[Traveller Answer] Starship Weapons

Date: Wed, 30 Oct 96 23:06:43 -0500
From: Derek Wildstar <wildstar@qrc.com>
Subject: [Traveller Answer] Starship Weapons

Amused to Death (marz@hotstar.net asked:

BTW, why would anyone put in a TL 11 PA-Gun vs the 8 weapon laser battery?

Well, in the "Basic" starship combat system (in the T4 rules) PA-guns don't have any advantage over lasers - they're treated the same. More detailed combat systems will highlight the differences between the weapons - for example, the Role-Playing Space Combat system gives PA-Guns two damage rolls per weapon strike (instead of one). The amount of armor or structure removed is the same, but the PA-gun damages more systems.

The second reason becomes important at higher energy levels. There's a maximum power output per laser (limited by the power-handling ability of the emitter array - it improves with TL), and a maximum number of turrets per battery (ten). So a laser battery is inherently limited in the amount of damage it can put on the target (the 10-turret, TL-15 laser batteries approach this limit).

This is not true of particle acellerators - the power output is limited only by the length of the acellerator, and big military starships can have pretty long spinal PA-Guns, resulting in weapons that inflict more damage. Of course, this whole thing doesn't matter at all in QSDS, where all of the ships and weapons are so small that the "laser limit" doesn't matter.

The laser takes up less volume. Although the laser takes up a lot more surface area when you work out the area of power plant needed to run the PA, the laser kills it in that category as well

Surface area for power plants in QSDS is broken. This was discovered at the last minute (during playtesting), and all reference to QSDS power plant surface area was supposed to have been struck from the T4 rules.

To repeat: You can IGNORE all reference to surface area requirements for power plants in QSDS. Sorry, folks.

Or for that matter, why would anyone use the 9 laser battery vs the 8 at tech level 11?

They wouldn't ... the 9-weapon battery shouldn't be listed there, since performance is the same as the 8-weapon battery.

Why do I keep thinking of the Sprint commercial; 2 cars, identical, except one is red and one is blue, and the salesman says buy the blue car cause it costs more

Well, you can apply the "double damage rolls" rule to the T4 Basic Ship Combat system. This would at least give PA-Guns a little more punch, down in the small-starship area where PA-guns need all the help they can get.

Guy "wildstar" Garnett
Traveller Answer Team

wildstar@qrc.com
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