Re: [Spaceships] A reevaluation of missiles and point defense
 

I'd love to see those calculations for my tl9-10 campaign, please get to it ;)

I wasn't thinking unguided. My thought is that you can get by with _less_ guidance if you accept that you can't hit beyond point-blank. Less guidance would equate more useful kill stuff ...

Re: [Spaceships] A reevaluation of missiles and point defense
 

In light of the clarification on PD vs proximity warheads, I see that proximity fusing is a much more viable use than impactors. In terms of missiles, I suspect that impactors will only be used against targets that both have some combination of heavy armor and light point-defense (probably due to the PD being taken out during previous rounds). They'll still be used when the caliber is hopelessly outmatched, in some attempt to actually deal damage, but in those cases the missile-user has practically lost already.

Guns, at least those on fighters, are a different story. Thanks to the small sizes of the shells, using proximity fusing to overcome PD isn't as necessary. With RF and VRF guns, proximity fusing doesn't even help with overcoming PD, since your number of hits is going to almost always be below the number of shots fired. Of course, the fact that the most advanced guns still take a penalty to sAcc means less skilled gunners might need to use proximity fusing for an added boost.

What it looks like now is that fighters will have some VRF laser turrets for PD, missile launchers - always using proximity fusing - for engaging most targets (distant enemy fighters, capital ships, etc), and guns for dogfighting. For capital ships, I suspect they'll have huge numbers of VRF laser turrets (most probably mounted in the center section), as well as some long-range lasers and some launchers (as always, generally using proximity fusing). Since fighters really can't do anything to capital ships without using missiles, I doubt capital ships will carry anti-fighter guns. If kamikaze-type attacks are common, however, they might supplement their PD with some VRF guns (missile-killing lasers might not be strong enough to stop a fighter).

Battles seem likely to involve carriers launching their fighters against enemy formations. The enemy would likely scramble their own fighters, and the two groups would initiate by firing missiles at long range. After a few salvos of missile fire, I suspect the survivors will get in closer to dogfight and bring their VRF guns to bear - shredding enemy fighters. During the dogfight, several fighters will probably break off and engage enemy capital ships with their missiles, trying to soften up the PD. If successful, they'll either switch to impactor missiles or break off, letting their gunships come in and finish off the weakened capital ships with large missile salvos or possibly even nuclear/antimatter warheads.

Re: [Spaceships] A reevaluation of missiles and point defense
 

Note that the armor-piercing power of non-fragmented missiles is zero against hardened armor. I don't think anyone is likely to make heavy use of unhardened armor, because if you're going to have any chance at all of stopping heavy beam weapons you need every edge you can get, and all beams are armor-piercing. So I don't see conventional impact missiles seeing much use under any circumstances. Nukes are another story, and much more viable.

Guns do in fact gain a substantial benefit in overwhelming PD from detonation, not from the ability to score more hits than shots fired (barring non-quick-firing cannon, which are of very limited utility), but from the +4, which is worth +2 hits unless you were missing in the first place.

Are you permitting capital ships to carry sub-tertiary mounts? This is a key switch. If you do, capital ships can completely screen themselves from nukes. In this case, you really probably don't want fighters at all, because they can't accomplish anything against serious combat units. Their role in combat would be about the same as a WWI motor torpedo boat without the torpedoes. An SM+12 ship with a couple 10000 gun point defense batteries is pretty much immune to any remotely conceivable attack from small units. I'm pretty sure that goes into an arms race to maximum-size superdreadnoughts with X-range laser cannon. Throw on one tertiary VRF battery to annihilate the fighters faster if you feel like it, but the enemy probably won't have any fighters.

If you don't permit more than 30 weapons per battery, then capital ships need a formation of smaller craft with smaller point defense guns, to keep enemy fighters from dumping a couple hundred nukes on the capital ship and blowing it away. This is a larger threat than conventional missile attack for a ship fully protected against 16cm conventional missiles. 3 16cm nukes have a better chance of overwhelming point defense than one 20cm proximity warhead, and you only need to get one through. In this case, every capital ship needs a cloud of PD escorts of SM+7 or smaller, which are vulnerable to fighter attack with conventional missiles or guns. So small craft can fight to wipe out the screening units to allow a nuke run. Capital ships will need armor (the role is defined by immunity to 16cm missiles) and some mix of anti-capital beams, anti-fighter beams, and hangars. I'd put the hangers on non-armored carriers kept away from the front, for preference.

An all-fighter strategy might dominate. I'm not sure if lasers can kill fighters fast enough for the capital ship to be worth it.

Fighters, as you say, carry point defense and some mix of missiles and guns. Also, I strongly suspect, ECM.

Re: [Spaceships] A reevaluation of missiles and point defense
 

Here's a can of worms: How do 1) force screens, 2) reactionless drives impact these numbers?

Re: [Spaceships] A reevaluation of missiles and point defense
 

Although the swarm-of-fighters picture can be quite compelling, I really can't see any reason not to allow sub-tertiary batteries, at least at TL9+ where you can get a targeting program with skill 12 almost for free.

