GURPS Spaceships: Base Relative Velocity of Missile Attacks

[Ezra]

I don't understand how to read the "Base Relative Velocity Table" on p. 59 of GURPS: Spaceships (4th ed.). The example explains that a close, 3-minute turn would use the number after the "/" (a 10) for missiles because the "Minimum Velocity" of a Missile (I'm assuming TL9-12, otherwise it matches the number before the "/") is 2 (again, assuming the distance is not point-blank or short.).

What if the distance were Standard though? In which case, there's only a "1" listed. That would still be lower than the minimum velocity of a Missile TL9-12, which if I'm reading the table correctly, is 2. Would you raise it? If so, to what?

I also don't understand why some scales have two numbers on the scale/distance part of the chart and others don't. What is the relationship between the Minimum Velocity numbers and the Scale/Distance numbers?

[Varyon]

I always assumed the 1/3, 1/10, etc values meant one-third, one-tenth, etc. That certainly makes the most sense - if you're at Close scale but are using 3-minute turns, you're probably going fairly slowly. I suspect the values given in the example were from a previous, pre-errata version of Spaceships (I know ballistic attacks underwent a lot of correction, both to base velocity and to base damage). I think the way it should read is: "It’s a 3-minute turn in close combat scale, so the typical velocity is normally 1/10 mps. However, the attacker is using a TL 9 missile, so the velocity is raised to 2 mps." (changes from text bolded)

[Ezra]

You're right. That would make sense. It's odd they wouldn't have fixed that by now, especially since I found an errata entry for that paragraph: here.

[Ezra]

This is from a post back in 2013 posted here.

Turn Length and Scale: None of the ships have less than 0.05G+ of acceleration, more than 10G+ of acceleration, more than 5 mps of delta-V, or many weapons that reach past Short range. The best scale is Close Scale and the best Turn Length is 1-minute per turn.

So according to the table, a close 1-minute scale encounter should have a typical base velocity of 1/3 (0.33).

She then releases a single CHS-4 missile at him. She has Gunner-13, -2 for multi-tasking, +5 for her target's size, +2 for her missile's sAcc, -2 for the Pathfinder's ECM array, -6 for 10 mps of relative velocity, and +4 for proximity detonation, rolling a 10 vs an effective 14 and achieving a hit.

How did he get a 10-mps value for relative velocity? A base relative velocity of 1/3 is less than the minimum velocity of missiles, but the chart shows the minimum velocity of missiles to be 2. Am I misreading something?

[Ulzgoroth]

The Base Relative Velocity Table had a pretty important rewrite 'errata' relatively early in the book's history. Perhaps the writer of the post missed that? Though I'm not sure the original numbers would support such a high number either, I don't have an old copy of the PDF ready to hand.

[Aldric]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

The Base Relative Velocity Table had a pretty important rewrite 'errata' relatively early in the book's history. Perhaps the writer of the post missed that? Though I'm not sure the original numbers would support such a high number either, I don't have an old copy of the PDF ready to hand.

Missiles at TL9-12 did say 5 or 10†, and the conventional warhead damage table also had some issues, the numbers got reduced by a factor of 10 if I'm not mistaken

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Aldric

Missiles at TL9-12 did say 5 or 10†, and the conventional warhead damage table also had some issues, the numbers got reduced by a factor of 10 if I'm not mistaken

IIRC, for the original conventional warhead table the author forgot to convert to dDamage, which indeed required the numbers to be divided by 10 to get the correct values. From your information here, I'd say it's pretty clear the example text simply didn't get updated (and if you look at the previously-linked errata, it only mentions how the table needs to be changed; I'd say the fact the example used the wrong numbers was overlooked.