[Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

It would be nice to have like, standardized dispersal patterns for sub-munition weapons. I looked into stating up some cluster bombs for a war on terror campaign, but never looked closely into that, just noted "well it depends on the weapon". Smart submunitions sound complicated, but if anyone has playable rules for them it certainly would be nice.

If you're ignoring the area effects, you could easily enough treat them as a huge Suppression Fire attack over the scatter zone. Realistically they probably don't achieve an even distribution over the hexes threatened, but it's probably close enough for gaming. You'd have to decide by weapon how many hexes and how many submunitions.

The final resolution for smart submunitions as homing weapons would be easy enough. The gap is deciding what if anything they spot to lock onto during their target acquisition phase.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Speaking of smart weapons, one thing that occurs to me is that at least by RAW, there should be no difficulty scoring a direct hit with a homing missile even if you're firing it over the horizon. The way RAW models it, the purpose of proximity detonation for anti-air missiles is to give you a chance of hitting a fast-moving target, which isn't necessary for ground targets. And multi-spectral homing has an imaging radar option, which I imagine would be hard to defeat with ECM. So maybe we can get direct hits over the horizon anyway?

GURPS rules, it's a bit hairy. You "must" lock onto the target before firing a homing weapon. What are the requirements of that? Other than a skill roll with no listed modifiers, Campaigns has nothing to say about it!

Not GURPS rules, yes, you can most certainly do that, and can do it at TL8. Lots of missiles can acquire targets after launching.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

EDIT: Wait, hmmm, on second thought, a trick like that is probably brilliant missile territory. And unfortunately brilliant missiles are slow and therefore more vulnerable to lasers.

Nothing all that brilliant about it, but target acquisition does take time and usually require line of sight. And even if you could do that very fast with TL10 sensors and processors you need to be able to course-correct onto your target after locking it, which is a problem for a super high speed short engagement window attack.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

There are some pretty aggressive limits on what you can do with computing when you're flying completely blind. High-speed impactors that are carrying a reentry plasma sheath for most or all of their flight, well, they can't possibly see the tank they're attacking and probably can't even tell where they are with much confidence.

I would not be at all surprised if TL 10 has inertial tracking several orders of magnitude better than what we've got now. This would essentially allow GPS levels of accuracy without needing GPS signals.

On the other hand, tanks move, and if you can't see the tank, being able to attack a precise coordinate will not do you much good if its not there when you arrive. I can see hypervelocity impactors being a good way to take out stationary targets - buildings and the like - but not anything that don't stay put.

An alternative is an orbital munition that does a hard aerobrake maneuver and then deploys a swarm of long rod kinetic penetrators moving at 2-3 km/s. This speed maximizes penetration and doesn't blind your sensors with a plasma sheath. Once loosed, the penetrators can autonomously lock on to targets and guide themselves to anything tank-shaped (or airplane shaped or whatever), then punch through the top.

Another drawback of using orbital kinetics is that they will take time to get to their target. A minimum delta-V trajectory from LEO will take about 40 minutes or so. If you have delta-V to spare you can cut down on this time, but your kinetic ends up hitting the air faster and suffering more from ablation.

Luke

[Michael Thayne]

Another point about using submunitions to punch through armor: currently, we do this for tank top armor. But the same approach isn't going to make sense for killing/disabling a human in a nanoweave tacsuit (30 DR vs. cutting all over the body). What does make sense against that kind of target?

[AlexanderHowl]

Orbital lasers. A 100 MJ laser does 50d(2) burn damage from 10,000 miles away, which is going to fry most TL10 armored troops, and you can use it to take out support systems. A TL10 soldier does not do well without ammunition, fuel, power cells, or satellite communications.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Another point about using submunitions to punch through armor: currently, we do this for tank top armor. But the same approach isn't going to make sense for killing/disabling a human in a nanoweave tacsuit (30 DR vs. cutting all over the body). What does make sense against that kind of target?

Why doesn't it make sense? You'd want more smaller submunitions - at most HEMP thimble grenades, but even smaller diameters would be better. 10mm is sufficient to the task after all.

Or you could go smart submunitions of course, though UT infantry probably are relatively hard targets for those to lock onto.

Other options are swarmbots and 'biochemical liquid' rounds, which can deliver metal embrittlement agent which can be ruinous to most equipment. (Or of course poisons or nanoburn but considerations around those have been previously discussed.)

Or if you're feeling funny, shower the enemy in tangler warheads. Though this won't be that useful if you allow the targets to have effective anti-tangler aerosol.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Orbital lasers. A 100 MJ laser does 50d(2) burn damage from 10,000 miles away, which is going to fry most TL10 armored troops, and you can use it to take out support systems. A TL10 soldier does not do well without ammunition, fuel, power cells, or satellite communications.

