Archive through January 19, 2012
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board:
New Rules:
(FD) New Drones:
Multiple Missile Swarm:
Archive through January 19, 2012
Multiple Missile Swarm
Here's an idea for bringing the missile launch sequences from Macross and other anime into the game without being too powerful, or, as important, filling the map with counters.
The box on the SSD (destroyed on drone hits) represents the micro missile swarm launcher, which can hold up to 20 speed-32 self-guided micro-missiles.
When fired in offensive mode, it launches any number of missiles, up to the number actually in the launcher at the time, in a swarm at a single target. The number of micromissiles in the swarm is always known to all players. This swarm is represented by a single counter, which moves according to F2.0. (In anime, the missiles are shown to stay close in terms of their own size, let alone the size of an SFB hex.)
Any microMissile in the swarm can be fired at by FD1.5, taking one damage point to destroy. Note that some weapons fire (e.g., a phaser-1 at range five or less in a neutral EW environment) will be guaranteed to destroy a micromissile (indeed, overkill). Announcement of such fire will be sufficient to reduce the swarm by one micromissile.
When the swarm counter reaches the hex of the target, all micromissiles remaining detonate on the facing shield side, doing one point of damage each.
(Tactically, this can be thought of as a plasma torpedo with a warhead that is not degraded by distance, but is degraded by any weapons fire, albeit at a reduced effect.)
Tactics -and the source material- call for this weapon to be effective against squadrons of fighters, I'm thinking of a mode where if the target is within three hexes of the ship, any number of swarms can be launched on the same impulse at different units that are also in that hex. The need to do a minimum amount of damage to destroy a drone or cripple a shuttle should keep the player from dividing it into too many "swarmlets" (all micromissiles with the same target are part of the same swarm), and the speed and distance should keep them from being on the board for very long. (The once per turn and not within 1/4 turn firing rate cannot be explained physically like drone racks; any micromissile was ready to launch the impulse the rest of the swarm did, why couldn't it launch a few impulses later? So I'm going to say the holdup is the targeting scanner. Getting a fix on more than one object if too far away, or too widely separated if close just takes a lot of time with this system.)
I'm thinking of a reduced system to be carried by fighters. No swarmlet capability, but two launchers of maybe six micromissiles each to allow flexibility.
The launcher must be taken out of service at the start of a turn for reloading. Reloading is done by transporter in a modification of G25.3. This could explain the small size of the warheads, as being the amount allowed with the special safety systems in place. Loading requires one transporter box (representing that part of the capacity of the ship's transporter network and processing; the actual loading is through hard-wired systems in the launcher) and 1/5 point of power per micromissile loaded. The transporter activity of loading is detectable, and announced. I suppose loading can't occur within 1/4 turn of firing from the previous turn, allowing the transporter box to be destroyed before loading, and any energy allocated to it to be lost. A subsequent turn's launching can't occur within 1/4 turn of loading, which might have been delayed to be done on spare battery power, or to run a bluff on the loading status.
I hesitate suggesting the use of external transporters to reload fighters without landing!
The micromissiles depend on the swarm launching system. They cannot be loaded into a scatter pack.
I'm not familiar with all the extra-Alpha weapons. I'm resigned to being told this weapon is workable and unique, with the workable parts not being unique and the unique parts being unworkable.
What about Control channels? And don't bother with the transporter. It's a complication that is there for the sake of making it 'different', when existing rules already cover reloading missile racks of all stripes.
Let's see.
If you launch this at my D7's #4 shield, I have a choice of firing all nine of my phasers and reducing the damage I will take from 20 to 11, or not firing my phasers and having my #4 shield reduced from 22 to 2 points, or some number in between. The trade off being you tie up my phasers, greatly reducing the total damage they might have done and allowing (unless I also have a micro-missile launcher) you to fire your phasers into my ship with no reduction in damage.
