Do fighters and battleships have the same problem?
- Thread starter LeperColony
- Start date
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
To quote your not quite - not quite.
The setting states that following the 4FW the Imperium switched to BBs in the forward systems where their ability to jump from overwhelming odds is and advantage while maintaing the more powerful BR BatRons in the Deneb sector reserve.
I don't think you catch my meaning - or I haven't explained it very well. By TL14 mentality I mean they are still building fleets to engage a TL14 enemy rather than considering building a fleet to TL15 standards to engage a TL15 enemy.
The first generation of which are TL14/15 hybrids and then obsolete TL15 designs built to engage TL14 enemies.
Post 5FW MT gives us an insight into yet another reorganisation of fleet structure, but the change to MT design rules prevents us from seeing how the ships built post 5FW have finally become mature TL15 designs.
The Imperium needs BBs because their size makes it possible to armour them to push damage results off the combat table - in game universe they can take more damage and retreat.
The line of battle ships need at least meson spinal factor N to be the equivalent of the factor S TL14 BBs, but there is also the possibility of swarming with factor J equipped light cruiser sized ships. The trick the Imperium is really missing is to build jump 1 drive equipped BRs.
Agility 6 is a must have, no question.
And yes you can get a spinal T meson into a 75kt hull but it wouldn't be much use, you would have to trade off armour or jump performance or screen rating to fit it in.
A Zho TL14 100kt heavy cruiser with agility 6 and properly designed will give an Atlantic a tough fight.
Ever checked the meson screens matrix?
You can't just compare the guns, you have to compare the relative computer size and meson screen difference too.
No, it really doesn't.
Relative to the total size? No, it does not.
Not technically possible since you cannot armor a non-planetoid ship to the degree that it's totally immune against nuclear missiles (or PA spinals.)
And in any case: A 30,000 ton Battle Rider which devotes the same percentage to protection as a 300,000 ton Dreadnought will be protected just as effectively. So will, except for some niche cases involving particle accelerator spinals, a 1000-ton missile boat - that is in fact the rationale between AMV's hamster and gerbil designs. In fact, due to their much smaller size, these will in toto be considerably more survivable than ships more than a hundred times their size except against high-factor particle accelerator spinal mounts.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Yes - it actually does. Try it.
If you really think this you don't know HG design rules as well as you think you do.
It is a feature of most ship systems being % based while and weapons are fixed tonnage
To get agility 6 a ship has to have a power plant size 6 - to power weapons, screens and computers the power plant has to be bigger than this.
For a 100kt ship you get 1000EP for a 1% tonnage of power plant
For a 200kt ship you get 2000EP for 1% tonnage
A 500kt ship you get 5000EP for 1% tonnage.
There you go - I'm sure you can do the rest of the math.
Nuclear dampers make your nuclear missile a waste of time. The few that get through will get hit with my repulsers.
And I'm not claiming total immunity, I'm claiming more survivability.
If I have factor 15 armour and a size code of T I will take 10 hits from a spinal PA, no crits, 5 of which will be pushed off the table.
I can only get an armour factor of 15 by making the ship big:
bridge 2%
maneuver6 17%
pp 9%
fuel 9%
jd4 5%
fuel 40%
armour15 16%
total for % based components = 98%
So I have 2% of ship tonnage remaining for weapons etc - better make the ship big so that 2% is at least 10,000t. Or reduce the jump fuel which is what the S9 ships do.
This is entirely irrelevant since it applies to both large and small ships.
No, it does not.
Only ever relevant for very high factor PAs, and not at all for the cruiser vs. battleship discussion, nor for the battle rider vs. battleship one. A 30kton battle rider with heavy armor or a 75kton cruiser with very moderate armor is immune against all PA size criticals of matching TL.
Meson guns, with their unmodified rolls on both the radiation and the interior explosion tables, will on average inflict several crits, in addition to other crippling damage, apart from size criticals. The only viable defense against Meson spinals is not to be hit by them and for this small size is an advantage - doubly so as small size means more ships and thus more targets.
Except for "ship vaporized", which has a 1/36 chance of occurring, no critical hit "kills" an enemy ship. Mission kills can be achieved by a number of means. The non-crit "Fuel tanks shattered" being the easiest probably.
