Battleship and Battlerider

[mike wightman]

At TL15 you can put a jump 1 drive in your BRs easy enough - so why not give them drop tanks to jump into the target system, and enough internal fuel to jump out again?

You use the tender for strategic movement - J3-4 - it never enters the target system or stays so far out system that it can't be found.

 

[mike wightman]

Right. That discrepancy between ship combat rules and setting has been known for decades.

Hans

Discrepancy, between rules and setting? Surely not...

Some possible fixes:

allow BBs to carry more than one spinal

extra large bays that can hold up to 3000t of spinal rated weapons

more than one hit required after the first to degrade a non-weapon/defence system on large ships

 

[far-trader]

BRs have one significant tactical advantage over a fleet of BCs, being able to jump in together. Even if you allow Fleet Jumps you're still spread out over time and space. BRs on a Tender all arrive at the same time, and the same point. And with up to date coordination. While elemnts of the BC Fleet have been out of touch for a week.

Providing your BRs with a strategic retreat option with J1 and fuel isn't a bad idea, as long as they don't lose fuel in the engagement, which would seem to be a long shot.

I would definitely be using drop tanks for the Tender's approach if possible, so it would have fuel aboard on arrival for a fast retreat if required.

 

[AndreaV]

BRs have one significant tactical advantage over a fleet of BCs, being able to jump in together. Even if you allow Fleet Jumps you're still spread out over time and space. BRs on a Tender all arrive at the same time, and the same point. And with up to date coordination. While elemnts of the BC Fleet have been out of touch for a week.

Providing your BRs with a strategic retreat option with J1 and fuel isn't a bad idea, as long as they don't lose fuel in the engagement, which would seem to be a long shot.

I would definitely be using drop tanks for the Tender's approach if possible, so it would have fuel aboard on arrival for a fast retreat if required.

Except if there's more than one tender involved (ie a fleet consisting of more than one squadron, which will be most of them) or any escorts for that matter. Then they're actually at a disadvantage as their arrival will be subject to a worse random distribution than a larger number of single ships. I tried every which way I could think of and the multi-rider tender just doesn't have a large enough cost/number advantage over the single-rider tender to make it worthwhile (the figure is around a 0.5% advantage meaning it is actually insignificant).

 

[Peter Schutze]

Im not that familiar with HG so apologies but you guys seem to be arguing purely from a 5 minutes of thunder and fury (the actual exchange of fire) perspective

A few questions

why would that lone battleship be there on **gaurd** duty ? Rather than one BB vs about the same cost rider+tender set wouldnt it be more reasonably the BB plus a handful of cruiser escorts plus the picket force ?

how could the battleship know to escape .... or can it detect the riders maneovering to encircle it from so far outside firing range so its got plenty of time to get to jump distance ?

Or is it that a 100D orbit normal for protecting somewhere so you can jump at the first hint of danger ?

regarding tenders .... these have always seemed to me to be the ideal enemy system dominance platform, being an "instant fleet" yet you guys are talking about just bringing in several similarly spec'd riders.

wouldnt it make more sense for the tender to jump to a distant (ie impossible to have someone nearby) orbit then disgorge dozens or even hundreds of ships of all sizes from small engine-and-sensor-only recon craft up to the handful of line-of-battle ships that would form the core of the balanced force making straight for the mainworld ?

 

[travlar]

Well, besides the far greater firepower of spinal mounts compared to other weapons, I think the main problem with the use of battleships is the tendency of large meson spinal mounts to mission-kill any ship with one hit, due to the 'fuel tanks shattered' hit. If that were changed, I think battleships would be far more effective. As long as their size lets them actually deal and absorb more damage, they at least have a chance of being useful.

 

[whartung]

So, being as I don't have HG handy, here's a bigger question.

Does the BR make any sense when there are no meson guns?

All the tube lethality stats point to meson guns, with reason. They're spectacularly nasty devices.

Larger ships tend to take blunt force damage better than smaller ships. Lasers, missiles, fusion guns, and particle accelerators all have to work through the ships armor. I think that the PAs offer a radiation component to damage as well, but I forget.

