Fighters are ineffective in High Guard/TCS???

[Hal]

I know that more than a few individuals have stated that Fighters are not all that effective in the higher tech level ranges, but I got to wondering. How effective would this design be as a fighter in a TL 15 combat environment?

Ship: FTB-129845
Class: Fighter
Type: Banshee
Architect: Hal
Tech Level: 15

FZ-0106L91-200000-00003-0 MCr 223.400 96 Tons
Bat Bear 1 Missile battery factor 3
Crew: 1

Cargo: 0.280 Fuel: 19.200 EP: 19.200 Agility: 6
Fuel Treatment: Fuel Scoops and On Board Fuel Purification

Architects Fee: MCr 2.234 Cost in Quantity: MCr 178.720


Detailed Description

HULL
96.000 tons standard, 1,344.000 cubic meters, Needle/Wedge Configuration

CREW
Pilot

ENGINEERING
Jump-0, 6G Manuever, Power plant-20, 19.200 EP, Agility 6

AVIONICS
Bridge, Model/9 Computer

HARDPOINTS
1 Hardpoint

ARMAMENT
1 Triple Missile Turret organised into 1 Battery (Factor-3)

DEFENCES
Armoured Hull (Factor-2)

CRAFT
None

FUEL
19.200 Tons Fuel (0 parsecs jump and 28 days endurance)
On Board Fuel Scoops, On Board Fuel Purification Plant

MISCELLANEOUS
1.0 Small Craft Stateroom, 2 Acceleration Couches, 0.200 Ton Cargo

USER DEFINED COMPONENTS
None

COST
MCr 225.634 Singly (incl. Architects fees of MCr 2.234), MCr 178.720 in Quantity

CONSTRUCTION TIME
37 Weeks Singly, 30 Weeks in Quantity

COMMENTS
The Banshee fighter is designed primarily to fulfill the fighter function in a
modern navy, yet be able to be a useful adjunct to the battle line. Experiments
are under way with the specially modified Light Carrier Gar'arrk, which had its
launch tubes torn out to replace the 50 dton max launch size to that of the
banshee's size at 96 dtons.

Ultimately, this fighter's Model 9 computer in conjunction with its size bonus of +2 in its favor, plus the agility 6, means that any attack mode used against the fighter will require to hit values of 4+ or better just to have a 1 in 36 chance of hitting. To hits of 5+ against this craft will no longer come close to hitting the craft. In the mean time, its To hit value of 5+ with its missiles, coupled with the computing power of a model 9 computer means that agility 6 craft can be hit with missile attacks on a roll of 11+ Only other craft with agility 6+ and size modifiers of +2 in their favor are immune to attacks by the Banshee fighter craft. All other craft however, are at risk against massed Banshee attacks.

 

[skyth]

It can't do anything at all to a ship with AV 15 and Damper 6+ (Which is pretty common. Damper-9 comes standard on any ship of mine that is TL15)

 

[Jeffr0]

Yes, that isn't useless. It's also little more than a game artifact.

I could almost swear that I saw a ruling somewhere that small craft did not count the purposes of screening other ships....

I've searched "screen" and "reserve" in all the relevant PDF's but just don't see it now, though....

 

[Bob Weaver]

It can't do anything at all to a ship with AV 15 and Damper 6+ (Which is pretty common. Damper-9 comes standard on any ship of mine that is TL15)

And it suffers auto-criticals when struck by anything with a weapon factor greater than 2. To compensate for that and the high to-hit number (base 5+, Agl-6 makes it 11+) there have to be a lot of them, and a lot of them will die in the first few rounds. In a one-off game that may not matter so much, but in a campaign where replacing ships takes time & money it will matter very much.

Cheers,
Bob W.

 

[Hal]

It can't do anything at all to a ship with AV 15 and Damper 6+ (Which is pretty common. Damper-9 comes standard on any ship of mine that is TL15)

Usually, by TL 15, a lot of the ships aren't AV 15. The Banshee fighter can basically handle armor up to level 3 before some of its hits begin to have "No effect" due to armor levels (Have to include the +6 penalty to die rolls for attacks of less than factor 9). However, armor factor 15 costs a ship 16% of its volume, volume that generally need to be reserved for such nefarious attack systems as Meson spinal mounts.

