Re: [GZG] Revised Salvo Missiles Update

["john tailby" <John_Tailby@xxxxxxxxxx>]

If people are unhappy about the homing missile issue why are not people 
picking on the turn sequence that lets two ships fly past each other with a 
closest approach 3MU away but not fire until the end of the movement phase 
when the enemy is out of arc and or range.

I can imagine that the salvo missiles are pretty small and they don't have 
the fuel for the kind of continuous course change that a "homing missile" 
would need. Its quite possible that the salvo missiles only carry fuel for 
the interception attack and are launched by magnetic acceleration by the 
mother ship.

If you want some simple suggestions to make issiles more "homing" allow them 
to make endurance burs after ship moves. In case of Salvo missiles reduce 
the initial placement range to 24" and allow a 12" move after the enemy 
fleet has moved. To balance out the increased chance of a hit reduce the 
number of missiles that hit by 1 for each level of EM on the target ship. As 
an option allow positive DM to the number of missiles that hit for each 
level of improved sensors that the mother ship has.

PDS fire can then take place as normal.

The problem I can see with this is that it makes the ordnance / non ordnance 
fleet design more pronounced.
If you come up against a fleet with advanced sensors and you are a low 
thrust beam fleet with not much ECM then you get hit very hard.

If the enemy does not use ordnance attacks and you take lots of ordnance 
defences then you are at a disadvantage.

FWIW my group allows ordance not making attack runs to be fired upon with 
anti ship weapons but with a -2DRM.

We also invented homing variations of the heavy missile that have 3 endurace 
but do 1D6 damage They can burn endurance after ships move.

We also invented rockets that hit using the pulse torpedo mechanism and can 
then be attacked by the ships PDS before they attack in the missile homing 
phase. They are fired in the ordnance phase but use a direct fire mechanism. 
This was pimarily introduced to give an ordnance attack to people that can't 
guess.

We use robot fighters. These are cheaper than normal but dumb. They must 
make any endurance burn moves before ships move.

There are plenty of options for simple rule mechanisms for improving the 
accuracy of ordnance weapons if you want to. The risk is that you increase 
their effectiveness and force ships to invest in more and more specialised 
anti missile defences.

I expect that by now, every playing group is using their own version of the 
rules. So all these arguments are in the spirit of whether your group wants 
to adopt them or not. 


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