Do fighters and battleships have the same problem?

[Dragoner]

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?

Eurisko did strange things in tactics, such destroying it's own ships.

Having played quite a bit of HG2, I never found it that broken for what it is, the TL differences are there and then there is the subject of Andrew's hamsters; but a total rewrite at this point is pointless, imo. I am more interested to what T5 or mong is going to do.

 

[pendragonman]

Eurisko did strange things in tactics, such destroying it's own ships.

Having played quite a bit of HG2, I never found it that broken for what it is, the TL differences are there and then there is the subject of Andrew's hamsters; but a total rewrite at this point is pointless, imo. I am more interested to what T5 or mong is going to do.

As long as the tech differential wasn't more than one, I had no issues either.

However, the "Andrew's hamsters" comment sounds like an interesting story. Care to elaborate?

 

[Ishmael]

Eurisko did strange things in tactics, such destroying it's own ships.

Only strange from the point of view of a human from western civilization. It may be perfectly acceptable to an alien mindset as a way of solving a problem (achieving victory ) with a given set of tools.
The human players simply burdened themselves with 'rules' based on their own social behaviours and their own preconceptions based on self-preferred naval analogues. The Eurisko program didn't have to follow those things.

In any rewrite of HG2, how many of the changes would be from similar social and historic preconceptions, and how many of the changes would be to define how the different ships' systems, etc. interact with each other? How much of the focus would be upon HG2 and how much would be placed upon TCS, with its non-canon economy rules?

It might be better to just run a century or two of Pocket Empire turns over the Imperium and see how things are really run instead of just assuming everything must be 'just so'. If nothing else, people would gain an idea of what canon economies of the 3rd Imperium would look like instead of guessing.

 

[Whipsnade]

I've got a feeling a setting built on the rules would be... dry? Euriskoish?

Dry? Euriskoish? How about different instead?

One poster here asked "Where are my battleships and figthers"? My answer are "Why do you need battleships?" and "Why do you need fighters?". Can't you think of anything else?

Why shouldn't Traveller space combat be different? Why should it be Just Another Historical Rip-Off ala "Honor Harrington" or "Star Wars"? Why shouldn't we, indeed why can't we, imagine something different? Oh look, it's Starfire with vector movement... yawn...

Space combat at TL E and F in Traveller is delightfully different. It isn't Jutland in space or Midway in space or Trafalgar in space. It's Traveller. It's different, it challenges preconceptions, and it's definitely just not more of the same.

You want fighters and battleships? You want the same old same old? Then play at the lower tech levels before dampers and power plant efficiencies and meson spinals make the game delightfully unique.

On one hand I've got a well balanced wargame which allows me to design and fight ships across eight tech levels and on the other hand I've got a bunch of frankly lazily written settling color text. To my mind, the wargame is more important than some setting fluff. You can flush S:9's ship USPs away and nothing will change regarding the history of the setting.

As for FFW's problems, they have almost everything to do with conflicts with the same setting fluff and what little we've been told about IN budgets and very little to with HG2. How can you look at a FFW counter and say you cannot "design" it with HG2?

What about the piracy and all the uncivilized behavior which makes the RPG fun? They still exist in the setting despite TL F warships for the same reasons they still exist on 21st Century Earth: That stuff happens where nobody gives a ****. Pirates off Somalia, slavery in the Sudan, the Golden Triangle, and dozens of other Real World examples all happens in places and usually to people the rest of the world couldn't give two s***s about. The Tukera megafreighter off Regina is perfectly safe while the PC's Beowulf off Kwai Ching is literally beneath the Imperium's notice and caring.

The 57th Century Imperium isn't a 21st Century liberal western democracy and, Strephon's diary aside, the Imperium doesn't even pretend to treat or view all it's subjects in the same way. The Imperium is an association of hi-pop worlds and not an association of citizens. Backwaters and the people living there are literally beneath the notice of the Imperial power structure.

One final word about Eurisko. It hacked the design system primarily by exploiting loopholes in the rules, loopholes Don's errata documents have cleared up. Any design system is going to be granular at some level and that granularity will provide niches where the system can be bent or broken.

 

[robject]

Having played quite a bit of HG2, I never found it that broken for what it is, the TL differences are there and then there is the subject of Andrew's hamsters; but a total rewrite at this point is pointless, imo. I am more interested to what T5 or mong is going to do.

On the contrary; an update or rewrite can be a useful exercise.

 

[rancke]

Dry? Euriskoish? How about different instead?

