Cruiser v Cruiser-rider
- Thread starter Garyius2003
- Start date
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
Nope, I'm talking about a full fledged Defense in Depth including, among others, Holding, Fixing, Blocking, Economy of Force and Maneuver forces such as Trading Space for Time, Counter Attack, Retrograde, Reaction, Rear Guard, Breaking Contact, Raid and Guerrilla Warfare, etc.
I'm an ex Field Grade Officer and know how to research, plan, evaluate and execute a proper Defense in Depth.
I've run the scenario to many times to count (Since TCS came out) and war-gamed it with any number of other amateur as well as professional warriors.
A J4 Fleet will lose. Send me a typical J4 BB, or Cruiser, design you think will win and I'll be happy to show you the counter. To get J4 & Meson "T", decked out to survive ship, you are looking at 700ktonnes per ship. Unworkable against a Credit for Credit expenditure Fleet designed at lower Jump number.
Again, under the current rules, your J4 invading fleet CAN NOT make effective repair to battle damage. Even IF, and that's a big IF, you took a system with extensive yards you can't use them for years, if ever.
I don't have catch up to your J4 Fleet, just wear it down till I either can, or "catch" it in the right place. You can run all over the Marches (for quite a while) but you can't "win" without taking the right Systems. Take a hundred or more crap planets and you've done nothing as I can retake them as soon as you move on (or try to hold against a superior counter attacking force). Assuming it's even worth the effort. No, I'm not going to even try to have a serious defending force every place, just the "right places". Without taking those "right places", you achieve nothing worth calling victory.
Those places we do fight, even if I lose a fleet, yours CAN NOT repair, and I have many, many, more ships in many, many fleets. Your invasion fleet(s) get(s) weaker (and slower) to the point I can now chase it down. Still, why bother? You have take certain systems to "win" and control the Marches. Do you really think a J4 fleet will EVER take Mora? That just isn't going to happen!
So, rather than continue to tell me I'm wrong, let's compare fleets.
BTW Don't begin to think ALL my ships are going to be J2, there will be a good, workable mix.
Also, while your Fleet(s) are invading, what's defending your territory from retaliation? Even a "slow" J2 fleet will clean up. Again, expending Credit for Credit, you can't win in the long run.
Attacking with "enough" J4s doesn't leave you anything worth talking about to defend with. With J2s I can outgun ANY J4 fleet you can build. I an easily do this in your own territory causing you to abort your attack or face destruction. Even then, you are out gunned and out numbered.
With J4s you are talking about a "cavalry" style of warfare, while I'm looking at "combined arms". Cavalry can't win alone. Never has, never will. (You can take, but you can't hold.)
It's all about weapons at the right place at the right time.
against jump? against one-, two-, three-week-long delays in intel?
strategic maneuver campaigns or just straight-up tcs battles? 'cause in straight-up tcs battles you're absolutely right. but strategic maneuver campaign is a whole different animal.
which is why j2 will lose a strategic campaign. j2 cannot defend adequately everywhere. j2 cannot block j4. j2 cannot chase j4. j2 cannot surprise j4. j2 can only wait for j4 to choose to engage.
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
Of course not! Nobody has, but there are parallels.
Strategic maneuver campaigns. TCS battles are to skewed and unrealistic to hold any meaning in a strategic fleet composition.
Believe if you will. I gave perfectly good reasons otherwise (above) which if I may point out you haven't refuted other than with these sweeping blanket statements.
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
Winning's nice I guess but I'd really rather have heard your counter arguments. These is much to be learned from another persons perspective and I'd have welcomed a good discussion. Sorry I didn't convey that well enough earlier.
I'd still like to see your main J4 ship.
What scale? Number of ships and size of theater?
You concentrate two (or, preferrably, more) J4 BBs for every J2 BB and achieve local superiority. Then you go somewhere else and do the same thing again. That's how you defeat a J2 force with a J4 force.
Unless you use riders so you don't have to armor the drives and the fuel tanks.
BTW, I thought you could get a Meson T into a 75,000T cruiser. Where do you get the 700T from?
Which of the current rules says that? Because there is a historical example of the Zhodani doing just that in one of the Frontier Wars. I think it was the third one. They captured Porozlo and used it as a base. The Fulacin gambit was designed to create a similar situation.
No, you have to do it before the J4 fleet destroys the naval facilities at too many of your right systems. Which by definition they must have a shot at, since an attack against someone who can garrison every one of his right systems againt everything you can throw at him would be just plain stupid.
But your losses would be much greater than mine and now one of your right systems are no longer able to contribute to the maintenance of your fleets for a while. And when you do retake the system (which I will not defend) you have to use some of your other ships to garrison it (unless you're prepared to leave it vulnerable to a small strike force of J5 cruisers).
Unless the surviving riders are being transported by fully intact tenders.
The Marches? How do you come up with a credit-for-credit balance for a Zhodani-Imperial fight over the Marches?
Not if it has been chased down by a superior force of J4 ships.
Don't think that all my ships are going to be J4, there will be a good workable mix.
How many systems do I have and how deep into my terrotory does your J2 counterstrike fleet have to go? These sweeping generalizations are not convincing.