As stated quite plainly in the designer notes, Chadwick worked off Brilliant Lances, and not High Guard, as a baseline, which is in any case obvious from the game itself, seeing how it does fully incorporate TNE's technological idiosyncrasies. And battleships are (relatively) more advantaged because of how TNE's design rules work, especially how armor and meson screens scale.
My recommendation to Hans to check out BR still stands and it is plain baffling to me how you think you can lecture me about this when you evidently lack very basic information.
On second thought don't bother answering this. Or for that matter, anything else I write, again, ever. I don't think anything productive is going to result.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Tobias - size does allow for more armour.
The bigger the ship the smaller % you have to allocate to power plant so the greater your armour % can be.
The bigger the ship the smaller % you have to allocate to power plant so the greater your armour % can be.
No, they won't, assuming we get a remotely equal budget.
This is really pointless, because all it can result in is retreading an argument that has been revisited far too many times already. Just search for a thread using "hamster" or "gerbil" and read it.
This is incidental to the debate but yes, a jump-4, maneuver-6, maximum protection ship is for practical purposes impossible. So what? I've only known that for about 20 years.
You don't. The mandatory crew requirements will reduce that below 1%.
J-4, agility-6, max armor and screens ships are not feasible no matter what the TL is. The Sup9 designs, as you know, are all wrong.
This is irrelevant on a cruiser vs. battleship scale. The "fixed" power requirements are a) nuclear damper and b) the computer. Taking TL 14 as an example, these consume .138 PPns for a 50,000-ton cruiser vs. 0.0345 PPns (duh!) for a 200,000-ton battleship.
Generally speaking, as soon as these EP requirements drop considerably below a single power plant number, they become mere afterthoughts.
Now you will say that the larger size does allow the larger ship to mount a bigger spinal Meson gun, because it has absolute EP requirements which are quite high and will for many ships exceed a whole power plant number. True. But the question then becomes: Is a 200,000-ton ship armed with a factor T meson spinal more effective than three or four 50,000-ton ships armed with factor N meson spinals, or four or five 40,000-ton ships with factor J spinals? I'll let you decide...
... but the answer is no.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
If the budget is the same than we end up with my 300kt BB vs 300 of your 1kt hamsters (you wont actually get 300 because you are paying for 300 model 9fib computers but I'll spot you them).
How many nukes do you fire? 300
How many hit? 220ish
I have 200 repulsor bays so 100 get through.
How many then penetrate my nuclear damper? 3
Now if you roll 7 or more for damage it gets pushed off the damage table by my armour.
So make it jump 3 - or use drop tanks.
For a realistic proposal I'd go with jump 3 or drop tanks.
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You've overlooked something very simple, besides the fact that only 50% of your repulsors bear. Try and find out what. Or read the thread as I suggested. I have no intention of retreading it.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Lol, I love your modesty.
You missed another major pp expenditure - the meson screen.
But you are missing the point - the extra large armoured BB counters the missile boat swarm, the meson sled counters the armoured BB, and the missile swarm counters the meson sled - rock paper scissors.
The ideal fleet needs some of each.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I was talking about the ones that bear - I actually install 100
What have I overlooked? I'm intrigued.
By the way which thread are you on about - can you link it?
No I didn't. Meson screen power requirements are proportional to tonnage.
HG1 simply added them straight, no subtractions.
I'll do it gladly (I guess is this one). I found it quite interesting when it was discussed:
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=25917
IIRC the hamsters discussion began about post 50+ or so
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Amber Chancer
SOC-12
Fascinating discussion.
Equally fasinating is what happens if you move away from the "it has to be Jump-4" mentality.
I've recently tried experimenting with TL 15 J-3 designs, and have been coming up with some highly intrigueing readouts.
I have an 18 Kton design with a J Meson gun, and I put 3 of them up against a 61 Kton design with an R Meson. They creamed it every time.
I then redesigned the 61 Ktonner and gave it a T Particle Accelerator ... and it made short work of the three 18 Ktonners.
It's like the man said .... it's HG and it plays out how it plays out. And it gives a wide variety of different outcomes across a range of different tech levels, which I for one like.
Equally fasinating is what happens if you move away from the "it has to be Jump-4" mentality.
I've recently tried experimenting with TL 15 J-3 designs, and have been coming up with some highly intrigueing readouts.
