Striker Book 3 DS 4 MRL Questions

[snrdg082102]

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to create composite documents for each Striker weapon system design sequence. The document is merging the DS 2 rules with, in this case, the DS 4 MRL rules. I'm also trying to list items from Books 1 and 2 that provides supporting and additional data to Book 3.

Going through DS 4 Multiple Rocket Launchers there are questions, some of which I've probably asked about already, on the DS 2 requirements that I'm not sure are part of DS 4.

Here they are:

1. Can MRLs be mounted on vehicles?

2. Can MRLs have a gun shield and would the item be identified as a blast shield?

3. Can MRLs have ammunition carriers assigned?

4. How many targets can a single MRL engage?

 

[Carlobrand]

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to create composite documents for each Striker weapon system design sequence. The document is merging the DS 2 rules with, in this case, the DS 4 MRL rules. I'm also trying to list items from Books 1 and 2 that provides supporting and additional data to Book 3.

Going through DS 4 Multiple Rocket Launchers there are questions, some of which I've probably asked about already, on the DS 2 requirements that I'm not sure are part of DS 4.

Here they are:

1. Can MRLs be mounted on vehicles?

As far as I know, any weapon system can be mounted on a vehicle.

2. Can MRLs have a gun shield and would the item be identified as a blast shield?n

Ulf ... why? Historically, the gun shield was used to provide some protection to gun crews when they had to conduct direct-fire against targets or were conducting indirect fire within sight of their targets - the targets under such circumstances were likely to shoot back. The MRL is a purely indirect fire weapon, ideally suited for shoot-and-scoot maneuvers and therefore ideally somewhere far away by the time the enemy arrives at their former launch site; if the enemy's in sight, the artillerist is probably in trouble. Nothing stops you from having one, but if you're using the system right, it's typically useless weight.

3. Can MRLs have ammunition carriers assigned?

4.

Book 2 describes reload times based on whether the rockets are in the vehicle or not in the vehicle. The latter could include rockets on the ground nearby or some such, but it would also apply to reloading from ammo carriers. Ain't no reason an MRL crew can't have an ammo carrier following them about.

How many targets can a single MRL engage?

An MRL is an indirect-fire weapon. As such, it does not engage targets - it fires at (usually) unseen coordinates given it by a forward observer and, with a bit of luck, there'll be targets within the firing sheaf it lays down at those coordinates. An MRL can only lay down one barrage at a time - it can't simultaneously fire on multiple map coordinates received from multiple observers. Although, I guess you could build a vehicle with two or more distinct separate MRL systems.

 

[snrdg082102]

Morning Carlobrand,

Thanks for the reply and your comments to my questions on MRLs.

1. Can MRLs be mounted on vehicles?

As far as I know, any weapon system can be mounted on a vehicle.

I think I may have asked the wrong question, however I have to agree with you.

DS 4 Step A Launcher states that a single launcher consists of a number of launch tubes plus fire control and carriage.

When mounted on a vehicle do I calculate the weight, volume, and price for the carriage?

2. Can MRLs have a gun shield and would the item be identified as a blast shield?


Ulf ... why? Historically, the gun shield was used to provide some protection to gun crews when they had to conduct direct-fire against targets or were conducting indirect fire within sight of their targets - the targets under such circumstances were likely to shoot back. The MRL is a purely indirect fire weapon, ideally suited for shoot-and-scoot maneuvers and therefore ideally somewhere far away by the time the enemy arrives at their former launch site; if the enemy's in sight, the artillerist is probably in trouble. Nothing stops you from having one, but if you're using the system right, it's typically useless weight.

The AC design sequence uses the CPR gun design system with exceptions. A gun shield is not listed as an exception which means, at least to me, that one may or may not be added.

In this case the gun shield, at least in my mind's eye, is deflecting the rocket exhaust away from the rear to protect say the reloads carried by the vehicle.

Instead of being a blast shield the better description would be a balst deflector. What do you think?

3. Can MRLs have ammunition carriers assigned?

Book 2 describes reload times based on whether the rockets are in the vehicle or not in the vehicle. The latter could include rockets on the ground nearby or some such, but it would also apply to reloading from ammo carriers. Ain't no reason an MRL crew can't have an ammo carrier following them about.

Ammo carriers are optional for MRLs just like CPR guns without changing the reload time, which is what I thought but wanted to be sure.

