Re: [FT] Should all Beams fire at fighters/ordinance?

David Griffin wrote:

> I've often thought (except when I am the one
> operating the fighters ;-) that any weapon, or
> at least any beam should be able to fire at
> fighters and missiles (or other ordinance)
> registering a kill on a 6. But is this plausible,
> and is it unbalancing?

>
> Plausibility -- Would a ship do this? Well in SFB
> this was possible. In real life I've hear stories
> of even 16-18" naval guns being fired in the path
> of torpedo fighters in the hopes of knocking them
> down. Sure it's harder to hit a fighter with a 16"
> gun, but this is already reflected in the type 1
> against fighter/ordinance rules.

In a word, no.	The japanese 18" inch gun did have an anti-aircraft
shell that was the mother of all cannister shot (may have been a beehive
precursor), but it was especially difficult to use.  If it was not in
the gun when the torpedo bombers showed up, unless the hoists were empty
of all other shells, it would not show up in the breach until it was too
late.  The japanese idea would have worked a lot better if they realized
what radar was good for, so they could have the guns loaded with
cannister AND pointing at the torpedo bomber when they showed up.
Nobody ever tried to actually shoot at an aircraft with anything larger
5" (the Dover 8" coastal batteries being the only exception [from book
of forgotten title, written by Ian V. Hogg]).

The simple reason is that the power required to slew a gun mount
increases with the square of the mass.	For directed energy weapons, the
method of aiming the beam may vary, but the power to slew the beam will
probably still be proportional to the square of the output energy
(physics is funny that way).  As noone has the required power to spare
(and keeping the actuators from burning out is expensive), noone bothers
to require that the larger beams slew as fast as small ones.

On the plus side, the amount of slew required is inversely proportional
to the range, so if we assumed the targetting systems are up to the
task, all classes of beams could be allowed to fire at fighters in the
range band where they only roll one die, but not at closer ranges.  The
larger beams are useless for point defense, but they can reach out and
touch somebody.