The point to the above is that you have to consider more than just the basic effects. A phaser-2 at Range 3 (assuming no EW shift) is guaranteed to score three points of damage and has a 50% chance of stopping a type-I drone (assuming no armor modules) and blocking 12 points of damage. You have reduced the phaser-2 to at most stopping 1 point of damage (albeit, it is guaranteed to do so and can save a half point of power by firing as a phaser-3 at Range 2). You are tying up all of the phasers for missile defense, and your actual defense is less effective than it would be against plasma torpedoes. Nine phasers reduces your missile swarm from 20 points of damage to 11 points of damage, whereas nine phaser-3s would normally reduce a full-strength plasma-F to a four point warhead.
Other rules you do not seem to have considered in the basic proposal:
Electronic warfare effect on the missile swarm warheads. If the ship has four points of ECM, how does this affect the strength of the individual missile warheads?
I assume wild weasels work the same as do wild SWACS and Wild Scout PFs, but how about a scout channel attracting a swarm missile? Can it attract more than one because they are so close together?
Given their small size and obviously even dumber brains compared to full-size drones (because there is less space for electronics and shielding) does a scout channel trying to turn them off have more effect? Are they subject to more loss due to terrain effects (does launching a swarm in a dust cloud instantly kill them all, can one missile be designated as leading all of the other missiles through an asteroid hex, or does each missile roll for possible asteroid impact by itself)?
Given how tightly they are bunched, would a type-VI (or type-I, or type-IV) drone (or a suicide shuttle) hitting the swarm destroy all of them in the blast? Can one counter plasma take out a whole swarm? How about a plasma-D, or a plasma-K? How about a plasma-R? What if the plasma-R is enveloped? What if it is an enveloped plasma-S? An enveloped plasma-G?
Given their small size, and tight packing, can one tractor beam snag a whole swarm?
Please note also that you have not defined endurance (the normal three turns, or fewer, or more)? And some will want a flat statement as to whether or not they can be modified (extended range, armor, etc.).
The above is just initial thoughts and observations.
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This could be in the late first generation advanced technology period. Earlier would raise questions of why it was never seen in previous scenarios.
This thing would imo have to replace heavy weapons at the least due to it's potential power.
A CA with four of these things would have a potential 80 point strike.
Perhaps to tie it in with some of the X1B stuff, first generation X-ship fire control can sweep phasers through a swarm for multiple hits per phaser? I would suggest as a first idea that the first and every 2nd point of damage from a phaser would hit a swarmlet drone.
Richard B. Eitzen:
I do not know about that. The reload cycle would seem to make it an inefficient heavy weapon, plus there is a question on just how many reload missiles would be available. And, again, it would seem to have some terrain issues (and electronic warfare issues) that would make it a less than useful weapon.
It might suit low power Orions fairly well. Could smack the heck out of a convoy (or it's escorts) with these things.
I think this weapon would have to be for a completely new empire, either simulator or non-Alpha. That seemed to be implied by the original post. These sorts of anime weapons don't really fit in the engineering used by Alpha octant empires IMO.
As far as the actual weapon's mechanics go, I think it's way too hard to stop. It's almost a guaranteed-hit direct-fire weapon. Fire a phaser-1 at Range 1 into a plasma torpedo and you're reducing the damage by 2-3 points, not just 1. Since the missiles are all close to each other and phasers "slash" through space, I think a single phaser should kill more than just one missile.
I propose a new type drone. It works just like a normal drone except that any weapon that fires on it can do a maximum of a one point of damage regardless of the roll. So, a Type-I version of this drone would have to be hit by four separate weapon firings to be destroyed.
Would this drone work in the game system? Would it be balanced? Because if it isn't, you need to realize that my drone is *way* less effective than these micro-missiles.
It's an interesting concept. Effectively, it's a 20 point drone you can incrementally phaser-down like plasma. Unlike plasma, you can't run it out because it doesn't loose damage with distance.
What's the endurance on these bad boys? I can't imagine it's more than 32 impulses given their size.
I concur that the reload makes it impractical. On a cruiser with 4 transporters, you'd need 5 turns to reload one of them ... which of course would be taken out by a single T-bomb.
