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

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

I've got to ask, how many missiles per salvo are you envisioning?

Because as you note, it's salvos, not missiles, that give effect. RoF is voluntary. It's stupid in setting, but I'd seriously consider only firing one missile per gunner per turn regardless of turn length or number of available tubes in order to not waste colossal amounts of very expensive ammo.

Yeah, generally envisioning one missile per salvo.

You realize that this problem is entirely an artifact of the tactical system dropping the wait and attack functionality (and the time granularity of course), right? The missiles are going to 'overfly' the screening craft at point-blank range. There's no simulation justification for not being able to shoot at them while they do - it's just the rules decided not to deal with it.

Sort of? You can't use wait and attack against missiles in the basic combat system anyway. More broadly, you can't do anything resembling point defense for another ship unless you're in formation with that ship, which the tactical system interprets as meaning "in the same hex". And yes, the Spaceships combat system has a lot of goofiness, but I'd like to use RAW as much as possible rather than gradually writing my own system.

That is a plus that I hadn't been thinking about in this go-around, yeah.

I don't see how it doesn't solve the 2% miss chance, though. Defense in depth means that the missiles get attacked (at least) twice - once by the screen and once by final point defense. The latter only needs to engage the 2% that survived the screen.

Hmmm, right. If you assume "declare all point defenders, then fire" defense in depth provides a way around that.

Unrelated: I wonder if those really big beam weapons AlexanderHowl likes could have a niche in providing MAD. Keep one trained on your enemy's spaceport, and even if it's theoretically vulnerable to missiles, you might be able to do a lot of damage to the spaceport in the time period when the missiles are flying. Of course, the other side might angrily demand you move the thing as soon as it enters range. The background treaties or "space law" can affect warfare a lot just by dictating where military space vehicles are when the fighting breaks out.