Megatraveller combat questions

[Rupert]

MegaTraveller doesn't give actual sizes for ship turret weapons, though they do give masses. A TL-13+ laser masses 4 tonnes. The biggest vehicle mounted fusion gun masses 0.31 tonnes. The laser requires 250MW of power, which means a ~1 DTon power-plant at TL15 that masses 27 tonnes. The fusion gun requires 61.7MW of power, which requires (assuming a dedicated power-plant with the lower efficiency that implies) 6.86 m^3 and masses 13.72 tonnes.

A ship's laser is a terrifying weapon in planetary combat, but smaller than a tank's fusion gun it is not.

The odd thing is that the vehicle lasers don't demonstrate nearly the same effect and have different ROF to starship ones. The starship lasers do something like three times the damage per MW (and the pulse lasers fire faster, too). They clearly weren't converted from CT using the same method as Striker weapons were.

 

[jec10]

Found this explanation by Joe Fugate (perhaps one of the last things he ever wrote about MegaTrav as it is in MTJ#4 on page 87) of what he intended with zero penetration hits and exceptional success:

 

[kilemall]

Found this explanation by Joe Fugate (perhaps one of the last things he ever wrote about MegaTrav as it is in MTJ#4 on page 87) of what he intended with zero penetration hits and exceptional success:
View attachment 7765

One of the possible results of hitting an armored vehicle is no penetration but spall- flakes of the armor generated by the hit internally that can damage or kill crew and equipment, possibly start fires.

Nowadays spall lining limits that sort of thing but arguably is still there and some version of it possible.

I also think taking small point blunt force trauma from non penetrating rounds should be possible, one nice side benefit of the damage - armor = real damage paradigm.