Fighters

[R_Chance]

How did you implement this? Was it a blanket 'subtract x from armour at point blank range', or did you have different armour ratings for different targets and a roll to hit table? Or something else?
I use a 'close range fighters can only be hit by turrets' rule, but I haven't used a special targeting table (yet). I use a group battery rule instead. Your idea sounds like an interesting option.

Thanks, it was fun but it did add a layer of complication. I'll have to dig that stuff up (it's boxed around here someplace...). I'll find it and post the particulars. It involved task rolls to match velocities after intercept, followed by targeting specific features with hit Dms based on the size of the specific target and penetration / damage rolls that were categorized by type of target (weapons, MD, airlocks, commo / sensor masts, etc.). If you missed your specific target you hit the general hull (kind of hard to miss something the size of a large starship from a few meters away...).

Edit: It's probably going to be the weekend before I can find the right stuff -- it's amazing how much stuff you can accumulate / box in 10+ years in the same house... I'll post it here when I find it.

 

[dccarles]

A serious problem here is a lack of operational-scale rules for Traveller combat.

Trillion Credit Squadron provided us with a minimal-but-useful set of strategic rules, and High Guard provided, of course, the tactical foundation. But we really know very little about what goes on at the intrasystem level. We have tables that tell us the amount of time to get from point A to point B, but no real way to calculate the likelihood of intercepting someone trying to do just that.

A lot of the arguments - e.g. on piracy, cruiser warfare and the use of fighters - are really just so much whistling in the dark without a set of rules for intrasystem maneuvering and detection.

--Devin

 

[LordVan]

Fighters vs Big Ships

Again and again I see people arguing over how easy it is for big guns on big ships to destroy little fighters, but everyone of you has ignored several factors:
1) Those small fighters are smaller, alot smaller and thus harder to spot let alone hit.
2) Those little fighters are faster and a H*** of alot harder to hit no matter what anyone says. I play the T20 system and it allows the excess energy of a ship's powerplant to affect the agility rating of a ship. At smaller tonnages this produces more agility for less power. The agility them acts as a penalty to the attacker trying to hit it.
3) Big ships are more geared towards pounding away at big ships.

 

[LordVan]

One more thing . . .

And one more thing,
4) imagine what any missle or a plasma gun hit or fusion gun hit would do to the nice big open inside of the barrel of those spinal mounts the big ships mount. And YES they are nice and big and open. Just consider how big those things are in the first place.
5) Another thing to consider, if you just fired or are getting ready to fire your missle bays, and the same kind of hit on your spinal mount hits the missle bays. haveing 50+ tons of missles blow up in your missle bay, set off the missle magazine next to it falls under the heading of A REALLY REALLY BAD DAY!!!!!!

 

[Bob Weaver]

Many have noted the comparative invulnerability of battleships to fighters. In fact that is nothing new. Despite the myth, fewer battleships were sunk in wwii then is thought. Allied anti-aircraft technology had more or less caught up with the airplane by 1942(enemy battleships remained at a disadvantage). Battleships in wwii remained in the "second fiddle" place to which they had been relagated. But at the same time, they could be quite a bother to sink.
But still they could be sunk from the air alone or in tandem with other elements.
As I understand, battleships in Traveller have their power increased from that, making it far harder to destroy them with fighters alone. But not necessarily impossible. Like wwii battleships they were tough but not impossible.
To continue the analogy, the ideal target for aircraft was not battleships but other types of vessels that could put up less of a fight. The same might be true in Traveler. There can be only so many battleships, whereas other types of ships are more vulnerable. And of course transport and service vessels are meat for the slaughter if caught unprotected.

In support of Jatay's point:

According to the Navy Historical Institute (www.history.navy.mil) the US lost only 2 battleships during WWII - the Arizona and the Oklahoma, both of which were lost at Pearl Harbor. Other BB's were damaged by aircraft during the war, but none were sunk by aircraft on the high seas. Only three carriers were sunk by aircraft: the carriers Hornet, Lexington & Yorktown. By comparison, 31 destroyers were sunk by Japanese aircraft, many of them Kamikaze attacks. The biggest ships the Japanese managed to sink this way were three CVE's (escort carriers). The historical comparison does not favor the "fighters as BB killers" model.

