[Spaceships] Idea for new system: VLS

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Anthony

What it would actually do is permit firing missiles from any part of the ship, not just the part of the ship facing the target. VLS improves firepower of surface ships because most of the surface area of a ship is up, not sideways.

That's only an improvement if you're going by the (fairly ridiculous) Spaceships 1 rule that weapon facing matters for missiles. Spaceships 3 negated that.

VLS is perhaps not the best term for it, but the concept of individually-packed missiles instead of magazine-fed tubes seems clear enough.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

VLS is perhaps not the best term for it, but the concept of individually-packed missiles instead of magazine-fed tubes seems clear enough.

Try MRLS, VLS is just an MRLS where the missiles can turn sideways after launch. I don't think I've ever used the Spaceships combat system so I haven't paid attention to it, but for 'realistic' space combat it's generally appropriate (particularly if turn length exceeds 20 seconds) to assume that you can dump your entire missile bay in a single tactical turn.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Try MRLS, VLS is just an MRLS where the missiles can turn sideways after launch. I don't think I've ever used the Spaceships combat system so I haven't paid attention to it, but for 'realistic' space combat it's generally appropriate (particularly if turn length exceeds 20 seconds) to assume that you can dump your entire missile bay in a single tactical turn.

MRLS, on the other hand, is a worse term for it, because that's the name of a specific weapon system rather than a general type. And it's not even evocative of the right type, because the launch cells almost certainly would be oriented like in a VLS system, firing out of cells inset in the ship's hull. The only real problem with calling it that is that 'vertical' is badly defined in space.

And whatever may be realistic, Spaceships standard assumptions are drastically to the contrary. You need 5 20 second rounds to empty the smallest missile magazines, and the largest launchers sustain 100 minutes of continuous firing.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

MRLS, on the other hand, is a worse term for it, because that's the name of a specific weapon system rather than a general type.

Would you prefer MRL? It's not like VLS isn't a pretty specific term too.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

And whatever may be realistic, Spaceships standard assumptions are drastically to the contrary. You need 5 20 second rounds to empty the smallest missile magazines, and the largest launchers sustain 100 minutes of continuous firing.

This is probably an example of spaceships choosing a dramatic version of reality. The problem with realistic launch behavior is that it's stupefyingly boring: you do a mass launch of missiles and either the target stops them all with point defense (and is unscratched) or point defense is overwhelmed and the target ceases to exist.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Anthony

This is probably an example of spaceships choosing a dramatic version of reality. The problem with realistic launch behavior is that it's stupefyingly boring: you do a mass launch of missiles and either the target stops them all with point defense (and is unscratched) or point defense is overwhelmed and the target ceases to exist.

Well that's not something that is, or could be, addressed by magazine to launch rate ratios. The key there is that there's no room between stopping all incoming and shattered wreckage, which Spaceships pretty much upholds, at least for moderate sized ships. A single missile fragment may not kill your ship, but it'll pretty surely ruin your day.

The magazine size means you can launch another (and another) all-or-nothing barrage, but missile defense is largely a save-or-die exercise.

If it's nothing but an artifact, it might be an artifact of trying to balance PD beams against missiles.

[Diomedes]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Would you prefer MRL? It's not like VLS isn't a pretty specific term too.

Perhaps something like ILC, for Independent Launch Cells?

[Snoman314]

Originally Posted by Diomedes

Perhaps something like ILC, for Independent Launch Cells?

I hadn't spent a whole lot of cycles thinking about the name, as its the concept thats the important part, but maybe something like Multiple Launch Missile Array/Battery MLMA?

As mentioned above, currently the largest missile systems can take a really long time to empty, and I tend to find that combat is over pretty quickly. I embrace the whole egshells-armed-with-sledgehammers feel of spaceships, as real life combat tends to be like that and will probably only get to be more so. I tend to put PC ships up against the Spaceships equivalent of Mooks, but even then, as it's spaceship combat, if the PCs screw up badly they could still get vaporised.
However, for those that point out that this could tend towards a battle between PD and the largest possible salvo:
-Firstly, yeah? and?
-Secondly, I'm mostly planning to use spaceships to string together ground missions on isolated planetary outposts. The ships fight their way into a system (jump point), then fight to dominate orbit, then to maintain orbital dominance. Small fights, but more than one and with little time between them. This means little to no time to reload hull mounted launch cells (unrealisticly fast/high dV to zip around in system).
With those setting assumptions, it becomes very important for ships to not blow their wad too early by using up all their ammo. This would become an even greater concern when missiles cant be reloaded from cargo easily.
-Thirdly, using a couple of tertiary batteries can have same effect. An MLMA would tend away from this slightly, for the reason I gave in my second point.

Messing around with it some more I feel like the ammo should be no less than half the normal amount, and not more than .75-.8 normal.

And yeah I'm going with Spaceships 3 rules that missiles aren't limited by facing anyway.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Snoman314

However, for those that point out that this could tend towards a battle between PD and the largest possible salvo:
-Firstly, yeah? and?

And this doesn't lend to particularly interesting fights. Depending on the specific role of spaceships in your campaign, you may or may not care, but if you don't care there's little reason to invoke the space combat rules at all.