Fighters

[dccarles]

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.

In High Guard, it kills fighters dead. Let's see some numbers:
* A factor-8 missile bay starts appearing at TL 10; factor-5 missile turrets are available any time.

* A fighter needs a bridge ~and a computer to avoid relative computer penalties against the frigate/corvette. As TLs increase, so do power requirements for the computer, and so size increases while the relative effectiveness of the fighter does not:
Computer disp + PPlant disp + Fuel disp = Total disp
TL 9: 3 + 3 + 1 = 7
TL 10: 4 + 6 + 2 = 12
TL 11: 5 + 9 + 3 = 17
TL 12: 7 + 15 + 5 = 27
TL 13: 9 + 14 + 7 = 30
TL 14: 11 + 18 + 9 = 38
TL 15: 13 + 12 + 12 = 37
As one can see, the size of the computer, plus the mass of the power plant required to run it, plus the fuel for the power plant increase steadily up to TL 12, beyond which nuclear dampers make nuclear missiles - the fighter's biggest equalizer - less useful. (Allowing capacitors to power fighters changes this, but see below.)

* At any TL, factor-5 missiles will hit Agility-6 fighters (<100 dtons) 1 time in 36 at long range. (That's assuming the fighter player has a big, heavy bridge.) Factor-2 missiles - the best a fighter can do before TL 13 - will hit an Agility-6 1000-dton ship at long range...uhhh, 0 times in 36. And remember the frigate's missiles do criticals! (If the fighter wants to use energy weapons, be my guest: they won't hit either, even at short range.)

In other words, even with no armour, without using a missile bay, a 1000 dton frigate will kill the best fighters of equivalent TL money can buy without taking losses before TL 13. (At TL 13, losses step up to 'trivial' because of nuclear dampers.)

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.

This is pure supposition. You're imagining little fighters swarming around a big battleship a la Return of the Jedi; this may be what you want, but it may not be what Traveller supports.

Quite simply, you're assuming a lot. First, you're assuming titanic irresponsibility on part of the weapon bay designer to expose the open magazine to space when it's not necessary at all; you're assuming the captain of the battleship is fool enough to open his spinal mount's armoured doors in the presence of fighters; you're assuming a nuclear blast won't wipe out these pesky little non-fib-computer-using nuisances; you're assuming perfect timing on behalf of the fighter pilot; you're assuming that meson guns, renowned for their ability to fire through matter, even need an opening; you're assuming the fighter doesn't have another fighter on his own tail; you're assuming the armoured doors stay open long enough for the fighter to aim; you're assuming the fighter somehow has an easy time hitting a small target and somehow the battleship's turrets have a hard time hittinga larger one; to top it all off, you're assuming the fighter pilot will find it simple to hit a meter-square target at that's just as agile and unpredictable as his own craft at just the right angle.

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.

Why is it harder for the captain of the ship to notice than it is for the overworked fighter pilots, who are busy trying not to get hit?

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.

I disagree.

The Douglas Devastator TBD was, indeed, a slow-moving disaster of a plane, which is why the US Navy ditched them for Avengers at earliest opportunity. They were 'sitting ducks' at Miday only because they had no fighter escort. And the Japanese Navy did put bomb racks on Zeros from the start, and the US Navy started using fighters for attacking ground/sea targets with no air cover later on.

Attack aircraft weren't 'sitting ducks'; first, they had tail guns; second, and more importantly, they had fighter cover. It requires a very special type of pilot to present his tail to an enemy fighter to make an attack run on an enemy bomber that's shooting at him with a .50 cal. This very special type of pilot usually ended up, as did so many Japanese pilots, meeting their honoured ancestors somewhat sooner than planned.

Second, while the proportion of fighters in Allied carrier air groups steadily rose, this was to deal with kamikazes and bombers, not for additional attack aircraft. The CVEs at Surigao Strait had a mix of 9 fighters and 9 bombers each; it's hard to say that fighters had taken over the job of bombers when they're only 50% of the carrier group on a task force whose primary mission was bombing ground targets.

Finally, fighters could carry drop tanks while the bombers were fully loaded with, well, bombs. It makes little sense to design an escort aircraft that can't escort your bombers all the way. If you want exact figures, I'll dig them out for you.

--Devin

(It's nothing personal; I just disagree with you, is all.)

 

[pendragonman]

Strictly by canon, Travller does not support swarms of fighters at point blank range. However, it does not specifically rule them out either, leaving that choice for your TU.

I, for one, prefer a TU where fighter can be effective. Just so they are not THE SUPREME WEAPON of the TU. I prefer a TU where every weapon system has a counter, and every defensive measure has a counter. So that there isn't just one design that always wins, but a mix of designs are necessary, and designs that try to do everything end up being really poor at most everything.

