Bay weapons
- Thread starter Kharum1
- Start date
A possible compromise would be to make all bays a 50 dTon hole in the ship. In this case, a 50 dTon bay weapon is a big gun that plugs directly into the hole. A 100 dTon bay weapon is a 50 dTon super-turret with 50 dTons of support/fire control that plugs into the 50 dTon hole.
Just thinking out loud.
Just thinking out loud.
BetterThanLife
SOC-14 1K
Actually you will note that a ship using a bay as a hangar can only use 50% of the bay's volume. Perhaps the best description is a combination of the two, as shown in the AHL deckplans.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Hmm, I recall a description somewhere about Bay Weapons being large steerable (aka Turret) weapons. It only makes sense since there are no rules for committing broadside attacks with Bay Weapons and you have the same battery bearing limits placed on Turrets and Bays.
Anyway, that's the way I always pictured them. Huge honking turrets. Of course I also play loose with the Turret Battery concept and will sometimes picture them as bigger turrets rather than more turrets. For example a battery of 10 triple turrets might be 10 separate 1dton Turrets firing in concert at the same target, or it might be 1 10dton super Turret firing a single weapon at one target. Both have the same effect game wise, it's just a style issue.
On the related issue of spinal weapons, I always figured there should be a bigger penalty when firing one. Like NO agility allowed for the firing ship. And treating the firing ship as zero maneuver while firing, meaning in HG spinal mounts are lowest on initiative.
Anyway, that's the way I always pictured them. Huge honking turrets. Of course I also play loose with the Turret Battery concept and will sometimes picture them as bigger turrets rather than more turrets. For example a battery of 10 triple turrets might be 10 separate 1dton Turrets firing in concert at the same target, or it might be 1 10dton super Turret firing a single weapon at one target. Both have the same effect game wise, it's just a style issue.
On the related issue of spinal weapons, I always figured there should be a bigger penalty when firing one. Like NO agility allowed for the firing ship. And treating the firing ship as zero maneuver while firing, meaning in HG spinal mounts are lowest on initiative.
GURPS Traveller specifically describes them that way, in rules. Since GT is essentially "Loren's ATU" that provides some insight from one of the Ancients.
HG implies the same in that the batteries and batteries bearing rules are the same as for turrets; non-steerables should have more restrictive arcs, and thus fewer batteries bearing proportionately.
TNE doesn't specify explicitly that I recall, but describes them as essentially large turrets as well, being drop ins in the same way that turrets are.
T4 is functionally the same as TNE for design purposes.
HG implies the same in that the batteries and batteries bearing rules are the same as for turrets; non-steerables should have more restrictive arcs, and thus fewer batteries bearing proportionately.
TNE doesn't specify explicitly that I recall, but describes them as essentially large turrets as well, being drop ins in the same way that turrets are.
T4 is functionally the same as TNE for design purposes.
Those (like me) who view 'bays' as big holes in which you plug things, must struggle with how to aim and "batteries bearing" issues.
Those of you who view 'bays' as big turrets need to struggle with how to dock craft and drop ordinance from an empty bay.
Those of you who view 'bays' as big turrets need to struggle with how to dock craft and drop ordinance from an empty bay.
Andrew Boulton
The Adminator
Aiming isn't a problem, given how long turns are.
Not reall an issue ATP, as the turret "fits in the hole."
Docking shuttles, etc, inside is an abstraction, but one that I can live with.
bay weapons as turrets is canonical. Bays as pullable modules ("cans") is also canonical. And the two are not incompatible. Think of the extra tonnage as the needed track and traverse gear.
Docking shuttles, etc, inside is an abstraction, but one that I can live with.
bay weapons as turrets is canonical. Bays as pullable modules ("cans") is also canonical. And the two are not incompatible. Think of the extra tonnage as the needed track and traverse gear.
Not really an issue ATP, as the turret "fits in the hole."
Docking shuttles, etc, inside is an abstraction, but one that I can live with.
Bay weapons as turrets is canonical. Bays as pullable modules ("cans") is also canonical. And the two are not incompatible. Think of the extra tonnage as the needed track and traverse gear.
Think about this:
A 1000 dTon ship is fitted with a 100 dTon hole for a bay weapon. (no actual weapon is installed at this time). The ship is eventually fitted with 100 dTons of “track and traverse gear” in the hole and a 100 dTon external ‘turret’ full of military grade “whoop-ass”. The 1000 dTon ship is now 1100 dTons of actual volume. Or was the 1000 dTon ship actually only 900 dTons with a hard point reserved for mounting a future 100 dTon turret?