But the meson gun changes the game. Size and armor pretty much don't matter any more. Yet, both the meson gun and the PA spinals advance as TL rises. That implies that SOMEONE is still building large PAs.

Why is that? When are PAs a better choice if MGs are available? Is the large BB hull the Old School doctrine that slowly gets obsoleted by the rise of the meson gun and, perhaps, the BT/BR?

Is there a TL progression? Before TL X, PAs and big ships with lots of armor are a better buy and more effective than MGs, but afterwards it's time to transition to BRs and more meson tubes?

What does it look like at each TL when you have, say, 100-200BCr to build up a fleet and how does the fleet makeup change at each TL as new systems and tech come on line.

 

[pendragonman]

While in general we accept the universal development of the Meson Gun, what about polities that develop to tech 15 in all areas without meson technology? Then PAWS weapon systems, especially those for spinal mounts, become queen.

Hence why developing PAWS to tech 15. Besides, if the opponent has equipped the best available meson screens PAWS can still batter him to submission.

 

[The Oz]

Discrepancy, between rules and setting? Surely not...

Some possible fixes:

allow BBs to carry more than one spinal

extra large bays that can hold up to 3000t of spinal rated weapons

more than one hit required after the first to degrade a non-weapon/defence system on large ships

Didn't we do this already, Mike?

 

[The Oz]

So, being as I don't have HG handy, here's a bigger question.

Does the BR make any sense when there are no meson guns?

All the tube lethality stats point to meson guns, with reason. They're spectacularly nasty devices.

Larger ships tend to take blunt force damage better than smaller ships. Lasers, missiles, fusion guns, and particle accelerators all have to work through the ships armor. I think that the PAs offer a radiation component to damage as well, but I forget.

But the meson gun changes the game. Size and armor pretty much don't matter any more. Yet, both the meson gun and the PA spinals advance as TL rises. That implies that SOMEONE is still building large PAs.

Why is that? When are PAs a better choice if MGs are available? Is the large BB hull the Old School doctrine that slowly gets obsoleted by the rise of the meson gun and, perhaps, the BT/BR?

Is there a TL progression? Before TL X, PAs and big ships with lots of armor are a better buy and more effective than MGs, but afterwards it's time to transition to BRs and more meson tubes?

What does it look like at each TL when you have, say, 100-200BCr to build up a fleet and how does the fleet makeup change at each TL as new systems and tech come on line.

Does the BR make sense without meson guns? Yes, because you're still putting your firepower into more baskets. No matter what you're armed with, having more hulls is always good unless you can be sure your defenses will stop the incoming fire.

Spinal PAs are great for roasting lightly armored (f-7 and less) cruisers and smaller vessels, thanks to the extra hits and extra crits from exceeding the target size.

Here's how I see the TL progression:

TL 7-9 - missiles are king, and nuclear missiles are instant death, thanks to small ship sizes and armor TL limits.

TL 10-11 - Spinal PAs become very useful, but are limited to the biggest ships (max ship sizes are still pretty small) and require huge powerplants. Nuclear missiles are still king.

TL 12-13 - Effective nuclear dampers just start to become available, but nuke missiles are still pretty effective. Spinal meson guns become effective weapons as larger size weapons turn the useless TL-11 meson guns into ship killers.

TL 14-15 - Spinal meson guns are king: bring all you can to the battle. The factor-J spinal meson gun is the love child of ship designers; lethal and able to fit into a sub-10000 dton BR hull.

Anyone else have a TL progession?

 

[whartung]

TL 14-15 - Spinal meson guns are king: bring all you can to the battle. The factor-J spinal meson gun is the love child of ship designers; lethal and able to fit into a sub-10000 dton BR hull.

So what kind of numeric advantage does a fleet need at TL-15 that is NOT equipped with meson tech to defeat a TL-15 fleet that does?

 

[The Oz]

So what kind of numeric advantage does a fleet need at TL-15 that is NOT equipped with meson tech to defeat a TL-15 fleet that does?

First pass analysis: a LOT!

Every time a f-J or better meson gun fires, it has about a 10 to 20 % change of mission-killing a target, even through f-9 screens and config-1. Every hit kills a lot of missile batteries. To have a good chance of getting one kill per squadron salvo we need 4 to 5 BRs, so that's 100000 to 125000 dtons of rider to kill one enemy ship per turn.

