I was pleased to see the set of vehicles uploaded by Scott Kellog a couple
of days ago, and I hope you will bear with me while I repeat a subtantial
amount of his opening message and one of his vehicle designs prior to making
my comments.
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Scott Kellogg is the name, Stephen Smith allowed me
to take a look at some of the MegaTrav discussion going on
and I was suitably impressed. Neat designs you folks have
come up with. So I decided to repay you all with a few of
my own. I am afraid, I have no access to e-mail so you
will not be able to reach me very easily and there will be
long gaps between my having access to any comments to any
designs or ideas you might have but I would appreciate it
Scott Kellogg
[address removed]
[phone removed]
Ok, are you ready for the question of the day? What
is the rate of fire of missiles in COACC? GDW's Air
Superiority allows ripple fire of 2 missiles per round of
the same type of missile.
Well, that's against aircraft. More than likely, an
aircraft would be destroyed by two. OK, what about larger
targets? If an aircraft went up against a larger target it
seems conceivable to me that systems would be convertible
to fire a larger number of missiles. What specifically am
I talking about? Fighter vs. Spacecraft. Now anti-
spacecraft missiles weigh in at 50 kg for a normal missile
and 70 kg for a nuclear missile. These missiles are
therefore capable of fitting on any hardpoint, on multiple
missile/bomb racks as a matter of fact, if you use all
available hard points plus two wing tip launch rails and
four fuselage launch rails (allowed for in the errata and
vindicated by the RAF Lightning and the A-7 Corsair II) a
total of sixty missiles are easily mounted externally,
(ignoring the bomb bay for the moment.) That's two battery
rounds of a factor 6 battery, (TL-7) (at TL-13 it's factor
7).
That makes an aircraft unbelievably deadly. That's
the firepower mounted on a 1000 ton ship.
Real life example: in less than a minute the 'Six on
six test of the Phoenix missile system, six phoenix's
locked onto and fired on six targets in less than one
minute, by an F-14 Tomcat. Since a starship combat round
lasts twenty minutes, I can easily see an aircraft firing
off a huge salvo of missiles in the time allowed.
Game balance, you say? Well... maybe, but you could
easily build a huge number of squadrons of cheap fighters
with Fusion rocket engines. Also, with the enormous thrust
of the fusion rocket its very easy to build say a 12G
capable interceptor or even higher.
More mundane question: What are the penetration
values of the different air to air missiles? Suppose my
players want to fire a radar homing AIM-7 Sparrow at a G
Carrier?
Mundane question 2: If the minimum size ship
thruster plates can be mounted on is 20 tons (Fighting
Shi*s of the Shattered Imperium), what about Anti-Grav
plates? You can put grav modules on a 4 ton air/raft, Why
not grav plates? The rules state that fractions of Grav
plates and thrusters can be built Personally, I think the
20 ton min is stupid. It's torn apart a lot of my best
light fighters.
If you ask me, I use
Book 2-Starships: to design merchant ships,
Book 5-High Guard: to design warships,
and Megatraveller to design headaches.
I hope you enjoy the designs,
Scott Kellogg
Phobos (TL10) Mobile Artillery/Tank Destroyer
CraftID: Mobile Artillery, TL 10, MCr 69.51593
Hull: (60/150) Displacement=20 Unloaded=334.4,
Loaded=336.5, Config=6AF Armor=40D
Power: (18/36) 289.4 Mw Fusion, Endurance=30/90
Loco: (3/6), Maneuver=1G Antigrav Unit, NOE=140,
Cruise=900kph, Top=1200kph, Agility=0
Commo: Radio=System*2, Maser Comm=System
Sensors: P-EMS=Interstellar, A-EMS=Far Orbit,
Neutrino=Directional, Densitometer=Surface,
Passive Audio, Active Audio, Synthetic Vision*3,
Headlight*2 ActObjScn=Routine,
ActObjPin=Routine, PasObjScn=Formidible,
PasObjPin=Impossible,
PasEngScn=Routine, PasEngPin=Impossible,
PasAudScn=Formidible, PasAudPin=Formidible,
ActAudScn=Formidible, ActAudPin=Formidible
Off: Plasma Turret=x01,
Batt=1
Bear=1
Pen/ Auto Dng
Attn Dmg Range Fire Spc Sig Recoil
Plasma Turret 83/5 800 Planet(50000) - 45 H H
SandCaster 20/2 10 VLong(.5) - 15* L L
0.05MW Beam
Laser 5/2 4 Dist(2.5) 2 - H L
Def: DefDM+6, Scaster=x03, Smoke*6, Prismatic
Aerosol*6
Batt=1
Bear=1
All weapons=Point Defense Targeting
Control: Computer=4/Fib*3, HUD*3, DynLink=3
Env=Basic env, Basic Is, Extend Is, Grav Plates,
Intert comp
Accom: Crew=(Commander, Driver, Gunner),
Other: Fuel=104.2 Kliters, Cargo=24.5 ObjSize=Average
EMlevel=None
Remarks: The Phobos Mobile Artillery unit operates
primarily just under the surface of the water. The plasma
turret, sand caster and beam laser are all mounted on a
mast outside the main body of the tank. The mast is
projected above the water surface to fire. At TL 10, no
sensors have the capability to locate it effectively
underwater, at higher tech levels densitometers can
penetrate water, but even then the air foil combined with
the high thrust engines give it good speed underwater to
relocate before opening fire again.