The error is tiny when dealing with a dreadnought with a few bays (each bay is less than a thousandth of the size of the total ship) but for the sub-spinal-mount ships, the bays can be 10 percent of the ship. It is not an insurmountable rules conflict, but it is a real issue (just like standard turrets adding 1% to the volume of the ship).
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In My Traveller Universe, I decided to split the difference and make all “bays” a 50 dTon hole.
A 50 dTon “Bay Weapon” is a 50 dTon can containing a 25 dTon ball turret full of weapons and 25 dTons of fixed stuff (like targeting and motors and capacitors and extra missiles).
A 100 dTon “Bay Weapon” is a 50 dTon external turret full of weapons and 50 dTons of fixed stuff (like targeting and motors and capacitors and extra missiles) that plug into the hole.
A ship fitted with a “50 dTon Bay Weapon” will have the correct volume, while a bay fitted with a “100 dTon Bay Weapon” will have an external turret that increases the volume of the ship by 50 dTons per bay (only +5%).
Thank you for the information, I was only slightly acquainted with the AHL plans and completely unfamiliar with GURPS (except to know that it is a multi-setting rules system by SJG). If the turret is only 10 percent of the size of a bay, then it is very much a plug-in module (“can”) system leaving the concept of a true 100 dTon turret (like on a WW2 battleship) still unexplored (at least by AHL and GURPS).
From a conceptual standpoint, a 10 dTon aiming Turret for a 100 dTon meson gun or particle accelerator creates some interesting technical difficulties concerning radically ‘bending’ the path of near light speed particles (it would be like building a cannon that shoots around corners). It is not important from a game perspective, I just wonder how to do it.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Actually if you can find a cutaway of a WW era Naval big gun you'll see that the "turret" (the bit above the deck) is in fact a small part of the total weapon. And it does in fact drop into a hole in the deck. There are a few decks below the turret for all the gearing/steering, loading, ready ammo, crewing, and such. I used to have a nice pic of such but can't find it at the moment. So the concept does (imo) fit quite well for Bay Weapons.
As for unused (weapon wise) bays, they'd naturally cover over that hole in the hull with some kind of cap, probably with a nice big cargo hatch. So it can be easily used to carry cargo, drop ordnance, or vehicles/small craft (at 50% of volume).
BTW the loss of volume for vehicles/small craft is due to the fact that the bay is not an ideal match dimensionally. A hanger specific to a vehicle/small craft is not so inconvenient.
As for unused (weapon wise) bays, they'd naturally cover over that hole in the hull with some kind of cap, probably with a nice big cargo hatch. So it can be easily used to carry cargo, drop ordnance, or vehicles/small craft (at 50% of volume).
BTW the loss of volume for vehicles/small craft is due to the fact that the bay is not an ideal match dimensionally. A hanger specific to a vehicle/small craft is not so inconvenient.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
This wiki on the Iowa has a cut-away of the turret.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armament_of_the_Iowa_class_battleship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armament_of_the_Iowa_class_battleship
Using this as a guide for discussion (click for details):
Compared to a similar weapon used as a simple field artillery piece, the entire “gun” is housed in the “armored gun house (turret proper)” and the mechanism to rotate the turret is located in the “rotating turret structure” and “machinery floor”. Most of what is below this is storage for additional ammo.
In Traveller terms, only the “armored gun house”, “rotating turret structure” and “machinery floor” would be counted as part of the 50 or 100 dTon bay. Additional ammo storage would require additional ship tonnage. If we convert this design concept to bay mounted anti-ship lasers, then all of the ammo storage becomes a large power plant in the engineering section of the ship.
I am not saying that this is the only way to view bay weapons, I am saying that it is a design which has not been explored in the cannon ships. The AHL bay weapon turrets are a tiny blister on the hull of a giant (more like the turrets on a B-17 bomber than the turrets of a Battleship).
Thanks for the feedback.
I am enjoying this discussion.
Compared to a similar weapon used as a simple field artillery piece, the entire “gun” is housed in the “armored gun house (turret proper)” and the mechanism to rotate the turret is located in the “rotating turret structure” and “machinery floor”. Most of what is below this is storage for additional ammo.
In Traveller terms, only the “armored gun house”, “rotating turret structure” and “machinery floor” would be counted as part of the 50 or 100 dTon bay. Additional ammo storage would require additional ship tonnage. If we convert this design concept to bay mounted anti-ship lasers, then all of the ammo storage becomes a large power plant in the engineering section of the ship.
