Cruisers in Traveller

[pendragonman]

Generally stored supplies will be a better bet. Not just food, but CO2 scrubbers, water filters and purifiers, additional oxygen and water also need to be accounted for. Plucking a figure from T20 that would be 20 months of supplies for an individual per dTon. Assuming you want an endurance of more then a year then an additional dTon per crew of cargo space would supply that adequately.

The other advantage of just carrying supplies as cargo is that the vessel can drop the supplies if it needs to be pressed to another mission. Stripping out an extensive hydroponics setup may be a different matter.

You clearly underestimate the value of fresh food to crew morale, and it will be crew morale (not maintenance levels or supply levels) that determine the success of such a voyage.

A crew with a high morale will be more apt to make successful, long term jury-rigged repairs in the lack of proper facilities. A crew with a high morale is more likely to make any sudden change to mission successful, regardless of shipboard facilities.

For a more clear understanding of the fresh food to morale connection, I suggest you eat frozen dinners for every meal and drink only instant coffee and reconstituted beverages, every day, until someone on the boards here tells you you can stop. By the end of the first week I predict you will be preoccupied with daydreams of fresh produce and real tea.

Further, the hydroponics will act as CO2 scrubbers somewhat.

 

[veltyen]

You clearly underestimate the value of fresh food to crew morale, and it will be crew morale (not maintenance levels or supply levels) that determine the success of such a voyage.

I wasn't entirely disagreeing with you, just pointing out the obvious.

The additional flexibility of carrying only stored food - rather then a water, labour and space expensive hydroponics setup is likely to factor heavily on what is a military vessel.

I love the idea for other types of long duration vessels. Just not military ones on a large scale.

On a small scale - the occasional cupboard growing a dozen lettuce, ornamental edible plants in the bunkrooms - I wholeheartedly agree, but this is an adjunct to any stores carried, not a solution in itself.

For a more clear understanding of the fresh food to morale connection, I suggest you eat frozen dinners for every meal and drink only instant coffee and reconstituted beverages, every day, until someone on the boards here tells you you can stop. By the end of the first week I predict you will be preoccupied with daydreams of fresh produce and real tea.

If you've ditched the cooks and the captains chef for a hydro setup, maybe other factors may be coming into morale. Stored food is not MRE's, nor is it instant dinners.

After the first year you get used to that diet. Not that I lived on anything that classy. Tubes of reconstituted meat, crackers and instant noodles along with vitamins is a diet you can live on indefinitely. In my case I was working on other things - food is just fuel after all. You start living for your goals, rather then the moment. For me it was finishing Uni. For a long haul cruiser sailer it would be the years salary and X weeks leave each year.

Further, the hydroponics will act as CO2 scrubbers somewhat.

Yes, but with a greatly lowered efficiency. Any increase in efficiency due to TL would likely be balanced by an increase in efficiency of any mechanical method.

 

[robject]

You clearly underestimate the value of fresh food to crew morale, and it will be crew morale (not maintenance levels or supply levels) that determine the success of such a voyage.
[...]

Yeah, tell that to my father-in-law. Apparently the military has (traditionally at least) taken a rather utilitarian view of food...

Er, note that military-style range is my current goal. Colony ships will have better food supplies, but I'm currently interested in cruisers that are sneaking behind enemy lines.

 

[navywarlord]

After 20 years of Navy cooking, I've survived through the gamut of decent cooking, utilitarian cooking and MREs (especially when the mess decks are shut down and coverted to bomb assembly areas - ask any carrier sailor)
The Navy is trying to teach their cooks better cooking - I retired before their efforts hit the fleet.

Getting fresh supplies from the UNREP ships was always a morale booster - wait too long between resupplies and the you go from milk to boxed (long life) milk to powdered milk (yes, its still out there) to water... There is a limit to the shelflife on even the hardiest of food stuffs so just having extra cargo space converted to food may not be enough...

