Diving into the Wreck: FSotSI

[Garnfellow]

The MegaTraveller supplement Fighting Ships of the Shattered Imperium is notable for being one of the few GDW books to be decanonized. The description of the Navy is frequently incompatible with CT sources, and the designs are reportedly badly broken. As I am neither a ship builder nor a wargamer (due simply to lack of time rather than interest), I found the book vastly less interesting than CT's Fighting Ships book -- rather than text blurbs accompanying each ship class, we get a prosaic serial number and then a dump of game stats. We don't even get names for the various ship classes.

But I've sometimes wondered -- is there anything that can be salvaged from this book? MJD was able to pull some useful fleet information into his Mongoose Traveller: Sector Fleet book.

I decided to take a look at the battleships from FSotSI. Assuming the designs are beyond hope, what if we pulled back to the most basic details -- is there something useful or insightful there? Perhaps these could then eventually form the basis of T5 builds?

Class	Type	kTon	Jump	Maneuver	TL
BB-11	Battleship	300	2	3	11
BB-12	Battleship	300	3	3	12
BB-13	Battleship	300	4	2	13
BI-13	Dreadnought	700	4	2	13
BI-14	Dreadnought	700	4	2	14
BI-15	Dreadnought	700	4	2	15
BL-13	Light Battleship	200	4	3	13
BL-14	Light Battleship	200	4	3	14
BL-15	Light Battleship	200	4	3	15
BM-15	Missile Battleship	500	4	1	15
BH-14	Heavy Battleship	700	4	1	14
BH-15	Heavy Battleship	700	4	1	15
BT-14	Battle Tender	700	5	1	14
BR-14P	Battle Rider	30	-	5	14
BR-14M	Battle Rider	30	-	4	14
BT-15	Battle Tender	500	5	1	15
BR-15P	Battle Rider	30	-	6	15
BR-15M	Battle Rider	30	-	6	15
BS-15	Strike Battleship	200	6	1	15

So, a few good things. I like that FSotSI tries to show the evolution of different ship classes over time and tech levels. And I like the battleship sub-classes of "Light," "Heavy," "Strike," and so on. I like having battle riders and battle tenders.

So what happens when we compare these ships to the battleships in CT Supplement 9? That book details three, familiar battleship classes, all designated TL 15 dreadnoughts: the Plankwell (200 kTon), Kokirrak (200 kTon), and Tigress (500 kTon).

And right off the bat we start to see some problems. The Supplement 9 battleship designs are themselves sometimes considered broken. The Kokirrak is listed a Jump-4, but Don's errata has it as Jump-3, which supported by the fuel storage of 80 kTon. Similarly the Tigress design is often called problematic. So when we're comparing FS and FSotSI basic parameters it's not clear what values should be used from FS.

In any cases, there are no clear matches between the two sources: FSotSI is describing completely different ships.

And the terminology used for ship designations is not compatible: FSotSI's greater specificity reserves the term dreadnought for the largest battleships, while FS seems to use it for any battleship. At 200 kTon, both the Plankwell and Kokirrak would be "light battleships" in the FSotSI schema, though the 500 kTon Tigress might still be a dreadnought, though the examples are all 700 kTon.

FS notes that "Although some older battleships of greater displacement remain in service, the Tigress class dreadnaught [sic] is the largest line-of-battle vessel currently in service with the Imperial Navy in the Spinward Marches" (38). This implies that some BI-13, BI-14, BH-13, or BH-14s could be kicking around the Marches.

But still, though I started this exercise thinking something from FSotSI could be salvaged, I'm not so sure now. FS, which is pretty solidly canonical despite potential design issues, really doesn't seem to match up well with FSoSI at all.

Thoughts, ideas?

 

[GypsyComet]

For all that the fleets chapter is different from CT, it still held enough weight to become the basis for fleet org going forward.

Part of the issue of depicting "different ships" is simply the differences in design mechanics. Powerplant and jump fuel calculations are very different between CT and MT, and the "partial power" realization had not yet struck when FSotSI was written, resulting in higher jump numbers and high thrusts being mutually incompatible with most weapon loadouts until after the book was in the wild.

Only one USP in the book is error free in all important ways: the TL15 Strike Fighter. Let that soak in for a moment. While this book could have been the opening volley in the relaunch of Traveller wargames under MT, it instead became the ammo crate that exploded in the magazine.

Essentially, the most useful part of this book is the art, and even that stumbles in places.

