Big Naval Ships in the Traveller Universe

[robject]

Assumption: this thread assumes that the Narrative Canon for Traveller is often more correct than the rules.
Carlo's Axiom sums it up nicely: The rules as written don't support the ships as written.

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MY GOAL: A list of generalizations, restrictions, and expectations for Big Ship combat.

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Given: there is a vast corpus of semi-compatible Traveller material.
Given: some books have a greater influence than other material.
Given: some people have a greater influence than others.

Then:

What can we say generally about Big Navy Ships in Traveller?

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Living List, stolen from the posters in this thread.

• Combat benefits which may, for example, mitigate technological disadvantage.
• Siege rules, or perhaps just notes on how long it takes once siege is established.
  • Might not be interesting from a game perspective, other than strategic time and resource requirement.
• Resource Units are a brutal taskmaster in fleet design.
  • You can't install everything in every ship, nor can you afford to.
  • Supporting a navy demands the permanent allocation of finite resources.
• Losses ("Out Of Action") take a LONG TIME to get rebuilt and replenished.
• TL is critical. A +3 TL, or perhaps +2 TL, difference is decisive.
• TL changes which weapons are effective -- what works in one TL might be invalidated in the next TL.
• TL dictates a maximum standard-efficiency hull size.
• I don't see sense or reason in allowing more than one spine per ship. Maybe it's just me.
• Warships by number. Corvettes, Destroyers, and Escorts make up 80% of the fleet, Cruisers make up 15%, and Capitals 5%.
• Missiles are viable secondaries, and dominate at lower TLs.
  • Missile platforms could be created from relatively weak ships, couldn't they?
• Fighters are not useful against heavy armor and defenses.
  • They might have a screening function.
• The Tigress class seems to be the largest feasible warship at TL15, and is "the Big Bad to Beat".
  • That could legitimately be a bone of contention. It might not be common enough to be fairly proven.
• There appears to be a breakpoint in capability somewhere around TL-12.
• Carriers seem to get short shrift on EVERY version of Traveller.
  • Perhaps this is because smaller craft typically mean less capable craft.

 

[Condottiere]

The Tigress class appears to be the largest, feasible starwarship.

 

[TamsinP]

The big ships (battleships, fleet carriers) will make up a relatively small part of the fleet and will spend most of their (non-war) time at naval bases, maybe venturing out every so often as a group for naval exercises or individually to "show the flag".

Medium ships (cruisers, light carriers) will probably account for 2-4 times as much of the fleet as the big ships. At any one time, half will be accompanying the big ships and the other half will be on patrol (normally in pairs) or at fixed stations on the borders.

Destroyers, frigates/destroyer escorts, escort carriers and corvettes will make up 75-90% of the fleet (by numbers). The big and medium ships will have 2-4 of these each as escorts; the rest will be split between permanent stations, convoy escort duty and patrols, usually operating in pairs of divisions of 4 ships. I think these will actually be much larger (tonnage) than the examples we see in published works.

There will also be all sorts of auxiliary vessels of various sizes - tug/repair ships, tankers, supply ships, transports, couriers, scouts, etc.


That's for the jump-capable ships. Those assigned to system defense will generally be of similar sizes (maybe a bit smaller) but more heavily armoured and with larger arsenals for expendable munitions; there will also be orbital stations of similar sizes. They won't need as many auxiliaries unless the system is lacking in facilities and gas giants.

The Tigress class appears to be the largest, feasible starwarship

That does depend on which edition of Traveller; in some editions even larger warships my be viable designs. However, in practical terms 200k -300k is probably the realistic limit (I'd go so far as to say 100k is probably more realistic) due to cost constraints and not wanting to put all of your eggs in a very few baskets.

The Tigress isn't a very good design - at 500k it isn't that much more heavily armed than the Plankwell or Kokirrak, and doesn't carry any more fighters than the Antiama.

 

[kilemall]

A great deal depends on the system plus tweaks.

Good example, one tweak I put in without hesitation is more then one spinal weapon, and whether it is spinal or just is a really big turret is relative to the size of the ship.

This in turn partially affects the style of BR vs large ship philosophy.