(I vaguely remember WWII stories about submariners that would stack canned food in the passageways of the sub and walk on them during the early parts of their war cruises - they would eat their way back down to the deckplates - a sacrifice they would make to stay in the fight)

 

[Golan2072]

Algae tanks would probably serve better than more traditional hydroponics as air scrubbers, and with the right mix of microorganisms they could act as a waste-recycling and water-recycling system as well. Just add in shrimps to covert some of those algae into meat and you'll have some fresh food to supplement your canned/dried food diet.

 

[Murph]

And where would Battle Cruisers come into play? Remember a Battle Cruiser was supposed to be a cruiser killer, not designed to fight battleships like at Jutland. So where do Battlecruisers fit into the scheme of things and what size would they be? I see M6/J4 or better at a minimum.

Reading a history of naval warfare in the 19th Century today (Rolf Hobson, "Imperialism at Sea", Boston & Leiden, 2002) I started wondering about the role of cruisers as a class in the Traveller universe. To my mind a clearer distinction could have been made between them and battleships/battleriders in canon designs. Why not have cruisers as they were intended in the 19th Century ideas of the 'French school'. The key point being that cruisers are differentiated from battlewagons by their range and speed: unlike battleships whose range and speed were limited, cruisers were capable of both showing the flag in distant ports in peacetime, and roving far and wide in commerce raiding in wartime.

 

[Condottiere]

Battle cruiser is just a term for a dead end evolution of the cruiser.

The British approach was to up gun a cruiser, the German one was to down gun a battleship.

I think that the pocket battleship concept expressed it best, outgun everything smaller, and outrun anything bigger.

 

[Otto Harkaman]

• Escort Cruisers
• Light Cruisers
• Cruisers
• Armored Cruisers
• Heavy Cruisers
• Battle Cruisers

I think the British listed the German pocket battleships as Battlecruisers? I think the British Battlecruisers that were destroyed at Jutland weren't suppose to be used that way? The HMS Hood was originally a Battlecruiser?

Where do modern Destroyers and Frigates fit into this whole thing? I think in the age of sail Frigates were Cruisers? :coffeesip:

 

[Condottiere]

Fisher intended that the battlecruisers would be used for commerce protection and reconnaissance in force. Scheer achieved tactical surprise; Beatty certainly was surprised. Beatty may also have been playing it cute, hoping to close the range and overwhelm his opponent with pure fire power.

Regardless, British battle cruisers and armoured cruisers are not intended to to stand in the line of battle, nor I think did Jellicoe mean to have them do so in any event, having an over abundance of the real thing.

 

[Selandia]

You know the old naval argument?

Q: If galleys cant fight man-o-war, why should we have galleys?
A: because they are the only ships capable to pursue enemy galleys upwind!
Q: why should we spend the money we should use to build man-o-war for building ships to fight enemy ships that cannot harm man-o-war?

By the time of Jutland, Armored Cruisers were obsolete and there was no mission for them beside gun fodders or trashing older protected cruisers that should not be at sea to start with.

Any design is a compromise, BC are seen as keeping gun and speed over armor while the Pocket battleship retained some form of balance. Their official designation Panzer Shiff - armoured ships is closer to armoured cruiser than battle cruiser.

This be said, the truth is that ships desigh might have little to do with notionnal concept and a lot with missions, circumstances, lawyers and accountants:
- Deutchland class Panzershiff (so called Pocket battleships) were limited to 10,000 by Versaille treaty requirement. 6 were intended, 3 built.
- The Dunkerque class BC of the french were produced as an answer by the french (that had a 70,000 t replacement building allocation available under the Washington treaty) designed to outrun & outfight (at 23,333 tons, 3 possible 2 built) the Pocket battleships while respecting french budget and the overall Washington treaty tonnage limitation. The original design of 17,500 t (4 to 70,000 t) would have made the lawyers and accountants happy but the sailor did not want to fight with the paper of spreadsheet and treaties as armor.
- The 2 ships of the Scharnhorst class were paid and built by cancelling the last3 Deutchland as a reaction to the Dunkerque. To tackle the french BC they came in at 32,000 tons with battleship like armour. If their guns where 9 x 280 rather than 6 x 380 (the french had 8x330) it is because in 1935 there was the Anglo-German naval treaty négociations where the Brits vetoed guns bigger than 280. The design of the 380 would wait for the Bismark.

