About Fighters

[infojunky]

What you lose, though, at least in HG, is the battery benefit. 9 Triple Laser Turrets on 9 ships is not as powerful as 9 TLTs on a single ship, because the latter is considered a single battery and a single attack, whereas the former are separated within the system as 9 separate attacks.

Well depends on what you are playing. Remember High Guard is a fleet combat system, not a ship combat system.

But, I don't think that LBB2 has a similar combat effect. A Laser is a Laser in LBB2.

Your right, the individual laser is much more powerful in LBB2 than it is in HG.

So, as others have said, the advantages of fighters are simply the saturation of defenses in terms of "number of targets" limitations, and, perhaps, the higher ratio of weapons to tonnage. A 1000 ton ship can mount 30 lasers maximum. If you can deploy fighters to boost that maximum, then fighters will prevail.

You must remember ship's are limited to the number of different targets they can engage, or at least in LLB2.

I think your real answer is going to be in your frame of reference and rule set.

I run small ship games, with combat being some flavor of LBB2/Brilliant Lances, fighters are scary in numbers. If you are running a big ship game not so. All depends on what your doing.

 

[atpollard]

Personally, I find that the greatest benefit of fighters is often overlooked in most combat - reconnaissance. All ships have a very definite sensor range, which is a small fraction of interplanetary distances. Fighters deployed at the limit of the main fleet's sensor range, would offer that fleet a significant advantage in detecting, tracking and targeting the enemy. Probably from a range that would not even the enemy fleet to target the attacking fleet. The more fighters your side has, the greater it's possible detection range, the more sensors to attempt detection, and the greater the tactical options to that fleet.

Many players handwave some infinite detection that removes the fog of war, but that is not what is presented in most of the rules.

 

[veltyen]

Personally, I find that the greatest benefit of fighters is often overlooked in most combat - reconnaissance.

Indeed.

You need to check out the upper level of a gas giant for lurkers.

Do you send

a) A 1000 crew 100,000 dTon battlecruiser (or for small-ship universe a 100 crew 3000 dTon battleship)

b) A pair of comparatively expendable fighters

 

[sabredog]

That's a non-trivial assumption; the discrepancy being that you and they may have markedly different conceptions of what the job precisely entails. The computer programming rules imply engaging multiple targets from one hardpoint's worth of weaponry is impossible by default, probably due to the limitations of fire control.

The game also implies that civilian ships and small craft routinely lasers and missiles, jump technology, and giant talking starfish, so I think there's enough room for flexiblity and imagination when figuring out what a fighter can and can't do.

My assumption seems simple enough: if its a fighter then it is designed to act like one, not just act like a pint-sized launch. It should have better agility, more sophisticated weapons controls, and better sensors than the average Free Trader, let alone some Ship's Boat.

As for multiple weapon launches, why can't missiles be launched at multiple targets? I can understand the energy weapons being limited on a by-turret basis, but the missiles are homing fire-and-forget jobs that don't rely on the launching ship to keep the target illuminated for them to guide on. So a fighter should be able to launch up to 6 missiles (3 per rack per the rules) at up to 6 different targets, at a rate of 2 targets per turn.

Heck, even the Tomcat could do better than that and it was around when Traveller was first printed.

 

[sabredog]

Indeed.

You need to check out the upper level of a gas giant for lurkers.

Do you send

a) A 1000 crew 100,000 dTon battlecruiser (or for small-ship universe a 100 crew 3000 dTon battleship)

b) A pair of comparatively expendable fighters

Either I'd send the fighters or a couple of guys in heavy vacc suits with ropes around their waists. That way I could yank them out of there when the Bug Eye Monsters attack.

Fighters make excellent lurkers in their own right, too...and you can hide them in warehouses, garages, in tunnels, ....

 

[veltyen]

Fighters make excellent lurkers in their own right, too...and you can hide them in warehouses, garages, in tunnels, ....

One of the reasons that makes them useful for near-space defence (COACC style).

Think of it this way. A 9 population TL9 planet could have tens of thousands of space capable fighters ready to launch from the ground. This is a number that an invading fleet may find difficult to deal with.

Add in wilderness landing capability and they become second only to deep meson installations as resilient irritations.

 

[sabredog]

Back in my day Lockheed came up with the zero-length launch concept for the F-104 Starfighter (which I've always loved and figure my fighters look a lot like) which allowed it to be launched without a runway. It was launched off a rail like a SAM missile.

