R-Chance,
The design was for a commerce raider and not a pirate.
The two activities are not the same.
Have fun,
Bill
Cruisers in Traveller
- Thread starter jec10
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R-Chance,
The design was for a commerce raider and not a pirate.
The two activities are not the same.
Have fun,
Bill
Hi
Hi,
Yeah, with a little effort and guessing you should be able to. I posted a graph of modern ship data on another message string and here is an updated version of it showing some additional data points. One thing that I noticed is that for a given ship type the data falls into recognizable trends, though for different ship types the trends are different.
Specifically, you can see that most of the Mine Counter Measures vessels and Surface Combatants all fall along (or near one trend line), but the Landing Ship Docks fall along a different line, and the submarines fall along yet another line.
As such, if you had a couple of data points for a given ship type (like the pre-Dreadnaught battleship that you show) you should be able to draw a trend line for those type ships and then use that trend line to estimate other similar vessels. Unfortunately, I don't have any real data on overall enclosed volume for ships of that era, but it might be possible to make some rough estimates for just a few data points and draw a trend line from them.
I'll take a look at the info I do have and try and see what I can come up with maybe these weekend.
Regards
PF
Hi,
Yeah, with a little effort and guessing you should be able to. I posted a graph of modern ship data on another message string and here is an updated version of it showing some additional data points. One thing that I noticed is that for a given ship type the data falls into recognizable trends, though for different ship types the trends are different.
Specifically, you can see that most of the Mine Counter Measures vessels and Surface Combatants all fall along (or near one trend line), but the Landing Ship Docks fall along a different line, and the submarines fall along yet another line.
As such, if you had a couple of data points for a given ship type (like the pre-Dreadnaught battleship that you show) you should be able to draw a trend line for those type ships and then use that trend line to estimate other similar vessels. Unfortunately, I don't have any real data on overall enclosed volume for ships of that era, but it might be possible to make some rough estimates for just a few data points and draw a trend line from them.
I'll take a look at the info I do have and try and see what I can come up with maybe these weekend.
Regards
PF
No they are not, as I mentioned in my post above, a government sanctioned raider might just blow the ships... assuming there were no conventions against doing so, or that the crews didn't mind being charged with warcrimes etc. if apprehended or in a postwar setting. Given any requirements *not* to commit mass murder of civilians (often including neutrals travelling on foreign flag vessels) the requirements are about the same. There could be cargos, passengers or other intel that a raider would want to retrieve as well all of which might necessitate boarding. There is the issue of incentive as well, even navy crews used to recieve prize money for the capture of enemy ships (naval or merchant). The practice has gone out of style, but in a setting like the Third Imperium it might just be back in vogue. You convince a ships officers and crew to forgo their chance at big credits. I don't want to. The line between commerce raider, privateer and pirate can be pretty thin.
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far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Capture or sinking in fact. And the sinking is so much easier, especially in Traveller. Easier to do and easier to verify to the prize court thanks to the tamper resistant computer recordings of all the sensor data.
Capture only I believe. In the Royal navy it was governed by the the "Cruizers and Convoys Act of 1708". Link below:
http://www.hms.org.uk/nelsonsnavyprize.htm
German commerce raiders of WWII generally (not always), shelled the merchant until it complied with stop orders, took on board the crew, and either captured or sunk the merchant depending on the damage inflicted.
The German experience also established that comerce raiders, like planetiod SBDs are most valuable by 'existing'. (ref: The Secret Raiders., David Woodward) Sinking or capturing ships was a bonus compared to the disruption to British commerce because of the threat & defensive measures required (building convoys & waiting on rare escorts). A commerce fleet travelling half as often creates an effective tonnage loss of 50% of the fleet. The German raiders achieved this with no more than half a dozen raiders at sea at any one time.
On the Cruiser debate, I fall on the 'purpose' side of the line with size or armament being secondary. In CT consider the 400tn Patrol Cruiser, intended to fulfill a strategic role of patrol, showing the flag & acting as a trip-wire force, calling in heavier units if required. To all intents fulfilling the 'purpose' of an armed vessel capable of independent cruising (also the Kunier). Of course a capital ship 30,000tn Light Cruiser may be more useful in many tactical circumstances, but a fleet of 400tn Patrol Cruisers can be in many more strategic places and with the threat of follow up forces can be just as effective (fire on one IN vessel & you have to be prepared to take on the lot...).
Just to be clear, I am not advocating 400tn Cruisers over capital ship Cruisers just making the point that the purpose of a Cruiser is to be an armed vessel capable of independent Strategic operations.
By comparison, Battleships are not intended for independent operation rather they are intended to be used en-mass to destroy the enemy line of battle with a range of escorts & support vessels to ensure they meet the enemy battleships in top condition.
Cheers!
