All Warships Should Have Drop Tanks

[rancke]

Easiest fix would have been to have meson screens reduce the number of extra hits a spinal gets on the interior explosion table.

And move fuel tanks shattered to the critical hit table where it belongs.

Or the whole michellaneous effect table moved to criticals.

I'd also give some sort of benefit to avoid critical hits the bigger the ship is. The odds of hitting the computer must be smaller when the ship is larger. The ship tonnage to computer tonnage ratio is much higher in a big ship. And why don't naval designers bung in half a dozen computers located in widely separate locations? And why not have the power plant be half a dozen smaller plants working together?


Hans

 

[mike wightman]

The one where the Imperium built thousands of battleships for over a century and is still only beginning to shift to battleriders and where the controversy over the relative merit of battleships vs. tender/riders is still going on.

You mean like the battle cruiser class Kinunir

[Eh? Where does it say that a spinal meson gets more than one hit per shot that hits and penetrates as long as the size factor of the target is bigger than the size factor of the spinal?

HG2 page 41 - read the spinal mounts paragraph.

Exactly my point. The game rules are obviously broken if a 500,000T battleship wouldn't last one turn against a 20,000T rider.

Oh I agree that the rules are broken, along with the ship designs.

No, they don't. See my analysis of the alleged Kokirrak refit above. Putting in a better spinal would make sense. Spending the cost of several riders on an upgrade that wouldn't last one turn of fire from a rider doesn't.

And yet the Imperium keeps refitting ships

No, it's not. FS is quite clear about that. All of them are deployed in squadrons. The Tigresses are specifically "generally assigned one per sector", which means somewhere between 160 and 224 of them, depending on how you interpret 'sector'.

Go read the Kokirrak entry again - especially the bit about being the preferred ship for flagship operations.

Not really. There's an article somewhere that does support it, but I can't remember where it was. JTAS? The library data merely state that there are two opposite views extant. As in, after more than a century of building TL15 vessels, they still haven't figured out for sure that cruisers and riders beat several times their own weight in battleships like a big bass drum every time. And the reason given in that article for the current shift makes absolutely no mention of half a dozen small vessels being superior to one big one. The big debate is about putting your jump drive into the front line or not.

It's in FS, the Imperium favours riders as their line of battle but since the 4FW has withdrawn them to the reserve and patrols frontier regions with battleships which can escape a superior force..

The Imperium's ship designers missed a trick though - stick a jump 1 drive in your rider to give it an escape option and have a fallback position for it to meet up with its carrier.

Which brings us back to drop tanks.

Fit drop tanks and your j1 rider can now assault a system from an adjacent system where the tender can stay out of harms way refueling.

 

[mike wightman]

It occurs to me that the whole battlerider thing is a distraction. The fundamental problem remains even if we postulate that no one had ever thought of the concept. Why is the Imperium building anything bigger than cruisers if a cruiser can stand up to a battleship? "Should we build a Tigress or ten AHLs? Gee, that's a toughie." The description on p. 9 of FS even makes the point that battleships can stand in the line of battle and cruisers can't. Obviously any combat system that allows cruisers to outfight battleships has to be flawed.

Exactly right and very well put - hence all the work Oz and I did trying to beef up battleships with the minimum of changes to HG2.

Cruisers, unlike riders, can't outfight battleships because if you give them a high jump number something else has to give under the design sequence, smaller spinal due to smaller power plant usually, less armour, that kind of thing.

 

[rancke]

HG2 page 41 - read the spinal mounts paragraph.

Yikes! That has got to go, or some sort of defense introduced. Maybe let meson screens reduce the strength of the shots that penetrates -- with a way to have higher factor screen in bigger ships.

And yet the Imperium keeps refitting ships.

They keep on doing it? How much? A third of the AHLs had their armament changed, but none of them had drives or power plants replaced. A few Atlantics may or may not have been enhanced, but nothing in the text says it was by replacing major components. If the Kokirraks started out as TL14, then they all had their power plants replaced, but that's just a theory, one predicated on the assumption that it's possible to upgrade a ship from TL14 to TL15 by replacing some of its components, which I think is a very problematic assumption. So leaving aside TL14 ships that has been turned into TL15 ships for the moment, do you have any examples of Imperial ships that has been upgraded by having major componenents (not just armaments) replaced?

