On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 8:44 AM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > The helicopter is faster by a factor of 4-5 and both use super > MHD fusion from VXii, so refueling is no issue. But if the > helicopter really operates at 300 mph, can it make use of > ground cover? > depends on the terrain and the skill of the autopilot. > > > [...] and the > > ability to jump over ground held by the enemy, without having to move > > through it. A ground vehicle of any sort is no match. > > Taking a helicopter directly over enemy positions is a bit daring, > I'd say. But swamps or forests are no problem for the chopper, > while they slow a Mecha. > > Depends on the enemy you're engaging. Consider a situation like what the US is in Iraq and Afghanistan. Big areas of territory that are not firmly in friendly hands, but with an enemy that doesn't have terribly good AAA. > > don't forget that at TL9 you get really good indirect fire weapons, that > can > > do anything that a mecha can do. Except fall over, not move, get stuck > in > > the sand. > > Interesting thought. > > * Ballistic indirect fire weapons can be backtracked by > counterbattery sensors, and engaged in flight by area defense > weapons. > * But indirect fire doesn't have to fly on unpowered, ballistic > trajectories. Juggling the thrust during the launch phase can > obscure the gun position, OGRE had rules for evasive shells, > and there is terminal homing to score a hit on point targets. > * Shaped charges can be discouraged by EM armor, but can indirect > fire use KE rounds? Maybe, if the arc is high enough ... > I can see a sub caliber projectile, mounting a rocket motor. fire ballistically, acquire the target at the top of the trajectory (or get guidance info from a spotter), and fire the rocket. > * OTOH, missiles with HEAT warheads were just what I had in mind > for the Mecha, so that point doesn't count. > > But if arty can replace Mecha, can it also replace tanks? > > In a lot of cases, tanks are used as artillery. Armored, mobile, and a bit more direct fire, but the idea is the same. > David wrote: > > Mecha simply can't be armored enough to be useful on a high-tech > > battlefield: their volume to surface area ratio sucks too badly. ground > > vehicles (or even creepy crawly spider mecha) beat the pants off them. > > > An area ratio of 1:2 or even 1:3 would be critical if armor is half or > more of the weight of an AFV, but what if the armor percentage drops > again? Perhaps because all AFVs (tracked, legged or VTOL) need to be > faster? > For a given percentage of mass as armor, a better ratio between surface area and volume means higher DR. conversely, if you pick the level of DR required, it'll be a smaller percentage of mass. It's conceivable Magick (force fields or something) could change that. > > > Missiles are modestly expensive. > > I get the feeling that VE makes them too expensive -- jet fighters and > tanks get an unreasonably low "mass production" pricetag, but missiles > don't. > The numbers Vehicles produces for costs have never made any sense to me. > > > Guided artillery shells are dirt cheap. > > And gurps gives unrealistic jamming and detection rules, mostly for > > playability. it's quite possible to build guidance systems that aren't > > jammable, nor even detectable. Not just "we can't find them" > undetectable, > > but actually theoretically undetectable. (It's not much fun to play in > such > > a battlefield, but that's what it's going to be like.) > > If your own receivers can detect them, and how else could the system > transmit information, why can't enemies detect them? It might become > more and more difficult to detect the system without knowledge of the > settings, but how can it be impossible unless we're talking weird > quantum stuff? > > It's possible to build radio communications systems that have transmitters that output less power than the background noise. If you don't know the code with which the transmitter is modulating its transmissions (and a way to sync with it, but depending on the length of the code being used, you can look in parallel) , you can't detect it. Note that's not just "figure out what's being transmitted" it's "detect it". Figuring out what's being transmitted is a second problem. This is TL9 stuff, and trivial at TL10, but the theory involved is WWII tech.... -- David Scheidt [email protected] _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