 

[LordVan]

First off the 6G acceleration does not mean agility 6. second after the math the fighters with 2 or 3 left over power under T20 usually have a very high agility. As for mr Nuclear Dampers, they are useless against x-ray laser warheads which are detonated at a distance and strike multiple hits into the target using nuke bomb pumped xray lasers. As for the spinal mount have a 1 meter opening you are wrong, yes the meson gun does not need one but the particle accelerator does, and it is much larger, even using the deckplans of the Azhanti high lightning, it shows it to be about 4.5 to 6 meters. As for the 1000ton unarmored ship with the 100 ton missle bay, that is not for use against fighters, that is the equivelant of the torpedo boat for big ships.

As for the aircraft used in the pacific, yes the military would design fighters without enough fuel capacity to make the crossings. So-called military experts do it all the time.

And no I am not thinking Star Wars type fighters attacking capital ships type battles. Heck no one in there right mind would have weapons for fighting capital ship to capital ship in space with that short of range. Which means some ninny somewhere in the military would.

But I will concede that the Classic Traveller rules make fighters really useless against most ships under 1000dtons. And without alot of house rules and such they would remain that way. But then how many campaigns were actually done with players commanding great fleets of capital ships? Most of the games I have seen or read about dealt with players on the smaller scale. So in the end, things will never really be resolved about fighters in the OTU and their efffectiveness.

 

[robject]

So in the end, things will never really be resolved about fighters in the OTU and their efffectiveness.

Or, rather, each rules set resolves them in different ways, with more or less ambiguity, or something like that.

I do like the way High Guard changes the role of fighters from being useful and destructive at lower TLs to mere sensor pickets at TL14 or so.

 

[dccarles]

First off the 6G acceleration does not mean agility 6. second after the math the fighters with 2 or 3 left over power under T20 usually have a very high agility.

I think that anyone designing an escort frigate would consider the capabilities of their likely opponents and design accordingly. In other words, they would design a fighter-killing frigate to have Agil-6 if it meant immunity to fighters.

I'm not familiar with T20; however the agility rules for fighters are the same as for any other size ship in every other version of Traveller, so I'll assume the same for T20. Fighters just aren't cost or mass-efficient as battle-line combatants under any set of Traveller rules I've seen.

As for mr Nuclear Dampers, they are useless against x-ray laser warheads which are detonated at a distance and strike multiple hits into the target using nuke bomb pumped xray lasers.

They can in Brilliant Lances. Not in T20, I take it? Then what, exactly, are they used for?

As for the spinal mount have a 1 meter opening you are wrong, yes the meson gun does not need one but the particle accelerator does, and it is much larger,

Sorry, I meant an opening measurable in terms of a few square meters. I wasn't clear.

In any case, the opening is going to be smaller than the fighter, which will be dealing with concentrated turret fire (because the gunnery captain isn't stupid) from the ship long before it gets in position.

even using the deckplans of the Azhanti high lightning, it shows it to be about 4.5 to 6 meters. As for the 1000ton unarmored ship with the 100 ton missle bay, that is not for use against fighters, that is the equivelant of the torpedo boat for big ships.

First, the ship I was using as an example was using turret weapons.

Second, in response to saying that 100-ton missile bays "aren't for use" against fighters, there's no game rule against it, and against higher-TL fighters in High Guard it's the best way to kill them. As for doctrine: if a captain is feeling seriously threatened by fighter craft, he'll use whatever defenses he can, doctrine be buggered.

As for the aircraft used in the pacific, yes the military would design fighters without enough fuel capacity to make the crossings. So-called military experts do it all the time.

Ahh, you're referring to land-based aircraft. And I suspect you're also referring to the European campaign, not the Pacific; B-29 Superfortresses can and did bomb Japan without any fighter escort at all. Why? Because at the altitudes they operated at the Japanese fighters - which generally lacked intercoolers - were slower than the B-29. (The Tokyo raid was something else entirely, of course, being at night.)

The Allies did run into problems with providing air cover for the Atlantic convoys, and when bombing Europe. (Early Allied fighters like the Spitfire and P-40 were designed for short-range home defense.) Later on, with Lightnings, Mustangs and Thunderbolts, it wasn't a problem.

But then how many campaigns were actually done with players commanding great fleets of capital ships?

Mine is. Traveller is unique in having grown up hand-in-hand with its own wargames, Trillion Credit Squadron included.

--Devin

 

[aramis]

My big complaints about most Traveller Space Combat Systems is the emphasis on critical hits...

• Bk2/Maday is cumulative damage with inherent critical-like effects from cumulation plus actual criticals
• High Guard is entirely criticals.
• MT officially uses criticals, but there are enough rules for vehicle damage that one can use Vehicle Damage system (which is tied to personal combat), and get a very different set of results from the very same designs, as vehicle damage is cumulative in nature, but lacks criticals.
• TNE/BL also uses criticals as the prime methodology, but at a slightly smaller granularity than HG.
• BattleRider is explicitly major criticals only; in my experience, it isn't congruent with playing it out in BL...
• T4 is on par with TNE.
• T20 is cumulative damage, plus criticals.

The general lack of cumlative damage is the problem with most Traveller ship combat systems.

If the fighter can carry a weapon that will penetrate the armor, or will scab the armor, fighters should be able to take out even capital ships... in sufficient numbers. But, in HG, they can't...

