Book Two Fleets

[pendragonman]

In reference to turrets bearing on target.

Recall the length of time for a space combat turn. There is plenty of time for a ship to rotate along its axis to get all fifty turrets to bear over the course of the turn. Just because all of the fire is resolved at once doesn't mean that the fire is all instantaneous.

 

[Timerover51]

This is neither good nor bad, but what it is. Different people will want different things; different people want different settings. You don't want this, and that's great. But the difference you point out might be exactly what someone else wants.

As I have never read the Dumarest book, I do not know the setting. There are definitely advantages to a setting having little if any difference between a heavily=armed merchant and a warship. That is especially true of a setting with a group like the Space Vikings around.

I am just looking at if from the standpoint of someone who has had to learn merchant and warship design as a result of some of the work that I do. That is now part of my background thinking. What I may do for my Piper Out Rim universe is drawn on the Victorian Period when it comes to warships. There you had a small fleet of ironclads backed up by a much larger force of unarmored ships that were not much different than merchant ships. I just need to determine how to do that within the confines of the Classic ship design sequence and the Cepheus Engine. That is still a work in progress.

 

[infojunky]

My problem with constructing warships using Book 2 or the Classic Rules is that the construction process treats warships as simply heavily-armed merchant ships, somewhat akin to the ships of the Elizabethan period. Then, the difference between a heavily-armed merchant ship and a purpose-built warship was not that great.

>some snippage<

The above quote shows that the sensors of a military ship are considerably different from the sensors of a merchant ship. A four-fold increase in detection range is a massive difference in capability, and should indicate a massive difference in cost, if the sensor cost are lumped into the cost of the ship bridge. Likewise, a warship is going to have to have a large amount of redundancy built into it in order to absorb damage, along with a high degree of compartmentalization. Those are not going to be needed on a merchant ship. Warships should cost at least double, and more likely more than double, the cost of the same size of merchant ship. A warship is going to put a premium on high acceleration, while to a merchant ship, high acceleration just means a more expensive ship with less carrying capacity.

Remember, a merchant ship's primary purpose is to generate income for the owner. If it fails at that, it is a dead loss as a ship. A warship's primary purpose is combat and the ability to survive combat. Those two facts are pretty much mutually exclusive.

Actually you answer your own question, if you look at how Book 2 works.

In that compare a 400 dTon ship in both merchant and warship models. For the sake of this exercise we will assume a similar jump performance of J2.

The Merchant, Maneuver 1, thus requiring a B drive which has a damage capacity of 1 hit. 8mcr

The Warship, Maneuver 3, we fit a G drive with a damage capacity of 6 hits. 28mcr

Just with the very 1st example we see a vast difference between the Merchant and the Warship. Then you add in the differences in computers and the rest you get two vastly different ships with the same tonnage.

With that, I admit there are few hardwired differences in the rules between the two, but I contend there enough to build different ships.

One of the things I do is make a list of the arbitrary limits and requirements for broad classes of ships. Then use that when putting ships together.

 

[LiNeNoiSe]

It is a bit more complicated than that, but see signature for why that is so. I can say that unless you get really lucky, or the ship has inadequate firefighting equipment, it will take multiple Harpoon or Exocet hits to sink a destroyer. They will do very nicely taking out the fast missile boats, however.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Sheffield_(D80)#Sinking

 

[Timerover51]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Sheffield_(D80)#Sinking

There is a lot more to it than what Wikipedia has. See signature.

 

[LiNeNoiSe]

There is a lot more to it than what Wikipedia has. See signature.

Nevertheless, a destroyer was sunk with one Exocet missile.

 

[McPerth]

Note while I did state book 2 for ship design, I didn't specify a combat system.

IMHO both must go in tandem. If you try (to put an example) to use LBB2 to design the ships but HG for combat, it is likely not to work.

 

[martletsquire]

Pendragon - Exactly. The combat round has plenty space for micro-movement (slewing, rolling, yawing or all three) in order to bring weapons to bear. This is especially useful for those using HG combat on small ships as it allows a single triple-sandcaster turret to bring it's tubes to bear in a full sphere. And would also explain why the enemy fire seems to wiggle all over the target ship.

