On 24Feb2018 0522, Rusty Witherspoon wrote:

Oh, it gets worse - they presume a single target model for PD and EW
in 1e - gunners take out 1 missile per roll, and get DM-1 for very
roll after the first, and the same for sensor Ops doing EW. In 2e, it
gets even worse considering the relative strength of missiles. You
get one attempt at PD, which removes a gunners effect (total throw-8)
in missiles, sandcasters do nothing against missiles, and every salvo
can have only one EW attempt against per round, which of course
removes the effect in missiles. Yeah, even with their specialised PD
system (auto intercept a small number), their bad attempt at counter
missiles (blow away lots of small craft! Or one missile, per
missile), and the ability to add sensor ops, they don't make
effective use of them.

Ah yes, I do remember that - I read the HG text in playtest, decided it was incurable, and aside from skimming it recently haven't looked at it since. You can have missile salvos in the hundreds, but gunners and EW guys can only remove maybe 10 missiles per attempt. It does make turrets worth having I suppose - each turret can be a battery, and thus get a PD roll. As for PD batteries, they take up 2% of the ship's hull (and at lower TLs a lot of hardpoints), a significant amount of power, and reduce salvo sizes by 3d6, which is pretty meaningless vs a 120 missile salvo.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief
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