During the previous games the missile movement rate was found to be too slow with the Federation cruisers being able to outrun any of them. I was able to replace the power plants and drives in the missiles with improved and more powerful versions, increasing their movement rate to 14, while still being able to maintain a size that was close to or the same as the originals. I also found an article on one of the 2300AD web sites that included revised stats for the missiles in the game that were done using the article from Challenge Magazine 36 on the anatomy of a missile. This article is important as the missiles cannot be built using the data in the ship design manual that is included with the game. While the revised missile stats from the website article had a faster movement the fastest one was only 11. This was still too low to catch the American cruiser before the missile ran out of fuel, if the American ship decided to run before the distance was too close.
One item that was ignored when I redesigned the missiles was the hull mass. In the game and the various supplement books for the 2300AD universe most missiles are shown as pointed nose cylinders. Dimension vary from one to two meters in diameter and five to seven meters long. A modern submarine torpedo is just over half a meter in diameter and about 6 meters long.
Since space has no atmospheric resistance missiles could be any shape and do not require a strong external hull to maintain integrity as the drives in the game do not create an acceleration stress. The hull can be made of light weight plastic with some internal bracing/connectors between the components. Cost and mass would be minimal for that type of hull. As for shape, the missile could be a cylindrical can without the pointed nose, a cube, or shaped like a brick. Cubes and/or bricks would be slightly easier to store than a cylinder
Starcruiser includes ships for the French, Germans, United States, Manchuria, Russia, and several other nations. The more modern ships are in the French, US, and German fleets. Since the French had the greatest variety of ship types I assigned them to the Panthari Imperium. The US ships went to the Federation and the German ships were designated for the Domain.
The German ships are not quite as advanced as the US and French which fits with the Domain's technological status compared to the others. Their ships in the game are a battleship/battle cruiser type, a missile cruiser, a frigate, and a fighter. The supplemental books provide additional fighters.
The French ships in the game are a large battleship, a cruiser, several frigates, and a fighter. The "Ships of the French Arm" and "Invasion" books include another version of the battleship, a couple of frigates, and several fighters.
The Americans only have the missile cruiser and a fighter in the game, but a frigate was in an issue of Challenge Magazine, and a battleship was noted in the Invasion book.
The marauding aliens are covered by the invading alien ships in the game and other books. They tend to use large, heavily armored and screened ships. They do have a couple of fighters also. Their heavier ships are 70,000 to 74,000 tons, their intermediate sized ship is 47,000 tons, and their smallest warship is 13,000 tons. This compares to the Panthari battleship at 60,000 tons, the Domain battle cruiser at 27,000 tons, and the Federation cruiser at 7200 tons. The Federation cruiser should probably be re-designated as a missile frigate.
The ships for the other nations in the game will be used for the various unaligned worlds as needed.
There is another spacefaring alien race in the books. They use organic technology and their ships are living creatures. At this point they are not included in the Human Space setting.
I ran a game at last weekend's Miniature Wargaming Society of Sacramento meeting using the increased missile movement rate. The game matched a pair of the Federation missile cruisers against a pair of Domain missile cruisers. The after action report for that game will be in the next blog post.
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