[Spaceships] Fixing ballistic weapons in tactical combat

[Rupert]

I don't see why missiles should be required to burn continuously.

[Lord Azagthoth]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

If shells have no burn points even on a 10 mile scale, that means they can't correct for initially being 10 miles off-target. But if you're using a 100 mile scale, and a shell happens to enter the hex of an enemy spaceship purely by accident, that's totally consistent with the shell being 10 miles off from the target. Or even 50 miles off. Maybe you could adopt a rule that if a shell and ship cross paths totally accidentally, the shell attacks on a 6 or less on 3d?

Give the accidental target a sensor check with a cumulative bonus for every turn the shell is drifting their way.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

If shells have no burn points even on a 10 mile scale, that means they can't correct for initially being 10 miles off-target. But if you're using a 100 mile scale, and a shell happens to enter the hex of an enemy spaceship purely by accident, that's totally consistent with the shell being 10 miles off from the target. Or even 50 miles off. Maybe you could adopt a rule that if a shell and ship cross paths totally accidentally, the shell attacks on a 6 or less on 3d?

Ah. On the one hand, your logic is fine.

On the other hand, you're treating a scaling granularity problem as being the fault of the ballistic weapons. The scaling rules mangle everything in the combat system. Giving ballistic projectiles extra leeway sometimes seems pretty far down the list of disruptions there.

That said, if you must solve it, your final suggestion seems like a decent way to go at things. (I'd harden the terms, too, firing wildly into a large enemy formation arguably means that no matter what you hit it's by intention, not accident...but that doesn't mean that the shell was in any way aimed at that particular target.) Except you need the roll to vary with the hex scaling, not be the same for all scales. EDIT: Also RoF bonus should add to the caps.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Revised proposal for limiting the range of ballistic weapons: shells and bombs can drift for up to 10 minutes before their odds of hitting anything drop dramatically (in most cases the GM should just remove them from the map).

How does 10 minutes correspond to a problem that is actually about distance scaling?

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

For standard TL9+ missiles, their powerful HEDM engines cannot be shut down until they run out of burn points. After that point, they become bombs, with sAcc in space equal to TL-11, and in most cases removed from the map after 10 minutes.

Unless you've got vast amounts of space opera stuff going on, I can't see any way to justify that weapon engineering choice. I'd do anything up to and including giving the missiles a second stage in order to give them actual stand-off capability.

You've ruled, in effect, that missiles become dumb (well, mostly dumb) bullets at 8200 miles, and basically useless by 14200 miles. Nobody would actually want those missiles.

Originally Posted by Lord Azagthoth

Give the accidental target a sensor check with a cumulative bonus for every turn the shell is drifting their way.

What would the check do?

[Lord Azagthoth]

What your sensors scanned can be intercepted or evaded.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Lord Azagthoth

What your sensors scanned can be intercepted or evaded.

The default combat expectation is that you already see the shells.

[Lord Azagthoth]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

The default combat expectation is that you already see the shells.

So no bonus to starship dodge with successful sensor checks? My error. It's been a while since I used Spaceships and physical projectiles.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Unless you've got vast amounts of space opera stuff going on, I can't see any way to justify that weapon engineering choice. I'd do anything up to and including giving the missiles a second stage in order to give them actual stand-off capability.

You've ruled, in effect, that missiles become dumb (well, mostly dumb) bullets at 8200 miles, and basically useless by 14200 miles. Nobody would actually want those missiles.

