I agree that ortillery seems way underpowered. I mean, judging from the scale
used in FT, a plasma bolt could potentially cover most of the surface area of
a continent if someone wanted to be indiscriminate enough to use it
on an inhabited world. Missiles are supposed to be nuclear-scale
warheads.
Ships actually _survive_ getting hit by these things. Yet these weapons
are considered worse for planetary bombardment than ortillery is... which
leads me to wonder just what sort of specialized horror ortillery really ought
to
be portrayed as, when ships capable of surviving medium-scale nuclear
exchanges would prefer to use this rather than their normal weapons. I mean,
it would start to seem evident that having an ortillery satellite in
stationary orbit would be a huge advantage in a ground war, based on the scale
involved.
Just my thoughts.
Stilts
[quoted original message omitted]
Mark Reindl wrote-
After all, an orbital bombardment doesn't respect national borders, now does
it?:)
Mark
Which raises a question in my mind. Namely, does anybody else think the
dammage/firepower represented by ortillary to be UNDERpowered? I think
that the effects and destructive power in ortillary firesupport is too low for
the energy levels involved. If a anti ship gun can hit a target ship several
thousand (or is it million?) KM distant, and inpart enough energy to burn
through/destroy 100 tonnes of armour in a single turn (however long a
turn is, but the energy wouldn`t be inparted over the entire turn, the target
would maneuver to avoid the shot, so the energy would come form a single part
of said turn), ortillary should be able to hit anything above ground with
enough energy to destroy whatever it hit.
Which also raises a use for walkers, lower signiture from above.
G'day,
> Which raises a question in my mind. Namely, does anybody else
In SG what do you rate them as, Very large artillery?? I'd probably also
rate them as anti-armour vs armour and anti-personnel vs dispersed (just
to capture the effects of kinetic energy and all). Mind you I'm not one for
using much if any artillery in SG - I just know its gonna deviate and
land on me anyway!
> --- Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:
> In SG what do you rate them as, Very large
Are you nuts?
Based on the DSII effects of Ortillery, I'd say that orbital fire targeted on
a SGII table would kill everything not in a bunker, and they only survive if
they are at least 4 feet from the point of impact.
There's a reason nukes aren't modelled in SGII either.
> > Which raises a question in my mind. Namely, does anybody else
I do agree that both in DS and SG ortillery is vastly underpowered (but then
again my to-be-written TOE will include an orillery observer at the
company level, so I'm probably a bit biased). Also, the existing rules for
artillery cover only kenetic penetrator and explosive warhead type things.
While treating missiles and specialised ortillery fire as in the above would
be (sort of) satisfactory, it really doesn't suffice to reprosent the effect
of a ship's main beams, pulse torpedoes, neadle beams, railguns, or plasma
bolts on a ground target. Therefore, my 2 cents would be to suggest treating
these things as outlined below. I'll only coment on SG as my DS experience is
a tad limited. Main Beams (inc Pulsars): Everything within a certain radius
(say 18") is treated as if hit by weapon with impact dice something like
1D12*6*(Class of
beam)^2.
Neadle Beams: As a Class 2 Main Beam but w/ a smaller radius (for
argument,
8").
Pulse Torps: As a Class 3 Main Beam but w/ a greater radius (24") and a
greater chance for deviation.
Railguns oops, K-guns rather: Standard solid munitions treat as a hit w/
an
impact die of 1D12*(2+(Class of gun))^2.
Plasma Bolts: Treat as a tacticle nuclear munition.
I'm sure the actualy numbers I used arn't very balanced, but it's a go at it.
[quoted original message omitted]
From: "Bif Smith" <bif@bifsmith.fsnet.co.uk>
> Which raises a question in my mind. Namely, does anybody else think
One of the things I'd like to see in FT3 is a more expanded set of rules for
planetary assaults - especially assaults on Planetary Defences.
The prime objective is to make a set of rules that results in a good game,
without snapping my disbelief-suspenders too much. I'm also looking at
this
from a very FT-oriented perspective, my apologies.
