Jump number for Bombardment Cruiser

[Garyius2003]

I have been working HGS and Mongoose for a workable Bombardment Cruiser design. What is the proper jump number for this type of cruiser?

I am going to insert a decent size meson spinal along with the deadfall (HG)/railgun (Mongoose) bays.

I was going to try a J2, but then I was thinking J3 for troop assault ship fleets. I do not want to do a J4, because that would result in it being pressed into battle fleets due to the spinal.

 

[Dragoner]

Why not use a BR/Tender combo?

 

[Garyius2003]

J4, 3, or 2 tender?

 

[Dragoner]

J3+, otherwise it winds up not being able to cross over gaps, the new TCS has some nice designs.

 

[Matt123]

A specialist ship like a Bombardment Cruiser I would leave at J2 and escort with say a couple of light cruisers or a light carrier (& a couple of light escorts) to protect its operations being disrupted by the expected SDB remnants.

My thinking behind this is that wearing down of a world by bombardment and troop assault isn't a Strategic Maneuver. It may be a target of a maneuver, but whether you keep the world long enough to reduce it depends on your Naval action, rather than how fast your Bombardment Cruiser (& Assault Troops) get on the scene. A tanker may help the Cruiser take short cuts if time is of the essence and if its really urgent the Tender option still exists, but in practise both Tankers and Tenders are more likely to be with the Naval spearhead not the follow-up forces.

A secondary consideration is the considerable extra space available for ordinance, if you do not carry that 10% or 20% required for jump fuel.

Using a Jump Tender is a good idea or specialist very large Assault Ships carrying a lot of troops, armoured assault craft and large bombardment boats (10ktn plus). Like specialist ships though, they have weaknesses. Tenders may get pinched for more pressing work, leaving the carried cruiser stranded. And large Assault Tenders if they need to get more troops (or take troops to another system) have to take their carried craft with them, or those craft too run the risk of being stranded.

All food for thought.
Cheers

 

[Carlobrand]

I would design a bombardment craft to be transported on a tender. The resulting craft will be smaller, therefore a more difficult target for planetary defenses. It'll be more heavily armored since it doesn't have to allocate space for jump fuel. It'll be more expendable - if I lose the bomber part to planetary defenses, I still have the tender part. After that, I can design tenders suited to local need: a jump-2 in sectors where my likely targets can be reached by jump-2, a jump-3 for naval bases that have to cross bigger gaps to get it to the probable targets.

At the point where I control orbital space and can insert bombers, the problem of a rider having to flee battle is no longer a problem.

 

[Hemdian]

If I were designing a bombardment cruiser I'd want its jump to be match that of the troop transports. I'd pair it with a Dromedary (plus screening ships) for extra fuel and ordinance. And, unless deep meson sites are common IYTU, I'd replace the meson gun with a PAWS (A-PAWS* if you can get it).

* = See JTAS 20

 

[Cryton]

If I were designing a bombardment cruiser I'd want its jump to be match that of the troop transports. I'd pair it with a Dromedary (plus screening ships) for extra fuel and ordinance. And, unless deep meson sites are common IYTU, I'd replace the meson gun with a PAWS (A-PAWS* if you can get it).

* = See JTAS 20

A-Paws....Your cruel. He wants to bombard the target planet, not strip off its atmosphere and reduce it to an asteroid belt.

With the Tigress variant carrying an A-Paw, I'm surprised that there aren't more asteroid belts in the war zones in MTs rebellion. Just sayin....

 

[whartung]

Don't forget to bring the Mining and Manufacturing Auxiliary fleet that can be used to transform raw asteroids in to simple, kinetic dead fall ordnance with you. Extraction, smelting, molding and forging. Just cast the iron in to pointy shapes with fins.

If you're showing up with a bombardment cruiser, may as well come and stay for the long haul and bring a reloading kit with you.

 

[Matt123]

And of course the rubbish compactor. I hear having the remnants of your SDBs dropped on you is rather demoralizing.

Keeps the space lanes tidy too.

 

[pendragonman]

And of course the rubbish compactor. I hear having the remnants of your SDBs dropped on you is rather demoralizing.

Keeps the space lanes tidy too.

Especially demoralizing if you leave enough of the SDB to make which one it is recognizable.

 

[Garyius2003]

I figure meson spinal to take care of deep installations, TL highest damper and meson screen for defense in orbit, decent armor, a few batteries of lasers/casters for defense, and 6-10 deadfall/railgun. Add in a flag bridge sized ops center, and some sort of conversion unit for making more deadfall or railgun. At J2 that is doable at 25-27kT, at J3 more like 35-40kT.

At J4 you are massing more like 55-60kT, and run the risk of an admiral grabbing the ship for his battle fleet, just because this is the most special emergency ever.

 

[Hyphen]

Pardon me if I'm just being dense, but isn't there a set of ready-made bombardment vessels in the "Ships of the Black War" _Challenge_ article?

