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

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The Rapid Fire rules are on p. 373 and expanded on p. 408 and that is what I meant. Please note that attacks in Spaceships are given Recoil stats. You use that with the Rapid Fire rules.

It may seem somewhat "Meta" that you use Rapid Fire when the same _Player_ is making multiple identical attacks rather than just the same _Character_ but it seemed obvious to me that you do not roll 30 times for a Tertiary Battery. Apparently it was obvious to David and everyone else in the playtest too.

It's how I've always assumed you'd do things. However, the rules do only say that this is done for identical fixed weapons in a single system.

I know that the Rapid Fire rules nerf all examples of very ROF attacks and they do it contrary to reality too. Modern Gatlings don't just put more rounds on target than single barrelled machine guns. They put a higher percentage on target too. The numbers I have read were that where a single barrel would put 7% of rounds on target a Gatling would put 9%. So that would be 70% chance of 1 hit with a ROF 10 gun but 9 solid hits with a ROF 100 Gatling.

An increase in percentage hits seems odd, and suggests not comparing like with like.

This of course is totally opposite of what the Gurps Rapid fire rules would predict but I believe it to be the result of a deliberate meta-game decision by the creators to promote their ideas of playability.

It represents automatic fire with small arms fairly well in 'general use'.

While I was a strong advocate, in the day, for using rapid fire rules for massed volleys and salvoes from ships, etc., in retrospect using them for this, while consistent and apparently elegant, doesn't give great results.