[Spaceships] Combat Examples?

[apoc527]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Point defense can't be modeled reasonably as just an effective skill level. Even in theory, probably, because you need more resolution than 3d6 provides to support some levels of defense you'd want! Also, determining the 'effective skill' is decidedly non-trivial, because it depends on the numbers of weapons and missiles involved in addition to the usual factors that modify attack rolls.

And since getting hit by 25 GURPS Spaceships missiles will typically reduce a ship to confetti, in any 'survivable' engagement for the as-written weapons you're likely to wind up in the pinch of needing to dice out whether an expected 0.1 hits actually means getting hit on this volley or not getting hit.

The Honorverse has a number of conceits set up such that one missile is far from lethal. First, all missiles are x-ray laser warheads, not kinetic energy weapons. Second, the impeller drives used by all ships produce invulnerable bands of stressed space wedges above and below the ship, so many missiles just bounce off harmlessly, leaving a relatively small window for effective attack.

I would suggest that any kind of GURPS Spaceships battle with missiles that must directly strike their target to be effective, you'd see very different tactics emerge. I would prefer most missiles to be proximity weapons or laserheads...assume that directly guiding the weapon into contact with your target is too hard over long ranges and/or is too easy to spoof with jammers or something. Unless of course you want one-hit kills on your space battleships!