The problem with making gunnery use the BAB instead of making it a seperate skill means the Marine Gunners are so much better than Naval gunners. However if the Naval Gunners get "Martial Training" this pretty much closes the gap.
Traditionally, in the US Navy anyway, on the Battleships one of the gun turrets was crewed by marines. There was generally fierce competetion between turret crews and the Marines usually made better gunners, primarily due to pride, they refused to be allow a Squiddy to be a better marksman than a Marine, even if a 16inch gun isn't something you generally fire over open sights.
The +5 threat range makes sense on paper until you realize that a Meson starts with a 15+ Critical Threat Range. Which means it now crits on a 10!!!
With typical gunnery skill, a reasonable computer, and a weapon factor of more than 3, against typical targets you hit on a 2+. With Gunnery as a skill and the PMOS feat for gunnery you can Take 10 and never miss even hard targets and a spinal Meson Crits on a 10!
If you eliminate the +5 and reduce the damage multiplier to X2 there is at least a chance to survive one of these hits And there is a reason to build the DN.
Under the rules as written there is no reason to build a ship bigger than a Heavy Cruiser and then only if you want a multi-role ship. In most cases a Light Cruiser is more than enough. (ANd the "Strike Monitor" from TA7 is a very nasty customer.)
Destroyers in the 5Kton range can mount a 100ton Meson bay possibly 2, A squadron of these Destroyers can, in T20 easily expect to kill a pair of drednaughts for the loss of 1 destroyer. (If you manage two 100T Meson Bays they can kill 4 dreds for the loss of 2-3 Destroyers, (the other destroyers will likely be damaged by secondary weapons of the Dreds but even if they are all destroyed The Drednaughts still lose.))
Combat in Traveller is supposed to be deadly but but Drednaughts not being able to stand up to ships 1/100th their size is ludicris. A Squadron of 8 destroyers is about 40,000 tons. A Drednaught is at least 200,000 tons, and we are talking about taking on 4 of them with 40,000 tons of destroyer and killing all of the Drednaughts and living to tell the tale.
Originally posted by Aramis:
I had proposed a Gunnery Attack Bonus, separate but equal... if you wielded it by hand, it was BAB, if you wielded it through a mechanical linkage, computer interfaace, or remote mount, it was gunnery, with specific feats similar to the way weapon proficiencies work.
It was not well recieved.
To be honest, the +5 threat range bugged me. as did he flat 16d.
Best solution for spinals, IMO, is just ignore thse two tidbits. Thus spinals are simply doing USP D__. Yes, a spinal can then carve up some really big things, but I think the Structural hit poitns are too low for bigger vessels; the damages were not reduced when the playtest shifted from tons of damage to SI.
