[Spaceships] Combat Examples?

[apoc527]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

I ran a combat last night, using a straightforward conversion of the Jovian Chronicles game from Dream Pod 9, which is a relatively low-missiles setting. Sadly, one side didn't have any point defense and got annihilated by a couple of missiles, but it's available anyway:

http://noschoolgrognard.blogspot.com...hronicles.html

I'm going to redo it in a separate post soon after giving the side without point defense some point defense and see how that goes. I'll write it up the same way.

Very interesting. Missiles seem horribly overpowered. I don't quite understand why proximity detonations get a full velocity bonus either...it seems to me that if a proximity detonation goes off at anything other than the right vector, the fragments are fighting against their own vector to hit and do damage. It just doesn't quite make sense to me.

The other problem I have is the base missile damage in space. The standard GURPS "cr ex" damage type should do nothing in space unless in direct contact with the enemy ship. A proximity detonation should do nothing but damage based on fragmentation, which WOULD be velocity based.

Still, missiles seem to work entirely differently in Spaceships than in normal GURPS. For example, the 400mm (40cm) cruise missile in Pyramid #3/37 with a HEMP warhead does 6dx48(10) cr inc + linked 8dx8 cr ex [20d]. Converted to decade scale, that looks like 6dx5(10) cr inc + linked 6d+1 cr ex [2d]. Compare this to 6dx10 with a potential AD (2) for non-proximity detonations. What gives?

I'm sure there was a good reason that Pulver came up with missile damage like this, but they sure seem off to me, especially considering that a shaped charge warhead would need to make contact to hit--proximity damage would be nothing worthwhile, unless "proximity" means within a yard or two, which I find unlikely at space combat ranges.