Do fighters and battleships have the same problem?

[LeperColony]

Let me start out by saying I am not an expert in Traveller rules, so this impression is formed mostly from cobbling together forum threads. But it is my understanding that neither fighters nor battleships make a lot of sense in the OTU under the rules as written, and the reason is one of scale.

Fighters are unable to carry weaponry that would make them relevant in fleet actions. Battleships, although armed with the best weapons, are no more powerful or resilient than cruisers.

Is the problem with both fighters and battleships one of scale? By scale, I mean the way weaponry is designed in CT.

 

[aramis]

Let me start out by saying I am not an expert in Traveller rules, so this impression is formed mostly from cobbling together forum threads. But it is my understanding that neither fighters nor battleships make a lot of sense in the OTU under the rules as written, and the reason is one of scale.

Fighters are unable to carry weaponry that would make them relevant in fleet actions. Battleships, although armed with the best weapons, are no more powerful or resilient than cruisers.

Is the problem with both fighters and battleships one of scale? By scale, I mean the way weaponry is designed in CT.

It's a huge problem in CT using Bk5-1980 (HG 2E).

Fighters are a holdover from the massive space left for maximum hulls by TL under Bk2 coupled to the lack of bay weapons.

Keep in mind a TL15 BB at 3000Td does J4 M4, and has 1280 unused tons...

A Bk2 fighter takes 14.4 tons or so... counting 10 for the fighter, 4 for the pilot's Stateroom, 0.4 for 1/10 of the engineer's stateroom. Plus, half a ton of cargo for ordinance. So that TL15 bad-boy can carry 80 of them in lieu of a second J4...

Carriers were the obvious Bk2 battleship design... at a cost of about GCr2.5 per carrier (including fighters). They were obviously so right from the start, thanks to the 1 turret per 100Td rule... big ships have more leftover space because the drive table isn't linear above about drive N, but increases in capacity gain per letter, coupled to Power Plant fuel ignoring hull and drive size (being based solely upon rating)... Anything that puts more turrets out there is good, and fighters are the highest density of additional turrets.

The rapid shift over to Bk5 big ships didn't have time to shake out the best strategies for the design and combat systems, especially since fighters were more of a threat under 1st edition HG. Here's the basic math... the TL15 fighter can have a factor 3 beam and model 1. The target ship, assuming TL15 sandcasters needs at least 27 SC (9 triple turrets) per 1000 tons to have a 9 rating... which means very limited other weapons. Realistically, maybe 30% of turrets would be sand... factor 4. Maximum computer was Model 7, not 9... max Comp diff of 6. SC=4 vs BLas=3 is 7+ on 2d DM–6... assuming maximum computer difference, that's 13+... but SC=3 is more likely, and hits on a nat 12... and personal skill adds, rather than replacing the Computer model... So add DM+1 ...

 

[Garyius2003]

Bk 5, assuming you mean at the top of the tech scale (14/15), fighters were useless, battleships were less helpful then having extra spinals in cruisers for the same fleet total tonnage.

Before the dampers started working, it was a much different mix.

Mongoose has fixed a lot of that, making the mix balanced across the different sizes.

 

[Whipsnade]

Wil covered the important points very well. The problem with fighters and battleships in the OTU is that the later rules, HG2, don't match up very well with the earlier descriptions.

I'll point out that fighters and battleships work rather well at lower tech levels. Fighters are ship killers until roughly TL D and, without the meson spinals found at TL D, E, and F, battleships do rather well too.

 

[Carlobrand]

Let me start out by saying I am not an expert in Traveller rules, so this impression is formed mostly from cobbling together forum threads. But it is my understanding that neither fighters nor battleships make a lot of sense in the OTU under the rules as written, and the reason is one of scale.

Fighters are unable to carry weaponry that would make them relevant in fleet actions. Battleships, although armed with the best weapons, are no more powerful or resilient than cruisers.

Is the problem with both fighters and battleships one of scale? By scale, I mean the way weaponry is designed in CT.

Neither fighters nor battleships make a lot of sense under High Guard. Fighters are pretty useful in Book-2 combat.

