Topic: SM2 Rule Interpretation - missiles

[JimiSue]

Just wondering what people would allow players to get away with here... It states in the Tech Book that missiles (such as are fired from PMLs or Quad PMLs) are virtually identical to grenades in terms of their effects. Which is fine.

Grenades are available in Marks 1 through 5. Also fine.

Grenade Rifles are limited to firing a maximum of Mark 2 grenades. Fine.

The question is, what mark "grenade" would you allow for a missile? I had this come up in my game last week and did an on-the-fly ruling that a missile could fire up to Mk 5 becaause they are larger and carry their own propellant, and can therefore carry a larger warhead. In game terms it's also balanced by reload speed and firing speed. But I can see this being quite dangerous (an unskilled telepath fired one with a mk 5 enhanced plasma warhead and wiped out 48 soldiers... finishing off the remaining two with the residual heat criticals the next round. This seems ... unbalancing.

[RandalThor]

I have to say that it is entirely dependent upon the purpose of the missile. Is it anti-infantry? Anti-vehicle? Anti-starship?

And a single person taking out 50+ enemy soldiers with a single missile isn't unreal now, certainly in a much higher tech environment like SM it whould be easy - except for anti-missile systems.

Weapons that are in use on a regular basis, will have counters. So, if there are guided missiles small enough to target individual people, and they have been in use for a while, then there will be countermeasures built to deal with them. But, if those CMs fail, then someone is not going to be having a very nice day....

[Ynglaur]

Mk5 missiles with enhanced blast radii are indeed very dangerous.  I think it's something like Mk. x 2 per radius, with 5 blast radii defined, so a 50m blast radius.  Of course, only radius 1 and 2 are *very* deadly, so this makes a Mk. 5 enhanced warhead about the equivalent of a modern 122mm mortar round.

SM is *very* unforgiving when it comes to combat.  Be like Han Solo: shoot first.

[JimiSue]

These are personal weapons, the PML and it's quad variant are envisioned in my game to be surprisingly similar to a bazooka kind of thing.

And the 50 people thing - we got a bit lazy, and rather than waste away playing time rolling 50 critical results, we agreed before the roll that one crit would affect all. And then She went and rolled a 92, so even though it was just an A, it was a plasma grenade so doing Impact, Heat and Radiation criticals off that result. Farewell to the grunts.

Unfortunately, this evening she tried that stunt again, and rolled very poorly, scoring a result of just 02 after the skill mod was added (the character has a negative skill). Unfortunately, the other side had a telepath who bounced the missile right back with interest using a Deflection psion. And the missile almost killed her - I did say that she needed to improve her AT.... If she had rolled much higher that triple C critical would have been an E or higher and it would have been a definite farewell.

The PCs have learned to rush in with stunners. Or better, throw in stun grenades and then wade in with machine guns loaded with HEAPDUCIC rounds. Even so I did manage to almost kill one PC (was looking up soul departure & stat deterioration rules), and blew the hand off another one. Time to relieve the PCs of some cash to replace that hand

And radius - I think it's 1m x mark per blast radius for point defence, standard are 2x, and enhanced are 3x - so a mk 5 enhanced has a ground zero effect of 15m radius, 2nd blast radius out to 30m... 75m total radius of effect. Big boom.

[markc]

 IMHO the MK5 is fine but the weapon might receive a negative to attack targets is was not meant to attack. IE is it an anti-air or anti-armor weapon? How does it actually target its target? IR, UV, laser following etc. All those wold come into my thought process when trying to decide what the mods would be.


 To counter this I think small laser AMS would come into use among troops.
MDC

[JimiSue]

The book states that missiles are almost identical to grenades in effect, which immediately places them as anti-personnel weapons. I have seen some footage of tank-killer missiles which are fired from a similar device but these aren't them (scary things, they blast a jet of molten metal forwardswhich cuts through tank armour),

The missiles being used are the fire and forget type rather than wire-guided, so do require an accurate shot, but to counter some of the accuracy issues (the user has only just found the weapon and is unskilled) she has twigged that she can use a proximity fuse rather than an 'on impact' fuse.

[arakish]

Also, depends on the tech level.  Even in Starship Troopers (both novel and movie), they had miniature nukes for warheads.  Even hand tossed grenades were mini-nukes.  IIRC, in the book, these were equivalent to about 1 to 2 kilotons explosive force.  And I think that could take out several city blocks.  IMHO, that would be equivalent to what? a Mark 10 grenade?  Perhaps Mark 20?  And yet, those missiles were basically the same as RPGs used in today's military.

With a high enough tech level, those RPGs could have MA warheads and be even more powerful.

If nothing else, they could still be classified as Mark 5, but have a much larger explosive radius.

rmfr

[JimiSue]

Except that those count as holocaustic attack deliveries, which the Emperor has explicitly banned. Not to mention that I just don't want the average psychopathic armsman having access to that kind of game changing disruption

[RandalThor]

IMHO the MK5 is fine but the weapon might receive a negative to attack targets is was not meant to attack. IE is it an anti-air or anti-armor weapon? How does it actually target its target? IR, UV, laser following etc. All those wold come into my thought process when trying to decide what the mods would be.