Looking at the ships from Fighting Ships Supplement #9, it becomes quickly apparent that very few capital class ships have armor factor 15. The Tigress class Dreadnaught has an Armor value of 15. The other dreadnaughts have 10 and 12 (Plankwells and Kokirraks respectively). However, the bulk of the remaining capital class ships (Cruisers and fleet carriers) have armor factors that are considerably less, ranging between 1 and 10.

In addition, even the planetoid monitor's stats are such that its AV = 6, permitting these craft the ability to penetrate its defenses and still do damage per hit. The real issue here is that only those weapon systems whose attack factors insure hits on up to 4+ have a chance of hitting the Banshee fighter. Any attack system whose to hit is equal to 5+ automatically fail to hit. This means that following weapon systems (by USP code) are the only ones that can hit the Banshee:

Missiles: 5+
Beam: 8+
Meson: Factor D+
Particle Acc: 9+

This only holds true if the attacking ship also has a model 9 computer, which rules out the Zhodani ships, as the best that the Zhodani can field in naval combat are Model 8 computers. The Zhodani equivalant of Colonial Naval ships will be at TL 13 or less, which means that these ships will become even more vulnerable to the Banshee than Imperial ships of similiar tonnage.

A TL 13 ship, with a missile factor 9 attack, requires a base 2+ to hit, +2 for the computer size difference, or 4+, which when added to the +8 bonus enjoyed by the Agility 6 and +6 size modifier, means that at TL 13, the Banshee is BARELY targetable. Banshees become invulnerable to Beam fire at TL 13, and are barely targetable against TL 14 beam weapons. This leaves only capital ship type weaponry aboard the TL 13 and TL 14 ships the Imperium is likely to go up against by the Zhodani. Any TL 14 or less meson system (spinal mounts included) are incapable of hitting the Banshee fighter as the base 4+ to hit for the meson weapon systems become 4+ 8 + 1 (computer size penalty) or 13+

In fact, the only real danger to the fighters are basically the Missile bays, and the Particle Accelerator systems at TL's 14 or less.

As for fighting TL 15 ships, the Banshee's ability to hang in there with its Model 9 computer renders it capable of affecting most of the "Fighting Ships" in Supplement 9 with the exception of the following:

Capital class ships with AV greater than 12

Ships with Armor Values of 9 or less will generate at least 50% surface hits that will still be able to damage the hull. Thus, if 20 missiles penetrate the target ship's defenses, the armor will generally stop 50% of those hits (at AV 9). With AV 9, the bulk of those that do hit, will tend to cluster around either Weapon hits, or Fuel hits, with no possibility of hitting manuever drives or other critical ship systems.

In all, although the Armor on the Banshee seems to be worthless overall, I was minded of the fact that the Banshee may be utilized as ground support attack platforms, which means that it needs to be able to withstand some ground fire (which is far less than what any Heavy fighter or System Defense Boat system can endure).

 

[tbeard1999]

At TL15, sensibly designed fighters cannot hit sensibly designed starships (the combination of small battery factor, computer difference, and target agility modifier will result in an automatic miss).

On the other hand, sensibly designed TL15 starships can do little to hurt large clouds of sensibly designed TL15 fighters (armor factor 15 is WAY too easy to get for fighters, which means most weapons will be ineffective most of the time). Hunting down individual fighters with spinal weapons (or high factor batteries) strikes me as a dubious plan as well.

If you want fighters to be effective against large starships, here are several easy fixes:

1. Eliminate the agility "to hit" modifier for fighters (or convert it into the agility difference ala computers). You gotta do this.

2. Allow fighters to be grouped into squadrons of 12 or so fighters. Treat each squadron as a single ship and total its weapons for determining batteries and factors (so a squadron with 36 missile launchers could have 12 factor 3 batteries, 6 factor 4 batteries, 3 factor 5 batteries, etc.).