The problem for fighters is more computers than weaponry. High Guard introduces a rule which gives bonuses or penalties depending on relative computer size. That makes it hard to make a cost-effective fighter. Buying and powering the best computer at TL 15 for example results in a fighter in the 80-90 ton range that costs a couple hundred megacredits - you're spending a couple hundred megacredits to deliver a single turret to combat, where most of your capital ships are running 50-60 megacredits per hundred tons.

Add that the fighter's single turret has trouble hitting or doing any significant damage - a fighter's nuclear missiles have trouble penetrating nuclear dampers at about TL 14, and most other weapons a fighter can carry can be stopped by enough armor - and the fighter's next to useless at high tech levels.

However, a fighter's pretty useful at the lower techs where computer support is limited and there aren't fancy screens to protect the target.

As for a battleship: a large battleship is indeed much more powerful than a cruiser - but it's not more resilient against the primary high-tech weapon, the meson gun. Meson weapons ignore armor, and a meson spinal gets extra damage rolls based on its rating. So, a large battleship - with its larger meson gun - can dish out more damage than a cruiser. However: 1) it costs a lot more - an equivalent cost in cruisers usually means 3 or 4 cruisers per battleship, which means 3 or 4 spinals, which means 3 or 4 chances to hit that battleship; and 2) that ignore-armor bit and that extra-rolls bit combine to make even cruiser-sized meson spinals wickedly deadly ... umm, I mean crippling. The battleship's additional extra damage rolls often ends up being overkill: the fuel tanks are just as shattered when you shatter them once as when you shatter them three times.

Tech Level play a roll here too, though the traditional 200-kilotonner battleship isn't available until TL 13 - a computer thing. (One assumes a 100 kilotonner would be a battleship to a TL 12 society, and a 50 kilotonner a battleship to a TL 11 society; many of the battleships of WW-I were about half the size of their WW-II counterparts, and the battleships of the 1890s were far smaller than their WW-I counterparts.) Until TL 13, larger ships tend to be more efficient killing devices ton-for-ton than their smaller counterparts. At TL 13, it's debatable - meson spinals are larger and more power-hungry than their PA counterparts, with the result that ships that carry them tend to be less agile and lighter-armored than ships carrying PA spinals, but the mesons themselves can be more dead ... er, crippling. After TL 13, improvements in armor and then power plants tilts the field in favor of meson-spinal warships, which is bad news for the battleship.

 

[Whipsnade]

However, a fighter's pretty useful at the lower techs where computer support is limited and there aren't fancy screens to protect the target.

Power plants and armor factor in too, but tech levels are the key.

It's not that fighters and battleships don't work in HG2. It's that fighters and battleships don't work at certain tech levels in HG2.

 

[LeperColony]

As for a battleship: a large battleship is indeed much more powerful than a cruiser - but it's not more resilient against the primary high-tech weapon, the meson gun. Meson weapons ignore armor, and a meson spinal gets extra damage rolls based on its rating. So, a large battleship - with its larger meson gun - can dish out more damage than a cruiser. However: 1) it costs a lot more - an equivalent cost in cruisers usually means 3 or 4 cruisers per battleship, which means 3 or 4 spinals, which means 3 or 4 chances to hit that battleship; and 2) that ignore-armor bit and that extra-rolls bit combine to make even cruiser-sized meson spinals wickedly deadly ... umm, I mean crippling. The battleship's additional extra damage rolls often ends up being overkill: the fuel tanks are just as shattered when you shatter them once as when you shatter them three times.

Tech Level play a roll here too, though the traditional 200-kilotonner battleship isn't available until TL 13 - a computer thing. (One assumes a 100 kilotonner would be a battleship to a TL 12 society, and a 50 kilotonner a battleship to a TL 11 society; many of the battleships of WW-I were about half the size of their WW-II counterparts, and the battleships of the 1890s were far smaller than their WW-I counterparts.) Until TL 13, larger ships tend to be more efficient killing devices ton-for-ton than their smaller counterparts. At TL 13, it's debatable - meson spinals are larger and more power-hungry than their PA counterparts, with the result that ships that carry them tend to be less agile and lighter-armored than ships carrying PA spinals, but the mesons themselves can be more dead ... er, crippling. After TL 13, improvements in armor and then power plants tilts the field in favor of meson-spinal warships, which is bad news for the battleship.

