[1e] Turret Weapons - Thoughts and House Rules

[Condottiere]

We could have a drone, that matches speed, and just blows up alongside, usually at the most vulnerable place.

 

[jec10]

Where are those from? I don't recall them, but my memory MT is far from perfect.

They're in both SOM and COACC.

 

[Rupert]

They're in both SOM and COACC.

Thanks. Found them - neither give more than a mention of them as homing options. COACC gives standard anti-ship missiles as using a 'mass detection guidance package', whatever that means. It also gives neutrino homing as TL10, but the Referee's Manual states that TL10 neutrino sensors can only give direction to the largest source, which seems a bit risky as a battlefield homing seeker system, and they only get usefully sensitive (for planetary use) at TL12 (TL11 vs spaceships). SOM claims that they can build images of a ship's hull from the neutrinos reflected by the dense hull and structural components, which seems, ah, 'optimistic'.

TNE then threw them out as combat (or even non-combat) sensors for detecting ships, on the grounds that when a nuclear physicist was asked about them he said that there's just no way they'd be able to detect the neutrino output of a reactor from a useful distance - and that's ignoring that we have no idea how to make one that isn't too big to put in a spaceship (let alone a missile).

 

[jec10]

Yes, I remember on TML when we were told that you need a vast tank of water to detect neutrinos - and ever since I've thought the MegaT neutrino homing missile guidance was bonkers.

 

[Condottiere]

I think you have to bury them deep underground.

 

[aramis]

We could have a drone, that matches speed, and just blows up alongside, usually at the most vulnerable place.

If you can get a stable enough maneuver to do that, you may as well have the chassis turn KKM on that spot.

 

[Rupert]

I think you have to bury them deep underground.

That's so that the rock, etc. shields it from non-neutrinos that might otherwise give false positives.

At 20,000 tons of liquid for the central sphere, that thing is at least 1500 DTons in volume.

 

[kilemall]

That's so that the rock, etc. shields it from non-neutrinos that might otherwise give false positives.

At 20,000 tons of liquid for the central sphere, that thing is at least 1500 DTons in volume.

Pfft TL8 primitives. At TL12 you use a soccer ball sized sphere of muons. Then the only thing that can swim through ARE neutrinos.