[TML] Expanding the turret selection.

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 7/6/08 4:52 PM, "Tom Naro" <tomnaro at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Greg Nokes tsykoduk at gmail.com wrote:
>> Did not book 5 add barbettes with more powerful PA's?
>> Why not stuff a bunch of guns into a barbette?
>> (Is that a barbette full of missile launchers, our are you just
>> happy to see me?)
>  
> The barbette was added due to the size of the PA weapons.  You cannot retrofit
> a barbette into a existing hardpoint.  Sure you could mechanically fit the
> unit into the spot, but the barbette has more tonnage than a standard turret -
> a drop-in wound be cheating.  You would have to sack a few staterooms to make
> up the tonnage difference (not sure that is even logical.)
> 
> How many guns can you fit in a barbette?  Do you get the same level of
> control?  Technically, a triple turret weapons could engage 3 separate targets
> - they are not required to fire as a battery.  Is the barbette automatically a
> battery meaning it can only fire at one target?
>  
> Is there really and benefit is cramming lasers into a barbette?  PA and fusion
> weapons seem to be better.
>  
> Smaller bays might help some designs.

The only way to answer such questions would be to build similar ships with
different armaments and see who wins.  :)

> I would expect that missile bays would closely resemble VLS (vertical launch
> system) arrays. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_launching_system The
> only problem is that the VLS would allow multiple missiles launches at once so
> traveller's combat rules would have to be adjusted.

See what I mean by can of worms.  There are so *many* variations you could
add that most would consider the system too complex.