4. How many targets can a single MRL engage?

An MRL is an indirect-fire weapon. As such, it does not engage targets - it fires at (usually) unseen coordinates given it by a forward observer and, with a bit of luck, there'll be targets within the firing sheaf it lays down at those coordinates. An MRL can only lay down one barrage at a time - it can't simultaneously fire on multiple map coordinates received from multiple observers. Although, I guess you could build a vehicle with two or more distinct separate MRL systems.

DS 4 lists the exceptions to the CPR gun design system which means that anything not an exception is part of the MRL design process. DS 2 Step O states that all CPR guns engage one target per fire phase.

Based on DS 2 Rule O a single MRL would, in my opinion be considered to engage one target. Actually a MRL engages one target area which usually contains multiple targets, however for simplicity I'll stick with one target.

 

[Carlobrand]

...DS 4 Step A Launcher states that a single launcher consists of a number of launch tubes plus fire control and carriage.

When mounted on a vehicle do I calculate the weight, volume, and price for the carriage?

I would say no. The carriage serves as a base for the weapon system. The vehicle essentially replaces the carriage in that role.

The AC design sequence uses the CPR gun design system with exceptions. A gun shield is not listed as an exception which means, at least to me, that one may or may not be added.

In this case the gun shield, at least in my mind's eye, is deflecting the rocket exhaust away from the rear to protect say the reloads carried by the vehicle.

Instead of being a blast shield the better description would be a balst deflector. What do you think?

So you're not proposing a gun shield. You're proposing a rocket exhaust deflector and applying gun shield rules to judge its weight. Three points:

1. The Striker gun shield has an armor rating of 10 (Book 1, Rule 30). In other words, it's equivalent to an inch thickness of steel. I think that's a lot more than would be needed to simply divert a brief rocket blast.

2. There's nothing in the rules that makes it necessary. Shield or no, the crew can't reload until the launcher's finished launching, so it's presence doesn't improve efficiency. And, there's no workplace accident rule - which is to say there's no rule that would put the crew at risk from the system's backblast. Striker soldiers are assumed to have the presence of mind not to stand behind an MRL while it's launching - and indeed most soldiers as a rule know better than to stand right behind a rocket. It's really only visiting politicians and other civilians that are at risk.

3. Blast has to go someplace. Diverting it left or right only moves the danger zone; the risk remains. Diverting it upward is like putting a bright arrow in the sky pointing downward to where the MRL's located.

An exhaust deflector might be useful in an urban setting, where the exhaust might otherwise strike buildings and be deflected unpredictably or cause unwanted fires. However, it's probably not the best idea to put an MRL in an urban setting in the first place: buildings obstruct potential lines of fire and give the enemy cover and concealment to sneak up on the launcher. Better to position it outside the urban area, given that it typically has adequate range to do its job.

Might be useful in dry grassland or similar natural environments, saves the crew the need to clear a blast zone to prevent wildfires, but in such circumstances one wouldn't need it to be part of the launcher - command could have the engineering battalion work up a shield that could be carried and emplaced where needed.

...DS 4 lists the exceptions to the CPR gun design system which means that anything not an exception is part of the MRL design process. DS 2 Step O states that all CPR guns engage one target per fire phase.

Based on DS 2 Rule O a single MRL would, in my opinion be considered to engage one target. Actually a MRL engages one target area which usually contains multiple targets, however for simplicity I'll stick with one target.

The design sequences deal primarily with weapons design. The Book-1/Book-2 rules address the use of the weapons. MRL rules in Book 2 do not offer rules for firing an MRL at a target, so you'd be in the position of figuring out for yourself how to judge if one or more of X missiles launched toward a target actually hit it. The MRL rules have the rockets going up and coming down like an artillery barrage, with the affected area determined by the number of missiles and the size of the warheads, and however many targets happen to be in that area is the number of targets attacked.

While there's no reason you couldn't come up with a direct-fire MRL and rules for same, there's little real advantage to it. You can decide it fires like a direct-fire CPR (essentially like the shoulder-fired ATRLs), but take that same rocket and slap a cheap wire guidance system onto it and you've vastly increased its odds of hitting; it becomes a tac missile. There's no reason not to slap a guidance system on if you're envisioning it for the direct-fire role unless you're trying to keep the round weight way down (as for example a man-portable rocket) or you're envisioning a setting where rockets were available but guidance systems were not - in other words, you'd be looking at TL 5 or lower armies using Congreves or that ancient Korean launcher featured on Mythbusters.

 

[snrdg082102]

Morning Carlobrand,

Thank you once again for the help.

