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Old 07-30-2014, 09:21 PM   #3
MatthewVilter
 
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Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Los Angeles County
Default Re: [High-Tech, Ultra-Tech] Targeting systems questions

ROUND TWO! (ding ding)

Homing weapons questions:

Reading comprehension check:

Basic p. 413 gives Homing Weapons a skill of 10 and they get +Acc if you made your Artillery (Guided Missile) roll. I take it that the Acc score of the 70mm SAM (the only homing weapon in Basic) represents it’s guidance system’s ability to home in on a target (as I don’t know what else would and I don’t think Acc 7 has anything to do with the precision of a SAM in a hypothetical iron sighted direct fire mode.

Ultra-Tech p. 146 gives each type of homing system a skill of 13 or 14 at TL 9 and lets you fire Homing Projectiles out of a variety of weapons with wildly different Acc scores (including weapons that fire basically the same type of shot where the Acc difference presumably comes from ergonomics and not firing characteristics eg Gyroc Carbine vs Holdout Gyroc) which is added to the homing system’s skill as normal if you make your Artillery (Guided Missile) roll.

Am I understanding this right?


Combat rules:

How should I handle lock ons? The RAW seem quite strange to me. Do you know if your Artillery (Guided Missile) roll was successful before you fire? Can you try again? Can you fire without Aiming? And if you fire without a lock (one way or another) you lose Acc? Why not a guaranteed miss?

Maybe direct fire without a lock should use (different then current) Acc (if you Aim) and would be a roll to see if you can nail the target with what is effectively a dumbfire rocket (and suffer range penalties)? And locked shots would ignore Acc and just use a skill based on their seeker head’s hardware (based on their current Acc and the stats given for Ultra-Tech seeker heads)?

Maybe some hardware would attempt to lock onto a (random/IFFed) target in flight or work as Guided Weapons if launched without a target lock.


The lock on roll:

What does this represent? Is it still needed if you already have a lock with another active sensor system? If range penalties apply to it what is the point of homing weapons? If range penalties don’t why not and why should anyone use active homing sensors when passive ones are just as good?

Discussion in this thread seems to indicate that range and other sense roll modifiers could be applied if one were to come up with proper rules for the sensors being used, when to apply +10 for the target being in the open, dark background silhouetting, etc.

Alternatively would it make sense to use modified range penalties (like how Forward Observer (Basic p. 196, High-Tech p. 139) does) for the lock on roll?


What can be Homing:

Ultra-Tech p. 146 says that “Guns may fire homing projectiles if the homing system can fit in the bullet or shell...” does this include grenade launchers, mortars, cannons, air guns, and electromagnetic guns?

Presumably micromissiles can be guided but not normal gyrocs. Why is it more expensive to make (already rocket propelled) gyrocs homing then to make bullets (which otherwise are just dumb metal) homing?


Homing bullets and grenades:

All of the Guided and Homing weapons in Basic and High-Tech are rocket propelled. Does it even make sense to use the same rules for Homing shots fired from guns and grenade launchers? Would it make sense to still fire these weapons with Guns skill but at a bonus if you (either as part of your normal Aim or as a separate one before that) locked onto the target before firing? Maybe a bonus to hit. Maybe reduced RCL too? Some limitation on hit location targeting to reflect that most of the time the bullet will be homing in on the target’s center of mass.


Anti-air missiles and speed:

Is the ability of, say, a stinger missile to (to a certain extent) come up behind an airplane and mitigate the difficulty of hitting a fast target by (sort of) rendezvousing with it covered by the weapon’s Acc or should fast missiles get some advantage to mitigate speed penalties in the same way that all Homing Weapons ignore range penalties?

Kromm says here that Homing Weapons ignore speed penalties but Basic p. 413 explicitly lists speed as one of the “other ranged combat modifiers” that do apply to a homing weapon’s Attack maneuver.
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