Killing a Demon Planet

[Warshield73]

I am spinning this off from the thread on Extradimensional Colonies for Three Galaxies power blocks so that it doesn't derail that chat.

What would it take for the CAF or TGE to destroy one standard demon planet from page 99 of DB 6: Three Galaxies? I am explicitly excluding Cormal here.

A few of my gaming group and I sat down and tried work it in Excel using average damages for ships and we came up with the following using the CAF Fleet described on page 98 of DB 3: Phase World SB. The numbers were kept well within the averages.
- 2 Protector BS
- 2 Packmaster CVE's
- 12 Warshields
- 45 Hunter Destroyers

The plan is simple:
1. Deploy all capital ships well outside the range of the tentacles, cosmic blast and as far out in the gravity field as possible, call it 75,000 t0 100,000 miles
2. Deploy most of the fighters and all the troops to one section out of range of the maw tentacles but close enough for future strikes and establish a beachhead, call it 1,200 to 1,500 miles away
3. Marines and 1/4 to 1/3 of the fighters begin attacking all surface structures in a 500 mile radius with emphasis on gravity glands and the local small tentacles
4 the other 2/3 to 3/4 of the fighters deploy to other areas of the DP to draw attention and prevent the DP defenses from massing in just the one area (this is the group that will likely get slaughtered
5 once local defenses are depleted and gravity glands are clear destroyers come in to eliminate the primary tentacles
Note: The hardest part here is once a DP structure is destroyed you need to prevent regeneration, there is no regeneration listed for standard DP so I assume it has half of Cormal's so 1D4X500 per minute which I assume is total so if it has 3 tentacles destroyed it has to focus on 1 at a time but if people disagree let me know
6 once the primary tentacles are cleared the Battleships and cruisers can come into range and begin bombardment in theory the only attack that can hit them is the cosmic blast but these ships should be able to absorb that

I forget how long it takes to actually kill the planet but eventually it will go down. I am simplifying things here and it would cost thousands of lives and billions of credits, millions if you can keep it from destroying any capital ships, but given the numbers involved it can be done.

The biggest problems we identified with this plan were the horror factor which makes it tough on mortal soldiers, the DP's energy resistance and the fact that tech armies need to repair and rearm constantly and if the carriers get close enough to actually do it the DP will eat them for breakfast...literally.

So thought. What did I forget? Is this possible?

[Grazzik]

Okay, all I could imagine as I read this is a single fighter weaving through a forest of tentacles to fire a single experimental magically enchanted torpedo down an obscure oriface two meters wide (about the size of a womp... I mean, a tall ratling) leading to the heart of the demon planet... kaboom!

Who needs to crunch all that math!

[taalismn]

Can't recall if Demon Planets are vulnerable to nuclear radiation, but if so, Catyr ground troops(supernatural strength, mega damage bodies, and invulnerable to radiation), packing plenty of Depleted Uranium and Uranium rounds, and throwing around dirty nukes like confetti oughta help clear some ground and start some area necrotizing.

[Marcethus]

Okay, all I could imagine as I read this is a single fighter weaving through a forest of tentacles to fire a single experimental magically enchanted torpedo down an obscure oriface two meters wide (about the size of a womp... I mean, a tall ratling) leading to the heart of the demon planet... kaboom!

Who needs to crunch all that math!

[taalismn]

The first few demon planets will be tough to kill, but with a good learning curve from the experience, it will become second nature.

"Demon planet in Sector oh-three-oh. Beelezebub pattern."
"Okay, break out the Exorcist missiles."

[Warshield73]

Okay, all I could imagine as I read this is a single fighter weaving through a forest of tentacles to fire a single experimental magically enchanted torpedo down an obscure oriface two meters wide (about the size of a womp... I mean, a tall ratling) leading to the heart of the demon planet... kaboom!

Who needs to crunch all that math!

Let’s be honest Star Wars is the only space combat as rediculous as Phase World in terms of speeds and weapons rangers and the use of fighters so it fits.

It also just works best in terms of a TTRPG setting too. Why have ground conbat in a setting with giant warship? Answer, planetary deffense exist which can be evaded by small fast targets but would obliterate a giant warship and those tentacles qualify.

It is also why I love demon planets (even Cormal) and hate the Dominator mothership. Those cannot be killed by any fleet in the three galaxies, again just going by the math. The ranges and ship seeds just don’t work. You can’t even really run away from them. Demon planets though, you can escape them individually and fleets can realistically kill them, perfect for a gaming session.

Can't recall if Demon Planets are vulnerable to nuclear radiation, but if so, Catyr ground troops(supernatural strength, mega damage bodies, and invulnerable to radiation), packing plenty of Depleted Uranium and Uranium rounds, and throwing around dirty nukes like confetti oughta help clear some ground and start some area necrotizing.

They take half damage from energy attacks but they should still be vulnerable to radioactive weapons. This is something that I have included in my PW setting for a long time as anything with bio-regeneration would be good for that. And yes Catyr are perfect for this kind of operation.

Okay, all I could imagine as I read this is a single fighter weaving through a forest of tentacles to fire a single experimental magically enchanted torpedo down an obscure oriface two meters wide (about the size of a womp... I mean, a tall ratling) leading to the heart of the demon planet... kaboom!

Who needs to crunch all that math!

Laugh it up fuzzball

Sorry, couldn’t resist…didn’t try that hard but couldn’t resist.

The first few demon planets will be tough to kill, but with a good learning curve from the experience, it will become second nature.

"Demon planet in Sector oh-three-oh. Beelezebub pattern."
"Okay, break out the Exorcist missiles."

Interesting idea but I wonder if you can even really kill these things. I mean we see what happens when you kill a regular, run of the mill vampire intelligence but these things are almost lesser old ones. Can they even be killed or once they are weakened enough do you have to imprison them?

Also, given the nature of the Minion War in the 3G not sure if they can even gain that experience as each known DP has fleets attached which adds to the difficulty considerably. THey also have standing ground forces that are far more capable than the standard DP defences.

Also have a problem with the description given. It says that using its magic and natural abilities (like FTL) weakens them and they need to recharge by eating planets but no limits are given. Do they not replenish PPE like other magic users? Do they start to power themselves by converting their own MDC like Cosmo-Kinights do? How do they “feed” on a planet? How do they feed on a star? What do they get from celestial objects with no living beings or PPE?

Don’t get me wrong, you don’t need to answer these questions to use them in a game but I am interested.

[taalismn]

I don't try to answer those question, I just try to kill every damn infernal associated with a Demon Planet.

[ShadowLogan]

For a tech heavy faction like the CCW or TGE to engage a demon planet? In general there are cannon technologies that if deployed in suitable numbers could be the bane of a Demon Planet (ignoring Cormal, not that it would matter I don't have the stats for him).

Technological Options:

1. T'Zee (CCW member) Piranha Weapons (DB3 pg63), while the two guns discuss the effects of a (mini-)grenade utilizing nano-machines that can attack MDC flesh (which the demon planet would constitute). This is canon (AFAIK), what isn't canon would be an alternate delivery system (cruise missile, "bomber", some how deploy ~100,000 ground troops armed with the Rifle, etc) and/or larger warhead size to reduce the required numbers to deploy (these are mini-grenades after all, which means a full-size warhead for a missile likely is going to be more powerful).

It would take ~900,000 of these mini-grenades to kill an Average Demon Planet (at 12.5million MDC main body) in 1 melee round (they have a life span of 1d6 melee rounds, so assuming an average roll you'd only need a ~1/3 of this). More if the nanites are expected to attack other targets and its immune defenders.

2. Mass Driver (DB6 pg129, also a variant in Fot3G pg77). The canon stats for the GR-500 Mass Driver Heavy Weapon would only require ~50x units to be brought to bear against a Demon Planet to kill 1x in a massed volley (if one is okay with multiple volleys the number can be reduced). This ignores the secondary blast damages (for the GR-500, the Kittani variant by RAW could see this number lowered to 20-30x assuming there is no errata fix)

Now the downsides:
1. ROF is 1x per 5 minutes (the Fot3G/Kittani variant is 15 minute)
2. Range would bring the vessel to within reach of the main tentacles
3. CCW (DB6pg129-30 note) has banned the weapon from it's territory (passing through have to disable the system). Though I think it is possible they might have some "dual-use" examples around.

3. Golgan F-MK 14 Super Cannon (Fot3G pg59) is the only non-Dominator/lost-tech PW setting beam weapon with a range of 1,600km (IINM). This puts it the edge of the demon planet's tentacle reach. You'd need ~1,200 of these guns to kill an average demon planet in 1 melee round (and over whelming the # of main tentacles that can reach it). Per text the Golgan's are set to deploy over 5,000 of these ships. It should also be noted this is energy weapon damage which I'm not factoring in the Demon Planet's resistances, but the weapon does have a "splash" effect (25% to radius). So if other tech powers can replicate the range (or even surpass it), then they might not have to get to close.

NOTE: this weapon design comes to them from 400 years in the future, so it might not be replicate-able at present for other powers.

4. Space Mines. Another Golgan example of canon tech (pg60 in Fot3G), but one conceptually other tech factions should be able to knockoff easily (might use a different type of warhead, but otherwise there is no tech that goes into them that is unique to them AFAIK). The ship that utilizes them carries 2,400 and can deploy 2 per melee round (or 300 minutes/5hrs for all of them), for a damage output of ~1,200,000, meaning you'd only need like 11x ships of this class (per text over 5,000x are set to be deploy), and it isn't a mine-layer so a dedicated ship to lay mines might be able to carry/deploy more. This obviously requires some preparation, but there really isn't a reason the TGE or CCW could not replicate these per say.

5. Missile/Torpedo Spam. The typical Cruise Missile does IINM 4d6x100, so you'd need ~9,000 units to kill an average demon planet. And this isn't the Anti-matter (5,000x) or Singularity Cruise Missiles (TGE only, 3,572x) statd in DB6 on pg130. The generic LRM missile warheads of course are going to require more, but these weapons also mean one only has to close to within the edge of reach of the tentacles and after firing could dash out.

6. Asteroid/Comet Collision. Similar to the Mass Driver idea, but only here one would use ships to divert an asteroid or comet on a collision course with a Demon Planet. This is unlikely to succeed IMHO since the planet can maneuver, but if you can "stealth" it somehow...

Non-Tech solutions:
1. Get a Dominator Star Fortress Involved. Seriously, IINM 1x DSF can take out a MAX Roll Demon Planet on Average Rolls in 15seconds at ranges the other powers in the 3Gs could only dream of. An an average rolled demon planet could be killed 3x over in 15seconds (ignoring damage resistances). Megaversally, some 1E RT/Macross2 vessels likely could stand in for one in small numbers the newer 2E RT vessels might have a harder time (IINM).

2. The Artifact (DB6 pg41-2). It would take 250x shots of its main gun to destroy an a demon planet (all average rolls), though likely looking at 500x shots using it secondary weapons which aren't as restricted (per text). And this thing could close the gap to well within tentacle strike range, even a DP's energy blast range and not worry (MDC is considered to be in the billions and unlisted, assuming average die roll for # of tentacles, you'd be looking at ~780,000MD per melee in output damage, it would take over 1,200 melee rounds for it to crack 1,000,000,000MDC and it has multiple billion). That also ignores its missile system or Drones (less of a danger to it).

3. "Space Weather" Trope (Meteor Showers, Plasma Fields, Nebulae, Ion Storms) found in DB6 pg16-24. These provide options to "soften" a Demon Planet, though if you can get one in a Nebulae and could figure a way to set an entire nebula up (Hydrogen Gas) you'd likely destroy it. Now most of the "weather" considers a ship passing through not a planet sized object, which means damage might have to be reconsidered for these instances (at GM fiat).


Strategy for taking down a(n Average) Demon Planet:
Demon Planets IMHO are limited in attack options and can be easily over whelmed. They have an average of 13 tentacles 1,600km long, and their energy blast can reach out 800km but it can only fire 1per minute (and it does so sparingly). That means that while one maneuvers into within range of the planet itself for a gun bombardment, one really only has to contend with the tentacles, which if you have sufficient numbers of mass fire of gun systems could be destroyed (ex. a typical Splugorth Task force as described in Fot3G consists of 6x Servitude Cruisers and 1x Taskmaster Carrier plus 20x Dragon Dreadnoughts and 480x Kittani Space Robot Fighters with their 36x Shuttles, ignoring the Taskmaster's mass driver in 15 seconds could output just over 2,000,000MD more than enough to kill 13x 70,000MDC tentacles total of 910,000MDC). Without knowing the rate at which the tentacles move through space, it's hard to know if they are even a danger to capital ships in reality (the ships might be fast enough to stay out of reach and maneuver).

[ShadowLogan]

I might have another method.

Per DB6 pg134, a Gas Collector space vehicle (cost 50million credits per) has a storage capacity of 6 tons of condensed gas. Now it doesn't state what gas(es) is(/are) mined from gas giants, but Hydrogen would be a good candidate.

1g of Hydrogen = 28.65g of TNT (source Google search)
6tons = 6,000kg =6,000,000g of TNT *28.65 = 171,900,000g of TNT = 171,900kt of TNT

The CS Firefly Nuclear Warhead (SB4 CS Navy pg48) has a capacity of 100kt for 2d4x100MD plus splash damage. (Tomahawk has 200kt and does 3d4x100MD, only 50% more for x2 yield but it does have higher splash)

IF we assume 1Mega-Ton = 10x Firefly (Tomahawk suggests it wouldn't) for easy of use, and go with a simple modifier of x100 (instead of 171.9 possible) you end up with a Gas Collector holding 2d4x100x10x100 = 2d4x100,000MD (average 500,000MD).

