Zack's Missile Fix

[Zack]

How fast do missiles go? And how many can I carry? And what does it take to shoot one down?

Great Question

My suggestion: Treat missiles as if they were vehicles that can be carried by a ship, rather than a weapon system that counts against the craft's DR.

As an example:

A Tier 15 Missile would be the ICBM of SARP! It would have to be 250 meters long, travel at .45c, and have a hull strength of Tier 12 (unarmored).

This breaks down as being Tier 12 (unarmored) so that it can get the 0.075 speed boost, trade its 12 teir 12 weapons for one teir 15 warhead, and have to be 250 meters long due to size restrictions ect.

Smaller missiles could have a profile such as tier 11 warhead, with a size of 20 meters, or even smaller anti-fighter missiles clocking in at a little bigger than a door frame.

This also heavily nerfs missiles as an offensive weapon since if they are traveling at only 0.075 faster than their target then the target gets a full 4 turns to shoot at them (Assuming the target is fleeing the missiles rather than heading right for them). There are plenty of implications here, and ultimately I like that this matches modern combat a bit better.

Aside from this needing to be officially codified in the DR rules, we'd also probably need to add in somewhere that missiles can have a top speed of Mach 7-10 in atmosphere.
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This would be a super-narrow ruling, so we could always go in later to determine how many support craft / fighters / gear a ship could carry if it wanted.

 

[Wes]

I agree with this. I'd like to know what other people think before I make any decisions, though.

 

[Ira]

I mean what is a missile? Basically a ship that flys and into something then blows up!

 

[Ira]

But seriously, yes I dig this. In a setting like SARP, missiles are at best archaic. They exist, but you cant even call them poor mans weapons when we have rail guns, plasma castors, and lol beams. Not to mention the state of countermeasures probably means the days of out of sight combat are long over.

 

[Doshii Jun]

Disagree. They're a weapon; why not treat them as one? Also, what's the purpose of the nerf at this time?

Single-shot projectiles allow craft to punch above weight and remain viable in ways they otherwise wouldn't be.

We've drafted arbitrary rules before about how many X can fit on Y, or how many A can be supported by B. Why not designate such a rule now?

 

[Fred]

If we start treating missiles as shuttlecraft, then we open a wholly different can of worms in regard to the DRv3 system. Not even v2 really stopped to take account of ammunition as it was... and it hasn't really been a problem for it.

This is a problem ever since the 8-same-tier-weapon guideline Cadetnewb wanted so much for me to make. Blargh.

The way I see it, most weapon systems are treated the way they are under that guideline under two viewpoints:
- Can it decisively overkill something of its class?
- Can it be reliably fired for an entire battle?

If either of the two questions has YES for answer, it's more likely that the weapon will account for a 'regular' slot. The rest of the limited useage weapons are more an exercise of give-and-take during the submission process. Though it's especially more compelling if we get shown a picture and see clearly that "yes, my fighter plane can reasonably carry 12 missiles under its wings".

If you want to complicate it beyond that, I caution to think long and hard on the leap you want to make.

 

[Syaoran]

I think there's a happy margin in the middle. Because there are some missiles that down right should be 'craft' but those are strategic missiles, not combat missiles. Combat missiles are weapons. For missiles with a small amount of ammo (like no more than 4 shots) then you probably can count them as a tier or 2 lower than the damage they can do to account for their unreliability. But maybe still have the same max damage as the vehicle can have. So you still can only carry a missile 3 ranks above you, but maybe it'd only count as 2 ranks above you instead.

But yeah I can see strategic missiles counting as 'vehicles' because they're strategic missiles anyway so they're not something you're using in combat.

 

[Zack]

Bah.

Bah I say!

Missiles have one major advantage over lasers: You can fire them at your target from outside of your target's weapon range. They are the only weapon in the setting that lets you get a shot in without exposing yourself to return fire. If you can score a kill with missiles then you've really only lost your missiles and your ships haven't taken any damage.