To give starships the ability to handle fighters, I'd limit the amount of armor fighters can have. You can search the Classic Traveller forum for my High Guard surface area armor fix, but an easy solution is to limit armor to the ship's size code. This will let surface batteries engage and destroy even high tech fighters.

 

[Maccat]

At TL15, fighters can hit anything!
Using that sub100tonner posted above a /9 comp w/ bridge and 1FF3 missile (/5) any ship 100-1000t hit on 12, 2000-19900t hit on 11, 20kt-74kt hit on 10, 75kt+ hit on 9.
178.72 in quantity. Bring 36 of em... statistically (say TCS rules?) 1/2/3/4 hits then. Against NucDampers, just use regular missiles, granted useless against Ar14+. So unless you had a max comp Ag6 Ar14 ship, you'll take hits. This is all the swarm of fighters scraping opponents through weapon-1 and fuel-1 hits tactic.

 

[Hal]

At TL15, fighters can hit anything!
Using that sub100tonner posted above a /9 comp w/ bridge and 1FF3 missile (/5) any ship 100-1000t hit on 12, 2000-19900t hit on 11, 20kt-74kt hit on 10, 75kt+ hit on 9.
178.72 in quantity. Bring 36 of em... statistically (say TCS rules?) 1/2/3/4 hits then. Against NucDampers, just use regular missiles, granted useless against Ar14+. So unless you had a max comp Ag6 Ar14 ship, you'll take hits. This is all the swarm of fighters scraping opponents through weapon-1 and fuel-1 hits tactic.

For what it was worth, I did a write up on a short (very short) battle between a Wind class light cruiser and two Midu Agashaam class destroyers versus the Gar'arrk class Light Carrier, which was a refit for the older Skimkish class light carrier. It had its fighter bay compartments redone so it could carry 40 Banshee class fighters. In addition, its launch tube was gutted and replaced with a larger version so that the launch tube could launch the Banshee fighter complement within 20 minutes. At that point, the 40 Banshees were placed in the battle line while the carrier was placed in reserve. The captain of the Blue Wind light cruiser ordered fire against the lead elements of the enemy fighters and discovered to his shock that what should have been easy hits (He was used to fighting the standard 50 dton heavy fighters) turned into dismal hits. In the first 20 minutes of combat, his ship secured only 3 hits with his missile bays - the meson gun being useless and the rest of his weaponry all missing. The weapons from the Midu Agashaam class destroyers were totally useless against the Banshee (only 12's would hit for the two missle-9 batteries, all other weapons could not secure a hit at any time). In return, the Banshee's savlos did some weapon damage (which the Blue Wind could easily sustain, plus an all important x2 manuever-1 drive hit. This was a relatively lucky hit that helped turn the fortunes of war against the Blue Wind. Initially, that first turn with 40 missiles firing, resulted in 14 salvos heading true to target. The Blue Wind's commander, expecting lower computing power, and thus better defensive capabilities from his ship, was shocked when 9 of the incoming 14 salvos struck home. The next 20 minutes saw the initial 40 fighters reduced to 38 fighters, but the manuever drive hit increased the next salvo against the Blue Wind, heading true to impact, a total of 23 hits. Defensive fires accounted for 3 of the 23 hits, and the ship's simlated damage went from bad to worse - including more manuever drive hits. By this time however, three more of the fighters had been hit and marked as destroyed by the simulated damage computer rulings. The Blue Wind was horribly maimed after only fourty minutes of combat, when the Ghost Whisperer (code name for the Gar'arrk light carrier) entered the main battle line against the Blue Wind. Adding all the weaponry available, which was identical to the Skimkish class light carrier, the Blue Wind suffered from simulated hits by 2 meson bays, along with untold numbers of missile attacks from the remaining 35 Banshee fighters. Combined missile salvos from both the Light carrier and the fighters totalled 35 against the now manuever-0 Blue Wind. Needing 4+ to hit the motionless Blue Wind, 32 of 35 missile salvos slammed home from the fighters alone. An additional 3 hit from the Light Carrier, making it 35 Simulated hits with missiles against the Light Cruiser. At that point, the Captain of the Cruiser informed the destroyers that they should disengage, and surrended to the victorious captain of the Gar'arrk.

