Missiles (and Laser Armed Drones) in TNE

[Scott Martin]

A fork from Libris' "Lasers in FF&S" which got thouroughly hijacked.

Executive Summary: Don't bother trying to use missiles in TNE unless you are using some seriously variant rules, or are trying to damage an impatient or incompotent fleet with a significant (3+ TL) advantage and a significant (factor of 10+ ?) numerical inferiority.
__________________

A major problem in FF&S is that missiles appear to only be effective at very short range due to 2 main factors:
1) Missiles have insufficient fuel reserves to cover long intercept ranges
2) energy weapons are very effective at sweeping them out of space.

The first can be (partially) remedied by using HEPLAR as the thrust agency, but it doesn't stop beam weapons from sweeping them out of space (or dampers from slurping them up either) this gap in effectiveness is further compounded by the fact that they are hellishly expensive.

For comparison, a missile barbette loaded with 5 top-of-the line 500 kton missiles (TL 15) costs 6.36 MCr, of which only 110 kCr is the launcher, the remaining cost is for the missiles. The cost for a TL-15 700 MJ laser barbette (including the power plant to power it) is less than 5 MCr. Add the best MFD that money can buy at TL-15 and your cost is still less than just those 5 missiles.

A proposal to use laser armed missiles instead was greeted with some skepticism (by me) so I promised to look at what the capabilities of a laser armed drone in a 1/2 dT package could potentially do.

My "back of the envelope" calculations suggest that if you filled this volume with power plant, HPG, point blank (1-hex range) beam pointer and an X-Ray focal array you could get an 80 MJ laser on board (leaving about 3.5 cubic meters for HEPLAR and Fuel) which would get you a whopping (1/7) 22 laser. An armour factor of 166 renders this entirely ineffective, and most ships have the 26 points of armour to guarentee that this weapon will only inflict minor hits. (remember that you add 2d6 to pen value, so (2x7 + 12 armour) will reduce this to 20 DV, which is "2 minor" on the hits table)

Sorry, still a non-starter compared to a big (Kininur style) laser barbette, which sweeps one of these a turn out of space (or more to the point gets "3 major" hits as well as a crit on anything less than 1,000 Dt and under 105 pts of hull armour: if your ship is incapable of controlling missiles there's no point in shooting them down...)

A weapons drone to carry this kind of weapons system would be possible starting at about 10 dT, and it's still an easy mission kill (and larger to carry, counting docking penalties etc. than just mounting one of these lasers on the hull of a ship in the first place...)

For comparison, a laser that dishes out damage equal to the largest (500 kT) Bomb-pumped det laser would be a 1,000 MJ output laser, which will easily fit into a barbette at TL-15 if you use an X-ray focal array... and you get to reuse it, and it doesn't cost more than 2 MCr a shot.

For those of you wondring what the actual discharge energies of bomb-pumped lasers is, it would be:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Warhead
10 kT 20 kT 50 kT 100 kT 200 kT 500kT
100 MJ 200 MJ 300 MJ 500 MJ 700 MJ 1,000 MJ
Laser DE </pre>[/QUOTE]so perhaps I'll run a regression analysis and see about building some Gigaton range missiles. If you're going to hit with a missile, make sure that the missile kills the target!

Scott Martin

 

[Zparkz]

When it comes to laser drones and missiles I can't really comment until I take a look at my spreadsheet at home.

However on the cost side I would guess that most components in missiles would be cheaper as they are one shot items. No need for building a drive that is supposed to outlive the operational time of the missile by several factors. I would slash prices with at least 75%

Drones on the other hand would probably have close to standard prices on its components.

When it comes to the tactical aspect of the missile it si not favoured in the game, and would not be in treal life either. In space the only horizon is the limit on effective range of the sensor. Both EAPLAC and HePlar drives would be next to impossible to hide.

As with point defense will be performed by lasers there is no balistics so the equation comes to simple x and y and fire off a volley of low power laser shots. There isn't need for much effect from a PD laser as the missile skin is rather thin.