Go read the Kokirrak entry again - especially the bit about being the preferred ship for flagship operations.

That's the entry that says that of the four squadrons stationed in the Marches, one of them was dispersed? Doesn't that imply that the other three wasn't? And if the number of Kokirrak squadrons in the rest of the Imperium is roughly comparable to the number in the Marches (which, I admit, is not a given), there could be from 80 to 120 squadrons of them still employed.

It's in FS, the Imperium favours riders as their line of battle but since the 4FW has withdrawn them to the reserve and patrols frontier regions with battleships which can escape a superior force.

Right you are. In other words, the imperium is switching FROM tender/riders TO battleships. That implies that battleships are still considered viable. Very much so, indeed.


Hans

 

[mike wightman]

Yikes! That has got to go, or some sort of defense introduced. Maybe let meson screens reduce the strength of the shots that penetrates -- with a way to have higher factor screen in bigger ships.

Yup, that's one of the changes Oz and I came up with, along with making big ships need more hits to cause damage in the first place, adds to the accountancy duing the combat but well worth it.

Right you are. In other words, the imperium is switching FROM tender/riders TO battleships. That implies that battleships are still considered viable. Very much so, indeed.


Hans

No, they are changing frontier defence doctrine, using their limited battleships to provide an initial contact force while the bulk of the Imperial fleet - the tender/riders - is held in reserve for counter offensive.

 

[rancke]

No, they are changing frontier defence doctrine, using their limited battleships to provide an initial contact force while the bulk of the Imperial fleet - the tender/riders - is held in reserve for counter offensive.

OK, that's true. Still leaves one problem (or two mutually exclusive ones). If the combat system is "realistic", why built battleships instead of cruisers? OTOH, if big ships do have an advantage over small ships, what rider BatRons? According to p. 9 of FS, a rider BatRon consists of one fleet tender (of no more than 1,000,000 T total) carrying six to eight riders. In other words, the entire squadron consists of six to eight vessels small enough for all of them to be picked up by a tender that also harbors jump drives and fuel to perform jump-3 with them. That implies a maximum size of, what, 75,000T? The equivalent of cruisers, not battleships. True, they're more heavily armored than cruisers, but armor doesn't protect against meson beams, so what's the big advantage the riders have? A squadron of six to eight 75,000T ships should be a CruRon, shouldn't it?


Hans

 

[mike wightman]

I would say the size of the spinal you bring to the battle dictates your BatRon or CruRon status.
BatRons have the heaviest, or at least most effective N, R and T rated spinals, leaving the J for cruisers.

 

[rancke]

I would say the size of the spinal you bring to the battle dictates your BatRon or CruRon status.

BatRons have the heaviest, or at least most effective N, R and T rated spinals, leaving the J for cruisers.

That's not what FS says, though. "Ctuisers are the smallest ships to carry the large spinal weapons needed to cause serious damage to a large armored ship, although most are too lightly armored to stand in the line of battle." And: "While battleships generally have little better in the way of primary armament than cruisers, their extensive secondary batteries render them virtually immune to missile and small craft attack while their bulk provides a tremendous ability to absorb damage and keep fighting." (Emphasis mine).

According to that, the main advantage battleships have over cruisers is their bulk. Which brings us back to several hundred thousand tons battleships supposedly likewise having an advantage over 75,000T riders.


Hans

 

[Selandia]

Tanker

Not being a TCS player, I will focus back to the fleet auxiliary and tanker discussion.

When it comes to move bulk material, playing Trillion Credit Business would show you that the jump tug, the equivalent of the naval tender of the RideRon, is the most cost effective way to jump cargo lighters between systems and is so common as to be amongst the most readily draftable merchant ship. By its nature it is not commited to a type of cargo, the pods, barges or lighters fitted to it are the ones that are commited to a type of cargo, not the tug. Once drafted, a tug involved in buld ore trade could carry fuel pods or tankers that would skim gaz giants. Of course, the Tankron following the fleet may be designed for that specific purpose.