So in theory all you need to do is have ~25x (~50x if one thinks its resistances would be a factor) Gas Collectors "land on" the demon planet (with average MDC) and "detonate" all that compressed hydrogen gas. The units don't even need to be crewed, they could be converted into drones. Cost wise looking at 2.5billion credits (more for the drone conversion, but still) worth of equipment, not sure how that compares to other options in terms of cost, but...

[taalismn]

Condensed hydrogen? Are we talking cryogen slush or even denser -metallic- hydrogen?

[ShadowLogan]

The Book text only establishes that it is condensed gas, so I don't think we are dealing with H2 in any other state (and H2 is stored as compressed gas at high pressure, which could qualify as condensed given Palladium's writing accuracy at times).

DB6 pg134 "Cargo: There is a small storage locker for the crew. The ship can hold 6 tons of condensed gas."

This is a short range unit, but it does state "These turbines are versatile enough to collect one type of gas while filtering out others. The gas is accumulated in the rear of the ship in a large storage unit."

Gas giants come with primarily H2 and He, but they can also vary in minor composition with other gases (Neptune and Uranus have "high" concentrations of methane that gives them its blue color). So I'm not sure what other gases they could be after other than maybe Helium.

The Gas Collector also works with the Argon Class Gas Mining Ship (pg133-4), which has x24 Gas Collectors as part of its compliment, and it has industrial facilities which likely means it likely handles the processing of the stuff. Note this unit has 5ton units and a 5,000 tons of cargo (I don't know why the differences).

If the Gas Collector wasn't scary enough, one could convert a Argon-class (~800x more capacity) or the Standard Cargo Canister (pg160) that holds 12tons and is much cheaper, never mind the Giant Can (20ton) or Super Can (200ton)... It should be noted the Cans on pg160 do list internal volume (though if all that is H2, by the mass that would mean the gas is either compressed to reduced volume or it changes state for storage). No volume is listed for the Collector. One could also switch to anti-matter, which should be more powerful.

[taalismn]

Still, metallic hydrogen? Less bulk, more bang.

Also, relativistic missiles against DP. Depends on if the DP has FTL sensors able to scan space in real time out beyond time-lag range.
If you know where the DP is going to be, and you have lead time, ramp up that CG drive or other pusher up as close to light speed as you can. That projectile from hell's going to come in seconds after light/radiation announces it's there.

Afraid the DP's going to move before you can correct your missile's course?
Saturate an area of space with plenty of the things. Maybe shotgun the warheads before they're calculated to hit so you cover. an area.

Only problem is, if you miss, you might be scattering a whole lot of very high velocity shrapnel across a region of galactic space. Centuries later, somebody might have reason to curse you(or your descendants) for negligent genocide.

[Grazzik]

A bit of science...

First, 312000 cubic ft is only 9k cubic meters, not 95k. So the stats for the super can is off by a smidge.

Second, to fit 200 tons in 312000 cu.ft means the substance has a minimum density of 1.4 lbs/cu.ft.

Third, the least dense metal is lithium at 33.3 lbs/cu.ft and liquid hydrogen is 4.4 lbs/cu.ft, so filling a super can to maximum volume with maximum mass would be with a gas.

However, surprisingly handwavium is exactly 1.4 lbs/cu.ft ...

[ShadowLogan]

@taalismnn
While I agree that SLMH has more bang for the buck in terms of storage there are a few problems:
1. AFAIK SLMH isn't part of the setting (not saying it isn't or can't be, just that I'm not aware of its use)
2. the text specified gas, so that's what I worked with that we are dealing with a gas and H2 is the likely candidate
3. the Gas Collector lacks volume for what it "collects", only thing is we have the mass/weight of what it can store, unlike the various CANS at the back of the book (math errors and all according to Grazzik, I haven't checked them)
3a. the GC is only there to collect the substance, it doesn't do much refining (separation only per text) and does appear to be stored in a gas state (one might argue they could process into the spot into liquid as there are rocket engines that have been tested to liquidify air for use as an oxidizer, so making it liquid should be possible). High end processing (which Metallic H2 might require) might push for it being done at the Argon-class ship (or elsewhere) for any number of reasons as it can collect and filter/strain for multiple substances or to simplify the vehicle
4. the "state" of the hydrogen doesn't change the ratio to TNT in a lot of cases (gas, liquid, slush), do admit SLMH would be mush more if Google's AI search result summary is accurate for the various states of H2 (21.5MT TNT yield of 1kg of metallic hydrogen).

As for a relativistic kill vehicle, while possible lets keep in mind one could put it safe guards and guidance system into place, so even if the DP can maneuver (and it has to) it might not be enough (but depending on the design features, it could have various approaches to an "abort" that render it safe). Though here we are likely dealing with speculation on the DP part, plus probably the damage from a RKV...

If the RKV damage is the same as Collision on RUE pg345, that means for every 16kph increment you do 2d4 SDC and the speed of light is 1,079,000,000kph (yes its in KPH not M/S) that means at:
0.10c does 2d4x107,900 MD (539,500MD Average)
0.25c does 2d4x269,750 MD (1,348,750MD Average)
0.50c does 2d4x539,500 MD (2,697,500MD Average)
0.75c does 2d4x809,250 MD (4,046,250MD Average)
0.95c does 2d4x1,025,050 MD (5,125,250MD Average)

So even a RKV would require multiple vehicles regardless of its relativistic speed to kill a DP, and this assumes the collision rules cited are applicable for this type of attack (I'd note that using these rules, you can make an M-16 do MD based on its muzzle velocity IIRC but in actual principle it does SDC).

[taalismn]

Guess I won't be getting an award from the SLMH lobby for promoting their product as a 'demon planet killer'.

Or hang a DP trophy in my den/solar system next to my ramjet-accelerator cannon.

[ShadowLogan]

I'm not sure how much of niche SLMH would have in the PW setting honestly. I mean think about it they have access to Anti-Matter, which will given even more bang for your buck (per Google's Search AI results* that 42.99Megatons** of TNT for 1kg of AM reacting with 1kg of M) why would anyone switch to SLMH (then again why does anyone still use Nuclear Fusion if they have this stuff)?. Granted that's for another topic I think.

*which could give varying results depending how you phrase the question (liquid metallic hydrogen it now says is the same as other stages of H2, it gives different results if "liquid"/"stabilized liquid" is used or not).

**that is the equivalent of 4299 CS Firefly Nuclear Missiles (which has a 100kt warhead), assuming things scale directly (which Palladium doesn't really do).

[ShadowLogan]

While working the Gas Collector results in a previous post here (as basis in another topic) I might have made an error some where with unit conversions.

The TNT equivalent of a fully loaded Gas Collector with 6,000tons of H2 gas would land the TNT equivalent between the CS Firefly and CS Tomahawk Nuclear Missiles (100kt and 200kt respectively). Which means its not much better than simply using a large volume of nuclear (or anti-matter) Cruise Missiles (which might be cheaper in any case).

SLMH would fall within this range to with the energy density I used for it (it has wide range, so possible it could be more given its theoretical status).

[taalismn]

The nuclear and antimatter lobbies thank you for your honesty.

[Shorty Lickens]

Basic video game strategy: Attrition.

Each side can take so many hits before dying, each side has to kill the other side first.
As the planet is taking out enemy ships one by one, what is the average damage of the fleet each turn? Based on that, how many turns will the fleet need to kill the planet? CAN they do it with what they brought?

[Plane]

One thing I think we're missing when looking at their natural half damage from energy is every single demon planet knows all spells levels 1-12 meaning it can easily just cast Impervious to Energy for minutes at a time since they all cast at 15th level experience.

I guess the question here is whether they're capable of self-casting?

"can cast a spell at a specific target in its atmosphere or in space, not on its surface"

That does seem like they have a "minimum range" which prevents self-spells normally (you are your own surface) so they can't cast ITE on themself but....

"can be cast at specific targets in space or on its surface by its official surrogate"

This means the Floating Horror CAN cast Impervious to Energy in the atmosphere. This spell however says 'others by ritual' though, so it will take them some time to set that up, but a smart Demon Planet is going to have hidden pockets of Floating Horrors constantly keeping ITE rituals active (drawing on the near-unlimited PPE power of it's ley lines) especially when ships with big energy cannons show up.

These creatures have built-in ley lines meaning they're always getting those multipliers and as of RUE buffing up how much PPE you can draw from ley lines (DB6 came out in 2003 a couple years prior to RUE) means they can basically just do this indefinitely.

They all knows Dimensional Portal so odds are just as you're whittling them down they'll probably just relocate somewhere safe away from most of your space ships - if you're lucky any troopers on the surface get to piggyback for the ride, but otherwise hopefully a few ships can follow through the Rift before it closes - how long that takes opinions tend to vary.

Worth noting that other spells the Floating Horror can cast on the surface would include the 8th level spell Metamorphosis Human - like ITE it is "other by ritual" but a Demon Planet is a very convenient MDC shelter for its minions to conduct rituals within. Of course - what happens to tiny creatures living inside you when you shapeshift into a vastly smaller form is an interesting question so I can't see a Demon Planet doing it casually (it might crush and kill all its denizens, who are useful to keep alive) but it's still possible as a last-ditch effort - they could just at the last minute of the ritual instruct all their minions to flee from caves and go to the surface where ethey won't be shrunk as the planet shrinks into a human form.

The ability of giant AIs to just shrink into the size of an insect or human is vastly underestimated regarding how these creatures can escape attacks.

[Warshield73]

Basic video game strategy: Attrition.

Each side can take so many hits before dying, each side has to kill the other side first.
As the planet is taking out enemy ships one by one, what is the average damage of the fleet each turn? Based on that, how many turns will the fleet need to kill the planet? CAN they do it with what they brought?

Like I said in the OP with the forces described, and that is just assuming equipment in the first 2 PW books, it can be done with just those fleets. If you double the number of carriers the opening phases go a lot faster and if you double the battleships the end goes a lot faster.

The spell magic of a DP is the wild card. If you assume it can cast impervious to energy on it's entire body then other spells like invisibility and teleport become a lot more terrifying then any of the defensive spells. I chose to rule that spell like those could only be cast on it's individual components. Just for the sake of sanity.

[ShadowLogan]

Found this about the Kreeghor's Imperial Homeworld on p73 of DB2 about surface cannons "bracketed by giant space cannons too big to be mounted even on the largest starships. These huge guns are able to melt a ship into slag before it gets into orbit." (NOTE these guns are credited with destroyed a force of 2,000 kittani warships, but no hard stats/info is given so extrapolation would have to be done)

So the tech powers likely do have weapons that can be a serious danger to the Demon Planet (maybe even Dominator Star Fortress), because while "into orbit" is a bit vague in terms of accuracy with regard to distance the power output to "slag" a ship means doing 10,000s of points of damage I would think.

[Warshield73]

Found this about the Kreeghor's Imperial Homeworld on p73 of DB2 about surface cannons "bracketed by giant space cannons too big to be mounted even on the largest starships. These huge guns are able to melt a ship into slag before it gets into orbit." (NOTE these guns are credited with destroyed a force of 2,000 kittani warships, but no hard stats/info is given so extrapolation would have to be done)

So the tech powers likely do have weapons that can be a serious danger to the Demon Planet (maybe even Dominator Star Fortress), because while "into orbit" is a bit vague in terms of accuracy with regard to distance the power output to "slag" a ship means doing 10,000s of points of damage I would think.

I have always assumed that major planets have massive defense grid with Kreeghor Tet being at the top and other major worlds right beneath. I think we can assume that most demon planets go for medium to small worlds. Enough population to make it worth it but not so much as to be a risk.

Cormal on the other hand has tentacles so long that he can start to crush the planet before he is in range of the guns.

So the tech powers likely do have weapons that can be a serious danger to the Demon Planet (maybe even Dominator Star Fortress)...

Nope. Had this conversation on another thread years ago but the best weapons by the lesser races have a range of 120 miles in space with 60 miles in atmosphere. If they firs straight up and we assume the atmosphere ends at 62 miles this means those weapons run out of steam before getting to the end. Now, in my setting I assume 3 times that range just to give some reach but let's assume 10 times the range, 1,200 miles in space.

The Dominator ship, between primary, secondary and tertiary weapons, has 5,103 weapons that all have a reach of 200,000 miles. They can roast any planetary or orbital defenses before they even come into range of missiles.

I have been through this before as written in system the dominators ship is not beatable by any power even phase world unless those shape shifting dreadnoughts of theirs are each more powerful than the city of center, then they may have a shot against one.

As presented in the books you cannot run form a dominator, you cannot hide from a dominator, and you sure as crap can't beat them.

[ShadowLogan]

Nope. Had this conversation on another thread years ago but the best weapons by the lesser races have a range of 120 miles in space with 60 miles in atmosphere. If they firs straight up and we assume the atmosphere ends at 62 miles this means those weapons run out of steam before getting to the end. Now, in my setting I assume 3 times that range just to give some reach but let's assume 10 times the range, 1,200 miles in space.

