I'm not sure that projectile weapons are reasonable options in TNE space combat, save for one or two situations I'll expand upon later.
Projectiles have to have a good chance of hitting the vessel they are targeting. At the typical ranges of combat, tens to hundreds of thousands of kilometers I think this is just a no-no. Sensors not only have to get a very accurate lock on the target, turrets and firing ship have to be capable of directing fire at the extreme accuracies required, and the target has to make virtually no deviation from its course. On the last point, even if the target is unaware that it is being fired upon -even to the extent of being unaware of the target lock upon it - I would think there would be some need for course corrections (updates to destination trajectory being the main one). This would render the projectiles useless, though perhaps with smart munitions a civilian ship could be at risk.
Projectiles could be useful both for attacking craft in low orbit, like assault landers or COACC craft - or for forcing larger craft farther out to take evasive maneuvers and hence interrupt operations (small craft ops, bombardment, maintenance, etc). Warheads could include sand (degrading laser and sensor arrays), webs (like the Homing Overlay Experiment), shot, or maneuverable payloads akin to Brilliant Pebbles.
Another use for projectile weapons would be in auxilliary craft. It can be hard to pack a decent ship-to-ship weapon into a TL-12 minus small craft that does not take up a horrendous portion of the craft. Of course, small craft, if being used as an auxiliary vessel for a military ship can always rely on the mother craft for protection under a lot of circumstances. However, if it has to close with an object (ship, station, or a facility on a planet) sooner or later it is going to be hard to fire on an object that has become hostile without risking hitting the auxilliary. A projectile weapon allows such small craft to directly threaten a target under such circumstances.
On the topic of projectiles making the space lanes more hazardous - whilst they might do so, would they be an appreciable hazard? The standard of TNE Combat is the BL Hex - 30,000 km wide. In order to have any effect in combat a weapon should at least be able to cross this minimum distance in a combat turn: 30 minutes. That requires a velocity of just under 17 km/s. That's just under the solar escape velocity at Jupiter. However, taking into account the need for time to handle such things as getting/maintaining locks, handling evasive maneuvers etc, we could say that the velocity the minimally effective projectile needs is at least over Jupiter's solar escape velocity. For a truly effective projectile I have a gut feeling that it is going to need to be able to cross a hex in a tenth of a combat turn - which gives us a much higher velocity, one in which even combats close to the sun will have projectiles easily achieving solar escape velocity.
Of course, this does not mean there is no hazard, but just a more transitory one.
Eamon
>From: "" <>
>Second, the idea of firing big sheafs or torrents of individually cheap slugs/projectiles/missiles, while it is clear you
>could make it work, would have fundamentally changed the feel of Traveller space combat from what had been
>established, so we stayed away from that completely.
<SNIP>
>Also, the KKM swarms model would make space travel MUCH more dangerous, as every single grapeshot blast from
>every space battle in history would still be out there, shredding Free Traders every time you looked up.)
Projectiles have to have a good chance of hitting the vessel they are targeting. At the typical ranges of combat, tens to hundreds of thousands of kilometers I think this is just a no-no. Sensors not only have to get a very accurate lock on the target, turrets and firing ship have to be capable of directing fire at the extreme accuracies required, and the target has to make virtually no deviation from its course. On the last point, even if the target is unaware that it is being fired upon -even to the extent of being unaware of the target lock upon it - I would think there would be some need for course corrections (updates to destination trajectory being the main one). This would render the projectiles useless, though perhaps with smart munitions a civilian ship could be at risk.
Projectiles could be useful both for attacking craft in low orbit, like assault landers or COACC craft - or for forcing larger craft farther out to take evasive maneuvers and hence interrupt operations (small craft ops, bombardment, maintenance, etc). Warheads could include sand (degrading laser and sensor arrays), webs (like the Homing Overlay Experiment), shot, or maneuverable payloads akin to Brilliant Pebbles.
Another use for projectile weapons would be in auxilliary craft. It can be hard to pack a decent ship-to-ship weapon into a TL-12 minus small craft that does not take up a horrendous portion of the craft. Of course, small craft, if being used as an auxiliary vessel for a military ship can always rely on the mother craft for protection under a lot of circumstances. However, if it has to close with an object (ship, station, or a facility on a planet) sooner or later it is going to be hard to fire on an object that has become hostile without risking hitting the auxilliary. A projectile weapon allows such small craft to directly threaten a target under such circumstances.
On the topic of projectiles making the space lanes more hazardous - whilst they might do so, would they be an appreciable hazard? The standard of TNE Combat is the BL Hex - 30,000 km wide. In order to have any effect in combat a weapon should at least be able to cross this minimum distance in a combat turn: 30 minutes. That requires a velocity of just under 17 km/s. That's just under the solar escape velocity at Jupiter. However, taking into account the need for time to handle such things as getting/maintaining locks, handling evasive maneuvers etc, we could say that the velocity the minimally effective projectile needs is at least over Jupiter's solar escape velocity. For a truly effective projectile I have a gut feeling that it is going to need to be able to cross a hex in a tenth of a combat turn - which gives us a much higher velocity, one in which even combats close to the sun will have projectiles easily achieving solar escape velocity.
Of course, this does not mean there is no hazard, but just a more transitory one.
Eamon
>From: "" <>
>Second, the idea of firing big sheafs or torrents of individually cheap slugs/projectiles/missiles, while it is clear you
>could make it work, would have fundamentally changed the feel of Traveller space combat from what had been
>established, so we stayed away from that completely.
<SNIP>
>Also, the KKM swarms model would make space travel MUCH more dangerous, as every single grapeshot blast from
>every space battle in history would still be out there, shredding Free Traders every time you looked up.)