My understanding, and again I could be wrong, was that cruiser sized vessels could carry the largest meson guns, thus leaving battleships primarily with more turrets.

 

[Whipsnade]

My understanding, and again I could be wrong, was that cruiser sized vessels could carry the largest meson guns, thus leaving battleships primarily with more turrets.

That's correct but you need to understand that meson guns are the setting's One Hit, One Kill weapon. As Carlobrand writes: As for a battleship: a large battleship is indeed much more powerful than a cruiser - but it's not more resilient against the primary high-tech weapon, the meson gun.

All the extra bays and turrets a battleship can carry don't mean a thing when a cruiser can gut her with single shot. Battleships may be bigger, but their jaws are still made of glass.

 

[LeperColony]

That's correct but you need to understand that meson guns are the setting's One Hit, One Kill weapon. As Carlobrand writes: As for a battleship: a large battleship is indeed much more powerful than a cruiser - but it's not more resilient against the primary high-tech weapon, the meson gun.

All the extra bays and turrets a battleship can carry don't mean a thing when a cruiser can gut her with single shot. Battleships may be bigger, but their jaws are still made of glass.

So I guess my point is couldn't battleships become practical if the weapons and defenses charts were tweaked either by extending them based on mass (like making a heavier "super charged" version) or by having steeper mass requirements on the weapons that do exist such that you need huge ships to carry the most powerful weapons?

 

[Gray Pennell]

LeperColony that is what I am getting at the system doesnt do a good job with these issues. You throw in my growing pet peeve that the cost are two low for the larger weapons and systems and you can see the weakness in HG.

 

[Whipsnade]

So I guess my point is couldn't battleships become practical if the weapons and defenses charts were tweaked either by extending them based on mass (like making a heavier "super charged" version) or by having steeper mass requirements on the weapons that do exist such that you need huge ships to carry the most powerful weapons?

People have been tweaking HG2 for decades now with a variety of results. I've tweaked the rules for decades too, but I also accept HG2 for what it is.

You see the trouble here is that people come to HG2 with preconceptions. They want space combat to Star Wars or Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica or Honor Harrington or some other sci-fi staple. They want zipping fighters taking out huge ships or they want big honking battlewagons standing toe to toe throwing haymakers or they want some other historical naval analogue. Everyone approaches HG2 with their own preconceptions and then is disappointed when HG2 doesn't meet them.

Of course, it doesn't help matters when GDW continued to feed certain preconceptions with their descriptive text even when their own rules didn't support that them.

HG2 is HG2 and nothing more. It can be zipping fighters and hulking battleships IF you select the proper tech level at which to build. Everyone wants to build and play at TL F however and that's where the problems begin.

At TL E and F, HG2 becomes it's own self. It isn't about your preconceptions anymore, it isn't about whatever historical naval analogue you've decided you want to cram YTU's space combat into. At TL E and F, the HG2 peg can no longer fit in your hole and that leads people to believe HG2 is somehow "wrong" and needs to be "changed".

Instead of changing the rules to meet your preconceptions, why not explore the rules to see what they create? In a century we've seen naval supremacy pass from battleships to carriers to submarines. Why shouldn't a similar process occur in the OTU as tech levels increase as fighters give way to battleships and they in turn give way to smaller meson-armed vessels?

HG2 is itself. You shouldn't attempt to pigeonhole it. Explore which designs work at each tech level and accept the fact that certain designs will not work at every tech level.

The rules are there and they work rather well. There's no need to tweak them simply to meet your preconceptions.

 

[LeperColony]

People have been tweaking HG2 for decades now with a variety of results. I've tweaked the rules for decades too, but I also accept HG2 for what it is.

You see the trouble here is that people come to HG2 with preconceptions. They want space combat to Star Wars or Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica or Honor Harrington or some other sci-fi staple. They want zipping fighters taking out huge ships or they want big honking battlewagons standing toe to toe throwing haymakers or they want some other historical naval analogue. Everyone approaches HG2 with their own preconceptions and then is disappointed when HG2 doesn't meet them.

