Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 23:36:30 -0600 From: bonn0015@flipper.itlabs.umn.edu (STEVEN M BONNEVILLE) Subject: TL15 50-ton Missile Bay A useful weapon system for TNE starship designers: TL15 50-ton MFD Missile Bay --------------------------- Volume: 700 kL Mass: 317.856 metric tons (709.856 tons loaded) Power: 6.84 MW Crew: 4 Price: MCr 36.3544 Surface Area: 91.2 square meters MFDs have +6 Diff Mod. Four high-speed launch systems for 7 kL missiles are installed in the bay. Each includes a launcher, a mechanical reloader with eleven launch cradles, and a gunner's workstation equipped with a 300 Mm laser communicator and a 300 Mm MFD with pencil-beam AEMS. The bay also includes a magazine for storing eight more missiles, and 5.972 kL of space for customization. One custom possibility is a small fusion plant and fuel tank to run the bay. The bay contains 56 missiles, of which 48 are loaded to fire; the bay may fire 40 missiles in any turn and can control up to 24 of them. If the bay fires no faster than 16 missiles a turn, it may fire continuously until the ship's magazine is exhausted; at 24 per turn it can fire for two turns, then needs to spend one to reload. To fully load the bay and the bay's local magazine with standard TNE TL15 det-laser missiles would cost MCr 70. NOTES: It turns out that it's more volume-efficient to use a launcher/reloader system if over five missiles are installed, and the system is also much cheaper than an all-launcher system. A larger bay could use a seventeen-cradle system for each launcher, which could fire as many missiles as it could control every turn until the ship ran out of missiles. Most of the cost and power requirement of the bay is caused by the four local MFDs and the pencil-beam AEMS. The reason that they're installed here is that any ship with this bay will need them, and by giving them to the gunners I'm reducing bridge crew by four. Lower tech missile bays can easily be built by using space from the local magazine to make up the difference in the additional bulk of the electronic equipment. More MFDs could be installed on the bridge to enable massive single-round missile salvos, maximum at eight additional MFDs per three bays, allowing control of all 40 missiles the bay may fire per turn; of course, pauses would be needed to reload at this firing rate. The surface area was assumed to be exactly the same as a 50-ton laser bay. 1 Mm == 1000 km. Steve Bonneville ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 10:00:48 -0500 From: bonn0015@flipper.itlabs.umn.edu (STEVEN M BONNEVILLE) Subject: TL15 Laser Bays More starship bay designs: TL15 100-ton bay laser, 2.6 meter diameter lens ----------------------------------------------- Volume: 1400 kL Mass: 2742 tons Power: 214.1 MW Crew: 1 Price: MCr 21.979 10:1/70-220 20:1/70-220 40:1/70-220 80:1/70-220 TL15 50-ton bay laser, 2.6 meter diameter lens ---------------------------------------------- Volume: 700 kL Mass: 1363 tons Power: 106.3 MW Crew: 1 Price: MCr 11.063 10:1/49-155 20:1/49-155 40:1/49-155 80:1/49-155 Both lasers are of the tunable type. Both are listed as powered to normal ROF levels -- can go up to -2 Diff Mod (at x10 power). I checked what would happen to the 100-ton bay if it were beefed up to handle -5 Diff Mod; performance would fall to 1/64-200, and the other stats of the bay would also change slightly. It turns out that designing starship lasers is actually not too rough. My design procedure is different than FFS, because I streamlined it substantially to design for volume, range, and best possible energy. After I got the method worked out with the big bay, the 50-ton bay only took ten minutes. Here's how I did these weapons: 1. Decide the size of the installation. 2. Decide the effective range desired -- in this case, 2400 Mm, or 80 hexes. (1 Mm == 1000 km. I like expressing the final values in megameters, because it's more readable without the extra three zeros. I do almost all calculations in the normal units, however, so I don't screw up.) 3. Go through the range calculation in reverse to find the lens radius and focal area. Does the lens fit? 4. Pick an appropriate beam pointer from the chart. 5. Crew is easy -- it's always one. 6. Finding the ideal discharge energy for the laser, so that the best lens and HPG can be installed, is readily computed by using algebra to mess with some terms. The best DE in megajoules equals: Total Bay Volume - (Workstation Vol. + Beam Pointer Vol.) ---------------------------------------------------------------- (FA Mult * FA ROF Vol Mod * Focal Area) + (5 * (HPG Vol per MJ)) Volumes in kL (cubic meters). Area in square meters. This equation works for all tech levels, given appropriate numbers. I verified it against the standard turret laser at TL15. 