Missiles 102

Posted in Intercept on April 12, 2016 by Mr Backman

“William Turner: You didn’t beat me. You ignored the rules of engagement! In a fair fight, I’d kill you!
Jack Sparrow: Well, that’s not much incentive for me to fight fair then, is it?”

Missiles are for cowards? True, you can kill an opponent in his sleep, but isn’t that the ideal space combat scenario?
You: Not a scratch
Them: An unaware expanding cloud of slowly cooling junk.

My last article on missiles dealt with protecting against them. This time we’ll cover how to use them effectively. Missiles can be broadly be divided into Regular, Coldstart and Miscellaneous. As always, grab the latest rules, designs and design system here.

Regular
Regular missiles, small 15 min endurance ones, are not really that stealthy. The trick is to make your launching ships Drift as close as possible to where you think the enemy will be, and to make sure your vectors will differ by at least 2. This is fairly easy if you are untracked but really hard when battling for Initiative. If you manage to place your launching ships Drift on top of the enemy position every thrust G become a +1 DM thanks to the often overlooked Remaining thrust Gs modifier. Remember to roll or turn so your launcher can see the enemy, otherwise you’ll automatically miss. If your volley holds 3 or more missiles use the Spray fire option.

Cold start
This is another beast altogether. Launch them drifting from far away, you only need to be within launcher range when attacking. Keep in mind that each launcher battery can only hold control one volley at a time. If your current volley seem impossible to impact, give it up and launch a new, but remember that your launcher only carries 3 volleys (unless your ship has a magazine, don’t you just love those SDBs). If the enemy happen to Detect or Track your volley things get much harder as you may only have a G or two acceleration advantage over your enemy, if that.

Miscellaneous
Decoys and sensor missiles aren’t strictly weapons but can be really useful in stealthy situations such as blockade running, agent injection, smuggling, space piracy etc.
Decoys
Concentrate on the Visual signature as IR Scans are rarely used. Match your ships Visual(Hull) if you can as the enemy will probably know what class of vessels to expect. Launch the decoys early and remember that even thrustless decoy volleys must be handled by a launcher battery (to simplify gameplay), ditch your decoys whenever you wish to launch regular missiles. Missiles are cheap, ships are not.
Sensors
Sensor missiles are mostly used to closely monitor a planet. Put a sensor in orbit and have it Scan a 3×3 sq area on the planet (maybe an entire box for large planets). Why do that? The sensing ship must be within 5 times the Scan size or less, with sensor missiles you can scan small areas without running the risk of being found yourself. Just remember that sensor missiles must be in Line of Sight with the controlling ship, this requirement holds for all missiles by the way.

1 Comment »

Crashes

Posted in Intercept on January 11, 2016 by Mr Backman

The best scene from the wonderful Pitch black movie (you know, Riddick before becoming some kind of Warhammer thing) is easily the ship crash in the beginning with the ship taking severe aerobrake damage and getting pounded some more when actually crashing on the planet. Good stuff! (full disclosure: I did the AI coding for Riddick: Escape from Butcher bay, and Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena so I am a bit partial to Pitch black, which these games are prequels to. Assault on Dark athena actually contain both games, and a multiplayer too).

Aerobrake damage

Crashing on a planet with atmosphere will first do a step of aerobrake damage where the ship slows from braking against the atmosphere. Any remaining speed will be taken as crash damage which is much worse, believe me.

A crash occur when a ship with non-zero speed during Drift has its Past on a planet. Remember that ships with Past on a planet are not affected by gravity (what direction should the gravity be?). If the ship has an atmosphere mandatory aerobrake will occur, if not continue to landing damage below.

Aerobrake with Atmos drag from page 20, you may brake more if your ship has wings, up to your ship’s Wing drag. If aerobrake damage modifiers are 1+ roll damage, streamlining is treated worse if the ship isn’t facing along its vector before the drag, ships will always face along the original vector after drag, yeah, turning for free.

Landing damage

A crash occur when a ship with non-zero speed during Drift has its Past on a planet with speed remaining after . Remember that ships with Past on a planet are not affected by gravity (what direction should the gravity be?).

Add up all damage modifiers from page 21 and if 1+ roll landing damage, the relative ARM and DAB modifirers are only used for docking and ramming. How hitlocation is rolled is based on the ships facing relative its vector, facing forward roll 2 D6 and use highest, if ass first roll 2 D6 and use lowest, all other cases roll 1D6. If the hitlocation is Destroyed reroll on Hull damage as usual. Don’t forget the whooping +6 Damage modifier when landing upside down, which can only really happen when landing on large planets.

