01-29-2018, 03:38 PM | #51 |
Join Date: Aug 2008
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Re: [Blog] n-Body Politics
Further thoughts!!
So first the bad news: As long as I can pack more energy into a weapon - including k8netic energy - I can eventually vaporize anything I hit. This suggests you might look at how AKVs can NotGetHit (tm). Options include enhanced vehicular dodge, large ships have triuble tracking small ships, or stealth. None of these sre realistic, but they would be necessary for your purposes. Tell me, do you see AKVs more as fighters or torpedo boats?
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01-30-2018, 01:42 PM | #52 | |||
Join Date: Jul 2013
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Re: [Blog] n-Body Politics
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I guess an analogy might be a kamikaze drone with submunitions which usually returns to be rearmed. Or, to stay with naval terminology, maybe an unmanned PT boat with an additional spar torpedo which detonates a few tons of explosives in the boat? |
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01-30-2018, 03:21 PM | #53 |
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: New Zealand.
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Re: [Blog] n-Body Politics
Scott Westerfeld has written "the risen empire" and "the killing of worlds" the space combat in those books has some parralels with gurps' eggshell space ships.
One aspect of the combat in that series is the use of detached armour. Basically a large chunk of metal is detached from a vessel and kept between the vessel and the enemy. Variations on this idea might include things like a solar sail that is used for concealment.
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01-30-2018, 10:55 PM | #54 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2008
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Re: [Blog] n-Body Politics
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One answer might be that he has a really big pink-mist-making gun, too. I'd rather send in a swarm of AKVs, hope one or two get through, and stay the heck out of his range. Another might be that AKVs are cheap enough that it's more economical to risk a swarm of them instead of putting my mothership at risk. This is all just food for thought. Quote:
Boats, on the other hand, take a walloping and still don't sink, but they are slower, less maneuverable, and easier to hit. A torpedo boat is small and maneuverable compared to a dreadnought, but it is far easier to hit than a dodgy kamakaze zero, at least in movies (which I'm using a common point of reference for the sake of discussing feel). If you are going more for the airplanes vs. naval ships feel, I'd suggest reading Planet-Hopping with the 273rd Fleet in So You Want to Build a Spaceship... It addresses mechanical changes to make some spaceships feel like airplanes and others like naval vessels. On an unrelated side note, naval vessels in WWI and WWII generally took around 10 or 12 torpedo hits to actually sink. That's a nice benchmark for how fast you want your big spaceships to die (fewer hits and you get more like Cold War-era and modern naval warfare; more hits and it's more like Age of Sail broadsides).
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02-03-2018, 01:13 PM | #55 | ||||
Join Date: Jul 2013
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Re: [Blog] n-Body Politics
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With regards to the detachable armour, I don't think there's much of an advantage compared to regular or reactive armour. Quote:
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02-11-2018, 02:21 PM | #56 | |
Join Date: Jul 2013
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Re: [Blog] n-Body Politics
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First go at customizing the Spaceships system. Apologies for the non-weekly update. I had thought my queue of posts to last a bit longer... |
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02-11-2018, 06:05 PM | #57 |
Join Date: Aug 2008
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Re: [Blog] n-Body Politics
Why don't ypu have to roll to hit with a speed of light weapon? You still have to point it at the target effectively. If an argument exists to remove rolls, it's the Active Defense roll, but Kromm has said repeatedly that even that is a measure of the target's evasiveness - not him literally dodging. This is why Dodge is allowed against guns and lasers and such in RAW.
Also, why does a railgun have a range at all? There isn't any appreciable drag to slow a projectile until it hits something. Its range is infinite with the caviat that ships can use objects as cover.
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02-12-2018, 01:42 PM | #58 | ||
Join Date: Jul 2013
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Re: [Blog] n-Body Politics
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In writing this, I also added a completely new section on guided railgun projectiles - and, spoiler alert, they're extremely nice! |
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02-12-2018, 07:34 PM | #59 |
Join Date: Aug 2008
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Re: [Blog] n-Body Politics
But by Kromm's own posts and comments, Dodge represents moving erratically to force a miss. It's an abstraction. Similarly, the skill roll to hit is to see if you are sufficiently on target to potentially score a hit against an unaware or non-defending target. Of course all of this assumes you're using 4th edition rules, and as of the your last post, it looks like you're playing 3rd edition THS. So that might by moot.
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02-13-2018, 12:51 PM | #60 | |
Join Date: Jul 2013
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Re: [Blog] n-Body Politics
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However - this brought me towards another idea (thanks for that!). We do have rules for long projectile flight durations, specifically from Tactical Shooting (p. 32 [i]Bullet Travel]). It tells us to take 1d-5 per additional second and apply the result as a modifier to the skill roll. Now, for some Fermi Estimation: A human being is about two metres high. A spacecraft has roughly the same aspect ratio as a human being. A human moves at about 6m/s (according to the GURPS rules). Let's take an SM+12 spacecraft (200m long) accelerating at 1G. At 20 second-turns, it can change its position by 2000 metres, which is 10x its length. In a one-second combat turn, a human can change their position by about 3x their length. Accordingly, we can use the following rule: Roll 1d-5 per two full combat turns a projectile attacking a spacecraft has been in flight and apply that value as a modifier to the attack roll. Modify this time by the following: Divide it by the square root of the spacecraft's acceleration, and divide it by two for every two SM you're smaller than SM+10. As an example: The modified Predator AKV I've been using (SM+6, 4.5G) divides that time by 2 (from acceleration) and by 4 (4 SM smaller than 10), i.e. you roll 4d-20 per turn it takes for the projectile to reach you. The modified Oberth SDV (SM+9, 3G) divides the time by 2 (from acceleration; it's a rough estimate), i.e. you roll 1d-5 per turn. Hm. While I like the general idea (because it nicely abstracts out relative velocities, for example), the numbers do seem a bit strange. But wait - I have the Hnd numbers available! So, take Hnd into account (representing size and reorientation for the main drive to propel you into a different direction)? In this case we can multiply it by 0.5 (Hnd 0), 1 (Hnd -1), 2 (Hnd -2) and 4 (Hnd -3) That would give the AKV 2d-10 per turn and the SDV 1d-5. That seems nicer, and I'm looking forward to gaming it out. Although I might apply this as a bonus to dodge instead, since that would mean that multiple projectiles (restricting your dodge vector) make it much more difficult to dodge than a single projectile. (Well, that post went kind-of-rambly.) |
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