 

[mike wightman]

I have a personal project that uses CT HG2e to do what SSotFI tried to do - describe how the Imperial fleet changes across the TLs as the new technologies (of CT HG2e) redefine ship capabilities. It's all on paper and none of it is electronic.

SSotFI is the only official Traveller book I could never bring myself to buy when it was first published. A read through in the shop was enough for me to put it down and never bother with it.
I eventually got it - and a second copy - when buying a MT deal from ebay to get a second copy of SSOM, V&V and S&A.
The fleet organisation section is fine provided you read it as the re-organisation post FFW.
The evolution of warship design relies too heavily on the broken MT ship paradigm to waste time on.

 

[Garnfellow]

Mike,

What should the CT jump rating be for the Tigress and Kokirrak -- J-3 or J-4?

 

[mike wightman]

As designed for S9 they should be J3 by USP factor, fuel carried and reverse engineering the designs. The descriptive stat blocks are wrong.
J4 versions would require drop tanks (not mentioned) and a bit of redesign to find the extra tonnage for the jump 4 drive.

 

[Garnfellow]

As designed for S9 they should be J3 by USP factor, fuel carried and reverse engineering the designs. The descriptive stat blocks are wrong.
J4 versions would require drop tanks (not mentioned) and a bit of redesign to find the extra tonnage for the jump 4 drive.

Any idea why Don's errata changes the Kokirrak to J-3 but leaves the Tigress as J-4?

In my copy of Supplement 9 (PDF from the CDROM), both the USP and the description for the Kokirrak have J-4.

 

[mike wightman]

This is the USP of the Kokirrak on p.42 of my electronic copy (CT CD ROM):

- it uses the 1st printing of S9
BB-S436AJ4-C78909-697T9-0 MCr135,102. 200 ktons

All three of my paper copies of S9 have the same USP.

No idea why the Tigress is still jump 4 in the errata, without drop tanks you would have to radically change the design to accommodate the missing fuel.

 

[flykiller]

project that uses CT HG2e to do what SSotFI tried to do - describe how the Imperial fleet changes across the TLs as the new technologies (of CT HG2e) redefine ship capabilities. It's all on paper and none of it is electronic.

surely you could summarize it in an hour and post it? it would be great to be able to specify the left-over backup colonial ship compositions, and would make great role-playing for pc's that suddenly find themselves re-activated to command or crew such boats, or for pc calculations in fighting such elderly ships. "ah we can run away from THAT old thing!"

(heh. at first I thought FSotSI stood for Forbidden Science of the Second Imperium.)

 

[Silverhawk]

Wow. I didn't realize that FSoSI had been removed from canon. I pulled out my CT:FS and have the same USP. If I had to hazard a guess I would say that whoever did the write up looked at the 4 next to the jump code and mistook it for the correct jump number. Easy mistake to make and not catch in review.

Just my 2 cents

 

[flykiller]

I have a personal project that uses CT HG2e to do what SSotFI tried to do - describe how the Imperial fleet changes across the TLs as the new technologies (of CT HG2e) redefine ship capabilities. It's all on paper and none of it is electronic.

surely you could summarize it in an hour and post it?

no can do?

 

[sfchbryan]

I've been reworking the ships myself.

Among the problems (irrespective of the fact that not a single one is a valid RAW design):

Problem 1 - Ships don't match Canon: When the 3rd Imperium was stood up, they were already at TL-12; the TL-11 ships were already second-line ships. The Civil War was fought by TL-13 ships, and the TL-14 ships were long retired by 1120. Any ship below TL-13 isn't going to be able to match fleet standard (J4/M4), and in 1120, it would be more cost effective to simply shoot the crews of TL-11 ships, and save on the crew and maintenance costs.

Of course, one could always upgrade the powerplant and weapons systems; rules exist for that in CT and it is effortless to move them to MT - that is what I did with my "4th edition" ruleset. That makes ships like the Disintegrator armed Voroshielef class BB from the Rebellion Sourcebook possible. Imperial Navy Handbook by Clayton Bush also gives a pretty nifty walkthru of rebuilding and repurposing a class of ships.

The reasons given for the Imperium "winning" the 5th Frontier War is the superiority of Imperial ships as far as Jump and maneuver capability (J4/M6 vs J3/M5 of the Zhodani). That doesn't exist in MT, which has a fleet standard of J4/M4. Which leads us to problem 2:

Problem 2 - Ships don't work as a Fleet: Too many ships are both too slow and/or too low afa Jump Capability. J4/M4 is the 1120 Fleet "standard". Not a single tanker meets that standard, and the same can be said for almost every capital ship.