Furthermore, those tugs are design to operate with jump tankers and have no issues of screening or field of fire for they are not intended as fighting ship.

In practical term, it mean amongst other things that

A Jump Master class (my commercial design) of X tons (including .5X jump fuel but berfore fitting lighters), with its .6X jump tanker attached could J-4. Once reaching the staging area, max jump load fitted with fuel pods, jump procedure undertaken, jump tanker drop, total weight 5X, X fuel burned (.5 from tug, .5 from tanker), J-2 done. Usable fuel at destination 4X, self fill for the j-2 jump back -.2X = 3.8X to fuel BatRon (for whatever reason), release the empty tanks and back to X displacement for the J-2, jump back. One could picture an attack on a system J-3 away by a J-4 squadron, without intermediate in-system fuelling possibilities: J-2, refuell, J1 to attack and enough fuel to J-3 back to point of departure if need be.

tanker do not need to move fuel tankage volume. They did not need in the above example to sacrifice 40 % of the 5X jump weight for their own fuel (20% in 20% out J-2) for the jump. They used .7X = 14%.

In fact, I wonder why tenders (specially the drafted merchant liner) would not use drop tanks or jump tankers when moving from base to base, allowing them to move more riders to area where geniune battle tenders would bring the riders into action. And in the last case, dismountable tanks/fuel pods still may be used to adapt the relative quantity of Rider / fuel carried

Selandia

 

[Sanjuro]

Here's a radical thought:
IIRC HG suggests that energy absorbed by a black globe can be stored in the jump capacitors until they hold sufficient energy for a jump.
If this logic is carried further, it seems likely that any suitable energy source can charge the jump capacitors. Instead of using jump tankers to pump fuel rapidly into the jumping ship, why not give them large power plants (if the tankers are larger than the jumping ship, they would have large power plants already), and use a simple electrical connection to directly charge the jump capacitors of the jumping ship?
I mention this purely for discussion- I am aware that most posters on this thread have much better knowledge of the game rules than I do.

 

[The Oz]

I would say the size of the spinal you bring to the battle dictates your BatRon or CruRon status.
BatRons have the heaviest, or at least most effective N, R and T rated spinals, leaving the J for cruisers.

It's not the main armament that really makes BBs different from CAs; it's the secondary armament (and armor, as you've said earlier). A battleship will have massive secondary weapons, like the Plankwell's 100 missile batteries (let alone the Tigress and her 430 missile batteries). Cruisers don't have such weapons arrays; forty missile batteries is a good armament for a cruiser.

That said, BB's do have larger spinals, it's just that above a factor-E the size of the spinal only determines how many extra holes you put in the target.

 

[McPerth]

The true failure I've allways thought the big ships combat system in CT (and MT, wich was nearly unchanged) was the lack of ships destroyed in combat.
Most of the ship crippling in this combat system came from minor damage ( ship unable to maneuvre due to maneuver damage, fuel loss or tanks shattered (the only one not able to repair with damage control, for, even if you repair it, you don't get back your fuel), computer damage, crew dying, etc..., but the chance of a ship vaporized critical is minimal.
In a battle among 20 ships per side, the usual result is 1 or 2 vaporized at most, and most of the others crippled, but easly repairable. So, the 'winner' of the engagement has a big victory, for, even if he only has a handful of ships not crippled, most of his other ships will be combat ready on a short time with damage control, and quite easy to repair in a shipyard, and most of enemy's crippled ships can be easly captured (barring scuttling, wich I think not too many crews will do if they can be thertened to be leaved moored on the void for so doing) and easly repaired if taken to a shipyard.
Just for doing this, I think one of the most important support ships one can have is a kind of 'jump tug', equiped with very large jump and fuel capacity, just to be clamped with crippled ships and take them to the rearguard to repair them.
Of course, all this combat results expected from the CT/MT ship combat system, are inconsistent with the JTAS news (mostly during rebellion) about hight hull losses, for, with this combat system, most of this hulls whould be recovered and repaired in a few weeks, having perhaps changed hands, but overall fleet losses whould be minimal.