 

[Scott Martin]

Yet another of the issues that I have with missiles in TNE: I'd expect missiles to be cheap, they are not. If they have so many tactical disadvantages, the only reason to use them would be on the basis of cost effectiveness, and that means that they would need to be cheap. For them to approach cost-effectiveness, they'd probably need to cost ~1/4 to 1/10 of their current cost.

The drive system used for missiles is actually more expensive than a HEPLAR drive of similar thrust once you are at TL-13 (and capable of actually using HEPLAR as a thrust agent) and the missile warhead generally costs in the range of a MCr: not what I'd call an "expendible" munition.

Scott Martin

 

[leighton]

This always used to be a joke in our Traveller games, where if you fired a missile and missed (and it wasn't destroyed) the first job was to go and collect it as you couldn't afford to buy another!

Scott, are the figures you've produced the max energy output or the max energy available to power the laser? Is there a difference?

Leighton

 

[mike wightman]

What if the missiles are soft launched from the attacking vessel?
They will have the vector of the launching ship and can then drift into range of the enemy.

They then wouldn't activate their maneuver drive until they are within the 2 hex range.

On the game board you would need a referee to keep track of the missile hidden movement...

 

[Badbru]

Originally posted by Scott Martin:
A fork from Libris' "Lasers in FF&S" which got thouroughly hijacked.

Executive Summary: Don't bother trying to use missiles in TNE unless you are using some seriously variant rules, or are trying to damage an impatient or incompotent fleet with a significant (3+ TL) advantage and a significant (factor of 10+ ?) numerical inferiority.

That just screams "Look just don't even bother discussing this with me because my minds thoroughly made up" That's allways a good way to start a thread IMHO.

__________________

A major problem in FF&S is that missiles appear to only be effective at very short range due to 2 main factors:
1) Missiles have insufficient fuel reserves to cover long intercept ranges
2) energy weapons are very effective at sweeping them out of space.

1) That then just becomes another TNE paradigm shift. TNE=Missiles are short range weapons. Much like the other TNE paradigm shift. TNE= Ships use fuel. It merely requires a mental approach shift.

2) Energy weapons are effective at sweeping them out of space if a) the ship can gain a target lock on them.A strict interpretation of the rules means no target lock = no fire. Missiles are much much MUCH larger in TNE than other Traveller rules but they're still very small and hard to spot. And, b) any energy weapon that is busy swatting missiles is no longer shooting at the ship that launched them thus essentially giving the launching ship a free lunch that turn.
Are you really going to give up that 700mj laser barbette to swat that pesky missile? It might only have a 10kt warhead.

The first can be (partially) remedied by using HEPLAR as the thrust agency, but it doesn't stop beam weapons from sweeping them out of space (or dampers from slurping them up either) this gap in effectiveness is further compounded by the fact that they are hellishly expensive.

This assumes you have the beam weapons to spare, or even a nuclear damper mounted, or even the power to run both, and again, that you have the target lock to begin with. In addition, you think the missile rules are bad, sheesh what about those damper rules. TL-15 turets can target one only. "Larger installations can target more"(or words to that effect) but how many more? By a larger installation do they mean a barbette? What would be so special about a barbette over a turret, they both only have one beam pointer? Dampers? please just don't get me started on dampers. Though I completely agree that missiles are too expensive. An order of magnitude too expensive atleast, if not two orders of magnitude. Even at 12,000credits a merchie captain in his Jayhawk would be peeved if his missiles missed that persuing Vargr Corsair. Though if he had his laser armed and sensor equiped probe out there keeping tabs on said corsair he could just fire again next turn. If the Vargr corsair shot that down, then thats a loss, but it's a turn when it didn't shoot his ship.

For comparison, a missile barbette loaded with 5 top-of-the line 500 kton missiles (TL 15) costs 6.36 MCr, of which only 110 kCr is the launcher, the remaining cost is for the missiles. The cost for a TL-15 700 MJ laser barbette (including the power plant to power it) is less than 5 MCr. Add the best MFD that money can buy at TL-15 and your cost is still less than just those 5 missiles.

