T5 HG Questions
- Thread starter szurkey
- Start date
I don't know how ship weapons will be designed, but I do know that personal weapons are designed more from effect, and not designed like FFS. And I like it a lot. It means dummies like me can design personal weapons quickly and usefully, and the resulting stats will work with Classic Traveller.
The last draft I saw of any starship rules had basic weapon types, base TL, cost, and displacement, then standard rules describing how they changed as you slide the TL up or down. More like effects-based customization rather than design proper.
I don't know if there will be a "fleet"-level combat system. I'm hoping it will have a reasonably easy way to mass any number of weapons of one type into one attack, so that (for instance) I won't feel compelled to roll 2d6 five hundred times for one Plankwell... and also so I won't be driven to using a computer program to play games for me.
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pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
That's why you use batteries, dude. One roll per battery. Waaaay lowers the number of rolls.
Yah, it helps, for sure. But it doesn't go far enough. Ever looked at the Tigress?
Or, ever fought two fleets against each other?
Batteries used in tandem with TCS' statistical combat resolution tables helps mightily, but it's not intuitive and it's not easy.
If batteries works, then why not go one step further and make it work for, say, any number of mixed PA bays?
Call it a massed-battery attack. Dedicate your batteries. Determine penetration for each defense -- with a small number of batteries this requires rolling dice, but after a certain point you use statistical results -- then if anything gets through, consult a damage table, where your number = the number of 100t bays (a 50t bay is a half a point) that makes it through plus 2D.
Or something. Anything.
All this just goes back to our initial poster's desires:
(1) An effects-based weapons design for starships (it will to a certain degree at least).
(2) A fast massed combat system for starships (I hope so).
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I've thought of that, too. Since battery factors are simply +DMs to hit and to pen, the ultimate solution is to add up all of the weapons of one type your side wishes to fire at a particular target and come up with a single DM (or a single damage rating, more like).
There's another consideration, one that HG didn't have to worry about: range or penetration or damage may all change with emplacement size.
In other words, weapons may have a purpose, guided by the weapon type and the emplacement size.
Or -- heaven forbid -- some weapons may undifferentiate at the turret side. When it's a Gazelle versus a Corsair, turrets and barbettes rule supreme. But when it's Sloans versus Chrysanthemums, those turrets might not really matter much of the time, and when they do, it might not matter that they're lasers instead of plasma guns. Maybe.
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Massed attacks
I've used a simple system for reducing the rolling for large number of batteries.
Roll for batteries in batches of 10, then for individual batteries.
For example, imagine a missile cruiser is firing 72 missile bays at several identical enemy ships.
Roll seven times, each roll representing 10 hits. Then roll twice more, each representing one hit.
(Alternately, you could roll 6 times x10 batteries, and then 12 times more, for a more accurate probability spread, but there's slightly more rolling involved.)
--Devin
I've used a simple system for reducing the rolling for large number of batteries.
Roll for batteries in batches of 10, then for individual batteries.
For example, imagine a missile cruiser is firing 72 missile bays at several identical enemy ships.
Roll seven times, each roll representing 10 hits. Then roll twice more, each representing one hit.
(Alternately, you could roll 6 times x10 batteries, and then 12 times more, for a more accurate probability spread, but there's slightly more rolling involved.)
--Devin
