Author Topic: aerospace fighters and warships  (Read 5404 times)

ajac

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aerospace fighters and warships
« on: 15 June 2017, 13:36:04 »
Do we finally have any official rules for aerospace fighters caring capital missiles to deliver them like anti-ship missiles? Beyond the Alamo. I dont see why the innersphere states wouldnt use mass aerospace fighters caring one or two missiles to strike at targets.

snewsom2997

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #1 on: 15 June 2017, 14:21:30 »
Not Capital or Sub Capital, they are much too large. There are large Antiship Missile based on the Arrow that can be carried, but at great penalty. Each missile is like 5 bomb slots and requires a 5 ton Bomb Bay for each Missile to exceed that.

Dropships can carry both Capital and Sub Cap missiles, but something like the Vampire at 400 tons would only be able to carry 1 launcher and missile.

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #2 on: 16 June 2017, 01:32:48 »
I dont see why the innersphere states wouldnt use mass aerospace fighters caring one or two missiles to strike at targets.

Who says they don't?  Its simply rarely done because the fighters carrying them have limited maneuverability thus making them easy targets to any enemy fighters, DropShips, etc.  Not to mention that only certain units carry them as part of their standard stores.
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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #3 on: 18 June 2017, 04:12:13 »
I guess in a setting where everyone didn't forget that anti-shipping missiles were a thing then a fighter based long range ASM would be a thing (as would AMS and anti-fighter defences on Warships but thats another kettle of fish entirely).  In one story I read the Kuritan's used a pair of big ASM's that would be carried under a Slayer's wings, and they seemed to be an analogue of a Harpoon/Exocet missile but because of their size you'd need a good number of them to hit and cause damage.

Whilst because of their (quite frankly) absurd size a capital missile is basically too big for anything but a dropship to carry (seriously they are like 30 - 50 tons for a missile, which is bonkers! What are they firing, Shuttle SRB's?) but there would be an equivalent of a long range ASM.

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Maelwys

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #4 on: 18 June 2017, 07:06:28 »
Fighters don't really need to carry Capital missiles, they have access to the Anti-Ship missiles from TacOps. Barring errata, they take up 6 bomb slots (so only fighters 30 tons and above can carry them), deal 30 points of standard damage (equivalent to a White Shark Capital missile), and gets an automatic critical chance in the same way as a Barracuda.

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #5 on: 19 June 2017, 15:31:28 »
(seriously they are like 30 - 50 tons for a missile, which is bonkers! What are they firing, Shuttle SRB's?)

Something like that, actually. Naval missiles are cheap chemical rockets, it takes a lot of fuel and mass to get a chemical rocket moving that fast (15 kilometers per second based on the bearing only fire rules) and still have enough reaction mass left to actually maneuver and hit a target with any accuracy.
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marauder648

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #6 on: 20 June 2017, 09:57:07 »
Something like that, actually. Naval missiles are cheap chemical rockets, it takes a lot of fuel and mass to get a chemical rocket moving that fast (15 kilometers per second based on the bearing only fire rules) and still have enough reaction mass left to actually maneuver and hit a target with any accuracy.

Thats actually surprising, i'd have thought they would be a multi-stage weapon system, a big 'ol booster to get them up to speed which they then jetison the warhead and its own drive to allow it to manouver without having the additional mass of a then dead rocket and its associated fuel tanks hanging off the back.  But B-tech Capital missiles are basically more akin to a homing torpedo then basically or a modern SAM.
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idea weenie

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #7 on: 21 June 2017, 19:09:54 »
Thats actually surprising, i'd have thought they would be a multi-stage weapon system, a big 'ol booster to get them up to speed which they then jetison the warhead and its own drive to allow it to manouver without having the additional mass of a then dead rocket and its associated fuel tanks hanging off the back.  But B-tech Capital missiles are basically more akin to a homing torpedo then basically or a modern SAM.

They might be this for all we know.  Chemical rockets can be two-staged, and the Minuteman ballistic missile is 3 staged.  The Tomahawk cruise missile uses a rocket booster, then engages its internal engine.

