T20: Variant Missiles

[veltyen]

Variant Missiles for T20.

I've been having some thoughts about missiles in T20. Apart from being a small launching system for small probes and communications devices, there should be some differences in missiles that can be bought and fired.

For starters missiles outrange everything except PA spinal weapons. Outrange by so much that most of the time the additional range is wasted.

Not wanting to complicate things terribly much, and wanting to keep the same infrastructure the thought came to mind that the standard missile form factor could be modified to be shorter range but more powerful, or even longer range but less powerful.

Extreme Range Missile
Range 150,000 km
Conventional Warhead USPd4
Nuclear Warhead (5+USP)d4 + USPd8 Radiation
BPL Warhead d4+(USP) Pulse Laser hits

Long Range Missile (Standard Missile)
Range 90,000 km
Conventional Warhead USPd6
Nuclear Warhead (5+USP)d6 + USPd12 Radiation
BPL Warhead d6+(USP) Pulse Laser hits

Medium Range Missile
Range 45,000 km
Conventional Warhead USPd8
Nuclear Warhead (5+USP)d8 + USPd12 Radiation
BPL Warhead d8+(USP) Pulse Laser hits

Short Range Missile
Range 15,000 km
Conventional Warhead USPd10
Nuclear Warhead (5+USP)d10 + (USP)d20 Radiation
BPL Warhead d10+(USP) Pulse Laser hits

Bomb
Range 0 km
Conventional Warhead USPd12
Nuclear Warhead (5+USP)d12 + (USP)d20 Radiation
BPL Warhead Unavailable. No drive means no aiming.

Of course Bombs aren't terribly useful unless you have a fast craft delivering it or have gravity on your side.

It also makes nuclear bombs utterly terrifying (compared to nuclear missiles which are just mostly terrifying

)

Probably the area of effects may need to be tweaked, that really only matters when firing at ground targets, so posisbly just a note that the heavier weapons would have a slightly larger area is enough.

Any thoughts? Suggested tweaks?

 

[far-trader]

Interesting. Looks good at a glance, consider my arsenal expanded, send me the bill

Have you seen my old fudges for missiles? Hmm, swore I posted more than this on it but it's all I find here:

my mutterings

Basically the missiles come in a cannister load of three missiles per rack. Oh and mtu magazines are colocated with the turret/bay they serve and function as autoloaders capable of holding 6 cannisters (18 missiles total or 6 torpedoes) per ton in addition to the automatic loader. Also my civilian missiles are kinetic rather than explosive, and I'm thinking not so much missiles as propelled rounds. My idea is the rack can take a single torpedo instead of the three missiles. In summary and tieing into your ideas, your's would be the standard missile. Below are the same treatments as torpedoes (a single torpedo costs the same as 3 missiles):

Extreme Range Torpedo
Range 150,000 km
Conventional Warhead USPd4x3
Nuclear Warhead (5+USP)d4x3 + USPd8x3 Radiation
BPL Warhead d4+(USP)x3 Pulse Laser hits

Long Range Torpedo (Standard Torpedo)
Range 90,000 km
Conventional Warhead USPd6x3
Nuclear Warhead (5+USP)d6x3 + USPd12x3 Radiation
BPL Warhead d6+(USP)x3 Pulse Laser hits

Medium Range Torpedo
Range 45,000 km
Conventional Warhead USPd8x3
Nuclear Warhead (5+USP)d8x3 + USPd12x3 Radiation
BPL Warhead d8+(USP)x3 Pulse Laser hits

Short Range Torpedo
Range 15,000 km
Conventional Warhead USPd10x3
Nuclear Warhead (5+USP)d10x3 + (USP)d20x3 Radiation
BPL Warhead d10+(USP)x3 Pulse Laser hits

Heavy Bomb
Range 0 km
Conventional Warhead USPd12x3
Nuclear Warhead (5+USP)d12x3 + (USP)d20x3 Radiation
BPL Warhead Unavailable. No drive means no aiming.

So, what's the game difference between a missile and a torpedo? Not much really. A torpedo can be launched in one turn same as a single missile. But the amount of damage the torpedo does is three times (if it gets through). While to clear the rack of it's three ready missiles will take 3 turns. So it's a big fast hit vs one target or three smaller hits spread out, possible even over more than one target. The advantage(?) of three missiles over one torpedo is that you might have a better statistical chance of getting a missile through the enemies defenses. The torpedo is similar in ways to another house rule I use allowing missile salvos (fire all 3 ready missiles in one turn at a single target) in an attempt to overwhelm the enemy defenses.

 

[mike wightman]

Looks good.

My only tweak would be to increase the damage of nuclear munitions in an atmosphere - by a lot.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Looks good.

My only tweak would be to increase the damage of nuclear munitions in an atmosphere - by a lot.

Hmm, like for the atmospheric concussive effects largely missing in space?

Maybe like add 1 to the pre-add per Atm USP? Or is that too much? Too little? Just right

Atm 0 = 5+USP (vacuum)

Atm 1 = 6+USP

Atm 2 = 7+USP

Atm 3 = 8+USP

Atm 4 = 9+USP

Atm 5 = 10+USP

Atm 6 = 11+USP

Atm 7 = 12+USP

Atm 8 = 13+USP

Atm 9 = 14+USP

Atm A = 15+USP

 

[mike wightman]

Well, to start with I'd increase the damage die to a d20, keep your numbers above, and then multiply the final damage by 50

 

[far-trader]

No half measures with you are there?

And here I was going to reverse engineer the numbers using the "til they glow" and T20 rules to see what ballpark we're talking about. And you just up an vape the whole target

 

[mike wightman]

The multiply by fifty is for personal combat scale.

For vehicles I'd multiply by 5.

For ships just use the numbers as is.

I noticed that in T20 that 250g of plastic explosive has a damage of 1d20...

 

[far-trader]

Ahhhh, that "feels" better

 

[veltyen]

I make Torpedos a little larger. Specifically bay weapons can fire swarms of missiles or torpedos (2.5 dTon normal torpedo in the 50 dTon bays, 5dTon Heavy torpedo in the 100 dTon bays).

I don't have any combat rule difference.

Of course 100dTon torpedo bays can launch 5dTon vehicles whereas the missile swarm bays can only launch smaller things.