Spaceships: "improved" guns?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by SCAR

Can you point me to any page reference which explains how 'Improved' Lasers use fast capacitors or two weapons?

Or where it says Spaceships assume 19 seconds of Aim and 1 second of attack?

Even if it was, 18 seconds of Aim and 2 seconds of Attack, or 2x (9 seconds of Aim + 1 second of Attack) would double RoF.

It was a friend of mine that had Spaceships, and I no longer have access to it (probably get around to buying it eventually, though, I really liked the series). I think the aiming bit is rolled into sAcc - there's a box somewhere in SS1 explaining just what sAcc includes, so I'd suggest finding that. As for Improved weapons, there's never an explanation of how they work, I was simply mentioning the only two logical ways they could work - a single weapon shooting twice as fast, or two weapons in the same mounting.

Originally Posted by SCAR

And does it seem even remotely 'realistic' for Spaceship Guns to only have an 'effective' RoF of 1 in 20 seconds (even if only firing a 1 second attack burst), and only RoF 3 in a minute, etc?

It's an abstraction, and Improved Guns (Conventional, EMG or Gravitic) seems perfectly reasonable and playable, especially stacked against Improved Beams with unlimited ammo, and the Imp.Guns will be running through their, generally quite limited, ammo supply more quickly.

Considering range penalties (SS combat is at very, very long ranges), GURPS rules for telescopic sights (1 second of Aim is necessary per +1) and pre-Tactical Shooting rules for effect of attacking on Aim bonuses (Basic Set has you lose any Aim bonus upon attacking), 1 attack per ~20 seconds doesn't sound that outlandish. Adapting Tactical Shooting rules, you could continuously fire at a target with base Acc, although you'd lose your bonus from the telescopic sights. With a completely recoilless weapon like a laser, it might not be unwarranted to let you maintain this bonus as well, but note this will make SS combat even more lethal (and make beam weapons far preferable to guns, provided the beam weapons do sufficient damage to get past DR).
All that said, I don't really have a problem with Improved Guns. Doubling RoF for +1 TL seems a bit much (I think guns have much less room for improvement than beam weapons), but it won't really break anything.

[SCAR]

Originally Posted by Varyon

It was a friend of mine that had Spaceships, and I no longer have access to it (probably get around to buying it eventually, though, I really liked the series). I think the aiming bit is rolled into sAcc - there's a box somewhere in SS1 explaining just what sAcc includes, so I'd suggest finding that. As for Improved weapons, there's never an explanation of how they work, I was simply mentioning the only two logical ways they could work - a single weapon shooting twice as fast, or two weapons in the same mounting.

Originally Posted by Spaceships.p5

sACC: The space Accuracy statistic combines the weapon’s Acc bonus, the range penalty for firing at typical ranges, and a bonus for aimed fire over several turns with the aid of active targeting systems and targeting programs.

'..several turns', not really clear enough.

My guess is you're refering to this box:

Originally Posted by Spaceships.p66

The space range modifiers assumes an Acc 18 weapon fired by a gunner performing All Out (Dedicated) aimed attack with 3+ seconds aim assisted by a +9 vehicular targeting system for a net +30. As point- blank range is actually assumed to be 100 miles for a -30 range modifier, the sAcc and Point- Blank modifiers are assumed to cancel out providing a net 0 modifier for Acc 18.

So that's 3+ seconds of Aim, nothing about 19 seconds of aim.


Anyway, these details aren't really that relevant to the OPs question. Officially Guns don't seem to support the 'Improved' Options (despite the note under the RoF table on p58), but there doesn't seem to be any particular reason not to allow it within the Spaceships Rules if you want.