Yeah that's hideously expensive true, and what's worse it represents only one load. But note how all your examples take it for granted that the ship in question has the space and power available to mount a honking great 700mj laser, which by the way has to be a non standard mount I think. I don't recall anyone building a Kininurs' 700mj Barbette and getting it to fit in 84 meters cubed. Though I could be wrong I've never tried it myself.

A proposal to use laser armed missiles instead was greeted with some skepticism (by me) so I promised to look at what the capabilities of a laser armed drone in a 1/2 dT package could potentially do.

My "back of the envelope" calculations suggest that if you filled this volume with power plant, HPG, point blank (1-hex range) beam pointer and an X-Ray focal array you could get an 80 MJ laser on board (leaving about 3.5 cubic meters for HEPLAR and Fuel) which would get you a whopping (1/7) 22 laser. An armour factor of 166 renders this entirely ineffective, and most ships have the 26 points of armour to guarentee that this weapon will only inflict minor hits. (remember that you add 2d6 to pen value, so (2x7 + 12 armour) will reduce this to 20 DV, which is "2 minor" on the hits table)

My complaint with this is again that you're approaching it with a narrow focus. In the BL book only one ship had armour greater than 100 points and that was the Shukugan SDB at 101. In addition you seem to be dismissing minor hits. Minor hits can scrub off EM masking radiators making the target easier to sense and retain lock on. Minor hits can scrub off sensor antenna effectively mission killing a target as it becomes blind. Minor hits can scrub off MFD antenna effectly eliminating MFDs and making your honking great ship armed with it's honking great 700mj lasers unable to hit anything beyond about ten hexes as the range mods rack up the task difficulty to impossible or beyond.

In addition, depending on the world, the Jayhawk captain can deploy his laser armed drone to high orbit before he lands and have someone remain onboard controlling it. If his comm system has a solar array or battery backup, he can do this even when powered down. If local Teddie tries to impound his ship he has orbital fire support on call. Horses for courses and a use for everthing if you look hard enough. Not every weapon has to be able to "Mission kill" a starship target before it's worth considering for a starship.

Sorry, still a non-starter compared to a big (Kininur style) laser barbette, which sweeps one of these a turn out of space (or more to the point gets "3 major" hits as well as a crit on anything less than 1,000 Dt and under 105 pts of hull armour: if your ship is incapable of controlling missiles there's no point in shooting them down...)

A weapons drone to carry this kind of weapons system would be possible starting at about 10 dT, and it's still an easy mission kill (and larger to carry, counting docking penalties etc. than just mounting one of these lasers on the hull of a ship in the first place...)

For comparison, a laser that dishes out damage equal to the largest (500 kT) Bomb-pumped det laser would be a 1,000 MJ output laser, which will easily fit into a barbette at TL-15 if you use an X-ray focal array... and you get to reuse it, and it doesn't cost more than 2 MCr a shot.

There must be alot of TL-15 starships, and TL-15 starports and worlds around in your TNE universe. There weren't in mine, or the OTU for that matter.

For those of you wondring what the actual discharge energies of bomb-pumped lasers is, it would be:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Warhead
10 kT 20 kT 50 kT 100 kT 200 kT 500kT
100 MJ 200 MJ 300 MJ 500 MJ 700 MJ 1,000 MJ
Laser DE </pre>

so perhaps I'll run a regression analysis and see about building some Gigaton range missiles. If you're going to hit with a missile, make sure that the missile kills the target!

Scott Martin [/quote]A combat example of my own for you to ponder, no doubt you'll just conclude one party was stupid.
A gazelle armed with 2 x Laser Barbettes and 2 x dinkie laser turrets encounters a Gazelle with 1 x laser barbette, 1 x missile barbette and 2 x dinkie little turrets. For one reason or another range between targets reduced to less than 12 hexes. Who survived? Well they were broke for quite along time but they picked through the wreckage and got some valuable spares after 5 missiles hit their target, with the worst scoring twice, and the best scoring 6 times. Just on average that would have been 15 hits at 1 over 21-66. And I believe they also score a hit with their own honking great 300mj laser barbette that turn My players gained a new respect for missiles after that battle.

