(spaceships) SM based Hull dST/HP

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

All true.

In one of the playtests I completely destroyed a SM+14 Gibralter Battlestation and all it took was a 16cm missile launched from a platform going 70 miles per second. I didn't launch just one missile of course but it only took one hit.

My ideas for dealing with this centered around improved anti-missile defenses possibly including layers of anti-missile drones. Fiddling with armor values is probably only nibbling around the edges.

It looks like it gets better at TL10+ when improved lasers come on line, but you still need boatloads of dedicated AMS lasers to handle it, but my playtesting is limited.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

It looks like it gets better at TL10+ when improved lasers come on line, but you still need boatloads of dedicated AMS lasers to handle it, but my playtesting is limited.

Oh, this was at TL10 and during the test for the mapped system so all the station's weapons opened up at maximum range. Main Batteries, missiles, everything and not just the Tertiary Battery.

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Oh, this was at TL10 and during the test for the mapped system so all the station's weapons opened up at maximum range. Main Batteries, missiles, everything and not just the Tertiary Battery.

By mapped, do you mean with the tactical rules of SS3? I haven't tried those.

Our best playtesting so far has been TL8.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

By mapped, do you mean with the tactical rules of SS3?

.

Those are the ones.

[Rupert]

I assume you had VRF batteries as the tertiary point-defence systems? Not that it probably makes that much difference - it comes out to an extra +2 RoF bonus to hit generally.

My thinking is that if you want survivable ships without doing too much hacking, you start with TL11^ force screens (depending on how one interprets the semi-ablative nature, they might need changes to how they function), and then start looking at rules like "Missile Shield" (SS:7, p.35), which will encourage the use of bomb-pumped laser warheads and proximity nukes (which if too strong can be countered by making nuclear dampers (SS:1, p.32) available which can be tiny systems and still kill off nukes as an option).

Making ships very fast with pseudo-velocity drives can help too - to catch them the missiles will also need pseudo-velocity drives, and if you 'design' the drives right that means they won't have much (or even any) closing velocity.

I do wish the series had included material on this sort of tweaking for more or less 'realism' and lethality, but at least it starts fairly grounded and well down one end of that spectrum, and is fairly easy to modify as required.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Rupert

I assume you had VRF batteries as the tertiary point-defence systems?

I was using whatever was in the playtest. David seems to like that.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I was using whatever was in the playtest. David seems to like that.

Funny, that.

Looking at SS:3, the Gibraltar-Class Battle Station's weapons are a secondary battery of 10 x 30 GJ UV lasers, a tertiary battery of 30 x 100 MJ VRF UV lasers, and a tertiary battery of 30 x 56cm missile launchers. Dropping them to conventional lasers (and thus making them improved) for double the RoF and therefore an extra +1 to hit might be an improvement, but I doubt it would matter.

To have any chance you'd need to use more optional rules to split the battery up further - make it three small systems, each of 30 x 30 MJ improved VRF lasers, for example. However, that might well still not be enough, so you'd need to go into complete houserule territory and already this is using an optional rule that adds complexity and spoils the clean simplicity of the 20-system design rules.