Lesser Races as of Fot3G do have weapons with ranges of over 120miles (~193km), looking at the spreadsheet I setup for this:
-Altess have 400km range Heavy Magnetic Photon Array (Zhokil-Class)
-Golgan have a Super Cannon range of 1600km (Xylnor-Class), though time travel might be involved in acquiring them
-Necrol have a 320km range "Gore Cannon (Behemoth Destoryer, though this is organic tech so might be ignore-able), they aren't in Fot3G, but qualify as lesser
-Splugorth/Kittani have a 800km range Mass Driver (Taskmaster-Class), probably the best "gun" system to use against a Demon Planet due to range (its' also a generic system in DB5 or DB6 IINM)
-UWW have TW-HI Lasers with range of 320km (Tangent Space Station), not exactly a tech solution
-UWW has a listed range of a Rift Projector Cannon at 240km (Dwarven Iron-ship, not Fot3G), so slightly better than 120mile/193km.
-UWW has a Flare cannon with a range of 640km (Arcane Mark X, not sure of book off hand)

It might also be worth considering what planet based defense weapons might actually look like vs ship based weaponry. I think the TGE cited weapons are possible, IF we consider the available power a planet could be generating versus a starship. But again we don't have useful power generation output/use stats anywhere AFAIK, nor do we have these weapons stated out (so we don't know what the range actually is in terms of "orbit", or how much damage it does)

Here are some power plant outputs after a quick google search: 3-Mile Island Power Plant available (that's x2 800MW reactors), a Ford Class Nuclear powered Aircraft Carrier has x2 Nuclear Power Plants at ~700MW, the older Nimitz-class has x2 550MW. China's Three Gorges Dam generates 22,500MW, and there are other Hydro-Electric sites that generate over 1,000MW. Earth in 2022 generated an estimated 460Terra Watts of electricity, in 2024 we added 49Giga-Watts of capacity, which easily outshines a single Nuclear Powered Naval Vessel. So if you had an electrical energy intensive task, a planet is likely to be able to pull it off where a starship might not (It's the equivalent of having a 60s muscle car and its horsepower seeming high at over 400 Horsepower, but put in its place as the first engines on a 707 Jet Airliner generate 20,000hp also from the 1960s).

Don't get me wrong a FLEET is going to have trouble with a DSF, but a "fortress" world should have more than enough energy production capacity in theory to power weapons that could match the DSF's IMHO.

[Warshield73]

Nope. Had this conversation on another thread years ago but the best weapons by the lesser races have a range of 120 miles in space with 60 miles in atmosphere. If they firs straight up and we assume the atmosphere ends at 62 miles this means those weapons run out of steam before getting to the end. Now, in my setting I assume 3 times that range just to give some reach but let's assume 10 times the range, 1,200 miles in space.

Lesser Races as of Fot3G do have weapons with ranges of over 120miles (~193km), looking at the spreadsheet I setup for this:
-Altess have 400km range Heavy Magnetic Photon Array (Zhokil-Class)
-Golgan have a Super Cannon range of 1600km (Xylnor-Class), though time travel might be involved in acquiring them
-Necrol have a 320km range "Gore Cannon (Behemoth Destoryer, though this is organic tech so might be ignore-able), they aren't in Fot3G, but qualify as lesser
-Splugorth/Kittani have a 800km range Mass Driver (Taskmaster-Class), probably the best "gun" system to use against a Demon Planet due to range (its' also a generic system in DB5 or DB6 IINM)
-UWW have TW-HI Lasers with range of 320km (Tangent Space Station), not exactly a tech solution
-UWW has a listed range of a Rift Projector Cannon at 240km (Dwarven Iron-ship, not Fot3G), so slightly better than 120mile/193km.
-UWW has a Flare cannon with a range of 640km (Arcane Mark X, not sure of book off hand)

It might also be worth considering what planet based defense weapons might actually look like vs ship based weaponry. I think the TGE cited weapons are possible, IF we consider the available power a planet could be generating versus a starship. But again we don't have useful power generation output/use stats anywhere AFAIK, nor do we have these weapons stated out (so we don't know what the range actually is in terms of "orbit", or how much damage it does)

Here are some power plant outputs after a quick google search: 3-Mile Island Power Plant available (that's x2 800MW reactors), a Ford Class Nuclear powered Aircraft Carrier has x2 Nuclear Power Plants at ~700MW, the older Nimitz-class has x2 550MW. China's Three Gorges Dam generates 22,500MW, and there are other Hydro-Electric sites that generate over 1,000MW. Earth in 2022 generated an estimated 460Terra Watts of electricity, in 2024 we added 49Giga-Watts of capacity, which easily outshines a single Nuclear Powered Naval Vessel. So if you had an electrical energy intensive task, a planet is likely to be able to pull it off where a starship might not (It's the equivalent of having a 60s muscle car and its horsepower seeming high at over 400 Horsepower, but put in its place as the first engines on a 707 Jet Airliner generate 20,000hp also from the 1960s).

Altess aren't lesser races, neither are the Necron. I truthfully forgot about the Golgan thing because the time travel aspect is so stupid.

Don't get me wrong a FLEET is going to have trouble with a DSF, but a "fortress" world should have more than enough energy production capacity in theory to power weapons that could match the DSF's IMHO.

I've had this conversation before, on these forums there is no way to make the math work here, The fastest capital ships are Altess and Naruni at 15,220 MPH, ALLLLL the weapons on a Dominator fortress ship have a range of 200,000 miles. That means the fastest capital ships with the longest range weapons have to cross for 13 hours. The 1D4X1000 MDC point defense turrets that fire twice a melee can obliterate a fleet of Doombringers more than a hundred strong in just a few hours and that assumes a 50% hit rate. Never mind the primary and secondary weapons those bring it down to barely an hour. Then you have the temporal shields, the plasma shockwave and the main body (inner and outer) in the millions.

Now if in your setting, as in mine, you can drop out of FTL really close to a target that isn't a planet then the numbers get a little better but the second the DSF can wormhole away, in a random direction that cannot be followed, to 300 LYs and simply regenerate.

If you send your entire fleet to follow it, about 3 days at average FTL, it can simply wormhole back to where you were defending and hit it without its defense fleet. Have another system in that 300 LY that you need to defend, it can just bounce between targets.

We played this out for hours with spreadsheets and everyone trying to game it out the only way you win, with in setting ships, is if it's a horde mode situation where the DSF just sits in one place facing fleet after fleet until it dies. Zentreadi from 1e Robotech do better as do the forces from Macross 2 where ranges are more equal but again the difference in FTL capability and the difference in MB MDC still means they need overwhelming odds.

[ShadowLogan]

Altess aren't lesser races, neither are the Necron. I truthfully forgot about the Golgan thing because the time travel aspect is so stupid.

Then you'll have to define "lesser races", because they are "lesser" compared to the Dominators IMHO.

We played this out for hours with spreadsheets and everyone trying to game it out the only way you win, with in setting ships, is if it's a horde mode situation where the DSF just sits in one place facing fleet after fleet until it dies. Zentreadi from 1e Robotech do better as do the forces from Macross 2 where ranges are more equal but again the difference in FTL capability and the difference in MB MDC still means they need overwhelming odds.

I have done this to. I DO NOT DISPUTE that a FLEET of SHIPS will have trouble using ships w/n the setting (Robotech/Macross2 I've also looked at, results are even posted here). The only way they can is by a meat grinder approach, which is how its supposed to be (per the fluff text).

What I DISPUTE is a PLANET vs a DSF. Planetary based guns/beam weapons are going to have much more power available to them than any known ship could hope to carry on its own. It also has a lot more surface area to mount these gun emplacements to.

The main issue with the TGE surface guns though is that they are pretty vague, but we know they are powerful enough to be credited with being a major contributing factor to reduce 2,000 Kittani Warships to "slag" before they entered "orbit". We don't know what type of Kittani Warship(s) are present (2,000 Kittani Dragon Dreadnaught 'Bots are easier to take down than say 2,000 Servitude Cruisers, we don't know what they mean by "slag" (how fast where those ships depleted), and we don't know what the orbital parameters (distance) where (we are talking about a ship on approach to the planet after all, so there is no reason to assume they have to enter position in Low Orbit, they could hit Stationary/Synchronous and be in orbit, we could also be taking farther distances).

[Warshield73]

Altess aren't lesser races, neither are the Necron. I truthfully forgot about the Golgan thing because the time travel aspect is so stupid.

Then you'll have to define "lesser races", because they are "lesser" compared to the Dominators IMHO.

You are correct, I was trying to describe the average weapons that would be used against. However, as I said above it doesn’t matter. Take every ship in the various militaries, give them all the speed of the fastest Altess ship and the main weapon of the new Golgan one and it still means jack all, they still can’t touch the DSF. The ranges and MDC values aren’t an order of magnitude higher; it is literally two orders higher while you are talking about a 20% to 50% difference in some ranges, damage, or speed. Instead of saying they aren't lesser races I should have pointed out that it is irrelevant.

The main issue with the TGE surface guns though is that they are pretty vague, but we know they are powerful enough to be credited with being a major contributing factor to reduce 2,000 Kittani Warships to "slag" before they entered "orbit". We don't know what type of Kittani Warship(s) are present (2,000 Kittani Dragon Dreadnaught 'Bots are easier to take down than say 2,000 Servitude Cruisers, we don't know what they mean by "slag" (how fast where those ships depleted), and we don't know what the orbital parameters (distance) where (we are talking about a ship on approach to the planet after all, so there is no reason to assume they have to enter position in Low Orbit, they could hit Stationary/Synchronous and be in orbit, we could also be taking farther distances).

I am putting this out of order because everything in this paragraph is true and goes to my point.

We played this out for hours with spreadsheets and everyone trying to game it out the only way you win, with in setting ships, is if it's a horde mode situation where the DSF just sits in one place facing fleet after fleet until it dies. Zentreadi from 1e Robotech do better as do the forces from Macross 2 where ranges are more equal but again the difference in FTL capability and the difference in MB MDC still means they need overwhelming odds.

I have done this to. I DO NOT DISPUTE that a FLEET of SHIPS will have trouble using ships w/n the setting (Robotech/Macross2 I've also looked at, results are even posted here). The only way they can is by a meat grinder approach, which is how its supposed to be (per the fluff text).

This is what I run into every time this subject comes up. Yes it says that it is a meat grinder to destroy one of these ships and what I’m telling you is according to the math there is not enough meat (ships) to meaningfully stop this grinder (the DSF). If you take the numbers in Fleets of the Three Galaxies it can’t be done if you are saying I’m wrong then please present your numbers. You can see in the OP I presented very specific numbers on what is needed to take out a standard demon planet using information in the books, give me yours for the DSF and let’s discuss.

What I DISPUTE is a PLANET vs a DSF. Planetary based guns/beam weapons are going to have much more power available to them than any known ship could hope to carry on its own. It also has a lot more surface area to mount these gun emplacements to.

The planet defenses are a problem because the only example we have is Phase World, more precisely just the city of center, and as I said before those defenses, while terrifying to normal ships and concerning to a standard demon planet are no threat whatsoever to a DSF. They lack the range and destructive capability to do any meaningful damage.

The description of the Kreeghor Tet defenses are vague in the extreme. 2,000 ships, were some of those fighters, transports, what? The Kittani have no large warships, nothing larger than battle cruiser range so a primary gun from a Doombringer can melt it with a few shots so how powerful are these guns? I mean if they said they melted 2,000 protectors from a thousand miles out we would have some numbers to work with but this is really vague.

What are your assumptions for planet defenses? 10X range 100X damage of capital grade weapons? If you give us the numbers we can discuss but here is the problem, the three primary weapons on the DSF have a range of 200,000 miles and destroy everything in their path, causing millions of MDC damage. This means the life expectancy of a planetary defense installation after being identified by the DSF is about 8 minutes, which is the recharge time of the primary weapons. If the weapons installation has an MDC value only in the tens of thousands then the secondary weapons can wipe them out in a minute or less.

I’m not trying to be argumentative here, I have simply run these numbers so many times that if you are making this argument I am going to need to see some new numbers.

In my own setting I have substantial planet based defenses that are, even on lightly populated worlds, far more powerful than anything currently in the setting. Planet based HI-Lasers that are thousands of feet long, buried in the ground, aimed using gravity fields to bend the beam for high levels of accuracy, with 3 to 5 times the range, powered but high output fusion reactors, with giant cooling towers so they can go rapid fire for short periods of time, protected by local force fields and anti-missile batteries. Even with all of this stuff which is not in the book, the DSF is still untouchable. Planet based, or any non-mobile, weapons must have a range advantage against a mobile attacker or they are irrelevant.

[ShadowLogan]

This is what I run into every time this subject comes up. Yes it says that it is a meat grinder to destroy one of these ships and what I’m telling you is according to the math there is not enough meat (ships) to meaningfully stop this grinder (the DSF). If you take the numbers in Fleets of the Three Galaxies it can’t be done if you are saying I’m wrong then please present your numbers. You can see in the OP I presented very specific numbers on what is needed to take out a standard demon planet using information in the books, give me yours for the DSF and let’s discuss.

Several things to consider here with regard to distance/range (applies to both DM and DSF):
1. While the DSF can target/hit something at specified ranges, the question does have to be considered at what ranges would they start shooting if something hostile comes w/n range. Just because they can strike something at 320,000km doesn't mean they automatically start shooting when something comes to within that range (unless it's shooting at them obviously).
2. Size Modifiers (DB3 pg106, which is probably C&P or similar also appears in RT 1E and Macross 2). It should be noted per the rules some size would actually get Auto-Dodge on top of a defensive strike penalty. So surviving the distance gap is highly possible for some sized objects (you'd just need a lot of them)
3. Speed issue. If the attacking fleet is approaching head-head to the DSF (direction of motion) they can shave off time because the DSF would be approaching them at potentially Mach 4 (its maximum Sublight Speed), any other angle and yes the speed issue in terms of crossing the distance. It takes 18.5hrs to transit 320,000km at Mach 14, but ~14.4hrs at Mach 18. PERSONALLY I don't think PBs Mach in space is/should be used as short hand for its MPH/KPH speed as if in an atmosphere I just haven't figured out which way to go (for example if its MACH = Miles Per Second, then Mach 14 could traverse the distance in ~7.14hrs, or if MACH = Acceleration in Earth-G puts it at 2-3 hours IINM* at "Mach" 1, 1-2hrs for "Mach" 3)
4. No Gravitational Sling-shot Assists to push the craft(s) faster than their listed top speed (while a real manuever, in actual practice it probably isn't going to amount to much so a bit of hand-wavium is required to make the idea work in game but the principle is sound).
5. Use of "Rocket Staging". The vessels/fighters are launched by something else traveling at say Mach 10, then those craft launch from the "carrier" they start at Mach 10 and can build on it (so if you can do Mach 14, you're now doing Mach 24). This can take several forms from an actual vessel, "booster stage", catapult launch system like an aircraft carrier/mass driver, etc, slowing down afterward...
6. "Hide & Seek", you have the Fleet hide in a formation that the DSF is projected to pass by and then "pop out" to strike when the distance is much shorter (now hiding a fleet big enough, well...)