 

[Scott Martin]

Originally posted by Leighton:
Scott, are the figures you've produced the max energy output or the max energy available to power the laser? Is there a difference?

Leighton

Values given are for discharge energy: input energy (from the power plant) is 5x discharge energy, since grav focused lasers are 20% efficient. Actual "trickle" energy required for minimum ROF (10 shots/turn) is (discharge energy * 10 * 5 / 1800) or 1/36 discharge energy required to power the mount over a turn.

Scott Martin

 

[Scott Martin]

Hello

The reason that I parked the "executive summary" at the top was to save people the hassle of reading my overly long post. Obviously if I was unwilling to discuss the topic I'd be off in a huff right now because <sarcasm> someone had the nerve THE NERVE!!! to critique my obviously perfect logical construct. </sarcasm>

Thank goodness for sarcasm flags

Originally posted by Badbru:
...<SNIP>... Yeah that's hideously expensive true, and what's worse it represents only one load. But note how all your examples take it for granted that the ship in question has the space and power available to mount a honking great 700mj laser, which by the way has to be a non standard mount I think. I don't recall anyone building a Kininurs' 700mj Barbette and getting it to fit in 84 meters cubed. Though I could be wrong I've never tried it myself.

Actually the Kininur's 700MW laser barbette fits nicely in a standard mount (mostly because the focal arrays get a 90% size reduction at TL-14 to TL-15) they just didn't include it in the "standard socket mounts" section in the BL book. I don't tend to design at TL-15, but if you look at the BL book, all of ONE ship (which I believe is your Jayhawk) is below TL-12, and the majority are TL-14 or 15. Nasty deep space ships start to appear at TL-13 (with the advent of X-Ray lasers and small high-efficiency power plants) This is one of the reasons that I liked the setting of TNE, which peaked at TL-12 making all of the really effective gear "relic" technology
The "gazelle" barbette is also pretty damn nasty, but not in the same ship-smashing category as the Kininur barbette. It generally gets "1 major" hits on anything it touches.
As far as tactics, I reccomended ignoring the missiles and taking out the controlling ship, since all of the "stock" missiles must be controlled by the launching ship, and if that ship is out of action you don't need to worry about the missiles.
As far as the utility of a combat drone, I'd feel even better with an armed ships boat in orbit, because the "death from above" can't be taken out with my grounded ship. YMMV, but for this application I'd probably go for a very limited maneuver reserve and a bigger (non X-Ray) focal array, because penetrating atmosphere will be a stone bi*** with a small X-Ray laser.

A combat example of my own for you to ponder, no doubt you'll just conclude one party was stupid.
A gazelle armed with 2 x Laser Barbettes and 2 x dinkie laser turrets encounters a Gazelle with 1 x laser barbette, 1 x missile barbette and 2 x dinkie little turrets. For one reason or another range between targets reduced to less than 12 hexes. Who survived? Well they were broke for quite a long time but they picked through the wreckage and got some valuable spares after 5 missiles hit their target, with the worst scoring twice, and the best scoring 6 times. Just on average that would have been 15 hits at 1 over 21-66. And I believe they also score a hit with their own honking great 300mj laser barbette that turn My players gained a new respect for missiles after that battle.

No argument that properly used missiles are decisive. But how would that have gone if the other Gazelle had a pair of "Honking Big" Kininur barbettes and only ran it's M-Drive to 4 G's? In a wargame I don't think the player ship would have survived to close within 12 hexes.

Don't take this as "One of the parties was stupid". I've often done this as "a necessary story element" giving the players an opportunity to succeed despite the disparity in hardware. I've also smashed their gear without a scrap of remorse to introduce an enemy (and motivate them to eliminate said enemy)

Always remember that there are significant differences between discussing starship combat as a "wargame" and discussing it as an element within an RPG: many of my "wargame" designed hulls can take a lot of "antennae scraping" before losing combat effectiveness, and within an RPG I can arbitrarily have a hardware glitch take out *all* of the players sensors. I also don't actually need detailed rules to describe fleet actions that the players are a part of (as a narrative).

