[Spaceships] Combat Examples?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Here's the write-up of the second combat:
http://noschoolgrognard.blogspot.com...nicles_19.html

This time, the example combat was much closer and harder fought.

Noticed something about multitasking in the examples. You appear to have single-man craft engaging in heavy multitasking, with what looks like a rules conflict:
"A single character may never perform more than one gunnery task per turn (with the exception of spreading fire)."(p53)

[apoc527]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

I'm writing up the Pathfinders vs the Bricriu right now, and it's a bit of a mess. The e-mag guns are useless in the face of point defense; the Bricriu is invulnerable to the Pathfinder's p-beams at short range and can shred them with its own p-beams at close range; and the winning condition for the Pathfinders is to get behind the corvette and slam it with missiles where its' point defense systems don't cover. Moving the PDS battery to the central hull would fix that problem, but then there's no way for the Pathfinders to damage the Bricriu at all. I'll probably post it tomorrow, but I'm going to want to revisit it in a day or three.

Point defense is penalized based on relative velocity, right? I would expect that an e-mag...and nevermind, just looked it up. That's kind of lame.

It would seem hard to vaporize a solid chunk of metal zooming at you at high velocity...much harder than simply knocking out a missile or preventing the missile from properly detonating. I would point out that knocking aside Honorverse missiles would be VERY hard under these rules. Given that some Manticoran missiles arrive at .6c...that's a -18 to be precise!

[apoc527]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Noticed something about multitasking in the examples. You appear to have single-man craft engaging in heavy multitasking, with what looks like a rules conflict:
"A single character may never perform more than one gunnery task per turn (with the exception of spreading fire)."(p53)

Well that would certainly change the point-defense calculation...or simply spawn a lot of Gunner-12 AIs.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by apoc527

I would point out that knocking aside Honorverse missiles would be VERY hard under these rules. Given that some Manticoran missiles arrive at .6c...that's a -18 to be precise!

With a detonation range of 20,000 to 30,000 km Honorverse missiles probably aren't being engaged by PD in the Spaceships sense.

Those missiles generally aren't be knocked aside either. Counter-missiles go for wedge to wedge impact and both missiles are vaporized by the feedback to their impeller drives.

Laser hits probably also vaporize their targets. Damaging the missiles power source or any of it's high energy systems would release large amounts of energy.

Then there's the inertial compensators. Even a missile needs one of those to survive 90,000 Gs. Or the particle shielding (whatever that is). 0.6C is stressful without that. It's the not blowing up during normal operation part that's impressive about Honorverse missiles

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Noticed something about multitasking in the examples. You appear to have single-man craft engaging in heavy multitasking, with what looks like a rules conflict:
"A single character may never perform more than one gunnery task per turn (with the exception of spreading fire)."(p53)

Huh.

You're right. Given how inferior single pilot craft are to a craft with a commander, navigator, pilot, gunners, and a proper damage control party, I'm pretty much inclined to say "to heck with that" and change it say that no craft can take more than 1 Move maneuver and that no identical weapons in the same battery can be used in more than 1 Gunnery task.

I mean, I don't feel that a single pilot/gunner is breaking the rules by firing a missile at a distant target from a medium battery, waiting for a different enemy to get closer before he fires his particle beam from the same medium battery and also waiting to use the point defense lasers in the same medium battery. He's taking a multi-tasking penalty to do all that and he's not firing more weapons than he has, so it doesn't feel munchkin to me.

I'll make a note of it in the examples, though. Thanks for pointing it out.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

I'm writing up the Pathfinders vs the Bricriu right now, and it's a bit of a mess. The e-mag guns are useless in the face of point defense; the Bricriu is invulnerable to the Pathfinder's p-beams at short range and can shred them with its own p-beams at close range; and the winning condition for the Pathfinders is to get behind the corvette and slam it with missiles where its' point defense systems don't cover. Moving the PDS battery to the central hull would fix that problem, but then there's no way for the Pathfinders to damage the Bricriu at all. I'll probably post it tomorrow, but I'm going to want to revisit it in a day or three.