FWIW, in my TU, the only places you see fighters are in systems where the government doesn't have the budget to build anything larger but they want to have some 'patrol' craft in space. Anyone with the budgets starts building at the 1Ktn+ level.

Cheers,

Bob W.

 

[Bob Weaver]

Again and again I see people arguing over how easy it is for big guns on big ships to destroy little fighters, but everyone of you has ignored several factors:
1) Those small fighters are smaller, alot smaller and thus harder to spot let alone hit.
2) Those little fighters are faster and a H*** of alot harder to hit no matter what anyone says. I play the T20 system and it allows the excess energy of a ship's powerplant to affect the agility rating of a ship. At smaller tonnages this produces more agility for less power. The agility them acts as a penalty to the attacker trying to hit it.
3) Big ships are more geared towards pounding away at big ships.

LordVan,

I've never played T20 rules (or TNE either), so I can't speak to those. Did you mean your points to refer only to T20? I hazard a guess that the bulk of discussion in "The Fleet" forum centers on Bk5/High Guard rules. As to your points in Bk2 & Bk5 terms:

1) Under Bk2 rules, there are no size modifiers to spotting/tracking ships so their smaller size is no advantage. Bk5 doesn't deal with spotting at all, so again no advantage for being small.
2) Under Bk2 rules, there are no size modifiers to hit. 10 ton fighters are as easy to hit as the 5Ktn big boys. Under Bk5 rules, small craft are at -2 to be hit; not a huge disadvantage when a factor-9 laser battery needs a base roll of 4 to hit. Still, your point here has merit. Smaller ships are harder to hit. This is offset in some ways by their comparative weakness.
3) This is irrelevant - we're not talking about what a battleship was designed to do, we're talking about what it is capable of doing.

The tension on this issue seems to be between what we want to do with Traveller's space combat rules and what the rules actually say we can do.

Best Regards,

Bob W.

 

[Bob Weaver]

And one more thing,
4) imagine what any missle or a plasma gun hit or fusion gun hit would do to the nice big open inside of the barrel of those spinal mounts the big ships mount. And YES they are nice and big and open. Just consider how big those things are in the first place.
5) Another thing to consider, if you just fired or are getting ready to fire your missle bays, and the same kind of hit on your spinal mount hits the missle bays. haveing 50+ tons of missles blow up in your missle bay, set off the missle magazine next to it falls under the heading of A REALLY REALLY BAD DAY!!!!!!

LordVan,

While not disagreeing with your conclusions about these circumstances, both of them are well outside the range of any Traveller rules set I've seen. If you want to have situations like this occur in your games, by all means do so. But the rules do not cover them. This is the crossover point between strait-up wargame and role-playing game. The effects you mention would be wonderfully dramatic scenes in your PC's lives assuming they survive the explosions. Great set-up for a tense gaming session where the crew of the stricken ship fight for their lives as the ship falls out of the line of battle, maybe into a gravity well, or the power plant threatening to go critical and blow.
Never the less, I suspect any attempt to create rules for such specific damage effects would bog down space combat in bookkeeping more detailed than is often needed. Save the descriptive damage effects for where they will advance the story for the PC's.

Best Regards,

Bob W.

 

[atpollard]

Again and again I see people arguing over how easy it is for big guns on big ships to destroy little fighters, but everyone of you has ignored several factors:
1) Those small fighters are smaller, alot smaller and thus harder to spot let alone hit.
2) Those little fighters are faster and a H*** of alot harder to hit no matter what anyone says. I play the T20 system and it allows the excess energy of a ship's powerplant to affect the agility rating of a ship. At smaller tonnages this produces more agility for less power. The agility them acts as a penalty to the attacker trying to hit it.
3) Big ships are more geared towards pounding away at big ships.