To return the favor, the missile/PA-armed ships need to get enough Wpn-1 hits (against f-15 armor and f-9 nuclear dampers) to reduce the spinal mount below f-E or so (any smaller and there's a good chance that the meson gun won't roll the instant death "Fuel Tanks Shattered" hit). So we need 35 hits (5 on the MG, and 5 for each of the other weapons: laser, energy, missile, PA, repulsor, sand). A single f-9 missile salvo has a 10% chance of penetrating the defenses,and gets to roll one on the Surface Explosions table and once on the Radiation table. One-third of the Surface Explosion hits will be Wpn-1 hits against f-15 armor, and just over 40% of the Radiation hits will be Wpn-1 hits, so we need around 45 hits to get our 35 Wpn-1 hits, and we need 450 missile batteries to get our 45 hits, so we need 450,000 dtons of missile-armed ship to mission-kill 1/5th of our 125,000 dtons of BR in one salvo.

Looks just about 5 to 1. Spinal PAs would make that better as they would get more damage rolls in less tonnage, but not much more, as the f-15 armor would reduce even a f-T spinal PA from rolling 19 times to only 4 times (on both the Surface Explosion and Radiation tables, so it's actually 8 rolls total), which is only 2 more damage rolls than you could get from replacing the 3000 dton spinal PA with 3 extra missile batteries.

Here's a real difference (in my eyes): those ships "killed" by the meson guns are either really dead, or so crippled they can't escape. If their side doesn't win, they are prizes to the enemy (from lack of power, lack of fuel, or lack of crew). The ships "killed" by the missiles are just firepower-killed, they still have drives, crew, and fuel and can easily escape by acceleration or by jump.

Anyone want to check my figures?

 

[E.D.Quibell]

Next thing that hit me was the futility of high end/high jump battleships. They
are just too expensive (at TL15 you can get six times as many jump 4 high end
riders as ships). However, interestingly, at the low end, the battleship very
rapidly becomes an attractive option. At TL15 jump 3 you get 2182 ships to 2117
riders.

But isn't that the point?

At TL15 Jump 4 you can put 6 times the amount of ship killing spinal mounts into action if you use riders than if you use ships.

With a 6 to 1 advantage it doesn't matter if you strand whole sqadrons of riders with the loss of the tender because you have such an advantage in hulls you can afford to strand a few.

Best regards,

Ewan

 

[rancke]

Discrepancy, between rules and setting? Surely not...

Some possible fixes:

allow BBs to carry more than one spinal

extra large bays that can hold up to 3000t of spinal rated weapons

more than one hit required after the first to degrade a non-weapon/defence system on large ships

There has to be some quality to bigger ships that improves their survivability. I've always vaguely assumed that smaller ships had smaller weapons, so they had to whittle away at the bigger ships whereas the bigger ships had bigger weapons and could one-shot the smaller ships. But if you really can fit a factor T spinal AND armor 15 into a 25,000T battlerider, that doesn't seem to work.

I've also had the notion that bigger guns could shoot farther, giving the battleships one or more free shots at approaching cruisers, but again, if cruisers are able to mount factor Ts, that's out too.

Maybe link range of meson guns to the length of the gun, giving bigger ships an advantage over smaller ones?

How about the armor? Maybe I'm doing my sums wrong, but if you use X% of a ship's tonnage on armor, wouldn't you get thicker armor on a big ship than on a small one?

If that's the case, a cruiser-sized ship might need more than 1% per armor factor whereas a battleship-sized one would get 2 or 3 factors per percent. ("Breakeven" would be around 100,000T, maybe?)


Hans

 

[Hal]

I'm curious.

Without getting into specifics of starship designs here, what are the non-combat advantages enjoyed by various ships being bandied about here in this thread?

For instance, can a jump drive capable warship have its engines repaired at a Class B starport, or must it go to a Class A starport in order to have its jump drive repaired?

What of construction times required?

In the event that a fleet has to be mothballed due to a lack of sufficient funds, can a battlerider group suffer less combat effectiveness loss due to a battle rider or two being mothballed as compared against a battleship that is jump capable?

