I know someone has asked this before but I could not locate it. Since none of the starship missiles have their damages listed on the weapons table in the player's handbook for Megatraveller, what are the damage stats for them? I really prefer the vehicle combat rules for starship combat over the existing starship combat in the rule. But even doing searches on the web and here I could not find the information.
Missiles in Megatraveller
- Thread starter LordVan
- Start date
Ship missile damage is listed in the MT Ref Manual.
Missiles are not covered...
However, striker says turret missiles are 15cm CPR-Gun warheads, and bay missiles are 25cm CPR-Gun warheads. Which are in the Ref's manual.
Personal oppinion:
So, I'd use the tables for a 150 mm mortar in their use against vehicles for HE missiles.
See that (AFAIK) there are no rules for nuclear warheads against other than starships in MT...
About use of vehicle weaponry against starships, you can use the rules given in HT One Small Step. See also this thread for further details about using vehicle combat in starships.
- IIRC somewhere (I guess I've read in this board in striker) missiles are described as 150 mm
- In 101 vehicles, again IIRC (I don't have my cop handy), the missiles are told to be treated as mortar rounds for pennetration/damage (see RM, page 75).
So, I'd use the tables for a 150 mm mortar in their use against vehicles for HE missiles.
See that (AFAIK) there are no rules for nuclear warheads against other than starships in MT...
About use of vehicle weaponry against starships, you can use the rules given in HT One Small Step. See also this thread for further details about using vehicle combat in starships.
See that in MT turret and bay missiles seem to be interchangeable, according to ammunition rules, as you msut not discriminate among them.
Which is REALLY bizarre considering how much velocity a ship missile has, over even a short distance.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not (to say the least) a weapons/explosives expert.
While you're right about it, I understand that , as we're talking about HE rounds, the damage is (unilike KEAP rounds) not kinetic, but explosive, so the velocity of the round being (to an extent) irrelvant for the penetration/damage.
In fact, see that the damage and penetration tables for HE rounds are equal for low mortars, howitzers and hivel guns in MT:RM (pages 74-76).
BTW, there is no entry for 150 mm rounds, so you hould use either 140 or 160 mm (14 or 16 sm) entries...
Doesn't really matter. A missile traveling a few Km/sec is going to GREATLY overshadow a HE mortar round of the same size in pen & damage. The energy delivered is so much greater. The blast radius might be a bit smaller but the pen will be off the charts greater. Really needs a complete rewrite to be useable with ships missiles.
Unless you asume that, as it happens with HE artillery, you don't really expect a direct hit, but just so close as for explosive damage to affect the target.
And I also believe its quite posible that when firing at atmospheric targets speed will be not as high as when firing against starships in space, so, to an extent, reducing the effects you talk about.
At TL's using ship missiles you expect a direct hit. Guided mortar rounds are in final test stage right now (TL 7).
Claiming again not being a weapons expert, I guess when you expect a direct hit you don't use HE, but either HEAP or kinetic rounds.
AFAIK (and that's not much), HE is used to blast a zone with shrapnel and affect everything in it, not to aim for specific targets.
Meh. I was gonna suggest looking at COACC, but there they only point you back to the Referee's Manual. Useless piece of ...
Ahem, anyway a spaceship as a rule has enough base armor to shrug off an HE round. Zero penetration, therefore only structural damage - and the structural damage rules are broken. You could hypothetically bring down a dreadnought with enough hits from a .50-cal. I'm not sure how he intends to make this work.
I think the missiles are intended to be HEAP, and MegaTrav doesn't have a listing for a 15cm or 25cm mortar or other artillery round. Closest is a 14 or a 24. Me, I'd call it a 24cm HEAP, because that's the only one with enough punch to make much of an impact.
Ahem, anyway a spaceship as a rule has enough base armor to shrug off an HE round. Zero penetration, therefore only structural damage - and the structural damage rules are broken. You could hypothetically bring down a dreadnought with enough hits from a .50-cal. I'm not sure how he intends to make this work.
I think the missiles are intended to be HEAP, and MegaTrav doesn't have a listing for a 15cm or 25cm mortar or other artillery round. Closest is a 14 or a 24. Me, I'd call it a 24cm HEAP, because that's the only one with enough punch to make much of an impact.
Hardly.
There is a range regime where a single laser turret is a 99.999+% probability of kill of a missile. That range is several kilometers for a shipboard laser with a pointing accuracy of 0° 1'... commercially made home telescopes with power pointing systems often have that level of accuracy. (And that's a 3.4km range to accurately point at a 1m object... with what is a 30cm circle...). So, we need to use the smaller of diffracted circle or missile minimum Cross-section (15cm?)... so 1m/15cm=6.666, so we take and divide the range by that... about half a kilometer of assured kill.