Your design here is the most likely.  The first stage is a high-power engine that has little maneuverability, but is optimized to get the second stage near the target and within a certain cone.  The second stage is optimized for short-range dash and maneuverability to make sure it hits the target.  (Now I want to mount something like that on an ASF or Dropship to serve as a one-shot missile 'pod'.  Essentially a RL system but modified to fire multiple 10 pt warheads, instead of the existing Rocket Launchers that fire multiple 1-pt warheads.)

Now what I'd like to see are 10-ton booster pods, so a Barracuda can be fitted with 1 or 2, or a White Shark with one.  Each Booster pod gives additional range to the carried missile, and by making them 10 tons in size it ensures that the math is easy to handle.  You'd need an ARTS modified AR-10 launcher to handle missile assembly before firing though.

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #8 on: 23 June 2017, 05:38:21 »
Fighters don't really need to carry Capital missiles, they have access to the Anti-Ship missiles from TacOps. Barring errata, they take up 6 bomb slots (so only fighters 30 tons and above can carry them), deal 30 points of standard damage (equivalent to a White Shark Capital missile), and gets an automatic critical chance in the same way as a Barracuda.
Those aren't invented until the Jihad and I don't remember anything about them getting crit chances.

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #9 on: 23 June 2017, 11:10:53 »
TacOps. They crit as Barracudas.
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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #10 on: 23 June 2017, 17:46:13 »
I use the twin-engine small craft of my AU to fire Cap missiles.  Not really realistic.

I'm surprised there wasn't more of a push to have more of them after Turtle Bay.
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Legatus

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #11 on: 23 June 2017, 19:44:38 »
I am rereading Isle of the Blessed and just got to the part where Atomic Annie shows up and her fighters nuke the Red Angel.  No details on what or how, but a canon example of fighter launched nukes.

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #12 on: 23 June 2017, 20:34:06 »
Whilst because of their (quite frankly) absurd size a capital missile is basically too big for anything but a dropship to carry (seriously they are like 30 - 50 tons for a missile, which is bonkers! What are they firing, Shuttle SRB's?) but there would be an equivalent of a long range ASM.

Way smaller than the Shuttle's SRBs, which were each 590 tons.  Think something akin to a Trident SLBM in size, with an acceleration profile more akin to a Sprint ABM missile.  SLBMs are smack dab in the mass range of capital missiles, and the Sprint has a comparable acceleration profile.
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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #13 on: 23 June 2017, 21:42:58 »
I am rereading Isle of the Blessed and just got to the part where Atomic Annie shows up and her fighters nuke the Red Angel.  No details on what or how, but a canon example of fighter launched nukes.

Alamos. We got rules for them.
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Red Pins

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #14 on: 23 June 2017, 22:57:48 »
Tac Ops, right.  Gotta look into that.
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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #15 on: 24 June 2017, 04:37:33 »
TacOps. They crit as Barracudas.
What page? Because I'm not seeing it on 357 and 358 which covers the rules for these missiles

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #16 on: 24 June 2017, 14:20:03 »
Not really sure what to tell you. On page 358, the first bullet point in the Anti-Ship (AS) Missiles' box it clearly states

"When an AS Missile delivers a successful attack, it inflicts 3 points of capital-scale damage (30 standard-scale damage) to the target's armor; in addition, the Attacker rolls for a penetrating critical hit as a Barracuda missile."

And sure, these didn't make their way out until the Jihad kicked, off, but they weren't really needed before that. The SLDF's apparent doctrine means you didn't really want your fighters going after DropShips and WarShips, that's what you had DropShips and WarShips for. You wanted your fighters going after the other guy's fighters. The Houses and Periphery might have needed an Anti-Ship missile in the Star League era for their fighters considering the disparity between the Star League navy and the House Navies, but at the same time, that disparity probably meant they were loading up their fighters with Alamos rather than bothering with lower-yield weaponry.

