Battle Tender Design Philosophy

[Swiftbrook]

What is your battle tender design philosophy? Or for that matter, modular starship design? (Note: I use MegaTraveller design rules but the general gist should work with any rule system)

For example you are designing a 1,000,000 t Battle tender with 8 x 50,000 t riders.

Method 1
======
Build a 1,000,000 t Battle Tender
Pros:
+ 10,000 hardpoints and all the weapons you want
+ 8 x 50,000 t riders with all their weapons
Cons:
- Cost, you're paying for 1,000,000 t of ship
- Life support equipment and the power to run them
- Crew, it takes a lot more crew to maintain a 1,000,000 t ship

Method 2
======
Build a 600,000 t Battle Tender
Pros:
+ Cost, less ship to pay for
+ Power & Life Support savings, less ship to heat, create gravity for and power
+ Crew, smaller crew needed
Cons:
- Fewer hardpoints

Those are just generic numbers. A quick calculation using MegaTraveller design rules shows that I can have 20% ship and 80% cargo/riders/fuel pods. (All jump fuel is in pods.) 20% ship equates to 1/5 the cost for hull, life support and controls.

Does it make a difference if you use an Open frame? Closed frame? Planetoid?

Just wondering.
(Actually I just ran into a buzz saw as I was working on an Excel MT starship design file and saw the cost for all the non-existent space for the riders and fuelers and wondered how I was going to work it through.)

-Swiftbrook

 

[Selandia]

I do not know of mega travellers combat rules, but in Trillion Credit Squadron I do not use the tender in the battle line. The whole point of tender IMHO is to have not to armor and provide high G for that 30-40 % of the hull used for jump fuel + % for J drive. I work open structure (with fuel pods to trade range for cargo when needed) with token weaponry.

Selandia

 

[Spinward Scout]

I always thought it would work better treating the Riders like fighters. To treat them as cargo integrated into the structure of the ship. It also would work better if YTU uses Jump grids and such. Otherwise, if you're missing one of your Riders, wouldn't you be missing part of your Jump grid?

 

[AndreaV]

Okay, my experience is with HG so YKmMV. However the whole point of the rider/tender is to separate off the jump fuel so you don't have to provide armour and agility for it. Any attempt to turn the tender into a combat ship defeats this goal and any tender will always make a very much second class (more forth class actually) combat vessels due to the high percentage of its hull required to carry the rider(s).

That being said, tenders are EXTREMELY high value targets. Kill the tender and the riders are strategically dead (particularly true with multirider tenders.) Thus tenders should be designed with maximum survivability. Maxing out the nuclear dampers and meson screens is a must, likewise the computer (all these are achieved at minimal cost) Using config 7 makes them actually quite hard to hit with a meson gun, leaving only spinal PA's and nuke missiles as a real threat (the tender only needs survive a round or two at most). If you max out the sandcasters and damper you can mitigate the nuke missiles, leaving only Spinal PAs

As to size. It doesn't matter. I've found that tender size is almost an exact linear progression. A tender carrying eight riders is almost exactly eight times the size and cost of a tender carrying one rider and almost exactly twice the size/cost of one carrying four riders.

 

[McPerth]

Does it make a difference if you use an Open frame? Closed frame? Planetoid?

Well, most tenders tend to be open frame (in MT called irregular configuration, in both cases code 7), and that's due to 3 main reasons, in order of importance (IMHO) :

- It's an inexpensive configuration

- Has the best modifiers against meson fire

- May carry subordinate crafts at no additional volume required (exterior, as CT:HG page 32 or MT:RM, page 82 specify), and can launch all subordinate crafts at once without need for launch tubes (as CT:HG page 32 or MT:RM page 60 specify).

Configuration 7 does not allow them to be armored, but, as Andrew said, a tender must not be a combat ship, but just a jump plataform/mobile base for its raiders/fighters, and once the battle begins its place is at the rearguard, avoiding being involved in battle.

Another problem about configuration 7 is that they may not be steamlined, relying on its raiders or other subordinate crafts to perform wilderness refueling, and so, slowing those operations (when needed).

 

[Swiftbrook]

Configuration 7 does not allow them to be armored,

OK, I found this in High Guard (p. 28) but did the rule get included in MegaTraveller? I can't find that reference. That's not to say that maybe there shouldn't be some kind of an armor rule, but the way MT works, all spacecraft must have a minimum armor value of 40.