I have an 18 Kton design with a J Meson gun, and I put 3 of them up against a 61 Kton design with an R Meson. They creamed it every time.
I then redesigned the 61 Ktonner and gave it a T Particle Accelerator ... and it made short work of the three 18 Ktonners.
It's like the man said .... it's HG and it plays out how it plays out. And it gives a wide variety of different outcomes across a range of different tech levels, which I for one like.
Gray Pennell
SOC-12
Fascinating discussion.
Equally fasinating is what happens if you move away from the "it has to be Jump-4" mentality.
I've recently tried experimenting with TL 15 J-3 designs, and have been coming up with some highly intrigueing readouts.
I have an 18 Kton design with a J Meson gun, and I put 3 of them up against a 61 Kton design with an R Meson. They creamed it every time.
I then redesigned the 61 Ktonner and gave it a T Particle Accelerator ... and it made short work of the three 18 Ktonners.
It's like the man said .... it's HG and it plays out how it plays out. And it gives a wide variety of different outcomes across a range of different tech levels, which I for one like.
My revamped Tigress design is based on tech 15 50K hull. It has type N meson gun I wonder how it would stand up to these designs. I see that the meduim size war ships point to a starting tech level 15. By this I mean it just not advance enough to put out the heavy duty ships.
Fascinating discussion.
Equally fasinating is what happens if you move away from the "it has to be Jump-4" mentality.
I've recently tried experimenting with TL 15 J-3 designs, and have been coming up with some highly intrigueing readouts.
I have an 18 Kton design with a J Meson gun, and I put 3 of them up against a 61 Kton design with an R Meson. They creamed it every time.
I then redesigned the 61 Ktonner and gave it a T Particle Accelerator ... and it made short work of the three 18 Ktonners.
It's like the man said .... it's HG and it plays out how it plays out. And it gives a wide variety of different outcomes across a range of different tech levels, which I for one like.
I guess the 18 Kdton ships were not too heavily armored, or the T rated PA would not be too effective against them (3 rolls on both tables per hit, inflicting damage on a 6-), while a single hit from the J meson gun would probably disable the 61 Kdton ship...
Of course, the better accuracy of the PA, coupled with the lack of defenses agains it (meson screen) give an advantage otherwise...
Amber Chancer
SOC-12
It depends what you mean by "not too heavily armoured", McP.
The armour is factor-D.
You can't quite squeeze in a J-Meson AND get factor-E, without taking them up from a K hull into an L hull. And that, of course, defeats the object of the design ... which is to avoid giving away the +1 "to hit" modifier to its enemies (which was the key to their superiority over the 61KT meson-armed pocket dreadnought: they were on 9 to hit at long and 7 and short, whilst it was on 10 and 8 ... creating the interesting spectacle of a meson-armed flotilletta winning the initiative roll and CHOOSING to stand off at long range). Armour factor D means that the T particle accelerator scores 2 criticals every time it hits. (Were it possible to achieve armour factor E then this would only be one. I've not pushed the boundaries of hull size K to see if it's possible up around the 19,600 ton mark. I don't think it is ... but if I'm wrong I'd be very interested to see how the encounter plays out with the T particle acceperator only doing a single critical the first time it hits.)
How it played out in practice was that the big particle accelerator normally knocked out one of the CLs while they were still at long range, whilst the missile battery did enough damage to a second to wipe off a factor or two from its meson gun ... and that pretty much wrapped it up. By the time the CLs could close to close range to give their meson guns a reasonable chance (bringing their "to hit" down from 9 to 7 ... but they still needed a further 9 to penetrate the meson screen and a 6 to penetrate the needle/wedge configuration) they were losing too much of their firepower. The particle accelerator played on the undamaged CL while the missiles continued to chew up the other one; and as they were even stevens on the initiative roll (the CLs had more ships in line, but the BL was the "faster fleet") the moment the BL gained the initiative it opened the range back out to long. Any time a CL remained servicable after the first particle accelerator hit, it got absolutely creamed once it took a second hit (armour down to factor-B so now it's 3 criticals + 8 rolls on each table, causing damage on 10-).
