Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin
IF RF launchers were allowed youi'd have to start with a 32 cm one and for VRF you'd have to start with a 64 mm and all because there are no missiles smaller than 16 cm. An SM +5 fighter has to use a Spinal Mount to carry a 24 cm missile.
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My point was more that, with RF being possible to describe as ten fire-linked -2 SM weapons, one could postulate an SRF (Semi-Rapid Fire) that is x3 to RoF and -1 to SM, which could be described as three fire-linked -1 SM weapons (which is what Pectus Solentis appears to be trying to make). That would certainly allow an SM+5 fighter to use an SRF Spinal Mount for 16 cm missiles, having 3 launching tubes.
Now, I'm not entirely opposed to
Spaceships limiting missiles to 16 cm or larger - it may well be the author decided the sort of drives such missiles would rely on couldn't be miniaturized smaller than that (by weight, 16 cm missiles (0.07 ton) are between SM -1 (0.03 ton) and SM +0 (0.1 ton) spaceships). But I don't think disallowing the various forms of Rapid Fire on launchers makes a lot of sense, beyond perhaps not wanting to have a clause of "launchers cannot be made smaller than 16 cm," particularly as, with the Smaller Systems optional rule, the
only case where this can restrict a ship's RoF is for a Spinal Battery (in all other cases, you can just make a Major Battery into a Medium Battery, Medium into Secondary, Secondary into Tertiary, or Tertiary into some Smaller Systems Tertiaries).
That said, if you want to charge extra for Smaller System Spinal Batteries (on account of these being designed to order, and only being usable for these ships rather than potentially mountable on other vessels), that could be an option. The polity using the Venatrix Interceptor
probably produces enough of such fighters to avoid that surcharge due to volume, but perhaps not. Of course, this is a digression from normal
Spaceships rules, which don't seem to change the price of a vessel and its components regardless of if it's a single custom design or one of millions of identical ships.