Problem 3 - Design philosophy. The ships in FSoSI have 1 design philosophy - how many weapons can we stick on the hull. That takes precedence over anything else. The only exceptions are the high jump ships, most of which have M1, which means if the maneuver drive takes a hit, it isn't leaving system.

As I rework the ships, I am fairly ruthless in the redesign - ships are designed for a purpose, they meet fleet standards (J4/M4 - M6 for riders), extraneous weapons are removed, and all of the tricks necessary to get them working as valid designs (separate power plants for weapons (24 hour capability only - if you can't kill it in 72 shots, go home.)

One of the things I really like about MT is that it forces the Naval Architect to make hard choices - that isn't the case in CT.

Speaking of choices, help me out here.

Why in Cthulhu's name would any starsystem buy an old battleship or cruiser, rip out the jump drives, and detune weapons capability of the ship when they could just buy a mothballed battle rider for about a 1/10th of the price of the starship (before the detuning costs).

 

[savage]

Why in Cthulhu's name would any starsystem buy an old battleship or cruiser, rip out the jump drives, and detune weapons capability of the ship when they could just buy a mothballed battle rider for about a 1/10th of the price of the starship (before the detuning costs).

The only good answers are availability and cut throat price cuts.

Don had an effort underway to redesign the FSotSI designs in his errata work.

Salvaging Rebellion Sourcebook ships is pretty straight forward, FSotSI is best tossed into the "fast war-time build" logic while forgetting any historical trend. Like this scenario: The Imperium has a general design book for secondary ships to be produced during an all out war with an invader. If an invader strikes even TL 11, TL12, etc. worlds will start building ships. The design book is low priority for 3I Navy. Some ships are produced for testing but efforts are geared for cheaper, heavy gun ships that are fast to build. Similar designs over TLs allow some upgrades. The Civil War is impacted by the junk being put to field.

Afterall, it is decanonized. Think we discussed this on another thread but I don't recall which one. On a side note, Fast build was a WWII activity for destroyers, freighters, etc. But they put more effort into it. They didn't build a lot of it to be in use 40 years later like a standard 3I design.

 

[Dagrill]

And the terminology used for ship designations is not compatible: FSotSI's greater specificity reserves the term dreadnought for the largest battleships, while FS seems to use it for any battleship. At 200 kTon, both the Plankwell and Kokirrak would be "light battleships" in the FSotSI schema, though the 500 kTon Tigress might still be a dreadnought, though the examples are all 700 kTon.
Thoughts, ideas?

As I understand it Dreadnaught refers to First Line Battleships (TL15 for 3I)
and Battleship is a more general term (this may be from Mongooses Sector Fleet).

I find when I put the figures for a ship design into a spreadsheet with any Traveller rule system, there is always something wrong, or I want to change.
My Kokirrak's & Plankwells are J4, & Tigresses J3, but I've made sacrifices elsewhere.

The way I see it (as an example) there could be J4 Plankwell Dreadnaughts with the 3I Fleets and J3 Plankwells, with the Reserve (Colonial) Fleets, with the systems designed for lower TL use.

Kind Regards

David

 

[Carlobrand]

... Any ship below TL-13 isn't going to be able to match fleet standard (J4/M4), and in 1120, it would be more cost effective to simply shoot the crews of TL-11 ships, and save on the crew and maintenance costs. ...

With a retirement program like that, I bet you have a heck of a recruitment problem. :rofl:

...Problem 3 - Design philosophy. The ships in FSoSI have 1 design philosophy - how many weapons can we stick on the hull. That takes precedence over anything else. The only exceptions are the high jump ships, most of which have M1, which means if the maneuver drive takes a hit, it isn't leaving system. ...

The key problem in design philosophy is making things big when rules-as-written meson spinals butcher big ships.

As to the M-drive, it's actually out of reach of weapons once you get about 11 factors of armor on, and FSoSI ships just love that armor. You can get it with a critical off a meson spinal, but it doesn't matter whether you have M1 or M6 at that point. So the only vulnerable ships are going to be the lightly armored ones.

...Why in Cthulhu's name would any starsystem buy an old battleship or cruiser, rip out the jump drives, and detune weapons capability of the ship when they could just buy a mothballed battle rider for about a 1/10th of the price of the starship (before the detuning costs).

