Re: Ortillery

--- Thomas Barclay <kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca> wrote:

> 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. 

Well, considering it's not IN SGII, that's hardly
surprising.  On page 44 there's a mention of the dice
roll to request orbital fire support, but there are no
rules to resolve it actually hitting the ground.  Page
46 lists small, medium, large, and very large
artillery shell (very large being indicated as coming
from superheavy artillery or area saturation weapons,
not space).  There are rules for deadfall ordnance off
of fighter-sized aerospace vehicles on page 50.  There
are rules for orbital insertion on page 51.

There are no rules for orbital fire.

> Perhaps the atmosphere diffuses lasers and 
> plasma weapons to make them ineffective? 

Probably.

> Perhaps ship missiles are thus also rendered 
> ineffective being bomb pumped lasers? 

Being that a bomb-pumped laser is just that--a weapon
with a nuclear bomb as the detonator, I doubt that
they would be "ineffective."  I mean, a 10kT explosion
is a freakin' 10kT explosion.  I don't care how studly
you are, you can't call that ineffective.  They would
be, however, like hitting a fly with a hand grenade.

> Perhaps also they aren't designed to manouver 
> in-atmosphere. 

Down is not difficult.
 
> 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. 

You still have to be moving fast enough to hit the
target.  You're talking appreciable lag moving at
light speed.  Start to cut speed too low with no
terminal guidance capability and you're getting
useless.  So instead of 11mT, you've got 11kT.	Still
not something I'm going to call down on a bunker.

> 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. 

This is highly likely.	

> The real reason to install an ortillery module 
> may be to provide effective ground-covering 
> sensors. And the types of ordinance installed 

Pet peeve:  Ordnance.  (Note this is not spelling
flame, but word choice flame).

> may be some sort of a launch system that can 
> deploy kinetic attacks or which can deploy 
> varying warhead types. 

Well, by DSII rules the only difference between
ortillery and artillery is the fact that ortillery
scatters.  
 
> 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. 

Or . . . we can go off of the little-remembered and
rarely used module in More Thrust that treated them as
pocket nukes.  I can't for the life of me find my copy
of MT, but perhaps some kind soul can repost those
rules and we can hash out the PSB behind them.
 
> 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!). 

There isn't a canonical solution to the issue of
firing starship main weapons at ground targets--unless
you use to More Thrust rules which are hugely
powerful--but leave residual radiation effects.  Other
than that, we are I suppose intended to use ortillery
as just normal heavy artillery that happens to be
immune to counter-battery.  

Which is a bit boring.

John

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