7. Given the discharge energy, finding the lens and HPG volume is strightforward. Find all values for workstation, beam pointer, lens, and using one-shot *input* energy, the HPG, and the starship laser is easy to finish. I occasionally do a conversion from the old rules to TNE. I tend to use laser barbettes to replace plasma and fusion turrets, and laser bays for high-energy weapon bays, for the sake of atmosphere. It also gives the conversions some punch. UP NEXT: TL15 PAWS Bays, and general PAWS and laser issues. Steve Bonneville ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 15:06:40 -0500 From: bonn0015@flipper.itlabs.umn.edu (STEVEN M BONNEVILLE) Subject: TL15 PAWS Bays TL15 100-ton PAWS bay (26-barrel) --------------------------------- Volume: 1400 kL Mass: 2476 tons Power: 184.9 MW Crew: 1 Cargo: 32.9 kL Surface Area: 150.4 sq. meters Price: MCr 31.18 1:408 2:102 4:25 8:6 TL15 50-ton PAWS bay (21-barrel) --------------------------------- Volume: 700 kL Mass: 1177 tons Power: 84 MW Crew: 1 Cargo: 6 kL Surface Area: 91.2 sq. meters Price: MCr 21.07 1:275 2:68 4:17 8:4 Volume marked as "Cargo" is available for customization of the bay. If you follow the design sequence in FFS for PAWS bay weapons, they seem fairly pointless; they're incredibly weak. However, I recently tumbled to something interesting that I understand John Bogan figured out a while back. The PAWS bay-length systems are small enough that you could theoretically fit several into the same bay! The theory is that several PAWS barrels could get linked into one weapon with just one beam pointer, and combine their delivered energy but keep their range performance. If you allow this, then to find out DV: DV == 5 * SQRT(Barrel DE * Number of PAWS barrels). FFS doesn't explicitly say that this technique is okay to use, but it's reasonable and doesn't seem to break anything. This isn't very competitive with lasers yet. But if you also reduce PAWS lens diameter to reduce effective range to 30000 km, then you end up with something interesting; a very short-range weapon with a higher DV than the comparable laser bay, but which drops off in power very fast. So what are they good for? PAWS weapons have lousy penetration in comparison to lasers, so against a well-armored foe, the short-range power advantage is reduced. Depends on the rule system. In Battle Rider, these weapons are still dangerous to escort vessels, but in Brilliant Lances, these are useful in another way. The Brilliant Lances rules state that any hit by a PAWS on any part of a ship causes *all* non-fiber optic computers to undergo a System Reset. This is a bit misleading. According to the rules, if the computer resets, and no backup computers are available, *every system on the ship* resets. In other words, for the next turn the ship will have "no functioning maneuver drive, and no weapons which can fire". You may recognize that last phrase. It's the conditions in BL under which a ship is disabled, and vulnerable to a boarding action. Now, of course, the boarding ship also needs to have matched vectors, but it probably won't be too hard to do that *and* hit the ship with the PAWS again, causing another ship-wide System Reset, giving the boarders enough time to board. I think that this is going to be the weapon of choice for commerce raiders. The weapon has the potential to disable most civilian ships, with less risk of turning the target into a hulk to do it. It might be possible to take the target as a prize ship and make a getaway with it, using its' own drives, once the prize crew has taken control! Military ships need to have fiber optic computers to avoid this danger. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 15:20:08 -0500 From: bonn0015@flipper.itlabs.umn.edu (STEVEN M BONNEVILLE) Subject: TL15 Meson Gun Bays TL15 100-ton Meson Gun bay -------------------------- Volume: 1400 kL Mass: 1852 metric tons Power: 115.3 MW Crew: 1 Surface Area: 150.4 sq. meters Price: MCr 73.7 1:132 2:33 4:8 8:2 TL15 50-ton Meson Gun bay ------------------------- Volume: 700 kL Mass: 991.4 metric tons Power: 65.2 MW Crew: 1 Surface Area: 91.2 sq. meters Price: MCr 32.3 1:56 2:14 4:3 8:1 Meson gun design is similar to PAWS design. For a PAWS, range depends on both length and diameter, and power depends on length. For a meson gun, range depends on length, and power depends on cross-section ("diameter", in a sense). A bay-mounted meson gun tends to have poor range; neither one of these bays has an effective range of even a hex, even with tech-level bonuses. Worse, I think that any of the meson screen equipped ships in Battle Rider could stop a hit from one of these bays, even on a failed screen attempt and an Outstanding Success on the attack roll. However, unscreened ships are in more trouble, since sandcasters and armor protection can't be used to stop meson gun attacks, as they can for PAWS and laser attacks. In order to speed up design for these, I made a formula similar to the one I used in laser design to get a rough estimate of what the DE could be. I then fine-tuned the design from there. Coming up with an exact formula to design a meson gun isn't as easy as it is for starship laser design, because the crew requirement changes in 7 kL chunks, but you can get a figure that is close. Steve Bonneville