If you feel strongly about the reload, it might be an interesting late year weapon for the RYN who actually have the capabilty to reload one in a single turn (in the worst use of power ever).
Sounds like great point defense weapon with a range of 1, vs drones and shuttles/fighters ----
Have it affect whatever is in the hex ---
if you are looking for a pre-existing miniature missile in a non-Alpha setting to compare with, there is the Stiletto missile; noted in part of the playtest rules for Powered Battle Armor, a system used to its fullest extent by the Human Republic out in the Triangulum Galaxy.
Quote:(DN100.3261) STILETTO MISSILE: A Stiletto Missile is treated like a Spear Missile (see FN103.2) but with these statistics: Size: 0.25, speed: 24, damage: 1, warhead: 6, endurance: 8 hexes, tracking arc: FA. A Stiletto Missile is self-guided and cannot receive any EW.
(Whatever the Spear missile is, it's not in the currently-published playtest data for M33; but may or may not be included in the "version 2" file which Francois Angers sent in for future consideration a while back.)
Why not make the swarm of up to 8 type VI fast drones? Range, seaking method, damage done, reload time, damage to destroy, EW effects, all already set.
It's a new launcher, not a new weapon! Targetting, the requirement to stay together, and speed of launch are the only real changes needed. They're even already more dangerous to fighters than to other units.
It's better than any existing type VI launcher, but not all that much better given that the obsolete by the general war E rack could launch 4 type VIs a turn.
The missiles are even already mounted on fighters.
I've got to admit that Douglas' suggestion is far more balanced.
The two major problems I see are the reload cycle and damaging the swarm.
The first one, there are a lot of solutions around. The easiest solution I can think of is to have 5 (or X) micro-drones replaced by a deck crew action for a full turn.
The second issue is the big problem.
- If you damage them like drones, then they'll strip a ship bare of weapons for almost no reduction in damage.
- If you allow a single phaser to damage more than one, then you're pretty much at plasma F that doesn't lose damage over range.
The former forces people to either run them out or eat them. As has been pointed out, that's a energy-free 80 point burst if you put four on a cruiser coming in probably in 4 separate volleys (to avoid T-bombs).
The I'd slow them to Spd 20 as a balance issue. That gives the user the choice of letting a T-bomb eat them all or having the victim take them on different shields. Also makes running them out a viable option.
I'm not sure that it's necessary, but it's an interesting option. One of the compliants I had from a friend learning SFB was that he had come to the game having read the Weber novels and was disappointed by the scale of conflict (number of missiles airborne, etc.) It has the upside that you could say "I've got 80 incoming drones", but has the downside that there's no way in the game to stop 80 incoming drones.
Ouch! 
My first thought was a dozen of these, I don't know why I upped it to 20. Maybe when I thought of them as a plasma I latched onto the G. I also fell into the trap of giving it enough to do a little now, and a little later, forgetting most usages of it would be all out.
They are quite the weapons sponge, perhaps more than I intended. I'm not sure about allowing weapons to damage two things, even in the same hex. Treating them as shuttles in a dogfight and using J7.334 goes to the other extreme. At the risk of writing a new rule, I could see giving them the EM benefit, but allowing a percentage to "blunder into" the slicing beam of range-of-effect weapons (as a shortcut to defining which weapons are actually beams slicing across an arc).
I'd intended them to be drones for all purposes of triggering mines, being distracted by wild *, chaff, or scout channels, and retaining or losing lock-on. I can't be convinced proximity would allow a scout channel to attract or break lock-on more than one at a time, although the dumber brain might give it a better chance with that one. Likewise, I can't see a tractor beam grabbing more than one of them, nor an SFG freezing more than one.
For the Proximity of Detonation Table, theoretically, each micro missile should roll for itself; I've been caught making them so strong I'm hesitant to suggest the 0.5 and 0.25 damage points should be added up.