The plane had a drop off RATO rack mounted to it, and the plane was on a rail mounted to a stand. The whole thing could be mounted on the back of a large flatbed. The plan envisioned hundreds of these prepped and hidden away in fake garages and sheds all around major cities. If Soviet bombers were on the way these fighters could be rolled out and launched in minutes.

Very Thunderbirds, but it was one of many projects that were cancelled as ICBM's, and especially sub launched ICBM's, were coming online. In WW2 the Germans came up with the same concept using telephone-pole sized rails to launch fighters, too.

But in Traveller...it has a lot of potential. I've never seen COACC but your idea about hundreds of fighters launching up from the most unlikely places has it's precedents.

 

[mike wightman]

Traveller fighters are not similar to comparing aircraft with ships, the better paradigm is the motor torpedo boat.

And yes there are historical examples of tenders carrying these things. For a brief period the French navy thought they could challenge the Royal Navy by building lots of these things - the torpedo boat destroyer was the result of that.

For a true aircraft like fighter in Traveller you'd need something at least ten times faster than a ship, capable of maneuvering in a plane that the ship can't, carrying a weapon capable of one shot kills.

 

[sabredog]

For a ship killer missile in LBB2 you would only need a nuclear warhead on a standard missile. You wouldn't need a larger fighter to use that. No armor, no dampers, no shields equals no ship when the nuke goes off.

But if you only want to stick to the most basics, then accelerate the fighter a few rounds at full G then fly it into the target. That ought to do the job.

Eject first, though, or use a drone.

 

[Jacqual]

Ok so I am a little late in this, but to explain why fighter's are so much faster then the big ships. Is simply the fighter manuever drive is designed for extreme speed and burns through the fuel that it carries withen in a short time at maximum thrust. That is one reason that fighters never perform 28 day long flights. The Big ships are designed with more fuel economy. Now I know your gonna say but everything is limited to 6G Manouver well you have to raise that for the fighters, I figure add 6G to the design for free and limit fuel to say 1 hour at max thrust. The extra Gforce is compensted by the flightsuit, Accelleration couch for seating, and of course the standard Gcomp that most ships use. Any leftover Gforce is sucked up by the pilot. Remember modern fighter pilots have to handle multiple G's and they do not have the compensation available in traveller. As to a big ships fighter defences look at what the navy uses now automated minigun systems mounted all over the ship. These have been known to shot incoming missiles out of the air, they are gonna tear up fighter's. And please dont say that in traveller that they cannot add this to kill the idea of fighter's. Fighter's will be most effective in performing ground attacks and against unarmored opponets and other fighter's.

 

[mike wightman]

Trouble is in most versions of Traveller ship thrust is based on some reactionless thruster technology not burning fuel.
And all ships come with magical acceleration compensators.

 

[infojunky]

Now I know your gonna say but everything is limited to 6G Maneuver well you have to raise that for the fighters, I figure add 6G to the design for free and limit fuel to say 1 hour at max thrust. The extra Gforce is compensated by the flightsuit, Acceleration couch for seating, and of course the standard Gcomp that most ships use.

Gee you just described how Fighters where treated in TNE, compensation and fuel define them instead of arbitrary limits. TNE and FF&S considered these.

 

[whartung]

Gee you just described how Fighters where treated in TNE, compensation and fuel define them instead of arbitrary limits. TNE and FF&S considered these.

I'd have to spend a day playing with FF&S to see what, if any, benefits Fighters would have in TNE. I would expect very little.

The primary benefit in LBB2 is that they provide better weapon density because of the 100-ton = 1 hard point rule.

TNE doesn't suffer from that limitation, it tends to be more bound by base physical limitations (notably surface area -- you can only stuff so many turrets on a ship).

While the stock ships abide by 100 ton/hardpoint rule, FF&S doesn't. At the same time, TNE doesn't have things like "triple laser turrets" either. It just pumps up the megawatts on the laser that's there. I think there's probably enough space left on, say, an SDB to add another laser or two to the stock TNE ship if you're so inclined.

Once the tide is turned away from small ships for weapon density, then I think you'll see designs creep up in size. Not necessarily to everything becoming 1,000,000 Dreadnoughts, but I can see a bounty of destroyers and what not filling out the fleets.

You do still have a targeting issue with dealing with swarms of small ships, but that role would most likely be taken by the anti-ship missile (which is simply a small, but unmanned, craft -- and modeled and designed as such).