I am not saying that this is the only way to view bay weapons, I am saying that it is a design which has not been explored in the cannon ships. The AHL bay weapon turrets are a tiny blister on the hull of a giant (more like the turrets on a B-17 bomber than the turrets of a Battleship).
Thanks for the feedback.
I am enjoying this discussion.
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far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Well actually in HG there is no mention made of what the ready supply (translated to the magazine in the turret pictured) for missiles are. In fact in HG Missile Bays are apparently unlimited in reload endurance. CT does mention that a small turret launcher has 9 missiles in the ready racks. Given that, and the canon 50kg missile it's easy to see that a Missile Bay has a large part of it's volume dedicated to housing hundreds if not thousands of missiles within the volume.
As for energy bay weapons, yes the powerplant is not part of the turret, but there's lots of other equipment that would be (analogous to the ready missiles) included in the turret below gun level. Stuff like fast discharge capacitors, cooling equipment, gravitics, and such.
I think the only way Bay Weapons can work as the rules are written is as a turret topped structure. Traveller deckplans be damned. They are always (or mostly anyway) so far out of spec as to be useless for making calculations of volume of components. Many don't even follow the rather loose allowances for fudge in the rules, exceeding and bending it way past broken. Just look at most of them and tell me I'm wrong
All they are good for is having a good time running a miniatures boarding action. And even that is a problem when you have a 50m line of sight to target down a corridor, on a ship that has a maximum length of 30m (exaggerated example). Unless all Traveller ships make use of tesseract space folding or whatever the TARDIS uses to be bigger inside than outside. But I don't see that in the design tables
And on the issue of "well if we say it's a turret then the ship is bigger than designed" I've always figured the design dtons includes the external turret structure. For example that 100dton type S is actually 99dtons if you simply lay hull plate over the hardpoint. If you mount a turret (the design "control 1dton") then you have the full 100dton. No muss no fuss. Same for ships with weapon bays. How much of the weapon bay is above deck differs from small turrets, I figure it's probably 20/80 or 10/90, but it doesn't matter. Empty weapon bays have a capping structure in place of the external turret. You could plate it over and shave some off the dtons of the ship and lose some of the usable volume of the empty bay in the ship if you wanted to.
As for energy bay weapons, yes the powerplant is not part of the turret, but there's lots of other equipment that would be (analogous to the ready missiles) included in the turret below gun level. Stuff like fast discharge capacitors, cooling equipment, gravitics, and such.
I think the only way Bay Weapons can work as the rules are written is as a turret topped structure. Traveller deckplans be damned. They are always (or mostly anyway) so far out of spec as to be useless for making calculations of volume of components. Many don't even follow the rather loose allowances for fudge in the rules, exceeding and bending it way past broken. Just look at most of them and tell me I'm wrong
All they are good for is having a good time running a miniatures boarding action. And even that is a problem when you have a 50m line of sight to target down a corridor, on a ship that has a maximum length of 30m (exaggerated example). Unless all Traveller ships make use of tesseract space folding or whatever the TARDIS uses to be bigger inside than outside. But I don't see that in the design tables And on the issue of "well if we say it's a turret then the ship is bigger than designed" I've always figured the design dtons includes the external turret structure. For example that 100dton type S is actually 99dtons if you simply lay hull plate over the hardpoint. If you mount a turret (the design "control 1dton") then you have the full 100dton. No muss no fuss. Same for ships with weapon bays. How much of the weapon bay is above deck differs from small turrets, I figure it's probably 20/80 or 10/90, but it doesn't matter. Empty weapon bays have a capping structure in place of the external turret. You could plate it over and shave some off the dtons of the ship and lose some of the usable volume of the empty bay in the ship if you wanted to.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
Far-Trader, I think you have hit this right on the head. Your comments make imminent sense to me, and canon is meant to be interpreted (see the Bible and the various sub-religions of Christianity for the meaning of interpreting "canon").
Your thoughts on a ship like a scout actually being 99 dtons until the turret is installed makes sense. What we really need here to avoid confusion is a small change in nomenclature. I suggest turrets that come from the 1 hard point per 100 dtons be small "t" turrets and turrets that come from being actual caps on weapon bays (derived from 1 bay per 1000 dtons of vessel) to be large "T" Turrets.
Besides, the idea of Turrets and a mix of the smaller turrets actually on the outside of a Cruiser makes for an image of the vintage WWI naval vessels and their weapons load outs.
