Back-up Meson Screens, Nuclear Dampers, and Force Fields

[snrdg082102]

Morning Rancke2,

Is Hard Times acceptable to you as evidence for the Classic Era navy? :devil:

Anyway, FS states that "there are five broad types of ships in service with the Imperial Navy: Scouts, Escorts, Cruisers, Carriers, and Battleships."

Either Hard Times is confused or it is referring to narrower types. Perhaps escorts are sub-divided into destroyers, escorts, patrol ships, and, oh I don't know, picket ships. (No, I've never heard of an Imperial Navy starship type called a picket ship).


Hans

Destroyers where originally designated as Torpedo Boat Destroyers (TBD) since they were developed to counter torpedo boats. Between 1892 and the First World War the torpedo boat part was dropped and they became Destroyers. As with many designs the destroyer evolved in to larger hulls and given the duties of escorting convoys, fleets, and battle groups. At one time there where a number of specialized destroyer types a couple of examples destroyers intended to escort a fleet where DDE and those used in the anti-submarine role were DDK. Somewhere along the line a decision was made to simply use the type designation of DD.

Scouts, IIRC unfortunately I still looking for the source document, are used for picket duty and could be designated as a picket ship, especially if they have bee modified to enhance their duty as an early warning system.

 

[snrdg082102]

BTW: I have pickets boats. And revenue cutters. Etc...

Now, as to my question: since "cruisers" are lightly armored, and exist in a universe with meson guns that ignore armor, then do screens count as "armor"? Or do we just vote on it because the almighty canon doesn't know?

I wouldn't consider it armor, but it might count as "armor" within the context of the world it exists in since it is designed to protect the ship from penetrating hits. Sand works away form the ship so it wouldn't be the same thing.

My take Sabredog is that armor is used for protection against some sort of attack. Meson screens, nuclear dampers, and force fields are, in my view, forms of armor. However meson screens and nuclear dampers are armor designed for protection against a specific weapon and is worthless against anything else.

 

[sabredog]

My take Sabredog is that armor is used for protection against some sort of attack. Meson screens, nuclear dampers, and force fields are, in my view, form of armor. However meson screens and nuclear dampers are armor designed for protection against a specific weapon and is worthless against anything else.

That's my point - since the nuke dampers protect against the swarms of nuclear missiles, and the meson screens against the big guns of the Traveller universe, then they should be counted as armor. The definition just expanded to include them as "armor" changed. PAWs, well that's what the conventional armor is for, but they don't strike me as he "line of battle" weapon since they are not nearly as effective as the meson guns are.

So if it carries a meson screen maybe its a cruiser?

Or maybe cruisers should be better defined by the type of spinal gun they carry: PAWs for cruisers and meson guns for battleships? PAWs work better against lightly armored ships, and ships of the line are supposedly heavily armored, so no matter how big your PAW spinal gun is it is probably significantly reduced enough by the SOL armoring to make it not worth equipping SOL's with.

 

[snrdg082102]

Evening Sabredog,

That's my point - since the nuke dampers protect against the swarms of nuclear missiles, and the meson screens against the big guns of the Traveller universe, then they should be counted as armor. The definition just expanded to include them as "armor" changed. PAWs, well that's what the conventional armor is for, but they don't strike me as he "line of battle" weapon since they are not nearly as effective as the meson guns are.

"Meson screens are a variation of the nuclear damper which provides specific protection against meson gun fire" per Book 5 page 31.

The meson screens armor value against missiles, lasers, energy weapons, and particle accelerator weapons is zero. Against a meson gun meson screens are counted as a special type of armor.

The table on Book 5 page 24 shows that Particle Accelerator spinal mounts were the only big gun available from Tech Level 8 to 10. The first meson gun spinal mount appears at TL 11 and began replacing the particle accelerator as the big gun. While meson guns may be more effective at inflicting damage they also cost more, take up more space, and/or require more EP.

A ship carrying a meson gun is most effective against targets not employing meson screen. The particle accelerator can still inflict damage on ships with meson screens. To me the particle accelerator is slightly more effective because the only protection against the weapon system is armor.

So if it carries a meson screen maybe its a cruiser?

Or maybe cruisers should be better defined by the type of spinal gun they carry: PAWs for cruisers and meson guns for battleships? PAWs work better against lightly armored ships, and ships of the line are supposedly heavily armored, so no matter how big your PAW spinal gun is it is probably significantly reduced enough by the SOL armoring to make it not worth equipping SOL's with.

Providing a common reference point for designating a ship with a meson screen as a cruiser wouldn't be a problem with me. Not having a common point of reference and I will ask some questions just like with a destroyer with a spinal mount. Knowing that a destroyer is 20,000 + tons I wouldn't have asked.

Why do ships of the line have more armor?

The answer is to counter the effectiveness of the biggest weapon being used. Any ship equipped with a meson screen reduces the effectiveness of a meson gun, but does not alter the effectiveness of the particle accelerator.

 

[far-trader]

Why do ships of the line have more armor?

