[Spaceships] Can Spinal Battery be bundles of smaller weapons?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Note if he were dealing with anything other than launchers (which are bizarrely unable to be RF/VRF), there likely wouldn't even be a problem -r.

IF RF launchers were allowed youi'd have to start with a 32 cm one and for VRF you'd have to start with a 64 mm and all because there are no missiles smaller than 16 cm. An SM +5 fighter has to use a Spinal Mount to carry a 24 cm missile.

Now in Ve2 I once designed a space fighter with a bank of 25 mm missiles because the TL could make nukes that small. I didn't have any arbitrary limits on how many of them I could mount either. I could have as many as my budget allowed and the size of my engine made practical.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

IF RF launchers were allowed youi'd have to start with a 32 cm one and for VRF you'd have to start with a 64 mm and all because there are no missiles smaller than 16 cm. An SM +5 fighter has to use a Spinal Mount to carry a 24 cm missile.

My point was more that, with RF being possible to describe as ten fire-linked -2 SM weapons, one could postulate an SRF (Semi-Rapid Fire) that is x3 to RoF and -1 to SM, which could be described as three fire-linked -1 SM weapons (which is what Pectus Solentis appears to be trying to make). That would certainly allow an SM+5 fighter to use an SRF Spinal Mount for 16 cm missiles, having 3 launching tubes.

Now, I'm not entirely opposed to Spaceships limiting missiles to 16 cm or larger - it may well be the author decided the sort of drives such missiles would rely on couldn't be miniaturized smaller than that (by weight, 16 cm missiles (0.07 ton) are between SM -1 (0.03 ton) and SM +0 (0.1 ton) spaceships). But I don't think disallowing the various forms of Rapid Fire on launchers makes a lot of sense, beyond perhaps not wanting to have a clause of "launchers cannot be made smaller than 16 cm," particularly as, with the Smaller Systems optional rule, the only case where this can restrict a ship's RoF is for a Spinal Battery (in all other cases, you can just make a Major Battery into a Medium Battery, Medium into Secondary, Secondary into Tertiary, or Tertiary into some Smaller Systems Tertiaries).

That said, if you want to charge extra for Smaller System Spinal Batteries (on account of these being designed to order, and only being usable for these ships rather than potentially mountable on other vessels), that could be an option. The polity using the Venatrix Interceptor probably produces enough of such fighters to avoid that surcharge due to volume, but perhaps not. Of course, this is a digression from normal Spaceships rules, which don't seem to change the price of a vessel and its components regardless of if it's a single custom design or one of millions of identical ships.

[Pectus Solentis]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The usual idiom is "smart" bomb. Checking SS4 p.40 I see that's what it says.

Smart bombs have no propulsion systems. They can't chase anything. To be used at all in space combat you need a situation where the target moves towards the bomb. Even then the very low Space Accuracy of bombs makes them very unlikely to hit.


Again, I'm sorry but the small, fast anti-fighter missile you're looking for does not exist in Spaceships.

So I said that making new kind of missile types will (or not?) be a fine solution.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The spaces it uses are the only difference between a Spinal Mount for one SM of ship and a Major Battery for a ship of +! SM. You will note that making a ship +1 SM (with all other factors being equal) does not make that larger ship 3x as long. Simple geometry would make it 1.45x in each dimension.

Again, I think this is rules-lawyering. trying to exploit an abstraction Spaceships makes for the sake of simplicity to get around that simplifying assumption.

There is another difference - Spinal guns and launchers have less ammo for some reason.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The usual idiom is "smart" bomb. Checking SS4 p.40 I see that's what it says.

Smart bombs have no propulsion systems. They can't chase anything. To be used at all in space combat you need a situation where the target moves towards the bomb. Even then the very low Space Accuracy of bombs makes them very unlikely to hit.

Using them with x-ray laser heads and detonating fairly early might work. It's hard to tell, since the rules on how to use those are less-than-minimalistic. But it could put out a lot of 100 MJ-equivalent X-ray lasers fast and without needing powerplant support.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Pectus Solentis

So I said that making new kind of missile types will (or not?) be a fine solution.

New kinds of missiles would be a House Rule of your own creation. This is alowed of course but it is difficult to get assistance with. It's your game and you can do what you want.