 

[Selandia]

capture and escape

The true failure I've allways thought the big ships combat system in CT (and MT, wich was nearly unchanged) was the lack of ships destroyed in combat.
Most of the ship crippling in this combat system came from minor damage ...but the chance of a ship vaporized critical is minimal.
In a battle among 20 ships per side, the usual result is 1 or 2 vaporized at most, and most of the others crippled, but easly repairable. So, the 'winner' of the engagement hasa a big victory, for, even if he only has a handful of ships not crippled, most of his other ships will be combat ready on a short time with damage control, and quite easy to repair in a shipyard, and most of enemy's crippled ships can be easly captured .

A very interesting question come to mind: how easy is it to use captured HG ships? I do not want to chase this post in another tread because one major issue it raise is quite linked to the issue of jumping in system already fuelled to jump out of system and therefore to the whole issue of fleet fuelling doctrine. May I suggest you start a separate tread on that issue of capture since you obviously gave it some good tought.

Selandia

 

[HG_B]

A very interesting question come to mind: how easy is it to use captured HG ships?

If you haven't had the computers locked out/encrypted, VERY easy.

 

[McPerth]

So my arguement is: Some naval designer has a Duh, moment and say's "why don't we use drop tanks?"
There available.
They provide strategic advantages.
They influence tactical choices. (Do I fight, or do I run since I have fuel)
They provide alternate fuel for those pesky shattered fuel tanks, allowing movement of damaged ships out of the war zone.
They provide multiple advantages in commercial usage. More cargo equals more profit.

Duh, why aren't we using drop tanks?

The fact that drop tanks may provide fuel to ship with fuel tanks shattered may be argued, for it depends on if the fuel is used directly from drop tanks or must be pumped to the internal tanks to be used.
I'm not aircraft pilot, so I may be wrong, but for what I know, when an aircraft uses external fuel tanks, fuel must be punped to internal tanks to be used by the engine, so, if its fuel tanks where shattered, external tanks won't do the difference.

Also when you say they ara available, you sem to forguet they must be available at the right place and at the right moment.
Just look what has happened with airplanes last weekend on Spain. After an air controlers surprise strike and the closure of the airspace, when it has been reopened, it took more than 24 hours to regain some grade of normality just because the airplanes that could fly from anairport just were not there, but at another airport.
And this was with nearly instant communications and les than 24 hours of flying time to arrive to the airport...
An knowing for sure where the airport that needs them is...
Imagine if the communication times where a week or more and the flying time another week at least, without knowing for sure if the fleet whould be still waiting for them...
Sure that would slow quite a lot any offensive.

 

[Sanjuro]

Many aircraft that are designed to use drop tanks have the ability to bypass internal tanks in order to use the extra fuel first; even aircraft with only internal tanks can select which fuel tanks are used first: in principle, use a damaged tank first, to ensure as much fuel as possible is used instead of being allowed to leak away, then change to the undamaged tank in the knowledge that the leak is isolated.
That is the theory anyway- as Air Transat demonstrated in 2001, it really helps to know you have a leak!

 

[McPerth]

A very interesting question come to mind: how easy is it to use captured HG ships? I do not want to chase this post in another tread because one major issue it raise is quite linked to the issue of jumping in system already fuelled to jump out of system and therefore to the whole issue of fleet fuelling doctrine. May I suggest you start a separate tread on that issue of capture since you obviously gave it some good tought.

Selandia

As I am quite new on COTI, does anyone know if there already is a tread about this subject of combat systems?

 

[McPerth]

Trugh, as you could guess from my previous entries, I'm not a defender of indiscriminate use os frop tanks, I see some uses for them I've not seen in this thread:

-Fleet courriers: I've allways assumed the fleet carries many small (200-400 dton) jump6 ships for courrier duty. For them, the possiblity or doing 2j6 without refuelling may be a strong strategic advantage.

-Reserves: the imperial doctrine, according to published writings, is to have some light units on th borders and relly on strong reserves to fight a protracted war. For ths reserves, the fact of using drop tanks and have some more in preplaned locations may also be a strategic advantage, reducing travell time to front lines in about 20-30%. ( a tender is not usually capable to refuel by itself, so jumping 2 jumps without turning arround to have A or B starports along all its way and being able to refuel for 2 jumps where it has to turn arround is what speedss more th travel time).

