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

For example, installing 3 spinal battery that is 1 SM smaller than normal simultaneously.
In Spaceships #7 there is no explicit descriptions for that.

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

What would the benefit be ? It takes 3 systems. If you buy 3 Major Batteries of the same SM you also need 3 systems and get the same weapons.

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

A Spinal Battery that was 1 SM smaller than the ship's size would be no different from 1 Major Battery of that SM. If you mounted 3 of them they'd use spaces normally.

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

Three forward facing weapons that take up only one forward component slot, perhaps?

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

That's called a Medium Battery.

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

I believe that spinal batteries wereeffectively an early attempt to represent what would eventually become the larger systems rule. A more elegant solution would be using a +1 SM front section main weapon battery. For example, a classic science fiction SM+9 gunboat may have a SM+10 main battery in the front section, a SM+10 fusion reactor in the center section, and a SM+10 reactionless drive in the rear section. The remainder of the systems may be a control room, an engine room, a fusion reactor, a habitat, a hanger bay, a tactical sensor/comm array, two main weapon battery turrets, and three armors, all at SM+9.

The crew would consist of twenty people: six bridge, six engineers/technicians, three gunners, three support staff, and two fighter crew. The hanger bay would consists of two SM+5 fighters and four SM+4 shuttles (each capable of holding ten people). The habitat would consist of one establishment, one sickbay, one minifac, four steerage cargo, four single-occupancy cabins, and eight double-occupancy cabins. With 20 tons of supplies (10 tons of provision), it would have a 250 day mission endurance.

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

Well, yes. But if someone wanted to make some kind of "triple barreled spinal mount" an option as a house rule, the main benefit I could see is that you'd be getting three forward facing major mount sized weapons, but still have 5 forward slots remaining (in exchange for the core and rear slots). The only other thing I can think of is maybe the Accelerator Tube Limits rule (SS7) limiting a weapon to a spinal mount.

I don't think I would allow it, myself.

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

I would allow it. It has a significant downside: if any one of the three spinal mount systems gets disabled, all weapons are disabled. If he had bought three major batteries instead only one would be disabled and two would still be functional.

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

I'd also allow it, for exactly this reason.

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

I thought exactly that.

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

No, they were a representation of the spinal mounts from Traveller and other SF games and the odd book. Unfortunately aside from having a sometimes more useful systems layout, they are worse than a 'larger system' Major Battery if they consume munitions, because they hold less.

That's probably a bad idea, because those SM+10 systems aren't much harder to disable than a SM+9 system, but disabling any part of them brings down the whole system. Three SM+9 reactors and engines are thus better than one SM+10 system.

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

I imagined exactly that, because using 3 front system slots up is different from using 1 front, 1 central core, 1 rear system slots.

I wanted my Venatrix Interceptor (SM +6) shoot a barrage of missiles to intercept enemy fighters effectively with its bundle of Spinal missile launchers. Venatrix is a sister model of Venator Bomber (SM +6 too) which shoots a big one missile with its normal Spinal missile launcher. Only diffences for them is their (spinal) missile launchers. I think multiple barrels of Spinal missile launcher makes a good image.

Will it be fine that I mount multibarrel spinal missile launchers?
Or, will it be fine that I define Rapid/Very Rapid Fire missile launcher?
(I think the latter options will be a substitution for multibarrel missile launchers.)

There is no rules for Rapid/Very Rapid Fire missile launcher in GURPS Spaceships. I doubt why there is no rules for that.
Did GURPS Spaceships authors think that Rapid/Very Rapid Fire missile launcher is not plausible option? Then why?

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

The exhaust would likely ignite each subsequent missile prematurely if they did not launch from multiple tubes. The best way to model such a system is Tertiary Weapon Batteries × N (giving RoF 30 × N). For example, three such systems would give RoF 90.

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

Then cold launching (as modern navyships' VLS does) will be an answer. At higher TL, shipbuilders will be able to build EM launchers in missile tubes which will make cold launching more effective.
And being Rapid Fire de jure and being Multibarrel de facto will be an answer too.
How about mixing these 2 approaches?

