Spaceship missile questions

[fdsa1234567890]

So are guns and even lasers mostly pointless? It seems like lasers are much harder to hit while guns just don't have the range to do anything of value. While lasers can't be shot down, they don't even seem as good as missiles for defensive purposes. Smaller interceptor missiles seem like a better investment than lasers most of the time.

Also, am I the only one or do the "more complicated" rules for tactical combat actually make more sense? I wound up using this to find the velocity of missiles the hard way as it seemed easier. This might also be where defensive lasers can be more effective, as they would then get to shoot defensively more than once depending on range. Though missiles would also get to do this, and with a VRF laser you wind up with extremely short range or with a regular laser you wind up being rather unlikely to hit.

Also, is there a proper rule for how to use Spaceship missiles or guns in conventional combat(like if I wanted to use them for fire support)? While you can just convert the damage itself, this doesn't account for the potential velocity. Proximity detonations especially don't seem to have a rule in this context. Going by Ultra-Tech's figure for a 100mm purely kinetic missile, it is at least double the power of one from Spaceships at the same scale(and that's without an exotic warhead as seen in ultra-tech).

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by fdsa1234567890

So are guns and even lasers mostly pointless? .

Guns are mostly pointless.Guns are only included for completeness and unsual settings. Ever since the beginning people have been trying to find uses for guns that just aren't there.

I have run sample ship-to-ship combats where lasers were the decisive weapons because of range and speed. With assumptions where ships begin moving whle out of range and then move into range things tend to be finished by lasers before anything else can started good. It didn't matter how many shots missed. This was at both a hard science TL10 with UV Lasers and a TL11^ fight with X-ray lasers.

The UT 100mm missile and Spaceships missiles tend to be so different that comparisons and conversions don't work. The TL10 100mm missile accelerates at 277 Gs for 5 seconds. It's Spaceships opposite number accelerates at 5 Gs for at least 333 seconds.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by fdsa1234567890

So are guns and even lasers mostly pointless? It seems like lasers are much harder to hit while guns just don't have the range to do anything of value. While lasers can't be shot down, they don't even seem as good as missiles for defensive purposes. Smaller interceptor missiles seem like a better investment than lasers most of the time.

For defensive purposes, anywhere you could have a missile you could have an RoF 100 or 200 laser that never runs out of ammo. The missile has more sAcc and gets the proximity detonation bonus, but the laser doesn't take substantial relative velocity penalties. Pretty sure that's going to favor the laser on balance. Though needing to budget power plants can weaken the advantage there. (That's also the one thing marginally attractive about guns: Conventional guns get both the RoF of beams and proximity detonation without needing power.)

Offensively, lasers can't be shot down and don't run out of ammo. It may be harder to hit but given sufficient time you certainly will hit. (And, if you're using the mapped rules, they hit instantly rather than arriving some time later.) Under some circumstances (when targets have substantial maneuvering capability) they can have greater effective range than missiles.

Originally Posted by fdsa1234567890

Also, am I the only one or do the "more complicated" rules for tactical combat actually make more sense? I wound up using this to find the velocity of missiles the hard way as it seemed easier. This might also be where defensive lasers can be more effective, as they would then get to shoot defensively more than once depending on range. Though missiles would also get to do this, and with a VRF laser you wind up with extremely short range or with a regular laser you wind up being rather unlikely to hit.

The basic system makes much less sense in many respects, yes.

Some of the respects in which the mapped rules make more sense are potentially unbalancing and inconvenient for play, such as the ability to launch all of your missiles into space over a series of turns and then have them attack in a single huge wave. Or having your missiles perform boost-and-drift attacks from tremendous ranges.

Originally Posted by fdsa1234567890

Also, is there a proper rule for how to use Spaceship missiles or guns in conventional combat(like if I wanted to use them for fire support)? While you can just convert the damage itself, this doesn't account for the potential velocity. Proximity detonations especially don't seem to have a rule in this context. Going by Ultra-Tech's figure for a 100mm purely kinetic missile, it is at least double the power of one from Spaceships at the same scale(and that's without an exotic warhead as seen in ultra-tech).

Not a good one. There's the box on p66.

[fdsa1234567890]

As a follow up, given that I'm already down a rabbit hole, has anyone designed missiles using the Spaceships rules? It would be more interesting to have different types of missiles with different performance characteristics.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The UT 100mm missile and Spaceships missiles tend to be so different that comparisons and conversions don't work. The TL10 100mm missile accelerates at 277 Gs for 5 seconds. It's Spaceships opposite number accelerates at 5 Gs for at least 333 seconds.

Where does that acceleration figure come from? I didn't see it.

[Willy]

It may be of interest in this thread, that against targets that can´t move aka space stations and the like projectile weapons can be very useful, if the gun fire doesn´t spread to much or the ammo is a bit of self correcting. First if you accelerate your ship while firing, you can time the wave of ammo hitting the target, in a way that ALL bullets hit the target at the same moment oftime and therefore overwhelming the defense. That is while the ammo may have a fixed speed, you and earlier salvos are a long way in front of you every bullet fired after the first has a higher starting speed and will sooner or later reach the prviously fired bullets. A projectile ammo that has some capacety to accelerate or steer themself makes it a way easier. If your drive is powerful enough and your targetting computer allows such a trick of course. Second if shields are electromagnetic, there are a lot of nonmagnetic materials that can be used for a bullet already, we don´t use them today because metal bullets are way cheaper, such ammo would penetrate the shield as if it were non existent. So projectile weapons may find there niche'.

[DangerousThing]

In the universe I've created for SF gaming, merchant ships often have lasers instead of missiles because missiles cost a small fortune per shot, and lasers just use power. And lasers are more useful for point defense.

My naval vessels use missiles because they hit harder.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by fdsa1234567890

Where does that acceleration figure come from? I didn't see it.

The accelerations for Spaceships missiles can be found on p.36 of Spaceships 3. the duration figure is derived from the acceleration and the Delta-v.

If you meant the acceleration for the UT missile that comes most solidly from a largeley successful attempt i made to reverse engineer the UT missiles using Ve2.