Operation Screaming Ghost, the first operational test of the Banshees against an Imperial warcraft was a success. The new Gar'arrk class light carrier would be put into production as its own class, and several of the Skimkish class light carriers were scheduled for a refit. It would be a few years however, before enough of the Banshee fighter squadrons would become available in operational numbers.

 

[Ranger]

Challenge #27 has a write up for the Rampart IV and V fighters. The Rampart V has the ability to combine 4 fighters into a single salvo with a missile factor of 7.

 

[tbeard1999]

At TL15, fighters can hit anything!

I don't see how. The maximum battery factor is 3. This yields a hit number of 5+.

With any kind of reasonable fighter design, the Agility penalty (-6 on sensibly designed TL15 warships) and the computer difference will result in a "to hit" number greater than 12 - an automatic miss.

I can't fit a Model/9 computer on any reasonably sized fighter -- it requires 12 energy points, which requires 12 tons of power plant and 12 tons of fuel. I can't get a 100 ton (or smaller) fighter that has:

-15 points of armor
-Agility 6
-Computer 9

 

[drnuncheon]

2. Allow fighters to be grouped into squadrons of 12 or so fighters. Treat each squadron as a single ship and total its weapons for determining batteries and factors (so a squadron with 36 missile launchers could have 12 factor 3 batteries, 6 factor 4 batteries, 3 factor 5 batteries, etc.)

This is basically the route Mongoose HG goes - a flight of fighters gets to perform (and be attacked by) "barrage" attacks similar to those made by capital ships.

 

[Maccat]

there's one posted above here. the fighter doesn't need armor15, and i posted the fighters to hit with the FF3 missile and /9 computer (max), so the fighter can hit anything (albeit on like a 12, some better, but hey!) except other fighters that also have Ag6 and max comp. For the fighter to be hit, w/ Ag 6 and max comp /9, a -8/ needs a FF5+ missile, 8+energy, D Meson or 9+PA. Figure if it's hit it dies. The idea is that it takes a lot of tonnage (and firepower) to counter *one* fighter, and a swarm of them if they're nibbling at you, while the big ships are after you as well, will add up. Also most ships will be using missile bays rather than 6 triple missile turret batteries (or 4 after TLC), so in essence to even HIT a fighter takes like 1000t of ship. because to be immune to the fighters one needs Ag 6 max comp and armor 15, 1000t of ship...

Type: KBeater
USP BB-A4466J2-700000-00009-0 MCr 835.250 1 KTons
Bat Bear 1 Crew: 13
Bat 1 TL: 15
Cargo: 8.000 Fuel: 460.000 EP: 60.000 Agility: 4
Fuel Treatment: Fuel Scoops
Architects Fee: MCr 8.353 Cost in Quantity: MCr 668.200

Ar7 the best i could get, so it'll take like 670MCr to be able to hit a fighter. assume 1/2 the fighter price for a tender jump cost and such. Quite doable.

 

[Ranger]

Here are the stats for the Rampart V from Challenge #27.

FM-0106MS1-K0000-00004-0

TL=15, 20 tons, Fuel=4.2 tons, Agility=6, Cost=MCr.33.2
Carries 12 missiles.

From the text:

"A unique feature of the Rampart V system is the ability allow up to five ships (usually 4) to combine their missile launches into one slavo which is equivalent to a missile factor seven."

So, a squadron of 16 of these would get four factor seven missile slavos each turn.

 

[Matt123]

I can't get a 100 ton (or smaller) fighter that has:

-15 points of armor
-Agility 6
-Computer 9

Drop the armour reqirement, with smaller & cheaper ships you can afford & carry more of them. Rely on numbers to be effective faster & act as ablative armour, harsh but effective.