the 8 ships too big for cruiser - too small for battleships designed and built in the interwar years had nothing to do with any transcendant BC concept. 5 just got the BC label slapped on and 3 were armored cruisers properly dignified with a name that did not refer to an obsolete concept.

have fun

Selandia

 

[Condottiere]

The fast battleship concept overtook that of the battle cruiser, and the aircraft overtook them both.

The battle cruiser became a candidate (and possibly a victim) of commonality, as the concept of the all big gun battleship took hold, so why not upgrade the armoured cruisers to that standard as well, as the extra range and fire power would knock out their natural prey, commerce raiders, whose biggest proponent would be their opposing (predreadnought) armoured cruiser.

 

[Meeko100]

I imagine that whatever stores on board the ship would have to only really last a week or so. Then they can get to the next planet and stock up again. For long haul marches into enemy territory, or across the entire empire, then maybe having the ship be self-sufficient is a much better idea.

I would be on the side of small-scale food growing, with enough algae tanks to feed the crew almost indefinitely, but that would be kept as a last-resort if they REALLY needed to blast to the front, or to advance quickly with no time to stop for resupply.

Real Food > Algae > No Food

Hydroponics are great and all, but aren't those still limited to how long the plant takes to grow? So "resupply" from a hydroponic pond may be 3 months out. Unless I am a uneducated individual, you'd obviously go for the algae for emergency feeding of the crew.

Just noticed the earlier talk about supplies in space and found it interesting.

 

[Condottiere]

Solomani Fleet Squadrons each have a fleet tender attached, for replenishment under way.

My take on it is that each two ship division has a tender, and that it's pre-arranged that before it empties it's stores, the Logistics Command schedules for it to be relieved, or it could head off to the nearest base to pick up supplies.

 

[mike wightman]

Ever seen how they put stores on a boomer? Every spare space is stuffed with food.

The cruise duration for a boomer is limited by how much food they can carry for the crew.

I imagine a long duration mission for a Traveller ship would do the same, every spare space gets crammed with as much food as you can.

 

[aramis]

Ever seen how they put stores on a boomer? Every spare space is stuffed with food.

The cruise duration for a boomer is limited by how much food they can carry fro the crew.

I imagine a long duration mission for a Traveller ship would do the same, every spare space gets crammed with as much food as you can.

There's one other critical store - CO2 Scrubber canisters. In theory, the can recharge the LiOH ones using heat and disposable airmass, but in practice, they rely on canister replacement.

 

[mike wightman]

There's the good old Beltstrike rules on extended life support - they mention CO2 scrubber replacements too IIRC.

 

[Condottiere]

On a slight tangent, Star Destroyers have stores for five years, and protein shakes are the encouraged MRE.

 

[SanDragon]

Need more than just protein!

 

[Drakon]

There's one other critical store - CO2 Scrubber canisters. In theory, the can recharge the LiOH ones using heat and disposable airmass, but in practice, they rely on canister replacement.

LiOH canisters are kept as emergency equipment aboard submarines. For regular CO2 extraction, you spray the air with amine, which soaks up the CO2 but leaves the N2 and O2. Collect the amine and heat it up in a chamber, it gives off the CO2 which can be pumped or blown overboard.

This system operates as a close loop and replenishment is not a limiting factor.

But you are right about there being one other critical store, toilet paper. There is a story of a fast boat out of San Diego that discovered a russian submarine just off the coast. A scheduled 1 week op turned into 6 weeks, and one of the biggest problems they had to deal with was a shortage of toilet paper.

Formerly ET1 (NUC) SS

 

[Condottiere]

I believe the Japanese have solved that (t)issue, with an automated toilet.