Consider that missiles currently travel at near C speeds, meaning you only get one round of shooting at them before they hit and you can't run away to buy yourself more time. There also seems to be no limit on ammo or missile size meaning a ship like the Sharie can carry 6000 SDR worth of damage from its fighter launched torpedoes alone!

This means missiles, and long range missile interception, are a HUGE part of space combat.

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The reason not to treat them as a weapon with ammo is simple: If you have 20 missiles and one launcher then you can roll 20 attacks all at once against an enemy ship It is also implied that ship will get some point defense fire in against the missiles. The massed-missile-attack is certainly a thing that works differently than a machine gun with 20 bullets (or a squadron of flying machine-guns).

Then there is the question of missile size. How big a missile do I need to destroy a ship? There are dozens of micro-missile launchers on the site and it seems silly to be able to launch hundreds of SDR level missiles the size of a soda-can.

Then there is the question of how fast missiles go.

There is also the question of why Missiles should count against a ship's overall DR allowed but not things like shuttles, fighters, mecha ect? As it is you're penalized for making a ship that doesn't carry other ships because other small ships are not only 'free' they are 'double free' as they don't count against the buildup limitations if they are assigned to a ship.


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This solves many of the problems with missiles in the setting in a very clean way without us having to really add new rules.

Yes there is still the question of 'how much X can Y carry' (we have no rules for this right now) but this is somewhat-solved by powerful missiles being really, really, big. It also leaves the door open for someone to come along later and make rules for how much X can Y carry.

This also solves the problem of point-defense vs missiles. Missiles will now have teir-ratings so you get to know just how strong a weapon you need to knock them out!

This solves the problem of not having any rules for how fast missiles can go. This is a huge problem for the NTSE because there is no one who can tell me what speed is reasonable for missile submissions. Now we have a way of saying 'This is how fast missiles can go, and this is what is expected of SARP'.

 

[Syaoran]

I don't know of any SDR level soda can sized minimissiles

 

[Syaoran]

Also forcing missiles into the ship size limitation gives laser type weapons a -huge- advantage over missiles. Because lasers and rail guns don't remotely follow the sizing rules. (look at any power armor ever). Statistically it 'makes sense' because they'd be not counting to the size chart. But you've entirely forgot in canon logic. If missiles had to be that huge no one would use them at all. Because they'd be a waste of space on a war ship. They'd be better off filling that redundant systems or new fancy tech.

 

[Navian]

I'd be inclined to let missiles go twice as fast as ships, at least, for practicality, on the basis that going fast is essentially the only thing missiles do (and only briefly, at that). Though, I guess that raises the question 'why can't we make other things go that fast?', so maybe it's not worthwhile.

A 250 meter long missile doesn't seem that impractical for a tier 15 ship to carry, and likely much smaller than other weapons of that tier, although I'd think there's very few situations where such a missile would be called for.

 

[Zack]

Part of making good rules is making as few rules as possible. We certainly could give missiles a speed or size adjustment but then we'd need to make more rules to govern that.

Sticking with what we have already means we get to keep our rules set as slim as possible which will be easier in the long run.

Do missiles even need to go any faster? at this speed you're getting 4 turns of shooting at missiles if your ship is flying directly away from the missiles. If you aren't moving, or moving toward the missiles you'll still only get one round of shooting. The result is that a ship's maneuvering will have a result on your missile defense, as will launching missiles at a target from two vectors. I'm pretty happy with that.

 

[Fred]

I'm going X_X here. This was an headache I did not need tonight.

First off: Syaoran, the soda can mini-missiles are from the Mindy armor. They're pretty common. Also, DRv3 isn't handling them right. I made a bid to make mini-missiles as we knew them the actual smaller missiles on fightercraft and instate something called micro-missile to fill in for the missiles we actually used on power armor - a retcon of a sort - with the term 'missile' really devoted to anti-fighter stature. Wes vetoed me; he was keen on keeping 'mini-missile' as the classical power armor one. I still think my ieea was better, but there's no helping it. However, it does mean that the mini-missile presented in Drv3 should be Tier 4, and not Tier 6.