(Believe it or not, you've probably seen this one in
action: The war machine in George Pal's `War of the
Worlds'.)
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There are a couple of systematic disconnects in the MT rules as they now
stand (Only a couple (-: ). I like Scott's idea of tallying up all the missiles
and firing them off in one or two volleys, as described above. Personally,
I would be too worried about it, even using the starship rules, but that's
just me. (I like armored hulls, so you wouldn't get any critical hits on me,
just knock out my weapons at worst.) However...this brings up the question
of using the design sequences to give advantages to certain classes of vessels
which may or may not have been intended.
I know that COACC gives designs for space-capable aircraft...but they are
incredibly light compared to the Armor-40 minimum spacecraft hull allowed by
the main rules. I was working over the "One SMall Step" rules for low-TL
spacecraft in Challenge 45 yesterday (best article I've seen for MT in Challenge
in the last six or seven issues), and designed a "40 ton" lander. That's
displacement tons. This thing has an Armor 40C hull necessary to make it sp
spaceworthy, and therefore weighs close to 350 tons, empty. Now, 40 displace-
ment tons corresponds to about a 9 weight ton COACC aircraft. Clearly a
COACC craft is virtually unarmored. (I could probably work out at various
TLs what the "equivalent armor" ratings would be for the various airframe
types based on their weights, apparent displacements, and so forth, but I'll
leave that for later.) Should we allow it in space? It obviously has a cost
advantage over a craft designed strictly to the MT rules. The same goes for
the computer...MT spacecraft must have them in triplicate, so aircraft are
again unduly advantaged. My compromise position would be to allow the aircraft
out of the atmosphere only with the backup computer systems, and only for
"short" periods of time, to represent the lack of radiation protection etc.
due to the thin hull. I really don't know...
The other problem that I want to mention comes in when you start mixing
starship components and vehicle components in the main MT rules. Starship
maneuver drives are the worst offender, since to save on calculational
headaches (apparently) their performance does not depend on the mass of the
vessel. (Which is silly, given the way the rest of the rules work.) As long
as everything is consistent (all spaceships or all vehicles) it isn't a problem,
but if you are dealing with 10ton fighters designed under the vehicle rules in
a fight with 40 ton pinnaces designed under the small craft rules, you have
a problem. Let's assume for a moment that the Phobos, repeated above, has
a 1-G Maneuver drive (which is how I read it, but I could be wrong). At
20 tons, I think that corresponds to about half a unit (I figured this out last
night at home, and I don't have my worksheet with me). Since the power
consumption of a grav maneuver drive unit works out to be consistent with the
weight and volume of an equivalent amount of regular grav drives from the
vehicle tables (except for a lower cost--bulk discount I suppose). I figure
that a maneuver drive unit has a thrust of about 650 tons. The Phobos, with
a 1-G maneuver drive on a 20 ton small craft hull, would not have enough thrust
to lift itself, let alone have any left for drive. As another example, the
Scout ship (Type S, beloved of us all) as listed in the Imp. Encyclopedia
has a 2-G maneuver drive, which has a power input equivalent to about 2.5Gs
gross in regular grav units. This should give it an atmospheric performance
of about 1.5Gs, 2.5 in space. These sorts of round offs are acceptable to me,
as long as I don't have to compete outside my class, so to speak.
When it comes to weapons, things get more out of hand. Scott has included
a starships turret plasma gun in this design. No problem there, except that
I think the weapons factors given in the player's book for starship weapons are
exaggerated. Example: A vehicle laser does damage points equal to twice its
power rating for beams, equal to its power rating for pulse. But a starship
pulse laser (250MW) does 750pts of damage. (Beam laser does 500, as expected).
A vehicle plasma gun does 20pts of damge regardless of power input, while
a 250MW turret plasma gun does 900. Seems to be a scale problem to me. A
turret plasma gun is also listed as having a range of "planetary", which it
probably should...in space. I went back to my copy of Striker (I think they
did a pretty poor job over all, if I can't play this game without referring to
my collection of out-of-print supplements etc., but that's another gripe),
and worked out a few numbers for a 250MW plasma gun using the equipment design
sequence. A TL10 250MW plasma gun would have a Pen 83 at ranges up to 7km
(so far it matches), and an extreme range (with a pen of 44) of 28km. This
fits in with the rest of the vehicle plasma guns, which is no surprise, since
the Plasma-A etc., were all taken from Striker. In any case, 28km is a lot
less than "Planetary". I'm not quite sure how to go about reducing the damage
values to something more reasonable.
In answer to a few questions that have been raised regarding penetration
values for COACC air to air missiles, I'd crib from the Striker rules, and make
the pen values equivalent to the penetration of a high-explosive round from a
mortar of the same damage value (basically how do it yourself missiles worked
in Striker.)
Well, that's my two cents worth. Personally, I'd prefer to do the caluclations
on a ton-thrust based maneuver drive, and know that the results would be
consistent across the board.
Rob Dean
(Slow week at work, as you can tell from the mass of vehicle designs.)