Topic: Weapon Ranges (Spaceships)

[RandalThor]

I was looking to create a few spaceships and have not been able to locate basic starship weapon ranges in either the main rulebook or the starships book. Are there any or is it done in a more abstract manner. which is fine, just not usual for ICE. Any hints as to what constitutes base weapon ranges would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[David Johansen]

Yeah, after years of bitching about it we've still got nothing but the ranges from Star Strike which don't really cover the range of options in SPAM.

[Defendi]

They are abstract.

[markc]

Yeah, after years of witching about it we've still got nothing but the ranges from Star Strike which don't really cover the range of options in SPAM.

 I thought the ranges in SS did cover all the options.

 Yes in SM:P they are abstract but if you have SS you can use those or SM:P could be used with SD IIRC.

MDC

[RandalThor]

I did find (today) the ranges for sensors and such and will likely extrapolate from there the various weapon ranges.

This is something that I look in every sci-fi game and have found some very silly situations. In d20 Future weapon ranges are in feet! Feet! For space! And not even in the thousands of feet, but hundreds. Apparently they expect you to be right on top of each other (to reference the thread on detecting reactionless drive plumes  ) in order to attack. It's like you will know about each other for hours prior to firing the first shot. Silly.

[David Johansen]

They are abstract.

Which is lousy.  It will always come up in play.

[providence13]

Just set your own standard...
Each weapon can have a particular function and range.
I'm not saying this is anything like the way SpaM:P works...

IMHO,
100,000 km is the absolute detection limit for "combat". This isn't a function of sensors. It is a function of time. 1 light second is ~ 300,000 km. Sensors, energy weapons and computers operate close to light speed.
Let's say you want to detect something at 100,000 km. Assuming your "active sensor beam" travels at light speed, then it takes .333 seconds to reach the target and .333 seconds to be received. In a perfect world, you look for the enemy and .666 seconds later, you (or your computers  ) can now choose what to do with that information. Sometimes it could take longer..

But you don't know if they have already detected you with passive scanners. Maybe they weren't exactly sure where you were, but as soon as you lit up your active sensors, you're glowing like a X-Mass tree!
When they detected a "gravitational anomaly", for example, they got everything ready and have at least a .666 second jump on what to do.
The 100k range is also good for beam weapons. Once someone decides what to do, it is still going to take .333 sec to reach the enemy. If they're really moving, your target has traveled for 1 sec.; they aren't there anymore.. At least, what you aimed for might be different.

If you increase to 300k, then you have more time to react and plan, 1 entire sec., but more of a chance to miss or at least not hit where you wanted..

Decreasing the distance... makes for a short and brutal combat! At 10k, you need .03 sec to reach target, .03 seconds for it to return and assuming you can react incredibly fast, .03 sec to hit target.
At 10k, IMHO, ONLY computers can fight.

And when you are able to get the jump on the enemy; see them light up while they're looking for you, is that them or just a decoy? Decoys with active sensors, artificial gravity generators (tech level allowing) and "reflective" panels to show larger on a "sensor beam"/RADAR LiDAR... could be hard to tell the difference.

Again, I'm not saying the game works like this, it's just something to think about.  

[RandalThor]

All of that is assuming that other technologies haven't been created to assist in reaction time and that all weapons are lasers or just as fast. And, it is all speculation for now. 

For the game I think it would be good to have weapon ranges in place to help determine what is good for what: range, power, hard to counter, special damage types, etc. That way warships can be created for purposes, and with (more) flavor.

[markc]

 Does anyone remember off the top of their head the size of the SS hex?
MDC

[providence13]

RandalThor,
Of course! You speak true, brother. 
I was discounting faster than light computing and weapons...  Which are in many SF games. I'm just not "too" partial to them myself.

[RandalThor]

I agree about not being partial, Providence.

The listed ranges of sensors for spaceships are too long for my tastes. It would mean that the sensors send out a signal that is phenomenally faster than light if it is able to go a parsec (3.26 LY) for extreme range and back in a few seconds, and I am projecting that time lag, none is mentioned. With sensors like that, they would build weapons to match so that it would be possible to attack a target light years away. A bit too much.

I would prefer the sensor ranges to be more like this:

Short = .2 Light Seconds (60,000 km)
Medium = .5 Light Seconds (150,000 km)
Long = 1 Light Seconds (300,00 km)
Extreme = 1.5 Light Seconds (450,000 km)

All of these ranges would replace the listed from SM:P (pg. 63), and be affected by tech-levels normally.

That is not to say that you cannot detect things or even attack things further out it just that this would represent the "tactical" capabilities of sensors. Those time when Real-Time information is of the utmost importance and when it is harder to hide from sensors. We detect things thousands of light years distant visually, but that information is thousands of years old. Not so helpful to an immediate crisis situation.

Each weapon system would be able to take advantage of the sensors to different degrees.
Examples: Lasers: 100%, Blaster: 50%, Plasma: 10%. This reflects the type of weapon (energy, physical, etc.) and the speed at which the discharge (sorry for the disgusting image,  ) travels from the weapon to the target. Lasers travelling at the speed of light are really only limited by the sensors, while plasma, being a physical-type weapon, would have the least ranges as it's travel time would be the greatest. That is unless it is determined that physical weapons fire their ammo off at some percentage of light speed, such as .5c or .8c, some pretty-great feats of death dealing technology there! This could also be the explanation of the increased ranges due to tech-level, the more advanced weapons systems have greater speeds in proportion to the earlier tech-level weaponry.

[providence13]

There are games  for that level of tech..
Star Trek (possibly imaginary high-tech) or even Star Frontiers (a fun/simple game; but not "too" high- tech).

As for SpaM:P, I don't mind that the weapon ranges are impartial at all. In all the games I've ever played, we changed something.   This way, it isn't difficult to use my own stuff in the game framework. One of the perks of SpaM:P; malleability.