Ortillery

> --
So, how many of what color chits do I draw, or was that d100 vs target die?

> On Mon, 2 Feb 1998, Michael Brown wrote:

> So, how many of what color chits do I draw, or was that d100 vs target

Quality of Ship Crew, all Chits, Quality Die Type Inches in AoE, Scatters
Leadership * 3in in random direction.:)

20 chits, all colours ignoring Systems down, Firer. Otherwise, 10d12 vs d4
target die.

'Neath Southern Skies
*********************
Smeartrek: These are the voyages of the Starship Bubbles. It's continuing
mission, to destroy new worlds, outbreed alien civilizations & to boldly go
where not even idiot's dare to venture.
users.mcmedia.com.au/~denian/

> -----Original Message-----

A lot of the assumptions about the power of shipboard weapons comes from
assumptions about space combat.

We don't really have a gamescale, so we make up numbers for time and distance,
then backfigure to energies, with other assumptions, etc. This is all made up.

What we do know is what the rules represent, and the use of ships weaponry
against a planet other than ortillery isn't represented.

So, why not figure from the known to the
unknown, rather than from the made-up to the
disagrees-with-known?

Suppose the ortillery modules, as present in the game, are the only normally
used weapons systems. Why is this the case? I think Ortillery is effective,
but as I recall from SG2, hardly devastating. I never really focused on its
DS2 effects, so pardon my ignorance.

Perhaps the atmosphere diffuses lasers and plasma weapons to make them
ineffective? Perhaps ship missiles are thus also rendered ineffective being
bomb pumped lasers? Perhaps also they aren't designed to manouver
in-atmosphere.

K-guns and other kinetic projectiles may not be
as powerful as people are suggesting. Several reasons exist: 1) You might fire
not 30 rounds at 100kg, but 10,000 rounds in a turn at 0.1 kgs. Maybe a
ship railgun uses a (conjectural) multiple-hit
approach with each slug packing the impact of (say) an M1 tank round. 2) How
tough are FT ships? Is destroying a point of armour eliminating 100 tons of
material? I submit that it is not. I submit that it is penetrating said armour
and either spalling it or just leaving enough of a hole that it is
ineffective. This might take far less energy. 3) Lasers and other weapons,
firing at the conjecturally less tough vessels may well not have the insanely
high power levels I've heard discussed. Wrecking a bunch of hull boxes and
killing a few crew and knocking out a system or two might not take that much
energy at all... because a box is checked off on the SSD doesn't mean that the
box is entirely annihilated. Destroying a system (since they can be fixed by
DC) is probably representative of some component damage or software down or
electrical feedback or something.

So the K-gun may not liberate 11 Megatons. It
may not even liberate 1 Mt.

So, perhaps in the less overblown universe, these weapons then take on the
proportions more likely to limit their utility versus ground targets.
Additionally, the sensor rigs on ships not equipped with Ortillery modules may
well not be too useful versus ground targets as both the software and the
hardware is optimized for certain types of space warfare. The real reason to
install an ortillery module
may be to provide effective ground-covering
sensors. And the types of ordinance installed may be some sort of a launch
system that can deploy kinetic attacks or which can deploy varying warhead
types.

In summary, there are two ways to approach the problem: 1) make up some
numbers for FT stuff, then try to redefine ortillery and how hugely powerful
it is or 2) look at the rules in DS and SG and the lack of scale or speed or
anything of that sort in FT or any definition of what constitutes destruction
of a system and therefore abandon any imagined notions of UberMegaWeapons and
think of a sensible way to explain the rules as they stand in DS and SG.

Being the GZG universe, you are free to do what you want. I think the second
option is actually more palatable. But don't go around claiming your solution
makes more sense than the
canonical one - you don't have enough data to
make useful judgements (Jon's intentionally vague approach strikes again!).

Tomb.

> --- Thomas Barclay <kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca> wrote:

> Suppose the ortillery modules, as present in the

Well, considering it's not IN SGII, that's hardly surprising. On page 44
there's a mention of the dice roll to request orbital fire support, but there
are no rules to resolve it actually hitting the ground. Page 46 lists small,
medium, large, and very large artillery shell (very large being indicated as
coming from superheavy artillery or area saturation weapons, not space). There
are rules for deadfall ordnance off
of fighter-sized aerospace vehicles on page 50.  There
are rules for orbital insertion on page 51.

There are no rules for orbital fire.

> Perhaps the atmosphere diffuses lasers and

Probably.

> Perhaps ship missiles are thus also rendered

Being that a bomb-pumped laser is just that--a weapon
with a nuclear bomb as the detonator, I doubt that they would be
"ineffective." I mean, a 10kT explosion is a freakin' 10kT explosion. I don't
care how studly you are, you can't call that ineffective. They would be,
however, like hitting a fly with a hand grenade.

> Perhaps also they aren't designed to manouver

Down is not difficult.

> K-guns and other kinetic projectiles may not be

You still have to be moving fast enough to hit the target. You're talking
appreciable lag moving at light speed. Start to cut speed too low with no
terminal guidance capability and you're getting useless. So instead of 11mT,
you've got 11kT. Still not something I'm going to call down on a bunker.

> targets. Additionally, the sensor rigs on ships

This is highly likely.

> The real reason to install an ortillery module

Pet peeve: Ordnance. (Note this is not spelling flame, but word choice flame).

> may be some sort of a launch system that can

Well, by DSII rules the only difference between ortillery and artillery is the
fact that ortillery scatters.

> In summary, there are two ways to approach

Or . . . we can go off of the little-remembered and
rarely used module in More Thrust that treated them as pocket nukes. I can't
for the life of me find my copy of MT, but perhaps some kind soul can repost
those rules and we can hash out the PSB behind them.

> Being the GZG universe, you are free to do what

There isn't a canonical solution to the issue of
firing starship main weapons at ground targets--unless
you use to More Thrust rules which are hugely
powerful--but leave residual radiation effects.  Other
than that, we are I suppose intended to use ortillery as just normal heavy
artillery that happens to be
immune to counter-battery.

Which is a bit boring.