-Swiftbrook

 

[McPerth]

OK, I found this in High Guard (p. 28) but did the rule get included in MegaTraveller? I can't find that reference. That's not to say that maybe there shouldn't be some kind of an armor rule, but the way MT works, all spacecraft must have a minimum armor value of 40.

-Swiftbrook

Neither I did find it in MT (not even in DonM's errata). When something in MT ship design/combat is not clear, I tend (as some other people does, for what I've seen here) to assume CT:HG rules apply, mostly if I see some logics on it.

About armor/configuration relation, I assume (my view, not cannon) that the '0' armor equivalent for starships/spaceships is 40. So, if I assume a configuration 7 ship cannot be armored, what I mean in truth is it cannot be additionally armored (so it has armor 40, not more, not less).

Also, when I read that for planetoids and buffered planetoids substract its automatic armor (50 and 56 respectively) from its actual factor to calculate the weight and cost, I assume it means its automatic armor over 40 (so substract 10 and 16 respectively from armor factor for such calculations). Otherwise, a buffered planetoid with an armor factor 70 would have the same modifiers than another craft with armor 14 (miltiplier 3.56), being nearly 10 times lighter that a similar unarmored ship of another configuration (multiplier 33), and if no aditional armor is used, then there's o way to know its armor modifier.

 

[Swiftbrook]

MT Errata ?

Well, most tenders tend to be open frame (in MT called irregular configuration, in both cases code 7),

I do believe we have found some errata!

Step 10 Subordinate Craft
Irregular configuration craft (UCP configuration 7) ...

Should be "Open Frame configuration craft (UCP configuration 0) ..." based on the definitions on page 57.

Or should it be "Open Frame or irregular configuration craft (UCP configuration 0 or 7 respectively) ...

Open Frame: An open skeletal frame with no exterior coverings.
Irregular Structure: A dispersed, modular exterior, which is not clearly definable as any one of the other possible configurations.

Back to this discussion, IMO it clearly implies that you cannot add armor to MT configuration 0, Open Frame. And I also agre with McPerth's armor value assumptions for planetoids and 40 for open frames.

-Swiftbrook

 

[McPerth]

I do believe we have found some errata!

Should be "Open Frame configuration craft (UCP configuration 0) ..." based on the definitions on page 57.

Or should it be "Open Frame or irregular configuration craft (UCP configuration 0 or 7 respectively) ...

Back to this discussion, IMO it clearly implies that you cannot add armor to MT configuration 0, Open Frame. And I also agre with McPerth's armor value assumptions for planetoids and 40 for open frames.

-Swiftbrook

You're right that MT divided what was configuration 7 in CT into 0 (open frame) and 7 (irregular), and configuration 0 should have the same advantages as 7 about its crafts carried.

About BTs, one thing I've always thought is that their use is not cost-effective (IMHO) before TL 12-13. This is for several reasons:

- The maximum size (due to computer needs) for TL 11- ships it's about 99 kdton(*), too small for a multi BR tender (although, as Andrew has always suported, single BR Tenders are as effective by the rules as multi BR ones).

- With jump 2 (maximum at TL 11), a BR has only 23% more free space (3% for JD and 20% for fuel) than a CA/BB, and that (IMHO) is not worth the losing of strategic deployement capabilities BT/BR combo assumes. I think at this jump level CA/BB is more effective. At TL 12, with jump 3, the saved space is 34%, and so I see less clear which direction design should take. At TL 13, jump 4 needs for 45% of the volume, so giving a true advantage to BRs (**).

- Before TL 12 meson spinals are not so deadly, nor are there screens. This means ships are not as suicidal as when meson spinals begin te be powerful, and that tenders are (IMHO again) too fragile to survive an ambush, with neither armor (I assume they are configuration 7) nor screens.

Notes:

(*)This is for CT:HG. In MT, the maximum imput allowed for computers will also limit your ship size/capabilities, but the formula is not so clear (the use of multiple computers to offset this limit, even while at least one canon design uses it (the Xboat Tender on HT), has always seemed to me as cheating the system).

(**) This is also for CT:HG. In MT fuel needs are lower, and percentages needed would be 18, 24 and 30% of the volume. Also, as in MT armor does not need volume, CA/BBs have less disadvantage.