*

Spoiler:

the OLD MS-DOS Microsoft Space Simulator manual had math and a graph for acceleration vs time & distance in the manual and it was intended to a "realistic" simulator, they cover both just to cover the distance and then to slow down (which increases the time), but that's where I got the figure for time, I just looked at the graph/chart.

The Math is

T1= (SQRT (2*A*D))/A

T2 = (2* SQRT (A*D))/A

where
A = Acceleration (m/s)
D = Distance (meters)

T1 = time in seconds to cover distance with constant acceleration
T2 = time in second sto cover distance with constant acceleration, but stop at your destination

The description of the Kreeghor Tet defenses are vague in the extreme. 2,000 ships, were some of those fighters, transports, what? The Kittani have no large warships, nothing larger than battle cruiser range so a primary gun from a Doombringer can melt it with a few shots so how powerful are these guns? I mean if they said they melted 2,000 protectors from a thousand miles out we would have some numbers to work with but this is really vague.

I agree that it's vague. I do not dispute that, but we have canonical reference that "super" guns exist in the setting, they just don't seem to be starship portable. So there may be worlds with defenses that a DSF or Demon Planet aren't going to want to visit. Nothing indicates either that these are recovered "1st Age" weapons (like the Dominators use).

As to what I think the weapons MIGHT look like:
Damage: 1d6x1,000MD per gun (this requires group fire and sustained fire, and makes them potent but not out of the ordinary in terms of damage, mass/sustained fire also explains how they can "slag" approaching ships), might even consider range modifiers for damage (1E RT some ASC infantry weapons had this "feature", might be interesting to see it applied more often, so for every 1/2 of the distance the damage doubles, though I could also see it reduced for increased ROF)
ROF: 1 or 2 per melee at long range, 6 per melee at "short range" and reduced damage when volume fire is needed
Range: ~300,000km (Off hand I don't recall stats on the world in question, so I'm assuming an "Earth-Analog", the main issue here is what constitutes "orbit", the Moon orbits at approximately this distance from Earth so an approaching object could be considered to go into orbit this far out though the actual theoretically possible distance might be farther still, a CASE might also exist to bring it down to 40,000km just above Geo-Synchronous/Stationary Orbit as that is when you start to approach "practically useful" orbital distances).

I'd also note, off hand I don't recall if there are solar sailors in 3G, but if a tech race did have them AND they built up infrastructure to support them that utilized lasers (something we have considered doing in the real world) then you might also have "super" weapons available (real world estimates call for 100GW Lasers for small probes for interstellar missions, so they'd have easily have the range, though what the damage would look like...)

[Warshield73]

Sorry I took so long to respond, I tried to find the older threads that I covered this in but no luck. I wanted to post this from the book.

It is now generally accepted by every major power bloc that the Dominators represent one of the gravest threats the Three Galaxies have ever known. Should the Dominators organize or band together for a coordinated attack, their intended target is doomed. As it is, it would take a fleet of ships to counter the power of a single Star Fortress. TGE and CAF officers both have “unofficial” orders to fight at each other’s sides should a Dominator ship appear in their domain of space.

Even as described it is basically all over, but as I said the flavor text in this case just doesn't match the numbers.

This is what I run into every time this subject comes up. Yes it says that it is a meat grinder to destroy one of these ships and what I’m telling you is according to the math there is not enough meat (ships) to meaningfully stop this grinder (the DSF). If you take the numbers in Fleets of the Three Galaxies it can’t be done if you are saying I’m wrong then please present your numbers. You can see in the OP I presented very specific numbers on what is needed to take out a standard demon planet using information in the books, give me yours for the DSF and let’s discuss.

Several things to consider here with regard to distance/range (applies to both DM and DSF):
1. While the DSF can target/hit something at specified ranges, the question does have to be considered at what ranges would they start shooting if something hostile comes w/n range. Just because they can strike something at 320,000km doesn't mean they automatically start shooting when something comes to within that range (unless it's shooting at them obviously).

If your players are in their personal ship and a DSF drops in at say 100,000 miles, so well within its range then it may just ignore them, if he's an idiot. Dominators as rule aren't stupid or merciful. If survivors flee a system and report it to the local government, which all but the most stupid or evil will, then they could be set upon by a larger fleet which I doubt they want. But sure in just a random encounter they may not shoot at first chance.

When attacking a planet though, they are going to unless of course your argument is that they are stupid. Also, it doesn't matter. If they open fire at any point from 200,000 miles to 1,000 miles the other side can not, in any way, return fire. Also, sure if they see a passing freighter who care they may not fire. But a Battleship or carrier, you no something that may have a shot of scratching their paint, that they will slag at first chance.

If they had missiles or some sort of projectile you might have a point that they would wait but this is energy fire which is unlimited so if they are there to kill everyone, which they aren't big tourists that is why they show up, then why not start right away.

2. Size Modifiers (DB3 pg106, which is probably C&P or similar also appears in RT 1E and Macross 2). It should be noted per the rules some size would actually get Auto-Dodge on top of a defensive strike penalty. So surviving the distance gap is highly possible for some sized objects (you'd just need a lot of them)

This applies to the primary and secondary weapons absolutely. The point defense weapons on the other hand, you know the 5,000 1D4X1000 MDC retractable beam weapons, those are like any other PDW so that is what will be swatting fighters and other small craft. Also, and I really thought this was clear, nothing small enough to evade those weapons can do any real harm to this ship. I know it looks like the Deathstar but there is no trench and no womp rat sized exhaust ports if you want to destroy it you need to inflict the 23 MILLION MDC to destroy it.

To be clear that would be 16,429 (rounding up) anti-matter cruise missiles all doing average damage. So if you sent in fighters and lets say each carried 4 cruise missiles, which is higher than average but not too much, it would take 4108 fighters, assuming a 100% hit ration. To give you an idea that is 8 Packmasters worth of fighters that would have to survive an approach, make it through the temporal field, maybe survive the plasma shockwave if you want to avoid the missiles being destroyed, and the missiles need to launch and be hit.

3. Speed issue. If the attacking fleet is approaching head-head to the DSF (direction of motion) they can shave off time because the DSF would be approaching them at potentially Mach 4 (its maximum Sublight Speed), any other angle and yes the speed issue in terms of crossing the distance. It takes 18.5hrs to transit 320,000km at Mach 14, but ~14.4hrs at Mach 18. PERSONALLY I don't think PBs Mach in space is/should be used as short hand for its MPH/KPH speed as if in an atmosphere I just haven't figured out which way to go (for example if its MACH = Miles Per Second, then Mach 14 could traverse the distance in ~7.14hrs, or if MACH = Acceleration in Earth-G puts it at 2-3 hours IINM* at "Mach" 1, 1-2hrs for "Mach" 3)

I agree but this is the system we have and in this case it is just speed as in miles of space traveled per hour. There are lots of things you can do to reduce time in that kill zone were they can shoot and you can't but anything over an hour is certain death. Our numbers had the entire CAF space force (for all three galaxies) being destroyed by just one DSF in just over 4 hours so realistically any force you would expect to be sent to just one area of the 3G would have to cover it in 15 minutes. Keep in mind its not just getting there and firing, it's the fact that once you engage there is no disengagement you fight till you die while the DSF can spin up its wormhole drive and be 300 LY away at any moment.

4. No Gravitational Sling-shot Assists to push the craft(s) faster than their listed top speed (while a real manuever, in actual practice it probably isn't going to amount to much so a bit of hand-wavium is required to make the idea work in game but the principle is sound).
5. Use of "Rocket Staging". The vessels/fighters are launched by something else traveling at say Mach 10, then those craft launch from the "carrier" they start at Mach 10 and can build on it (so if you can do Mach 14, you're now doing Mach 24). This can take several forms from an actual vessel, "booster stage", catapult launch system like an aircraft carrier/mass driver, etc, slowing down afterward...

All possible but not in the books and even then you have to close that gap in less than an hour which would require such high speeds that as you are traveling as ships in front of you are destroyed the debris the leave becomes a weapon that will do hundreds of MDC to your ships. Spread out your ships and you increase the number of secondary and PDWs that can fire on you which actually increases the rate at which the ships are destroyed.

6. "Hide & Seek", you have the Fleet hide in a formation that the DSF is projected to pass by and then "pop out" to strike when the distance is much shorter (now hiding a fleet big enough, well...)

Its space not many places to hide and I can't imagine a Dominator just strolling by one without checking it especially not in weapons range. This might work in a situation when you know where a DSF is going to attack in advance and you can put a force there before the DSF approaches. even then if your force moves at mach 18 they would have to be within 13,000 miles just to get in that 1 hour gap. That is something I can't imagine a standard carrier doing much less a DSF with weapons that can almost reach from the earth to the moon.

Spoiler:

the OLD MS-DOS Microsoft Space Simulator manual had math and a graph for acceleration vs time & distance in the manual and it was intended to a "realistic" simulator, they cover both just to cover the distance and then to slow down (which increases the time), but that's where I got the figure for time, I just looked at the graph/chart.

The Math is

T1= (SQRT (2*A*D))/A

T2 = (2* SQRT (A*D))/A

where
A = Acceleration (m/s)
D = Distance (meters)

T1 = time in seconds to cover distance with constant acceleration
T2 = time in second sto cover distance with constant acceleration, but stop at your destination

Amusing. Sort of like when you tell a 5th grade math student to show your work and he writes "your work" on the page.

I was clear, the math here starts with how many ships and if you are assuming planet bound weapons what kind of damage. What you have below is an example. If you look at the OP some basic strategy would help to, anything that can ground the conversation with some agreed upon facts.

The description of the Kreeghor Tet defenses are vague in the extreme. 2,000 ships, were some of those fighters, transports, what? The Kittani have no large warships, nothing larger than battle cruiser range so a primary gun from a Doombringer can melt it with a few shots so how powerful are these guns? I mean if they said they melted 2,000 protectors from a thousand miles out we would have some numbers to work with but this is really vague.

I agree that it's vague. I do not dispute that, but we have canonical reference that "super" guns exist in the setting, they just don't seem to be starship portable. So there may be worlds with defenses that a DSF or Demon Planet aren't going to want to visit. Nothing indicates either that these are recovered "1st Age" weapons (like the Dominators use).

First, not sure why you bring up Demon Planets here. As we all discussed earlier there aren't just planets they would avoid but even a standard fleet is a threat to them. This is only about the DSF.

We both assume planet bound weapons, you just seem to assume way more range than I do. The description says they can melt a ship before it gets into orbit so that's somewhere between 100 miles and 1,200 miles. The giant, incredibly advanced, almost magic planetary phase cannons of Phase World have a range of 5,000 miles. I tend to put these guns at 350 Miles on the low end to around 1,800 at the high end with the average being around 1,200 miles for standard tech. Altess and races like that would have a little more with ranges closer to 2,500 miles.

In a setting like PW planetary defenses are all about area denial. George Lucas talked about this with Empire Strikes Back. The empire has these giant Star Destroyers but he wants them to have to land with giant walkers so how do you make that happen? Planetary shield, how do you keep the those ships from just shooting the shield until its down? Giant gun on the planet that can shoot at the ships. In PW we have wizards and guys in power armor so we want a Star Wars like system not an Honor Harrington I can vaporize your city from several light-seconds away so you have to surrender as soon as I control the area around your gravity well.

As to what I think the weapons MIGHT look like:
Damage: 1d6x1,000MD per gun (this requires group fire and sustained fire, and makes them potent but not out of the ordinary in terms of damage, mass/sustained fire also explains how they can "slag" approaching ships),

This seems light for a planetary gun, this is light cruiser range but it does bring up a possible in setting strategic disagreement. Do you put a lot of resources into a few, very heavy, guns with lots of damage and layers of defenses around it or do you spread it out lots of smaller weapons with few defenses. I tend to go heavy route, but I can see going the other way. It does say under the Kreeghor HW description that these are "giant" guns though.

might even consider range modifiers for damage (1E RT some ASC infantry weapons had this "feature", might be interesting to see it applied more often, so for every 1/2 of the distance the damage doubles, though I could also see it reduced for increased ROF)
ROF: 1 or 2 per melee at long range, 6 per melee at "short range" and reduced damage when volume fire is needed

I have things like this in my setting but again hard to discuss this around house rules. I mean if your setting has gelatine missiles that turn the enemies hull into cherry jell-o this is all over pretty quick. I think this is really going to come down to what range you give it.

