[GZG] Heavy missile questions.

One of my nephews/admirals has started reading the Honor Harrington  
novels, and developed a commendable ambition to launch salvos of  
heavy missiles at the OPFOR. Since I'll have to umpire, I've been  
browsing MT and trying to integrate the missile rules with FB2. Heavy  
missiles seem a bit of an orphan system (no FB design seems to use  
them for example), and I have a few questions:

1. Interaction with FB2 armour. Should the effect of armour on heavy  
missiles be the same as that for salvo missiles? My feeling is that  
it should, if only to keep things simple.

2. Firing/moving heavy missiles. In the fighter movement phase? The  
way MT missiles move seems more like fighter movement than the way  
salvo missiles shoot. If the missiles move in the fighter phase,  
should they alternate with the fighter groups to give the fighters a  
chance to intercept? In vector, I think the acquisition range should  
be cut to 3mu as for salvo missiles.

3. Fire control. MT is pretty explicit about this:

"One ship may launch any number of missiles in one turn, subject only  
to the number it is carrying; each missile may have a different  
target, as they are guided by their onboard AIs and their own fire  
controls."

That seems reasonable enough. I can't imagine missiles engaging over  
ranges up to 60mu (60,000km?) using command guidance, beam-riding,  
semi-active homing or any other form of launch-platform-dependent  
guidance. If each missile has an on-board AI, sensors, IFF etc., they  
should be pretty autonomous. On the other hand, I can't really accept  
that the launch vessel would require *no* fire control at all. So...  
Maybe one FCS per launch?

4. Point Defence. Hmmm. This is a thorny one, since PDS vs. fighters  
or salvo missiles involves engaging a group of targets, whereas MT  
has one PDS engaging each heavy missile and only knocking it out on a  
roll of 6. Now each heavy missile *is* more costly in mass and points  
than a standard fighter despite it's shorter endurance, so I imagine  
it as being pretty smart, tough and equipped with its own ECM etc.  
but... I don't know. I guess we'll go with the MT rule and see how it  
turns out.

Any thoughts, or URLs where someone's already done this? I'm not  
looking for a full-on Honorverse adaptation BTW, just ways of  
bringing heavy missiles into our FT 2.5 games.

Best regards, Robert Bryett
rbryett@mail.com
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