"Les Howie" writes
>
Steven M Bonneville ([email removed]) wrote:
>
> It looks to me like the lighter weapons are really only useful for
>
> anti-missile fire or to try and scrub the communications and sensory
>
> antennae off a ship. The only other thing I can think of doing with
>
> them is to try to saturate a big ship's anti-missile defenses and get
>
> a fusion weapon right up next to it. So I suppose the *really* big
>
> ships like the _Tigress_-types will depend more on what we'd currently
>
> consider very heavy weapons to do any real damage to the enemy line.
>
> I have no idea what sort of power the TNE equivalent to the meson-T
>
> delivers on target, but it is probably massive.
I've designed a cruiser-sized meson gun, resonably sized for that class of
ship, with a DV of 1000 (yes, one thousand). A Tigress could sport something
even larger, possibly with a DV several times that, depending on how
specialized
you want to design the ship.
> > The big ships will
>
> need to depend on heavy bays to back up the main gun, though, since
>
> the turrets and "pea-shooter" spinal mounts on escorts won't do much
>
> good.
> I'm not sure if the 100-ton bays can cut it; I haven't checked.
I have, and bay weapons tend to be pretty useless except as hull-scrapers.
If a PA is operating at the maximum Mj for it's length, its penetration value
works out
to 5 times it's length in meters within it's effective range.
I don't have the exact numbers here, but for a 50-ton bay that works out to
a PV of 60, and for a 100-ton bay a PV of about 80. Considering that cruisers
and battleships will have armor ratings in the THOUSANDS, they're only
good for blinding the enemy (a tactic which will be very popular in battles
under
BL rules, I should think.)
Bay mesons have such pitiful range they're not worth building in most cases.
Lasers should be limited to about 50 Mj/tech-level, which is an arbitrary
limit,
but is needed for game balance. Joule for joule, lasers are more versatile
than
PA's or MG's and have a superior ability to deliver damage to the target.
Allow them to compete directly, and there rapidly becomes no point to building
PA's and MG's. Putting a limit on them keeps them at the low end of the
weapons
spectrum, where they have traditionally been in Traveller.
>
Well, so much for the Meson armed death star -- back to the
drawing board, Darth.
>
Les Howie
>
Prograph International
- -------
P'shaw, I tried that ages ago with High Guard. Threw in the towel when I
realized
I'd have to depopulate most of a sector just to crew the engine room.
Considering
TNE ships have a crew requirement 3 to 4 times that of HG...
That's it! The Virus was a hoax! All those people never died, they were
pressed
into service to crew Lucan's Death Star!
Well, I can wish, can't I? ;-)
John Bogan