Matt
The German experience also established that comerce raiders, like planetiod SBDs are most valuable by 'existing'. (ref: The Secret Raiders., David Woodward) Sinking or capturing ships was a bonus compared to the disruption to British commerce because of the threat & defensive measures required (building convoys & waiting on rare escorts). A commerce fleet travelling half as often creates an effective tonnage loss of 50% of the fleet. The German raiders achieved this with no more than half a dozen raiders at sea at any one time.
On the Cruiser debate, I fall on the 'purpose' side of the line with size or armament being secondary. In CT consider the 400tn Patrol Cruiser, intended to fulfill a strategic role of patrol, showing the flag & acting as a trip-wire force, calling in heavier units if required. To all intents fulfilling the 'purpose' of an armed vessel capable of independent cruising (also the Kunier). Of course a capital ship 30,000tn Light Cruiser may be more useful in many tactical circumstances, but a fleet of 400tn Patrol Cruisers can be in many more strategic places and with the threat of follow up forces can be just as effective (fire on one IN vessel & you have to be prepared to take on the lot...).
Just to be clear, I am not advocating 400tn Cruisers over capital ship Cruisers just making the point that the purpose of a Cruiser is to be an armed vessel capable of independent Strategic operations.
By comparison, Battleships are not intended for independent operation rather they are intended to be used en-mass to destroy the enemy line of battle with a range of escorts & support vessels to ensure they meet the enemy battleships in top condition.
Cheers!
Matt
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Matt123,
Compare and contrast the tonnage German raiders captured/sank during WW2 and the tonnage German u-boats sunk during the war.
Technology trumps all. The change in tech between the Age of Sail and the Age of Steam put paid to capturing commerce. The shift to destruction was driven by the changes in technology.
R_Chance's sniffing about "mass murder" and other such silliness didn't stop any of the combatants in WW2 from sinking merchant ships. The practice of stopping ships and allowing their crews time to leave was on nearly all occassions simply far too dangerous for the raider, and will be on nearly all occassions far too dangerous for a raider in the OTU.
Gvien the technology, there's just no way to "square the circle". Certain aspects of the Traveller setting may resemble the Age of Sail, but it doesn't necessarily follow that all aspects of the Traveller will resemble the Age of Sail.
Have fun,
Bill
It depends on your interpretation of the setting really. Of course, the Third Imperium, with it's Moot, nobility, and traditions of honor -- not exactly 20th century stuff -- might not find anything to "sniff" about mass murder. They might not find it too "silly" to consider it an issue. Others might not be that averse to the at any cost mentality of the 20th century (i.e. the Solomani).
I think it would depend tremendously on the character of the local Imperial duke. Emperor Strephon is an honorable man and would want anyone working for him to behave themselves. I think the Imperial Code of Military Justice contains a lot of stuff cribbed from age-old historical sources like the UCMJ. And we have a canonical instance of the Imperium prosecuting someone for violations of the Rules of War (which aren't written down anywhere, remember?
)But Strephon can't deal with everything. He has to rely on his dukes to interpret his will. And they will interpret them differently. I'm morally certain that Duke Carl of Alderamin will try to enforce the full letter AND spirit of the ICMJ. But other dukes would merely pay lip service to them.
That's the beauty of the Imperium. Within some broad (sometimes very broad) guidelines provided by the Emperor, every GM can tweak some duchy to provide the situation he prefers. Want the Imperial forces to back the megacorporations against the member worlds? There's a duchy where they do. Want them to back one megacorporation against another? There's a duchy where they do. Want them to have a strict hand-off policy towards internal affairs of the member worlds? Want them to finance clandestine agencies bent on changing the socio-economic policies of the member worlds? Want them to support the member governments against insurrectionists or vice versa? Just pick a duchy and work out what the duke has to be like to provide such a situation.
Hans
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
Whipsnade, your point is correct if you look strictly at tonnages lost. However, it must be remembered that U-boats were tragically short ranged and thus had a (relatively) small operating area unless supported by surface ships to extend their range. The surface commerce raiders derived from converted civilian vessels mostly supplied themselves from the tonnage they stopped, often using their captives to fuel and supply nearby U-boats. They would then try to send the rest of the cargo captured to either a neutral or allied port for resale. Penguin and Atlantis I know were particularly successful at this.
Further, the surface raiders (this time of all types, i.e. include ships like Graf Spee, and to a lesser extent Bismark)) forced the Allies to allocate huge resources to hunt down and find these ships and forced dislocation of huge amounts of cargo tonnage (it is a significantly longer journey to deliver goods from and to Australia and India from/to England if you can't use the Indian Ocean or the South Atlantic). This effort on the German Navy's part is called a "Fleet in Being" tactic of not necessarily destroying everything or trying to wipe out every contact but to feed off the enemy cargo and create a massive amount of uncertainty. Yes, it didn't work all the way to the end of the war, but neither did the U-boats; further, the budget for the U-boats was much larger than that of the surface raiders. Remember, the Navy was told in (IIRC) 1937 not to expect a major conflict until 1947, so the surface ship construction program was barely under way when the war broke out. U-boats were faster to produce, so production switched over to them. I know it is impossible to quantify the volume of cargo disrupted by the fleet-in-being method, but go look at British Naval records from the period and you can easily see that the threat from these ships was taken just as, and in some cases more, seriously than the U-boat threat.
