Missiles for 2300AD

by Bryn Monnery

Introduction

Missiles and Drones are, of course, miniature stutterwarp ships in their own right. As such they are extremely expensive pieces of equipment.

The two tend to be used in conjunction with one another in combat. A vessel will send out drones to detect the enemy at a distance so that it can send its missiles to attack without having to approach the enemy itself.

This means that drones are often targeted during combat. Sometimes this is because they are mistaken for missiles, but more often the enemy simply wants to deprive the missile ship of the information the drones transmit, forcing the ship to close distance itself.

When considering the fact that every time a detonation missile explodes or a regular missile or a drone is destroyed by fire, another small stutterwarp engine is lost, it becomes obvious that such battles are very expensive, even if the main military vessels themselves are never hit.

- Page 78, 2300AD Directors Guide, 2nd edition

 

This quote is very revealing. It appears on the same page as the Kennedy class Missile Carrier and tells us a lot about missiles that is at odds with Star Cruiser.

    1. Missiles are no different from other stutterwarp craft, and should be designed as such.
    2. Detonation missiles are the exception, not the rule.

With this in mind we should examine the effect this has on later products.

    1. Fighters become relatively useless (as if they weren't already), unless there is an upper range on missile communications.
    2. Missiles, whether they have a sensor or not, are tethered to the missile ship as theydon't have any navigational or targeting equipment.
    3. The Bismarck is a ridiculous design (as if it wasn't already), unless we accept the 24 missiles value.
    4. The Tallayrand is in fact an okay design.

There are several ways to handle the problem.

    1. Ignore it. If your campaign does have much to do with starships, then you have no problem.
    2. Just accept the breaks, even where common sense is violated.
    3. Redesign all the missiles to the full NAM specifications, this has several variants.
      1. Redesign the missiles so they match the original weapons, but impose a "tether range" on missiles. (See below)
      2. Redesign the missiles as small starships, but without crew. This will allow them to be treated just like missiles in CSC, but their speeds will go down immensely.

If you choose either 1 or 2, the rest of this article is of little relevence to you. If you choose 3-1, then which scale you use is important.

If you use the broke scale of CSC, then the tether range is 4 hexes, as per Lester W. Smiths house rules. If you use KevinC's 0.1ls scale, then tether range is quite long, on the order of scores of hexes. This gives the nearest result to classic SC and is the one I'd recommend.

The only change with Kevin's fix is that laser ranges jump to 20+ hexes, as the coherent range of a low X-band laser with a 6m focal array is 2 ls. The other option is that the lasers are not X-band as stated, but Visible Spectrum. The main change here is that starship energy weapons become usable in an atmosphere (PBWS already were, but X-band lasers weren't).

I will some time sit down and rerate missiles fully into line with NAM, but in the meantime the "correct" costs of missiles are:

Also note that each carried missile (or drone) should also have one maintainance crew.