When mounted on a vehicle do I calculate the weight, volume, and price for the carriage?

I would say no. The carriage serves as a base for the weapon system. The vehicle essentially replaces the carriage in that role.

Mounting a MRL on a vehicle drops the carriage weight exactly like DS 2. Good now I don't have to change that part of my spreadsheet.

So you're not proposing a gun shield. You're proposing a rocket exhaust deflector and applying gun shield rules to judge its weight. Three points:

The option of adding or not adding a gun shield/blast deflector can be dropped from the design sequence even though it is not listed as an exception and being constructed using the CPR gun design system using mortar characteristics.

The design sequences deal primarily with weapons design. The Book-1/Book-2 rules address the use of the weapons. MRL rules in Book 2 do not offer rules for firing an MRL at a target, so you'd be in the position of figuring out for yourself how to judge if one or more of X missiles launched toward a target actually hit it. The MRL rules have the rockets going up and coming down like an artillery barrage, with the affected area determined by the number of missiles and the size of the warheads, and however many targets happen to be in that area is the number of targets attacked.


While there's no reason you couldn't come up with a direct-fire MRL and rules for same, there's little real advantage to it. You can decide it fires like a direct-fire CPR (essentially like the shoulder-fired ATRLs), but take that same rocket and slap a cheap wire guidance system onto it and you've vastly increased its odds of hitting; it becomes a tac missile. There's no reason not to slap a guidance system on if you're envisioning it for the direct-fire role unless you're trying to keep the round weight way down (as for example a man-portable rocket) or you're envisioning a setting where rockets were available but guidance systems were not - in other words, you'd be looking at TL 5 or lower armies using Congreves or that ancient Korean launcher featured on Mythbusters

.

DS 4 states that rockets are designed using the CPR gun ammunition rules the only ammunition related item that is not available is RAP. That means I can have laser guidance and variable ballistics on the rockets just like any of the CPR gun using indirect fire mode. Of course to keep the rockets really cheap the two allowed DS 2 features aren't going to be used.

Thanks again Carlobrand.

 

[Carlobrand]

...DS 4 states that rockets are designed using the CPR gun ammunition rules the only ammunition related item that is not available is RAP. That means I can have laser guidance and variable ballistics on the rockets just like any of the CPR gun using indirect fire mode. Of course to keep the rockets really cheap the two allowed DS 2 features aren't going to be used.

Let's clarify a point: when I said Book 2 MRL rules do not offer rules for firing an MRL at a target, I was understating a wee bit. Rule 35-C specifies that the MRL cannot be used in direct fire nor against targets within 30 cm. (300 meters). However, as you pointed out elsewhere, there are fictional representations of unguided rockets used in the direct-fire role, and if you want to emulate those, you'd need to drop Rule 35-C from your variant. Thus, I'm presuming our discussion on that score relates to an IMTU variant.

Variable ballistics? An interesting feature in the indirect fire role, but if you're still talking about direct fire roles, it doesn't do anything. Variable ballistics makes it harder for an enemy to use radar to track your rounds to figure out where you're shooting from, but if you're in the midst of direct fire, other spotting rules apply. Any enemy with a line of sight to the launcher itself has a chance of spotting it based on range, movement, concealment and camouflage, and when it fires, enemies in line of sight spot at +2 (Striker Book 1, Rule 14-D).

Laser guidance idea's likely to trigger some complaints from the player seated across from you. At the point where you're slapping a laser guidance on a rocket and using it in direct fire, it's basically a laser-guided tac-missile. Other guy's likely to complain that you should be using tac-missile rules for that. However, your rocket with the laser guidance in the indirect-fire role is pretty deadly:

"Point Attack: Instead of specifying a sheaf, the mission may be declared a point attack. All rounds will impact exactly on the target designated by the laser. Each round is resolved individually, as a normal sheaf with the burst size of a single round; in addition, if the target is a vehicle, building, or fortification, it receives one automatic contact hit per round. If the target is more than 35 cm from the original MPI, the rounds land instead in a converged sheaf."

Now, hitting that 35 cm mark isn't guaranteed, but it's not impossible. You could conceivably use indirect fire to have a one-round MRL with laser guidance land smack atop the enemy tank that's in your line of sight. The odds for an average initiative crew of hitting on one shot are slightly better than 50:50 - I think. Depends on whether you interpret that, "Per turn of fire" rule as counting from the first turn, and I vaguely recall some rule about MRLs being less accurate - but I'm danged if I can find the reference. I may be confusing the variable ballistics rule with the MRL rules.