How good is point defense? Screens? How much does kinetics increase missile damage? What is the effectiveness of armor vs x system at y TL?

As a simple example, if a missile is launched at .01C, will it hit like a spinal weapon? If so large fleets cannot afford to be in close to planets in say a LS, a suicidal fast pass by light ships could rip them up all out of proportion.

So really the question is what game do you want more then what is it given x Traveller version. They all impose more optimized designs then others by virtue of their resolution/cost matrix.

 

[Spinward Flow]

The Tigress class appears to be the largest, feasible starwarship.

The Tigress class is definitely "the big bad to beat" ... but I'm kind of curious to see what could happen if a more "modest battlecruiser" type design were attempted at smaller scale along the same general lines.

• Meson-N instead of Meson-T
• Fewer Heavy Fighters requiring fewer Launch Tubes to launch and recover and smaller hangar facilities
• Better "tailoring" of the secondary weapons to optimize the number of batteries bearing
• Smaller hull size = smaller drives = smaller crew = lower construction and sustainment costs per copy

Consider that "ton for ton" you could have 4x 125k tons of "modest battlecruisers" = 1x 500k tons of Tigress (for example) ... which almost means 4 spinal mounts vs 1 spinal mount.

"Smaller Big Ships" built en masse can be in more places at once (and thus deal with a wider variety of circumstances) than a single Dreadnought can. Conversely, those "Smaller Big Ships" can be gathered together to yield more collective firepower (4 vs 1 spinal mounts being a start) when they operate together.

History has shown that "superweapons" (in small quantities) rarely determine the outcomes of major conflicts. In most cases, it's the "good enough" fielded in LARGE quantities that prove to be the more decisive factor ... because Quantity Has A Quality All Of Its Own.

 

[TamsinP]

Or 3 x 100k battleships and a 2 x 100K carrier; that way outmatch the Tigress for Spinal mounts and have double the number of fighters.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The Tigress is a white elephant. It's a vanity project. It's not even the biggest, just the biggest battleship currently deployed to the Spinward Marches:

CT S9, p38:
Although some older battleships of greater displacement remain in service, the Tigress class dreadnaught is the largest line-of-battle vessel currently in service with the Imperial Navy in the Spinward Marches.

By all the canon (e.g. S9+LBB5) I can remember, large scale combat has been dominated by meson spinals for thousands of years, since the Terrans first built them. The rules of some editions (e.g. MgT2022) may disagree, but canon still stands I believe...

(Nuke-)Missiles are viable secondary armament, and dominates at lower TLs.
Fighters are insignificant to warships, but effective to harass small civilian ships.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Fighters are insignificant to warships, but effective to harass small civilian ships.

Fighters are actually limited by tech level (of all things) by virtue of practical upper limits on how powerful of a computer you can install into small craft (under LBB5.80, of course). Fighters that lack "cutting edge for their tech level" computer models will rapidly fall behind the power curve and fade into irrelevance somewhat quickly, mainly because they "can't compete" as combatants when their computers get outclassed.

Another limitation on fighters is that they get ONE turret (each).
If squadrons of fighters are able to "attack in formation" in a coordinated fashion (10 fighters = 10 turrets = 1 battery) then that's less of a problem ... but if they can't "band together" to form impromptu batteries of firepower, then the weapons they can carry get limited to:

• Code: 5 for Single Fusion Guns (TL=14+, short range offense only)
• Code: 4 for Triple Beam Lasers (TL=13+)
• Code: 3 for Triple Missiles (TL=13+), Triple Pulse Lasers (TL=13+), Single Plasma Guns (TL=12+, short range offense only) and Single Sandcasters (TL=10+)
• Code: 2 for Single Particle Accelerators (TL=15)

All of those weapons are "useful against ACS" but are of relatively little threat value against ships of 1-3k ton Destroyer class if the Destroyer has a more powerful computer (model/8-9) that easily outclasses what can be installed into a small craft fighter.



I can build fighters that are "pretty darn capable" in the TL=10-12 range, because the computers available at those tech levels are "relatively small" and don't have exhorbitant (for a small craft) EP demands, making it possible to have adequate EPs to spare for weapons and agility. But once the "demands" of the computer grow with advancing tech levels, it stops being practical to keep advancing the computer model installed into small craft fighters ... which is the point at which fighters start getting phased out as "meaningful threats" to larger combatants.

