> IIRC, lightspeed is about 300,000kps, so your TL 11 and TL 13 > torpedoes are actually going faster than light (at about 3c and 12c, > respectively).
That presumes the missile/torpedo accelerates in a straight line, which it may not do if it chases an evading ship. For this reason, a 'nominal delta-V' in excess of lightspeed might make sense. You just have to keep in mind that the actual speed should not exceed, say, 0.8 c. Beyond that, relativistic effects become hard to ignore. > What is the maximum speed of something without FTL drives in GURPS Space? Lightspeed, of course. Regarding FTL missiles, that depends to a large degree on the chosen FTL technobabble. If you use warp drives, a missile with warp drive is just about the only possible anti-ship weapon. Sure, there are FTL beams in GURPS Vehicles, but you need to fly in close formation to use them - their range is the distance covered in a small fraction of a second. Hyperdrives and non-jumpline jump drives are more likely for FTL weapons. Regarding Kurt on missiles vs. torpedos, keep in mind that realworld anti-ship missiles fly through the air at speeds tens or hundreds of times faster than their swimming targets. A torpedo, by comparison, swims through the water at speeds only a few times faster than the ship. I would suggest that the relationship between a space ship and a space missile is more similar to a wet ship and a torp. (That is the reason, BTW, why so many space carrier ideas fall flat unless you cook the rules to give little ships higher speed and lower endurance.) Of course he is right on visibility issues, so there will be more defenses against space torps than we have right now against submarine torps. (Probably. I'm sure that the USN knows more about ladar and supercavitating projectiles than I do.) Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
