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Old 05-01-2018, 06:45 AM   #37
ericbsmith
 
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Binghamton, NY, USA. Near the river Styx in the 5th Circle.
Default Re: [Spaceships] Paying more for better system?

Quote:
Originally Posted by YankeeGamer View Post
I think that a section could be equipped with MUCH smaller weapons than the size class of the ship supports in the rules, with the rest cargo, or reaction mass, or whatever.
That would be why I included such rules in my Spaceship Design Spreadsheet. Since the number of mounts in a battery and weapon size both scale directly with ship size it's simple to calculate the stats for smaller weapons. I also included rules for mounting Mixed Mounts (a mix of multiple weapon mount sizes, so you don't 100,00 Denary mounts or leave 99,000 of them uninstalled and converted to cargo).

Quote:
Originally Posted by weby View Post
Note that if you are at a reasonably high relative speed(to get through enemy armor) then massed small guns will be devastating due to the low number of hitpoints that large structures have in GURPS. Thus a dreadnaught armed with large drives/fuel tanks and huge number of small auto cannon will be extremely devastating.

Also note that massed small weapons will strip enemy ship shields away in no time making shields basically useless.
These are probably quite realistic, but also could be undesirable. One of the ways to avoid the problems with shields is to assume that an attack that doesn't penetrate the shields doesn't weaken it, but that just shifts the problem slightly up the scale where you need to have weapons of a certain size to reliably penetrate the shields of of a ship of a given size, and once the shields start getting warn away they will be penetrated more and stirpped quicker.

The one realistic thing that will help in any situation is to keep out of range of the smaller gun batteries. In a realistic spaceship battle the capital ships will likely fire at each other with missiles and main batteries at very long ranges, only getting close enough to maintain sensor contact and stay within range of their own main weapon batteries.
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