Some questions on Spaceships

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Rysith

I'd think that you would want a drone because you're concerned about the ability of your target to shoot it down. It's a lot easier to throw a bunch of drones at a ship and hope one of them gets through, and then demand that the now-crippled ship receive boarders or be destroyed than it is to throw a bunch of boarding parties at a ship and hope that one of them gets through.

That works if your problem is a ship that can fight small craft and can run away from but can't fight your ships. I'm not sure I see that as a likely problem, but yeah, in that case some disposable 'bola' drones to shoot out the propulsion could be called for.

Originally Posted by Rysith

But that seems like the answer to what FeiLin was asking - if you want complex missiles, build them as drones and use 'hangars' to launch them rather than weapon systems. Given that a 16cm missile only masses 1/10 of a ton you'd need to scale a lot of the systems down to SM-1, but that means that the cost might actually compare favorably with the $100K a normal missile costs. As a GM I might even both allow you to launch them out of weapon systems as a special option and give a cost discount for 'single use' - I'm sure that there are all sorts of corners you can cut if you expect an operational lifetime measured in hours at best.

I don't think drones really address anything FeiLin was asking about. I do think that a ship (unmanned or otherwise) of appropriate SM being designed to launch from missile tubes is quite reasonable, though.