04-15-2018, 05:50 AM | #21 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: [Spaceships] Missile shield vs. ramming: two questions
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Two common phenomena in naval architecture are big for the sake of big ("mine is bigger than yours!") and ships which have to serve multiple functions (the galleons of the Indes were treasure transports and armed to fight off filthy heretical pirates; an American aircraft carrier is a base for land operations and a weapon of naval warfare). Both can be reasons why there are ships bigger than a rational in-game analysis would justify, let alone our amateur analysis through the foggy mirror of the rules on a lazy Sunday.
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04-15-2018, 06:00 AM | #22 | |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: [Spaceships] Missile shield vs. ramming: two questions
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"Why build big ships?" you asked, and listed some points about armour ratings and beam weapon damage. You didn't mention range, but it can be significant. Big ships carry big objective mirrors and can therefore focus a weapon at ranges where a smaller ship cannot effectively return fire. In GURPS Spaceships that effect makes a tactical difference up to a 100 GJ UV laser or X-ray laser, for which you need an SM +12 ship with a spinal mount or SM +15 with a major battery. That's another reason to build ships larger than SM +9. You also asked about defending such large ships against missiles and ramming. Though holding the launching ships beyond X range with the Big Gun is a start on that, you're right that the Big Gun can be swarmed. So I suggest a point defence with high rate of fire, and the use of the "Missile Shield" setting switch. Details remain to be worked out: perhaps a weapon system split into three SM +11 systems: one SM+11 tertiary battery of thirty VRF improved lasers (improved UV lasers at TL 11) for dealing 3D damage to each of 6,000 unarmoured warheads/turn out to S/L range, one SM +11 secondary battery of 10 RF UV lasers (improved at TL 11) dealing 2D×5 (2) to each of 100 (200 at TL 11) SM +4 or smaller fighters or KKVs per turn, out to L range, and a medium battery of three RF UV or x-ray lasers doing 6D×5 (2 or 5) to each of three cheeky pests per turn that have armour on them, out to range L, and useful fire against light targets trying to close from beyond-X to L. It's not immune to everything, but any swarm of warheads or KKVs launched from beyond the range of its Big Gun is going to have to run a hell of gauntlet, especially if you keep down to limited superscience in drive performance. If attackers build KKV with massive plugs of hardened armour on their front sections, deploy large ships in pairs, or with escorts, that can pour rapid fire at the sides of closing KKVs.
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 04-15-2018 at 06:05 AM. |
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04-15-2018, 06:33 AM | #23 |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: [Spaceships] Missile shield vs. ramming: two questions
Spaceships 8 (page 21) offers optical Phased Array lasers at TL11 and UV lasers at TL12. Only major batteries are available, and at TL11 they are only available as fixed mounts, but they can switch to rapid-fire or very-rapid-fire at will. They even function as LIDAR.
If you have TL12 (or TL 11 and play games with smaller-systems) you can equip an SM +12 ship with a phased array turret (or an SM +11 phased array in each hull section) that is a very versatile defensive weapon.
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. |
04-15-2018, 06:41 AM | #24 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: [Spaceships] Missile shield vs. ramming: two questions
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04-15-2018, 07:00 AM | #25 |
Join Date: Oct 2008
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Re: [Spaceships] Missile shield vs. ramming: two questions
First: Gurps HP rules are broken for large structures/vehicles. They are much harder to destroy than the cube root gives.
And related: In spaceships the beam weapon damage scales with cube root too to keep the damage scaling same as HP, but missiles and ramming do not. The simple solution to that is: Use square root for both damage and object hitpoints. Square root is closer to real effect. This will both make beam weapons more effective against smaller targets and make larger targets tougher. The damage square root is proposed in "The Square Root of Destruction" pyramid 3-34 page 9. Second: Kinetic weapons are more effective due to the ability to get high speeds at higher TLs. This one is realistic but can be unsatisfying if you want large ships to survive. The easiest solution to that is to use super science in the form of Force Screens that are silly good against kinetic threats. As example Vorsigan saga gives their Force Screens half normal dDR vs beams but fifty times normal dDR vs kinetics(so 100 times better than vs beams). Alternative solutions include allowing smaller batteries on larger ships and not use rapid fire rules for massed batteries. Combining this with tactical combat where you have time to attack the incoming missile multiple times. As example at TL 10, you cannot have more than DR 30 hardened as front armor and with The Square Root of Destruction a 30mj laser with 2d*10 will penetrate it easily. The battery weights 15 tons and needs 7.5 tons fusion power plant, so by using 2.25 times the drone mass(and remember that the attacker will likely use 1 2/3 times the mass to include the vehicle bays) you will get quite many shots at the drones(20+), with likely 2-3 hits needed to neutralize. So having say 1/4 the number of expected drones in defensive weapons should be enough. Under this system the automatic misses do not matter as you get so many attacks. Alternative to beam weapon based defense is to use massed small missiles. Even a small missile will do devastating damage. Use massed Striker Missiles (UT 168) as a last ditch defense. No small target cannot have the armor to stop a 100mm High Explosive Multi-Purpose round with an effective dDR penetration of 126 against a hardened armor target(252 normal) and the missile weights only 17 lb and is a smart weapon so is independently targeting and make separate attack rolls. So launching 2 000(17 tons) to counter a 100 drone attack(1000 tons) is definitely feasible close defense. That gives 20 tries for each incoming drone by using a minimal part of the drone mass(1.7%). |
04-15-2018, 09:17 AM | #26 | ||
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Spaceships] Missile shield vs. ramming: two questions
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Less sure about the multi-role thing. It would be interesting to stat out a multi-role ship under the Spaceships rules, where each role would only justify say a SM+8 ship. How big could such a ship get? Not sure it would get more than 10x larger than the "single role" ship. Last edited by Michael Thayne; 04-15-2018 at 09:23 AM. Reason: Fixed tag error |
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04-15-2018, 09:23 AM | #27 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Spaceships] Missile shield vs. ramming: two questions
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04-15-2018, 09:33 AM | #28 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: [Spaceships] Missile shield vs. ramming: two questions
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The only time I have seen drone saturation work was against a space station that could not get out of the way v. a massive number of targets that had a closing velocity of 70 miles per second. This speed also allowed the vessels carrying the drones to stay out of range. Hardening the drones played no role. If you're going to saturate the target's defenses adding missile launchers instead of armor is a much better deal.
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04-15-2018, 09:37 AM | #29 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Spaceships] Missile shield vs. ramming: two questions
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04-15-2018, 09:50 AM | #30 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Spaceships] Missile shield vs. ramming: two questions
If you use "HP and Weight: An Alternative Approach" from the same Pyramid issue as "The Square Root of Destruction", and round up generously in in canon Spaceships style, you might get an HP progression like this:
SM+4: 30 dHP SM+5: 50 dHP SM+6: 100 dHP SM+7: 150 dHP SM+8: 300 dHP Still not sure about the warhead damage progression. |
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combat, spaceships |
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