The stern chase

[kilemall]

The missile supplement is worth mining but has limited application when we're abstracting missiles the way Book 5 does. Also, I'm seeing the word impact being used:

"Impact: Actually impacting a target (as opposed to intercepting) requires maneuverability on the part of the missile. Any powered missile will impact the target on the first turn of movement; initial guidance by the launch racks is sufficient in this case. In subsequent turns, continuous burn missiles can intercept, but will not impact. Limited burn and discretionary burn missiles can impact if they are able to plot a vector which passes through the target."

Am I overlooking some line that modifies this statement?

Those are awfully small missiles. I've entertained notions of making them bigger just to make them a bit less magical, or of redefining them to be short-range weapons.

There are missile impact rules further on where the missiles do a LOT more damage if they hit. The supplement says the warhead only/no hit damage is automatic if within x (I want to say 15000 km).

The HG to hit for missiles seems to me to abstract the ECM and impact rules, so I am comfortable with the effect.

 

[kilemall]

You don't shoot once every 20 min or so. You shoot continuously during the round, at least by FF&S. If you want to hit at longer ranges, you shoot a lot of times during a round.

View attachment 4941

I do one shot one turn for cooling and power allocation purposes, all a matter of taste.

 

[Carlobrand]

I do one shot one turn for cooling and power allocation purposes, all a matter of taste.

That means you wouldn't need a power plant big enough to power all weapons simultaneously. You could charge batteries and do a Star Fleet Battles kind of thing.

 

[kilemall]

That means you wouldn't need a power plant big enough to power all weapons simultaneously. You could charge batteries and do a Star Fleet Battles kind of thing.

Not my view, the one shot IS a 1000 second power up.

Put another way, a 250 MW 1 EP laser is really taking a 250GW shot.

Turns a lot of longstanding assumptions on their head, not to mention requiring a questionably powerful capacitor tech.

OTOH I postulate that the HG capacitors become unstable after prolonged charges at full capacity. They are metallic hydrogen based, and so stored charges heat them up and threaten to undo the grav pressured stability they were forced into. Hence why over capacity, they explode.

 

[Carlobrand]

Not my view, the one shot IS a 1000 second power up.

Put another way, a 250 MW 1 EP laser is really taking a 250GW shot.

Turns a lot of longstanding assumptions on their head, not to mention requiring a questionably powerful capacitor tech.

OTOH I postulate that the HG capacitors become unstable after prolonged charges at full capacity. They are metallic hydrogen based, and so stored charges heat them up and threaten to undo the grav pressured stability they were forced into. Hence why over capacity, they explode.

I see what you're aiming for, but that puts it out of step with other sources. A 250 Gw EP means the missile's 12 kt and should be doing ferociously more damage. A 250 Gw laser by Striker is huge and by any reasonable math would punch through the heaviest armor. I think MT identifies the turret laser as 250 Mw.

 

[kilemall]

I see what you're aiming for, but that puts it out of step with other sources. A 250 Gw EP means the missile's 12 kt and should be doing ferociously more damage. A 250 Gw laser by Striker is huge and by any reasonable math would punch through the heaviest armor. I think MT identifies the turret laser as 250 Mw.

Oh absolutely. Although given T5 resolution of lasers maybe we need gigawatts for CT ranges.

The environment rules of Striker align the ranges and power, space ranges are multiplied x1000. Just drop that and the gigawatt shot is necessary.

Independent of that, I’m aware many would not be comfortable altering this particular mechanic. I’m not seeking to persuade all to my view or oughta play the game.

What I am doing is posting my system, why it is what it is, and opening up the thinking to what game effect is desirable and make limited changes to help that happen.

All taste, all art. Good to know what the choices could be, and the consequences, and realize the hallowed RAW was itself a specific choice of the game art for effect.

 

[warwizard]

T4's FF&S rules out all propulsion alternatives except chemical solid fuel rocket for the tiny missiles you are assumming. TL 12- there are no alternatives to chemical rockets unless you want to go to missiles as big as a jump capable craft. Chemical rockets of that tiny size just do not have the delta V to do the job being asked of them in a 1000 second space combat with ships able to do 6g's for weeks. To be effective one has to assume some sort of large liquid fuelled rocket with a small payload, therefore bay missiles should be multiple DT hulled with a final stage of a small missile with a sprint 12g solid rocket that gives perhaps a 10 second burn to do the intercept/impact. Of possible intrest is the missile's acceleration increases as the fuel is burnt. This becomes important as the fuel to payload ratio is 10 or 20 to one. The missile that is 95% fuel at launch with 6g acceleration, at burnout may be doing 60g to 100g. thrust/(Mass of fuel/2+mass of engines and payload) is the formula for average thrust, with thrust/mass of engines and payload is the final acceleration at burnout. This gives near engine burnout missiles a much greater dodge and or intercept/impact maneuver ability.
Missile launchers are railguns! velocity at launch 6000m/s or 6km/s so that is a 6000km in 1000s boost. Not too bad.
External box mounted missiles do not get the railgun boost. but that is why they are put on fighters.

 

[whartung]

...or you can realize how missiles, as done in the rules of the game, are actually a combination of space denial and a close up attack weapon.

