Error in the Spaceships tactical combat collision rules?

[Michael Thayne]

Looking at the collision damage formula in Spaceships 3, it looks like there's an obvious mistake. But I can't find anything on an errata, and I might be missing something. So, the formula from the basic space combat rules is:

6d x 3 x lesser dST x relative velocity in miles per second

For tactical combat, the formula is:

6d x 3 x lesser dST x relative velocity in hexes per turn x scale factor

That seems to imply the scale factors should just be the inverse of the factors from the table on p. 25 of Spaceships 3. But they look to big by a factor of 3-4. For example, for 10-mile hexes the progression is:

x 2
x 6
x 20
x 60

But on p. 32 it's

x 2
x 0.6
x 0.2
x 0.06

I think this means that collisions do 3.6x as much damage as they should on a 20-second or 3-minute scale, and 4x as much damage as they should on a 1-minute or 10-minute scale. Or am I missing something?

[weby]

Yes, it seems to be a bug in Spaceships 3 that it produces too much damage.

Lets take a 100 ton object with 30 dHP/dST =300 hp moving a 100 miles/minute:
Damage according to B340: Speed is=2,933 is 8,799dice of damage or 6d*147dDam
Damage according to Spaceships 3 p32: 1 hex/turn on one minute scale:6d*3*1*30*6= 6d*540 dDam
Damage according to Spaceships p64 damage: 1.67 mps*3*6d*30= 6d*150 dDam

The two other values are within rounding error type difference of each other but the Spaceships 3 method has way too high value.

[Ulzgoroth]

Yeah, the scale factor table is obviously, bizarrely wrong. The top-left entry should be 0.5 rather than 2 and the rest filled out accordingly.

[Michael Thayne]

Has this made it into an errata anywhere? I can't find it.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Has this made it into an errata anywhere? I can't find it.

Only to my unofficial space ships line errata as a lot of the errors in the Space ships line: http://gsuc.roto.nu/doku.php?id=errata

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by weby

Only to my unofficial space ships line errata as a lot of the errors in the Space ships line: http://gsuc.roto.nu/doku.php?id=errata

THANK YOU!

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by weby

Only to my unofficial space ships line errata as a lot of the errors in the Space ships line: http://gsuc.roto.nu/doku.php?id=errata

From that:

"Sword-Class

...

Also, it has 10 fixed rear-mounted missile launchers. Does it expect to be running away often?"

In the Spaceships 3 system, what direction your missile launchers are pointing doesn't matter at all. (Except maybe for hyper missiles?)