Battleship and Battlerider

[mike wightman]

An easier fix is to allow meson screen rating as a +DM on the damage tables.

Which would also mean you are using the full table

You could also allow the meson screen rating to affect the meson gun the same way armour affects other weapons.

 

[rancke]

I take "Armour" to be more than just a thick skin. Armour is a total package for damage resistance. Its a thicker skin, increased subdivision, stronger internal bulkheads, damage absorbing void spaces etc (you can find some reference to this concept in HG pp28).

How does that make a difference? With the same volume you not only get thicker skin, you also get more subdivisions, thicker internal bulkheads, bigger void spaces, etc, equalling better armor for the same volume.

Don't you? (As I said, my 3D geometry is weak).


Hans

 

[rancke]

An easier fix is to allow meson screen rating as a +DM on the damage tables.

Which would also mean you are using the full table

You could also allow the meson screen rating to affect the meson gun the same way armour affects other weapons.

How does that fix the problem that battleship-sized ships should be more resistant to damage than cruiser-sized ships? Our cruisers can have high screen factors as easily as our battleships.


Hans

 

[mike wightman]

How does that fix the problem that battleship-sized ships should be more resistant to damage than cruiser-sized ships? Our cruisers can have high screen factors as easily as our battleships.


Hans

Not without sacrificing something else:

Gionetti 30kt, agl 5, mg ,J ms 0, armour 0

Arakoine 50kt, agl 4, mg N, ms 9, armour 0

Ghalalk 50kt, agl 5, pa H, ms 5, armour 5

AHL 60kt, agl 0, pa N, ms 6, armour 5

Atlantic 75kt, agl 5, mg N, ms 6, armour 10

 

[rancke]

Not without sacrificing something else:

Gionetti 30kt, agl 5, mg ,J ms 0, armour 0

Arakoine 50kt, agl 4, mg N, ms 9, armour 0

Ghalalk 50kt, agl 5, pa H, ms 5, armour 5

AHL 60kt, agl 0, pa N, ms 6, armour 5

Atlantic 75kt, agl 5, mg N, ms 6, armour 10

Check the starting post in this thread. If Shadowdragon did his sums right, he managed to fit everything inside a 25,000T battlerider.

ISTR from discussions way back that it was possible to design a 75,000T cruiser with all the trimmings up to and including a factor T meson spinal. I haven't done it myself, so I won't swear to it. Armor may have been less than factor 15.


Hans

 

[pendragonman]

Then what do you do if you need to withdraw? Either you sacrifice some of your riders/fighters behind or expose your (fewer) tenders to fire.

Fighters have been, and always will be, attrition units. And as you say, it is cheaper to replace a BR or two to stiffen the fighters.

Four ships doesn't give enough of a sample, 32 does

Only if you are looking at a paper, statistical analysis. This is dangerous and has unintended consequences. See the lead-up to any of the following for details: Pearl Harbor, the Nazi invasion of Poland, the Nazi Russian Campaign, the fall of Singapore, MacArthur's charge to the Yalu, the Vietnam war (both the French and American versions), The second American invasion of Iraq, ...I can go on for quite a while with this.

But let's say your statistical example is correct-ish. Five percent of 32 units is 1.6 units- or two units more often than not. Five percent of 4 units is .2 units- or zero units more often than not. I have done the math, and while the sample size for large projections is too small in both cases (32 units is statistically just as untenable as 4, if you disagree check with a statistics professor). What we have for both sets is 95% of the time you are sitting with 30 units and 95% of the time I am sitting with all 4 of mine.

So you have 30 BRs and I have 32 in this gun fight. And 5% of the time you have 32 BRs and I have 24. I will take those odds every time.

Ahhh, but I don't have to go to eight separate destinations, I can go to one if I like, or two or three... The key here is that the eight separate rider/tenders have far greater strategic flexibility than the single eight rider/tender.

Also its important to look beyond a single squadron or even combat deployments. In reality no major navy will build a fleet consisting solely of riders or solely of ships.