The laser's diffraction limit is smaller than that, so...
out to about 3.5km, if the laser can track fast enough, it's accurate enough to hit a 1m target, and to 510m, a 15cm target.
Note that accuracy of about 0° 0' 5" should be readily done... high end home scopes can do that. And that's going a pointing range of 41km or so... and thus 6km is the do-not-cross line.
Also note: the HEAP round has a pen of about 41 at 14cm; 43 at 16 cm, interpolation makes the warhead at 15cm about Pen 42...
And Striker notes that it is "equivalent to", not "it is", a 15 or 25 cm tac missile.
The KE effect is profound, but it's not going to hit if the ship has a laser on PD/CIWS mode.
Oh, and published data on the CIWS is 1cm accuracy in still air at 1km. 0° 3' accuracy released data... with an autocannon.
A Trav 6G6 missile has acquired a velocity of 72 kilometers per second at the end of a 20 minute turn. It's acquired a velocity of 10 KPS after a bit under 3 minutes of flight, quite enough to get killed by that laser and still hit the ship a second later. Much therefore depends on what the target is doing: if the target's vector is unfavorable enough that the missile's acting as a kinetic kill vehicle, then the laser can kill the missile and the missile will still impact the target. The ship simply can't maneuver enough between the time the laser kills the missile and the time the missile remnant crosses the remaining space to hit the ship. Best hope is the ship pivots fast to try to make sure the dead missile impacts the hull at an angle and glances off (which would be just as effective if the missile were live).
Question is: what happens when something not designed as a penetrator smacks into a hull that's as strong as a foot thickness of steel? Great, the missile smacks home with a lot of energy, but can it deliver the energy or is most of that going to be spent deforming the missile into a pancake? To act as an effective KKV, the missile needs some sort of dense core that will resist deformation and transmit the impact to the smallest possible area.
Thought occurs to me that you could build a two-chance design. Build a missile with a KKV nose impactor and a KEAP warhead behind that set to fire at an angle off the missile's center-line. If the missile detects that it's going to have a near-miss, it triggers the KEAP as it passes.
What would the effect of ablative armor in the missiles be?
I assume the missiles to take evasive moves while in movement to their target. If so, the probablility to be hit while pointing the target is quite remote, so one hit is one miss for them. And remember odds are the target is also evading at very high speeds...
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In any case, as MT is depicted (and as tables are shown), I'd expect most of orbital pinpoint fire to be conducted by beam weapons (lasers and energy weapons, PA may also help if there's no atmosphere and if you want their nuke-like effect), while the missiles only used for area fire (mostly against dispersed infantry, too numerous to be taken off by pinpoint fire), probably with specialized munnitions as cluster bombs or FASCAM (or, if the moment comes, with nukes) and strategic bombing (facilities and cities).
Those beams are quite lethal and precise in atmosphere, do not use ammo (if you're attacking a hostile planet cargo space would be at a premium), and are more difficult to stop by PD weapons, so I expect them (and fighters) to be the main ortillery weapons, instead of missiles.
Those beams are quite lethal and precise in atmosphere, do not use ammo (if you're attacking a hostile planet cargo space would be at a premium), and are more difficult to stop by PD weapons, so I expect them (and fighters) to be the main ortillery weapons, instead of missiles.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
So we are now talking guidance system (capable of evasive maneuvers), ablative armour, a dense penetrator, a KEAP auxiliary warhead, a 6g engine (with evasive maneuver potential) and enough "fuel" for 6 burns - and all in a 50kg package.
Is it just me or does anyone else think this is verging on a magic missile?
Is it just me or does anyone else think this is verging on a magic missile?
Personally, as described, I've NEVER been able to figure out how (at the TL designated) a Trav ship missile was constructed. The spell Magic missile does come to mind...
The possible random lateral motion is trivial, as the speeds are the problem. And the ranges I noted are for guaranteed hit if able to track; that is, if the turret can point fast enough, the possible location error is so small that only the mechanical limits of turret tracking speed matter. Ships lasers retain high probabilities of hit for hundreds of kilometers.
Yes, for ships that are the target of lasers, and missiles as they get closer to defending L turrets, the hit probability would be so close to 100% as to not need a die roll (given ability to track) But, given the missile size in Trav, there is no propulsion source they can use to get that type of performance in the first place.