I want the module that spans front - central core - rear systems, not 3 front systems.

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

What makes me confused is there are no explicit mentions that it is possible or not in Spaceships #7.

I know that weapon batteries use its own systems (Major, Medium, Secondary, Tertiary, ...) but Spinal Battery is an unique case (footnote 1) and there are no mentions that Spinal Battery can be installed as a smaller system or not. it makes me so confused. Could writers not expect this question?

footnote 1 : Spinal Battery consists of 3 systems, Front Hull - Central Core - Rear Hull. Other Larger Systems use up 3 system slots that are in the same hull section, different from Spinal Battery.

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

The answer that a 'small Spinal Battery' is just a primary battery seems obvious and not necessarily worth the page space...

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

Did you mean Major Battery?
I thnk 1 system is different from 3 of 1/3 small systems.

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

One advantage of a +1 SM major weapon battery over a SM spinal battery is that it can be modular. For example, you could have a SM+9 modular gunboat (with only the core systems, the Control Room and Engine Room, remaining unchanged), that could alternate between having a 3 GJ laser, three RF 100 MJ lasers, nine VRF 3 MJ lasers, 30 28cm missile tubes, or 90 12cm railguns, with only $60k (60 hours) worth of work to change them out. Since spinal batteries include a core system, they are not modular, though they may be refitted.

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

Not to mention the Death Star, Space Battleship Yamato's Wave Motion Gun, Vorlon cruisers in Babylon 5, the "keel mounted railguns" in The Expanse, Ori motherships in Stargate SG-1, or the original Battlestar Galactica*. Spinal mounts aren't a rare oddity or something Traveller introduced into RPGs. Even spaceships think it's cool to carry around a BFG 9000.

--
* in which the Galactica reveals in the last episode a couple of massive superlasers firing from the nose that smoke a Base Star -- kinda making me wonder why they waste so much time with the Vipers...

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

The requirement that a Spinal Battery occupy 2 Core systems makes it impossible to have more than 1. You only have 2 Core systems.

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

That's right.

I wonder whether you could use the "Smaller Systems" rule to split a front and both cores into three each, and then combine a system from each of them into a "smaller" spinal battery?

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

They only occupy one core system:
The catch is that you can only have one central core system.

I'd allow doing this to split up that central core system, and thus be able to have three small spinal mounts. I don't see that it would ruin anything.

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

Why both core systems? Spinal Battery only use Central Core system slot, doesn't it?

Yes. It will use all 3 systems as Smaller ones.

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

My mistake. One front hull system, the central core system, and one rear system, each split into three and assembled into three Smaller spinal mounts.

That seems to get the job done, doesn't create a loophole that you can drive a gold-plated Rolls-Royce through, and looks kind-of legal.

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

What does this sentence mean?

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

It consists of three independent clauses.

• The first clause says that the approach that I described in the paragraph before seems to me to achieve what you wanted.
  
• The second clause is a metaphor that implies that the approach that I described in the paragraph before does not create a flaw that someone could exploit, or at least not one that would give a large and valuable advantage.
  
• The third clause says that the approach I described in the previous paragraph might not comply exactly with some detail of the wording of the rules, but that I think it is close enough, because it represents someone doing the sort of thing that they were meant to allow.

I'm sorry to have phrased that so obscurely.

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

Well, I read this again and again, managed to understand.
Then do you think installing bundles of small weapons in a Spinal Battery is possible while not violating the spirit of rules?

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

However, you have no more firepower than you would have using 3 Major Batteries in the front section.

It does allow you to use the Central Core section and a rear Section instead of 2 Front sections but it makes me wonder who's selling you those long skinny weapon systems that are otherwise identical to your standard Majoe Battery.

It's one of the core concepts of Spaceships that every increase in SM is a 3x (3.1x actually but we round for neatness) as large as the SM that went before. It's another core concept that spaceships is deeply agnostic about shape, volume and density and deals only in mass. That's what makes the fuel calculations work out as well as they do.

