Spaceships: "improved" guns?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

For a real world example, consider this: Are the gun turrets on the WWII Iowa-class battleships medium batteries, or improved major batteries with three barrels? t.

You can not actually build an Iowa-class with Spaceships. It violates the rules for gun size. The ship is SM+12 by mass yet that SM only allows 32 cm guns while the Iowa has 40 cm main guns. You certainly can't have 9 Spinal Mounts.

After some reflection I believe the Improved option is not a rules viable choice. With a Beam weapon you're giving up something such as using a UV laser with armor divisor (2) instead of an X-ray model with a (5) to get the higher ROF.

That's because it's an Improved version of old tech.

With a Gun you wouldn't be giving up anything.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

You can not actually build an Iowa-class with Spaceships. It violates the rules for gun size. The ship is SM+12 by mass yet that SM only allows 32 cm guns while the Iowa has 40 cm main guns. You certainly can't have 9 Spinal Mounts.

After some reflection I believe the Improved option is not a rules viable choice. With a Beam weapon you're giving up something such as using a UV laser with armor divisor (2) instead of an X-ray model with a (5) to get the higher ROF.

That's because it's an Improved version of old tech.

With a Gun you wouldn't be giving up anything.

You would be if you were bumped down from EM to conventional (or grav to EM).

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

You can not actually build an Iowa-class with Spaceships. It violates the rules for gun size. The ship is SM+12 by mass yet that SM only allows 32 cm guns while the Iowa has 40 cm main guns. You certainly can't have 9 Spinal Mounts.

Wikipedia isn't entirely reliable, but it notes displacement of a fully-loaded (Spaceships stats are based on fully-loaded weight) Iowa-class as 57,000 tons, which if I remember the Spaceships tables right (from calculating that an SM 0 ship would weigh 0.1 tons) that puts it between SM+13 (30,000) and SM+14 (100,000), leaning more toward +13. Of course, we're still running into the issue that those 40 cm guns weigh (again, according to Wikipedia) 0.2% of the ship's total mass, not the 5% SS assumes, but I don't think that number includes the turret, so maybe it works out?

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

After some reflection I believe the Improved option is not a rules viable choice. With a Beam weapon you're giving up something such as using a UV laser with armor divisor (2) instead of an X-ray model with a (5) to get the higher ROF.

That's because it's an Improved version of old tech.

With a Gun you wouldn't be giving up anything.

That's kind of what I was thinking, and it's why I suggested +2 to TL and Conventional Guns having a "base" of TL 7. I think so long as the next "level" of gun (Conventional->EMag->Grav) is available, allowing for the lower one to be improved would work out.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Wikipedia isn't entirely reliable, but it notes displacement of a fully-loaded (Spaceships stats are based on fully-loaded weight) Iowa-class as 57,000 tons, which if I remember the Spaceships tables right (from calculating that an SM 0 ship would weigh 0.1 tons) that puts it between SM+13 (30,000) and SM+14 (100,000), leaning more toward +13. Of course, we're still running into the issue that those 40 cm guns weigh (again, according to Wikipedia) 0.2% of the ship's total mass, not the 5% SS assumes, but I don't think that number includes the turret, so maybe it works out?

Spaceships battery systems include the entire weapon system including magazines. (Though not including any enclosing armor...) So it doesn't compare to the mass of the gun alone.

Also, an Iowa-class doesn't fire shells at a mile per second.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Varyon

that puts it between SM+13 (30,000) and SM+14 (100,000),

You're misremembering (or miscounting, anywas). SM+11 is 30,000 tons, SM+12 is 100,000 tons. Fred was being generous when he said the 57,000 Ton Iowa-Class qualifies as SM+12.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

You're misremembering (or miscounting, anywas). SM+11 is 30,000 tons, SM+12 is 100,000 tons. Fred was being generous when he said the 57,000 Ton Iowa-Class qualifies as SM+12.

I screwed up in reading the quick table I generated in Excel - you are correct, 30,000 does indeed count as SM+11.

Of course, as Ulzgoroth noted, the weapons used in SS and the weapons mounted on the Iowa are quite distinct (in addition to the greater velocity of SS weapons, they are actually firing guided munitions). Firing a smaller shell at a greater velocity, or a larger shell at a lesser one (as in this case), should be possible to somehow work out, although you're clearly in the realm of houserules at that point.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

You're misremembering (or miscounting, anywas). SM+11 is 30,000 tons, SM+12 is 100,000 tons. Fred was being generous when he said the 57,000 Ton Iowa-Class qualifies as SM+12.

Rounding up is the general rule for SMs

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

You can not actually build an Iowa-class with Spaceships. It violates the rules for gun size.

Which rules are rather bizarre; for some reason caliber is only doubling for every +4 SM, not every +2 SM.