One poster here asked "Where are my battleships and figthers"? My answer are "Why do you need battleships?" and "Why do you need fighters?". Can't you think of anything else?

Certainly I could, if I thought it would do any good. However, as I pointed out earlier, that ship has sailed. It sailed 30 years ago when GDW based their setting descriptions on their prejudices instead of the rules. If you want different, you have to seek it somewhere else than in the OTU.


Hans

 

[mike wightman]

Not necessarily. I don't see that HG can't describe the setting. Rather the setting hasn't quite revealed al that the rules can offer.

The setting states that the Imperium continues to build battleships, and I can understand why they do if they still have a TL14 mentality for what works in combat.

The lessons of the SRW and the 4FW have lead to strategic changes. More oddly is the fact that a TL15 cruiser design is now considered obsolete.

Ask yourself what lessons have the Imperium learned to make the TL15 Atlantic obsolete?

Now assume that the designers did indeed intend HG to model large ships within the setting, we have to look at how the Imperium would change their fleet as TL15 battles are understood.

Within the setting battleships still make sense to the Imperium if they are fighting a lower TL opponent. The carnage of the rebellion shows what happens when poorly designed TL15 battlefleets clash.

 

[Dragoner]

However, the "Andrew's hamsters" comment sounds like an interesting story. Care to elaborate?

Andrewmv, maker of HGS, has a designs of various missile ships that are hard to beat called "hamster" and "gerbil" respectively and subsequently other ship's get "nibbled to death by hamsters". I remember people bringing them out in TCS and getting house ruled away, as well.

Only strange from the point of view of a human from western civilization. It may be perfectly acceptable to an alien mindset as a way of solving a problem (achieving victory ) with a given set of tools.

Or like Whipsnade said, they wargamed the rules, I know it well, coming from a wargame background; HG is nothing compared to GI: Anvil of Victory.

On the contrary; an update or rewrite can be a useful exercise.

You didn't like it when I said so in the other HG thread, now views are reversed?

I fear that crucial time and energy that could be used for BCS will get absorbed. Other than the hamster issue, which doesn't work for ships but it does mean planets can be defended long term, what really needs to be re-written? It's dice rolling madness without probability tables and people miss movement, though the abstraction is probably realistic.

 

[aramis]

Certainly I could, if I thought it would do any good. However, as I pointed out earlier, that ship has sailed. It sailed 30 years ago when GDW based their setting descriptions on their prejudices instead of the rules. If you want different, you have to seek it somewhere else than in the OTU.


Hans

It's much more likely, Hans, that they based them on HG 1... where fighters are still (barely) practical at TL 15... and defenses are somewhat more limited, skill matters more (augmenting rather than replacing computer factor).

The 9-10 ton fighters of HG1 are pretty much optimized... in ways HG2 designs are not.

Really, tho, a CT HG2 fighter can and should look somewhat different than the fighters given in various places.

 

[rancke]

Not necessarily. I don't see that HG can't describe the setting. Rather the setting hasn't quite revealed al that the rules can offer.

The setting states that the Imperium continues to build battleships, and I can understand why they do if they still have a TL14 mentality for what works in combat.

Not quite. The setting states that following the losses of the 4th Frontier War the Imperium is switching TO battleships. And a century is a very long time to maintain a TL14 mentality. I wouldn't hesitate to call it an unbelievably long time.

The lessons of the SRW and the 4FW have lead to strategic changes.

The lessons of the SRW and the 4FW are separated by two generations of ships.

More oddly is the fact that a TL15 cruiser design is now considered obsolete.

Ask yourself what lessons have the Imperium learned to make the TL15 Atlantic obsolete?

"[The Atlantic class] is not the equal of more modern vessels in the Imperium and neighboring regions. The slight disadvantage of 5G acceleration and agility 5 are telling in otherwise equal engagements, and make the class inferior enough to affect strategic judgements concerning its deployment." [FS8:32]​

The lesson would seem to be that 5G acceleration and agility 5 is at a disadvantage against 6G acceleration and agility 6.

Though personally I would have gone with "We've decided to make a heavy cruiser class with factor T spinals instead of the factor N spinals the Atlantics carry".

(Or am I misinformed about the size needed to carry a factor T spinal? I've been told it is around 75,000T.)

Incidentally, I wonder who those neighboring regions with the more modern vessels are and where the Atlantics have faced 'otherwise equal engagements'.