IF (big if TM ) I'm recalling correctly the biggest reason for armour is to damage soak (negate) criticals. And generally the biggest ships have the full armour for that reason.

I seem to recall the wording being vague enough to soak even Meson crits* but I'm not sure and I'm too busy/lazy (pick one ) to check at the moment

* might be my inner munchkin tried that reasoning once upon a time

 

[Carlobrand]

...
Scouts, IIRC unfortunately I still looking for the source document, are used for picket duty and could be designated as a picket ship, especially if they have bee modified to enhance their duty as an early warning system.

Scouts? Act as pickets for my squadron of 200,000 ton battlewagons? They haven't the teeth for the job, and a lot of them don't have the jump range or speed to keep up with the fleet.

An escort needs to have at least enough speed and agility to not slow down the ships its escorting, along with enough teeth and defenses to make the enemy work for it if he decides to send in a skirmisher to get the details on your main force. I'd do it as two rings: an outer ring of fighters both for early warning and to challenge enemy fighters trying to scout me out, and an inner ring of destroyers that the fighters can fall back on if the enemy tries to send in something bigger for skirmishing. My ideal picket is in the 1000 to 3000 ton range.

Scouts on the other hand tend to be cheap and expendable, just enough there to spot the enemy and make a run for it when needed. I'd use scouts independent of the fleet, both the traditional ones and longer-range, faster ones. They're weak but comparatively cheap, especially when you consider that the old-fashioned jump-2 traditionals are fine for places within 2 parsecs of a naval base, so I can scatter them in task forces of 3 or 4 each among all the systems in the theater of conflict, with orders to watch for and relay news of enemy presence back to the naval base and any nearby fleet. A couple hundred such little task forces costs less than a single dreadnought and covers a lot of territory. I guess they could be considered a kind of picket force, but I tend to think more of what's immediately around a fleet when I think of pickets.

I'd also use scouts within the fleet - fast ones with good range that did not slow down the fleet - to ferry information and orders between the fleet and the rear bases, and to keep the system scouts informed of fleet movements near them so they know who to report intelligence to. (Thus that whole business in FFW of plotting moves ahead.) A scout can also serve for - well, scouting; for example, the fleet comes in and engages enemy forces at the gas giant while a scout or two head for the main world to see what forces are there.

A scout in my mind is eyes and ears, and it does best when it's trying to avoid battle.

 

[sabredog]

IF (big if TM ) I'm recalling correctly the biggest reason for armour is to damage soak (negate) criticals. And generally the biggest ships have the full armour for that reason.

I seem to recall the wording being vague enough to soak even Meson crits* but I'm not sure and I'm too busy/lazy (pick one ) to check at the moment

* might be my inner munchkin tried that reasoning once upon a time

Nope, damage from meson guns of any size are not reduced by armor.

Criticals are soaked up by armor when using the surface explosions and radiation tables (by non-meson gun weapons). The reduced chance to hit by the screens isn't too bad once you are using size J+ guns. Plus you get a +2 DM to hit at short range. Meson guns also do the more damaging radiation and internal explosion hits, not to mention the increased number of criticals when applied against the size of the ship hit since the target's armor doesn't reduce those in that case.

PAWs hit more often but armor reduces the the surface explosion and radiation damage they do.

So it would seem to me that the weapon of choice for a line battleship would be the meson gun. So the "armor" that should be emphasized for non-cruisers should be configuration, screens, and agility. All of which have more of a defensive effect on meson gun hits than conventional armor - which has no effect.

Just thinking outside the box here.

 

[rancke]

The root of the problem is that any ship stands a very good chance of being one-shotted by the biggest meson gun available, and that size provides no ability to prevent that by soaking up criticals. That makes it extremely wasteful to build ships bigger than the smallest needed to carry the biggest available meson gun. Which is, I've been told, around 75,000T given optimal design.

The problem with riders isn't really a rider vs. battleship problem, it's a ships in the tens of thousands vs. ships in the hundreds of thousands problem. Sure, 50,000T riders that cost a quarter of what a battleship costs are (more or less) as effective as 2-300,000 T battleships, which is a big problem, but 75,000T cruisers are ALSO (more or less) as effective as battleships, which is the very same big problem. Why build the big ships when you can get four times (or whaterver the factor is) the bang for your bucks by buying small ships?

Setting canon portrays cruisers as eggs armed with hammers and battleships as coconuts armed with hammers. One blow will shatter an egg but coconuts take a lot of blows to break. But the combat system "portrays" cruisers as small eggs armed with hammers and battleships as bigger, more expensive, but equally fragile eggs armed with hammers.


Hans

 

[snrdg082102]

Evening Dan,

IF (big if TM ) I'm recalling correctly the biggest reason for armour is to damage soak (negate) criticals. And generally the biggest ships have the full armour for that reason.

I seem to recall the wording being vague enough to soak even Meson crits* but I'm not sure and I'm too busy/lazy (pick one ) to check at the moment

* might be my inner munchkin tried that reasoning once upon a time

Yes, armor is used to soak up damage giving an edge to the ship with the most armor. In Traveller combat the dice can be be fickle and allow a critical hit that results in the ship being destroyed regardless of how much armor is installed.

