your volley and really put a lot of stealth systems such that you can get from 50 to 500 times closer than the standard target for both detection and target lock. The lowest level "civilian" class sensors at sens 12.5 passive EMS fails to target lock the missile till it reaches 10,000 m, but the missile set off it's X-ray laser nuclear bomb at 15,000 km.

Again, not planning on investing or doing the FF&S full wonk, but it does occur to me that this result simply enshrines the already extant dynamic in SS3 and Mayday, the concept of the proximity detonation vs. contact, just in a less abstract way.

AML and railgun intercept I had in mind optimal at 10,000 km, diminishing chances out to 100,000 km.

Most rules ignore the possibility of anti-missile missiles, which would be short-ranged to pack more in but be high-G, should allow anti-proximity work AND not be costing power, at the cost of ammo use/replacement and using potentially offensive missile bay space.

I believe I have already mentioned the penaids and coordinated nature of an HG missile bay attack.

They are datalinked, 1-2 of their number likely have robot brains controlling the swarm, array-like coordinated sensor work on multiple sensor types to increase range, maintain targeting and defeat spoofing/countermeasures.

This ain't your grandpa's alpha strike.

Heplar rocket has a in theory max g's at 200, you also must have a fusion plant that produces 1 MW, which determines your actual theoretical maximum acceleration.

At TL 16 masses 142 kg, plus the 100kg heplar gives you a minimum mass of .25 mt for 200 kn which gives 800m/s per second or 80 g's without payload, communications controls hull or fuel.
the max for TL 15 is 74 g's and the max for TL 14 is 18 g's TL 13 is the same 18g's but the missile is 3X bigger due to minimum size of the fusion power plant. and TL 12 the max is 9.5g' and the missiles now are nearing a minimum size of 1 dt. TL 11 the missiles are now 20dt minimum but still 9.5g and one should look at different thrust agencies

TL 10 Fusion rocket has minimum size less than 1 Dt and can do 9g's.

(So for your Imperium game both sides would be using fusion rockets for their long range missiles at about 1 Dt per missile, and if you want a 1/2 dt missile you'll need to go to a solid rocket engine.


TL/DR
TL 10,11: 6g missiles 1 Dt Fusion rocket
TL 12, 13: 12g missiles and the size starts dropping to 1/3 of a Dt at TL 12
TL 14 12g missiles but now they are .1 dt or smaller
TL 15 50 g missiles and sub .1 dt
TL 16 60g missiles and sub .1dt

Interesting, does certainly address having an appropriate tech increase such as what happens to Our Heroes in the Forever War, when they reach the maximum distance from Earth and closer to the enemy and thus face weapons several tech levels above due to the time difference in transit.

If you still honored the SS3 impact rule, those tech 12-14 missiles in 3 turns of accel would be packing a kinetic hit of 12 CT hits plus warhead per lowly rack missile, getting you into low end nuke territory.

Assuming a similar performance of potentially 3 hours of accel, the TL15 missiles would have engagement ranges of over 100 LS or more with discretionary burn and drift.

More interestingly to me the missiles would have a wider envelope to course correct, reattack in case of a contact miss, or deliberately fly ahead of a fleeing enemy, turn and burn making for higher kinetic contact damage.

How fast can the ships go in that system?