I did like fact that the gazelle in TNE finally became a kick-butt combat platform...

Scott Martin

 

[Badbru]

Sorry Scott, your "Executive summary" didn't stipulate a "Wargame" setting. It only referred to "missiles in TNE" and sounded strongly like a potential tirade. I have "issues" with missiles too but just felt compelled to take the other side, so to speak.

Given a "Wargame setting" then I heartily endorse everything you said

Personally I don't realy use TNE or BL for wargaming, but for resolving, usually small ship encounters, with usually four or fewer ships involved in a battle. I like it for it's far greater attention to detail and, IMHO, greater realism. Though I don't like it for some of it's complexities. So essentially I liked it for the same reasons I disliked it!

For small ships like the RC used, like Jayhawks, MM scouts, Victrixes etc often times they may be called upon to drop covert agents via drop capsuals launched from standard missile tubes, recon planetary systems with RCV sensor probes, and fight off similar sized and armed Guild ships, who may not have military grade sensors. Given this, atleast one turret fitted for missile launch seems more than appropriate.
And they can keep players poor.

In TNE where you no longer have the arbitrary one hard point per 100 tonnes rule the Gazelle becomes an amazing ship if you replace those 50D tonne drop tanks with 25D tonne ones, each fitted with a turret socket of their own.
I think my players favourite loadout was laser barbettes in the Barbette cans. Sandcasters in the "nacelle" sockets, and 10 hex 95mj turrets in the tanks sockets.

 

[Scott Martin]

I guess that a big part of the problem is that once you have the "wargame" rules, the RPG universe is constrained by said rules. Both BL and BR favor slow heavily armoured long-range beam platforms. Because of the way the rules are structured, there really isn't any compelling reason to build high thrust warships, which is a radically different paradigm from HG, where speed (agility) was life, and armour was a second line of defence.

I do like your concept for a laser armed drone for "orbital overwatch" on survey missions (in TNE "survey" = just about any free trader encounter) so I'll put together a low-ish (sub TL-13) overwatch satellite and controller for your paranoid (read "not dead yet") free trader captain.

Expect it to be less than 5dT (less than 2 if I can squeeze it in) and shaped like a box, for ease of stowage in a cargo bay. 1 laser com, 1 short range laser com, 1 PEMS array a laser and power supply and a station keeping ion thruster. The only real use for them is as overwatch or to give a troop of marines dedicated orbital support. I'll also put together specs for a "ground station" module to cram into a vehicle so that it can be controlled without a starships commo gear handy. This will allow your Jayhawk captain to send a crew member off to a remote location in an air raft to watch his back without the need of an armed small craft.

For "starship combat" use, this would be an IDEW mine (Independently Deployed Energy Weapon) but it's range will prety much limit it to close orbit fire suppport, although I guess you could seed the lower orbits of a gas giant with them to deterr refueling. Powered down with the sensor array closed these would be a real problem to lock up on sensors, although as soon as they power up they'll be giant screaming "shoot me" targets.

For the game I'm putting together at the moment I suspect that my players will like the "free trader" configuration that gets them Jump-4 and 8G with a couple of long-range lasers and piles of missiles. Without the additional (military) drive modules this class of ship gets a whopping Jump-2 and 1G.

They won't like the fact that they will have the staying power of a hummingbird. (Woohoo! 8G! (paf) ummm 5G (paf) how fast can we get the jump drive online?) Converted merchants make poor warships...

Scott Martin

 

[Badbru]

Scott, or anyone for that matter, have you done any work in the lower Tech range? I'm thinking TL 8 to 10, where missiles are the weapon of choice over lasers?

