CT Only: Weapons conversion Mercenary to Striker

[Graham2001]

Is there a document covering the conversion of Mercenaries Plasma & Fusion 'X, Y & Z' weapons to strikers more detailed system?

 

[TNE2300]

isn't that in

Striker book 3
pages 34 and 35?

or am I misunderstanding the question?

 

[kilemall]

The X Y Z guns are IN Striker as listed equipment.



What's more, each flavor of gun gets a tech upgrade per higher TL, so by the time the A plasma gun reaches TL15 it's effectively a man-carried heavy weapon that can penetrate unarmored starships and fire rapid pulse.

 

[jec10]

Graham,

do you want to re-create the vehicles from the JTAS amber zone "Search and Destroy" using CT/Striker?

I'll do it for you.

There is a spreadsheet that takes literally five minutes per vehicle.

Just give me the basic details.

 

[mike wightman]

I could be wrong but I think what the OP is asking is can you use design sequence 7 to recreate the values listed for the stock plasma A-C and fusion X-Z guns that are in the weapon tables, and if so is there a spreadsheet or walkthough showing how.

 

[jec10]

As others have said, those weapons are already fully detailed in Book 3 of CT/Striker. No need to design anything, they're already done.

 

[mike wightman]

Are they reproducable by the design system though - if not either the design system is broken or the stock numbers are...
If design sequence 7 can come up with the stock numbers in the weapon tables then all is well. I've never actually tried this out...

 

[nobby-w]

Are they reproducable by the design system though - if not either the design system is broken or the stock numbers are...
If design sequence 7 can come up with the stock numbers in the weapon tables then all is well. I've never actually tried this out...

Yes they are, for certain values of Yes. The guns all have the same range as quoted in Book 4, although I don't think the weights and prices line up exactly.
Mercenary also doesn't make any representations as to the power plants needed to power the weapons.

There are a few minor niggles with the designs. For example, the 'B' gun sits just below the threshold where it gets a burst at extreme range, which seems a bit silly from a utility perspective. I also think that the inverse square law of range makes the A-gun rather smaller than one would expect to put on a grav tank, so some of the tech as described in Mercenary doesn't make a lot of sense mechanically if you try to implement it in Striker.

If you diddle the power plant scale efficiencies a bit then you can make sensible TL11 grav tanks with a B-gun that makes sense (around 17MW) and a level of armour commensurate with energy weapons in this power range. The tanks will weigh in at about 70-100t. You can do something similar at TL10 by making the A-gun a bit larger, somewhere in the 10-15MW range. It still has no burst at extreme range, and long will be about 3-3.5km. This is longer than the canonical A-gun, but it works if you hold your head just right and think of it in terms of a first-generation grav tank.

I used to hand-wave this a bit and view self-propelled A-guns as something like a close support weapon rather than a tank. I would build a design that had enough power to power the gun or fly but not both (also somewhat canonical). However, as the gun is only useful out to Long range (2.5km) the vehicles had to be small and cheap to be worthwhile, hence the self-propelled gun designs coming in a bit over Cr1m.

Unfortunately the RAW scale efficiencies have a gap in the range where a B-gun armed grav tank would be a sensible scale, making the smallest sensible grav tanks a bit bigger than this and needing a 10m³ power plant to make a break point. You can design a 27MW power plant (weighing 36t) or a 40MW power plant (weighing 40t) but nothing in between. Building off a 40MW plant will wind you up with a tank in the 120-150t range mounting a 20-25MW gun; you can also do this at TL10. This still works for a skirmish but it doesn't quite line up with the descriptions in Book 4. There is a similar disconnect with the X and Y guns at TL12-13.

Unfortunately, if you take the power plant up to 14M³ then you get double the power for not much more cost and you're into the leviathans that are pretty much invulnerable to anything else on the battle field, and thus kinda boring. This is more of an issue if you're doing TCS style Striker where the players design all their kit as well as put it into battle.
_______________________
I may have spent far too much time playing with and houseruling Striker in my mis-spent youth.

 

[whartung]

if not either the design system is broken or the stock numbers are...

Haven't pretty much all of the equipment, historically, been this way?

 

[jec10]

Yes they are, for certain values of Yes. The guns all have the same range as quoted in Book 4, although I don't think the weights and prices line up exactly.
Mercenary also doesn't make any representations as to the power plants needed to power the weapons.

There are a few minor niggles with the designs. For example, the 'B' gun sits just below the threshold where it gets a burst at extreme range, which seems a bit silly from a utility perspective. I also think that the inverse square law of range makes the A-gun rather smaller than one would expect to put on a grav tank, so some of the tech as described in Mercenary doesn't make a lot of sense mechanically if you try to implement it in Striker.

If you diddle the power plant scale efficiencies a bit then you can make sensible TL11 grav tanks with a B-gun that makes sense (around 17MW) and a level of armour commensurate with energy weapons in this power range. The tanks will weigh in at about 70-100t. You can do something similar at TL10 by making the A-gun a bit larger, somewhere in the 10-15MW range. It still has no burst at extreme range, and long will be about 3-3.5km. This is longer than the canonical A-gun, but it works if you hold your head just right and think of it in terms of a first-generation grav tank.

I used to hand-wave this a bit and view self-propelled A-guns as something like a close support weapon rather than a tank. I would build a design that had enough power to power the gun or fly but not both (also somewhat canonical). However, as the gun is only useful out to Long range (2.5km) the vehicles had to be small and cheap to be worthwhile, hence the self-propelled gun designs coming in a bit over Cr1m.

Unfortunately the RAW scale efficiencies have a gap in the range where a B-gun armed grav tank would be a sensible scale, making the smallest sensible grav tanks a bit bigger than this and needing a 10m³ power plant to make a break point. You can design a 27MW power plant (weighing 36t) or a 40MW power plant (weighing 40t) but nothing in between. Building off a 40MW plant will wind you up with a tank in the 120-150t range mounting a 20-25MW gun. This still works for a skirmish but it doesn't quite line up with the descriptions in Book 4.

Unfortunately, if you take the power plant up to 14M³ then you get double the power for not much more cost and you're into the leviathans that are pretty much invulnerable to anything else on the battle field, and thus kinda boring. This is more of an issue if you're doing TCS style Striker where the players design all their kit as well as put it into battle.
_______________________
I may have spent far too much time playing with and houseruling Striker in my mis-spent youth.

Completely agree. It makes a huge difference if you are min-maxing for a game of "Rapp's 100MCr Striker" as oppsed to designing for the OTU timeline.

If I'm designing for an army I'm going to use in a competitive sense then I'll ignore the stock energy weapons and design from scratch using a spreadsheet.