It's an interesting old outcome, especially given that if you put the two BLs against one another (which I haven't tried yet ...) my money would be on the meson-armed ship any day. So it's a real paper - scissors - stone situation (which, to my mind, plainly validates the balance of the HG rules as there is no clear "optimum solution")
Incidentally, how do you arrive at 3 rolls on each table per hit, inflicting damage on 6-? A Factor T particle accelerator gets 19 rolls on each table against a completely unarmoured ship. So at armour F it would be 4 rolls on each table inflicting damage on 6-; at armour E it would be 5 rolls on each inflicting damage on 7-; and at armour D (the actual armour of my CLs) it is 6 rolls on each table inflicting damage on 8- by my reckoning.
Full specs for each of my ships are as follows, if you want to try them against your designs.
Light cruiser: CL - K136CJ3 - D92900 - 500J9 - 0
18,000 tons. One battery of everything. Crew = 147 (22 officers + 147 ratings) Fuel = 7,560 EP = 2,160 Agility = 6 Cargo = 28 Fuel scoops and on-board purification plant, no small craft. MCr 17,959.64 singly; MCr 14,367.712 in quantity
Meson-armed pocket dreadnought: BL - P136AJ3 - E99909 - 999R9 - 0
61,000 tons. One battery of everything. Crew = 492 (76 officers + 416 ratings) Fuel = 24420 EP = 6,100 Agility = 6 Small Craft = 10 Cargo = 5 Fuel scoops and on-board purification plant. MCr 58,020.802 singly; MCr 46,416.641 in quantity
The fuel tankage includes a full refuelling for the small craft (which have no fuel scoops of their own) and the purification plant has the capacity to refine it as well as the main ship's fuel load. The small craft are two 40-ton pinnaces and eight 30-ton launches to my standard Zhodani design (yes ... these are my ZC designs!)
Particle-accelerator armed pocket dreadnought: BL - P136AJ3 - F99909 - 90T99 - 0
61,000 tons. One battery of everything except missiles, of which it has 30 (24 bearing). Crew = 523 (77 officers + 446 ratings) Fuel = 24,415 EP = 6,100 Agility = 6 Small Craft = 7 Cargo = 10 MCr 60,562.944 singly; MCr 48,450.355 in quantity
The small craft are three 40-ton pinnaces and four 30-ton launches, and the same comments about main ship fuel tankage and refining apply.
The "one battery of everything" approach is my standard approach to starship design. It helps to slow down the rubbing out of your main harm-giver when those gerbils start nibbling (or the factor-T particle accelerators get to work) ... and the choice of the somewhat idiosyncratic 61 Kton hull is dictated by the fact that I really DON'T like paying (and giving up hull space) for the generation of Energy points which I don't use. So it's a matter of finding a hull size at which an integer power number gives me exactly the energy required to power all the systems I want. It sometimes takes a lot of fiddling with the numbers ... but I think that some rather elegant craft are the result.
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Amber Chancer
SOC-12
It would indeed, Gray ... and as my designs are in the post above, you can try it out and see how the designs compare.
You might also like to try pitting it against my Zhodani 40 kiloton J-3 cruiser:
CA - N136BJ3 - F99909 - 999N9 - 0
40,000 tons. One battery of everything. Crew = 316 (48 officers, 268 ratings). Fuel = 16,410. EP = 4,400. Agility = 6. Small craft = 5. Reserve computer (model/9 fib) = 1. Cargo = 5
The small craft are one 40-ton pinnace and four 30-ton launches; and see my comments above about the main ship fuel tankage and purification plant providing capacity for the fuelling of the small craft, which do not have fuel scoops of their own.
My own experience of pitting this against the 18KT CLs is that on an equal-cost or equal-tonnage basis, the CLs absolutely slaughter the CAs every time. I gradually tipped the balance in favour of the CAs ... and the CLs kept winning. Eventually I pitched them against one another on the basis of parity of numbers (6 ships to each squadron) and FINALLY the CAs prevailed. However, by the time that the issue was decided, all 6 CLs were hors de combat ... but so were 4 of the CAs (so the COST of the damage sustained by the CAs still FAR exceeded that sustained by the CLs).
The conclusion I have reached is that the combination of the K size hull with the factor-J meson gun is a VERY potent one. BUT to marry them together, you HAVE to limit yourself to a jump-3 design. So now I need to play out a long strategic struggle scenario, to find out just what the opportunity cost of this limitation is in the grand scheme of things. And that, in turn, may vary depending upon the density of worlds in the sector you are fighting in.
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