Now assume that the designers did indeed intend HG to model large ships within the setting, we have to look at how the Imperium would change their fleet as TL15 battles are understood.

Within the setting battleships still make sense to the Imperium if they are fighting a lower TL opponent. The carnage of the rebellion shows what happens when poorly designed TL15 battlefleets clash.

So factor S meson spinals don't inflict nearly as many (only one less, in fact) criticals as factor T spinals do? Battleships facing TL14 meson spinals have a significantly better chance of avoiding being one-shotted than cruisers facing the same spinals do?


Hans

 

[robject]

You didn't like it when I said so in the other HG thread, now views are reversed?

Ah. You must have some sort of aura about you that influences me to disagree with you regularly?

 

[Dragoner]

Ah. You must have some sort of aura about you that influences me to disagree with you regularly?

Maybe I've got the m-drive turned up to 7.

 

[Garyius2003]

To use America and its navy as an example, by the end of WWII we were going from TL6 to 7, carriers and air attack were clearly (looking back) the key warship, with close escorts (traveller definition) being second most important. The only real exception was in the restricted waters off the PI.

Even so, we kept battleships around, retired them briefly, and then brought them back in the 80s.

Now that small missile ships are going to replace carriers, America keeps turning out the huge targets.

America has only really been an empire for 60 years (110 if you count the PI, zone, and those minor possessions). The 3I has been one for over a thousand. Is it so hard to believe that they are waiting until the 25 year after 5FW lessons learned conference to decide to buy less battleships and more cruisers?

(My TL15 view: three meson Js win against a T; and in peace give you three patrol vessels)

 

[rancke]

America has only really been an empire for 60 years (110 if you count the PI, zone, and those minor possessions). The 3I has been one for over a thousand. Is it so hard to believe that they are waiting until the 25 year after 5FW lessons learned conference to decide to buy less battleships and more cruisers?

Um... yes.

If the lessons learned is that battleships are just as vulnerable to meson spinals as cruisers, then that lesson has been available since the Terran Confederation invented meson guns 3000 years ago.

However, according to canon, the lesson learned in the 4FW was that while carriers with riders were more effective than battleships (the advantage being small enough to cause controversy), said advantage was not sufficient to conpensate for the added vulnerabilty from not being able to bug out when losing a battle. So the Imperium is switching TO battleships following the lesson. This actually doesn't seem to have anything at all to do with the question of the effectiveness of battleships versus cruisers, except indirectly through the question of the effectiveness of riders and insofar as the Imperium is switching from carriers to battleships instead of from riders to cruisers.

(My TL15 view: three meson Js win against a T; and in peace give you three patrol vessels)

It doesn't help the effectiveness of battleships vs. cruisers that you can use smaller cruisers and still win.


Hans

 

[Tobias]

It doesn't help the effectiveness of battleships vs. cruisers that you can use smaller cruisers and still win.

The problem is that in HG2 (and in HG1 for that matter) size is strictly a disadvantage except in special circumstances. Size makes you easier to hit, but except in cases where size criticals are relevant, it does not make you any more able to take damage.

All Traveller ship combat systems except HG, the HG-derived MT system and LBB2 do this differently. Most (TNE:BL, GT, T20, MgT, PP:F, T4?) use size-based hit points of some sort. TNE:BR uses a damage modifier based on factors of 10 of the ship's tonnage.

TNE and GT, with their intricate design systems, also have armor efficiency go up with size since armor coverage is based on surface area. I'm not quite sure, but I think the same also applies to meson screens.

If you want to give battleships some of their groove back, look at these systems for inspiration. Especially at TNE's Battle Rider. I only got to play it once, but it looked like a very neat game - except for the (in my eyes) bizarre decision to replace die rolls with card draws and the extreme effects of critical hits.

 

[Dragoner]

Now that small missile ships are going to replace carriers, America keeps turning out the huge targets.

This with one whole carrier group being vulnerable to a single nuclear missile, not only does the US still produce carriers, but other nations do so as well.

Anyone looking at combat ability alone for ships is going through one gigantic over-simplification.

 

[McPerth]

Within the setting battleships still make sense to the Imperium if they are fighting a lower TL opponent. The carnage of the rebellion shows what happens when poorly designed TL15 battlefleets clash.

As I've told in quite a number of other threads, the carnage of the Rebellion is not explained in terms of HG (or MT, for what's worth) combat rules (not talking now about designs) unless scuttling crippled ships is a common practice. And even if it is a common practice among military, it's harder to me to believe it to be also within the merchant marine, and Rebellion canon talks about heavy losses there too...