Fighters will ALWAYS remain a threat to "small fry" such as ACS, particularly those that devote a significant share of their displacement to "revenue tonnage" purposes (rather than optimizing for combat) ... but as a significant combatant force, fighters eventually become more or less obsolete as threats to capital ships when technology advances much beyond TL=13. I haven't made any explicit designs to prove it, but I suspect that TL=13 is the "last" tech level where fighter craft can be "competitive" combatants in a fleet. After that, small craft fighters just fall "too far behind the curve" to be a major threat to bigger ships with more powerful computers than the fighters can mount.

 

[TamsinP]

The Tigress is a white elephant. It's a vanity project. It's not even the biggest, just the biggest battleship currently deployed to the Spinward Marches:



By all the canon (e.g. S9+LBB5) I can remember, large scale combat has been dominated by meson spinals for thousands of years, since the Terrans first built them. The rules of some editions (e.g. MgT2022) may disagree, but canon still stands I believe...

(Nuke-)Missiles are viable secondary armament, and dominates at lower TLs.
Fighters are insignificant to warships, but effective to harass small civilian ships.

As far as I can make out, in MgT2e fighters' main role in fleet battles is to provide an anti-missile screen deployed ahead of the fleet.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

As far as I can make out, in MgT2e fighters' main role in fleet battles is to provide an anti-missile screen deployed ahead of the fleet.

Depends on edition: In MgT2'16 fighters are a viable main combatant, in MgT2'22 they are non-competitive as far as I can see.

I would see them more as patrol and reconnoissance elements in MgT2'22.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Depends on edition: In MgT2'16 fighters are a viable main combatant, in MgT2'22 they are non-competitive as far as I can see.

I would see them more as patrol and reconnoissance elements in MgT2'22.

Patrol and recon is an IMPORTANT mission tasking that doesn't require exorbitant amounts of computer power to conduct. Fighters as a distributed Sensor Screen/Early Warning is an important job that is often times best handled by plentiful small craft doing picket duty, rather than relying on larger (and more expensive, therefore fewer) destroyers to fill that role and mission set.

Being able to rotate fighter squadrons deployed makes it a LOT harder to be caught by surprise.
Not impossible ... but definitely a lot less likely to happen.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Fighters are actually limited by tech level (of all things) by virtue of practical upper limits on how powerful of a computer you can install into small craft (under LBB5.80, of course). Fighters that lack "cutting edge for their tech level" computer models will rapidly fall behind the power curve and fade into irrelevance somewhat quickly, mainly because they "can't compete" as combatants when their computers get outclassed.

This is only in CT and MT. Other editions have other systems.

Another limitation on fighters is that they get ONE turret (each).

Agreed, they just can't hit and penetrate a warship with decent defences in CT. On the other hand they are quite difficult to hit too, but are fragile to size crits from anything that can actually hit them.

Combining ten fighters into larger batteries becomes prohibitively expensive with ten computers per battery, and still limited to factor 7 for missiles.

I can build fighters that are "pretty darn capable" in the TL=10-12 range, because the computers available at those tech levels are "relatively small" and don't have exhorbitant (for a small craft) EP demands, making it possible to have adequate EPs to spare for weapons and agility.
...

... but as a significant combatant force, fighters eventually become more or less obsolete as threats to capital ships when technology advances much beyond TL=13. I haven't made any explicit designs to prove it, but I suspect that TL=13 is the "last" tech level where fighter craft can be "competitive" combatants in a fleet.

Perhaps at TL-11, but I doubt it (I have tried...)
At TL-12+ they are utterly non-competitive, they just can't di significant damage to competitive warships. (See Eurisko)

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Patrol and recon is an IMPORTANT mission tasking that doesn't require exorbitant amounts of computer power to conduct. Fighters as a distributed Sensor Screen/Early Warning is an important job that is often times best handled by plentiful small craft doing picket duty, rather than relying on larger (and more expensive, therefore fewer) destroyers to fill that role and mission set.