As already established, various GURPS sources say contradictory things about laser ranges. I'm trying to work out what the best options are for artillery given the more conservative assumptions about laser ranges.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Why doesn't it make sense? You'd want more smaller submunitions - at most HEMP thimble grenades, but even smaller diameters would be better. 10mm is sufficient to the task after all.

Or you could go smart submunitions of course, though UT infantry probably are relatively hard targets for those to lock onto.

Current parachute-style cluster munitions don't seem ideal for hitting an upright human. Thought I guess GURPS doesn't usually worry about that level of detail.

Other options are swarmbots and 'biochemical liquid' rounds, which can deliver metal embrittlement agent which can be ruinous to most equipment. (Or of course poisons or nanoburn but considerations around those have been previously discussed.)

The "Metal Embrittlement Agent" needs to be tailored to work on one specific metal. Which would you go for? Possible it would be almost entirely countered by designing equipment to have minimal exposed metal parts, but instead always covered in at least a minimal protective layer of something else. Metal might not even be that common a material for equipment given strong ultra-tech composites.

Swarms, on the other hand... the devourer swarm and gremlin swarm look like quite effective weapons. Techniques for combating that are going to be important, and I'm not sure which will be most effective.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

One thing we haven't talked about much yet is railguns. As small arms, electromagnetic guns suffer from that pi- wounding multiplier, but the 40mm railgun doesn't suffer from that problem (to put it mildly) and has one of the best ranges of any Ultra-Tech kinetic weapon. It could be a dominant weapon on a TL10 battlefield. Assumptions I'd make to cause that to be true:

• Conservative assumptions about laser range.
• Conservative assumptions about ballistic missile accuracy
• Lasers are generally good pretty at shooting down cruise missiles, but little help against faster-moving projectiles.

Rather than being mounted on anything like a modern MBT, they might be mounted on self-propelled artillery.

I think you're okay as long as you have UT's conservative asumptions about laser _power_ The TL10 Laser Cannon with 6Dx10(2) can only pentrate the side armor of the 30 ton tanks in UT. That's quite light for an 8000 lb weapon.

The 40mm railgun would work for the 30T tanks if they weren't hover or grav. Hover vehicles res[pond directly (i.e like air hockey pucks) to Newton's Thrid Law.

TL6-8 style indirect field artillery died with the MBTs and their targets went into stealth mode anyway. You're searching for a way to do indirect fire before you've got a real use for it. I assume it's non-existent at TL10.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The 40mm railgun would work for the 30T tanks if they weren't hover or grav. Hover vehicles res[pond directly (i.e like air hockey pucks) to Newton's Thrid Law.

Ultra-Tech's obsession with hovercraft is really weird. If I wanted light tanks to be part of my combat paradigm at TL10, I'd probably blend stats from the TL9 and TL10 tank examples. The hover tank is notable for being able to withstand 25mm HEMP (maybe used as submunitions for 100mm cluster warheads?), but otherwise seem kind of pointless.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Ultra-Tech's obsession with hovercraft is really weird. If I wanted light tanks to be part of my combat paradigm at TL10, I'd probably blend stats from the TL9 and TL10 tank examples. The hover tank is notable for being able to withstand 25mm HEMP (maybe used as submunitions for 100mm cluster warheads?), but otherwise seem kind of pointless.

The hover vehicles are in UT to aid persons emulating vatious fictional and gaming sources.

The TL10 25mm HEAT does slightly more damage that the HEMP. You use the HEMP got calibers under 25mm. For 25mm HEAY you can use guided grenade launcher rounds at 2200 yards or the Payload Rifle or 25mm Autocannon with ETC at 12,875 yards.

You could also use $500 64mm Striker or $3400 100mm Hunter missiles at 16 and 32 miles.

I really don't see why people keep trying to invent "heavy" weapons and vehicles for the UT TLs. What do you think they're needed for.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The TL10 25mm HEAT does slightly more damage that the HEMP. You use the HEMP got calibers under 25mm.

Heh, good catch. 25mm+ HEMP may as well not exist at TL10. How odd.

For 25mm HEAY you can use guided grenade launcher rounds at 2200 yards or the Payload Rifle or 25mm Autocannon with ETC at 12,875 yards.

I know this is technically allowed under the rules, but it really seems like the rules could use a tweak here. Technically you can put guidance systems on a 40mm railgun round and have a rocket that flies at over four miles per second, for just over seven seconds, but there's absolutely no reason to assume a railgun-fired rocket-assisted projectile would have exactly those performance stats.

<snip>

I really don't see why people keep trying to invent "heavy" weapons and vehicles for the UT TLs. What do you think they're needed for.

People expect Ultra-Tech versions of real-world weapons whose caliber is over 100mm. It's an understandable impulse. Realistically, making munitions smarter will probably also lead to their being smaller, but IDK if that will make calibers >100mm go away completely. And mininukes will only have that effect if we get rid of the nuclear taboo.