 

[tbeard1999]

Drop the armour reqirement, with smaller & cheaper ships you can afford & carry more of them. Rely on numbers to be effective faster & act as ablative armour, harsh but effective.

I can't get a valid fighter design at under 100 tons if the fighter carries a model/9 computer, unless I'm willing to also settle for armor-0 and agility 0. And even then, the fighter is 55 tons -- hardly a bargain. (And at agility 0 and armor 0, each hit will be virtually automatic and will probably cripple the fighter -- rather wasteful of pilots, seems to me). Agility-0 means that the starship will always be able to pick the range, which will make the fighter's "to hit" chance worse:

5+ for missile to hit; - target's agility (-6); -computer difference (-1); -missiles at short range (-1) = 13+ to hit.

(Note that fighters with computers have their computer rating reduced by 1).

So not only is this fighter huge, slow and highly vulnerable, it's not able to damage a sensibly designed heavy warhip.

The problem seems to be that the computer has a collossal energy point requirement (for a fighter). Even at TL15, the computer alone will require 24 tons of power plant and fuel.

So at TL15, it seems clear to me that fighters cannot affect a sensibly designed warship.

 

[Hal]

I can't get a valid fighter design at under 100 tons if the fighter carries a model/9 computer, unless I'm willing to also settle for armor-0 and agility 0.

tbeard1999?

The Banshee fighter is under 100 dtons, has agility 6, a bridge, and 2 armor levels - not to mention fuel scoopes, fuel purification plant, and a small stateroom. That seems to meet your specifications but for the 15 levels of armor - which isn't all that doable for small ships in High Guard. A 15 armor level requires 16% of the ship, which when coupled with the requirement of manuver 6 drives the expended space up to 33%. Couple this with the space required for the bridge, which is about 20% of the hull space, and you have allocated up to a touch over 50% of the hull space without even walking into the issue of power plant and fuel requirements.

In any event, the Banshee at a touch over 2x the cost of a heavy fighter from Fighting Ships, does do the job.

 

[tbeard1999]

tbeard1999?

The Banshee fighter is under 100 dtons, has agility 6, a bridge, and 2 armor levels - not to mention fuel scoopes, fuel purification plant, and a small stateroom. That seems to meet your specifications but for the 15 levels of armor - which isn't all that doable for small ships in High Guard.

It's actually *quite* doable -- on a 10 ton fighter no less -- as long as you don't need a large computer.

In any case, I can't get a TL 15 fighter with Armor >1, Computer-9 and Agility-6 at any size smaller than 100 tons. A 100 ton fighter is not much of a firepower deal IMHO.

Because at the end of the day, it *still* can't hit a sensibly designed TL15 large ship most of the time.

Missile hits on 5+.

DM -6 for target's Agility.

DM -1 for target's computer advantage.

So it hits 1/36 times. And unless its using nuclear missiles, it will do no damage to the target (2d6 + 15 armor + 6 for battery size less than 9 = damage only on a "2") most of the time.

This fighter will hit 1/36 times and will cause damage 1/36 times. So even if there are no defenses, about 1 fighter in 1300 will cause any damage to a sensibly designed TL15 ship.

Allocating 130,000 tons to fighters that will average 1 hit per turn seems a dubious idea to me.

And because it has virtually no armor, most hits on it will result in mission kills.

 

[Hal]

<snipped stuff>

In any case, I can't get a TL 15 fighter with Armor >1, Computer-9 and Agility-6 at any size smaller than 100 tons. A 100 ton fighter is not much of a firepower deal IMHO.

Because at the end of the day, it *still* can't hit a sensibly designed TL15 large ship most of the time.

Missile hits on 5+.

DM -6 for target's Agility.

DM -1 for target's computer advantage.

I think you may be in the habit of thinking "computer size advantage"

The Banshee, not only has a size 9 computer installed, but also has a bridge installed, not to mention its Agility 6.

As a consequence of this, the Banshee is treated as a size 0 hull, with a -2 size modifier for hits against it, and does not give up any kind of "computer size" advantage to its enemies, nor suffers from a computer size disadvantage itself when attacking other ships.

