Is spaceship armor useless?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

What about those generic rules, specifically?

Well, my issue was with the turning radius rules, and really still is, but I'd forgotten that they are very slightly ameliorated by the Pushing the Envelope rules. Having turning agility inextricably linked to accel/speed is a pretty bad fit for vehicles maneuvering aerodynamically (or based on ground friction).

The Pseudoatmospheric rules seem like they may be worse, actually, but I'd need to look again.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

As for cluttered environment, I'm not sure that's necessary. Sure, asteroid thickets are a thing in some settings (SW), but not others (BSG).

How do they dodge missiles in BSG?

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Star Destroyers and the like generally have enough DR from shields and armour that their lack of Dodging and poor PD are not a tragedy. That's actually one of the issues of 'armour is useless': armour tends to either make a ship invulnerable to a given class of attack, or has such a small effect that the lifespan of the ship on the battlefield changes very little.

Well, yes, of course...

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Yeah, it can represent doing things in advance. It still takes twice the concentration to do two things* in advance on turn 1, even though the final effect of those things is resolved on turn 2.

Of course, none of it matters if you have as many operators as missiles launched.

* == Calculating and assigning suitable approach vectors or whatever.

If it only matters if you're launching multiple missiles per turn with one gunner I'm almost entirely disinterested because that should never happen.

However, I would contest that if you're launching two missiles to the same place, you don't in fact have double the things to do in advance...

I'd also note that you can have multiple missile salvos arriving in one turn without ever having launched multiple salvos in one turn.

Originally Posted by Mirtai

So far in my playtests, I find Railguns quite good at close range. They can fire faster (sometimes significantly faster) than an equivalent missile battery, so they're harder for point defense to stop... and they do nearly as much damage. In close range, the railgun rounds will reach the target before the missiles do, at least in the TL 9 to 10 range of things.

And of course, they do more than enough damage to punch through most armor. They're excellent for stopping suicide fighters from reaching your ship, for example, because of their high damage and high volume of fire.

The words "at close range" pretty much summarize why they're pointless. There's no reason for anything to happen at that range.

Suicide fighters can be stopped with an RF beam pretty well, I would think, though I'm not sure what the idea there is exactly. Massive, armored missiles that are allowed to dodge?

Originally Posted by Mirtai

On a separate note, I have also noted that bigger beam weapons can equal or exceed the range of missile weapons in the same TL, if they're big enough... and since a Beam weapon has the advantage over a missile in that at long range it'll hit the target many times before the a missile can cross the distance, someone with a heavy beam weapon will usually win the fight quite easily unless their opponent has enough armor to take the hits from it.

No, beam weapons cannot outrange missiles, because missiles do not have limited range.

Unless you're talking about how much range the missiles can cover before the target has time to burn more delta-V in evasion than the missile has, and thereby completely evade the missile. That can be an issue, though mostly only with high-performance superscience drives.

Originally Posted by Mirtai

A classic battleship will have a combination of weapons... point defense lasers for defense, of course. A battery of Railguns or conventional guns for close in barrage against tougher foes that get in close (they'll wipe out suicide bomber type fighter attacks, for example), missile launchers... for obvious reasons, and very often, a Major or Spinal Battery Beam weapon which can take out lightly armored targets that like to fight at long range with missiles.

I think under the tactical conditions you imagine, it is not at all obvious why you would have any missile launchers at all.

However, I'm also pretty sure you're very wrong about those conditions.

Originally Posted by Mirtai

No design is perfect, of course, but I'm still convinced that a Pirate Ship could do just fine with Beam weapons, good engines and good armor alone, and be quite effective in a fight, as they could use, for example, a Spinal Beam Weapon to take out their opponent while using Point Defense VRF lasers to destroy incoming missiles. Naturally, a missile boat with enough ammo could probably throw enough missiles at the target to eventually get through any point defense, but that's what the Spinal Weapon is for, to destroy the target's weapon systems in the first few seconds of combat... preventing it from firing more than a single load or two of missiles.

They will never be within range of your spinal beam while they still have a single missile on-board. And they won't run out 'eventually', if this is a serious fight, they'll run out of missiles at the beginning, stack them all up, and hit you with every missile they were carrying simultaneously. If you are not dead, you win, but good luck with that.