Our Soda-cans-of-death.

Zack, you mention missiles, but there's also torpedoes too. Like the KFY Z-1.

Can you demonstrate how you'd deal with Z-1 torpedoes fielded on, say, a Midori-class scoutship?

 

[Syaoran]

I know of the soda can mini missiles, but I had never seen one that was SDR class in damage. They're usually on power armors and stick to armor class. I guess the anti matter ones probably hit ADR5 in v2, but well that's anti matter and kinda screws with proportional damage anyway.. And I don't think there are lots different ones out there that do hit SDR level. (My point is I think Zack's statement above about that is very misleading and trying to give people a misguided impression)

 

[Zack]

Torpedoes/missiles/ect would all be lumped in as the same thing. Any guided weapon that can hit a target at greater than 3 light seconds.


For the KFY Z-1 at 2.25 meters I think standing upright it wouldn't quite fit in an office corridor so It would be a tier 6 body.

That would mean it would be Tier 6 (unarmored) with a speed of .45c and a single Tier 9 warhead.

This doesn't include a 'how much X could Y fit' style rule and if someone wants to introduce that later they are welcome to. One of Yamatai's fighters can easily hold 4 of these which thematically seems to fit the type of weapon these fighters should be able to carry.

Of course this also opens up the torpedo a bit for different options. There is certainly an armored Tier 6, .375c version, and you could easily hold 8 tier 6 sub munitions. The 'bomb pumped laser' is also a thing that can easily be done here. I know we've had submissions like that in the past but how do you balance being able to deploy 100 one-shot-lasers from a single bomb? In this case it would be fairly easy, you could make a Tier 6 torpedo hold 32 tier 4 one-shot lasing rods.

 

[Doshii Jun]

The reason not to treat them as a weapon with ammo is simple: If you have 20 missiles and one launcher then you can roll 20 attacks all at once against an enemy ship It is also implied that ship will get some point defense fire in against the missiles. The massed-missile-attack is certainly a thing that works differently than a machine gun with 20 bullets (or a squadron of flying machine-guns).

Can you show us examples of this? Because we've left behind this kind of crazy Macross-style attack, as far as I know.

Then there is the question of missile size. How big a missile do I need to destroy a ship? There are dozens of micro-missile launchers on the site and it seems silly to be able to launch hundreds of SDR level missiles the size of a soda-can.

Syaoran has the right of it, though Fred makes a point about how v3 is handling the Yamataian missiles. We can correct that without adding this new rule.

Then there is the question of how fast missiles go.

That could be fixed by finding the missiles that have no listed speeds. It also could become irrelevant if we figure out which missiles are doing too much damage.

There is also the question of why Missiles should count against a ship's overall DR allowed but not things like shuttles, fighters, mecha ect? As it is you're penalized for making a ship that doesn't carry other ships because other small ships are not only 'free' they are 'double free' as they don't count against the buildup limitations if they are assigned to a ship.

I struggled to make sense of this paragraph. Then I frowned at it.

Why would we penalize a carrier or cruiser for carrying other starships? CFS-capable vessels can nest other vessels inside their bubbles if they want and transport them that way; are we to penalize them for that?

You count single-fire projectiles against a ship's DR because they're a weapon. Period. If you're a freighter, and you decide to make your method of attack a trio of snubfighters with big projectiles dumped from your cargo bay, I say good on you and I hope your fighter pilots cover you.

The rules favor nations who have a lot of production and know how to use it. That is because that's most of what we have. USO could do that too.

 

[Zack]

Doshii, currently there are no rules for missiles. As such including missiles means the NTSE staff have to entirely wing-it with no guidelines to follow as to what is and isn't acceptable.

