Nightwind1
SOC-12
As the title asks- In the official Hostile setting, are non-military ships legally allowed to mount weapons?
HOSTILE- Can non-military ships have hardpoint weapons?
- Thread starter Nightwind1
- Start date
That is a good question. HOSTILE seems to go for a more real world approach regarding ownerships of ships, being that independently owned tramp freighters really aren't a thing, and that instead the equivalent are more like working for small companies.
It also mentions in the corebook that piracy is "incredibly rare." It seems like hijackings may be more of an issue compared to piracy, so perhaps that is a reason why no civilian ships apparently have any hardpoints installed on them.
BackworldTraveller
SOC-13
If you break up a rock that you can't dodge into two rocks that you can't dodge, that doesn't remove your problem!:rofl:
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Except that, given the physics involved, if you do it early enough, both new rocks have outward-from-impact thrust, and that literally blows a hole. If you hit the edge, you reduce one guaranteed impact into a handful of likely survivable tiny ones and the big mass having a slow acceleration away.
If using a laser, you literally are turning the surface into reaction mass gas at the impact site. Traveller's insanely long (>1 LS) laser weapon range makes it practical. (in no small irony, deleting the thrust limits in 2nd ed CT makes that capability redundant. Assuming the two "range greater than" entries stack, that -7 with a +3 from Predict-5 is a net-4, which means a hit on a 12 at ranges exceeding 1⅔ LS... (using tables from The Traveller Book.)
Cepheus inherits this range paradigm. (Note that real world, there are installations capable of the level of accuracy in the needed time to assure a beam hit at 2 LS vs a non-maneuvering target. The question isn't will it hit, but will there be enough energy density into the target to matter.)
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
AND whether you are hitting square on at the point of thinnest material or along the oblique angle, re: angle of armor.
That all abstracts into "enough energy density to matter."
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Fair enough. At one point I was considering a hypersim version of the rules and combat so you would design a ship hull and then angle it for optimal effects against opponents, but eh, ultimately not worth it.
Potential acceleration is up to 8 G's (as shown with the tug starship) and sensors are advanced up to radar & lidar.
No mention of densometers or NAS sensors.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Hmm, I'm thinking more in terms of range of sensors and how well they will pick up cold rocks. Range translates into time to react, along with Gs possible.
The higher the Gs the more that a ship could react and accel out of the way of rocks, but of course a higher G ship is also probably using greater average accel to burn and turn to get to the destination faster. At the apogee of velocity there may not be much time to react.
As the writer of HOSTILE, I'd say yes, why not - if you can gain a licence from the government. I could see corporate ships armed with missiles or lasers as carriers for their PMC teams, or during periods of corporate conflict. Of 'in support' of US or CAS interests, ie. PMC starships....
Interesting. I suspect something like small merchant ships run by small companies would have to provide a good reason to be given such a license?