McPerth - I have found that HG combat rules to work quite well with LBB ships, especially those that have mega numbers of turrets. Just each turret is a battery. Of course, unless you're running a really big comp with autofire, you are dealing with a poop-load of gunners. Especially if you have dedicated magazine crews running missiles and cannisters to the reloading equipment for the individual turrets. But then again, might encourage the ship owners to upgrade the comps/sensors to cut down on the number of physical gunners, or encourage them to get 'gun-bots', either fixed per turret or mobile (I prefer 'sentient' turrets myself.)

The LBB / Mayday combat rules sometimes seem to be a bit kludgie sometimes, especially in a multi-multi missile environment. Especially when you get that 50 missile triple turret ship firing all turrets at once. Though it is fun doing vector movements and watching the missiles chase the ships.

 

[Timerover51]

Nevertheless, a destroyer was sunk with one Exocet missile.

I did allow for lucky hits. The Israeli Destroyer Eilat, a World War 2 British "Z"-class destroyer took 3 hits from Russian-built Styx anti-ship missiles before sinking. The USS Stark to a hit from one and survived. The USS Cole had the equivalent ot 500 or so pounds of TNT, about twice the weight of explosive that would be in the warhead of either a Harpoon or Exocet, go off against her hell and she also survived. There were a considerable number of tankers hit by Exocets during the Iran-Irag War, and the main reason for writing those off was the fact that the Exocets were hitting in the engine room, indicating that the missiles were homing in on the brightest corner reflector. Roughly half of those did not explode. That information is unclassified. The difficulty of removing a live, unexploded missile warhead from a tanker engine room was too great to risk anyone's life, so the tankers were listed as total losses and scraped, after the warhead was detonated in place.

I have a study done by the US Navy Bureau of Ships in 1944 analysis of the likelihood off ships being sunk by aerial weapons and torpedoes that is quite detailed, being based on a large number of ship damage reports from World War 2, along with a fair number of ship damage reports and studies done by the Royal Navy. The US Navy BuShips report is unclassified, and one of these days I need to put it into PDF format.

By the way, Wikipedia is a useful way of putting misinformation out there.

 

[kilemall]

My problem with constructing warships using Book 2 or the Classic Rules is that the construction process treats warships as simply heavily-armed merchant ships, somewhat akin to the ships of the Elizabethan period. Then, the difference between a heavily-armed merchant ship and a purpose-built warship was not that great.



The above quote shows that the sensors of a military ship are considerably different from the sensors of a merchant ship. A four-fold increase in detection range is a massive difference in capability, and should indicate a massive difference in cost, if the sensor cost are lumped into the cost of the ship bridge. Likewise, a warship is going to have to have a large amount of redundancy built into it in order to absorb damage, along with a high degree of compartmentalization. Those are not going to be needed on a merchant ship. Warships should cost at least double, and more likely more than double, the cost of the same size of merchant ship. A warship is going to put a premium on high acceleration, while to a merchant ship, high acceleration just means a more expensive ship with less carrying capacity.

Remember, a merchant ship's primary purpose is to generate income for the owner. If it fails at that, it is a dead loss as a ship. A warship's primary purpose is combat and the ability to survive combat. Those two facts are pretty much mutually exclusive.

I would take the cost of military ship computers vs. the traditional Model/1 to be a huge cost and performance difference.

Dig into the actual CT computer program combat subgame, especially paying full price for those more capable programs, and then the effects they can have.

There is a world of difference between a Free Trader with it's piddly bundle of barely operate the ship plus whatever homebrew programs that may break, and a fully equipped warship software suite. It's brutal, and translates into situations where the merchant can't even hit the warship at range while the warship picks apart the merchant at leisure- fast.

As for the sensor differences, it never bothered me back in the day, I figured it was 'restricted electronics' which an enterprising captain with the need could get illegally retrofitted.

Nowadays I find my players are not the slightest bit interested in playing the computer game, so I took a cue from many on this board and assume the full computer buy also includes the sensor suite.

Then I worked out a formula to define exactly how capable the ship sensors are, with a view to approximating the CT results.

Detection Range= (Model# +/- HG target ship size + .1 TL) x 150,000 km

Tracking Range= (TL + M# +/- HG sensor ship size) x 100,000 km

Bis treated as one up.