Please be specific. Pick a Fighter, a Big Warship and a range. What are the 'To Hit' rolls, the modifiers and the damage on a sucessful hit?

If a fighter will hit a warship 50% of the time and destroy 1 dTon of warship and a warship will hit a fighter only 10% of the time and destroy 1000 dTons of fighter, then the "ignored factors" don't really matter, do they?

 

[robject]

All this hoo-hah is solved by applying your preferred rules set to an appropriate battle. The average results tells you the way things is.

IMTU, all this hoo-hah is solved by tech level.

TL9: Weapons are superior to defenses. Fighters and gunboats may threaten large ships.

TL15: Weapons are inferior to defenses. Fighters cannot threaten large ships.

TL16: Black globes modify fleet combat strategy.

A few TLs Later: White globes modify fleet combat strategy, again.

TL26?: Portals rearrange fleet combat strategy drastically.



That's just a back-of-the-napkin estimated sample.

 

[pendragonman]

Before I go on, I apologize in advance if someone else has already made these arguments. I haven't had time to read every post in this monster yet.

In support of Jatay's point:

According to the Navy Historical Institute (www.history.navy.mil) the US lost only 2 battleships during WWII - the Arizona and the Oklahoma, both of which were lost at Pearl Harbor. Other BB's were damaged by aircraft during the war, but none were sunk by aircraft on the high seas. Only three carriers were sunk by aircraft: the carriers Hornet, Lexington & Yorktown. By comparison, 31 destroyers were sunk by Japanese aircraft, many of them Kamikaze attacks. The biggest ships the Japanese managed to sink this way were three CVE's (escort carriers). The historical comparison does not favor the "fighters as BB killers" model.

FWIW, in my TU, the only places you see fighters are in systems where the government doesn't have the budget to build anything larger but they want to have some 'patrol' craft in space. Anyone with the budgets starts building at the 1Ktn+ level.

Cheers,

Bob W.

Ok, so Japanese aircraft did not hurt our BBs or CVAs much, but what about American aircraft effects on Japanese BBs and CVAs? Yamato, Musashi, Soryu, Hiryu, Kaga, Akagi all sunk or damaged too far to recover by aircraft (Soryu, Hiryu, and Akagi scuttled due to damage inflicted by aircraft). Recall that Yamato and Musashi were the most powerful BBs afloat at the time.

Then there is the critical damage that Bismark took from outdated British aircraft.

Clearly aircraft should be able to have an ability to harm large ships. Maybe not in ones or twos, but there should be some effect.

I like the idea of adding a "point blank" range band at which batteries are unable to target the fighters. They must be engaged by individual turrets. I think this coupled with the fighters being allowed to individually target vulnerable spots on the ship will give them a bite. Still gotta survive closing, but that is a problem even for our present day aircraft.

I kind of like the idea of charged plasma/fusion capacitors on fighter to deliver a couple of shots from these kinds of weapons. Gives the fighters more bang for the buck. Especially if the capacitor can be sent to slow energy release allowing a (say factor 2) shot 2-3 times or instantaneous release allowing a (say factor 5 or 6) single shot. These capacitors could be even small containment devices (for the slow release) or much larger containment devices (for the larger release) designed for "dropping" on the target like a bomb run. When released from the fighter the power to maintain containment fails causing the detonation...

 

[BillDowns]

I think that naval history site should be rechecked to see if a fighter ever sunk any ship. I don't think so. Torpedo bombers, dive bombers, and level bombers, yes, but fighters no.

But really, this is an "apples and oranges" comparision. Battleships and aircraft operate in different environments, but small craft and starships operate in the same environment. The real comparision should be whether a Pelican bass-boat can kill the Big E.

 

[atpollard]

The real comparision should be whether a Pelican bass-boat can kill the Big E.

USS COLE

Where are the Traveller Torpedo Boats?

 

[BillDowns]

USS COLE

Where are the Traveller Torpedo Boats?

Did you notice the CO didn't get his 4th stripe?

What would constitute a Torpedo Boat in Traveller? Perhaps a new topic??