Docking / Ramming damage

Docking and ramming works similarly to landing damage above but have some more damage modifiers, also on page 21, those taking relative ARM and DAB into account, the values used are from the actual hitlocatins used so larger ships docking with smaller are not safe. Roll damage if modifiers are 1+.

For an actual docking to occur both ships must hit Crew or Core and both ships must face and be rolled the same.

If you are ramming a larger ship, try to hit with your Hull versus their Surface or Thrust locations for better relative DAB and let us just hope you have better ARM there too.

Leave a comment »

Post new year post

Posted in Intercept, Rules, Traveller on January 11, 2016 by Mr Backman

Well this will be a short update where I briefly mention some of the new stuff added, I’ll go into more detail about some of them later on. Sorry about the long delay. Rules are hereand designs are here.

Jumpdrives

Before jumping the ship must inject fuel into its jump bubble, a layer of ionized hydrogen surrounding the ship, thicker the longer distances that are jumped. Jump prep takes 15 min to 60 minutes and uses 10% of the ships volume in jump fuel, per number of parsecs jumped, or Jn as the range is called. Small intrasystem jumps termed J0 spend only 5% of fuel but takes the same prep time. Ships with very small powerplants must turn off floor field and other power hungry components when prepping, the procedure is then called jump dimming, because traditionally the earlist jump capable ships turned interior lighting red during this, to warn the crew that a jump was in progress.

Rules can be found on page 30-31 as well as well as in the design rules on page 36, basic Jump prep or Jump dim time is on a row below the underpower modifiers, Underpower Thrust, Underpower Drift and Underpower Prep respectively.

Batteries

Batteries are either set to power just the floater and possibly Impulse thrust, or power for the entire ship. In both cases you input a nominal endurance in hours and Ship.xls will calculate the actual endurance loaded / unloaded. Multiply the hourly endurance by 4 and tick off each turn running on batteries, Impulse thrust is noted in GTurns used, typicaly twice as much as Floater alone. Ships running on batteries have the same IR(Power) signature as with a running powerplanet but no Neutrino(Power).

Don’t add batteries to your designs unless you fully understand the above rules, batteries are tricky and costly and not really needed for most designs.

All you need to do is to set the TL of the battery, whether you want its data for powering Float or the entire shio and the nominal endurance in hours, rules are on page 36.

Fuel converters

The Ammonia and Methane fuel converters have been combined into one, the water cracker is still a separate unit as it requires much more power. The special tankage row of ship.xls can hold any of water, ammonia or methane, but only one at a time.

I have added one Cutter fuelconverter and one Cutter fuelshuttle to the designs as the cutters are such common I though it would be good to get two ready made specialties aside from the regúlar one. Both the Mercenary cruiser and Survey cruiser has them as small craft.

See the sidebar on page 36 for details.

Workstations

The various waorkstation rows has been turned into one so all workstations must now be of the same type. The bridge workstation, aside from being a tie breaker for when Ship tactics skill are equal it also gives longer endurance, used by the optional Fatigue rules on page 25.

Battery modifiers

The modifiers for attacking with multiple indentical weapons, maybe from different ships if a Ship tactician is commanding them, have been modified to simplify designs at the cost of slightly harder to remember the breaks. The breaks are 2 for +2, 3 for +3, 9 for +4, 30 for +5 and 90 for +6. Fit three turrets with small missile launchers each for a +4 bonus from 9 missiles in a volley for example.

The tables are on page 9 and page 41 and of course in the 4 page table dupes at the back. Print out the last four pages at the back of the book to get handy references during play. All commonly tables and figures are there.

Detailed ranges and relative vectors

Those who want more detailed breakdowns of ranges and relative vectors can find tables for both on page 32.

Brace for impact

Every submarine movie has the captain yelling ‘brace for impact’ and now you can too in Intercept! At the end of movement, right before rolling for G-Loc you may opt to have the Crew and Repair Crew brace themselves. Bracing means they cannot Scan, attack or defend and they cannot perform repairs or power up powerplants. Bracing for impact ends at the end of the turn so you can thrust and turn or aerobrake while bracing for impact any number of times in a row. Basically, you cannot sense, fight or repair but take less battle, crash and aerobrake, you can also stand high G effects better.

The rules are on page 32, G-loc specific on page 25.