 

[snrdg082102]

Morning Carlobrand,

I see the problem, which as usual is on my end, which is that the Number of Targets is solely related to a direct fire weapon.

Apparently the authors of the Striker Book 3 were not expecting someone as literal as I am sometimes, okay most of time , using the rules.

Thanks Carlobrand.

PS - Have you had a chance to look at the DS 4 summary I posted?

Let's clarify a point: when I said Book 2 MRL rules do not offer rules for firing an MRL at a target, I was understating a wee bit. Rule 35-C specifies that the MRL cannot be used in direct fire nor against targets within 30 cm. (300 meters). However, as you pointed out elsewhere, there are fictional representations of unguided rockets used in the direct-fire role, and if you want to emulate those, you'd need to drop Rule 35-C from your variant. Thus, I'm presuming our discussion on that score relates to an IMTU variant.

Variable ballistics? An interesting feature in the indirect fire role, but if you're still talking about direct fire roles, it doesn't do anything. Variable ballistics makes it harder for an enemy to use radar to track your rounds to figure out where you're shooting from, but if you're in the midst of direct fire, other spotting rules apply. Any enemy with a line of sight to the launcher itself has a chance of spotting it based on range, movement, concealment and camouflage, and when it fires, enemies in line of sight spot at +2 (Striker Book 1, Rule 14-D).

Laser guidance idea's likely to trigger some complaints from the player seated across from you. At the point where you're slapping a laser guidance on a rocket and using it in direct fire, it's basically a laser-guided tac-missile. Other guy's likely to complain that you should be using tac-missile rules for that. However, your rocket with the laser guidance in the indirect-fire role is pretty deadly:

"Point Attack: Instead of specifying a sheaf, the mission may be declared a point attack. All rounds will impact exactly on the target designated by the laser. Each round is resolved individually, as a normal sheaf with the burst size of a single round; in addition, if the target is a vehicle, building, or fortification, it receives one automatic contact hit per round. If the target is more than 35 cm from the original MPI, the rounds land instead in a converged sheaf."

Now, hitting that 35 cm mark isn't guaranteed, but it's not impossible. You could conceivably use indirect fire to have a one-round MRL with laser guidance land smack atop the enemy tank that's in your line of sight. The odds for an average initiative crew of hitting on one shot are slightly better than 50:50 - I think. Depends on whether you interpret that, "Per turn of fire" rule as counting from the first turn, and I vaguely recall some rule about MRLs being less accurate - but I'm danged if I can find the reference. I may be confusing the variable ballistics rule with the MRL rules.

 

[Carlobrand]

Still mulling it over. Overall, it looks like a good summary of the MRL design rules, but there's enough there that I want to give it more than a half-hour's attention, and some concerns - like the gun shield bit - I've raised in other posts and I'm not sure if I should restate them or just focus on the rest of the post.

I will say I am a bit concerned about the idea of using flechette rounds in MRLs, given the generally downward trajectory of MRLs in their terminal phase and the generally horizontal trajectory of flechettes' danger space. While one can get around that by envisioning a number of possible future-tech solutions, it involves coming up with your own rules to tell you how to establish a vector for the flechette danger space. Still thinking on that one, though.

 

[snrdg082102]

Morning Carlobrand,

Thanks for even a quick look

Still mulling it over. Overall, it looks like a good summary of the MRL design rules, but there's enough there that I want to give it more than a half-hour's attention, and some concerns - like the gun shield bit - I've raised in other posts and I'm not sure if I should restate them or just focus on the rest of the post.

I will say I am a bit concerned about the idea of using flechette rounds in MRLs, given the generally downward trajectory of MRLs in their terminal phase and the generally horizontal trajectory of flechettes' danger space. While one can get around that by envisioning a number of possible future-tech solutions, it involves coming up with your own rules to tell you how to establish a vector for the flechette danger space. Still thinking on that one, though.

Please remember that the summary was put together following a literal interpretation of the sentences of

1. MRLs "....they are constructed using the CPR gun design system, using the same characteristics as mortars with the following exceptions."

2. "Rockets are designed in the same way as CPR rounds. They are identical to mortar rounds with the following exceptions."

All I tried to do was enter exceptions of Book 3 and the additional information found in Books 1 and 2 that may or may not be pertinent to the design sequence.

Thank you again for the replies to my endless and often odd ball posts.