The HG size refers to the -2 through +2 range. Most ACS are - 1.

So a TL9 Free Trader would Detect 135,000 km against most ACS, 235,000 km against 1000 ton plus, and Tracking at 900,000 km.

A TL11 ACS warship with Model/4 would be 615,000 km detects against most ACS, and tracks to 1.4 million km (or almost 5 LS).

A TL15 fully tricked out Model/9 ACS detects other ACS at 1.425 million km, and tracks to 2.3 million km- almost 8 LS.

To even things up a bit and offer more options, I have three options for ships- active, passive and doggo/stealth.

Active is any kind of active transmission, maneuver, sensor or firing.

Passive is ship is powered up but not using any of the above.

Doggo is powering everything off and being blind. Stealth is largely the same but paying for exotic hardware/software to allow passive at doggo results.

Active ships get detected at full tracking range, passive requires detection range, and doggo/stealth is as the rule you quoted.

Little more complex but not that much, you get the idea.

 

[Brandon C]

I have a study done by the US Navy Bureau of Ships in 1944 analysis of the likelihood off ships being sunk by aerial weapons and torpedoes that is quite detailed, being based on a large number of ship damage reports from World War 2, along with a fair number of ship damage reports and studies done by the Royal Navy. The US Navy BuShips report is unclassified, and one of these days I need to put it into PDF format.

WWII torpedoes were about 20x the weight of Traveller missiles. Presumably there is a similar ratio in warhead sizes. This would require a significant increase in explosive energy per kg.

 

[infojunky]

IMHO both must go in tandem. If you try (to put an example) to use LBB2 to design the ships but HG for combat, it is likely not to work.

Well, then I must point out that Mayday is a iteration of the Book 2 combat rules and work just fine, with either Book 2's or Maydays Damage system.

As for book 2 ships under book 5's combat system, I have found they work just fine as well. Though on must remember in it's heart book 5 is a fleet combat sim who core damage mechanic is the Critical hit.

 

[kilemall]

WWII torpedoes were about 20x the weight of Traveller missiles. Presumably there is a similar ratio in warhead sizes. This would require a significant increase in explosive energy per kg.

Nowadays I think of Traveller missiles and their warheads as creating a higher probability shot pattern and the damage vector is kinetic impact.

 

[Timerover51]

WWII torpedoes were about 20x the weight of Traveller missiles. Presumably there is a similar ratio in warhead sizes. This would require a significant increase in explosive energy per kg.

World War 2 aerial torpedoes ran in weight from circa 1500 pounds for the 18 inch variety to 2200 pounds for the US 22.4 inch Mark 13. Submarine torpedoes generally ran somewhere in the vicinity of 4000 pounds, while the massive Japanese 24 inch Long Lance torpedoes weighed over 5000 pounds. I would have to check Campbell's Naval Weapons of World War 2 for more exact weights. The current crop of 11.75 inch anti-submarine torpedoes have a warhead nearly the same weight as the entire Book 2 missile, and there are repeated charges, which I do not agree with at all, that they are not lethal enough against submarines. More than that, I cannot say.

The warhead weight used in the study was the 600 pound warhead of the US aerial torpedo, which went from 600 pounds of TNT to 600 pounds of Torpex in 1943. Torpex is about twice as good as TNT in inflicting damage on a target, so the TNT equivalent of 600 pounds of Torpex is around 1200 pounds, just about the size of the Japanese 1243 pound Long Lance warhead, which used an explosive slightly less powerful than TNT. Submarine torpedo warheads ran about 750 pounds of explosive or so, and were upgraded from TNT to Torpex during 1943-44 when the supply of RDX explosive increased. Note, most manuals only list Torpex as about 1.5 times as powerful as TNT, but the unclassified reports I have of full-scale damage tests conducted in World War 2 along with actual damage on targets in World War 2 confirm the twice as powerful figure.

The current Mark 48 warhead is reported to use a PBX-based explosive, and if correct, that would give it a punch of slightly more than 3 times that of TNT. The PBX yield was declassified under a Freedom of Information request by the Union of Concerned Scientist regarding US nuclear weapons, which was an oversight of the people doing the declassification. That would give the warhead of the Mark 48 a punch equivalent to 2000 pounds or so of TNT.