Range: ~300,000km (Off hand I don't recall stats on the world in question, so I'm assuming an "Earth-Analog", the main issue here is what constitutes "orbit", the Moon orbits at approximately this distance from Earth so an approaching object could be considered to go into orbit this far out though the actual theoretically possible distance might be farther still, a CASE might also exist to bring it down to 40,000km just above Geo-Synchronous/Stationary Orbit as that is when you start to approach "practically useful" orbital distances).

OK no idea where a range like that comes from. There is nothing in setting that approaches those ranges except the DSF itself which as you said is tech from an older era.

I can understand a range at or near 5,000 miles, that is the range of the phase cannons on Center, but after that...I just don't see it.

That said, the planetary defenses you describe would still be obliterated by a DSF with no meaningful chance to fire back. Static defenses must outrange attacking weapons, and by a significant margin, to be effective. If they don't the attacking can strike and fade to wear down the defenses while taking time to replenish itself.

I'd also note, off hand I don't recall if there are solar sailors in 3G, but if a tech race did have them AND they built up infrastructure to support them that utilized lasers (something we have considered doing in the real world) then you might also have "super" weapons available (real world estimates call for 100GW Lasers for small probes for interstellar missions, so they'd have easily have the range, though what the damage would look like...)

Nothing. The damage would be zero MDC, what you are talking about is a dragons tanning bed not a real weapon. It might be effective against long range projectiles launched at high speeds but even then I doubt it.

When we gamed this out the only thing we came up with was deploying tens of thousands of long range missiles (not cruise missiles, the range is too short) in a series of minefields and then lighting them off in groups, large numbers would be lost to the plasma shockwave. Ultimately you would have to fire them in waves with gaps of at least 700 miles so that the plasma wave couldn't destroy more than one group at a time.

Even this didn't work great, but it was something. The biggest problems are how can even the largest galactic powers keep such large stockpiles of this kind of munitions in enough locations to be deployed when the DSFs appear.

[ShadowLogan]

Re: Distance
1. Hide & Seek. Yeah its hard to see it working and requires some for knowledge, but it is possible in some circumstances. Throw in something like Stealth technology here to.
2. Speed. As I said it was a personal thing. I think it's somewhat supported when you consider that Mach 5 is orbital velocity for Earth (in PB physics, which equates to the near 5miles per second to orbit Earth). The only other thing I can think of to achieve higher speeds is the runup to FTL the drives are cut short before true FTL is achieved or we're dealing with a "FTL-jump" bringing them out closer to the target
3. Range. I agree the Dominator would have to be played pretty stupid to not start shooting in some scenarios, but it could be perfectly reasonable to also hold their fire in others. And as I said, just because you can hit something at that range doesn't mean you have to start shooting at that range as its not easy to hit something based on the size of the target (versus the shooter). Game mechanically speaking you should technically be applying strike penalties to the DSF (or giving its targets dodge bonus) based on the size of the target, and some targets would get Auto-Dodge (even if the guns are anti-fighter they don't say you negate either of these mechanics, and if you are +12 to dodge due to your size and you have a bonus to dodge of +5 while flying via the Space Fighter Combat Elite Skill, which puts the fighter pilot at +17 to dodge more if the OCC/RCC/skill or craft offers additional bonuses to dodge meaning you'd need a nat 20 which should only occur about 5% of the time)

Although on the topic of range for weaponry at least. What if the listed ranges are the effective targeting distances for certain EXPECTED sized objects/targets and not their actual range. What I mean is if we take the classic GB put it in orbit above Earth's Moon, it could still theoretically hit a target on the Lunar surface, the fired shell/slugs from its Rail Gun don't stop moving when it hits 10,000ft (x2 in vacuum) they'd keep going. And if we're talking about just hitting an object the size of the Moon it'd be pretty hard for the GB pilot to miss, versus say a capital ship or fighter sized object (where its change of hitting beyond 10,000ft go down). Now beam weapons do run into issues like energy dissipation, but the notion isn't completely with out merit as the RMB rules (pg243 describe range as "The is the longest distance that the weapon can be fired without losing accuracy or damage. Guns can be fired beyond their effective range.", though you take -4 to strike for every 25ft beyond this last bit was dropped from RUE pg3632 though on the previous page they cap it at 30%, but it still might be worth considering if there is an expected size of target regarding range).

Also based on the Kittani example (see below), IF we follow that as a guide for doubling the range and 1/2 the damage for beam weapons (either as a setting/feature or consequence of the above not about range and say that a DSF is way bigger than intended targets so you can shoot farther you just can't do called/aimed shots). If we simply modify the x1,000 damage modifier (present on some guns), you can 1/2 it approx. 7x times to yield x15 damage (for simplicity call it x10), which means the range would double 7x, so a 1,000mile gun would end up with a 64,000mile range (drastically altering the engagement zone, even if you can target with accuracy/called-shot/aimed-shot, still short of the 200,000mile required but if you're willing to go another increment or for a simplified x5 you'd be at 128,000mile and for a simplified x2 modifier you'd be well within range). Though IIRC, not a lot of ship weapons would mod this easily, but in principle.

First, not sure why you bring up Demon Planets here. As we all discussed earlier there aren't just planets they would avoid but even a standard fleet is a threat to them. This is only about the DSF.

Trying to stay on topic a bit, from an MDC damage perspective (only) if you can kill one you can likely kill the other as the difference in values aren't that big. The main advantage a DSF has over a Demon Planet is its weaponry.

This seems light for a planetary gun, this is light cruiser range but it does bring up a possible in setting strategic disagreement. Do you put a lot of resources into a few, very heavy, guns with lots of damage and layers of defenses around it or do you spread it out lots of smaller weapons with few defenses. I tend to go heavy route, but I can see going the other way. It does say under the Kreeghor HW description that these are "giant" guns though.

I'm not opposed to bumping the damage per say, these stats where pulled off on the fly so to speak and I tried to go with something established for Damage. I tend to see a lot of these installations as having been built (and why not there is plenty of surface area, a DSF is only 48km/30mile in diameter and it has 5,000 weapon emplacements which means a much larger planet and can support more emplacements than this), so they can group fire and/or sustain fire as opposed to trying to 1-hit everything with a single cannon shot (also trading some of that damage potential for range, IIRC there is at least one weapon that does this in Rifts: the Kittani Energy Lance in WB2 pg152-3), it also means you can have emplacements down for maintenance and more installations makes it that much harder to take them out directly (it also should lower the cost).

OK no idea where a range like that comes from. There is nothing in setting that approaches those ranges except the DSF itself which as you said is tech from an older era.

I can understand a range at or near 5,000 miles, that is the range of the phase cannons on Center, but after that...I just don't see it.

That said, the planetary defenses you describe would still be obliterated by a DSF with no meaningful chance to fire back. Static defenses must outrange attacking weapons, and by a significant margin, to be effective. If they don't the attacking can strike and fade to wear down the defenses while taking time to replenish itself.

As I said the heart of this issue is what constitutes "orbit" in the text description.

The Moon orbits the Earth at an average distance of 384,400km (238,855 miles), and its farther away at apogee (405,696km/252,088miles). If Earth is used as an stand-in/analog for the Kreeghor Homeworld, then we know anything can orbit Earth within that 384,400km range (more if you want to use apogee). And if you want to get historical Earth in 2024 captured a Mini-Moon for a few months that orbited at even greater distance of 1.8million km (1.1million miles), so an even larger distance is possible technically, but not very long lasting (one reason I did not use it)

That means from a technical definition of being in orbit of Earth, by range you'd have to be able to strike out to 384,400km (or more). There is no way around, to prevent anything from going into orbit at that distance you would need something with that range.

Now one might argue for practical (artificial) orbits (that are ideal for a purpose), but even then you'd still be looking at something just under 40,000km for GEO-Stationary (which is a practical orbit as we intentionally put lots of satellites there).

The only way I can see something smaller than those figures IS IF you only allow the "offender" to not be allowed to complete an orbit (after it enters) from a time perspective, but that is going to be determined by the distance (LEO is like ~90minutes, higher orbits are longer). But also doesn't seem to be what they intend, plus we're now factoring in a second element (time) that we have to also make an assumption on making it a less reliable answer IMHO.

Switching Solar System planets for analog doesn't help either, the massive gas giants have even longer reaching orbiting objects, Mercury and Venus don't have any natural satellites (so no quick easy reference for distance here), Mars (23,460km for Deimos) and the dwarf planet Pluto (Charn orbits @19,640km/12,200miles) also require larger distances than you are considering. And these are natural objects, never mind what might be technically possible with an artificial object or a "temporary" captured natural object.

Now I get that Center has a range of X for its weapons (I don't have that book), but a few factors to consider: 1. is that range limited by Phase Technology (those are phase canons after all), 2 is that range artificially imposed by the Prometheans (who are a 1st Era race IIRC) for some reason (aside from DSF that would still outclass pretty much everyone else in the 3G ships so it might not need it), 3. the Prometheans might have access to more capable weapons that aren't in the book in question on their homeworld (I know speculation).

[ShadowLogan]

What if we're making the DSF match up harder than it has to be? We're trying to brute force our way to depleting 20 million MDC equipped with weapons of vastly superior range. What if there are ways to engage one that are more manageable but can still achieve the same end result (removing the danger of a DSF)?

What about drawing the Dominator out? Or trying to board the ship, since then we don't necessarily have to worry about raw numbers to deplete the millions of MDC?

Are the older Piloting Skill "Stunt" Checks (Evasive Action, Tilt Dodge, Shadow, Dogtail, etc) found in some lines (1E RT, Macross 2, HU2E, etc) applicable to the Rifts Phase World Setting? Because if they are in theory you could have fighter swarms take evasive action on approach and could technically be un-hittable (yeah I know on approach there might be periods where the skill check failed as it only last 15seconds)? Larger capital ships might even be able to take evasive action on approach (technically).

DB2 also has the Star Ghost Phase-Tech equipped fighter (it has FTL, plus phase powers) and mentions the existence of Frigates equipped with such technology, but AFAIK the Frigate(s) is never detailed (and putts in some wiggle room for size may be limited by the technology, but it might just be the Prometheans haven't seen a need for larger ship classes as its mentioned they had transforming dreadnaughts in the past).

[Warshield73]

Sorry it's been a while but I started working on this then forgot about it. This is a long one so I wanted to thank everyone who contributed to the original topic, sorry I let this off the rails so badly.

Not going to try and hit every single point as I think in the end most of them are kind of repetitive and irrelevant. Again, not trying to be insulting just had this conversation too many times already.

First, this.

First, not sure why you bring up Demon Planets here. As we all discussed earlier there aren't just planets they would avoid but even a standard fleet is a threat to them. This is only about the DSF.

Trying to stay on topic a bit,...

OK, that ship hasn't just sailed it is doing the full Magellan. Its mostly my fault I should have just let this go or better yet said my piece and asked you to set up a separate thread if you wanted to continue but here we are.

...from an MDC damage perspective (only) if you can kill one you can likely kill the other as the difference in values aren't that big. The main advantage a DSF has over a Demon Planet is its weaponry.

No, just no. The differences between a DP a DSF are almost too large to mention but ultimately it comes down to a DP being a place of adventure and horror where as a DSF is just a big object that kills people, sometimes from before you can even see it. Here are just a few of the more important differences:

1) A DP has an Average MB MDC of 10 or 15 million while the DP total between inner and outer is 23 million. But more than that the DP has components, parts of the planet and defense mechanisms that the PCs can fight and destroy and the destruction of those things actually will have an effect. Destroy a nerve cluster or gravity gland on a DP and all the sudden the PCs can escape or hide. Destroy one of the 5,000 retractable beam turrets on a DSF and all that happens is you are still getting shot at for another thousand of them all in range and arc of fire and each one of those is like killing a destroyer.

2) Size and for lack of a better term awareness. A DP is so ancient, so alien that it may in fact not notice a group of PCs on its surface. It hunts planets and large star liners not individuals, fighters or shuttles. It like you might notice a ham sandwich but mis the crumb of bread in the wrapper. For a DSF though it is almost impossible to imagine it not noticing just the approach much less when they come aboard. Then when you get onboard what do you do? There are no MDC values for any internal part of the ship and the only person to fight is the dominator and if you use the info in DB 14 maybe a 2 to 12 slave soldiers. From the description the outer shell is just a big slab of armor with gun turrets on it with all the real stuff in the inner core.

3) I hate to keep coming back to this but attack range of the the DSF are again orders (plural) of magnitude greater than the DP. the sheer volume of fire is just off the charts. If you look at the plan I laid out for a DP I call for fighters and Marines to attack structures on the DP to clear an area that larger ships can then exploit to finish it off. This just isn't possible for a DSF

Think of a fighter going in, attacking, then returning to a carrier that is out of range of the target for rearm and repair. In the case of a DP this is an hour or less from launch to recovery with almost the entire trip being out of range of the DPs attacks (a DP is not going to use cosmic cannon against fighters). But, for a DSF it can 6 to 16 hours from launch to recovery with maybe an hour of that being out of range of the PDWs.

If your fighter, at any point, gets caught in the plasma field you are likely dead as there is no dodge or at least damaged.

DSF PDWs can focus strictly on destroying any vessels as anti-missile work is almost irrelevant and it is far more efficient to destroy the platform before it launches or before it can return to rearm than it is to destroy a missile or volley of missiles that in the long run isn't going to do much anyway.

Temporal field will mess with any pilot, giving huge penalties so as you go in to range for attack it becomes a lot easier for those turrets to hit you.

Not sure if any of you use these but there are exhaustion penalties. If you spend 6 to 16 hours flying, part of that in the temporal field which is designed to mess you up, then you are going to end your flight with some serious penalties.

