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ship weapon damages

manley_t

SOC-12
I'm wondering what criteria was used to set the damage dice to the different starship weapons. Primarily, why 5d6 for missiles?

???

ideas?
 
5D6? 5D6?

Oh. You had better ask in one of the T20 forums. Most of us gearheads are still using the earlier versions of Traveller
 
In T20...

Normal (HE) missiles do 1d6 per USP factor.

Nuclear missiles do 5d6 PLUS 1d6 per USP factor.

Hope that helps to clear a little bit up.
 
In T20 missiles do base 5d6 +1d6 per USP; radiation is extra damage on top of that.

I was curious as to what criteria was used to set different weapons in T20 at the damage that was give, the dice and the number of dice, etc.
 
The number of dice is based solely on the USP of the weapon (or a flat 16dx [no, that's not a derivative
] for Spinal Mounts). The number of dice rolled also interacts with the target's armor rating (1 AR removes the damage die with the lowest value...if there are more AR than damage dice, then all dice are removed vice one, and the remaining AR are subtracted from that last roll...if there are more damage dice than AR, then the remaining dice are totalled).
 
I'm pretty sure only nukes get the additional 5d6. The little asterisk note is next to nukes on the table, not normal missiles. I think the "All" part is a misprint. Otherwise, what's the difference between nuke and regular? Yes a nuke does radiation, but I cannot see a HE missile and a nuke doing the same surface damage at all.

Just like the table note for bomb-pumped missiles says 1d6+1/USP, but the table says otherwise. I think those are both candidates for future errata.
 
Normal HE is 1d6 per USP, nukes do 1d6 per USP and add 5d6. So a USP 3 missile salvo does 3d6 damage if HE and 8d6 damage if nuke.

Laser heads do 1d6 + 1 + USP hits with each hit doing 1d10 (laser hit)

See my post in "missiles a peeve" for the way I treat missiles to make them a bit more frighting :D
 
thanks for the input -- but my question was the *reasoning* behind assigning the dice values in T20.

And I'm pretty sure that in T20 basic missiles do 5d6 +1d6 per USP and nukes do an additional d12 per USP in radiation damage (from table). But I'll double check when I'm home.

It could be a misprint, I'll have to check the errata. If it is and it's not listed in the eratta this might be one that the Devs should pipe in on.
 
The reference to the extra 5d6 is with the star which is beside the nuke and not the HE missile, also the line mentions radiation which is why I think it refers only to nukes.

It makes sense to me that a nuke is going to be more damaging than anyones HE even tech 15 stuff.

As to why d6 vs d8/10/12/20 etc. I don't know. Damage variety is a good idea but the numbers don't make sense.

A meson hit doing d20 against a missile doing d6. The meson is a simple (well sort of :D ) explosion that happens to go off inside your hull ignoring armour, why it is so much more effective than a missile I don't know.

Also fusion doing d20 against a missile doing d6, a USP 9 fusion hit does 9D20, a USP 9 salvo of nukes does 14D6. Against an armour 0 target thats an average of 95 against 49 and against an armour 15 target you have possible max of 13 damage against a max of 4 damage.

The problem as I see it is the d20s, d6/d8/d10/d12 gives a good range without massively overclassing the lower dice.

Try Nukes/fusion/meson at D12, the rest as they are and either adding 5d6 to any missile salvo or not using it at all.
 
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