My assumptions are always that “fancier” == “bigger”. At TL X you can pack B capability into a missile size A. If you want to pack 2B, you have to get a 2A sized frame (or 1.5A or what ever), or get higher TL stuff.

IMTU the basic ship to ship missile is the CT ship to ship missile. Military ones have more delta-v and cost more, however they are the same size. They are fire and forget. Bays literally launch 100’s of them at a time. I think that my rule of thumb was 3 launchers per DT of bay, so a 100tn bay would sling 300 missiles per firing.

If you want a missile with more capability, aka a Fancy Missile, you’ll end up with larger missiles. You’ll get less in the air, less in your mag and be sad. ;-)

My uninformed belief is this:

If I can engage 100 targets, with a 99% chance of crippling each target that means that if you shoot 100 missiles at me, 1 will get through. If you can get bigger, better missiles (2x the size, for example) that increase the % of penetration, then you get a few more hits.

However if you just fire 200 “cheap" missiles at me, I get hit by 101 missiles. And that really sucks for me.

The basic thesis is that every defensive system has a capacity of targets that it can deal with that is less then infinity. If you can overwhelm that capacity, then you are basically guaranteed hits. Assuming that the delta between capacity of launchers and defensive systems is close, then smaller less expensive fire and forget munitions which can be salvoed in large numbers will be better then smaller numbers of more capable weapons.

If the defensive capacity is a lot higher, then missiles do not make sense. You’ll want beams. This is a very interesting universe as well. Broadsides of beam weapons, with missiles regulated to anti-fighter and small craft work. IMTU, beam weapons are very short ranged (missiles have 30’ of range, beams 2 - 6’, Bays 2 - 10’, spinal weapons 12- 24’, so with out spinal weapons that gets down right close)

If the defensive capacity is a lot lower, then you end up with SFB - a few, very expensive and capable torpedoes.

Based on CT’s tables, it appears that the two capacities are close, thus in the CTU it would appear that overwhelming salvos are the way to go. ;-)





On Mar 24, 2016, at 3:53 PM, Ethan McKinney <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

The missing questions:

How much are your missile magazines mass-limited?

How likely is a single standard missile to hit its target?

Can you make fancier missiles just by spending more money, without an increase in mass?

Or with a small increase in mass? By how much?

How restricted are you in how many missiles you can fire/control at the same time?

Suppose that two missile - armed ships are volleying missiles at each other. Both have the same launch and guidance capacity. If one ship's missiles have a 1% chance off hitting and the other ship's missiles have a 2% chance of hitting, the ship with the better missiles is going to win. Depending on damage effects, it's likely to take far less than half the damage suffered by the loser (we'll assume assume simple Lanchester Law combat).

Obviously, assumptions change this a lot, but simply assuming that better missiles is a waste is, well, not thought-through.

On Mar 15, 2016 12:58 PM, "Greg Nokes" <xxxxxx@nokes.name> wrote:
Honestly, I don’t really see the value in fancy missiles. The vast majority of them will be killed in transit anyways, so the more that you can toss at an enemy the better. The cheaper they are the better. I see missiles as a wave trying to overwhelm defenses.

The only real advantage is any stand off, i.e. bomb pumped lasers. Personally, I’d think about seeding a few of them into a wave of KK missiles. The EMP’s will confused Point Defense sensors, and you might get a few hits with them ;-)




On Mar 15, 2016, at 12:04 PM, Jeffrey Schwartz <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

Take with a very large bag of salt...

http://www.pravdareport.com/science/tech/19-11-2014/129079-atomic_bullets-0/

The decay heat makes sense, but the half life issue isn't even mentioned.

100 to 700kg of TNT per bullet is quite a bit, but not total Armageddon.

Presuming this kind of thing is possible with Traveller tech levels
though, I think it would be a nice half-way on the "kinetic vs nuclear
missile" discussion in another thread.
Load up a MetalStorm style mechanism with these, put the whole thing
in a nuclear dampner box, and when it closes on the armored target,
begin firing a steady stream of Cf bullets. As they hit the target
ship, they'll carve a path inward for the shipkiller warhead still in
the missile.
Say a 10x10 array of barrels, with 10 bullets per barrel. That'd give
around 0.5 kilotons of "carving" potential. Figure maybe 25% actually
hit usefully, and that's still 0.1kt of carving.

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 2:46 PM, Mark Urbin <xxxxxx@urbin.net> wrote:
I can still think of several PCs in games I've run who would want one.   One
of my favorite lines from the Ringworld books comes to mind for the more
sane (for various ratings of sane) PCs that would carry a 25mm handgun with
a Cf round.  This isn't an exact quote, but close "The problem with having a
anti-matter missile, is that the crew looked for the first excuse to get rid
of it."

On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 8:35 PM, George Herbert <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
wrote:


The current consensus is that tiny Cf micronukes will be more like 20-25mm
projectiles but might well work.  The ones that small would be horribly
dangerously radioactive to have around and would decay rapidly barring
convenient damper tech like Traveller supposes...

George William Herbert
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