From HG 2e page 48 DMs per the Ship Damage Table the surface explosion column is checked when energy weapons, lasers, HE/Nuclear missiles, and particle weapons.

My impression is that armor provides protection against surface explosions and the meson gun is not listed. However, a meson gun does cause radiation damage and internal explosions.

 

[snrdg082102]

Are you taking lessons from Dan Sabredog beating me to the post.

Nope, damage from meson guns of any size are not reduced by armor.

Criticals are soaked up by armor when using the surface explosions and radiation tables (by non-meson gun weapons). The reduced chance to hit by the screens isn't too bad once you are using size J+ guns. Plus you get a +2 DM to hit at short range. Meson guns also do the more damaging radiation and internal explosion hits, not to mention the increased number of criticals when applied against the size of the ship hit since the target's armor doesn't reduce those in that case.

PAWs hit more often but armor reduces the the surface explosion and radiation damage they do.

So it would seem to me that the weapon of choice for a line battleship would be the meson gun. So the "armor" that should be emphasized for non-cruisers should be configuration, screens, and agility. All of which have more of a defensive effect on meson gun hits than conventional armor - which has no effect.

Just thinking outside the box here.

 

[sabredog]

Exactly my point, Hans. It makes no sense given the technology available to restrict the naming of ship classes by definitions that don't fit.

Logically, the battleships should be the fastest, smartest (highest possible computer rating), open configuration design there is with the most powerful meson gun it can carry combined with a code 9 meson screen - preferably with backups of the bridge, computer, and screen (those pesky internal explosions!).

A cruiser should be smaller, faster (is possible) and armed with as many PAW guns as it can carry for inside knife-fighting with the meson ships. It would have armor since the opposing meson battleships would be escorted by like-designed cruisers. And maybe some would carry PAW spinal guns, I think some would be even better served with batteries of PAW bays to help the attrition rate be minimized. Meson guns don't reduce weapon batteries like the rest of the weapons do since they don't inflict surface damage.

It's why my destroyers have so many missile bays - they are good for long range salvos to scrub off weapon batteries for as long as you can keep the two fleets apart.

 

[rancke]

Logically, the battleships should be the fastest, smartest (highest possible computer rating), open configuration design there is with the most powerful meson gun it can carry combined with a code 9 meson screen - preferably with backups of the bridge, computer, and screen (those pesky internal explosions!).

It's logical if the only thing to base conclusions on were the rules. But we also have setting canon, and that's not how cruisers and battleships are portrayed in setting canon. That is a canon conflict, and canon conflicts of this kind can be solved in one of two ways: by changing the first piece of canon to fit the second or by changing the second piece of canon to fit the first. (Or to change both pieces of canon, of course. )

I happen to be in favor of changing the rules to reflect the setting. Your solution seems to be to change the setting to fit the rules. Which one is best is a matter of opinion, not logic.

Mind you, even though I prefer changing the rules to fit the setting, I'd much rather see the setting changed to fit the rules than to have the conflict left unresolved.


Hans

 

[sabredog]

It's logical if the only thing to base conclusions on were the rules. But we also have setting canon, and that's not how cruisers and battleships are portrayed in setting canon. That is a canon conflict, and canon conflicts of this kind can be solved in one of two ways: by changing the first piece of canon to fit the second or by changing the second piece of canon to fit the first. (Or to change both pieces of canon, of course. )

I happen to be in favor of changing the rules to reflect the setting. Your solution seems to be to change the setting to fit the rules. Which one is best is a matter of opinion, not logic.

Mind you, even though I prefer changing the rules to fit the setting, I'd much rather see the setting changed to fit the rules than to have the conflict left unresolved.


Hans

I agree (handshake) on all points. I dodge the canon issue by ignoring what parts of it are not in the rules as far as the rules being a framework to hang my game on. Anything beyond mechanics gets tossed. Which is why, although I have shared things in the past they sometimes get pasted as non-canon and heretical, thus silly and not "Traveller". But that's also have the fun so I'll keep muddling through.

 

[Carlobrand]

It's logical if the only thing to base conclusions on were the rules. But we also have setting canon, and that's not how cruisers and battleships are portrayed in setting canon. That is a canon conflict, and canon conflicts of this kind can be solved in one of two ways: by changing the first piece of canon to fit the second or by changing the second piece of canon to fit the first. (Or to change both pieces of canon, of course. )

I happen to be in favor of changing the rules to reflect the setting. Your solution seems to be to change the setting to fit the rules. Which one is best is a matter of opinion, not logic.

Mind you, even though I prefer changing the rules to fit the setting, I'd much rather see the setting changed to fit the rules than to have the conflict left unresolved.


Hans

Soooo ... how would you change the rules? Eliminate that spinal mount multiple damage rolls bit? It would certainly make the big boys endure longer, but I notice that they kept that element for MegaTrav despite its deadly effect - though they did do something about the crew hits. Fuel tanks are still getting shattered though.