Of course, it doesn't help matters when GDW continued to feed certain preconceptions with their descriptive text even when their own rules didn't support that them.

HG2 is HG2 and nothing more. It can be zipping fighters and hulking battleships IF you select the proper tech level at which to build. Everyone wants to build and play at TL F however and that's where the problems begin.

At TL E and F, HG2 becomes it's own self. It isn't about your preconceptions anymore, it isn't about whatever historical naval analogue you've decided you want to cram YTU's space combat into. At TL E and F, the HG2 peg can no longer fit in your hole and that leads people to believe HG2 is somehow "wrong" and needs to be "changed".

Instead of changing the rules to meet your preconceptions, why not explore the rules to see what they create? In a century we've seen naval supremacy pass from battleships to carriers to submarines. Why shouldn't a similar process occur in the OTU as tech levels increase as fighters give way to battleships and they in turn give way to smaller meson-armed vessels?

HG2 is itself. You shouldn't attempt to pigeonhole it. Explore which designs work at each tech level and accept the fact that certain designs will not work at every tech level.

The rules are there and they work rather well. There's no need to tweak them simply to meet your preconceptions.

It's not about tweaking them to meet my own preconceptions. I can do that in the privacy of my own TU. It's more about the rules making certain canonical craft silly.

Although, again, the whole point of this thread was simply to clarify for my own understanding why certain canonical craft don't make a whole lot of sense.

 

[Whipsnade]

Although, again, the whole point of this thread was simply to clarify for my own understanding why certain canonical craft don't make a whole lot of sense.

As Wil explained earlier, there was little if any backward compatibility between LBB:2 and HG2 and as I've explained, GDW didn't bother to shelve their own preconceptions when writing post-HG2 color text.

 

[mike wightman]

My advice would be to actually play it by the rules as written. Play it lots.

Design a squadron or two at TL9 and fight a few battles.

Try building fighters, escort sized ships, and the biggest ships you can manage.

Then fight it out.

Do this at each TL and you will realise that HG2 is actually a very well balanced game for covering ship to ship combat spanning 3000 years.

It is as Whipsnade posted earlier, as the TLs increase the type of ship that is successful in battle changes.

The OTU doesn't actually have any examples of well designed TL15 ships, but you can explain that away as the Imperium still being in the process of switching to a TL15 fleet that has been tested in battle.

 

[Whipsnade]

My advice would be to actually play it by the rules as written. Play it lots. Design a squadron or two at TL9 and fight a few battles. Try building fighters, escort sized ships, and the biggest ships you can manage. Then fight it out.

Excellent advice.

Do this at each TL and you will realise that HG2 is actually a very well balanced game for covering ship to ship combat spanning 3000 years.

Thank you for distilling my rambling into a pithy single sentence people will actually remember.

HG2 is very well balanced and across several tech levels.

It is as Whipsnade posted earlier, as the TLs increase the type of ship that is successful in battle changes.

That's what makes the game so fascinating.

The OTU doesn't actually have any examples of well designed TL15 ships...

That's a huge part of the problem here. People come to the game wanting fighters or battleships or whatever, they take GDW's own designs for TL F, they realize those designs don't work very well, and they decide the game is broken.

The game isn't broken, the designs are broken.

GDW didn't vet their own designs against their own rules. I don't know why it happened, but it did, and that failure has colored people's perceptions of HG2 for over three decades now.

We can come up with all sorts of in-game reasons for why the OTU's designs are poor and your reason is better than most, but in the end we're simply applying a handwave because GDW designed with their preconceptions instead of their rules.

The IN IMTU is like nothing you'll see in canon, but it works in HG2.

 

[Hal]

One of the things that has always irked me was the fact that GDW's published designs can NOT be built using HIGH GUARD second edition, nor does the written material indicate that these designes were built using HIGH GUARD 1st edition. Perfect case in point is the Carrier design posted in THE SPINWARD MARCHES CAMPAIGN.

As has been noted, some of these designs placed in the Supplement 9 book wouldn't last very long in a fleet battle using HG rules.