I built a TL-9 SDB that primarily fights with two 5 Disp Tonne drones, which each carry one, or was it two, TL9 short range FIM's. The ship itself has a missile barbette once it's assailants get past those, but with MFD's not being worth it at TL9 they need to be armed with SIM's, or left untill very close.I tried to make it cheap and nasty and failed at both, but if handled well, and it's allways on a defensive posture, it could surprise some ships.

 

[Scott Martin]

FIM's would be problematic, since TNE has no rules to build them...

I have a few designs in the TL-10 range. TNE basically makes combat craft below TL-10 (before EMS / PEMS) untenable, since they will never attain sensor lock. (the extra 2 diff mods against EMM coupled with the HUGE sizes of Radar / HRT sensor arrays just kill TL-9 designs)

SIM's are one of the weapons of choice, but you want MFD's for missile control (you still get 3 missiles per MFD at TL-9) and with the mind-bendingly large crew requirements at low TL's, you will really want the crew reduction.

At low TL's you probably want to power craft with a fission plant and use a fusion rocket as the thrust agent. Remember that you are effectively limited to 2G anyway due to lack of compensators.

For an essay on some of my thoughts regarding low tech SDB design, look here:
http://www.scottmartin.ca/Space_RPG/Hells_Dominoes.html

As you can see, I gave up and went to orbital weapons platforms. These get backed by enormous PAW's with insane rates of fire, and are still only capable of engaging "High Tech" (TL 11-13) forces at (cost) margins of about 100:1 with deep emplaced minefields (preplaced missiles)

At low TL's if you need to build defensive forces you are really restricted to defensive emplacements. The "cheap, fast, good, pick two" mantra becomes "cheap, fast, good, pick one" Building "offensive" forces is pointless.

I'd reccomend missile and laser bays dug well into a convenient planetoid with multiple redundant sensor emplacements: a few thousand points of (free) armour is a decent leveler at low TL's, but you will need enough "point defence" (50kT anti-missile missiles or laser bays) to stop contact hits with nukes.

Scott Martin

 

[Badbru]

Originally posted by Scott Martin: FIM's would be problematic, since TNE has no rules to build them...

Yes, and no. Do you not have the robot design sequence from "Vampire Fleets"? Just stick one or more robot brains in the missile and give it an appropriate programming package, ie skills; Sensors, and Gunnery Missiles. Don't forget the sensor too.

I have a few designs in the TL-10 range. TNE basically makes combat craft below TL-10 (before EMS / PEMS) untenable, since they will never attain sensor lock. (the extra 2 diff mods against EMM coupled with the HUGE sizes of Radar / HRT sensor arrays just kill TL-9 designs)

Hi res thermal aren't that much bigger than similar capability PEMS though you will be restricted to a fairly short -short range- . Radar is indeed probably a waste. Not everything has EM Masking, or are you talking Wargamming here again?

SIM's are one of the weapons of choice, but you want MFD's for missile control (you still get 3 missiles per MFD at TL-9) and with the mind-bendingly large crew requirements at low TL's, you will really want the crew reduction.

The trouble is with the pencil beam active sensor used as a beam pointer, as it must come from the Radar table at tech levels below ten which results in the best MFD having a range of Two hexes. Sure, you can put your ten hex laser com in the MFD to give it the ability to control missiles but the MFDs' range, and therefore it's Task rolls, are based on the PB active sensor. Hence, since low tech MFDs are also huge volume wise, and expensive at all tech levels, why would you bother with one. Just replace with SIM's and FIM's.

At low TL's you probably want to power craft with a fission plant and use a fusion rocket as the thrust agent. Remember that you are effectively limited to 2G anyway due to lack of compensators.

To my mind this is the greatest problem at TL's below ten, that of thrust agent and power supply, and the problems of gravity and zero g.

For an essay on some of my thoughts regarding low tech SDB design, look here:
http://www.scottmartin.ca/Space_RPG/Hells_Dominoes.html

As you can see, I gave up and went to orbital weapons platforms. These get backed by enormous PAW's with insane rates of fire, and are still only capable of engaging "High Tech" (TL 11-13) forces at (cost) margins of about 100:1 with deep emplaced minefields (preplaced missiles)

At low TL's if you need to build defensive forces you are really restricted to defensive emplacements. The "cheap, fast, good, pick two" mantra becomes "cheap, fast, good, pick one" Building "offensive" forces is pointless.