So, I assume a fleet carries on larger ships some drop tank equiped small courriers so, when they come out of jump on a possibly hostile system, they begin send them to the rear to have the almiralty informed, and having drop tanks ready on them allows for greater flexibility and quicker response time.
I also assume in most naval and scout bases and way stations thre are many spare drop tanks for fleet use in case of hasty moves.
This gives the drop tanks a big place in the defensive strategy for using interior lines, but I don't see them as decisive in ofensive strategy to give the fleet a way out when attaking, because it needs more preplanning than is usually possible when attaking. You can use them on the first atack move, but after this one, if you want to quickly push on (like the abyss campaign in FFW), to wait for the tanks to come at every stop will delay you too much, allowing the enemy to react once your objective seems clear and intercept you, for it makes moving along friendly territory a lot quicker just for the fact you don't have to wait for your drop tanks, as you don't expect battle in most systems you jump to.

 

[Theophilus]

Trillion Credit Squadron Page 34 Refitting Ships fifth paragraph:
"The degree to which a ship may be changed is limited. Power Plant, M drive, J drive, and spinal mount weaponry may not be increased in tonnage."

I quess that nix's the reduction of a Kokirraks Maneuver drive to M4.

Supplement 5 Lightning Class Cruisers Pg 3, paragraph 1:
"Carrying the most advanced ship-board main armamenet and defensive systems then available, the AHL and the sister ships of this new class became the most cost effective addition to the Imperial arsenal in dedades."

Another thing to consider is the effectiveness of secondary weaponry against the lightly armored cruisers found in Supp9.
The Ghalalk- armor 5, Azhanti- armor 5, SEH- armor 0, Arakoine- armor 0. Only the Atlantic class has decent armor.

Looking at the ship damage tables in HG:
Apply armor as a DM, and add +6 for factor 9 or less weapons allows-
SEH and Arakoine: Weapon-3, Maneuver-1, Fuel-2, Weapon-2, Maneuver-1 hit on rolls of 2-6. or secondary lasers and fusion/plasma guns and missiles render ships combat ineffective very quickly.

Ghalalk and Azhanti: Minimum roll (A5+6+2=13) no maneuver hit's ship runs away.

Atlantic and Plankwell armor 10, +6, +2=18 Role 2-5 minor damage, role 6+ no effect. mostly immune to secondary weaponry.

Compare to Kokirraks (armor 12) Tigress (armor 15): 12+6+2=20 on a roll of 2 or 3 minor weapons hit, Tigress is immune to all secondary weaponry.
Even a spinal Particle Accelerator has a hard time killing a Tigress since the +15 armor gives a minimum roll of 17, and only a roll of 4 hits fuel, the weapon-1 hits really don't reduce combat effectiveness till you've gotten 532 of them!

Anyway, back to Drop tanks.

How many aircraft in WWII were equiped with drop tanks to increase range?
How many tanks were carried and dropped, being lost and needing repacement?
Why do we still use drop tanks on modern aircraft if dropping them is cost ineffective?

 

[far-trader]

Trillion Credit Squadron Page 34 Refitting Ships fifth paragraph:
"The degree to which a ship may be changed is limited. Power Plant, M drive, J drive, and spinal mount weaponry may not be increased in tonnage."

I quess that nix's the reduction of a Kokirraks Maneuver drive to M4.

How so? Wouldn't the reduction of the maneuver drive result in a decrease in tonnage which is within the rule of "may not be increased in tonnage"?

One caveat to that I would suggest is that such tonnage would be lost tonnage, not able to be re-purposed for some other item. So a reduction would be odd.

The powerplant and spinal mount are the only ones that makes sense under the rules since they can both benefit with increased performance in the same or less tonnage as TL advances. M drives and J drives don't. Seems that rule wasn't thought out too well or it actually means something else. I suppose one possibility (for wanting a lower M drive or J drive) would be to reduce the power requirement to enable some other weapons (energy) outfitting. Or in the case of J drive more fuel endurance. I guess.