[Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The beam weapons are probably improved 30 GJ lasers with a total RoF of 40 on a 3-minute turn, dealing 6d×10 (2) burning d-damage up to a range of 10,000 miles and 6d×5 (2) burning d-damage at a range of 30,000 miles, allowing for orbital bombardment from GSO of missiles and lasers. The soft targets get the lasers and hard targets get the antimatter missiles. A pure spaceship of terror will exchange the missiles for 2,700 40cm bombs with 10 megaton antimatter warheads, which ends up not even doubling the payload cost, which it would drop from GSO.

Do bombs have enough delta-v to be 'droppable' from GSO? How about for mid-course and terminal guidance. Or are you just planning on dropping enough it doesn't much matter where they land?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Fun story. I'm curious how developed the setting background was. Did you figure out the purpose of the space navies pre-mutiny? .

None of them were my designs but I had a concept where they deployed in detachments of one Victory-class Cruiser, One Nova Assault Carrier and three destroyers to outer system pop centers like Mars or Titan.

The cruiser sat on top of the major population center with it's Major battery Particle Beam being the big hammer (much too much armor penetration for anything likely including the Gibraltars). The Nova stayed with it most of the time using its' fighters and assault boats as the scalpel. The destroyers would deploy as necessary to regulate commerce. Call the mission colonial occupation and control.

Eh, it's a sort of justification I came up with for ships I "glued" together based on TL and technology.

I ended the battle with the supposition that without the Gibraltars sitting over head with massive missile batteries dissident areas on Earth fractured GLUE.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

For what it's worth awhile back I started this thread to try to figure out how the heck having multiple point-defense gunners works (among other things). I did not get an answer. Based on this thread from ten years back, Ulzgoroth, it sounds like you favor "a point defense gunner gets to see if his buddy hit before deciding whether to take a shot", is that correct?

It looks like I did at that particular point. I don't especially at the moment, but I haven't pored over Spaceships that hard in a long time now. Reading my OP, I suspect that I'd received that understanding from a prior Spaceships thread. You might be able to find where that came from and see whether you agree.

EDIT: I was checking my PMs to see whether I might have gotten it there instead. I don't think so, unless I've deleted something I really should have kept...but there was an interesting nugget from David Pulver which I don't think ever got released elsewhere: "The Book 3 rules may include an option for point defense gunners to (secretly) note they will fire early (at -4 for close range instead of point defense) This can be advantageous if prox fusing is expected, but is kind of disadvantageous otherwise."

Originally Posted by Rupert

Do bombs have enough delta-v to be 'droppable' from GSO? How about for mid-course and terminal guidance. Or are you just planning on dropping enough it doesn't much matter where they land?

No, bombs certainly do not have the ability to de-orbit themselves.

[AlexanderHowl]

If a spacecraft releases the bombs while going 10 mps, the bombs do not have to deorbit. With 2,700 10 megaton antimatter bombs, accuracy is unneeded, as they would glass a hemisphere. The spacecraft can decelerate while the bombs continue to fly towards the planet.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

If a spacecraft releases the bombs while going 10 mps, the bombs do not have to deorbit. With 2,700 10 megaton antimatter bombs, accuracy is unneeded, as they would glass a hemisphere. The spacecraft can decelerate while the bombs continue to fly towards the planet.

"Which it would drop from GSO", is what you said.

And no, 2,700 10 megaton bombs would not glass a hemisphere. Wreck the climate, and spread fallout over a lot of area if used as ground bursts, yes. Glass the place? Not a chance.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

None of them were my designs but I had a concept where they deployed in detachments of one Victory-class Cruiser, One Nova Assault Carrier and three destroyers to outer system pop centers like Mars or Titan.

The cruiser sat on top of the major population center with it's Major battery Particle Beam being the big hammer (much too much armor penetration for anything likely including the Gibraltars). The Nova stayed with it most of the time using its' fighters and assault boats as the scalpel. The destroyers would deploy as necessary to regulate commerce. Call the mission colonial occupation and control.

Eh, it's a sort of justification I came up with for ships I "glued" together based on TL and technology.

I ended the battle with the supposition that without the Gibraltars sitting over head with massive missile batteries dissident areas on Earth fractured GLUE.

Heh. When I've tried to figure out how to use the Spaceships designs in an actual game I found myself working backward in terms of justifications too. I've gotten increasingly frustrated with that though—most of the warships and fighters don't seem to have anything coherent behind their design beyond replicating things that look cool in fiction.

Do you remember how handled many point defense gunners vs. many salvos in the playtest? That is, when one salvo hits, does each gunner declare whether they're firing in point-defense, then the rolls happen? Or is it roll-decision-roll-decision? Or did you not worry about it because in the biggest battle the Gibraltars were too screwed for it to matter?

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

It looks like I did at that particular point. I don't especially at the moment, but I haven't pored over Spaceships that hard in a long time now. Reading my OP, I suspect that I'd received that understanding from a prior Spaceships thread. You might be able to find where that came from and see whether you agree.

I've been looking through old threads to try to find where it came from, and no luck so far, but I did find this thread where David says the fixed-mount bonus only applies to beams, which is big news to me.

[Rupert]

By the way, if a spaceship using a single fusion drive for thrust drops bombs at 10 mps, and then de-accelerates into GSO Earth orbit, it has to release the bombs about 92 hours out. As the bombs are ballistic objects, if there's any half-decent defence system around or on the planet, those bombs aren't landing (and certainly not the ones landing on anything important).

Note that the basic combat system gives bombs a range of 'S' vs surface targets, making this an illegal tactic if using the basic combat system.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

H
Do you remember how handled many point defense gunners vs. many salvos in the playtest?

The standard Gurps 4e rules for Rapid Fire were used throughout.

To be specific all identical attacks at the same target were grouped together and then given one roll only with a bonus for ROF as described in Basic. When those attacks were subject to Point Defense PD fire was conducted agaisnt the missiles that would hit using the same proceedure.

In the cruiser battle missiles may have been launched in the first Turn but neither their launcher nor their targets lived long enough for them to matter. Agaisnt the Gibraltars the ASATS and their submunitions may have been combined into one salvo (which perhaps they shouldn't have been) but the Gibralter under attack conducted 3 separate PD fires. Once with the Main Battery, once with the Gib''s Missile battery and then with its' Tertiary.

If you wonder, I reported all this to David on a roll by roll basis and he did not correct my procedure though he had done so when other issues came up. He even caught it when I was using an table from Spaceships 1 that had later been replaced.

If you have issues with this procedure I believe they are rooted in the basic 4e rules for Rapid Fire. I have my own issues with them but for playtests you use the Rules As Written.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

If a spacecraft releases the bombs while going 10 mps, the bombs do not have to deorbit.

If it is going 10 mps, it isn't in GSO.