I'd reccomend missile and laser bays dug well into a convenient planetoid with multiple redundant sensor emplacements: a few thousand points of (free) armour is a decent leveler at low TL's, but you will need enough "point defence" (50kT anti-missile missiles or laser bays) to stop contact hits with nukes.

Scott Martin

I tend towards Orbital Defence Platforms too.

 

[Scott Martin]

Hi Badbru

I don't have "Vampire Fleets" because I don't have a lot of interest in "Virus" and I assumed (incorrectly) that the design sequences in FF&S would allow me to build a seeker missile. The fact that I need a "Robot Brain" for something that a 486 chip could accomplish quite nicely strikes me as a bit weird.

The Wargame / RPG aspect in TNE (and other Traveller versions) will always be an issue: in my experience most military starship design is "wargame" based, while the "commercial" designs tend to be RPG based.

<tangent> We were running an LBB campaign with the PC's in a "scientific" fat trader when HG came out, and the "science grade" model/7 made this one of the most capable "military" ships in the region (as an artifact of the HG rules) </tangent>

I was amused at the 2-hex max range of radar, since most of the "long range" AEMS is likely to be done in the long radio wavelength (AKA "RADAR")

The description of AEMS suggests that they are also capable of using the short-wavelengths (AKA "LIDAR") which made me wonder why there wasn't an explicit rule allowing an AEMS system to function as a LIDAR array.

Current Radar is quite capable of detecting targets at multi-LS distances, although you don't want to be standing in front of the emitter when it's active...

The down side to orbital weapons platforms is that they are easy to take out with kinetic bombardment: I deal with this by having very restrictive rules on FTL transit, which restricts emergence to FTL "nodes" which are defensible in much the same way as "Starfire" allows the defence of Warp Points. If you do not have this type of restriction, then you are pretty much limited to deep (hidden) installations dug into planetoids

YMMV IYTU

Scott Martin

 

[Antony]

Though FF&S1 doesn't say it can be used isn't Ladar actually a pencil sensor by default?
IMTU I certainly allow the use of Ladar instead of pencil radar in my missile MFDs.

 

[Badbru]

With my orbital defense platforms I admit to taking the "rules lawyer" approach. I make them less than 10DispTonnes to get the size DifMod. I run them on batteries and solar arrays so as to have no "active" powerplant, which allows me to justify giving them the powered down DifMod, and I fit them with EM Masking for those DifMods. By the time I'm done the only detection task that is not beyond "Impossible", and therefore not attemptable is a short range Active EMS scan, and that is at the "Impossible" difficulty level.
By that time even the best military vessells are within 16 hexes and they're emitting active EMS.
So yeah it's very rule lawyer of me but the rules were made based on reasonably accurate assumptions I feel. It is harder to spot, and shoot, something small, cold, and masked.

As for Ladar, I can see how and why you might go down that path, seems aceptable to me. I just don't. I don't like to vary too much from the written rules so that anyone can duplicate my stuff, and so that I don't feel like I'm cheating, and so that I don't create unforseen problems for myself. In any event at the Tech Levels involved (TL-8 and TL-9, and maybe even TL-10) I don't think Ladar is that much of an improvement, range capability wise, over the radar anyway.
If you start down that path it leads to thinking, anything target locked by a Ladar is essentially Laser Designated therefore why not fit Laser designator heads on our missiles and have actual hull hits. Why not indeed you say? Because a TNE missile is big. Even a 20cm TL-9 HE warhead will likely inflict crits on targets unless you redesign all ships with massive armour levels.(A low TL 10cmHEAP warhead like the lyrebirds do 113C pen) I don't value reality that much that I let it break my -game- system and force me to have to rebuild all ships or rewrite rules that allready work for me.