Hmmm. Fair. Even if any given stage can't be shut down, a two-stage system should give you the boost-drift-attack profile that I agree is oh so useful. But Spaceships seems geared somewhat towards giving you "space opera" as an option, and if you push realism to the point where space warfare becomes "exchanging missiles from half an AU or more", the entire system becomes kind of pointless. It's like a system for simulating in great deal an exchange of ICBMs between the US and Russia. Interesting to some people, but it's not what most people shopping for a sci-fi RPG want. So it would be nice to come up with a way to impose de facto range limits on missiles—but I agree doing this in a way that's realistic is difficult.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Hmmm. Fair. Even if any given stage can't be shut down, a two-stage system should give you the boost-drift-attack profile that I agree is oh so useful. But Spaceships seems geared somewhat towards giving you "space opera" as an option, and if you push realism to the point where space warfare becomes "exchanging missiles from half an AU or more", the entire system becomes kind of pointless. It's like a system for simulating in great deal an exchange of ICBMs between the US and Russia. Interesting to some people, but it's not what most people shopping for a sci-fi RPG want. So it would be nice to come up with a way to impose de facto range limits on missiles—but I agree doing this in a way that's realistic is difficult.

One useful thing is that if you've got drives with even fairly modest thrust and plentiful (or unlimited) delta-V, that can severely limit the range of boost-and-drift missiles.

For instance, if you boost a missile to 9 mps and reserve one mps, against a target with 0.05G acceleration, the target can escape at any range over 30,000 miles. Because in the time it takes the missile to reach it, it can put on more than a mile per second of lateral velocity, forcing a miss.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

One useful thing is that if you've got drives with even fairly modest thrust and plentiful (or unlimited) delta-V, that can severely limit the range of boost-and-drift missiles.

For instance, if you boost a missile to 9 mps and reserve one mps, against a target with 0.05G acceleration, the target can escape at any range over 30,000 miles. Because in the time it takes the missile to reach it, it can put on more than a mile per second of lateral velocity, forcing a miss.

Yeah—I'm aware of this. But the "range target is guaranteed escape at" can balloon to millions of miles if (1) using fusion rockets (2) you use the launching craft to boost—or use an incoming warship's speed against it. (Imagine a fusion rocket warship is headed to your planet. If your missiles have 10 mps, and I did my math right, you should be able to hit it if you launch your missiles when it has 20 mps left in its breaking burn.)

At the very least, I don't think you should get the benefits of a tactical array vs. defensive ECM if the target is outside your active sensor range. Maybe even reduce skill to 10 + sAcc, making Spaceships missiles more similar to non-Spaceships homing missiles? I confess I've always been confused by the weird hybrid of guided and homing rules Spaceships missiles seem to use.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Yeah—I'm aware of this. But the "range target is guaranteed escape at" can balloon to millions of miles if (1) using fusion rockets (2) you use the launching craft to boost—or use an incoming warship's speed against it. (Imagine a fusion rocket warship is headed to your planet. If your missiles have 10 mps, and I did my math right, you should be able to hit it if you launch your missiles when it has 20 mps left in its breaking burn.)

I...think there must be a problem there? Tripling the closing speed (close enough) doesn't change the time the target needs to escape, so it only triples the no-escape range (by cutting flight time). Reducing the target's acceleration by a factor of ten only multiplies time to escape by 10, multiplying the no-escape range by 10. That would get you out to almost a million miles, but the range for that shot would be six and a half million...

Ah, I see. Yeah, if the enemy is doing their maximum burn for a zero-zero intercept on your launch point, you can hit them at the point where they have double the missile's delta-V left in their deceleration...because if they accelerate laterally they lose their deceleration and will overshoot your position at speed, in less time. That won't involve the missile doing any unpowered drifting, though! It's also independent of their acceleration, though of course the range for that will vary.

I would suggest that the implication here is that, as a matter of tactics, you should refrain from suicide-burning into enemy positions.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

At the very least, I don't think you should get the benefits of a tactical array vs. defensive ECM if the target is outside your active sensor range. Maybe even reduce skill to 10 + sAcc, making Spaceships missiles more similar to non-Spaceships homing missiles? I confess I've always been confused by the weird hybrid of guided and homing rules Spaceships missiles seem to use.

I'd expect a tactical array, like any other space detection setup, to focus heavily on passive sensors. I don't see why you'd need active ones to overcome ECM.

Spaceships use of gunner's skill for missile attacks is indeed baffling.