Well, I hit the wrong button while writing the disclaimer, so the Bricriu vs the Pathfinders fight is up. Here's an important tip for designing GURPS Spaceship craft: put a tertiary battery with VRF lasers in the central hull for point defense. Don't put the point defense array in the forward hull, or your ship will die.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Well, I hit the wrong button while writing the disclaimer, so the Bricriu vs the Pathfinders fight is up. Here's an important tip for designing GURPS Spaceship craft: put a tertiary battery with VRF lasers in the central hull for point defense. Don't put the point defense array in the forward hull, or your ship will die.

A note about the guns: guns can use proximity detonation too. With 16 cm emag guns against DR21 mecha, they definitely should have!

EDIT: Actually, a second note. Treating multiple turreted weapons as a single attack is not in accordance with SS57. By the book, all twelve of the medium-mount guns should have been separate attacks.

[mlangsdorf]

Quoting myself:
"Then the KKC gunners open up, each battery firing a combined salvo of 9 shots against the first two Pathfinders. The port battery starts, rolling a 10 against Artillery-14, +5 for target SM, -6 for the KKC's sAcc, -3 for the 2 mps gun velocity, -2 for ECM, +2 for the RoF bonus for 9 shots, and +4 for proximity fusing. He succeeds by 4, and hits with two shots (the guns have Rcl 4). "

The KKCs did use proximity fuses, but between their crappy sAcc and the terrible Rcl, it didn't help much. And the 4 Pathfinders in formation had 2400 effective RoF from their point defense lasers, coming from 4 sources, so there was a 1/6250000 of getting 4 critical failures and actually getting an E-mag round through the point defenses.


But I see you are right about having to roll separately for every weapon in a turret. I can't imagine why - can anyone from the playtest comment?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Quoting myself:
"Then the KKC gunners open up, each battery firing a combined salvo of 9 shots against the first two Pathfinders. The port battery starts, rolling a 10 against Artillery-14, +5 for target SM, -6 for the KKC's sAcc, -3 for the 2 mps gun velocity, -2 for ECM, +2 for the RoF bonus for 9 shots, and +4 for proximity fusing. He succeeds by 4, and hits with two shots (the guns have Rcl 4). "

The KKCs did use proximity fuses, but between their crappy sAcc and the terrible Rcl, it didn't help much. And the 4 Pathfinders in formation had 2400 effective RoF from their point defense lasers, coming from 4 sources, so there was a 1/6250000 of getting 4 critical failures and actually getting an E-mag round through the point defenses.

Quite, sorry. I specifically looked for that and missed it.

I think it's really silly to give guns rcl 4 with proximity rounds (or at all really) but it does seem to be by-the-book. Your alternate treatment (the one you threatened for missiles) might actually be helpful to the guns here...if you treated it as an x9 shotshell it would get better rcl.

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

But I see you are right about having to roll separately for every weapon in a turret. I can't imagine why - can anyone from the playtest comment?

Not on the playtest, but I'd think it's kind of obvious...each of those guns is fired by a separate character. Spaceships actions are almost all performed by individuals, not vague aggregates.

Of course, this makes the Pathfinders' PD a bit harder too. Probably not enough to matter.

[JP42]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Not on the playtest, but I'd think it's kind of obvious...each of those guns is fired by a separate character. Spaceships actions are almost all performed by individuals, not vague aggregates.

Of course, this makes the Pathfinders' PD a bit harder too. Probably not enough to matter.

Specifically, the rules say that a turreted battery of any size is a single weapon. There are no rules for "double" or "triple" turrets a la Traveller or even ocean-going ships. I seem to recall thinking that weapons in secondary mounts should be mountable in pairs in a single turret, and tertiary or smaller could be mounted in triple turrets, but it's not RAW.