Lets look at two theoretical states...snip

So, when again was it decided that we are only dealing with small states? What about state with 7 worlds, 10, 100?

So, you can send your 8 in pairs, or any combo up to 8. Great. Each section of less than 8 will still pack less punch. And in the stack of 8 configuration arrival time still means getting defeated piecemeal.

So you can potentially hit more targets. Fine. With lesser combat power at each target, potentially causing you significant losses at each location due to this lower combat power.

Yes, if all of your ships are there at the time combat begins you have 16 targets, 8 in the battle line and 8 in the reserve. Great. Once breakthrough begins your BRs will be just as unable to escape as mine, since there is really only one optimum design for these things at a given tonnage and so we will both have the same agility. So discussing the BR's ability to disengage is a bit disingenuous.

Now, we come to the last bit. You are arguing that having even 1 multirider is a waste of resources. I can agree to that, if we are really only dealing with a VERY small polity, like either of your examples. However, a couple of multiriders as part of a fleet as a whole of a medium-small (even 5 moderately populated planets) or larger polity make good sense. It is the definition of Power Projection. At any time one of these could jump in and launch a strike in moments, while a bunch of individual jump-shuttle/BR combos would have to wait for the force to assemble, giving the target prep time.

In this we are going to have to agree to disagree. You will not convince me that having a few multiriders as part of a force structure is not a good idea, and I can't make you see that it is.

 

[rancke]

There's a simple solution to the problem of arriving spread out across a span of time. Just jump in far enough away from the defenders that you can be sure everyone has arrived and formed up before the defenders can get within firing range.

This also has the advantage that if the defender has been reinfoced in the two weeks since your latest intelligence, you won't be jumping into a bigger bunch of enemies than you expected.


Hans

 

[jawillroy]

How does that fix the problem that battleship-sized ships should be more resistant to damage than cruiser-sized ships? Our cruisers can have high screen factors as easily as our battleships.


Hans

The trouble to me is that what is for us a static system (the rulebook) has to be applied to something that ought to be in a state of flux (history of the development of military tech, especially meson weaponry.)

Is there, anywhere, any chart showing the progression of tech levels during the frontier wars?

If TL15 meson weaponry had been around for hundreds of years at the time of the "Present OTU" then I'm with Rancke in saying things are pretty broken. But if the third and fourth frontier wars were fought with early mesons, and the fifth with TL 14 and 15 weaponry, then I don't have any problem at all with big meson weaponry being able to chew through everything: They're rifles at Gettysburg, machine guns at the Somme: a new technology whose implications are ill understood.

 

[pendragonman]

And that, IMO, is the premise most likely to be wrong.

I tossed off a suggestion some posts back that seems to've gone unnoticed. Possibly I'm wrong -- my 3D geometry is very weak -- but shouldn't you be getting thicker armor out of a given percentage of a ship's volume for bigger ships than for smaller ships?

If that is the case, then the rule that gives the same armor value to all ships for the same armor volume is flawed. And if your 25,000T battlerider is only getting a factor 5 armor out of its 15% while the 500,000T battleship is getting a factor 30 out of its 15%, then bigger ships suddenly do have a survivability factor derived from its size -- just as one would suppose from the fact that OTU navies do build many battleships.


Hans

Let's look at a sphere for ease of example:

Surface area of a sphere is calculated by SA=4*Pi*r^2

Volume=dtons displacement= 4/3*Pi*r^3 implies r=(.75*V/Pi)^(1/3)

Assuming TL 14-15 Armor and an AV of 15:

50,000 dton BR has a radius of about 23 meters and so has a surface area of about 6650 square meters or about 1.2 dtons of armor per square meter of surface.

500,000 dton Tigress has a radius of about 49 meters and so has a surface area of about 30,500 square meters or about 2.6 dtons of armor per square meter of surface.

So yes, the armor gets thicker. I suspect the idea that the game designers followed is that the wider the radius, the more internal structure was required to support the armor as it would be further from the center of gravity, representing this increased structure as more dtons dedicated to armor per square meter of surface. This is just a WAG though.

