02-09-2019, 10:25 AM | #31 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
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02-09-2019, 12:14 PM | #32 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
Technically, you can be at GSO without being in GSO (GSO is a distance as well as a delta-v). In the case of the example, the spacecraft would diverge away from the planet after releasing the bombs at GSO. The momentum of the bombs would carry them over the next forty-five minutes towards their targets, and their maneuver thrusters would help them make the final approach.
As for it being an illegal manuever, ballistic attacks travel forever in space. In the case of range, I see that as maximum accurate range for specific locations, but 10 megaton bombs really do not need specific locations (until kinetic kill weapons). As long as you are within a 1 km of your target, that is all you need. In order to counter the bombs, you would need to be able to engage and destroy 2,700 SM+0 targets in 15 3-minute combat turns. At the same time, the major batteries of the spacecraft are attacking surface targets as it does its flyby. Depending on the protocol, it may also have released its drones, which may release their own bombs. For example, a SM+4 drone with one major battery of bombs can have 15 16cm 100 kiloton antimatter bombs. With 900 such drones, that means that there would also be 13,500 SM-2 bombs to deal with. Of course, we are talking about a terror load rather than a combat load. Now, more targeted bombardment could be done, though the strategy would likely involve engaging soft targets with 30 GJ lasers from GSO, launching drones at MEO so they can drop their 100 kiloton bombs on hard targets when they enter LEO, and then using the 10 megaton bombs to clean up everything else. If done correctly, over a billion people die in the first hour and the vast majority of the survivors die in the next month. With their infrastructure destroyed and their planet depopulated, the survivors would likely take a century to recover. Of course, any defending fleet exists to prevent that exact scenario from occurring. |
02-09-2019, 04:31 PM | #33 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
Where is that approach in Basic? A few genre-specific supplements like Supers and Zombies use something like that approach for when hordes of mooks are attacking the PCs, but I don't think it's the standard approach. Certainly two PCs with two identical weapons attacking the same target should get to make separate attack rolls, and AFAICT one PC with two identical weapons always rolls separately for each weapon. Linked vehicular weapons do work this way (High-Tech p. 229), but it's not a general rule. Spaceships makes it sound an awful lot like fixed mounts are linked in the way described in High-Tech but seems to imply turrets aren't. I can easily believe that Spaceships wasn't meant to have the same rule for handling huge numbers of interchangeable NPCs that Supers and Zombies has, but it doesn't seem to have made it into the text.
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02-09-2019, 05:16 PM | #34 | ||||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
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And no, GSO: Geosynchronous Orbit. It's not just a distance. Quote:
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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02-09-2019, 06:27 PM | #35 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
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. 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. 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. What would I do if I were setting up a Spaceships game? I'd play with my defense and propulsion assumptions so that mass missile barrages didn't work. Kinetic impact weapons too. That generally prevents me from having to worry about the "realism" of conventional guns in space combat too so it's a win-win all around.
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Fred Brackin |
02-09-2019, 07:02 PM | #36 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
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The only way to justify it apparently requires (A) inventing rules for multiple characters per player, out of zero textual source, and (B) having those rules allow the multiple characters to simultaneously act as multiple characters (to be allowed to perform the multiple gunnery tasks to run multiple turrets) and one character (to make a singular attack roll with all controlled weapons). This isn't the biggest Spaceships-related rules disaster, but it really horrifies me that this could have happened in the playtest and apparently had nobody take any note.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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02-09-2019, 07:25 PM | #37 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
I found this thread where Fred and Ulzgoroth argued at great length about how having multiple PD guns works. Based on the text of the Spaceships rules, Fred's approach seems to be right for fixed mounts but not turrets. P. 53 says, "A gunnery task allows a character to control one of the following: a single turret weapon; a single spinal weapon; all identical fixed mount weapons in a major, medium, secondary, or tertiary battery." And p. 57 says, "All identical fixed mount weapons in the same battery may be fired simultaneously – multiply RoF by number of fixed mounts."
Re: "it seemed obvious to me that you do not roll 30 times for a Tertiary Battery", I'd certainly agree that in practice few players or GMs are going to want to make 30 rolls for 30 nameless NPCs. So I'm really sympathetic to playtesters who applied the rule for one character controlling multiple fixed mounts to N NPCs controlling N turrets. But I can't find this approach being suggested anywhere in Campaigns (as opposed to Supers or Zombies, which do contain similar rules). |
02-09-2019, 07:26 PM | #38 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
The expense of missile barrages is one of the reasons why I prefer long range beam attacks. Missiles are just too expensive to waste in a barrage, but point defense does not work again TJ lasers.
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02-09-2019, 07:37 PM | #39 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
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Fred Brackin |
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02-09-2019, 07:48 PM | #40 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
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