It's much more likely, Hans, that they based them on HG 1... where fighters are still (barely) practical at TL 15... and defenses are somewhat more limited, skill matters more (augmenting rather than replacing computer factor).

I guess the HG published in the compilation of the books 0-8 published by FFE is HG, if it is HG1 the rest of what I'll say here has no sense.

In page 44, under individuals, it's told that (ship's tactics level-1)/2 of the OC is added to the effective computer level, so augmenting it, not replacing it. Same happens with Pilot and Agility.

AFAIK, replacing them comes with MT, for gunnery and pilot skills* (ship's tactics is treated with the pool rules), not in HG.

*note: Pilot is only talked about in emergency agility and Spinal mount aiming, but the note as always when talking about it in emergency agility hints that it can also replace normal agility. The question then is, if your pilot skill is higher than emergency agility (so making the replacement worth), why to do it if it can also replace normal agility?

 

[mike wightman]

The problem is that in HG2 (and in HG1 for that matter) size is strictly a disadvantage except in special circumstances. Size makes you easier to hit, but except in cases where size criticals are relevant, it does not make you any more able to take damage.

In a way it does.

If you build a 200kt BB less tonnage is needed allocated to the power plant to produce enough EPs to power everything and grant agility 6. Lots of space left over to allocate to armour.

With enough armour on your huge ship you can push a lot of damage results off the top of the table.

Taking no damage from anything less than a spinal meson sounds like a fairly tough ship.

 

[mike wightman]

And a couple of other points.

You can't just keep concentrating on spinal meson effectiveness. The advantages the TL15 fleet give the Imperium over their TL14 adversaries are:

smaller power plants
more effective screens
a computer bonus.

Now go back and look at how these changes affect combat outcomes - play the game the way it was intended..

 

[Whipsnade]

The problem is that in HG2 (and in HG1 for that matter) size is strictly a disadvantage except in special circumstances. Size makes you easier to hit, but except in cases where size criticals are relevant, it does not make you any more able to take damage.

That's nothing but TL 15 myopia and a shallow understanding of the rules.

Size does provide an attacker with as much as a +2 To-Hit DM, but only once 20K dTons is reached. Agility, on the other hand, can provide a negative To-Hit DM up to 6. Furthermore, the power plant "densities" at higher TL's make it easier to provide designs with protective agility. So, as sizes grow, ships can also grow more agile.

Size also allows more armor which can reduce critical hits and size prevents the automatic critical hits which result from battery size to ship size over matches. When you remember that critical hits are one of the primary ways ships in HG2 kill each other, anything that prevents or limits crits becomes important.

Apart from armor, size also helps a ship sustain more damage because more weapons batteries are present.

So, when looking at the HG2 in it's entirety instead of peering through the TL 15 keyhole size is almost always a benefit. Almost always because technological advances eventually turn that upside down, just as technological advances always do.

All Traveller ship combat systems except HG, the HG-derived MT system and LBB2 do this differently. Most (TNE:BL, GT, T20, MgT, PP:F, T4?) use size-based hit points of some sort. TNE:BR uses a damage modifier based on factors of 10 of the ship's tonnage.

Size-based hit points are used to speed game play and nothing more. They're also simplistic because they only account for size; i.e. a 40K dTon tanker is tougher than a 20K dTon cruiser because the tanker is bigger.

If you want to give battleships some of their groove back...

... play at lower tech levels.

Especially at TNE's Battle Rider. I only got to play it once, but it looked like a very neat game - except for the (in my eyes) bizarre decision to replace die rolls with card draws and the extreme effects of critical hits.

BR suffers from the same Setting Fluff/Actual Rules dichotomy that the HG2/S:9 comparison does. As stated quite plainly in the designer notes, BR strips down HG2's combat and damage systems to critical hits only because, given the size of the ships used in BR, focusing on crits speeds game play. BR then uses the same suboptimal designs the setting has been saddled with since at least S:9.

Battleships don't do better in BR because the game somehow allows them to do better. Battleships do better in BR because the game doesn't contain any better designs, designs which the HG2 rules say should exist.

In history we've seen the title of "Queen of the Seas" pass between design paradigms as technology advances. The same process holds true in HG2 but we've been blinkered from recognizing that fact for two reasons.

First, GDW failed to explore their own design rules and, second, the myopic "Herp Derp battleships and fighters are alwasy best herpity derpity doo" preconception held by too many Traveller players and GMs.