Combat in planetary weather. Radar guided slug throwers?

[Julius9999]

I was playing a game with my group and as I didn't want them to see the situation they were in I said they had landed in a pink mist. One thing lead to another and shooting started. The NPCs were firing pulse lasers. One of the players objected saying lasers are degraded through water in the atmosphere. Which at our tech level is true.
So I started thinking of tech resistant to weather. So in my TU the players can buy expensive personal radar for their battledress.
Has anyone come across tech in Traveller that negates planetary weather?

 

[McPerth]

Acording MT, TL13+ lasers are x-ray, not visible light.

I guess x-ray pass trough mist or other weather effects as they pass through human body, without being too much affected...

 

[gchuck]

Wouldn't current 'image enhancement' devices be apropos in these situations? i.e. thermal imaging, IR, and the like be used.
Radar and Lidar being 'active' emitters, would seem to be contra-indicated.

 

[whartung]

Wouldn't current 'image enhancement' devices be apropos in these situations? i.e. thermal imaging, IR, and the like be used.
Radar and Lidar being 'active' emitters, would seem to be contra-indicated.

Lasers are degraded by weather, but the question is whether they're degraded enough at nominal combat ranges.

Perhaps ship to surface (and vice a versa), but a couple hundred yards? And in "pink mist" where visible range is greatly reduced, it could well matter quite a bit less.

Simply, "yes" lasers degrade in weather, but you're using lasers designed for combat in outdoor conditions, not just fair weather. If you're lasers aren't going to be effective in the fog, or in the rain, they're not really useful are they?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

This might give some ideas?

Weather

The main types of weather affecting the game are fog and precipitation, which will affect both visibility and movement.

A. Visibility: Fog and precipitation affect visibility in the same manner as night (see rule 47). Light fog, drizzle, and light snowfall have a visibility multiplier of 0.5; dense fog, rain, and heavy snowfall have a visibility multiplier of 0.25.

Vision enhancement devices treat weather effects as night with the following exceptions.
1. IR devices (active and passive) do not work in drizzle, rain, or snowfall.
2. Thermal imaging devices may see personnel only out to 150 cm and vehicles out to 300cm in rain. They do not work in snowfall.
3. Radar has its range cut in half in rain and heavy snowfall; all-weather radar may see normally.
4. lllum rounds, searchlights, and light amplification devices do not work in any reduced-visibility weather conditions.

Lasers

Obscuration: In addition to the usual blocks to the line of sight, there are three forms of obscuration which have a special effect on lasers: dense smoke, anti-laser aerosols, and prismatic anti-laser aerosols; mist smoke has no effect. All these are completely transparent to lasers of tech level 13+. At lower tech levels, lasers may be stopped.
...
2. Effects on Non-Weapon Lasers: Lasers which are not being used as weapons (communicators, target designators, etc.) may go through up to 1 cm of smoke without effect and are completely stopped by any greater amount. ... Units protected by aerosols may not be designated by laser target designators, and all non-weapon laser fire in or out is blocked. However, an operator guided missile with a laser command link may still hit a vehicle protected by aerosols.

3. Effects on Weapon Lasers: Smoke, aerosols, and prismatic aerosols are treated as armor against laser weapons (including laser carbines used as weapons). Each centimeter of dense smoke has an armor value of 25 against lasers of tech level 7-8,and 20 against lasers of tech level 9-12. An anti-laser aerosol protecting a unit has an armor value of 50 against tech level 7-8 lasers, and 45 against tech level 9-12. A prismatic aerosol has an armor value of 80 against tech level 7-12 lasers.

Scale: 1 cm = 10 m.

 

[kilemall]

I'd work through it on a case by case basis.


Plasma and fusion guns might be affected by intense magnetism in terms of the bolts diffusing the further they go, but otherwise ignore laser effect weather/aerosols.
EM effects could mess up radar-based systems.
Some versions of Traveller have miniaturized densitometer sensors, so your BD guys might want that as a passive way to read through walls or tunnels for something heavy on the other side.

No reason you can't define something similar for all the EM spectra, although I think most people would take a gamma-ray emitter for an attack rather then fire control.
Various ship sensor active systems are likely several times as powerful in raw juice and computing ability to power through natural or EW effects.
Drones are another way to get 'eyes' on something that's obscuring sensors.

I like using laser homing slugs as cheap precision fire, the slugs themselves would just have the smarts to follow 'their' beam and controls. Of course, the same effects apply to laser designators.

But you could postulate that you take a snapshot of the target when you squeeze the trigger or 'think the target', the bullet gets a visual or radar or other ID of what you want hit and an approximate 'last known location' and homes in on that signature.

A fairly good solution if you have an unlimited ammo budget is mass driver artillery or on a smaller scale VRF Gauss guns. Don't have to aim very much if you saturate an area you think they are in, rounds aren't going to be fooled or affected by much short of a major storm, and the round itself is cheap. 130,000 rounds later, maybe not so cheap.