What other non-direct combat advantages do battleships and/or battleriders enjoy that the other class does not?

Just thinking outside the box as it were.

 

[rancke]

For instance, can a jump drive capable warship have its engines repaired at a Class B starport, or must it go to a Class A starport in order to have its jump drive repaired?

Starport classifications apply to civilian traffic, so if the world is populous enough and has the requisite tech level, it is potentially able to build (and thus repair) military ships. However, just because a world could have military shipyards doesn't mean it has. That would be a setting detail. World A builds its own ships, so it can repair them. World B buys its big military ships from World A, so although it builds small civilian ships (Starport A) and can thus repair the smaller military ships, it doesn't have the infrastructure to build or even repair the big ones.

This is beyond the detail level of TCS, of course.


Hans

 

[Hal]

Starport classifications apply to civilian traffic, so if the world is populous enough and has the requisite tech level, it is potentially able to build (and thus repair) military ships. However, just because a world could have military shipyards doesn't mean it has. That would be a setting detail. World A builds its own ships, so it can repair them. World B buys its big military ships from World A, so although it builds small civilian ships (Starport A) and can thus repair the smaller military ships, it doesn't have the infrastructure to build or even repair the big ones.

This is beyond the detail level of TCS, of course.


Hans

Your reply made me look up this in TRILLION CREDIT SQUADRON:

"Starport Repairs: Full repair may be done at any A or B starport, but j-drive
repairs require double cost and time at B starports, and no starport may repair a
ship system of higher tech level than the starport's tech level."

This means then, that if a Battle Rider has to stop in for repairs at a class B starport (the closest starport available due to campaign reasons), its repairs are pretty much going to be quickly done at straight cost, while a starship's repairs for a jump drive will cost double at a class B starport. Mind you, the presumption here is that the Tender has been kept free of combat, and that the battle riders disengaged from combat via acceleration rather than via jump.

 

[rancke]

Your reply made me look up this in TRILLION CREDIT SQUADRON:

"Starport Repairs: Full repair may be done at any A or B starport, but j-drive
repairs require double cost and time at B starports, and no starport may repair a
ship system of higher tech level than the starport's tech level."

Yes, but High Guard states that "...alternatively, a planetary navy may construct ships on its planet, using local resources, even if a shipyard is not present." (emphasis mine).

Presumably, the rule in TCS is a simplification based on the assumption that there is a strong correlation between worlds having civilian starship construction facilities and having military starship construction facilities. But such a correlation is not absolute.


Hans

 

[McPerth]

So what kind of numeric advantage does a fleet need at TL-15 that is NOT equipped with meson tech to defeat a TL-15 fleet that does?

If the meson gun equiped ships are armored enough, no numeric adventages would offset the lack of meson guns to fight them.

If your ship has armor 20 (in CT, 100 in MT), all hits will be no effect.

In CT, this means 21% of the tonnage (at TL 14-15) must be dedicated to armor, so it's quite difficult to put this armor on a battleship (unless very low jump capability), but this option is quite attractive for BR/monitors.

In MT, no tonnage is dedicated to armor, it only adds weight, and so reducing agility (which anyway, in MT designs, uses to be quite low, at least for jump capable ships), but you can afford that (and the extra hits you would receive for it) if you know hits would not damage you (but would the Almighty help you if enemy has MGs...)

About other traveller versions, I don't know them enought to talk about

 

[The Oz]

If the meson gun equiped ships are armored enough, no numeric adventages would offset the lack of meson guns to fight them.

If your ship has armor 20 (in CT, 100 in MT), all hits will be no effect.

In CT, this means 21% of the tonnage (at TL 14-15) must be dedicated to armor, so it's quite difficult to put this armor on a battleship (unless very low jump capability), but this option is quite attractive for BR/monitors.

You are forgetting the TL limit on armor; you can't add more armor to a ship than the TL of the ship's construction (HG2, page 29).

Using planetoid hulls, you can reach armor-20 or higher at TL-15, that's true but it costs you a lot more tonnage.

This is one reason why I hate planetoid hulls.