Agreed, but it's not a main combat mission.

Whether we can screen carriers and transports is critical. In CT we can, in other editions we can't.
Having to make carriers into armoured defensible warships makes them much more expensive per fighter.
Basing fighters on regular warships makes no sense with any Traveller percentage based ship design system. Only in LBB2 where there is no other use for the space.

 

[whartung]

The big ships (battleships, fleet carriers) will make up a relatively small part of the fleet and will spend most of their (non-war) time at naval bases, maybe venturing out every so often as a group for naval exercises or individually to "show the flag".

That's a silly thing.

They're not ceremonial. They're combat vessels.

And as combat vessels, they have to operate. This is a hidden aspect of what makes them expensive.

Training is constant, because personnel change is constant. These vessels are complicated beasts. Ships and crews do not sit idle well.

 

[Condottiere]

Feasibility being the somewhat key term here.

The Tigress design being considered successful enough to clone across the entirety of the Imperium, at a minimum of, I would suppose, eight per sector.

Capital ship being a somewhat vague definition in the MongoVerse, but changing the size of the spinal mounts does bring into the fore that ratio between performance, fire power, and protection, bearing in mind that spinal mounts are capped at one per hull.

Of course, commercially, there are megatonne freighters, though chances are few are larger than this, beyond special designs with rather specific cargo in mind.

 

[Carlobrand]

It's pretty clear that the rules as written don't support the ships as written, at least not under CT or MT. I don't know for other versions. There'd need to be some fairly significant changes to make something like a Tigress worthwhile.

 

[chipla]

I agree that the tigress is someone’s idea of a wunderwaffe that certainly has issues.

I do think however traditional big ship traveller glosses over some of the potential uses of small craft.

First is as scouts/screens. While there is no horizon in space for ‘over the horizon’ combat there are various limits in sensors and ewar and sensor baffling is also probably a thing. Having a small relatively hard to hit scout relaying targeting information is probably something useful, especially if you’re enemy is ‘hiding’ on the other side of a planet.

Second is as a remote missile platform. Nukes are still fairly effective in a world of nuclear dampeners since screens need to be aimed. If you’re focusing on the big guns a few fighters launching a salvo of nukes from behind can discombobulate you - not really a threat for the big battlewagons but the various screening ships and lighter capitals might need to worry.

Third is as an interceptor working against the first two types.

Aside from the interceptors they’d probably operate more akin to the PT boats of WW2 than modern combat aircraft.

 

[McPerth]

The Tigress class appears to be the largest, feasible starwarship.

Depending on what you mean with "starwarship"... S9, on the planetoid monitor explanation (page 44) talks about the million ton tender Gorodish, and, while a Tender is not a combat ship, I guess it's a warship, as much a Carrier today,,,

My feeling when I first saw the Tigris ship was it was "paying homage" to the Death Star from SW (why else to have it spherical configuration, while a meson resisting config it's a must in battleships?).

I latter have read that initially (in latter 70's, last century) Traveller was intended to be a "small ship" universe (as much aas you can call a 5000 dton ship, (70000 kl, so larger than most WWII battleships) a "small ship"), but then came SW, with its enormous ships, and affected it.

I don't know if this is true, but is beleiveable, and that reinforced my view of the Tigris.

 

[mike wightman]

Assumption: this thread assumes a Big Ship universe, in some sense, for Traveller.

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Which edition and which setting? At what TL?

MY GOAL: A list of generalizations, restrictions, and expectations for Big Ship combat.

Which edition and which setting? At what TL?

---

Given: there is a vast corpus of semi-compatible Traveller material.
Given: some books have a greater influence than other material.
Given: some people have a greater influence than others.

Without baselines then this could go one of two way - people base everything off HG80, or a completely useless free for all of mutually contradictory rules.

Then:

What can we say generally about Big Navy Ships in Traveller?

Which edition and which setting? At what TL?

 

[Condottiere]

The thing about one megatonne battle tenders, is that they are basically megafreighters carrying a rather specific cargo.

Though I think the ratio is more six fifty kilotonne battleriders, and seven tenths of a megatonne tender.