 

[Scott Martin]

Of course a contact hit at orbital velocities doesn't need a warhead (and a non-nuclear warhead isn't actually going to enhance the damage) If you count the Kinetic Energy as untamped HE a 10 g submunition (way smaller than TNE space missiles) is going to inflict hundereds to low thousands of DV at BL velocities...

My OWP is the opposite of yours, and (IMO) simulates a low TL OWP better. The early mods are a hari under 100 dT (because that's the size of a shipping "ingot" of steel IMTU) and later versions are a bit over 100 dT. The main reason for the size is that these need to be manned long-term (months) which you can't do with a small platform and no artificial gravity. Link two of these together and you have low tech artificial gravity (although it get's "tilted" towards the ends...)

These platforms have a -1 dif mod (yup they're easier to spot) for anyone attempting to active scan it (and no EMM) since they are basically big slabs of metal, which return radar (and many other wavelengths) just fine thank you. Of course the 18+ inches of steel armour (AV 100) does tend to stop those "popgun" weapons, and for some reason Vargr ships mount 2-hex SR lasers.

In addition, decoys are pretty easy to arrange, since the system they are based in has steel as one of its primary exports, and a big slab of steel is pretty cheap (and reusable) as a gunnery target.

Scott Martin

 

[Badbru]

Of course a contact hit at orbital velocities doesn't need a warhead (and a non-nuclear warhead isn't actually going to enhance the damage) If you count the Kinetic Energy as untamped HE a 10 g submunition (way smaller than TNE space missiles) is going to inflict hundereds to low thousands of DV at BL velocities...

Yup, and that's why I don't like, or bother, with kkm's. Looks like any fighter with a 20mm cannon and and missile racks could take down a Tigress.

My OWP is the opposite of yours, and (IMO) simulates a low TL OWP better. The early mods are a hari under 100 dT (because that's the size of a shipping "ingot" of steel IMTU) and later versions are a bit over 100 dT. The main reason for the size is that these need to be manned long-term (months) which you can't do with a small platform and no artificial gravity. Link two of these together and you have low tech artificial gravity (although it get's "tilted" towards the ends...)

Seems I forgot to mention that mine are unmanned and remote controlled from dirtside defense bunkers, or anything with a laser comm for that matter. Mine are basically a turret socket at one end, battery and solar cells in the middle, and sensor and commo gear at the other end. It's the permanently deployed array that mounts both the sensor antenna and the solar panels that allow AEMS to spot it at all.

These platforms have a -1 dif mod (yup they're easier to spot) for anyone attempting to active scan it (and no EMM) since they are basically big slabs of metal, which return radar (and many other wavelengths) just fine thank you. Of course the 18+ inches of steel armour (AV 100) does tend to stop those "popgun" weapons, and for some reason Vargr ships mount 2-hex SR lasers.

In addition, decoys are pretty easy to arrange, since the system they are based in has steel as one of its primary exports, and a big slab of steel is pretty cheap (and reusable) as a gunnery target.

Looks like yours would last a lot longer in a fight but will more than likely be in a two way fight. Mine are one hit wonders but it's getting that hit that's the tricky thing. A mix of the two would be good static defense.

 

[Scott Martin]

Ummm... I guess I should point out that the system that these originate in doesn't have a major habitable body. It's much harder to hide the "control center" dirtside if there isn't any dirtside

The main issue is that the missiles need to be controlled from somewhere, and the sensor range is pretty good if you are using a syntletic array composed of a few hundered emplaced missiles as well as 20 or so OWP's.

I guess I'll have to post my rules for constructed synthetic arrays, since that also makes a big difference to detection in combat, especially for fleet actions.

On another of your topics I *do* use KKM's, which has the nice (from my POV) side effect of making my universe a "small ship" universe. Fighters are still ineffective since they don't carry anything with enough range to threaten a cap ship (even a 400 dTon Cap ship) and given a choice between carrying a 15 dT fighter which has 4 carried missiles, or carrying 19 missiles, I know which I'd choose.

Scott Martin