Your thoughts on a ship like a scout actually being 99 dtons until the turret is installed makes sense. What we really need here to avoid confusion is a small change in nomenclature. I suggest turrets that come from the 1 hard point per 100 dtons be small "t" turrets and turrets that come from being actual caps on weapon bays (derived from 1 bay per 1000 dtons of vessel) to be large "T" Turrets.
Besides, the idea of Turrets and a mix of the smaller turrets actually on the outside of a Cruiser makes for an image of the vintage WWI naval vessels and their weapons load outs.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
fwiw I came across the reference I was recalling earlier, it's from MT Referee's Manual in the design section:
* that would be just shy of 50dtons
So there you go, bay weapons are large turrets, movable enclosed weapon mounts
* that would be just shy of 50dtons
So there you go, bay weapons are large turrets, movable enclosed weapon mounts
Captain Midnight
SOC-12
GT does describe them as simply larger weapons, plus it gives figures for how many missiles are contained in storage for missile bays; the 50-ton bay holds 3,800 250mm missiles (launching 50 per turn), and the 100-ton bay holds 1,100 500mm missiles (launching 100 per turn). I still like to envision them as a VLS (Vertical Launch System), but that's not really supported by any version of canon, more's the pity.
GT also gives you the option to either build them as external or internal mounts. External mounts get treated like really big turrets, with the commensurate extra surface area that has to be armored; internal mounts get a restricted arc of fire, and it's unclear whether you're expected to worry about that during 20-minute space combat turns, especially when there is no provision for rotation of the ship, and you're specifically permitted to adjust facing as you see fit. Internal mounts can be swapped out at any spaceyard with repair facilities, and if empty, can be used for storing small craft or rocks or other stuff, at a space penalty; external mounts may only take weapons.
GT also gives you the option to either build them as external or internal mounts. External mounts get treated like really big turrets, with the commensurate extra surface area that has to be armored; internal mounts get a restricted arc of fire, and it's unclear whether you're expected to worry about that during 20-minute space combat turns, especially when there is no provision for rotation of the ship, and you're specifically permitted to adjust facing as you see fit. Internal mounts can be swapped out at any spaceyard with repair facilities, and if empty, can be used for storing small craft or rocks or other stuff, at a space penalty; external mounts may only take weapons.
When thinking about weapon bays, maybe we need to ask ourselves "Why it is called a weapon bay and not a turret weapon?"
Several reasonable possibilities come to my mind:
1. The term "turret" is reserved for the small weapon mounts such as adorn the top of a type s scout and the weapons meant for a bay are too big to fit in them.
2. They're called "weapon bays" because the weapon is very large, complex and requires vastly more service and maintenance than a regular, turret weapon so the weapon is mounted in a bay that makes it easier for technical personnel to access and service the weapons systems.
3. The "bay system" is there to allow warships to quickly and efficiently swap out large weapon systems easily as the current tactical/strategic system requires.
4. A weapon bay keeps the weapon inside the hull and under armor until it's ready to fire, minimizing it's exposure to 'turret sniping" by enemy units as it's only exposed during firing.
5. As to the whole "big turret" idea, maybe some bays come with a turret type system that houses the output end of the weapon, or the launch tubes for missiles, while the bay contains the beam generator/missile magazine and loading systems.
6. Another reason to make the weapon a "bay system" might be safety. The bay might be designed like a containment system so that if the weapon explodes for some reason the energy is channeled outward from the hull, blowing the bay panels off and directing the blast out into space thru blow off panels, somewhat like a M1 tank is designed.
Several reasonable possibilities come to my mind:
1. The term "turret" is reserved for the small weapon mounts such as adorn the top of a type s scout and the weapons meant for a bay are too big to fit in them.
2. They're called "weapon bays" because the weapon is very large, complex and requires vastly more service and maintenance than a regular, turret weapon so the weapon is mounted in a bay that makes it easier for technical personnel to access and service the weapons systems.
3. The "bay system" is there to allow warships to quickly and efficiently swap out large weapon systems easily as the current tactical/strategic system requires.
4. A weapon bay keeps the weapon inside the hull and under armor until it's ready to fire, minimizing it's exposure to 'turret sniping" by enemy units as it's only exposed during firing.
5. As to the whole "big turret" idea, maybe some bays come with a turret type system that houses the output end of the weapon, or the launch tubes for missiles, while the bay contains the beam generator/missile magazine and loading systems.
6. Another reason to make the weapon a "bay system" might be safety. The bay might be designed like a containment system so that if the weapon explodes for some reason the energy is channeled outward from the hull, blowing the bay panels off and directing the blast out into space thru blow off panels, somewhat like a M1 tank is designed.
