Is spaceship armor useless?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Between GURPS and SS being non-setting specific, and the sorts of other stuff that G:SS has as options (up to and including hyperdynamic cosmos), that doesn't seem like something unusual to expect.

I think your expectations of Spaceships are a lot higher than mine are after having fiddled with it for some time...

It seems like you'd start in the right direction with pseudoatmospheric space rules, optionally plus Boost Drives. There are still some unfortunate limitations, but I think they're down to the fact that GURPS tactical combat vehicle and general high-speed movement rules are kind of ugly. And, unfortunately, you kind of have to make up how those apply to the missiles and what missiles with non-kinetic warheads do. And as setting choices, you have to disallow AI-controlled point defense guns on small ships and preferably make sure every battle occurs in a ridiculously cluttered environment so that you have props for your evasive flying.

I'd note that the 'evasive action' thing almost always applies to fighters, not large ships. Star Destroyers don't dodge missiles or torpedoes. (They also don't shoot them down, generally. Which actually makes sense if you consider that Star Wars weapons are almost never VRF and are not lasers...try making a PD loadout with only RF plasma beams and you'll give up pretty quick.) Although real, seagoing ships did try to dodge torpedoes, when the torpedoes were not effectively guided.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I'm capitalising them to distinguish between making one Attack Roll at +x RoF bonus, and doing two at +(x-1) RoF bonus + whatever penalties apply. Examples for non-SS situations distinguishing between one or multiple Attacks / Attack Rolls include: Spraying Fire (the penalty is increased Rcl), Ranged Rapid Strike / Quick-Shooting (RS penalty), DWA (-4/-8), the use of Extra Attacks with Multistrike with one weapon or without firing two weapons (the 'penalty' is the need to fork over [25*x]) etc.

All of which correspond somewhat to Splitting Fire, in the sense of actually splitting your fire, but not much to multiple missiles arriving on target simultaneously.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

You're rolling your missile skill, so you're not just sitting there while things work without your input.

You could be rolling your skill to represent things that you had done in advance rather than things done during the actual attack.

Looking at the Spaceships 3 weapon fire sequence, the Aim and Attack 'maneuver' is used to fire beams or launch ballistic weapons. The weapons arriving is clearly not a maneuver, since the rules recommend arranging to have gun shells arrive the same turn they're fired.