Actually, this is not the case, especially when you are talking about really high tech. I was a USMC artilleryman through the mid-to-late 80's (1980's not 1880's you screwheads  ) and at that time we were accurate enough to attack a single man-sized target with the first shot. As tech-levels get higher and higher, the only thing stopping that ship mounted mega gun from taking out a single trooper, is that it is a huge waste of firepower, not accuracy.

To counter this I think small laser AMS would come into use among troops.

I would imagine that the average high-tech infantry squad would have several different types of AMS, and laser would just be one.

[JimiSue]

There does come a point of balance vs realism in any roleplaying game - and I will freely admit that it's not easy playing in a hard sci-fi game. In SpaceMaster terms (which let us not forget was written before mobile phones), what is today a smartphone represents some quite expensive kit in the SM rules (and I'm reminded of an episode of Star Trek TNG in which Geordi LaForge is proudly boasting of the Enterprise's massive 300 baud transfer speed).

Which is why almost every SM game I've played in has been more of a cyberpunk edge so the tech is there - sort of - but not easy to obtain for whatever reason. At the end of the day, a roleplaying game is about people - and if you bring it up to speed with military capability which even today is increasingly about who has the best toys, and extrapolate that even further forward in time, the people cease to be important. At which point you've lost the roleplaying game!

[RandalThor]

I disagree. I think you can have tech and still have a character driven game. Think about it: don't fantasy games have the same situation with magic and magic items? So, both genres have special elements that are superhuman, but can still be character and story driven.

Does having that cool item maybe make something easier? Sure. Does that mean the why (what the police like to call motive) has gone away? Nope. Just how something got done. And that is not the story.

[Ynglaur]

heh heh.  Look up the various video recorders in Tech Law.  I think the "data disc" (or whatever) stored something like 100MB.  That was in SM 1st edition, though. 

[yammahoper]

I recall my friend Ray dropping in a 800MB hard drive (1987 I think).  I distinctly remember someone saying "Man, you'll never fill that thing."

[Ynglaur]

And radius - I think it's 1m x mark per blast radius for point defence, standard are 2x, and enhanced are 3x - so a mk 5 enhanced has a ground zero effect of 15m radius, 2nd blast radius out to 30m... 75m total radius of effect. Big boom.

You are correct.  My memory was not.  Closer to a 155mm HE round, then (though not quite, as those have a 50m kill radius...though I can't quite recall the definition of kill when it comes to blast radii in US military terms.  I think it was 50% chance of death or disabiling injury, but I"m far from certain.

[JimiSue]

I recall my friend Ray dropping in a 800MB hard drive (1987 I think).  I distinctly remember someone saying "Man, you'll never fill that thing."

SM2 didn 't change it. An audio disc hiolds up to 20 hours of audio, and a memory disc 100 hours of a/v or 100MB of coded data. I may need to amend those in an upwards direction.

My first computer with an internal drive of any sort was the ZX Spectrum +2, which had a 65K RAM disk. As an actual bespoke hard drive, 40 MB

[markc]

Looking up the robot design question I saw that there are some rules in the SM2 Companion for missiles, grenades, etc.
MDC

[JimiSue]

Yes, and very useful they are too since they plug some of the gaps in the Tech Book! I've not specifically read them with missiles in mind though - I'll go dig it out and have a look. Thanks!

[Ynglaur]

100 hours of AV or 100MB, so 1MB per hour....that's either very low resolution, or very, very good compression. 

[arakish]

I disagree. I think you can have tech and still have a character driven game. Think about it: don't fantasy games have the same situation with magic and magic items? So, both genres have special elements that are superhuman, but can still be character and story driven.

Does having that cool item maybe make something easier? Sure. Does that mean the why (what the police like to call motive) has gone away? Nope. Just how something got done. And that is not the story.

Arthur C. Clarke: Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic.

Now look at Stargate: SG-1.  Those devices used by the Gwa'uld definitely appear to be magic items.  Then look at some of the technology built by the Ancients in Stargate: Atlantis.  More magical items.

And I can remember when I got my first 10MB HDD.  And I thought then, I'll never fill this thing.  Now, that 10MB HDD, about the size of a VHS cassette won't even hold a small fraction of my flash drive, smaller than my thumb, which will hold 32GB.

100 hours of AV or 100MB, so 1MB per hour....that's either very low resolution, or very, very good compression. 

Very good compression.  Watch the second to last episode of the first season of Stargate: Atlantis.  McKay was able to compress a year's worth of data, reports, and about 10 hours of video into a databurst of only 1.38 seconds.  Wow!

rmfr

[RandalThor]

Arthur C. Clarke: Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic.

Now look at Stargate: SG-1.  Those devices used by the Gwa'uld definitely appear to be magic items.  Then look at some of the technology built by the Ancients in Stargate: Atlantis.  More magical items.

Exactly, tech doesn't destroy or take over a story anymore than magic does in a fantasy setting.

And I can remember when I got my first 10MB HDD.  And I thought then, I'll never fill this thing.  Now, that 10MB HDD, about the size of a VHS cassette won't even hold a small fraction of my flash drive, smaller than my thumb, which will hold 32GB.

I just got one of those too. But I hate that they bill it as 32GB, but it is actually 29.9GB. (The same goes for all computer storage.) Shouldn't they be telling us the amount of usable storage?!? I think so.