So, the fun now lies in using HG rules with home-brew designs and then deciding for your own traveller universe, what makes sense. I regret that GDW never bothered to actively game out the implications of High Guard, nor made an attempt to redo the FIFTH FRONTIER WAR board game using HG stats. THAT would have simply been awesome!

 

[rancke]

We can come up with all sorts of in-game reasons for why the OTU's designs are poor and your reason is better than most, but in the end we're simply applying a handwave because GDW designed with their preconceptions instead of their rules.

But at the end of the day, the fact remains that GDW did design with their preconceptions and that those preconceptions, through the setting descriptions, are now the preconceptions of most who read those descriptions (That's a guess, but I think it's a pretty likely guess). For those of you who have played with the rules as written[*], that makes the setting broken. But to the rest of us, and pardon me for assuming that it's the majority of Traveller fans, it makes the rules broken.

Now, I think that fixing the rules to match the setting would do a lot less damage than fixing the setting to match the rules. But I could live with either. What really bothers me is having the issue unresolved.

[*] EDIT: That should have been "played a lot with the rules as written". I've played with the rules as written too, just not nearly enough to draw the conclusions you and Mike and Wil have.​

Hans

 

[aramis]

GDW didn't vet their own designs against their own rules. I don't know why it happened, but it did, and that failure has colored people's perceptions of HG2 for over three decades now.

What happened is pretty obvious - the designs work pretty well in HG 1.
Many authors of 3rd party materials continued to include HG1E stats, and several of them had continuing input into CT. (Check the credits.)

 

[far-trader]

...to the rest of us, and pardon me for assuming that it's the majority of Traveller fans, it makes the rules broken.

Now, I think that fixing the rules to match the setting would do a lot less damage than fixing the setting to match the rules. But I could live with either. What really bothers me is having the issue unresolved.


Hans

Put me in that camp too Hans. And I dare say fixing the rules to match the setting looks a lot easier than fixing the setting to match the rules. And a whole sight more interesting as well. I've got a feeling a setting built on the rules would be... dry? Euriskoish?

 

[Carlobrand]

...That's a huge part of the problem here. People come to the game wanting fighters or battleships or whatever, they take GDW's own designs for TL F, they realize those designs don't work very well, and they decide the game is broken.

The game isn't broken, the designs are broken.

But at the end of the day, the fact remains that GDW did design with their preconceptions and that those preconceptions, through the setting descriptions, are now the preconceptions of most who read those descriptions (That's a guess, but I think it's a pretty likely guess). For those of you who have played with the rules as written, that makes the setting broken. But to the rest of us, and pardon me for assuming that it's the majority of Traveller fans, it makes the rules broken.

Yer both right.

Let's be frank: how many times had GDW issued products that created canon conflict with other GDW products? It had gotten so common that, as MicroSoft might say: it's not a bug, it's a feature. They were always more invested in making engaging and entertaining products than in making sure those products fit into the overall milieu.

They made a wonderful game in FFW. They made a wonderful game in High Guard. They made a wonderful campaign setting in the Spinward Marches. It's just that the things don't really mesh with each other real well.

From the point of view of a High Guard aficionado, FFW makes no sense and the Marches make less: the Sword Worlders are about as much a threat to the Imperial fleet as a squadron of Civil War Merrimac's is to a 21st century cruiser, and the Vargr fleets are about as effective as 1890's pre-dreadnoughts.

From the point of view of a Marches role-player and child of Book-2, High Guard makes no sense and FFW is a pain: what happened to my fighters, and where's the adventure when the setting implies enough Imperial wealth and tech to make it possible to post 1000-ton escorts in every system - escorts as technologically superior to the corsairs they seek as an Oliver Hazard Perry frigate is to a Somali pirate skiff?

From the point of view of a FFW aficionado, High Guard and the Marches milieu are problematic: what happened to my battleships, and how is all this piracy and other uncivilized behavior going on when my Imperium can afford to field entire fleets of giant ships?

Now, I think that fixing the rules to match the setting would do a lot less damage than fixing the setting to match the rules. But I could live with either. What really bothers me is having the issue unresolved.

Yeah, me too.