I see 2 basic types of planetary defences - one for places without a
significant atmosphere, such as Luna, and one for places with a relatively
souplike one, such as Earth. The bases on Luna would be like grounded FT
ships, and could be treated as such. Each "base" might have a firing arc
restricted to 3 arcs, so you'd need 2 for minimal coverage, 3 for safety. You
wouldn't have to pay for basic structure, nor movement, nor warp, and armour
might be cheaper and
also Phalon-like.
But on earthlike planets, there's got to be a good reason for Ortillery.
Things like SMLs and MT missiles are too destructive. Beams OTOH could be
heavily attenuated by clouds and just having lots of molecules in the way,
while Railgun rounds are both too destructive (they burn up slightly,
producing a
Kiloton-range
nuke effect, then a megatonne range effect when they hit) and imprecise.
Outgoing fire from planetary defences would be just as ecologically unsound. I
see SMs and MT missiles as being OK, but not Railguns (they make huge
explosions
On Sun, 30 Dec 2001 18:38:58 -0800 (PST) John Atkinson
> <johnmatkinson@yahoo.com> writes:
Ever think of going to work for the Department of State? <grin> Country TBD
later? <VBG>
Gracias,
On Sun, 30 Dec 2001 21:43:16 -0500 "Z. Lakel" <zlakel@tampabay.rr.com>
writes:
> > Which raises a question in my mind. Namely, does anybody else
<snip>
Excuse me but in (?) MT wasn't Oertillery a specialized system *only* (i.e.,
extremely specialized and usable for Space to Ground fire specifically)?
I rather thought that ship to ship weapon was much less effective (Relatively)
then 'true' Oertillary in CSS (Close Space Support)
roles?!?!?!
Gracias,
> --- Glenn M Wilson <triphibious@juno.com> wrote:
> Ever think of going to work for the Department of
No.
I'd tell some Saudi exactally what I thought of his precious Sharia and then
we'd have another oil crisis.
> --- Bif Smith <bif@bifsmith.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> > Railguns oops, K-guns rather: Standard solid
Delusionally weak.
> These are probably the main weapon for use against
Uhh... depends on your definition of turn and MU. IIRC, someone once worked
out that if a MU is 1000km and a turn is 7.5 minutes then each thrust point is
1G of acceleration. Which works out so nicely that this is the Official Scale
of the NREverse. (IMUD*) Also works out so nicely that I rather suspect that
it's not quite so, but I don't care.
But since a K-gun round traverses this distance almost
instantly it must been accelerated up to a measurable fraction of c. At 30,000
km there's something like a
.1 second lag at lightspeed. If K-gun rounds were up
to.1 c, then it would take a full second to traverse their max range, which
would explain why they are quite hard to actually fire accurately at 30". 1.1
second lag built in from when the sensor signature originates to when the
rounds get there, and that
assumes quick-fast firing, but that won't be the case,
so say around 2-3 seconds. Which leads me to believe
that K'V rail guns a) have really spiffy predictative computers and b) fire
long bursts.
So you've got this big alloy dart coming in at.1 c. If e=mc^2, then a 100kg
dart is going to release energy equivelant to what, a small nuclear weapon?
I'll leave the conversion to precise kilotonnage to those who are into that
stuff.
Now fire a 30-round burst.
Sucks to be on the ground--and truly sucks to try and
drop this anywhere near real estate that you're planning on moving onto.
Now, if your distance scales in FT are larger, your railgun rounds have to
move faster to realistically hit the target. Which means they have even more
kinetic energy...
> --- Eric Foley <stiltman@teleport.com> wrote:
> things. Yet these weapons are
I refuse to acknowledge plasma bolts IMU. The idea of
an area-effect weapon in space in the scale ships
fight in is unsupportable. Which means Phalons don't exist, which is fine
because I find the minis to be ugly. No one will miss them.
IMU, Ortillery consists of metal (tungsten?) darts
under much less acceleration than a K-gun would have.
It would have an ablative nosecone, and directional control rockets.
Adjustable velocity so that if We have to punch a hole in a mountain to take
out a
NORAD-equivelant you can, but if We want to drop 50 of
them on a tank batallion and kill every tank without laying waste to the
entire city you can do that too.
Other options involve modifications to the SLM.