The Successor States didn't really have the option to make such things during the Succession War, and until the Jihad, the Successor States probably felt that their navies were going to be on par with everyone else, and thus didn't need their fighters going after WarShips with non-Alamo weaponry. It isn't really until the Jihad when the navies take a serious hit and the advent of Pocket WarShips means that your fighters aren't going to just be going after WarShips, but also heavily armored DropShips that will need to be opened up by hard-hitting AS weapons.

SCC

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #17 on: 24 June 2017, 15:48:45 »
Not really sure what to tell you. On page 358, the first bullet point in the Anti-Ship (AS) Missiles' box it clearly states

"When an AS Missile delivers a successful attack, it inflicts 3 points of capital-scale damage (30 standard-scale damage) to the target's armor; in addition, the Attacker rolls for a penetrating critical hit as a Barracuda missile."
Sorry, don't know how I've missed that for years.

And sure, these didn't make their way out until the Jihad kicked, off, but they weren't really needed before that. The SLDF's apparent doctrine means you didn't really want your fighters going after DropShips and WarShips, that's what you had DropShips and WarShips for. You wanted your fighters going after the other guy's fighters. The Houses and Periphery might have needed an Anti-Ship missile in the Star League era for their fighters considering the disparity between the Star League navy and the House Navies, but at the same time, that disparity probably meant they were loading up their fighters with Alamos rather than bothering with lower-yield weaponry.
Wrong on so many levels. Unless your fighters are a threat to enemy shipping there's no point in bringing them along.

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #18 on: 24 June 2017, 22:29:39 »
They've always been a threat. Never needed underwing missiles for that. They've got internally stored missiles. And lasers. And cannons. And...
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Nebfer

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #19 on: 19 July 2017, 15:29:12 »
And for Reference the Novel "the Hunters" mentions that the Warheads for the White shark and Killer whale are 8 and 12 tons of HE respectively. No figures for the Barracuda that i'm aware of.

Also noting that their are references that B-tech explosives are notably more powerful than real life ones, that's a lot of bang (Like in Natural Selection where 250kg of plastic explosives is stated as having an explosive yield that would of registered as a 5.2 earthquake, which is equivalent to ~950 tons of TNT). Not to mention the Polaris Dropship noting it's cruise missiles are equivalent to nuclear weapons in damage capability's.

SCC

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #20 on: 29 July 2017, 04:26:28 »
Nebfer, that's not actually that much better then what we make today, that's less then 4 times more powerful then TNT, and C4's only a bit over 3 times more powerful.

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #21 on: 22 September 2017, 05:51:32 »
They've always been a threat. Never needed underwing missiles for that. They've got internally stored missiles. And lasers. And cannons. And...

Rocket launchers used to be my weapon of choice back in the day, could throw out a silly amount of damage in a single pass.

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Nebfer

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #22 on: 09 October 2017, 16:20:29 »
Nebfer, that's not actually that much better then what we make today, that's less then 4 times more powerful then TNT, and C4's only a bit over 3 times more powerful.

Are you sure about that?

This is 0.25 metric tons of explosives equaling 950 tons of TNT, Basically one gram of this stuff supposedly equals 3.8 kilograms of TNT (~8.4 pounds)...
AFAIK C4 has a effectiveness factor of 1.3 vs TNT (TNT being 1), Supposedly some FAE weapons have a factor of around 5.

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #23 on: 09 October 2017, 16:56:01 »
FAE and HE are different beasts entirely.  I'd think you'd need about a half page of caveats to make that comparison.

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Re: aerospace fighters and warships
« Reply #24 on: 09 October 2017, 18:31:17 »
And for Reference the Novel "the Hunters" mentions that the Warheads for the White shark and Killer whale are 8 and 12 tons of HE respectively. No figures for the Barracuda that i'm aware of.

Also noting that their are references that B-tech explosives are notably more powerful than real life ones, that's a lot of bang (Like in Natural Selection where 250kg of plastic explosives is stated as having an explosive yield that would of registered as a 5.2 earthquake, which is equivalent to ~950 tons of TNT). Not to mention the Polaris Dropship noting it's cruise missiles are equivalent to nuclear weapons in damage capability's.

I don't know if any of those assumptions can be taken absolutely seriously.

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