Re: Fusiondrive Control Incorporated

> >  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.
>
> How bad an idea would you say that driving a truck full of explosives into
> a fortress wall is? Yet fanatics have been known to do just that.

  There is a difference here and it ties in with this:

> >  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,
>
> I thought that TNE rules was to be applicable to any Traveller period.

  and this:

> That just means that power plants needs a fix too.

  Having fusion rockets as 'the fusiongun from hell' means that you have an
*unlimited ammo* *no-cost ammo* weapon. Letting people detonate their ships
for some kilotons to some megatons of effect means that they have a *one
shot* *MCr40+ per shot* weapon.
  These limitations on detonating ships (either through fooling with the
powerplant or with the jump drive) takes away it's usefulness and removes
the problem IMHO.

> >  Hole three is plugged with doubletalk (but not as bad doubletalk as
> >cheap, common and generally magic 'force fields':).
>
> If force fields exist at all I see no reason why cheap, common force fields
> is any worse doubletalk than expensive, rare ones. As for the magic part:
> sure they're magic, but are they any more magic than jump drives, psionics,
> and contragravity?

  In Traveller they are.

  (Although I personally agree with the psionics:)

> >  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'.
>
> Slice it any way you like, unless you can come up with a cheap, common, and
> effective way to protect communities from a nuclear missile then cheap,
> common nuclear missiles are BAD, BAD, BAD in a gaming sense.

> And note that
> I advocated that such force fields should be expensive: To be found in
> cities and on warships, but not in towns and on merchant ships.

  What you look for already exists in TTNE and it is called the Master Fire
Director. You find it on warships and in the defence networks of worlds, but
not on merchant ships. Allowing the MFD to do the same for defensive fire
as for offensive fire means that a character with skill 5 and attribute 5
has a 95% chanse of stopping the missile *per individual weapon firing*
controlled by a TL8 MFD!
  Tie two lasers to the MFD and you get a 99.75% stop probability. Three
and it becomes 99.9875%.

  (Ok, there might be some cultural issues here. I (and presumably Hans?)
don't think that having shore batteries (guns and missiles) around civilian
harbours and gun turrets around international airports in Real Life is
in anyway strange. There are batteries around Gothenburg (a few manned even
now) and turrets around Arlanda International (unmanned).
  Personally I've always assumed that any starport higher than E (and many E
ports too) has several batteries of lasers and missiles. Manned.)

>       Hans Rancke
> University of Copenhagen
>      [email removed]

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