BIG rebates.

 

[GypsyComet]

The reasons given for the Imperium "winning" the 5th Frontier War is the superiority of Imperial ships as far as Jump and maneuver capability (J4/M6 vs J3/M5 of the Zhodani). That doesn't exist in MT, which has a fleet standard of J4/M4.

As I mentioned before, FSotSI was written before the partial power development of late MT, and was thus forced to adhere to the monolithic power assumptions of CT when designing the ships. Under MT that lead to compromises, some of them brutal to CT assumptions.

Use the partial power trick of assuming that life support/gravity/computer/controls is the only thing getting a full month of power, with maneuver (one of the big power hogs) only getting two or three weeks of power, and the weapons (the other big power hog) only getting one week (or less), and the huge volumes of fuel drop enough to return capital ships to something closer to their CT HG performances. This approach also allows ships to be nuanced a bit in areas of full throttle endurance, engagement times, and similar, providing all sorts of fodder for class technical descriptions.

 

[sfchbryan]

The only good answers are availability and cut throat price cuts.

Don had an effort underway to redesign the FSotSI designs in his errata work.

Salvaging Rebellion Sourcebook ships is pretty straight forward, FSotSI is best tossed into the "fast war-time build" logic while forgetting any historical trend. Like this scenario: The Imperium has a general design book for secondary ships to be produced during an all out war with an invader. If an invader strikes even TL 11, TL12, etc. worlds will start building ships. The design book is low priority for 3I Navy. Some ships are produced for testing but efforts are geared for cheaper, heavy gun ships that are fast to build. Similar designs over TLs allow some upgrades. The Civil War is impacted by the junk being put to field.

Afterall, it is decanonized. Think we discussed this on another thread but I don't recall which one. On a side note, Fast build was a WWII activity for destroyers, freighters, etc. But they put more effort into it. They didn't build a lot of it to be in use 40 years later like a standard 3I design.

Don's work didn't impress me in the slightest - I worked with him on the MT ship design example rewrite - he was a charter member of the "Every hardpoint must be filled, regardless of any other characteristic". Look at what he did with the TL-14 Regal design. It was a flying brick that did not meet any definition of a cruiser.

MT made significant changes to ship design and he deliberately ignored them while trying to shoehorn a CT design into the MT design sequence, rather than going with a cruiser's mission and building around it. (Have just enough armor to defend against an M meson gun; and go with a M meson gun rather than an S; separate booster plant for weapons (24 hours worth), and you have a J4/M4 cruiser that is capable of staying on station for more than a week or two).

The easiest way to salvage FSotSI is to add the power design errata along with the construction & upgrade rules from TCS; toss the original ship designs and pretend that they never existed; replace those designs all with Clayton Bush's redesigns of the Supplement 9 ships, while downshifting to a J4/M4 fleet requirement.

Of course, that is the easiest way to do it so most people here wouldn't be on board with that.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

(Have just enough armor to defend against an M meson gun; and go with a M meson gun rather than an S; separate booster plant for weapons (24 hours worth), and you have a J4/M4 cruiser that is capable of staying on station for more than a week or two).

I mostly agree with you, but there are many ways to skin a cat...

Why a Meson M and not a Meson G?

Why unarmoured? Unarmoured ships are quite vulnerable to nukes.

High-agility ships are vulnerable to more, cheaper low-agility ships.

 

[savage]

Don's work didn't impress me in the slightest - I worked with him on the MT ship design example rewrite - he was a charter member of the "Every hardpoint must be filled, regardless of any other characteristic". Look at what he did with the TL-14 Regal design. It was a flying brick that did not meet any definition of a cruiser.

MT made significant changes to ship design and he deliberately ignored them while trying to shoehorn a CT design into the MT design sequence, rather than going with a cruiser's mission and building around it. (Have just enough armor to defend against an M meson gun; and go with a M meson gun rather than an S; separate booster plant for weapons (24 hours worth), and you have a J4/M4 cruiser that is capable of staying on station for more than a week or two).

The easiest way to salvage FSotSI is to add the power design errata along with the construction & upgrade rules from TCS; toss the original ship designs and pretend that they never existed; replace those designs all with Clayton Bush's redesigns of the Supplement 9 ships, while downshifting to a J4/M4 fleet requirement.

Of course, that is the easiest way to do it so most people here wouldn't be on board with that.