It complicates matters when you try and deal with one of those factors by itself. I'd need to hear a really good story about where you were getting those long skinny weapon systems.

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

Yes.

padding to satisfy the message length limit

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

Maybe you want a ship with five armour systems in the front and three major batteries in fixed mounts firing forwards.

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

It is my sheet of Venator Bomber.
I want to design Venatrix Interceptor which is the sister model of Venator whcih shoot a bundle of small but agile missiles to intercept small drones and fighters.
But there is no rule for Rapid/Very Rapid Fire Missile Launcher so I looked for the possibility of Bundles of Spinal Battery.

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

I didn't say there was no concievable reason to do it. I did think of that one specifically. It's jsut that the whole smells to me of rules-lawyering rather than engineering.

It seems designed to take advantage of some of Spaceships' simplifying assumptions. If you went to a system like Ve2 you could ahve any combination of weapons and armor you wanted and it wouldn't require any exotic maniipualtion of the rules at all.

My impulse when i come up against one of Spaceships' inherent limits is to stop rather than finagle my way around it.

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

Sorry, it is an inherent limitation o fspaceships that there is only one missile design of a given missile size and nothing smaller than 16 cm.

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

What ve2 means?

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

Well I know. But what about thinking bombs described in Spaceships #4? It won't be fine that I make the distinct missile types that is specialized to intercept drones and fighters?

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

The same place you get the long, not-as-skinny weapon systems for a typical Spinal Battery? It's not like a spaceship designer goes to the local Blasters R Us to pick up such a thing for the vessel they're building - rather, such would be built to the specifications the design team decided on, just like the thrusters and similar. Many of the components in a spaceship are likely designed specifically for that ship design, and Spinal Batteries are certainly going to be such a component.

Ve2 is GURPS Vehicles, 2nd edition, which was a supplement for GURPS 3rd edition (GURPS is currently in 4th edition, but the PDF of that is available as part of the GURPS Classic line). It's a much more in-depth design system than Spaceships, which gives it more flexibility but also makes it much more time-consuming (and difficult) to use.

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

That may be the case, but it doesn't have to be the case. If we look at real modern weapon systems, it's quite common for a new type of ship, tank, or airplane to be designed around off-the-shelf available weapons. (And sometimes other major subsystems, but weapons maybe more than most.)

Spinal batteries are possibly more likely than other mounts to use a specifically designed weapon due to how big and integrated a part of the ship they are. On the other hand, I don't really buy SS6's view that spinal weapons can be treated as modular and swapped out easily - if you build a ship literally around a new weapon that turns out to be a lemon in service, I suspect you'd find that very hard to exchange it for something more satisfactory.

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

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.

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

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.

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

I don't think that observation lends itself to the conclusion you're coming to (that an SM +n Spinal Battery is the same weapon as an SM +n+1 Major Battery). A Spinal Battery is, by definition, nearly as long as the ship itself. If we compare an unstreamlined SM +5 ship with a Spinal Battery to a streamlined SM +6 ship with a Major Battery, the first ship is roughly 15 yards long, while the second ship is up to 40 yards long. This most extreme case does allow for the same weapon that is a Spinal Battery in the SM +5 ship to be a (fixed) Major Battery in the SM +6 one (it's a little longer than 1/3rd the length of the latter ship, but close enough for Spaceships level of resolution). If we match up the streamlining, or reverse the situation, however, things change - a 15 yard battery is going to be difficult to fit within the first third of a 20 yard ship (both unstreamlined), as is a 30 yard battery on a 40 yard ship (both streamlined), and don't even get me started on trying to fit a 30 yard battery onto a 20 yard ship (smaller streamlined, larger unstreamlined).

I don't think it's really a case of rules-lawyering so much as just trying to get a little better resolution out of the system. 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 - an RF Spinal Battery laser, for example, could easily be described as being 10 weapons (each 1/10th normal mass) mounted next to each other.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.