Canonical Squadron/Fleet Actions with Interesting Details

[mike wightman]

Which exemplifies part of why no one really wants to integrate what's doable under TNE to the OTU, because if one does, it becomes rather unrecognizable.

That's you opinion not fact, based a lot on your hatred of TNE.

I for one like to use bits of TNE technology in MTU.

As to what the OTU does, do you mean the OTU as described my MgT or the OTU described by T5 (which accepts the TNE and 1248 settings as OTU history - retcons thick and fast incoming methinks)?
- since those are the two 'living 'versions'
- I am still waiting to see any T5 OTU background material.

 

[Condottiere]

Speaking of the torpedo, everyone and his mother then started embedding torpedo tubes on everything that floats, including battleships.

What really made a difference was finding it an appropriate delivery system.

 

[mike wightman]

Aircraft - no Traveller ship combat analogue
Submarine - no Traveller ship combat analogue
Turn the torpedo into a cruise missile - no traveller ship combat analogue

 

[Condottiere]

Mongoose has kamikaze drones.

 

[mike wightman]

Not exactly ship killers

 

[Condottiere]

I have issues with several variants of their drones, that included.

 

[mike wightman]

What is really needed is a detonation meson missile warhead. A small nuclear explosion generating the power for a one shot meson beam - a higher TL variant of the detonation laser.

Hmm - can't believe I haven't had this idea until now...

 

[Orr]

Mongoose has kamikaze drones.

Yeah, because the canonical OTU laser accuracy which forced TNE to accept reality and to adopt stand-off detonation lasers as missile warheads means it's somehow going to be harder to hit a larger drone which has to get close enough to impact it's target. :rofl:

Mongoose also claims small craft can force boarding actions by docking with larger vessels which choose to contest that docking. One user on the MgT forum said it was just like an aircraft landing on a moving carrier.

 

[DonM]

What is really needed is a detonation meson missile warhead. A small nuclear explosion generating the power for a one shot meson beam - a higher TL variant of the detonation laser.

Hmm - can't believe I haven't had this idea until now...

You need to write that up. Quick, while the idea is hot.

 

[Reban]

But how would that work?


To make a detonation laser warhead you strap lasing rods to a nuclear warhead. You can't do something similar for a meson weapon.

Or can you?

I thought the meson gun was a derivation of the Particle Accelerator, accelerating particles in a very precise way to cause degradation at a calculated point in space. You could probably build a meson missile by strapping the accelerator hardware, sensor package and bomb-pumped power source to the missile bus, but why would you? For that matter why no particle beam detonation missiles too?

Detonation lasers are very much a shotgun effect weapon, expolding and sending laser pulses towards a target. I'm not saying a meson missile can't be done I'm wondering how you both see it working? One thing it does do is overcome the meson gun's shorter range.

 

[mike wightman]

You are taking the idea too literally

It doesn't have to be a nuclear explosion powering it - jump drive capacitors could do the job.

A battlefield meson gun is just a little over a dt

So this 'missile' could be 2-5 dt in size, TL15, MCr30.

 

[rancke]

You are taking the idea too literally

It doesn't have to be a nuclear explosion powering it - jump drive capacitors could do the job.

A battlefield meson gun is just a little over a dt

So this 'missile' could be 2-5 dt in size, TL15, MCr30.

When I played in one of Steve Higginbotham's TCS campaigns, I started a research project about using zuchai crystals to power missiles.

(Didn't last long enough to get a result, alas).


Hans

 

[Reban]

Ohhhh now I gettit!

You are taking the idea too literally

It doesn't have to be a nuclear explosion powering it - jump drive capacitors could do the job.

A battlefield meson gun is just a little over a dt

So this 'missile' could be 2-5 dt in size, TL15, MCr30.

Ahh... Now that makes more sense.

In fact the first thing that jumps into my mind is Meson Mines. Drop the missile propulsion and sow them in a 3D pattern so that their danger spaces are mutually supporting.