 

[Theophilus]

No.

TA7 and TA9 had bombardment cruisers, Huron class in TA7.

 

[madmike]

sounds what I would call a monitor.

I have not got my ship stats around nearby, but I do recall making my Imperial Fleet Monitors displace about 75k tonnes. That put it up close to battlecruiser displacement which I had set at around 100K dT. Cannot rightly remember much else, but jump capability would have been at J4.

Garyius has got the mix pretty right in regards to weapons and defenses on my version IIRC

Monitors are escorted by a destroyer flotilla headed by a light cruiser leader.

But that is in MTU

During WW1 and WW2, a typical RN monitor displaced roughly the same as a heavy cruiser. Heavy cruisers in my Imperial Navy mass around 50K dT.

 

[Garyius2003]

With HG, at TL 15 I can cram all this into 25kT at J3, going to 33kT at TL 14, which is where I wanted it for storyline sense.

With Mongoose I can get it mostly done with 35-39kT at TL14 and J3, but I run the even great risk there that a battle fleet commander will order a bay refit and addition of the ship to the battlefleet. 10 railgun bays and 10 artytorp bays are very hard to pass up with an A spinal and good screens. The issue with Mongoose is that you really need armor 10-12 with an orbital attack ship because the bomb pumped laser torps and mines are so effective and are damper proof.

 

[madmike]

With HG, at TL 15 I can cram all this into 25kT at J3, going to 33kT at TL 14, which is where I wanted it for storyline sense.

With Mongoose I can get it mostly done with 35-39kT at TL14 and J3, but I run the even great risk there that a battle fleet commander will order a bay refit and addition of the ship to the battlefleet. 10 railgun bays and 10 artytorp bays are very hard to pass up with an A spinal and good screens. The issue with Mongoose is that you really need armor 10-12 with an orbital attack ship because the bomb pumped laser torps and mines are so effective and are damper proof.

To be able to provide orbital fire support, an attacking fleet should control the orbitals. In WW1 and WW2, monitors would only provide fire support and softening up of coastal fortifications once the local area of operations of the coast was secured and cleared of mines. The escorts provided defence against aircraft and attacking enemy ships. Even if those wartime monitors did go into action without the firing zone being cleared, thoese escorts did provide some level of protection.

It would be no different in space. I am certain I armoured my monitor design to the same level of protection as heavy cruisers. The meson and nuclear damper shielding are a monitor's primary passive defence. Any mines would have been cleared and any incoming ground based missiles would be dealt with by escorts. Monitors might be able to keep up with most ships but they are not agile either.

This makes the monitor quite specialised and harder for justifying its use in a ship to ship engagement role.

My thoughts

 

[stealth]

Well, bluntly, bombardement cruisers are obsolete.

What you want to to do (at TL15) is buy 99 ton planetoid fighters with model-8 computers and armour factor-18 so that bay weapons cant put critical hits on them. They are invulnerable. Also, the enemy deep site meson gun has a lot of them to take out.

So you deploy them from far range from a dispersed structure, refuelued by your fleet light cruisers.

Here is the writeup:

99 ton planetoid rock fighter (the Death Skull 99)

Percentage based components:

20% Planetoid hull
16% Armour f-15 (total 18 due to configuration)
17% MD-6
12% PP-6, fuel-6 for agility 6
---
65% (65 tons)

Tonnage based components:

11 Model-8
18 +9 power plant, +9 tons fuel for computer (total PP-15)
1 missle turret
3 Magazine
1 Crew stations
---
34 tons

Total: 99 tons.

The result: a 99 ton rock fighter with level 18 armour which cannot be critically hit except by spinal mount weapons. Factor 9 bay weapons have no effect, although very lucky hits from nuke bays will slowly scrub it's weapons if an entire light cruiser fires on one. And that means 3 turns of repair in reserve on it's config-7 carrier.

It can fight for 36 turns without running out of ammo or life support and needing to dock.

A group of 10 has the equivalent of a factor-7 nuclear missle battery with a model 7 computer (because it has no bridge), but still that is nothing to sneeze at.

Use them as a screen, so that that you can repair the spinal mounts on your cruisers as your take them in and out of battle.

 

[aramis]

Well, bluntly, bombardement cruisers are obsolete.

What you want to to do (at TL15) is buy 99 ton planetoid fighters with model-8 computers and armour factor-18 so that bay weapons cant put critical hits on them. They are invulnerable. Also, the enemy deep site meson gun has a lot of them to take out.

They are Also illegal. hg armor may not exceed TL. See Book 5, page 29, 1st paragraph, last sentence

 

[rancke]

They are Also illegal. hg armor may not exceed TL. See Book 5, page 29, 1st paragraph, last sentence

Planetoids can add +3 armor to that allowed by TL, can't they? I've no idea if that leaves enough interior space to do what Stealth claims can be done, but it's not illegal, is it?


Hans