Couldn't the mage(if there is one) just nail the incoming missile, assuming that he has the neccessary reflexe enhacement and LOS? Or is that too off topic from the "Rigger and the minigun"?

Remember that ASMs are closers to vehciles, levels a car is pretty hard. Also sea skimming missiles will have pretty low LOS times.

A thought on shooting down missiles, I don't remember where to find a link on this anymore, but about a year ago someone was entering the testing stages on a type of gum designed to saturate a 3/4 m x 3/4 m or 1/2 m by 1/2 m area with bullets. It uses a array a parallel barrels that are mounted about 3-6 cm from centers (rather uncertain on this exact distance), and utilizes caseless rounds to attain an increased rate of fire over standard ammunition. If I remember correctly the idea behind this was that you would try to get a 1-3 or second window in which the missile had to pass certain point, and fire into that area. The rate of fire would practically guarantee a hit on most passing objects, I haven't heard any reports on the success of this device against any actual missiles though, trials had not started at the time the article I read reached print. This would use a large amount of ammunition, but would increase the chances of hitting the missile over a standard single barrel system.

In terms guns in 2064, this could be refined into a useful system, reducing the TN to hit an incoming missile far enough to make it possible. As you can guess this would required a fairly large platform to handle the recoil, and with something in the range of a 10 x 10 array of barrells anything caught in this kind of full auto fire would suffer, I don't know how to stat this out for the can yet, but it could see some use in a higher end game.

A random thought for the day.

Metalstorm. It's been posted here more than a few times, but good suggestion nonetheless.

~J

Based on game mechanics and common sense, I'd say spells would be far more effective in this situation than any kind of projectile weapon.

So Mark what your basically saying, is that you do suppressive fire on a missile?

Nice idea though i think it could make it too easy it hit it.

Now I shoot skeet and while I have full confidence in the brains ability to compute trajectory, angle, distance and speed...I have to say that manually shooting down a missle would be near impossible even with the help of a computer. By the time you knew it was coming you wouldn't be able to stop it. Now you could use an anti-missile missle but you better be damn quick on the trigger. All in all, if there was any kind of tactical advantage to manually or even sensory gunning down a missile our military would already have it covered. Hence thier use of misdirection/confusion mechanisms.

This may come under suppressive fire rules for game mechanics, I don't know those rules yet.

The advantages for this particular gun though it that is has approximately 20 barrels firing in a parallel configuration. This would reduce the TN of the test to actually hit the missile by allowing a larger area of space to be fired into in a given period of time. A single attempt shoot down a missile would use 150-300 rounds in a combat turn. This requires a high stability platform to shoot from to compensate for the recoil.


For a suppressive fire gunnery test on hitting an incoming missile I would second many people previous statements of TN 20-30 range. For use of the this 20 odd barrel system I would say reduce the TN by about 10, and allow the usually sensor assisted gunnery modifiers, and this would still make it difficult, but a skilled rigger/gunner could still intercept a significant portion of the incoming missiles provided sensor lock could be established.

www.metalstorm.com is an example of the system that is similar to what I am talking about.


A random thought for the day.

What would you give the difficuly of someone trying to shoot down a rocket/missle with a laser pistol/rifle in normal combat, provided of course the character in question was watching as it was launched? Since the laser moves at the speed of light I would assume that one would have an easier time hitting instead of just putting lead in its path and hoping it bumps into a round. Personaly I would add a +8 modifier, but thats just me.