Now I want to see the fully worked up version of the Meson Missile.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Yeah, because the canonical OTU laser accuracy which forced TNE to accept reality and to adopt stand-off detonation lasers as missile warheads means it's somehow going to be harder to hit a larger drone which has to get close enough to impact it's target. :rofl:

Mongoose also claims small craft can force boarding actions by docking with larger vessels which choose to contest that docking. One user on the MgT forum said it was just like an aircraft landing on a moving carrier.

I mean as far as I can tell, the person Orr is ragging on is right, trying to dock with a spaceship is rather like a carrier landing, scary, can go wrong quickly and may end with crashing. :devil:

 

[McPerth]

What is really needed is a detonation meson missile warhead. A small nuclear explosion generating the power for a one shot meson beam - a higher TL variant of the detonation laser.

Hmm - can't believe I haven't had this idea until now...

You need to write that up. Quick, while the idea is hot.

As I understood the articles in JTAS about spinals, a meson gun is a kind of particle accelerator, and so needs the particles to be accelerated, wither in a long linear spinal weapon or in a doghnut shaped structure (akin of a cyclotron). If so, I'm not sure this can be fit in a missile...

You are taking the idea too literally

It doesn't have to be a nuclear explosion powering it - jump drive capacitors could do the job.

A battlefield meson gun is just a little over a dt

So this 'missile' could be 2-5 dt in size, TL15, MCr30.

In this case, the "missile" could be recovered, and I'd call it more a drone than a missile. I guess we's need turret sized MG to achieve this, though (something not even appearing in MT, where ultra-high ship components up to TL 21 are described. There are disintegrator turrets there, but not MG ones).

 

[mike wightman]

Striker gives us the battlefield meson gun - all you need is the delivery method to get it close enough to an enemy ship to affect it.

Hence the 5 dt package - one and a bit tons for the meson accelerator, one ton for 36EPs of capacitors, one ton for a maneuver drive, one ton for the electronics/brain.

 

[aramis]

You are taking the idea too literally

It doesn't have to be a nuclear explosion powering it - jump drive capacitors could do the job.

A battlefield meson gun is just a little over a dt

So this 'missile' could be 2-5 dt in size, TL15, MCr30.

Practical 0.1 DT meson tubes do a couple damage points each.

You can thus make 1Dt Meson torpedoes... they're expensive, but they're also big enough to have a fusion plant. They become ROV meson fighters.

At which point, things start to look nothing like the OTU. 1Td Robot Fighters that can only be stopped with meson screens are an issue.

 

[Orr]

I mean as far as I can tell, the person Orr is ragging on is right, trying to dock with a spaceship is rather like a carrier landing, scary, can go wrong quickly and may end with crashing. :devil:

So many things can quickly go wrong when the carrier wants and helps the aircraft to land, can you imagine just how quickly things can go really wrong when the carrier does not want that aircraft to land and takes actions to prevent the same?

The "genius" at the MgT board wasn't able to.

When you remember just what sort of shenanigans a ship can undertake via yaw, pitch, and roll movement, the idea that a small craft can force a docking with a larger vessel which contests that docking is ludicrous.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Geeeez.

So many things can quickly go wrong when the carrier wants and helps the aircraft to land, can you imagine just how quickly things can go really wrong when the carrier does not want that aircraft to land and takes actions to prevent the same?

The "genius" at the MgT board wasn't able to.

When you remember just what sort of shenanigans a ship can undertake via yaw, pitch, and roll movement, the idea that a small craft can force a docking with a larger vessel which contests that docking is ludicrous.

Except when you add players. Then all bets are off, anything goes. It is sort of the point.

 

[Orr]

Except when you add players. Then all bets are off, anything goes. It is sort of the point.

Players aren't magic. Players aren't "Ignore the basic underpinnings of the setting" cards either.

Vector movement still applies to players and NPCs alike. Jump drive works the same regardless of whether players or NPCs throw the switch. Guns still kill players and NPCs in the same way.

If your players are special snowflakes who can ignore the basics and rely on the "Rule of Cool", you're not playing Traveller.