Fusiondrive Control Incorporated

> From: [email removed]
> Subject: Giving loaded guns to infants (PCs)

> I've thunk. An it seems to me that what we really need is a couple of
> carefully tailored science-fictiony gimmicks to make things work out
> properly. I'm thinking about force fields and similar not-very-scientific
> whatnots.

  Yikes! Force fields as a 'every ships item' in Traveller. Somehow that
idea does not excite me.

> Item: I don't want just any starship owner to be able to torch
> planets at will, yet we have these super blowtorches. Answer: Planetary
> force screens.

  I think "BAD IDEA to run the fusion drive in an atmopshere and BAD IDEA
to run it within a km or three from a solid object" takes care of this.

  Possible holes: Vacuum worlds, 'Suicide ships', and the rockets in missiles:

  Hole one does IMHO not need to be plugged. It has been noted in several
canonic sources that they *are* intensely vulnerable, so this won't change
anything.

  Hole two is made a little smaller by that ships are expensive, even more in
TNE and the trouble in arranging a remote control or whatnot, and the remainder
of it does not need to be plugged, since you can (probably) get the same
effects by blowing the powerplant.

  Hole three is plugged with doubletalk (but not as bad doubletalk as
cheap, common and generally magic 'force fields':). Like Steve has shown, the
engines on missiles are much smaller (and much less effective) than the
ship drives.
  Presumably the missile engines are related to the maneuver jets of the
ships, and since the 'BAD IDEA' idea needs that the maneuver jets are usable
in the atmosphere without any major bad effects, missile engines behave
similarily.

> Item: I don't want ship combat to be simply a missile
> counter-measure, counter-counter-measure oneupmanship, but with nuclear
> missiles being capable of vapourising any concievable metal what can we
> do?

  The enthusiasm over the missiles may have given the wrong impression but
at medium ranges, against any vessel with a energy weapon, the missiles are
IMHO balanced wrgt the other starship weapons: This is mostly because you
can shoot them down *at any point of their journey*, and this translates
to several times during a 'typical missile journey'.

  (Wonder if the sandcaster can be used against the laser from the nuke/laser
missiles...)

  Missiles that has to come into a few km or less of the target should be
even easier to shoot down, say a final round of fire at -1 difficulty. That
will translate to:
  Asset 10, At short range the basic hit task is Average. No range mod,
Submicro size +1 diff (Difficult), Extra close -1 diff (Average, aka 20 in
this case).

  Hmm, I think I've changed opinion again: To avoid making the class 2+
missiles totally worthless, there should *not* be an 'Extra Close -1 diff'
mod.

  So the way missiles should be used is in overwhelming waves at close range.
Most ships can't accomplish this, so for them all missiles are significantly
inferior to energy weapons unless against inferior targets.

>	Hans Rancke

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