TL15 50-ton Missile Bay

Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 23:36:30 -0600
From: bonn0015@flipper.itlabs.umn.edu (STEVEN M BONNEVILLE)
Subject: TL15 50-ton Missile Bay

A useful weapon system for TNE starship designers:


TL15 50-ton MFD Missile Bay
---------------------------
Volume:   700 kL        Mass: 317.856 metric tons (709.856 tons loaded)
Power:      6.84 MW     Crew:   4
Price: MCr 36.3544      Surface Area: 91.2 square meters
MFDs have +6 Diff Mod.

Four high-speed launch systems for 7 kL missiles are installed in the bay.
Each includes a launcher, a mechanical reloader with eleven launch cradles,
and a gunner's workstation equipped with a 300 Mm laser communicator and
a 300 Mm MFD with pencil-beam AEMS.  The bay also includes a magazine for
storing eight more missiles, and 5.972 kL of space for customization.  One
custom possibility is a small fusion plant and fuel tank to run the bay.

The bay contains 56 missiles, of which 48 are loaded to fire; the bay may
fire 40 missiles in any turn and can control up to 24 of them.  If the bay
fires no faster than 16 missiles a turn, it may fire continuously until 
the ship's magazine is exhausted; at 24 per turn it can fire for two turns,
then needs to spend one to reload.  To fully load the bay and the bay's
local magazine with standard TNE TL15 det-laser missiles would cost MCr 70.

NOTES:

It turns out that it's more volume-efficient to use a launcher/reloader 
system if over five missiles are installed, and the system is also much
cheaper than an all-launcher system.

A larger bay could use a seventeen-cradle system for each launcher, which 
could fire as many missiles as it could control every turn until the ship
ran out of missiles.

Most of the cost and power requirement of the bay is caused by the four
local MFDs and the pencil-beam AEMS.  The reason that they're installed
here is that any ship with this bay will need them, and by giving them
to the gunners I'm reducing bridge crew by four.  Lower tech missile bays
can easily be built by using space from the local magazine to make up the
difference in the additional bulk of the electronic equipment.  More MFDs
could be installed on the bridge to enable massive single-round missile
salvos, maximum at eight additional MFDs per three bays, allowing control
of all 40 missiles the bay may fire per turn; of course, pauses would be
needed to reload at this firing rate.

The surface area was assumed to be exactly the same as a 50-ton laser
bay. 1 Mm == 1000 km.

  Steve Bonneville
  <bonn0015@gold.tc.umn.edu>

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 10:00:48 -0500
From: bonn0015@flipper.itlabs.umn.edu (STEVEN M BONNEVILLE)
Subject: TL15 Laser Bays

More starship bay designs:


TL15 100-ton bay laser, 2.6 meter diameter lens
-----------------------------------------------
Volume: 1400 kL      Mass: 2742 tons
Power:   214.1 MW    Crew:    1
Price:  MCr 21.979
10:1/70-220  20:1/70-220  40:1/70-220  80:1/70-220


TL15 50-ton bay laser, 2.6 meter diameter lens
----------------------------------------------
Volume:  700 kL      Mass: 1363 tons
Power:   106.3 MW    Crew:    1
Price:  MCr 11.063
10:1/49-155  20:1/49-155  40:1/49-155  80:1/49-155


Both lasers are of the tunable type.  Both are listed as powered to
normal ROF levels -- can go up to -2 Diff Mod (at x10 power).  I
checked what would happen to the 100-ton bay if it were beefed up
to handle -5 Diff Mod; performance would fall to 1/64-200, and the
other stats of the bay would also change slightly.

It turns out that designing starship lasers is actually not too rough.
My design procedure is different than FFS, because I streamlined it
substantially to design for volume, range, and best possible energy.
After I got the method worked out with the big bay, the 50-ton bay 
only took ten minutes.

Here's how I did these weapons:

1.  Decide the size of the installation.
2.  Decide the effective range desired -- in this case, 2400 Mm,
    or 80 hexes.  (1 Mm == 1000 km.  I like expressing the final
    values in megameters, because it's more readable without the
    extra three zeros.  I do almost all calculations in the normal 
    units, however, so I don't screw up.) 
3.  Go through the range calculation in reverse to find the lens 
    radius and focal area.  Does the lens fit?   
4.  Pick an appropriate beam pointer from the chart.
5.  Crew is easy -- it's always one.
6.  Finding the ideal discharge energy for the laser, so that the 
    best lens and HPG can be installed, is readily computed by using
    algebra to mess with some terms.  The best DE in megajoules equals:
	
         Total Bay Volume - (Workstation Vol. + Beam Pointer Vol.)
     ----------------------------------------------------------------
     (FA Mult * FA ROF Vol Mod * Focal Area) + (5 * (HPG Vol per MJ))
	   
    Volumes in kL (cubic meters).  Area in square meters. 

    This equation works for all tech levels, given appropriate numbers. 
    I verified it against the standard turret laser at TL15.
7.  Given the discharge energy, finding the lens and HPG volume is 
    strightforward.  Find all values for workstation, beam pointer, 
    lens, and using one-shot *input* energy, the HPG, and the starship 
    laser is easy to finish.

