Ortillery

A lot of the assumptions about the power of 
shipboard weapons comes from assumptions 
about space combat. 

We don't really have a gamescale, so we make 
up numbers for time and distance, then 
backfigure to energies, with other assumptions, 
etc. This is all made up.

What we do know is what the rules represent, 
and the use of ships weaponry against a planet 
other than ortillery isn't represented. 

So, why not figure from the known to the 
unknown, rather than from the made-up to the 
disagrees-with-known? 

Suppose the ortillery modules, as present in the 
game, are the only normally used weapons 
systems. Why is this the case? I think Ortillery is 
effective, but as I recall from SG2, hardly 
devastating. I never really focused on its DS2 
effects, so pardon my ignorance. 

Perhaps the atmosphere diffuses lasers and 
plasma weapons to make them ineffective? 
Perhaps ship missiles are thus also rendered 
ineffective being bomb pumped lasers? 
Perhaps also they aren't designed to manouver 
in-atmosphere. 

K-guns and other kinetic projectiles may not be 
as powerful as people are suggesting. Several 
reasons exist:
1) You might fire not 30 rounds at 100kg, but 
10,000 rounds in a turn at 0.1 kgs. Maybe a 
ship railgun uses a (conjectural) multiple-hit 
approach with each slug packing the impact of 
(say) an M1 tank round. 
2) How tough are FT ships? Is destroying a 
point of armour eliminating 100 tons of 
material? I submit that it is not. I submit that it 
is penetrating said armour and either spalling it 
or just leaving enough of a hole that it is 
ineffective. This might take far less energy. 
3) Lasers and other weapons, firing at the 
conjecturally less tough vessels may well not 
have the insanely high power levels I've heard 
discussed. Wrecking a bunch of hull boxes and 
killing a few crew and knocking out a system or 
two might not take that much energy at all... 
because a box is checked off on the SSD 
doesn't mean that the box is entirely 
annihilated. Destroying a system (since they can 
be fixed by DC) is probably representative of 
some component damage or software down or 
electrical feedback or something. 

So the K-gun may not liberate 11 Megatons. It 
may not even liberate 1 Mt. 

So, perhaps in the less overblown universe, 
these weapons then take on the proportions 
more likely to limit their utility versus ground 
targets. Additionally, the sensor rigs on ships 
not equipped with Ortillery modules may well 
not be too useful versus ground targets as 
both the software and the hardware is 
optimized for certain types of space warfare. 
The real reason to install an ortillery module 
may be to provide effective ground-covering 
sensors. And the types of ordinance installed 
may be some sort of a launch system that can 
deploy kinetic attacks or which can deploy 
varying warhead types. 

In summary, there are two ways to approach 
the problem: 1) make up some numbers for FT 
stuff, then try to redefine ortillery and how 
hugely powerful it is or 2) look at the rules in 
DS and SG and the lack of scale or speed or 
anything of that sort in FT or any definition of 
what constitutes destruction of a system and 
therefore abandon any imagined notions of 
UberMegaWeapons and think of a sensible way 
to explain the rules as they stand in DS and SG. 

Being the GZG universe, you are free to do what 
you want. I think the second option is actually 
more palatable. But don't go around claiming 
your solution makes more sense than the 
canonical one - you don't have enough data to 
make useful judgements (Jon's intentionally 
vague approach strikes again!). 

Tomb. 

-----------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Barclay
Instructor, CST 6304 (TCP/IP programming for the Internet)
kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca 
http://fox.nstn.ca/~kaladorn/CST6304
http://stargrunt.ca/tb/CST6304