Instead of bomb-pumped X-ray lasers, they could be
outfitted with submunition dispensers or multiple large warheads designed to
penetrate armored structures, or FAE warheads, or whatever else We want. This
has the added advantage of being the main armament of Our stealth destroyers
(cloaking devices are NEAT) which allows us to get in an initial strike on the
planetary defenses. It also has the advantage of being simply a different kind
of ammunition, not weapon. So the same ship could be configured for
anti-ship strike or land attack, or both on the same
mission.
Using main guns of ships (particle beams IMU) is a last resort due to residual
radiation effects. We don't like residual radiation effects.
Obviously this will require some serious house rules, and that's on my List of
Things To Do.
> On Mon, Dec 31, 2001 at 08:08:41AM -0800, John Atkinson wrote:
The latter is consistent with the variable damage mechanic.
> So you've got this big alloy dart coming in at .1 c.
If you ignore relativity, you get about 11 megatons (0.5 m v^2, TNT
releases 4.2E6 J/kg). In practice it's more, because you can't get away
with ignoring relativity at that sort of speed - you needed to put more
energy in to make the thing go that fast - but it only makes about a
0.5% difference.
If you drop the same mass from an infinite distance from Earth, you get
about 1.4 tons-TNT energy release; that's a working minimum. It seems to
me that it wouldn't be hard to downgrade the energy input of a K-gun
used for orbital bombardment, and tune it at the time of firing to exactly the
energy release that the firer wants, anything from a big
aircraft-dropped bomb to a strategic nuke.
This is sufficiently appealing an idea that I'd be inclined to make it the
Kra'Vak's only method of surface bombardment, and invent some other mechanism
for humans...
> John Atkinson wrote:
> So you've got this big alloy dart coming in at .1 c.
I think you want the formula for kinetic energy.
e = 1/2 m v^2
Even so, a K-gun round fired at a planet will make
a big hole in something, or a lot of things. For
killing vehicles and infantry, a K-1 gun would be
sufficient.
> --- Jon Davis <davisje@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
> I think you want the formula for kinetic energy.
Oh, darn. So instead of a 11mT energy release we have a 5.5 mT energy release.
You've still sunk Okinawa to take out a bunker on the beach. The equivelant in
Dirtside terms would be to place a grenade on your gaming table and pull the
pin. Any mini which survives, survives the impact.
> Even so, a K-gun round fired at a planet will make
How much mass is a K-gun throwing around? I mean,
there's a world of difference between 100g and 100kg when it comes to this
sort of thing. Well, not that much since the energy mostly comes from
velocity, but if we're trying to quantify it in game terms it would be nice to
know.
> John Atkinson wrote:
If you were targeting an asteroid or airless moon, you'd have no atmospheric
dissipation of energy. A planetary atmosphere will generate an immense amount
of frictional heat that would vaporize the incoming slug at 0.1c. I'm sure the
Ks could "tune down" their guns to still be effective against ground targets.
> On Mon, Dec 31, 2001 at 10:20:12AM -0800, John Atkinson wrote:
> Oh, darn. So instead of a 11mT energy release we have
No; I used the right formula. :-)
> You've still sunk Okinawa to take out a bunker on the
But you can almost certainly dial that down - just by feeding the gun
less energy when you fire it - to whatever setting you want.
> Uhh. . . depends on your definition of turn and MU.
I was the someone, and it's pretty close. I don't recall the exact figures but
the equation is d=0.5at^2 where d = whatever distance you want a mu to be, a =
whatever acceleration you care for, and t = however long you feel the turn
ought to be. (Of course, at the end of the turn you've built up a velocity of
*2*
mu/turn...but we all close our eyes and pretend iit doesn't exist).
G'day,
> Are you nuts?
Yes, but that's a different thread altogether;)
> Based on the DSII effects of Ortillery, I'd say that
I'm not disagreeing John, but I was actually more asking a question about what
Bif did under the current rules (given they do mention they cover stuff coming
from orbit, but then don't specifically point to it in the stats section) than
what would be realistic (sorry that wasn't clear).
Cheers
> Eric Foley wrote:
> I agree that ortillery seems way underpowered. I mean, judging from
I
> mean, it would start to seem evident that having an ortillery
It is not that ortillery is underpowered, it is merely appropriately powered.
If you are bothering to fight for a planet, the last thing you want is to