 

[Antony]

Well a number of Icelandic patrol boats (basically trawlers) did a lot of damage to RN frigates during the Cod Wars. Of course this was done by the Icelandic vessels with their strengthened bows ramming the thin skinned frigates of the RN.

 

[far-trader]

The real comparision should be whether a Pelican bass-boat can kill the Big E.

Where are the Traveller Torpedo Boats?

I'll try to answer those if you can tell me where the waterline is on the Big E...

:smirk:

 

[LordVan]

Fighters, Bombers, etc

The designations of type of combat small craft is hard to decide. Bombers? What bombs exist in any but Megatraveller and only for atmospheric fighters. Although after reviewing the various classic traveller rulebooks at high tech levels fighters aka small craft with decent weapons, would not really be effective against anything. As for a torpedo boat for traveller, try a 100ton missle bay on a 1000 ton ship with 6G acceleration, poor armor and see what happens. As for going by one's favorite rules of Traveller, so what. If you are commanding a battleship and are under attack by fighters, you are not going to use your weapon bays 50 or 100 ton or even spinal mounts against the fighters. You are goning to save them for the other big ships out there simply because if you don't, when it comes time to do so they are not going to be available because you already fired them on the fighters. And if you do survive the engagement, if you did something that stupid, you are going to be courtmartialed and shot by your superiors for numerous charges. You are simply going to engage the fighters with the smaller turrets and such because that is why they are even there, to deal with small targets and missles. As for the extra work involved in hitting open missle bays and spinal mounts, there really isn't much: you just fired the missle bays this battle so they are open to fire. A few die modifiers for the pilot of the fighter and BOOM! Same way with the spinal mount. For the spinal mount it is really easy to notice the BIG HUGE OPENING at the front of your battleship that is NOT PROTECTED BY THE SHIP'S ARMOR. As for WWII when ships were lost by bombs, the majority in the pacific were not actually hit by speciallized bombers, there were fighters carrying bombs. Simply because most of the specialized bombers were sitting ducks for the zeros used by the Japanese because no fighters had the fuel capacity to escort them all the way.

 

[robject]

[...] If you are commanding a battleship and are under attack by fighters, you are not going to use your weapon bays 50 or 100 ton or even spinal mounts against the fighters. [...] You are simply going to engage the fighters with the smaller turrets and such because that is why they are even there, to deal with small targets and missles. [...]

Yes, exactly, I so agree.

I've heard this argument before, and I'd like to underline it. Weapons, like ships, have a purpose. The purpose of turrets is to swat close-flying nuisances. They're defensive. The purpose of bays and spines is to flog ships of the line. They're offensive.

Sure, you'd like to use everything you've got to attack that dreadnought over there, and in HG you can and should, but I think that, really, it would've been better if you couldn't.

The implications are pleasing: there are fewer weapon batteries to fire in High Guard, and fighters (and gunboats) engage in true dogfights at close range.

 

[Anthony]

If you are commanding a battleship and are under attack by fighters, you are not going to use your weapon bays 50 or 100 ton or even spinal mounts against the fighters.

Assuming you bother to engage the fighters at all, you will do so with weapons capable of actually killing fighters. Under High Guard, that generally means you're using a weapon with a high enough damage factor to get criticals. At higher TLs, where fighters may well have armor factor E, that means bay weapons or large turret arrays.

 

[Jame]

My take on fighters is that they kill escorts, disable destroyers, maim light cruisers and damage everything else.

You'd have to use squadrons or wings on anything over 100,000 tons in HG, but using them you'd be able to take out turrets/bays/sensors and such.

 

[robject]

My take on fighters is that they kill escorts, disable destroyers, maim light cruisers and damage everything else.

You'd have to use squadrons or wings on anything over 100,000 tons in HG, but using them you'd be able to take out turrets/bays/sensors and such.

Good. I like to see what people think about these issues. That's very clear and concise.

My take is that turret weapons kill escorts, and barbette weapons maybe can kill destroyers. There is no turret or barbette battery factor which can kill ships of the line.