Agility - thoughts

[Rupert]

I don't think whether they'd have sunk 'immediately' or 'at some point' is very important, nor do I think what the owners of a ship used to scuttle it when it's becomes effectively a hulk is either. Torpedoes were convenient and fast, so most navies used them in these circumstances. It doesn't prove much about the utility of torpedoes for sinking combat ready operational warships, any more than attacks like Taranto and Pearl Harbour did, or fire ship attacks on fleets at anchor proved anything about their utility vs a fleet at sea.

That said, yes, torpedoes were and effective and powerful weapon, but most of their effectiveness in WWII came from being dropped by aircraft or launched by submarines, two situations that right there make them quite different from anything in Traveller, where there are no equivalents to these platforms. Those things closest to small Traveller ships in WWI & WWII - MTBs and other assorted small craft and destroyers, could kill manoeuvring and aware capital ships, but only by luck or due to terrain and darkness, things that either don't exist in Classic Traveller space combat, or only minimally exist.

The Jeune Ecole didn't work for navies in the late 19th and early-mid 20th centuries, but it does sometimes in Traveller. I'm not sure how much all this has to do with Agility though, other than that being agile enough to dodge missiles when in a large spaceship seems like a big ask.

 

[infojunky]

US planes in the Pacific sunk more IJN ships with bombs by far, than torpedoes.

Note, High Guard is more akin to pre-WW2 battleship combat. In which Torpedo Boats were the thing.

 

[Rupert]

Note, High Guard is more akin to pre-WW2 battleship combat. In which Torpedo Boats were the thing.

Given that the 'torpedo boats' even work (at some tech levels), it's most like pre-dreadnought combat, I think. The weapons big ships wield do not outrange missiles (or torpedoes in 1900-1904-ish). Of course the small ships of HG being able to carry enough armour that secondary weapons don't just obliterate them changes the tone a bit.

 

[infojunky]

Given that the 'torpedo boats' even work (at some tech levels), it's most like pre-dreadnought combat, I think. The weapons big ships wield do not outrange missiles (or torpedoes in 1900-1904-ish). Of course the small ships of HG being able to carry enough armour that secondary weapons don't just obliterate them changes the tone a bit.

Note, a fair number of torpedos could be fired outside the range of typical quick firing secondary guns, and the rate of fire and minimum range for the main batteries, left a gap where the small Torpedo was effective. Note, this is the genesis of the Destroyer type of escort ships, which where originally name Torpedo Boat Destroyers. Also consider the cost differential between capital class ships and a squadron/flotilla of Torpedo Boats...

 

[Tobias]

Yes, I don't bother with secondary sources.

Just to be clear: "Secondary sources" means scholarly history books and articles. I would say everyone "bothers" with secondary sources because no one reconstructs the entirety of their knowledge of history from primary sources on their own.

 

[Tobias]

It doesn't prove much about the utility of torpedoes for sinking combat ready operational warships,

Prince of Wales, Repulse, Barham, Ark Royal, Musashi, Yamato, Shinano, Indianapolis, Courageous and Admiral Belgrano are just the most famous 10 examples that come up in my head when this topic is mentioned.

 

[Rupert]

Prince of Wales, Repulse, Barham, Ark Royal, Musashi, Yamato, Shinano, Indianapolis, Courageous and Admiral Belgrano are just the most famous 10 examples that come up in my head when this topic is mentioned.

That was in reference to using them to scuttle crippled or sinking ships and ship in harbour.

 

[Carlobrand]

That was in reference to using them to scuttle crippled or sinking ships and ship in harbour.

I'm not quite sure what a debate over what sank what in WW-II says regarding agility of ships in space, but I'm pretty sure some of those ships were sunk by a mix of bombs and torpedoes. Also unstated is torpedoes could compel behavior that we can't easily simulate in a CT HG-2 space combat setting. At the Battle off Samar, Yamato at one point veered hard to evade a torpedo salvo and had to run north for 10 minutes trying to outrun them; it was out of the fight until it could maneuver around again. Closest we could do to that would be to introduce some method by which ships burned high Gs away from attacking missiles to outrun them and then had to spend time coming back, but we don't track missiles the way they do in CT Book 2 so it would be a real tricky set of home rules to make work right.

 

[Condottiere]

The point being, a torpedo is a weapon system that could mission kill a capital ship, and whose presence could, and has, influenced their behaviour, as well as battles.

More like spinal mounts.

 

[mike wightman]

How fast was a WWII torpedo compared to the ship it was aimed at?

Back to agility - in the first printing of HG80 agility only affected spinal mounts.

 

[Rupert]

How fast was a WWII torpedo compared to the ship it was aimed at?

Back to agility - in the first printing of HG80 agility only affected spinal mounts.

So it did - or at least the JTAS 6-8 'update' did, and I presume that was a copy & paste of the HG80 text.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[infojunky]

So it did - or at least the JTAS 6-8 'update' did, and I presume that was a copy & paste of the HG80 text.

Hum... I had never noticed that... I will now have to look at my Dead Tree editions of book5.

Though eliminating Agility for missile attacks alone makes for a more interesting game.

 

[Grav_Moped]

US planes in the Pacific sunk more IJN ships with bombs by far, than torpedoes.

In fairness, American torpedoes kinda sucked back then.

 

[Marcatlas]

In fairness, American torpedoes kinda sucked back then.

In the first 2 years of the conflict "kinda" is a mild term. If the US had been using the Long Lance torpedoes would have probably sunk 3x as many as they did.

 

[Tobias]

So it did - or at least the JTAS 6-8 'update' did, and I presume that was a copy & paste of the HG80 text.

Agility affects fire from all types of weapons in HG80.

 

[Rupert]

Not in the first printing apparently, and not in the updates published in JTAS6-8.

Here's the JTAS7 text:


And here's the HG50, 5th printing text:


Note the addition of Agility. The meson gun and particle accelerator to hit roll does have agility in both, however. This makes small meson guns and particle accelerators much harder to land hits with in the original version, though the lack of defences against them in most small ships might've made up for that.

 

[Tobias]

Yeah, it was an error in JTAS. The JTAS version is quite different in formatting and exact wording to the HG80 one (probably due to typesetting issues) , while obviously designed to convey the same information.

 

[mike wightman]

I have two copies of first printing HG80, both of them lack agility as a universal DM. It was "corrected" for later printings and mentioned in TCS.

It makes for an interesting game where turret and bay weapons are not affected by agility though.

 

[Rupert]

Yeah, it was an error in JTAS. The JTAS version is quite different in formatting and exact wording to the HG80 one (probably due to typesetting issues) , while obviously designed to convey the same information.

What? The only difference aside from the missing line in the two texts I posted is the justification of the last paragraph.

And here's the TCS text:

So not just JTAS, and an accident, but an interesting one.