The big problem I have with your claim is that the current rules doesn't HAVE rules for campaigns. Nothing about logistics, nothing about planetary defenses and sieges. Whatever TCS games you and your friends have run on a sector-wide campaign scale you have to have come up with a lot of house rules (or possibly ignored some crucial aspects). Rules that may not be the same rules other people would agree with. Such as the one about being unable to use captured shipyards.
Hans
the ruleset is based on hg but is very modified (especially armor):
cherry - screen rider, 1.9kdtons, m6, factor 9 beam battery, armor 14+7, various secondary weapons
allosaurus - main battle rider, 19kdtons, m6, factor N meson, armor 11+7, various secondary weapons
kurashk - main battle rider, 19kdtons, m6, factor T particle, armor 5+7, various secondary weapons
tok - rider transport, 94kdtons, j4, m1 loaded m2 unloaded, 2 main battle riders, various secondary weapons
tikkit - rider transport, 14kdtons, j4, m1 loaded m2 unloaded, 2 screen riders, various secondary weapons
squadron: 3 toks, 3 tikkits, 3 allosauri, 3 kurashks, 6 cherrys
battlegroup - 3 squadrons (scouts and support ships - cargo, lighter, maintenance/repair, rescue/recovery, and marines - added asreq)
line fleet - 3 battlegroups
sector/grand fleet - 3 line fleets
(each battlegroup also has some standard j4 cruisers but these are not at all line ships)
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Vladika
SOC-14 1K
Was this based on One Trillion Credits or what value? Also, I don't understand your Armour numbers.
Garyius2003
SOC-13
Replay America v IJN, with cruiser riders and tenders in place of carriers and squadrons. Under HG rules, the tenders will be safe.
America/3I wins if they put enough hulls in, even if the IJN/Zho fleet is playing local, so long as there is a 5/1 advantage, and so long as the 3I is allowed to set up forward repair and supply bases.
As for the field grade officer, I played many of those Defense in Depth games out as a snuffy, but there are not roads, hills, or trees in space.
America/3I wins if they put enough hulls in, even if the IJN/Zho fleet is playing local, so long as there is a 5/1 advantage, and so long as the 3I is allowed to set up forward repair and supply bases.
As for the field grade officer, I played many of those Defense in Depth games out as a snuffy, but there are not roads, hills, or trees in space.
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
With the right fleet mix a tender will NEVER get fired on, much less hit.
Duh but that is only going to happen TL15 vs TL14, NOT were both sides start with equal Credits to build their respective fleets at TL15. (Come on, the Zho's don't stand an ice cubes chance. Smaller, Lower Tech Empire?)
Sure, if you toss out the parts of the rules that work against you. Do that and you'll always win at anything. (I just could never get those pesky Eastern Block nations to do that while working out barrier plans for the Fulda Gap...)
Literally; no. Figuratively; yes.
BTW, I was a Grunt long before working my arse off to work up the ranks. I've seen it from BOTH sides. But feel free to trash professional training and experience. Armchair Generals have been doing that since the dawn of time. Odd isn't it that the Monday morning Quarterbacks are never hired to coach? And that's not intended as a slam, I've done my share of that too.
Hi,
One thing I do with my Tenders is give them spare fuel for an additional J1,
gives them the J4 capability and the option to jump out without refuelling if things are too hot, they can also act as a tanker for their Riders, it does mean fewer Riders though...
Kind Regards
David
Hm, I have problems with the relative costs of things as well.
But, it's worth remembering that there are more reasons than military ones for building specific types of ships, we are currently building 2 aircraft carriers that won't have any aircraft, so they are obviously built for prestige reasons rather than military ones.
Regards
David
I've built fleets for several planets using TCS and a High tech, high pop world can produce a ridiculous quantity of ships, compared to present day earth.
My thinking is that tech increases costs should increase as well producing fewer ships so 1,000 ships at TL3 becomes hundreds and TL4 & 5 and by TL7 you are down to 40 or so ships.
Regards
David
Hi,
The rules are OK for a one off action, not for simulating a campaign involving high tech high pop worlds, (low tech pop world have the problem they can't afford to defend themselves).
I think there is some canon on the Tenders/Riders been held in reserve somewhere, as they are too vulnerable to a surprise assault to station near the frontier, another reason to build some battleships to show the flag in remote frontier regions.
Kind Regards
David
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
Hi David. I believe you are correct, unfortunately CT/HG/TCS is all we've really got to work with.
It is overly simplistic but I make do.
This is all to true! Unfortunately for them, in a campaign, they are all to often not worth defending. (Limited resources.)
This is BT/BR deployment, as I understand it, from canon. I do find that with a proper fleet mix they can be used very effectively in assaults though. I do build BBs though I'm sure many would regard them as Pocket Battleships or even Heavy Cruisers. (Not very many though; they are expensive.)
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those two will be flled with currently ground based squadrons. The USN has a surfeit of aviation units. Some of the F-14 reserve units may lose their F-14's to new active staff, or even be activated and deployed, to fill those two. (plus, we just decomissioned one).
Any carrier concept needs to have a surfeit of fighters to work. Riders are little different there.
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
Quite right. Isn't it an interesting comparison though? The Battlerider becomes the "fighter", of sorts, in Traveller. Mission, and deployment, are similar. Size-wise it is hard to wrap the mind around the concept.
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