Vessels aren't the only thing that can be boarded: cruisers can and do raid ground targets. The Emden's last sortie was against a radio station; unfortunately for her and her landing party, the HMAS Sydney was a little too close by. Speaking of which, the Emden happened to shell, board and capture many merchant ships.
The assumption that boarding Won't Happen is entirely dependent upon the particular flavour of Traveller you use. This ship was designed for High Guard, which has rather forgiving boarding rules.
Cruisers, as multimission craft, need to be flexible. Cargo space and troops are some of the best ways to add that flexibility.
The carried craft, and any <2k ton escorts tagging along.
In the Second World War, the Royal Navy found themselves burdened with many old and/or slow battleships (the Nelson class being capable of only 24 knots). They found the perfect use for them as convoy escorts. A cruiser, then, facing a superior force would need speed to disengage.
One thing we wargamers suffer from is what I call combat myopia: the prejudice towards known, measurable combat statistics over logistics and intangibles. Resupply is unglamorous; exactly how difficult it would be to supply a commerce raider on station is an open question. Therefore, energy weapons are to be preferred to ordnance. (Also note that Brilliant Lances and Power Projection make nuclear salvoes very expensive kabooms for your credit.)
The missile bays on the Mirador are there to pull the ship's a.. err, stern out of an unexpected fire, or to overwhelm an escort or two before the convoy scatters. Missile supplies will, however, be limited. The ship will be hunting Serendip and New Colchesean freighters and escorts, which are mainly TL 11-12, so nuclear dampers aren't that much of a problem.
Esperanza is limited to TL 11, so shipborne nuclear dampers aren't practical yet.
Odd, I thought I had installed the best computer. (Except for high-tech fighters, the best computer is usually a no-brainer.)
Thanks for the criticism!
Piracy is indeed done to death. I say that since Traveller is space opera, the referee (I nearly typed GM!) has license to do whatever the heck they like.
However, I will post one little factoid I recall from (I think) N.A.M. Rodger's The Wooden World: the value of a merchant ship's cargo was often worth several times what the ship itself cost. This doesn't hold in Traveller.
--Devin
However, I will post one little factoid I recall from (I think) N.A.M. Rodger's The Wooden World: the value of a merchant ship's cargo was often worth several times what the ship itself cost. This doesn't hold in Traveller.
--Devin
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Quite. And that fact would help to make things better if it could be worked into the game.
But then I've always thought Traveller ship prices were at least 10x too high. Do that, and maybe make cargo prices 10x higher and we might see it. And it might make sense to ship something across parsecs too. And you wouldn't have players being able to buy speculative high value cargoes and getting rich so easily either...
...though they might take to theft more often :smirk:
What! Make ships affordable? Heresy! Hmm, looks like I didn't realize there was a "ship value" holy war... mebbe it's not a holy war, just a funny quirky house preference of Dan Burns...
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Yep, so far as I know there's no Ship Value holy war, just a lone voice in the wilds, a hermetic heretic mumbling crazy thoughts to no one in particular. Pay no attention...
Gallowglacht
SOC-12
Make some room by the campfire then.
I brought Marshmallows.
I brought Marshmallows.
Icosahedron
SOC-14 1K
Heresy Warning: Please read no further if you are of a nervous disposition. 
IMHO, before Traveller got burdened with the OTU, the rules worked. Characters were meant to work on ships, not own them, and the high price of ships kept them beyond reach. Multimillionairedom via speculative goods is hard to come by if you earn 2k per month and spend 1K on upkeep, and trading across the parsecs makes sense if you have a pocket empire feeding a 'wild west' frontier. I don't think the ship and cargo cost rules were broken until the OTU hit the scene - Maybe that's one reason why the powers-that-be broke it up?
IMHO, before Traveller got burdened with the OTU, the rules worked. Characters were meant to work on ships, not own them, and the high price of ships kept them beyond reach. Multimillionairedom via speculative goods is hard to come by if you earn 2k per month and spend 1K on upkeep, and trading across the parsecs makes sense if you have a pocket empire feeding a 'wild west' frontier. I don't think the ship and cargo cost rules were broken until the OTU hit the scene - Maybe that's one reason why the powers-that-be broke it up?
mbrinkhues
SOC-14 1K
"Striking the color" should be easier in Traveller than in real life since combat is slower and a lot more dependant on sensors etc. Granted, one needs a clear definition what "striking" means. IMHO scraming your reactor sounds good and detectabel. After that you might suffer the "final strike" already underway but that should be it.