I will not comment on the warhead of the standard Traveller Book 2 missile that packs the guidance system, warhead, and propulsion system into a 50 kilogram package, or about the weight of a Sidewinder air-to-air missile. As for the idea that a missile of that size could be used as a planetary surface bomb, it would be useful for taking out a truck or a very lightly-armored vehicle. Every once in a while in Vietnam, a pilot over North Vietnam could pick up a truck with the Sidewinder's heat-seeking guidance system, and rather than carrying it back home, clobbered the truck with it. The Sidewinder warhead was set for direct impact detonation, as if was not large enough for effective proximity action.

The Mark 8 torpedoes used by the HMS Conqueror on the Argentine General Belgrano were Torpex loaded and had the equivalent of 1500 pounds of TNT as a warhead. A US Brooklynn-class cruiser was not going to be able to survive two hits from those unless exceptionally fortunate. There were three cases in World War 2 of Long Lance hits in the bow area breaking off the bow, and she took one hit in the bow. The other hit was apparently in the vicinity of the bulkhead separating the forward engine room from the after fire room and knocked out her entire power plant. That is basically the hit combination that sank the USS Helena. A sad ending for a Pearl Harbor survivor, but it does beat the wreckers yard.

 

[infojunky]

Nowadays I think of Traveller missiles and their warheads as creating a higher probability shot pattern and the damage vector is kinetic impact.

I can live with that. Kinetic Kill with annular fragmentation makes perfect sense by me, in that even a near miss will have a higher likelihood of making damaging contact with the target.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The Sidewinder had a proximity detonation system (active IR, and until later models a magnetic influence detector as well) that would detonate the warhead in the event of a near miss -- detecting whether the missile had "just" missed. Early models likely relied on this as the primary kill mechanism; later, more accurate ones would have been more likely to score direct hits and trigger the impact detonation system. Proximity detonation would only be effective in a rear-aspect interception near miss where the missile would be alongside or ahead of the target at warhead detonation so the target would be struck by or fly into the shrapnel disc. Current versions of the missile can intercept from all aspects, so they may not have the same proximity sensors.

 

[LiNeNoiSe]

By the way, Wikipedia is a useful way of putting misinformation out there.

In this case, it was accurate. Sheffield was sunk by an Exocet.

I remember when it happened.

 

[Timerover51]

In this case, it was accurate. Sheffield was sunk by an Exocet.

I remember when it happened.

I was not arguing about Sheffield being hit by an Exocet. I remember it as well, as I was 30 at the time of the Falklands War. If the British had not had to try and tow her to South Georgia, she probably would not have been lost, although she might have ended up being stripped of usable equipment and being what is called a "constructive total loss."

As I was taking a graduate school research class at the time, for my research project to chose to try and predict where the British would land. I tracked down a copy of the Falkland Island Colonial Reports, and obtained it through interlibrary loan. It have about a 3 foot by 3 foot map of the Falklands, and after thorough study, I put the British as landing in the San Carlos Water area, but I figured that they would land on a Sunday, not a Friday, to put the Argentines off guard a bit. I did get an "A" in the class.

 

[LiNeNoiSe]

As I was taking a graduate school research class at the time, for my research project to chose to try and predict where the British would land. I tracked down a copy of the Falkland Island Colonial Reports, and obtained it through interlibrary loan. It have about a 3 foot by 3 foot map of the Falklands, and after thorough study, I put the British as landing in the San Carlos Water area, but I figured that they would land on a Sunday, not a Friday, to put the Argentines off guard a bit. I did get an "A" in the class.

i don't suppose you've still got the paper? I'd like to read it.

 

[Timerover51]

i don't suppose you've still got the paper? I'd like to read it.

I am sorry, but I have no idea where it went after the class. That was a little while ago. I think that I could re-create some of it, but I would have to see about getting another good map.

Part of the analysis was locating an area which could be sealed off from submarine attack, as the Argentines did have a couple of reasonably modern submarines, as well as setting up some land-based air defenses to supplement the ship-based missiles and guns. Enclosed water would also aid in ship unloading and operating. All this being not too close to the main concentrations at Port Stanley and Goose Green, but within marching distance. The San Carlos Water/Port San Carlos area fit the bill nicely for all of that.