The reaction mass limitations on ships are very real, however. G Turns are very expensive. Missiles help solve that problem because they only need fuel to maneuver, they're never going to slow down. Fighters have to stop, come home, and match vectors with the carrier (or the carrier needs extra fuel to try and fly around to round them all up).

TNE also heavily supports the "Rider" concept, again because of reaction mass. Not so much for weapon density (the primary motivator in HG -- volume not used for fuel is usable for weapons and armor), but simply by allowing riders to dedicate more fuel for maneuver. Two ships with 4G drives, but one that has 20 G-Turns of maneuver vs another with 100 G-Turns of maneuver are two completely different ships. The latter is faster and has much more freedom than the former.

Not that maneuver has a lot of effect in TNE.

 

[tim_manley]

For a ship killer missile in LBB2 you would only need a nuclear warhead on a standard missile. You wouldn't need a larger fighter to use that. No armor, no dampers, no shields equals no ship when the nuke goes off.

Depends on distance. Energy dissipation drops by the cube as the sphere expands by the square.

Trouble is in most versions of Traveller ship thrust is based on some reactionless thruster technology not burning fuel.
And all ships come with magical acceleration compensators.

Exactly, fighters in straight LBB2 rules are 6G. Big ships tend to not have maneuver drives at 6G.

Gee you just described how Fighters where treated in TNE, compensation and fuel define them instead of arbitrary limits. TNE and FF&S considered these.

Right -- but talking straight LBB2 it's not a concern. You either have to add new rules, house rules, which changes how things work. You can create rules that make fighters just plain useless for anything other than ground support.

But, as LBB2 rules stands fighters are an exceptionally good weapon deployment system.

 

[infojunky]

I have been pondering writing a small ship system for MGT/classic. Filling out the the small sized ships with more option than exist outside of FFS.

 

[boomslang]

For a ship killer missile in LBB2 you would only need a nuclear warhead on a standard missile.

From the guidelines in Special Supplement 3 and/or extrapolating from Striker, standard missiles are only fitted with fractional-kiloton "tactical" nuclear warheads which -- especially since they are proximity-detonated, not contact-detonated -- are too low-yield to vaporize most targets.

To knock big ships out with one hit, you need multi-megaton "strategic" warheads, which will be too large and heavy to fit on regular old "standard" missiles.

 

[mike wightman]

And unless they detonate pretty close most ships would be proof against their effects - remember that Traveller maneuver drives shield against stellar radiation , andhulls can cope with the many thousands of degrees of heat during re-entry.

 

[tim_manley]

One of the 1st house-rules systems I created was to introduce different missile types. You had trade-off in 3 parts, warhead, duration and speed. In these house-rules there wasn't a 6G limit.

The first time I ran combat* with those missiles it was pretty impressive.

The players would then pick and choose, buying the missile specialized for the mission they wanted it to do.



* I used to use a ruler, colored pencils and buther paper to plot vectors. But dining room table, and each color for a ship/misile track.

 

[sabredog]

From the guidelines in Special Supplement 3 and/or extrapolating from Striker, standard missiles are only fitted with fractional-kiloton "tactical" nuclear warheads which -- especially since they are proximity-detonated, not contact-detonated -- are too low-yield to vaporize most targets.

To knock big ships out with one hit, you need multi-megaton "strategic" warheads, which will be too large and heavy to fit on regular old "standard" missiles.

You guys are working it too hard...

In Striker it says bay missiles (torpedos IMTU) are certainly large enough for even a megaton weapon, but I was assuming a 10 ton fighter used as a drone torp.

Fill the "torpedo's" nose with reinforced concrete....add a .5 kt nuclear weapon in the tail to protect it with the crush space...accelerate until in contact with the capital ship....the "torpedo" will have more than sufficient velocity as it punches through the armor and detonates inside the ship. No need to worry about cubing the expanding energy or any other nonsense. Brute force, properly and liberally applied + a little imagination, tends to get the job done.

If you don't use a warhead, then lengthen the distance of acceleration to maximize the energy on impact.

There are even historical precedents if you need the creative juices primed.

 

[sabredog]

One of the 1st house-rules systems I created was to introduce different missile types. You had trade-off in 3 parts, warhead, duration and speed. In these house-rules there wasn't a 6G limit.

The first time I ran combat* with those missiles it was pretty impressive.

The players would then pick and choose, buying the missile specialized for the mission they wanted it to do.



* I used to use a ruler, colored pencils and buther paper to plot vectors. But dining room table, and each color for a ship/misile track.

JTAS has a supplement that came out around '83(?) that has a similar and highly detailed system for missiles.