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Old 09-06-2015, 02:55 PM   #33
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: GURPS Starships line errata (and some observations)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mailanka View Post
For example, missiles aren't nearly as lethal as people seem to think. Guns and missiles scale slower than beam weapons. A beam weapon doubles its damage (and armor doubles its DR) every +2 SM, while ballistics do the same every +4 SM. I noticed this when I started working on some very large ships and I noticed that the missiles weren't nearly as much of a problem as I thought they were. Fighters are just destroyed by missiles (an SM +5 fighter has 20 hp and can sport a 20cm missile launcher, which deals an average of 100 damage, which is nearly instant death against an unarmored ship, and when you account for the minimum of 2x damage, surely instant death). Huge dreadnoughts, though, have less of a problem (An SM+15 ship has 1000 hp and can carry a 112 cm missile, which deals an average of 560 damage, which isn't enough to even bring the dreadnought to negative HP. If you double the damage because of minimum speed, you'll bring the dreadnought to negative HP, but if you put any armor on it (A single system of Nanocomposite Armor at SM +15 is already DR 300) and a missile hit is quite survivable Put three systems on (900 DR, 1000 HP vs 560-1100 damage) and you're barely taking any damage. Of course, if the missile hits directly, it has an armor divisor of 2, but if your armor is hardened, you can remove that. Never mind Exotic Laminate: three systems of that is DR 2100.
This is part of the really basic analysis. Big ships (and they don't have to be SM+15 really, because a 112cm missile is easy to stop with point defense) can carry enough armor to stand up to conventional missiles.

The 'oh, wait' for that is that they're not so much on standing up to 25 kt nukes.
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