On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 9:54 PM, Kurt Feltenberger <xxxxxx@thepaw.org> wrote:

You could still arrive with a large number of pods...they just wouldn't be deployed. Stick them in a tender or bulk transport, and when you arrive in system, then assign the pods to the various tow ships.

But your attacking fleet has to include several such tenders (or one REALLY massive one). Since these are starships, attackers are having to spend a whole lot of cash in order to counter a relatively cheap defense.

While your argument may have validity if we were looking at this from real world perspectives, much of your argument/tactic falls apart if the game system doesn't model the effects you mention.

I thought we were discussing the effects of introducing missile pods into canon (or at least near-canon) Traveller. In that specific situation, missile pods are going to give system defenders a large advantage, particularly since it is one that's [relatively] cheap to implement.

I just can't see these pods existing without some form of effective countermeasure...like how Star Fleet Battles introduced the transporter bomb so the Klingons could neuter Kzinti and Federation drone swarms.

Countermeasures are certainly possible in Traveller; these would be either the missile tenders you postulate above as well as the possibility of dedicated sensor ships which don't turn on their suites until after the initial wave of nukes pop.

My point is that - in *Traveller* - countering a defender's *cheap* missile pods could not fail to be relatively *expensive* for an attacker. This would help tilt the outcome of an invasion toward the defender's side.

Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein

"I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as Muhammed." Alexis de Tocqueville

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester (fictional monster hunter portrayed by Jensen Ackles)

"It has been my experience that a gun doesn't care who pulls its trigger." Newton Knight (as portrayed by Matthew McConaughey), to a scoffing Confederate tax collector facing the weapons held by Knight's young children and wife.