Mechanically, only BL has something that closer to "realistic" missile movement. In contrast to the other games where you can adjust the "future" part of the vector by the G rating of the drive, in any direction.

Using that mechanic, a missile (6G) needs to have a ship move within 6 hexes of the missile (missiles move last), then they burn the 6Gs on the missile to close with the target. They literally just "jump" in space to hit the target. Get within 6, and she-boom, here it comes. So, in that sense a ship closes in on its target, volleys some missiles, and either follows them in, or turns away. The target ship gets to choose whether to close in within the missiles envelope or avoid it. This is how missile can act like moving mines, just floating out in space waiting for someone to get close so they can "reach out and touch someone".

This is in stark contrast to the vision of something tracking and chasing and closing on a target ship. You'll note most missiles do not have the fuel payload to do very much of that, which makes them more of an approach weapon. They deny space like mines do. Sure, you can go that way, but there may be some pain if you do! But anything else, they need most of their vector to come from the initial ship launch. The "move 6G" part lets them be effective if they can coast in at all close.

This is what makes them a close attack weapon. Launch ship closes with the target, and gets within 6G of them, THEN launches, and the missiles can use their 6G to close the gap.

It's not quite the same in BL, because you can't just burn the G's and go to where you want to go, you have to accumulate Gs in order to turn (based on the missiles velocity), making them much less nimble. This reduces their envelope more to a forward facing cone.

 

[Rupert]

I see what you're aiming for, but that puts it out of step with other sources. A 250 Gw EP means the missile's 12 kt and should be doing ferociously more damage. A 250 Gw laser by Striker is huge and by any reasonable math would punch through the heaviest armor. I think MT identifies the turret laser as 250 Mw.

It does, and IMO that was a mistake (it gives even low TL powerplants very high energy densities), but there you go.

 

[Rupert]

Missile launchers are railguns! velocity at launch 6000m/s or 6km/s so that is a 6000km in 1000s boost. Not too bad.
External box mounted missiles do not get the railgun boost. but that is why they are put on fighters.

That requires a long railgun and some serious acceleration (which will increase the cost and mass of the missile), and a lot of power.

At 10,000G to 6,000 m/s the railgun tunnel needs to be 180m long (at 1,000G it needs to be 1,800m long), so we're looking at a spinal mount. It also requires 18GJ per ton of missile (at 100% efficiency), which is 18MW per ton per 1,000 seconds. There's also a fairly large capacitor required.

It might work with CT's little itty-bitty missiles, but it seems like a big and expensive way of giving a not very large (in terms of the scale of 1,000s turns and constant 1+G accelerations) boost to the missiles.

A simple electromagnetic catapult the length of the missile's launch tube/storage container just to kick it clear of a possibly violently evading ship quickly makes sense. I'm not convinced a serious railgun launcher does.

 

[warwizard]

I was intending that for the tiny CT missiles as they are so limited in delta V. I mean a less than 100kg missile, or whatever the mass is on them, really needs some extra oomph out of the launcher.

 

[mike wightman]

IMTU the standard space combat missile is 5dt in size, it is a small craft. Expensive, but if you can take out a 10,000t ship with one that is a fair trade.
The 50kg (Hellfire) turret missile for civilian use was really intended as a defensive interceptor, it is launched from the ship using gravitics to give it its initial velocity and then may either coast then burn or burn to the target. I ignore the errata and go back to the original intent, 6g6 means a maximum of 6g acceleration and enough fuel to do that once.

 

[Carlobrand]

IMTU the standard space combat missile is 5dt in size, it is a small craft. Expensive, but if you can take out a 10,000t ship with one that is a fair trade.
The 50kg (Hellfire) turret missile for civilian use was really intended as a defensive interceptor, it is launched from the ship using gravitics to give it its initial velocity and then may either coast then burn or burn to the target. I ignore the errata and go back to the original intent, 6g6 means a maximum of 6g acceleration and enough fuel to do that once.

That's useful for a stern chase: you quietly launch missiles, your pursuer chases you and is suddenly confronted with missiles coming at him out of nowhere.

 

[Carlobrand]

Okay, this didn't work. Player A announces a breakaway attempt by acceleration, Player B announces pursuit, they go into bidding how much agility they want to sacrifice to break away/pursue, Player A realizes they aren't going to be allowed to break away and says, "Screw this. Hard about, engage pursuers, maximum evasion," and all that previous rigamarole was pointless except maybe as a role-playing exercise if you were doing RPG.

Twenty minutes is a long time in which to make decisions. Player A's spinals were pointing the wrong way while Player B's spinals still had them in their gunsights, and - since I'm no longer applying agility as a DM for missiles - Player B took few risks by pursuing except maybe a bit more missile damage, well worth it to fire a few more spinal shots at the retreating Player A. It only takes a moment to reverse a decision and come about, and no sane captain abandons his evasive and keeps his butt pointed at the enemy while the enemy is peppering him with spinals. Sure, we could posit a rear facing second spinal, but that's a significant investment in volume that could be used for other things just to have a running-away weapon.

There may be outlier situations when a stern chase with missiles is a good strategy because neither side came to the fight with spinals, but it depends on the two sides being matched for agility. Otherwise A breaks away or B uses its agility advantage to move laterally so the missiles don't come straight down on it. Oh well.