Don hacked into a few different things. So, I agree with the discomfort. Doing too much can lower quality. I look at FSotSI ships as background canon fodder, either way. I think downplaying FSotSI is the key to using it on any level. I redid what I needed in T20 with some TNE/FFS tossed in as needed. MT is not my favorite either, but as you said. Some people want an MT solution.

 

[sfchbryan]

I mostly agree with you, but there are many ways to skin a cat...

Why a Meson M and not a Meson G?

Why unarmoured? Unarmoured ships are quite vulnerable to nukes.

High-agility ships are vulnerable to more, cheaper low-agility ships.

Yes, there are many ways - I started from a different point than Don. He was most concerned about weaponry - I was more concerned about mission. Missions drive ship designs in RL.

I didn't say unarmored - I just said less.

My approach is a layered defense - Nuclear Dampers to slow down nucs, Meson screens to shield against Meson guns and Armor for particle accelerators and anything else that might get through.

When dealing with those cheaper, low-agility ships, I'll simply keep the range open and pound them to death - the planet isn't leaving the system. Or simply go around them.

If you look at historical military navy designs, cruisers were at best, armored to defeat an equivalent cruiser's main weaponry (There were a lot of light cruisers that weren't, See: Italian interwar cruisers, for instance. The reality is that the only way a cruiser could be built with armor to defeat another cruiser's weaponry was by going over treaty limits - ie. cheating.) Nobody built cruisers with battleship size armor.

If looking at battlecruisers, the British (and to a lesser extent, the Japanese) went with BCs with DN weaponry and cruiser armor & speed (and paid for it at Jutland). The Germans went with 25% less DN weaponry (no Q turrets), but had DN armor and cruiser speed. The German High Seas Fleet lost the Lutzow when she floundered outside of the Jade estuary, but none of German BCs blew up with a loss of all hands.

The mission design for the British BCs was for the BCs to deal with the opponents cruiser screen. However, if you have a ship the size of a BB and the weapons of a BB, admirals want to put them in the main battle line. The HSF took the approach of less firepower, but enough armor to stand in the battleline. The German BCs lead the way to the "Fast Battleship" concept, whereas the British BC philosophy went to the bottom of the North Sea in WWI and the bottom of the North Atlantic and the South China Sea in WWII.

I went with a M Meson gun rather than a G, because the Regal was a bigger cruiser.

If I was going with a type G, I'd add and optimized Nuclear Damper and a type 4 meson screen and dump the savings into a faster maneuver drive.

If I go with a Type M, I can power both a UCP 6 Nuclear Damper AND a UCP 6 Meson Screen for the less than the power requirement for a S Type meson gun, before using booster plants. That means survivablity in combat.

In CT, one could put DN sized weapons on a cruiser sized hull, and still keep J4/M6. It is nearly impossible to do it in MT.

Most of the DN designs in FSotSI are (barely) jump capable monitors.

I agree with you Savage, FSotSI is mostly background fodder - If DGP had ever finished their tactical ship game, it might have been different.

For my campaigns, I went to the trouble to build out the fleets in the Verge Sector - I have them move around, they will make the news when they show up to conduct exercises. It's one of the things I do to make the area seem more "real".

They also make good contacts - Have the same CA-13 floating around gives the players the ability to get contacts, patrons, and enemies with crewmembers.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Yes, there are many ways - I started from a different point than Don. He was most concerned about weaponry - I was more concerned about mission. Missions drive ship designs in RL.

I agree a mission is the design goal. Unfortunately large combat ships have very little reason to exist in a system where they are exactly as easy to kill as much cheaper small ships, and no better at killing other ships.

I didn't say unarmored - I just said less.

You said:

(Have just enough armor to defend against an M meson gun; ...

Armour has no effect on meson guns, hence unarmoured?

My approach is a layered defense - Nuclear Dampers to slow down nucs, Meson screens to shield against Meson guns and Armor for particle accelerators and anything else that might get through.

Max screens are a given, but both reasonable armour and agility is very expensive. Yet every point of agility confers more effect than the last, if you invest in high agility it's better to go all the way to Agility 6?

When dealing with those cheaper, low-agility ships, I'll simply keep the range open and pound them to death - the planet isn't leaving the system. Or simply go around them.

The low-agility ships are not slower; agility have nothing to do with the manœuvre drive in MT.

If you look at historical military navy designs, ...

I'm not convinced either Jutland or Salamis tells us much about the proper use of meson guns in space combat.