I occasionally do a conversion from the old rules to TNE.  I tend to
use laser barbettes to replace plasma and fusion turrets, and laser
bays for high-energy weapon bays, for the sake of atmosphere.  It
also gives the conversions some punch.

UP NEXT:  TL15 PAWS Bays, and general PAWS and laser issues.

  Steve Bonneville
  <bonn0015@gold.tc.umn.edu>

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 15:06:40 -0500
From: bonn0015@flipper.itlabs.umn.edu (STEVEN M BONNEVILLE)
Subject: TL15 PAWS Bays


TL15 100-ton PAWS bay (26-barrel)
---------------------------------
Volume: 1400 kL     Mass:  2476 tons
Power:   184.9 MW   Crew:     1
Cargo:   32.9 kL    Surface Area: 150.4 sq. meters
Price:  MCr 31.18
1:408  2:102  4:25  8:6


TL15  50-ton PAWS bay (21-barrel)
---------------------------------
Volume: 700 kL      Mass:  1177 tons
Power:   84 MW      Crew:     1
Cargo:    6 kL      Surface Area: 91.2 sq. meters
Price:  MCr 21.07 
1:275  2:68  4:17  8:4


Volume marked as "Cargo" is available for customization of the bay.

If you follow the design sequence in FFS for PAWS bay weapons, they 
seem fairly pointless; they're incredibly weak.  However, I recently
tumbled to something interesting that I understand John Bogan figured
out a while back.  The PAWS bay-length systems are small enough that
you could theoretically fit several into the same bay!  The theory
is that several PAWS barrels could get linked into one weapon with
just one beam pointer, and combine their delivered energy but keep
their range performance.  If you allow this, then to find out DV:
  DV == 5 * SQRT(Barrel DE * Number of PAWS barrels).
FFS doesn't explicitly say that this technique is okay to use, but
it's reasonable and doesn't seem to break anything.
  
This isn't very competitive with lasers yet.  But if you also reduce
PAWS lens diameter to reduce effective range to 30000 km, then you
end up with something interesting; a very short-range weapon with
a higher DV than the comparable laser bay, but which drops off in
power very fast.

So what are they good for?  PAWS weapons have lousy penetration in
comparison to lasers, so against a well-armored foe, the short-range
power advantage is reduced.  Depends on the rule system.  In Battle
Rider, these weapons are still dangerous to escort vessels, but in
Brilliant Lances, these are useful in another way.

The Brilliant Lances rules state that any hit by a PAWS on any part
of a ship causes *all* non-fiber optic computers to undergo a System
Reset.  This is a bit misleading.  According to the rules, if the 
computer resets, and no backup computers are available, *every system
on the ship* resets.  In other words, for the next turn the ship will
have "no functioning maneuver drive, and no weapons which can fire".

You may recognize that last phrase.  It's the conditions in BL under
which a ship is disabled, and vulnerable to a boarding action.

Now, of course, the boarding ship also needs to have matched vectors,
but it probably won't be too hard to do that *and* hit the ship with
the PAWS again, causing another ship-wide System Reset, giving the
boarders enough time to board.

I think that this is going to be the weapon of choice for commerce 
raiders.  The weapon has the potential to disable most civilian 
ships, with less risk of turning the target into a hulk to do it.  
It might be possible to take the target as a prize ship and make
a getaway with it, using its' own drives, once the prize crew has
taken control!  Military ships need to have fiber optic computers
to avoid this danger.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 15:20:08 -0500
From: bonn0015@flipper.itlabs.umn.edu (STEVEN M BONNEVILLE)
Subject: TL15 Meson Gun Bays


TL15 100-ton Meson Gun bay
--------------------------
Volume:  1400 kL     Mass: 1852 metric tons 
Power:    115.3 MW   Crew:    1
Surface Area: 150.4 sq. meters
Price:   MCr 73.7
1:132  2:33  4:8  8:2


TL15 50-ton Meson Gun bay
-------------------------
Volume:  700 kL     Mass: 991.4 metric tons 
Power:    65.2 MW   Crew:   1
Surface Area: 91.2 sq. meters
Price:    MCr 32.3
1:56  2:14  4:3  8:1


Meson gun design is similar to PAWS design.  For a PAWS, range depends on
both length and diameter, and power depends on length.  For a meson gun,
range depends on length, and power depends on cross-section ("diameter", 
in a sense).  A bay-mounted meson gun tends to have poor range; neither 
one of these bays has an effective range of even a hex, even with 
tech-level bonuses.

Worse, I think that any of the meson screen equipped ships in Battle Rider
could stop a hit from one of these bays, even on a failed screen attempt
and an Outstanding Success on the attack roll.  However, unscreened ships
are in more trouble, since sandcasters and armor protection can't be used 
to stop meson gun attacks, as they can for PAWS and laser attacks.

In order to speed up design for these, I made a formula similar to the
one I used in laser design to get a rough estimate of what the DE could
be.  I then fine-tuned the design from there.  Coming up with an exact
formula to design a meson gun isn't as easy as it is for starship laser
design, because the crew requirement changes in 7 kL chunks, but you can
get a figure that is close.

  Steve Bonneville
  <bonn0015@gold.tc.umn.edu>