As for everything else:

If you assume the Dominator is exceptionally stupid or for some reason doesn't want to kill people then sure you can get right up next to with your hero ship...and do what? Again any force large enough to even scratch his paint and its hard to imagine even the dumbest dominator not shooting. Any group small enough to get close can't do anything.

It doesn't matter what range you give a planetary weapon it has to be greater than the DSF (again wow that is totally beyond the books) and the damage has to be enough that it is a credible threat to the DSF before it gets close enough to glass your defenses from 200,000 miles out.

You can imagine all sorts of things that aren't in the books that can help destroy a DSF but in that case wouldn't you add some internal defenses to the DSF. Maybe some ECM? Anti-missile system? If the regular weapons can do half damage at twice the range why not the DSF? 1D4X500 at 400,000 miles! OMG - BLT Why add just to one side.

Orbits, yeah you can stretch this to lunar sure. It's pedantic when we all know that these are space ships and in our world ships, even stations are just few hundred miles out so hundreds of thousands of miles...but do it. Those weapons still aren't enough. If they are again show me your estimates for how many of these weapons emplacements are needed to, if not kill, at least drive off a DSF.

Now I get that Center has a range of X for its weapons (I don't have that book), but a few factors to consider: 1. is that range limited by Phase Technology (those are phase canons after all), 2 is that range artificially imposed by the Prometheans (who are a 1st Era race IIRC) for some reason (aside from DSF that would still outclass pretty much everyone else in the 3G ships so it might not need it), 3. the Prometheans might have access to more capable weapons that aren't in the book in question on their homeworld (I know speculation).

1) we have limited examples of phase tech but the examples we have show a range equal or superior to lasers of the same weight so no evidence it is limited by being phase tech. Also, they have missiles that out class any missile produced by any other group in both damage and range by about 3X so makes sense that there big planet protector would do the same.

2) No. It is very clearly stated that these weapons are not sold or given to anyone so there is no reason for them, especially sense they have been attacked by DSFs several times, to not make these guns as far reaching as they could. I could see you asking these this question about a commercially available product but it just doesn't apply here.

3) Phase World is not there planet of origin but, for all intents and purposes, it is there home world. It also clearly states that these guns are better than the ones they mount on there own warships, the ones they don't sell, so it just makes sense that these would be the best they can make. In fact, it is my belief that those ships, not the planetary defenses, or boarding actions are responsible for the destruction of the DSFs that have attacked Phase World, although how they did that is still beyond me, probably with mass volleys of those heavy missiles.

The problem with fixed planetary defenses is that in order to protect from an enemy like the DSF you need an almost equal spread of weapons to prevent the approach of the DSF which, using your numbers, means thousands of planet based defense cannons all over the planet.

In my system I view fixed planetary defenses as area denial weapons very much in the Star Wars tradition. I put them on the outskirts of a colony and that prevents orbital bombardment of that area and also means you have to land troops further out. This leads to the kind of fighter to fighter, robot to robot, PA to PA, soldier to soldier combat that we want in a TTRPG session. They do nothing to a planet destroying weapon like a mechanoid mothership, demon planet or DSF.

What if we're making the DSF match up harder than it has to be?

Always that possibility what do you have in mind?

We're trying to brute force our way to depleting 20 million MDC equipped with weapons of vastly superior range. What if there are ways to engage one that are more manageable but can still achieve the same end result (removing the danger of a DSF)?

Given the numbers involved in the books I think this is the only possible solution, I just haven't seen anything that can do it.

What about drawing the Dominator out?

I think this comes back to making these super intelligent, ancient beings that are obsessed with there own survival to the point they went to war with the known universe and became hated by everyone complete idiots.

Or trying to board the ship, since then we don't necessarily have to worry about raw numbers to deplete the millions of MDC?

This has been my thought but again I come back to how. Landing on a DP is, relatively, easy especially with large numbers. In this case I do not see any vehicles in the books that can do it.

Forget the how though just say you get into the outer shell, then you have to cross several miles of internal space to get to the inner shell and then get into it somehow. Then you kill the Dominator who, especially with the stuff in the Thundercloud book, is a true bad @$$, what happens then? The ship instantly explodes (it is tied to the Dominators brainwaves so yes instant) vaporizing everything in 100 miles and if near a planet sends 1D4X10 chunks to impact each equal t a mass driver impact.

Are the older Piloting Skill "Stunt" Checks (Evasive Action, Tilt Dodge, Shadow, Dogtail, etc) found in some lines (1E RT, Macross 2, HU2E, etc) applicable to the Rifts Phase World Setting? Because if they are in theory you could have fighter swarms take evasive action on approach and could technically be un-hittable (yeah I know on approach there might be periods where the skill check failed as it only last 15seconds)? Larger capital ships might even be able to take evasive action on approach (technically).

They are but even when successful they are not 100% unhittable they just get bonuses and those PDWs need only one hit against most ships. This also creates two new problems:
1) Time, evasive maneuvers increase the amount of time it takes to fly through the fire zone increasing the number of times the PDWs get to shoot at them
2) The fighters and other craft have to spread out more to allow room to maneuver this increases the number of weapons on the DSF (a sphere) that can fire at them.

Also keep in mind during the last 285 miles they have to fly through the temporal field which has huge skill penalties and again then your fighters are BLT.

DB2 also has the Star Ghost Phase-Tech equipped fighter (it has FTL, plus phase powers) and mentions the existence of Frigates equipped with such technology, but AFAIK the Frigate(s) is never detailed (and putts in some wiggle room for size may be limited by the technology, but it might just be the Prometheans haven't seen a need for larger ship classes as its mentioned they had transforming dreadnaughts in the past).

The later books say that the frigate sized vessels (still never described) are the largest that they sell. They have at least Battleship sized ships and maybe Dreadnought sized but we have no stats for them either. Again, I have always assumed this is how Phase World defends itself from DSFs but that has no benefit for any other planet.

As for the Phase Fighters, this is another way I see it happening. Again all the tech is poorly defined and phase tech is even worse, but it is possible. The problem is they have to come out of FTL right on top of the DSF because the phase generator has limited charges so a limited time it can be out of phase. While out of phase they can not fire any weapons or even deploy troops, but it also can't be damaged. The problem is it doesn't have enough range to damage anything in inner core from outside and once they hit the temporal field they become just as vulnerable as any other fighter.

So this is one way you could do this, but it requires some assumptions that may or may not be true depending on how you read the books:
1) A ship can exit FTL at any range from an object like a DSF (in my game I have a range of X number of hundreds of KM off but if you think they can nail it down to the mile it will work.
2) A ship can jump to FTL instantly and from any distance from a large object like a DSF, in this case a phase fighter can turn off phase field in one moment and jump away the next (again in my setting I have a charge up time sort of like Star Wars)

So plan is simple:
Start with large field of those missile mine fields I mentioned earlier as a distraction and to force it to use the plasma shock.
As soon as the plasma shock goes phase fighters jump in as close to the temporal field as possible.
Activate phase field and fly the rest of the way to temporal field
Pass through the temporal field, this is where you will loose a minimum of 50% of the fighters, all of our simulations were higher but again this is just excel math.
Fighters attack a few PDWs to clear an area to operate. Using magic or phase tech the fighters deploy people (2 from each fighter) to the surface and leave, most of the surviving fighters will be destroyed on the way out but survivors can FTL away
Group of hopefully 50+ people board the ship and find the Dominator.

(Note: There is no floorplan for this so boarding team will likely have to split up and search just to get that is why you need so many boarders)

They find and kill the Dominator; the ship blows up and they all die. Now, in theory you could plan to use some form of teleportation to escape but I assume such things cannot bypass the temporal field. You could also plan to use a dimensional portal and a timed or remote explosive to finish off the Dominator but that takes time and assumes that he can't disarm it or that his tech can't neutralize it. Again lots of issues with this being anything other than a suicide mission.

Here is the real kicker, when we ran the numbers, we need somewhere north of 300 Phase Fighters for this to work. If you look at the fleet I put together in my OP, that largest fleet would carry 92 phase fighters so that is 3 CAF fleets worth of phase fighters, just for a suicide mission. Outside of Phase World it self you can't immagine even the wealthiest planet having more than 100 of these fighters.

Again some interesting ideas but I don't see how they work and if you think they can look at the skill percentages, look at the effects of the temporal field, look at average damage levels, and come up with a number that you think works.

Ultimately this comes down to the fact that if a GM wants to allow PCs to do this he can allow almost any plan to work but this comes back to me not seeing a purpose to the DSF in the game. As a GM what can I do with it, I can make my players run away or die...that's it. Forget comparing it to the DP, which as I said is a great place for adventure I have run it in multiple games, look at the Artifact of the Pentarken system in DB 6, pg.39-42. This is an incredibly powerful vessel with long range (1,000 mile) beam weapons, mach 30 engines and is actually indestructible. However, this is automated platform with the purpose of protecting a system so if you leave the system it will stop pursuing you and it has smaller fighters that while incredibly tough can be killed by a PC group.

It is perfectly acceptable to have hard or even impossible to kill enemy but it should provide avenues of adventure. Again, just my opinion.

[ShadowLogan]

3) Phase World is not there planet of origin but, for all intents and purposes, it is there home world. It also clearly states that these guns are better than the ones they mount on there own warships, the ones they don't sell, so it just makes sense that these would be the best they can make. In fact, it is my belief that those ships, not the planetary defenses, or boarding actions are responsible for the destruction of the DSFs that have attacked Phase World, although how they did that is still beyond me, probably with mass volleys of those heavy missiles.

Emphasis mine, I think between us we've established then that planetary based guns are going to outclass the warship guns in canon. The question is by how much and how those weapon systems are going to balance their various factors? The PW Guns then are the only examples we have of such a balancing act, but that doesn't mean they are the only solution, especially with the only other known example (AKAIK) being nebulous to the extreme. Hands down we know it is possible for a laser to cover the DSF beam weapon range, we've done it in the real world (did way back in 1969 after Apollo 11), the question really is what the damage output would/should look like.

The thing is with the PW guns, they are outclassed by the DSF, so why would a DSF close to range when they can strike from outside said range? In theory a DSF could be bombarding the planet on approach, with well over 100,000miles of range advantage (the 5k gun emplacements can put out 25million MDC per melee, the 100x heavy guns do 2.5million MDC per melee, and the 3x Anti-Matter can do 10.5million at a much reduced ROF in comparision/~328k per melee, and there are 240 melees in an hour, and we're talking a multiple hour trip so its hard to see anyone surviving such a bombardment on a planet short of being buried DEEP DEEP underground).

I think this comes back to making these super intelligent, ancient beings that are obsessed with there own survival to the point they went to war with the known universe and became hated by everyone complete idiots.

RE: drawing a Dominator out

I think it can be done, you just need to give a Dominator a reason to come out of the DSF. Aside from maybe a honorable Dominator, I doubt you'd get many accepting duels/gladiatorial matches. But we know its somewhat possible given the background/fluff text from DB2 does establish they can and do rule worlds. So we know it's possible. It just takes some bait that would be enticing enough that they couldn't bring the DSF with them and would need to get out on their own (granted we don't have info on "support" craft the Dominator would use, like shuttles or fighters but it seems like they would need them to get around if they can be found w/o said DSF per canon). Now what that bait might look like I'm not sure off the top of my head, and it might vary from Dominator to Dominator (artifact from their homeword, a captive Dominator possibly even female, or something else they don't want to see destroyed).

Forget the how though just say you get into the outer shell, then you have to cross several miles of internal space to get to the inner shell and then get into it somehow. Then you kill the Dominator who, especially with the stuff in the Thundercloud book, is a true bad @$$, what happens then? The ship instantly explodes (it is tied to the Dominators brainwaves so yes instant) vaporizing everything in 100 miles and if near a planet sends 1D4X10 chunks to impact each equal t a mass driver impact.

Why do we have to kill the Dominator? One could try to subdue/capture or even negotiate. Sure you could kill them, but you could also kill them on a delay (after subduing them) to give you time to escape (I'd also play the detonation as having a slight delay given the size of the ship).

Do the 3G powers know about the self-detonation fail safe? There are only 3x instances detailed in Fot3G. So while its something that could be Meta-Gaming to consider, it might not be something known in-universe.

They are but even when successful they are not 100% unhittable they just get bonuses and those PDWs need only one hit against most ships. This also creates two new problems:

Don't get me wrong I don't expect the Piloting Skill Maneuvers to make them 100% un-hittable I am looking at this as a method to increase their survivablity time, the more survivable they are the fewer we actually need at the start.

Ultimately this comes down to the fact that if a GM wants to allow PCs to do this he can allow almost any plan to work but this comes back to me not seeing a purpose to the DSF in the game. As a GM what can I do with it, I can make my players run away or die...that's it. Forget comparing it to the DP, which as I said is a great place for adventure I have run it in multiple games, look at the Artifact of the Pentarken system in DB 6, pg.39-42. This is an incredibly powerful vessel with long range (1,000 mile) beam weapons, mach 30 engines and is actually indestructible. However, this is automated platform with the purpose of protecting a system so if you leave the system it will stop pursuing you and it has smaller fighters that while incredibly tough can be killed by a PC group.

I agree, but since the DSF has stats ultimately the question will come up if they can just kill the threat or what it would take to kill such a threat.

(Honestly the DSF we got in Fot3G isn't what I envisioned based on DB2 given their personal weapons aren't the best ranged for a 30ft tall individual I didn't think they would have enjoyed such a range advantage on their ships, DPS sure, but not range, granted I also thought they would have had drone fighter defenders to)

[Warshield73]

3) Phase World is not there planet of origin but, for all intents and purposes, it is there home world. It also clearly states that these guns are better than the ones they mount on there own warships, the ones they don't sell, so it just makes sense that these would be the best they can make. In fact, it is my belief that those ships, not the planetary defenses, or boarding actions are responsible for the destruction of the DSFs that have attacked Phase World, although how they did that is still beyond me, probably with mass volleys of those heavy missiles.