The use of transporter tricks was suggested to recreate other anime mecha characteristics; I thought I'd try it here for the proverbial ten-shots-from-a-sixgun case. Also, it saved me from having to define the space of these micro missiles. Can they really take 1/6 space? That'd be to load in one turn. My intent on the working of transporter reload was unclear. (Perhaps I should be thankful.) The one transporter box could reload as many micromissiles as you were willing to pay 1/5 a point of power for.
A two-turn cycle, 2.4 power 12 warhead system seemed so reasonable to me!
Douglas's idea does sound more tempting. I'll have to think it over, see if it runs afoul of opening loopholes for current ships.
Also, this system would be a super-shatter-pack, able to stop the largest incoming drone wave in its tracks, since the rules state that any drone automatically kills any other drone.
What a super Mizia weapon this would make.
lets assume one fires a missile swarm at an unshielded ship (or a ship that already had its shields destroyed). The result is up to twenty separate mizia volleys?!?
It would totally defeat the purpose of the DAC.
Unless specified elsewhere in the rule for this weapon, it's a seeking weapon, which all get added together for one volley.
Considering the impact of the weapon, what is the ship going to remove/replace to put that weapon in --
Sounds to me like something you would put in place of your main torps (photons, disruptors, fusion, hellbores etc) ---
I like the idea of a type-VI swarm. Say, a 2-space rack loaded with only type-VIs that can fire once per impulse. If you replace your heavy weapons with this, then a cruiser can put out 4x type-VIs an impulse until it's empty.
Killer on a drone wave of fighter squadron. But against ships it's 8 damage an impulse for 4 impulses and an upper range of 12 hexes. Of course the down side is that the opponent can do all sorts of things during those 8 impulses, including reducing the damage you do (3 damage to the drone kill 2 damage done to ship). And once empty it would take 2 turns to reload.
IMAO the original suggestion of shooting any number up to the entire wad at once at a single target with a single counter (and only one launch per turn and no ability to split it up unless the targets are within range 3) is fine for the type VI swarm and 8 in a single box is also fine (we can already fit 12 half space drones in a G rack, 8 in a box isn't excessive).
Rule that launching the swarm doesn't need a control channel if within warp-seaker range.
It's 16 damage if you fire at a ship, but it's a seaker which can be taken out by a single T-bomb or run out and damaged with non-facing phasers.
And the guidance problems if you launch from more than range 8 (self-guidance range for a Type-VI) are prohibative.
A cruiser with 4 of these has a respectable alpha (64 damage), if the target doesn't have a T-bomb. But unless my phaser suit is a real killer I'd probably rather have normal heavy weapons so it's still a secondary system.
Couple of thoughts:
Terry - There are a number of exceptions to the "drone kills drone" rule already in place (SCUDS, etc.), but I agree that this would have to be one of them.
Matt Potter - While I think your idea would be more balanced, I have two concerns about it. First, it doesn't seem to meet the original goal (of having a weapon that matches the mass launch that you see in anime shows). Second, from an board accounting perspective that'd be 24 (or so) counters on the board from one ship that have to get moved. I'd pass on fighting it from an accounting standpoint.
Douglas Lampert - I agree that you might be able to do it with Type VI. While it would have a reaspectable alpha against a ship, I'm thinking it would decimate 1-2 squadrons of fighters a turn. 32 Type VI is a lot of flack in the air for some fighters to have to gun down.
32 is a cruiser with four of these boxes, which cripples it in ship to ship. But let's say you have that. 24 fighters means 24 of their own seaking weapons used for counter-drones, the 8 remaining drones are dead meat when 24 fighters open up with Ph-3. And you need to be in range 3 to fire that "devastating" volley. What fighters other than stingers EVER get within range 3 of an intact enemy cruiser? If there are 24 Stingers in range 3 of your ship then the CORRECT description is that there are 24 stingers within range 3 of your expanding ball of vapor and the explosion takes care of any type-VIs that may have been deployed.
32 type-VI is FAR easier for fighters to deal with than 80 micro-missiles.
I don't see why you'd have to be in Range 3. Self-guidance range for Type-VI is range 8.