 

[McPerth]

I've had not the time to devote to many maths those days, so I'll assume your's are correct (I have not real reason to dubt it anyway).

One of the reasons I think may make sense about having multi BRs tenders is command control. A large multi BR ship makes a good base for it, while several smaller ones are probably more likely to lead to confusion.

Let's imagine an engagement among two 8 BRs squadrons. First of them is on an 8 Brs tender, Seccond on 8 one BR tenders. Both arrive to the same system at once.

Just arriving on system, the First squadron has a clear chain of command, while Seccond's commander is the seniorest commander on a tender present, and tham may change as other's arrive...

Even if fleets are too much apart to begin combat operations for a while, the confusion created for the (possibly multiple) command change(s) on seccond may make the difference. That's a risk few fleets could afford.

The same way, if things go bad, to have to deffend one large target is easier than 8 smaller ones, most so if all 8 BRs share the interests in saving their tender in First, while every BR in Seccond has to think about his own tender.

Another reason may be squadron integrity. While this may be as much an advantage as a liability, I guess most fleets whouldnt like to disperse its squadrons too often, at least not those in reserve (don't forget is where most BT/BRs stay). This would be reversed on picket/first line frontier squadrons, and that's why those missions are mostly done by cruisers/BBs.

Yet another may be crew quality. If you have an elite engineering team, or an elite navigator, or tactician, or whatever it be on a large BT, you can serve 8 raiders with it. If your BRs are dispersed on 8 smaller BTs, you'd need 8 elite whatever-you-need to serve them. We must not forget teh BT also has a 'mobile base' function.

And the last one I've thought about for now is (related to command and control) the better cohesion I guess a mutli BR tender whould give to the squadron, even if just because crews can expend some jump time together on the tender facilities, and the commanders have several conferences while in jump, a thing absolutely impossible if you use one BR tenders.

 

[mike wightman]

Check the starting post in this thread. If Shadowdragon did his sums right, he managed to fit everything inside a 25,000T battlerider.

ISTR from discussions way back that it was possible to design a 75,000T cruiser with all the trimmings up to and including a factor T meson spinal. I haven't done it myself, so I won't swear to it. Armor may have been less than factor 15.


Hans

Battlerider yes, cruiser no way. Which is sort of the point of the BR

And I have a problem calling a 75kt ship a cruiser (I know, canon) since it falls inside the +2 size modifier for to hit purposes.

Also the optimum size for a BR is 19kt

 

[pendragonman]

There's a simple solution to the problem of arriving spread out across a span of time. Just jump in far enough away from the defenders that you can be sure everyone has arrived and formed up before the defenders can get within firing range.

This also has the advantage that if the defender has been reinfoced in the two weeks since your latest intelligence, you won't be jumping into a bigger bunch of enemies than you expected.


Hans

Yep, sure can. And then give the defense an exact knowledge of your force configuration well before the battle. Always a good idea.

 

[McPerth]

Yep, sure can. And then give the defense an exact knowledge of your force configuration well before the battle. Always a good idea.

Not always a good idea, but sometimes (most times, in truth) better than allow your forces to engage piecemal the enemy.

 

[rancke]

Battlerider yes, cruiser no way. Which is sort of the point of the BR

Cruiser-SIZED. Which a 25,000T battlerider most certainly is. Which means, and this is the point I've endeavored to put across several times already, that it COSTS a lot less than a battleship. Somewhat more than a cruiser of its own size, but still a lot less than a batttleship. So who would be silly enough to buy battleships when they could get six or eight times the firepower by buying battleriders? Or, if some sort of unreasoned prejudice against battleriders existed, at least four times the firepower by buying heavy cruisers?

And I have a problem calling a 75kt ship a cruiser (I know, canon) since it falls inside the +2 size modifier for to hit purposes.