Emphasis mine, I think between us we've established then that planetary based guns are going to outclass the warship guns in canon. The question is by how much and how those weapon systems are going to balance their various factors? The PW Guns then are the only examples we have of such a balancing act, but that doesn't mean they are the only solution, especially with the only other known example (AKAIK) being nebulous to the extreme. Hands down we know it is possible for a laser to cover the DSF beam weapon range, we've done it in the real world (did way back in 1969 after Apollo 11), the question really is what the damage output would/should look like.

Agreed, all the way around. One of the things I like for laser weapons is the idea that as range increases damage drops. You can absolutely do this with other energy weapons but with plasma charged particle weapons they disperse much faster so that extra range is kind of minimal, but lasers I think you can make a better case for much longer range. Mine is simple, a laser that is 1D4X1000 and 100 mile range, you go to 200 miles its now 1D4X100, go to 300 miles its 1D4X10, 400 miles 1D4 MDC, 500 to 700 its SDC, past that it's a flashlight.

As I said before though it is also about game play. If you look at the planetary defenses on Phase World they are designed to keep ships from attacking from orbit and force attackers to engage in ground combat to disable the weapons so the ships can come in, very Star Wars and that is what I tend to do as well. The other problem I have with planet based weapons being so long range is the idea of going through the atmosphere. They have to loose some range doing that.

Like I said though ever change we would make to the rules would effect the DSF weapons too and wow that just gets tough.

The thing is with the PW guns, they are outclassed by the DSF, so why would a DSF close to range when they can strike from outside said range? In theory a DSF could be bombarding the planet on approach, with well over 100,000miles of range advantage (the 5k gun emplacements can put out 25million MDC per melee, the 100x heavy guns do 2.5million MDC per melee, and the 3x Anti-Matter can do 10.5million at a much reduced ROF in comparision/~328k per melee, and there are 240 melees in an hour, and we're talking a multiple hour trip so its hard to see anyone surviving such a bombardment on a planet short of being buried DEEP DEEP underground).

Yeah this is the difference between the DSF and a Demon Planet or even something like a mechanoid mothership. A DSF can scrub a planet clean at range and since the Dominators are only interested in exterminating others races they have no reason to interact with the locals.

I think this comes back to making these super intelligent, ancient beings that are obsessed with there own survival to the point they went to war with the known universe and became hated by everyone complete idiots.

RE: drawing a Dominator out

I think it can be done, you just need to give a Dominator a reason to come out of the DSF. Aside from maybe a honorable Dominator, I doubt you'd get many accepting duels/gladiatorial matches. But we know its somewhat possible given the background/fluff text from DB2 does establish they can and do rule worlds. So we know it's possible. It just takes some bait that would be enticing enough that they couldn't bring the DSF with them and would need to get out on their own (granted we don't have info on "support" craft the Dominator would use, like shuttles or fighters but it seems like they would need them to get around if they can be found w/o said DSF per canon). Now what that bait might look like I'm not sure off the top of my head, and it might vary from Dominator to Dominator (artifact from their homeword, a captive Dominator possibly even female, or something else they don't want to see destroyed).

First, I had the same impression of the Dominators that you did from DB 2. A lot of that comes from the backstory of the captain of the Stick in your Eye, but it calls them the Ravagers, described as giants with planetoid sized ships so they were probably called Ravagers and then changed, so I think Campbell decided that was a different race and just made the Dominators more...just xenociders. From the information. They would be more interesting if they have some overriding goal and extermination of other species was sort of a side effect or a hobby, but they don't.

The problem of drawing them out is what do they have for small craft? I mean of the DSF is there main ship then what is there landing craft like? Also, they have slaves if they want something they can just send them down. I think you could contrive a reason, let's say there is a first race artifcat or ruins, for them to land. It's hard to imagine that they don't sterilize everything around first so it would be hard to get to them. Mages using dimensional Rifts Endgame style could work. One moment the Dominator is facing a few CAF Marines to take an artifact next thing you know there are a dozen portals bringing in a dozen cosmo-knights with a bunch of Warlock Marines in PA and a few Battleram robots I mean sure. But that situation would be so tough to manufacture and it would require so much lead time it just seems...unlikely.

Forget the how though just say you get into the outer shell, then you have to cross several miles of internal space to get to the inner shell and then get into it somehow. Then you kill the Dominator who, especially with the stuff in the Thundercloud book, is a true bad @$$, what happens then? The ship instantly explodes (it is tied to the Dominators brainwaves so yes instant) vaporizing everything in 100 miles and if near a planet sends 1D4X10 chunks to impact each equal t a mass driver impact.

Why do we have to kill the Dominator? One could try to subdue/capture or even negotiate. Sure you could kill them, but you could also kill them on a delay (after subduing them) to give you time to escape (I'd also play the detonation as having a slight delay given the size of the ship).

The problem is according to the description a Dominator will never be taken prisoner and will self destruct before allowing any to take there tech. As for a delay the book is clear as soon as the dominator is dead or commands it the stasis field goes down and the second he is free that Boiaw detonates and takes everything with him.

Again there are lots of contrivances you as the GM can put in to delay it or allow escape but as written it's not possible so you either nerf it, which is my approach, or just do a gimme.

Do the 3G powers know about the self-detonation fail safe? There are only 3x instances detailed in Fot3G. So while its something that could be Meta-Gaming to consider, it might not be something known in-universe.

I would assume they know there is a self destruct as theses ships are never found without a Dominator, but I doubt they know the specifics. For my analysis it doesn't matter though, in fact if they don't know it's worse because they have no incentive to try and delay the Dominators death to escape and that makes it more of a suicide mission. This also means that there would be almost no institutional knowledge on attacking a DSF as any person that successfully does it dies before they can pass on any best practices.

They are but even when successful they are not 100% unhittable they just get bonuses and those PDWs need only one hit against most ships. This also creates two new problems:

Don't get me wrong I don't expect the Piloting Skill Maneuvers to make them 100% un-hittable I am looking at this as a method to increase their survivablity time, the more survivable they are the fewer we actually need at the start.

I understand and like I said it does have some effect. The problem is that, given the spherical nature of the ship the more you spread out to allow maneuvering it increases the number of weapons that can fire on the attackers. The effect is minimal but every new gun that comes in just increases the death toll. I think you can get a large fighter, maybe even Destroyer force, through the bulk of the fire zone but once you hit that temporal field maneuvering goes to crap. That plasma shock is also a problem.

Ultimately this comes down to the fact that if a GM wants to allow PCs to do this he can allow almost any plan to work but this comes back to me not seeing a purpose to the DSF in the game. As a GM what can I do with it, I can make my players run away or die...that's it. Forget comparing it to the DP, which as I said is a great place for adventure I have run it in multiple games, look at the Artifact of the Pentarken system in DB 6, pg.39-42. This is an incredibly powerful vessel with long range (1,000 mile) beam weapons, mach 30 engines and is actually indestructible. However, this is automated platform with the purpose of protecting a system so if you leave the system it will stop pursuing you and it has smaller fighters that while incredibly tough can be killed by a PC group.

I agree, but since the DSF has stats ultimately the question will come up if they can just kill the threat or what it would take to kill such a threat.

Oh yes it has come up many times. I searched for my previous conversations about this but I am sure it was situations like this where the conversation took over an existing thread.

When the book came out with my friends and on at least two other occasions on these boards I have gone through this. We looked at all sorts of ships form the 3G and even other settings. I mean a Mechanoid mothership gets spanked (assuming straight MDC conversion), but the 1e Zentraedi ships do OK. It only takes a moderately sized fleet to destroy a DSF and Macross II ships do even better. The losses for both are horrific but they get the job done. In setting though, just nothing that can stop them.

(Honestly the DSF we got in Fot3G isn't what I envisioned based on DB2 given their personal weapons aren't the best ranged for a 30ft tall individual I didn't think they would have enjoyed such a range advantage on their ships, DPS sure, but not range, granted I also thought they would have had drone fighter defenders to)

I give Campbell all the credit in the world. He put together two books at a time when we weren't getting much for the 3G and we've gotten nothing since then. It just didn't feel right to me and ultimately I think the differences it had with the earlier books just makes the setting more broken. Again, all the respect in the world he got his 2 books out (I, like a lot of people on these forums have a hard drive full of stuff that I could try to put into book format but haven't) and some of it is good stuff.

That said, no the Dominators we got aren't what I had imagined from DB2 and what I created was also very different. They were still tough but they had more interactions with other people and thus were more vulnerable. I had them using legions of robots, I think I used the bots from either splicers or the old Myridian Rifts Manhunters book. SO yeah, mine were different too.

[ShadowLogan]

The problem of drawing them out is what do they have for small craft? I mean of the DSF is there main ship then what is there landing craft like? Also, they have slaves if they want something they can just send them down. I think you could contrive a reason, let's say there is a first race artifcat or ruins, for them to land. It's hard to imagine that they don't sterilize everything around first so it would be hard to get to them. Mages using dimensional Rifts Endgame style could work. One moment the Dominator is facing a few CAF Marines to take an artifact next thing you know there are a dozen portals bringing in a dozen cosmo-knights with a bunch of Warlock Marines in PA and a few Battleram robots I mean sure. But that situation would be so tough to manufacture and it would require so much lead time it just seems...unlikely.

I know about the sub-craft, but there is no way one is landing a DSF on a planet IMHO. The thing about the size of the sub-craft to is its going to be bigger than might be expected, remember Doms are ~30ft tall, which IIRC isn't a common size in the 3G (IINM only the Prometheans Stage1s are this tall, with most giants being like 1/3-1/2) and few examples of tech/vehicle for giants (of this caliber) is present in Rifts or DBs AFAIK.

As for them subcontracting the work out, that is possible but it might also be something they don't want other non-Doms handling (thinking of the G1 TF Movie with the Autobot Matrix, Galvatron, and Unicron) so might go themselves (avoiding the G1 TF Movie rebellion plot).

I understand and like I said it does have some effect. The problem is that, given the spherical nature of the ship the more you spread out to allow maneuvering it increases the number of weapons that can fire on the attackers. The effect is minimal but every new gun that comes in just increases the death toll. I think you can get a large fighter, maybe even Destroyer force, through the bulk of the fire zone but once you hit that temporal field maneuvering goes to crap. That plasma shock is also a problem.

But there is something(s) that can be done to improve their odds with relation to the distance they need to cover.

I had the notion to look at the Intruders (DB3) the other night as their regenerative hulls might give them an edge the other tech powers lack. Unfortunately it doesn't help as much as I thought it would (takes a few minutes to regen completely), BUT did notice a feature that could help them drastically close the gap: Slealth. Per DB3 they don't become detectable until 1-2,000miles out (depending on craft), couple that with their Mach 20 speed (10,000+ mph, means a much shorter time they are detected and have to avoid fire like less than 10minutes). But their weapon ranges are severely limited, so they have to get even closer than other 3G do (however this is with established craft, if they have "heavier" craft that aren't documented the situation could change but AFAIK they haven't been expanded upon since DB3 in hard stats).

And Stealth is an available tech in the 3G (Fot3G has it, not sure if any other examples exist besides the Intruders prior), but it isn't heavily used nor is as effective as the Intruders (from a certain POV). But it is an option, one the various factions could employ (and do employ as a few examples exist in Fot3G alone). So I guess the question is what does a penalty to the RSI skill look like in terms of distance, because it could mean those 200,000mile weapons might not be able to target them until they get closer.

Interestingly F0t3G might also give us another option for attacking DSF, DP, and Star Hives (which don't have actual stats but does get a revisit mention in said book only reason its mentioned). In the section of FTL combat (pg11), they mention that any weapon fired by FTL traveling via CG drive will drop back to normal space unless the two craft have "merged" their FTL/CG fields. So a precisely timed attack/deployment could see fighters, PA, robots, shuttles, and missiles (and even beam/projectile weapons) launched at FTL and then forced to drop out of FTL once they pass the FTL field of their carrier ship putting them in real space inside the effective fire zone of the DSF weapons.

When the book came out with my friends and on at least two other occasions on these boards I have gone through this. We looked at all sorts of ships form the 3G and even other settings. I mean a Mechanoid mothership gets spanked (assuming straight MDC conversion), but the 1e Zentraedi ships do OK. It only takes a moderately sized fleet to destroy a DSF and Macross II ships do even better. The losses for both are horrific but they get the job done. In setting though, just nothing that can stop them.

Yeah as I've said, I looked at RT 1E/2E and Macross 2. Though I don't think I would consider the few hundred ships the 1E Zentreadi or Mac2 ships a "moderately sized fleet" given the total fleet size of the Zentreadi (in RT) approaches 6million ships, that's not even like 0.02% of their total available force assuming 1,000 ships (and IIRC is more like a common/higher-end battlegroup sized force they employ as opposed to the "end a planet" gathering seen in the show).

I almost have to wonder if the DSFs are made to be this strong to at least give the illusion of being able to handle a RT-1E/Macross2 crossover situation (which likely isn't going to be bringing in the full weight of their settings) as opposed to the 3G setting as a whole (Fot3G came out a year after the 2E RT's main book, so likely 2E didn't have as much influence on the writing as 1E, though 2E seems to have neutered RT given dialogue establishes ranges that aren't met by the books which might lend credence to the idea that the RAW ranges are effective combat ranges for certain sized objects and not the maximum firing range allowing one to target larger objects farther out).