With a missile-3 attack, using conventional warheads, the Banshee's to hit starts at 5+. Agility 6 targets will raise the to hit from 5+ to 11+.

Depending on the size modifier of the target ships, assuming Agility 6 for all ships in this example, the following to hits become the norm:

Size modifier -2: 5+6+2 = 13 (no possible hits)
Size modifier -1: 5+6+1 = 12
Size modifier -0: 5+6+0 = 11
Size modifier +1: 5+6-1 = 10
Size modifier +2: 5+6-2 = 9

 

[tbeard1999]

I think you may be in the habit of thinking "computer size advantage"

The Banshee, not only has a size 9 computer installed, but also has a bridge installed, not to mention its Agility 6.

Yes, that would make a difference, although I'm still not wild about spending that much tonnage on a fighter. With nuclear missiles, it would definitely be more effective.

I'll re-check my numbers and comment tomorrow. Since I like fighters, I'm certainly willing to be persuaded otherwise

 

[Whipsnade]

Gents,

Hal's Banshee illustrates what I feel to be an important point about both fighters and tech level progression in Traveller.

In this thread and another in the Classic Traveller forum, people have been discussing the relative uselessness of fighters in space comabt and making suggestions about how to remedy that. What gets lost in these discussion is that fact that fighters are only useless in space combat at certain tech levels.

Below TL13 roughly, fighters are the arm of decision. As the "Smoke Tests" at the "ct starships" Yahoo Group showed over 8 years ago, fighters can routinely mission kill all but the most extremely designed warship through fuel hits in single combat rounds. Not only that, but the amount of fighters needed was roughly 80% of the MCr cost of the ship they killed.

So, in our discussions regarding fighters we're really only discussing tech levels 14 and 15, just two of HG2's nine tech levels.

The other point Hal's 98(?)dTon Banshee illustrates is that "Things Change". In the real world we've seen warship sizes and roles fluctuate as technology progressed. Destroyers were originally torpedo boat destroyers and, after assuming the role of the warships they were designed to fight, have steadily increased in tonnage ever since. In WW1 a destroyer could perform its job on less than 1000 tons, by WW2 it has to be twice that size, and current destroyer are 8000 tons.

What caused this increase in size was technological progress, destroyers had to become bigger to do their job as technology improved. Starting to sound familiar?

In A:8 Broadsword we're shown a 5dTon fighter design. Other canonical designs range from 10dTons of various TLs to the TL15 50 dTon Ramparts. While I believe that scouting is an important role for fighters in Traveller and Traveller's wargames don't feature this role, I also believe that fighters had a combat role at lower tech levels and still have a combat role at TL15.

How can fighters have a combat role at TL15 you ask? The same way destroyers still have a combat role in 2009: They Got Bigger.

In this interpretation, the canonical 50dTon Rampart fighter is primarily an armed sensor platform, fighters resembling Hal's Banshee are the smallest of the actual combat fighters, and small vessels greater than 100dTons make up the rest of a TL15 navy's fighter ranks. For example, a fast, agile, heavily armored, 200dTon ship with a level-9 computer could mount two dual fusion gun turrets and have a factor-6 battery at it's disposal.

We're always confusing labels with reality in these discussions, even confusing labels with the "fictional reality" of the setting. The term "fighter" always brings up atmopsheric craft in people's minds, no matter the fact that a Traveller fighter operates in space. The same holds true with size, say "fighter" and people assume a certain size.

We all know that a ship's role actually determines it's classification, size can and does change with technological progress. This means we should stop assuming that "fighter" also means "sub-100dTons" across a range of nine tech levels.

Fighters are not useless as combat craft at TL15, but sub-100dTon fighters are. Things changed during the progression of nine tech levels. We already accept that engines change, computers change, weapons change, and designs change. Why shouldn't we accept that the size of fighters changes too?

Please note how this Fighters Got Bigger idea makes fighters useful again through a minor change in labels and not by a major change in the rules as so many others suggest. No violence gets done to the rules, a few labels are tweaked instead.

Regards,
Bill