[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

AI targeting is already assumed for any weapon bot manned directly by PC.

I...don't know what you're saying here, but it's definitely not the case that AI targeting is assumed.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

You already have stats for 3KJ lasers that do 1D-4 dDamage. You don't want to go smaller than that.

The smallest guns that appear to actually be possible to mount under the rules are 30 kJ VRF, though. And they only mass 1000 lb for a turret. A houseruled 100 lb turret with a VRF 3 kJ gun clearly would have some problems fitting in a control station...

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

It's already legal to put sub-SM systems in place (though I can't find the cute right now). You simply get 3x as many for -1SM. You'd get x10 for -2SM x30 for -3 SM and so on. Much of the same effect can be achieved through the rapid fire and VRF options anyway.

Spaceships 7. Only allows going down one SM. Arbitrarily many SM down is fairly logical as a houserule, but has rather dramatic effects on ship design.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Missiles are also not very relevant in engagements between ships with long range weapons. It's easily possible to kill a ship long before any missiles it launched can get to you. It's really only during fast passes and attacks on sitting ducks like Battlestations that the sort of ultra-speed attacks where one missile equals one kill show up.

Er, there's no ruleset for Spaceships where that's true. In the basic rules, missiles hit immediately after firing like any other weapons. In the SS3 tactical rules, you can fire missiles from arbitrarily far away, while non-missile weapons have finite ranges.

Missiles do sufficient damage that even at the 1 mps floor from spaceships p59 (which they can easily attain in tactical combat), one missile is horribly destructive.

Also, if you don't use fairly exotic drives, most ships are sitting ducks, in the sense of not having any meaningful ability to maneuver compared to missiles and, in the basic system, being subject to attack with small missiles at X range (p68). Of course, you address this:

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Your time would be much better spent customizing your FTL and real space propulsion to ensure that engagements take place at the ranges and with the weapons you want.

It's really only with specific types of FTL (like being able to drop out of hyperspace at a few hundred miles range) or with some very carefully chosen warp and/or reactionless drives that maneuver combat with diverse weapon mixes ever happens. If you have FLOSSGROuPONE heading towards GLUEHOMEFLEET from Mars in open space at constant acceleration you can forget it.

This, yeah, have to agree that drives dictate a lot.