[Warshield73]

The problem of drawing them out is what do they have for small craft? I mean of the DSF is there main ship then what is there landing craft like? Also, they have slaves if they want something they can just send them down. I think you could contrive a reason, let's say there is a first race artifcat or ruins, for them to land. It's hard to imagine that they don't sterilize everything around first so it would be hard to get to them. Mages using dimensional Rifts Endgame style could work. One moment the Dominator is facing a few CAF Marines to take an artifact next thing you know there are a dozen portals bringing in a dozen cosmo-knights with a bunch of Warlock Marines in PA and a few Battleram robots I mean sure. But that situation would be so tough to manufacture and it would require so much lead time it just seems...unlikely.

I know about the sub-craft, but there is no way one is landing a DSF on a planet IMHO. The thing about the size of the sub-craft to is its going to be bigger than might be expected, remember Doms are ~30ft tall, which IIRC isn't a common size in the 3G (IINM only the Prometheans Stage1s are this tall, with most giants being like 1/3-1/2) and few examples of tech/vehicle for giants (of this caliber) is present in Rifts or DBs AFAIK.

You recall correctly. Landing craft are tricky for any group, it is made even more difficult when your 30 feet tall and everyone else is less than a third of that. Do you go big and impressive, able to take and deliver hits, or do you go for something that can land in places made for normal ships. When I was creating stuff for the Dominator with just DB2 I started with a basic assault shuttle but by the time I was done it was halfway to a destroyer. They were controlled by robots and they were used not just for the Dominator but his robots and allies as well.

Several years ago someone here on the boards said what he used was a sphere, 50 feet in diameter, with a large throne like seat for the Dominator. It had no power or weapons of its own instead it was transported and protected by a beam from the DSF and protected by weapons from that ship. It just lowered down and slid open revealing the dominator as cannon blasts from tens of thousands of miles away came down on any attackers.

As for them subcontracting the work out, that is possible but it might also be something they don't want other non-Doms handling (thinking of the G1 TF Movie with the Autobot Matrix, Galvatron, and Unicron) so might go themselves (avoiding the G1 TF Movie rebellion plot).

Looking at their tech they have some ways of preventing that but I could see it but the Thundercloud book makes it clear that they are happy to just destroy most things if it avoids risks to themselves. You also have the problem of it being able to call down fire from its ship while on the surface.

Still, I could see this as an option if you somehow know oh this they want vs this they will just destroy. This requires intelligence and that is hard to get if they don't have minions.

I understand and like I said it does have some effect. The problem is that, given the spherical nature of the ship the more you spread out to allow maneuvering it increases the number of weapons that can fire on the attackers. The effect is minimal but every new gun that comes in just increases the death toll. I think you can get a large fighter, maybe even Destroyer force, through the bulk of the fire zone but once you hit that temporal field maneuvering goes to crap. That plasma shock is also a problem.

But there is something(s) that can be done to improve their odds with relation to the distance they need to cover.

I had the notion to look at the Intruders (DB3) the other night as their regenerative hulls might give them an edge the other tech powers lack. Unfortunately it doesn't help as much as I thought it would (takes a few minutes to regen completely), BUT did notice a feature that could help them drastically close the gap: Slealth. Per DB3 they don't become detectable until 1-2,000miles out (depending on craft), couple that with their Mach 20 speed (10,000+ mph, means a much shorter time they are detected and have to avoid fire like less than 10minutes). But their weapon ranges are severely limited, so they have to get even closer than other 3G do (however this is with established craft, if they have "heavier" craft that aren't documented the situation could change but AFAIK they haven't been expanded upon since DB3 in hard stats).

I've never really looked at them for this. I have to admit like most people on these forums I didn't like the ships or art much, in my game I replaced them with Mechanoids much to the horror of my players. The thing is their ships aren't that dangerous. They are fast, maneuverable and durable but they really don't do much damage. 3G fighters on the other hand can take some damage, in the case of fighters like the Katana a LOT of it, and they deal out plenty much of it with better range than their energy beams. Most of the times when they attack they get the initiative, but after that first melee they just get ground down. The Attack ship is even worse off. It just can't match the firepower of a...well any frigate/destroyer class we have in the books. I think it would do best against a ship like a Berserker which is slow and has no fighters, in a situation like that I think it wins. Put it against a hunter or scimitar with full fighter load though and they don't do as well. Even if you scale them up to cruiser or even battleship size I just don't see them doing much except in very large numbers and again the plasma chock and temporal field will be a problem.

The biggest problem is once they engage the DSF knows they are there and those PDWs are one shot kills on the spinners and with an average damage of 2,500 MDC they will one shot a UFO three out of 4 times.

Still, give them enough numbers they might be able to do it.

And Stealth is an available tech in the 3G (Fot3G has it, not sure if any other examples exist besides the Intruders prior), but it isn't heavily used nor is as effective as the Intruders (from a certain POV). But it is an option, one the various factions could employ (and do employ as a few examples exist in Fot3G alone). So I guess the question is what does a penalty to the RSI skill look like in terms of distance, because it could mean those 200,000mile weapons might not be able to target them until they get closer.

Stealth, both in concept and function, is horribly defined in PW mostly because the sensors are horribly defined in the setting. Most stealth is defined by "can not be detected until "X" miles" which works OK but it just assumes that the sensors on a merchant ship, a Warshield or a DSF are all the same. Still even if you assume that the DSF can detect these systems at 3 or 5 or even 10 times the range that is still better. The problem is that if you mass enough stealth vessels into one area they are going to get noticed so bringing in enough to do the job gets dicey.

Now just like with the Phase FIghter there is a TGE destroyer that uses OPFs for stealth. It carries 40, 1D6X1,000 MDC missiles and then a pair of what amount to cruiser grade lasers that fire once per round. The problem is the same though: 1) you need to build a massive number of these and they are...well no price is given but it looks to be the cost of a cruiser flotilla. 2) the main damage they do is missiles and if you fire outside the temporal field a large portion will miss or be shot down, go into the TF and OPF goes down and you start getting shot at.

We have no examples of stealth, on any level, larger than a Destroyer so with nothing to go by I would say it doesn't exist for larger ships. This means large numbers of small stealth craft to do the job but given how rare it seems to be and how long they would have to fly through that 5,000 miles being shot at by those guns...it is only slightly better.

Now, if you had a stealth ship with a weapon that could be fired outside of its detection envelope that would work. It could even work as a distraction for larger fleets of non stealth ships causing the PDWs of the DSF to change focus. Until you have that though...I just don't see stealth as a major factor outside of phase ships like the Etherium.

Interestingly F0t3G might also give us another option for attacking DSF, DP, and Star Hives (which don't have actual stats but does get a revisit mention in said book only reason its mentioned). In the section of FTL combat (pg11), they mention that any weapon fired by FTL traveling via CG drive will drop back to normal space unless the two craft have "merged" their FTL/CG fields. So a precisely timed attack/deployment could see fighters, PA, robots, shuttles, and missiles (and even beam/projectile weapons) launched at FTL and then forced to drop out of FTL once they pass the FTL field of their carrier ship putting them in real space inside the effective fire zone of the DSF weapons.

With nothing on Star Hives I have no idea. Given the power level of the bugs they just don't seem like much of a threat. Again, sensors are poorly defined so maybe these organic creatures with natural flight can get closer to the DSF before detection but...again given their damage level they just need so many to do anything.

Dropping weapons out at FTL could work but that is poorly defined in game. If you are talking about physical objects then sure you could lay out an impressive field of stuff flying in at some fraction of c. but it will be detected by even lightspeed sensors, much less any FTL grav scan and then it just wormholes away. That is assuming you can even line up the shot on a DSF moving through real space while you are coming in at FTL or that the effects of dropping out of FTL without a field leaves you in one piece and not scattered across the cosmos as subatomic particles. Lining up a real space shot with an energy weapon with a range of even a thousand miles would be unbelievable, much less a hundred.

When the book came out with my friends and on at least two other occasions on these boards I have gone through this. We looked at all sorts of ships form the 3G and even other settings. I mean a Mechanoid mothership gets spanked (assuming straight MDC conversion), but the 1e Zentraedi ships do OK. It only takes a moderately sized fleet to destroy a DSF and Macross II ships do even better. The losses for both are horrific but they get the job done. In setting though, just nothing that can stop them.

Yeah as I've said, I looked at RT 1E/2E and Macross 2. Though I don't think I would consider the few hundred ships the 1E Zentreadi or Mac2 ships a "moderately sized fleet" given the total fleet size of the Zentreadi (in RT) approaches 6million ships, that's not even like 0.02% of their total available force assuming 1,000 ships (and IIRC is more like a common/higher-end battlegroup sized force they employ as opposed to the "end a planet" gathering seen in the show).

I almost have to wonder if the DSFs are made to be this strong to at least give the illusion of being able to handle a RT-1E/Macross2 crossover situation (which likely isn't going to be bringing in the full weight of their settings) as opposed to the 3G setting as a whole (Fot3G came out a year after the 2E RT's main book, so likely 2E didn't have as much influence on the writing as 1E, though 2E seems to have neutered RT given dialogue establishes ranges that aren't met by the books which might lend credence to the idea that the RAW ranges are effective combat ranges for certain sized objects and not the maximum firing range allowing one to target larger objects farther out).

I believe DB 13 came out in the time after they lost the license for 1e but before they got it for 2e and RT so I don't think so. Again I don't blame Braden for this I just think that because the space combat was so poorly defined under CJ and none of the subsequent writers ever thought to define it so this is just how it turned out. To me Phase World has always felt like the b@$tard child of Rifts and maybe PB as a whole. It is very popular but it has never been one that Kevin ever gets really involved with or passionate about so it just kind of turned into this big contradictory mess with only 7 books.

[ShadowLogan]

I've never really looked at them for this. I have to admit like most people on these forums I didn't like the ships or art much,

I only did out of completeness (I looked at them for the Demon Planet as 1 of 12 factions, even included the Artifact as one). I don't let myself get hung up on art to much, the only reason I bring them up was their stated stealth, speed (Mach20 for that last 1-2000mile stretch means minutes of flight vs hours to evade fire), and their regeneration which is supposed to be a huge bonus to them that CCW and TGE forces are out matched by them by the fluff (the actual stats don't necessarily bear this out). Still I think the Invaders where one of those things introduced that suffers from the lack of being fleshed out more, since the only RAW examples are a suit of PA, a "light" fighter, and "light" capital ship all of which are going to be a handicap when compared to forces that can bring in "heavier" stuff.

One big disadvantage the Invaders suffer as compared to the other PW blocks is in terms of range though. They are simply outclassed, even ignoring the Dominators, which might explain their need for regeneration ability.

Stealth, both in concept and function, is horribly defined in PW mostly because the sensors are horribly defined in the setting. Most stealth is defined by "can not be detected until "X" miles" which works OK but it just assumes that the sensors on a merchant ship, a Warshield or a DSF are all the same. Still even if you assume that the DSF can detect these systems at 3 or 5 or even 10 times the range that is still better. The problem is that if you mass enough stealth vessels into one area they are going to get noticed so bringing in enough to do the job gets dicey.

It isn't just horribly defined in PW, its horribly defined everywhere I've ever looked in Palladium if its even an option.

I have to disagree about the number of ships increases the chance of detection. A few years back I worked out some information for Robotech when the Zentreadi amassed at Earth, 5.8million ships (using an "average" generic ship, which would still be much larger than typical PW ship IINM) didn't have that much visual impact if they all bunched up as viewed from Earth, so a PW fleet shouldn't become visible (unless they blockout a major star, which I'd think they would not do) or get to close (by then likely having negated the range advantage, now if the Dominators can detect the life signs...)
https://www.palladiumbooks.com/forums/v ... p?t=185557

TGE destroyer that uses OPFs for stealth. It carries 40, 1D6X1,000 MDC missiles and then a pair of what amount to cruiser grade lasers that fire once per round

The TGE destroyer in question yeah its not necessarily a threat on its own, though I have to wonder how the Dominators would react to encountering the Singularity Missiles and their history with the Black Hole Projector (black holes being singularities). They might just withdraw (blackhole weapons), then again they might also get more aggressive (either right away or they go off to band together before returning).

Dropping weapons out at FTL could work but that is poorly defined in game. If you are talking about physical objects then sure you could lay out an impressive field of stuff flying in at some fraction of c. but it will be detected by even lightspeed sensors, much less any FTL grav scan and then it just wormholes away. That is assuming you can even line up the shot on a DSF moving through real space while you are coming in at FTL or that the effects of dropping out of FTL without a field leaves you in one piece and not scattered across the cosmos as subatomic particles. Lining up a real space shot with an energy weapon with a range of even a thousand miles would be unbelievable, much less a hundred.

I agree its poorly defined, but it leaves some wiggle room on how you can survive that distance without getting pounded to dust without the Dominator being an idiot/distracted. You might even be able to do some damage.

Detection, yeah that is a thing, but I always assume that FTL is occurring in non-space (and each type of drive has its own type of non-space). So even if a Dominator detected the ships at FTL and they where sub-light, they wouldn't necessarily be like time to move to FTL (even in large numbers of approach craft).

I believe DB 13 came out in the time after they lost the license for 1e but before they got it for 2e and RT so I don't think so.

Based on printing dates for DB13:Fot3G and the Main Book for 2E RT, RT2E came out a year before DB13. Now they where "fresh" into the 2E RT License, with only the main book out by that point and the ships ended up being more PW "friendly" (though relative, as some weapon systems still out class them by a huge margin just not as they did in 1E), though I don't know about the time it took to write the book before it went to Kevin for editorial work.