No we have not left macross style attacks behind.

No Syaoran is not correct as there are no limits in place regarding the amount of missiles you can take.

No this could not be fixed by finding missiles that have no listed speeds as we still have no way of saying what is an acceptable speed. We have established than .9c is too much but nothing more than that.

Nor does it make sense that a battleship is just as expensive as a carrier, but the carrier can have all the same amount of weapons and protection which makes a straight-combat ship a negative when for the same cost you could have that + fighters. Not that we're dealing with this now of course, but in the future it would be nice to have some rules to help make the distinction between battleship type ships and carriers.

This is a fix for the lack of rules for missiles. Period.

 

[raz]

Treat missiles as if they were vehicles that can be carried by a ship, rather than a weapon system that counts against the craft's DR.

This is a concept that generally makes sense for massive missiles like real life ICBMs or things as big as 40k-style torpedoes. It'd also be nice to have a limit on the ammunition missile/torpedo systems can have, since unless your ship makes them out of aether it's a big old gray area.

For simplicity's sake, why not a table that says how many of which tier missile (up to massive tier 15s) a craft of each tier size can fit inside and/or accommodate on outer racks?

 

[Syaoran]

Doshii, currently there are no rules for missiles. As such including missiles means the NTSE staff have to entirely wing-it with no guidelines to follow as to what is and isn't acceptable.

No we have not left macross style attacks behind.

Considering most weapons that fire missiles and are still used have a salvo max fire yeah macross attacks have mostly been left behind. Yeah some people still do it but if I remember right there is a limit to how much damage can be directed towards a single target by ships per turn anyway.
Also yeah there are no hard rules for missiles, but that doesn't make these rules the best rules.

No Syaoran is not correct as there are no limits in place regarding the amount of missiles you can take.

No one said that I said that there were rules in place for missile limit. Unless you only read 1 of my post and then Doshii's. In which case you simply shouldn't have started this topic if you're not actually going to read what's posted in it.

No this could not be fixed by finding missiles that have no listed speeds as we still have no way of saying what is an acceptable speed. We have established than .9c is too much but nothing more than that.

When Doshii says it can be fixed by finding the msisiles without a listed speed they mean putting a speed on them, and there you go, now you know how fast it goes. If you're talking about what the max speed of missiles is, honestly it doesn't -really- matter. Missiles can go fast enough to hit a target in their class. That's all that -really- matters the rest is just fluff for being awesome.

Nor does it make sense that a battleship is just as expensive as a carrier, but the carrier can have all the same amount of weapons and protection which makes a straight-combat ship a negative when for the same cost you could have that + fighters. Not that we're dealing with this now of course, but in the future it would be nice to have some rules to help make the distinction between battleship type ships and carriers.

Then you make rules concerning balancing carriers to weapons. (if that's even needed, most people don't try to push everything to the very limit) Cause you know Carriers can still carry missiles just like battle ships, so nerfing missiles wouldn't make them even. Especially since like I said, this nerf would just make it more practical to rely on lasers and rail guns, and just fill extra space with cool tech and redundant systems.

This is a fix for the lack of rules for missiles. Period.

That yes adding rules fixes the lack of rules, but that doesn't make them good rules.

 

[Zack]

A good rules set is a slim rules set.

There are certainly a lot of situations that we'd want to cover. Things like a torpedo-bomber that would carry one giant missile externally or a person walking around with an anti-power armor missile launcher like the SLAM.

There is also the issue of fighter craft, shuttles, and power armors being carried by a larger ship. If we are saying how many missiles you can carry then it makes sense that we should make a comprehensive rule governing how much extra 'stuff' a ship can carry.

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This makes trying to fix the 'How much X can fit on Y' problem a much bigger issue. Until we have a really solid set of rules for that, I would rather limit the missile fix down to just this. It would mean that the only rules added are basically ones that we already have. No extra stuff for anyone to memorize.