A better way to go if you like fighters in your game would be to enforce spread fire penalties on PD. My personal interpretation is that Point Defense don't have spread fire penalties (this is most certainly influenced by my dislike for fighters), but the rules are not crystal clear and you could probably argue both ways.

Re: [Spaceships] A reevaluation of missiles and point defense
 

I assumed spread fire penalties. Regardless, with point defense working the way it does, if you can put the same set of weapons on one big ship vs N small ships, the big can make itself totally immune to anything the small can do, short of ramming. Or possibly including ramming, with a battery of 16cm missiles reserved for anti-kamikaze point defense. The tertiary battery limitation is not terribly realistic, perhaps, but without it it's hard to justify small craft at all.

Reactionless drives don't make that much difference. Only ships that have no problem with being hammered on by all manner of weapons from X range with no chance to do anything about it can be without high thrust, which I don't think is a very big category. Reactionless would give ships more room for things that get crowded out by Orion fuel, which would make some difference for the actual designs, but not the weapon comparisons. If available, a fusion torch is about as good as a reactionless engine in combat terms.

Shields I don't have a feel for. Their depletablility means that a capital ship would have to worry about having its shields hammered down by missiles that can't actually damage it. It's also TL11, which means you've got some really powerful beam weapons available.

On a first think, heavy force screens really beg for missiles or VRF cannon (particularly grav cannon, if we're pulling in ^-tech) to hammer them down with proximity warheads before the big X-ray/Graser/AM beam tears the associated ship apart. On large vessels, anyway. Small ones could be taken down without the softening up first.

Re: [Spaceships] A reevaluation of missiles and point defense
 

It just moves the catergory of gun up (especially if heavy force screens are used) for a particular target, so opponents who could be faced with a medium battery might now need to be faced with a major battery. The size of PD guns remain unaffected.

Not much, the notion of whether or not your engines are running low on d-v or if they've recieved sufficient power points has little bearing on how many hits you get. Also dodge doesn't get any bonus from acceleration, so you'd need to house rule if you wanted engine type to matter whilst shooting is being resolved, beyond the fact that reactionless drives have higher accleration than reaction drives. Which means turn length is likely to be shorter (unless the GM is picking a slow vessel as the base for determining combat scale), and they can generally out manouver the slower vessels.

Re: [Spaceships] A reevaluation of missiles and point defense
 

They take us into Star Wars territory. Fun but unrealistic.
Not that, IMO, anti-spaceship missiles Are realistic as presented . If you're using the hard-science reaction drives, your missile can either be hi-G/ Lo-DV or lo-G/ hi-DV, but it can't behave like the missiles in the combat system. The Honor-verse missile combat sequences weren't bad - launch missiles at mind-bogglingly long range, wait for an age as they ballistically approach target, enage drives for last second homing. Honor-verse, however, uses superscience^.

Perhaps, better modelling of real flight times/ paths for realistic missiles (mini-spaceships) and the final approaches realy would be ramming runs... What would the stats for a missile as a mini-spaceship be? Would this result in minimum effective PD sizes depending on missile size? That would allow deeper realism but it's at the expense of fun...

Re: [Spaceships] A reevaluation of missiles and point defense
 

One, you didn't actually answer the question, and two, IMHO, considering the amount of missiles and nuclear weapons that are being thrown around in these examples, you're simply objecting to a different flavor of "unrealism".

Thanks!

[nitpick]Depending on how many engines you want to pack in, ship size, and thrust, you might be able to get +1 to Dodge due to superior Handling (Spaceships p.35).[/nitpick]

Re: [Spaceships] A reevaluation of missiles and point defense
 

Um, a different flavour of unreal - that's what I said...
As for objecting, my own preference is for grav-tech to have been discovered. This leads to reactionless drives, forcefields, grav-guns and graviton beams. I've got TL10 ships with TL11 grav-tech and computing (aliens invaded long ago and brought grav-tech so it's old-hat). The fighters are armed with grav-guns because graviton pulse doesn't do enough damage despite ignoring 95% of protection. Everything uses sub-warp but it produces a fixed sub-light velocity dependant on drive-hull ratio: 5-45% c. Missiles are called torpedoes because missiles are designed to damage from a near miss but these things need to hit. The sub-warp drive-field is also a low-grade, adjusted rear, forcefield which cannot be operated at the same time as a defensive forcefield. Military doctrine means no defensive forcefields on ships (keep moving or die). The drive system puts a limit on how small a torpedo can be, 24cm. Big ships use the 32cm. The torpedo's drive field restricts the effective size of PD lasers: small lasers need lots of hits to take out a 32cm torpedo...
The end result is SM+5 fighters whizzing around firing guns at anything up to SM+10; anti-shipping fighters are armed with 24cm spinal missile launchers. Destroyers are once again doing their intended job and cruisers carry bigger weapons.
Unreal but fun:)