Now, using MT vehicular, they can often damage even battleships... but they seldom survive the effort. T20 likewise. I like that. Makes fighters a waste of money, but hey...

 

[LordVan]

xray laser warheads

In T20 the Xray laser warheads, is specifically states that Nuclear Dampers have no effect on them because the warheads detonate outside the 10 mile radius of the Nucleat Dampers. So it would make more sense to use these warheads on fighters than standard nukes. As for TNE and BL, man that was one ruleset that gave me headaches just thinking about it. Took me a while to work through everything, then in the end I scrapped the setting and used it with the 2300ad system and used it for that universe.

 

[Antony]

Compared to Gurps vehicles the TNE system (FF&S1) is a walk in the park. Metric is so much easier.

 

[pendragonman]

Compared to Gurps vehicles the TNE system (FF&S1) is a walk in the park. Metric is so much easier.

Seconded.

 

[Anthony]

Compared to Gurps vehicles the TNE system (FF&S1) is a walk in the park. Metric is so much easier.

I haven't used FF&S1 much, but FF&S2 is worse than Vehicles, even if you ignore all the editing problems.

 

[robject]

I haven't used FF&S1 much, but FF&S2 is worse than Vehicles, even if you ignore all the editing problems.

 

[Anthony]

Cute, but I've used both systems, and Vehicles is at least lacking in tricks like multiplying by 0.9 multiple times to handle the scale efficiency of power plants.

 

[mbrinkhues]

Compared to Gurps vehicles the TNE system (FF&S1) is a walk in the park. Metric is so much easier.

You don't build GT Starships with Vehicles. They have a slimmed down system that uses ready modules and is quite easy to do with pen and paper. Even a computationally challenged like me does not need a calculator.

 

[Icosahedron]

Hmm, something about a 'computationally challenged' engineer worries me. :smirk:

Or perhaps your signature doesn't refer to you?


EDIT: HEY I just noticed - I passed the Big K!

 

[LordVan]

computationally challenged engineers

Down here in Texas we call them Aggies. They design all the major road and highway construction projects. Like you have a deep ravine that floods when it rains, you build the road down into the ravine, put up a depth gauge, and call it a bridge, then wonder why people get swept off the road and die when it rains. Or concrete pillars holding up real bridges that crumble like cheap plaster when something runs into them.

 

[mbrinkhues]

With me that's easy. They don't allow me anywhere near real objects. Instead they stuck me in a basement and let me write programs for computers. That way if I have to add 3 and 4 I can call up the calculator and do it

So don't fear, they'll never let me build the nuclear power plant, only program the controlling software. And that should not produce any dangers.

 

[dccarles]

The general lack of cumlative damage is the problem with most Traveller ship combat systems.

If the fighter can carry a weapon that will penetrate the armor, or will scab the armor, fighters should be able to take out even capital ships... in sufficient numbers. But, in HG, they can't...

Very good observation. In High Guard, surface hits basically don't matter, whereas internal explosions and criticals do. (And because internal explosion hits are generally served by spinal meson guns, they come in enough quantity to disable a ship in one shot.)

I remember designing a ship for Brilliant Lances, and noticing that one displacement ton would make a tremendous amount of difference in how often the ship received critical hits. Below 1000 dtons, 61 penetrating damage points would cause a critical; at or above 1000 dtons, 101 penetrating damage points was necessary. And it's not hard to use Fire, Fusion and Steel to design a laser bay that will have a DV of 70 or so, enough to puncture most medium-sized hulls and score a critical, while a DV 110 laser will require 2.5x the power (and mass, and volume, etc.)

I don't want Traveller starships to just be giant damage sponges - fifteen TL 15 100-ton particle bays are not the same as a factor-P spinal particle accelerator, despite using the same amount of power. But a little more progressive damage would give the player important decisions to make: repair the spinal mount or maneuver drive? Take the ship out of the line now, or leave it in one more turn?

And important decisions are the essence of good gameplay.

--Devin

 

[Antony]

You don't build GT Starships with Vehicles. They have a slimmed down system that uses ready modules and is quite easy to do with pen and paper. Even a computationally challenged like me does not need a calculator.

I may be wrong (I often am) but weren't all the modules used in the simplified GT starship design sequence actually designed with Gurps Vehicles? And in any case what about if you want to build a ship at a different TL from the ones done in this system? Then you have to go back to Gurps Vehicles.

 

[mbrinkhues]

I may be wrong (I often am) but weren't all the modules used in the simplified GT starship design sequence actually designed with Gurps Vehicles? And in any case what about if you want to build a ship at a different TL from the ones done in this system? Then you have to go back to Gurps Vehicles.

Using "Starships" they cover GTL9 to GTL12 (Traveller TL9 to TL15) and with a very detailed list of modules. Mercs or Ground Forces has the Ground Vehicle system that in turn is compatible with WWII's system so even there you are covered

 

[Antony]

So how about a Traveller TL7 or 8 Slow Merchant. A Darrian TL16 Cruiser etc. And how many books do I need now? Then If I want a module not in any of the books or a ship that is not modular.

I think I'll stick with FF&S1 until something I consider better comes along