I am considering creating a weapon arm for the Luther to replace the 5cm gun. It will use the basic combat arm with an attached magazine to fire wire guided missiles. I need to find a source for finned missiles, so I am looking now.

The idea is from the German research into smaller guided missiles, such as the enzian and rhientochter.

These would have an unlimited range, and would be 1/2 against all armor up to 7 and all air units. They would have no effect against infantry. The weapons special ability would be BERSERK (permanent sustained fire) to represent the accuracy but not make it too crazy.

The walker will have 8 of these, marked off when fired, and 2 can be fired in one turn.

The walker will also have MG44 and Kamfanzang.

Any thoughts?

Sounds quite reasonable to me and must be pretty close to the Pounder for chance of a kill on a 4W A4 vehicle. Another option would be to give it the Spotter rule to represent the accuaracy.

I had not considered a Spotter rule. That would actually work better than the Berserk rule. Good idea!

These are mostly comments about German missile programs... all of the SAMs under development were still pretty **** large (the Enzian, for instance was 4m long with a 4m wingspan) and none were wire guided, all were either radio controlled or had nascent homing capability. The wire guided missiles under development were for air to air use and had more reasonable dimensions (2m length and less than a meter in span), the post-war descendants of these particular missiles were anti-tank, rather than anti-air, in nature.

Also, what works against armor isn't going to be good against aircraft and vice versa. Take the German 88mm for instance, it was a great AT gun and a good AA gun, but it certainly wasn't using the same shells for both. An 88mm AA shell, with its focus on fragmentation damage and thin casing would have little effect on the heavy armor of an enemy tank. Similarly a dedicated anti-armor shell would only be useful in the case of a direct hit against an aircraft which, given the slow firing of heavy AA compared to lighter AA autocannons, is just impractical. Even in the case of direct hit the anti-tank shell would just punch a hole through, rather than exploding on contact. The German anti-air missiles (either AAM or SAM) were (to be) proximity fused and did their damage via fragmentation and had no anti-armor capability, which would require an entirely different warhead.

So, if we're talking missiles, we're looking at Fragmentation (effective against light and unarmored ground targets and aircraft) and Armor Piercing (noticeably less effective against infantry as it would require much greater accuracy, essentially worthless against aircraft, but good against tanks) warheads, but not a warhead capable of both roles. As far as I'm aware there has never been a dual use anti-air/anti-armor missile.

For one, we are talking about the Axis Missile programs AFTER the discovery of VK, so anything is possible.

I really did not care for an AA missile. I wanted a straight anti-tank missile.

Grand Inquisitor Fulminarex said:

Then why are you looking at the SAMs and making it effective vs aircraft? The thing to look at would be some anti-tank version of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhrstahl_X-4

Maybe treat it like a Panzerschreck but with range U? or maybe just a serious range bump, wire-guided generally goes with needing to be able to visually track it.

Edit: I wouldn't say ANYTHING is possible, the Axis light walker in the revised core set clearly has separate anti-armor and anti-infantry warhead rockets, so I doubt some dual purpose frag/flak and armor piercing warhead has been developed.

I would almost prefer to make a 3 missile pod that ANY walker can carry, mounted on a shoulder. I see perfect spots to mount one on the Axis medium walkers, and can easily modify a Hans weapon pod to carry 3 missiles, or even 6 if it carries 2.

its a wire guided missle, the user guides the projectile why would a spoter assist in anything?

ev17dan said:

It's just a game mechanic to make a weapon more accurate without causing more damage.

Major Mishap said:

EXACTLY. The spotter skill is just an approximation of how it would work in game. You could call it "guided missile".