Leave a comment »

Defense against missiles 101

Posted in Design system, Intercept, Rules on November 22, 2015 by Mr Backman

At 06:00 on 22 September, the weather had calmed and the ships were patrolling at 10 knots, line abreast, 2 nmi apart. Lookouts were posted for submarine periscopes or ships and one gun either side of each ship was manned. U-9 had been ordered to attack British transports at Ostend, but had been forced to dive and shelter from the storm. On surfacing, she spotted the British ships and moved to attack.

At 06:20, the submarine fired one torpedo at the nearest ship from a range of 550 yd, which struck Aboukir on the starboard side, flooding the engine room and causing the ship to stop immediately. No submarines had been sighted, so Drummond assumed that the ship had hit a mine, and ordered the other two cruisers to close in to help. After 25 minutes, Aboukir capsized, sinking five minutes later. Only one boat could be launched, because of damage from the explosion and the failure of steam-powered winches needed to launch them.

U-9 rose to periscope depth from her dive after firing the initial torpedo to observe two British cruisers engaged in the rescue of men from the sinking ship. Weddigen fired two more torpedoes at his next target, Hogue, from a range of 300 yd. As the torpedoes left the submarine, her bows rose out of the water and she was spotted by Hogue, which opened fire before the submarine dived.

Livebait squadron of September 22 1914

Free trader firing missile

Image by Rob Caswell

Missiles are deadly in Intercept, especially those with the Cold start option that are really tricky to detect when drifting. The controlling ship may be far away and unlike beam attacks, the attacker isn’t giving himself away when attacking. So, how does one go about reducing the risk of missile death?

The basics

Missiles move last, after all ships have moved. They are still moved in reverse Initiative order but after all of the ships has done the same. Small missiles typically have an endurance of 15 minutes which mean their range is limited to the distance from the launching ships Drift and you. This means that if your ship is beyond 6 squares from the attacking ships Drift, no unmodified small missile can hit you. Safe, assuming they are not modified, assuming you track the enemy ship and thus know its Drift position, lots of assumptions.

In reality you may have a hunch on from what direction a missile attack will come from, based on the scenario. Always make sure you have lasers covering that direction through their attack arc, and make damned sure your aft centerline isn’t pointing towards the threat direction.

Radar

If the enemy is Tracking you, you might as well use your Radar. Setting a 1×1 square Radar Scan on top of your ship gives a +6 in Scan strength and small missiles have a Radar signature of +2. This should almost guarantee that any missile will be Tracked before impacting, so you avoid the -3 DM for defending against unknown attacks. As Intercept only allow two Scans per side per turn this isn’t practical for many dispersed ships but keeping them in close formation might help.

Cold start missiles

Cold start missiles sacrifice 2G for the ability to thrust and drift as they please. This means that a TL 14+ small missile will have 4GTurns of total fuel to maneuver with, larger missiles still have the 4G limit but have better endurance for larger amounts of GTurns. Keep changing vectors of your ship so the unseen Cold start missiles of your enemy must expand precious GTurns to keep up. Perform large IR Scans to see if you can catch a Cold start missile thrusting, a small missile thrusting have an IR Signature of +6 and even if you only get an Indication, you’ll know it’s out there.

Matching vectors

Matching vectors completely is well-nigh impossible but try at least to avoid having a relative vector of 5 or more as this give the missiles +6 on both PEN and DAM! Sure, they also get a -2 DM to hit but do you really dare risking that? Your defense rolls will suffer the same -2 DM too.

Design

Make sure your design have laser turrets on both left and right or both top and bottom. This way at least one will always bear. Large warships can take a lot of damage even from missiles but are still smoked when hit by nukes, add nuclear dampers too in that case. You are allowed two defense rolls against nuke missiles; one from lasers and the other from dampers. As results stack this is pretty effective against the threat of nukes. Two Fair results from lasers and dampers would require the missile volley to be VGood to still hit.

In Traveller, civilians and now allowed to have dampers but then again, neither are they allowed to have nukes. Even pirates usually avoid nukes as they tend to destroy the precious ship and cargo and then they’ll have the Imperial Navy on their ass as nukes are certainly a breach of the Imperial rules of war. Pirates with nukes rarely end up in court, they usually end up dead.

Page 41 cover the basic parameters of missiles and all the options to modify them, except the nuke option which is covered in the optional rules section page 23. Missile parameters are also duplicated on page 45 of the tables section at the back of the rulebook.

1 Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »