Big Naval Ships in the Traveller Universe

[McPerth]

But the individual Admiral will also be an important factor.

Of course, I've never said (or at least it was not my intent) the opposite...

Un CT:HG, if you Captain has Ship Tactics 5, you get a +2 effective computer rating, and if your Pilot has skill 5 you have a +2 to your effective Agility, and I agree with it.

But likewise if your gunnery crew is a bounch of untrained recruits (or ground artillerists, as the Spanish Navy did in Trafalgar) who have never used ship's gunnery (so skill -3), you should also have a -2 to all firing, while if they are a highly trained elite gunners with an average skill 5, they should have a +2 to all your fire.

Are you suggesting that Admiral Stvi is just as good as Admiral Djoulikian (FFW)?

That's entirelly another matter (though my answer to your question is "of course not"). FFW aldmirals have two factors, the number of turns in advance you must plot (that I understand is the Intelligence capacity of their staff) and the combat rating, that would, IMHO, mean more their Fleet Tactis skill than any Ship tactics or other ship related skill.

 

[TamsinP]

Agreed, crew quality is an important factor. But the individual Admiral will also be an important factor.
Are you suggesting that Admiral Stvi is just as good as Admiral Djoulikian (FFW)?


It's in the context of an RPG, there will be skilled player characters floating around...

The quality of an admiral will affect the tactics (initiative) of the fleet. They may affect the morale of the crew of their flagship (and will usually be assigned officers and crew of above average competence).

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Un CT:HG, if you Captain has Ship Tactics 5, you get a +2 effective computer rating, and if your Pilot has skill 5 you have a +2 to your effective Agility, and I agree with it.

Agreed.

But likewise if your gunnery crew is a bounch of untrained recruits (or ground artillerists, as the Spanish Navy did in Trafalgar) who have never used ship's gunnery (so skill -3), you should also have a -2 to all firing, while if they are a highly trained elite gunners with an average skill 5, they should have a +2 to all your fire.

Agreed, but perhaps not so big DMs. ±1 on 2D is a huge difference.

That's entirelly another matter (though my answer to your question is "of course not"). FFW aldmirals have two factors, the number of turns in advance you must plot, that I understand is the Intelligence capacity of their staff) and the combat rating, that would, IMHO, mean more their Fleet Tactis skill than any Ship tactics or other ship related skill.

Agreed, admirals deploy the fleet, captains fight their ships, and so on.


So, we basically agree: Crew quality matters, and a few outstanding individuals in the right positions matters too.

 

[McPerth]

Agreed, but perhaps not so big DMs. ±1 on 2D is a huge difference.

Sure, but it's the same for key individuals.

I gave you quite extreme examples, as I believe it's in the extremes where one can see where things fail.

I guess a ship with a unskilled crew would not even reach battle, while one with average crew skill 5 would mean a hand picked crew along the whole Imperium, while a specific Captain or Pilot with skill 5 is not ruled out (though uncommon).

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Sure, but it's the same for key individuals.

Agreed.

±2 should be very uncommon. Skill-5 is extremely uncommon with CT chargen, especially Fleet Tactics and Ship Tactics.

 

[mike wightman]

Fully agreed (for a change ). That's why I've been advocating for a crew quality factor in HG since ages...

It has been suggested many many times.
elite +2
veteran +1
regular 0
green -1
These would be blanked DMs applied to the effective computer rating (HG80)
For added complexity you could split the crew experience
Command/maneuvering - DM only applies to initiative and agility.
Gunnery - DM applies to weapons and screens

 

[McPerth]

It has been suggested many many times.

And yet never agreed (at least to my knowledge)

Command/maneuvering - DM only applies to initiative and agility.

Better to computer than intiative, that initiative is already featured in Fleet Tactics...

And see those are already featured in the Captain and Pilot skills, What I missed whas the gunenry (as you say), engineering (for damage control) and Marines (for Boarding actions, though those are seldom used, I guess).

IMHO the simplest option would be wither a plain DM (as you first suggested), but this could well not affect the Command and Maneuvering, that would be affected by the individual Captain/pilot skills (more so if they are PCs)

 

[McPerth]

Given: there is a vast corpus of semi-compatible Traveller material.
Given: some books have a greater influence than other material.
Given: some people have a greater influence than others.

Then:

What can we say generally about Big Navy Ships in Traveller?

I know this might not be the best part, but I’ll begin with what (IMHO) you should avoid: the flagrant inconsistences among rules, narrative and wargames that we can find in former versions.

Some examples:

• In FFW the SW fleets put the IN to withdraw, and formerly they took the Entropic Worlds from the Darrian. Given the TL differences, probably a single Gioneti (AKA SHE) Light Cruiser, with its MG spinal and + 3-4 DM for computer difference would have finished the whole fleet, let alone a whole CruDron or the Darrian TL16 ships…
• Same in Rebellion about the Vargr (whose ships are shown at TL 11-12) taking Gemid (TL16)
• In FFW confronting the best naval units (IN) against the worst ones (SW/Vargr) gives a + 2 columns in firing, far from the DMs th computer differences will give in HG
• No rules in FFW to represent the Zhodani believeing Jewell and Efate would fall to siege (no siege rules, despite the improtance of them in narrative)
• In Invasion Earth narrative (and game) it takes months (if not seasons) to conquer Earth. In FFW it would be a matter of a few weeks
• (again) The very high fleet loses in narrative (and WGs) on any war with a combat system that destroys few ships, while cripples many to mission killed but easily repairable

Let the errors of the past teach us...

 

[mike wightman]

And yet never agreed (at least to my knowledge)

Who is going to agree an official change to a forty four year old rule set?

Better to computer than intiative, that initiative is already featured in Fleet Tactics...

The crew quality option replaces the individual skills section of HG - which is broken.

And see those are already featured in the Captain and Pilot skills, What I missed whas the gunenry (as you say), engineering (for damage control) and Marines (for Boarding actions, though those are seldom used, I guess).

Again, crew quality replaces individual skills.

IMHO the simplest option would be wither a plain DM (as you first suggested), but this could well not affect the Command and Maneuvering, that would be affected by the individual Captain/pilot skills (more so if they are PCs)

I would replace crew quality with individual skills for PC involvement

 

[Badenov]

1. The problem I saw when the spacecraft design rules were being revised, was that you could have multiple spinal mounts.

2. Which didn't quite fit in with Chartered Space.

3. Using the Warthog as an example, I temporized and suggested the reason there's only one is that the hull can only handle so much recoil.

4. You could, in theory, place the spinal mount in a mechanism that rotates, probably elevates.

5. After all, how do you think deep site mesons align their guns with off planet targets?

So, a deep site meson is basically a meson mounted in a planet. So putting a 14,000-ton mount in a 5.97x10^21-ton planet such that it's aimable seems reasonable to me. I would think a turret-sized gun in a ship would be aimable?

It's not an issue of power, but length. Spinals form the spine of a ship in order to utilise the full length of the ship, see TNE.
The length of a ship (proportional to radius) varies much less than the volume or mass (proportional to radius cubed).

A spinal in a turret would be like putting an entire WWII destroyer as a "turret" on a battleship. It would be unwieldy...

Except in a ship that large, the spinal doesn't run the length of the ship. The "spinal" is 2.5% of the ship's mass. As I mentioned above, the spinal mount mass compared to a 500,000-ton dreadnaught is about the same proportion as a battleship gun to a battleship.

Not in MgT2 or T5. In T5 weapons size varies with TL and range. In MgT2 there is only one spinal of each type, but that can be added as an increment increasing the power (damage) of the gun, i.e. a 7500 Dt gun does ~21000 damage, a 15000 Dt gun does ~42000 damage and so on.

Now that's a ruleset that makes sense. I suppose I should bite the bullet and fork over the cash, but my inner parsimonious self says I already bought one set of rules, why should I pay for another set of the same?

 

[Condottiere]

1. Depending on your edition's spacecraft rule set, you could have a pseudo turret for your spinal mount.

2. Embed the spinal mount in the smallest feasible hull.

3. Place a turntable at the bottom.

4. Install a docking clamp on the turn table.

5. Attach spinal mounted hull on a larger hull.

6. Place the spinal mount on a double hull, and use that for elevation.

 

[mike wightman]

Why can't the BR spinals not be used as fixed mount weapons by the tender?

How about you build the minimum possible hull, pp, bridge, m1 to carry a factor T spinal.

Now build a ship that can carry a few of them internally to act as really big bays...

 

[Carlobrand]

The boxed wargames are a headache, true. Given the canon mentions about buried spinal mounts, Invasion Earth hints at planetary defenses that would have made an invasion impossibly bloody. FFW essentially demands the Sword Worlds fly old Zhodani castoffs if they're performing as well as their Vargr counterparts. Even then, they and their Vargr counterparts are significantly overperforming compared to High Guard.

I'm not championing multiple spinal mounts, but a 1000 Td spinal is 0.2% the volume of a 500,000 Td ship. 1250 Td Kinunir carried a pair of 3 Td particle beams. If someone wants it as a house rule, it's not entirely inconceivable.

 

[Carlobrand]

You're not likely to find green crews on capital ships. Green individuals will tend to get spread out for training; one or two green gunners among 20-30 batteries is not something I'd care to track. Too, most would be berthed on support ships for teaining, not given choice assignments on capital ships unless they showed particular talent. Underperformers too would filter down to less prestigious assignments, so your poor crew is likely to be on some tanker captained by some fellow who couldn't cut it as a fighting ship captain.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Except in a ship that large, the spinal doesn't run the length of the ship. The "spinal" is 2.5% of the ship's mass. As I mentioned above, the spinal mount mass compared to a 500,000-ton dreadnaught is about the same proportion as a battleship gun to a battleship.

A spinal is something like 100-200 m long.
A 10 000 Dt needle is perhaps 200 m long.
A 500 000 Dt sphere is something like 240 m in diameter.

Yes, they span more or less the entire ship.


But, yes, the 1000-7000 Dt spinals isn't optimised for every ship.

 

[McPerth]

Now build a ship that can carry a few of them internally to act as really big bays...

Not sure if you're being ironic or serious here...

Two details:

• how large must the Tender be for those so long ships to be able to change their facing inside (as Deep Meson Sites do)?
• This would expose your tender.

 

[McPerth]

I'm not championing multiple spinal mounts, but a 1000 Td spinal is 0.2% the volume of a 500,000 Td ship.

How much of a Galley (or Ironclad) volume represented the ram?

And yet, they could only have one...

 

[Badenov]

A spinal is something like 100-200 m long.
A 10 000 Dt needle is perhaps 200 m long.
A 500 000 Dt sphere is something like 240 m in diameter.

Yes, they span more or less the entire ship.


But, yes, the 1000-7000 Dt spinals isn't optimised for every ship.

A sphere is literally the smallest shape that can contain a volume, so that's not a typical comparison. The spinal is still 2.5% of the tonnage. In this case, it's basically a 5m x 6m space through the sphere with a cross section of 745m^2. The idea you can only fit one seems silly. It's a toothpick through a tennis ball. Sure it goes through, but there's room for more than one.

A 500,000-ton cylinder that's 100m across is 900m long. For a 14,000-ton spinal to run the length of that ship, it would have to be 3mx5m. 3mx5m on a 100m diameter cylinder has a lot of extra room, too.

How much of a Galley (or Ironclad) volume represented the ram?

And yet, they could only have one...

Yes, but that's because the damage from the impact is divided by the surface area of the impacting bits, so more rams would do less damage each. That's not really a valid comparison as spinal mounts don't do kinetic energy damage based on the speed of the attacking ship.

 

[McPerth]

Yes, but that's because the damage from the impact is divided by the surface area of the impacting bits, so more rams would do less damage each. That's not really a valid comparison as spinal mounts don't do kinetic energy damage based on the speed of the attacking ship.

You sure?

Of course, the way to work is quite different, but their use in combat not so much, nor the reason you can have only one (they must be braced along the whole ship).

Spinals (specially meson ones) are the Rams of HG combat: short ranged, dangerous and difficult to put to bear, but decisive when hit. They are not the Battleship main batteries, that bear most of the combat (in HG, those are the missile bays)

 

[McPerth]

A 500,000-ton cylinder that's 100m across is 900m long. For a 14,000-ton spinal to run the length of that ship, it would have to be 3mx5m. 3mx5m on a 100m diameter cylinder has a lot of extra room, too.

Put two spinals on it and you'll have a double barreled shotgun. Put more and you'll have a gatling gun: Several barrels, but all of them aiming at the same enemy.

As you only need to hit once (at least for meson ones), what a waste...