Not my problem. I'm perfectly satisfied with the canon definition. Or rather, I would be if battleships actually were significantly better able to stand in the line of battle than cruisers (well-designed heavy cruisers, that is).


Hans

 

[pendragonman]

Battlerider yes, cruiser no way. Which is sort of the point of the BR

And I have a problem calling a 75kt ship a cruiser (I know, canon) since it falls inside the +2 size modifier for to hit purposes.

Also the optimum size for a BR is 19kt

I believe that the BB/BC/CA/CL designation dtonnage is somewhat arbitrary in that it is derived by the polity that produces the ship.

A case in point is that the U.S. no longer produces a BB class of ships. However the Ticonderoga class cruisers are actually longer and have a deeper draft than the Iowa class BB. In the 1970's the decision was made to build "cruisers" instead of "battleships" as a political move to avoid people asking why, if we have these Nimitz class carriers, do we need BBs.

The Ticonderogas don't have the main gun armaments of an Iowa, which politicians see as a good enough reason to not call them battleships, even though they throw missiles that can travel farther, hit more precisely, and do more damage than the main guns of an Iowa.

 

[mike wightman]

There were an awful lot of big cruisers built after the Washington Naval Treaty...

 

[rancke]

There were an awful lot of big cruisers built after the Washington Naval Treaty...

They didn't have the technology to build cruisers back then. You need minimum TL9 for the jump drive.


Hans

 

[aramis]

And that, IMO, is the premise most likely to be wrong.

I tossed off a suggestion some posts back that seems to've gone unnoticed. Possibly I'm wrong -- my 3D geometry is very weak -- but shouldn't you be getting thicker armor out of a given percentage of a ship's volume for bigger ships than for smaller ships?

If that is the case, then the rule that gives the same armor value to all ships for the same armor volume is flawed. And if your 25,000T battlerider is only getting a factor 5 armor out of its 15% while the 500,000T battleship is getting a factor 30 out of its 15%, then bigger ships suddenly do have a survivability factor derived from its size -- just as one would suppose from the fact that OTU navies do build many battleships.


Hans

While that is true, it's irrelevant for Meson Guns; if anything armor should exacerbate meson hits, as it contains and redirects the internal explosion back to the insides. Armor only matters vs PA's; Meson Screens & Configuration are the only factors there.

Further, Armor and the square-cube law is not reflected in HG, T20, nor MGT; and not properly reflected in MT. So it obviously must reflect more than just a hull shell.

And while Armor is properly reflected in TNE and T20, other elements break there.

 

[rancke]

While that is true, it's irrelevant for Meson Guns; if anything armor should exacerbate meson hits, as it contains and redirects the internal explosion back to the insides. Armor only matters vs PA's; Meson Screens & Configuration are the only factors there.

True, as has already been pointed out to me.

But that leaves us back on square one, try to explain why the background material claims that battleships are better able to stand in the line of battle and cruisers aren't, when the design and combat rules makes the difference in survivability between a cruiser (albeit a big one) and a battleship so not worth the cost of four or five times as much for a battleship.

Further, Armor and the square-cube law is not reflected in HG, T20, nor MGT; and not properly reflected in MT. So it obviously must reflect more than just a hull shell.

And while Armor is properly reflected in TNE and T20, other elements break there.

Well, if you can come up with a plausible reason why armor factor doesn't go up as the size of the ship increases, we can conclude that TNE and T20 is wrong about armor. If you can't, we can conclude that it's HG, T20 and MGT that's wrong. It has to be one or the other. Unless they ALL wrong, of course.


Hans

 

[AndreaV]

I believe that the BB/BC/CA/CL designation dtonnage is somewhat arbitrary in that it is derived by the polity that produces the ship.

LOL just look at what a "frigate" has been at various times in history. Anything ranging from the most powerful warship afloat (HMS Warrior), a standard cruiser (the classic Napoleonic 32), an advanced surface combatant (the type 23), to a cheap "disposable" escort (the 2nd WW Rivers). What any given ship is designated at any given time is as much dependent on politics as it is on function.