Fighting Ships

[ThunderChilde]

Anyone else have a copy of this yet? This book makes me kinda regret Mongoose's promise to include Deck Plans for every ship it introduces. A sizable fraction of this book is given over to the micro scale deck plans of a Tigress. Cool in a gearheady kinda way, but massively reducing the number of ships presented.

I have to comment on the artist who is doing the illustrations for the last couple of books.......I do not care for the style, not at all. I can say that the art atleast resembles the deckplans, which is an improvement.

 

[Mark Morgan]

ouch sounds like something of a mistake the deck plans are kinda usless unless maybe one is runing a campagn abround a tigress but the plans would have to be like plans for the death star (are we allowed to refer to starwars)

 

[Galadrion]

Got it, and I've gotta kinda agree with ya, ThunderChilde. Way, WAY too many pages of deckplans for the Tigress. Even really too many for the Azhanti, though they did at least compress those down by noting the "duplicate" decks - an eminently sensible way of coping with a capital-class ship which would have many effectively identical decks. Personally, I'd feel better served if Mongoose would provide more gross-scaled deck plans for the larger ships, allowing the larger ships to be compressed down to, say, no more than three or four pages of plans, plus the ship information (which so far seems to need no more than two pages, for the most part). That would have allowed room in the book for another five or six ships, easily, and I can think of several things I'd like to see instead. A battle tender plus its associated riders, for example.

If I really need detail on a capital class ship's layout, I can take a gross-scale map and extrapolate the parts I'd need. Most likely, the players aren't going to see much of it in any case - if they even get invited inboard, they'll probably see the boat bay, some corridors, and a conference room, and that's about it. I've never yet run a game with active-duty characters in it, and civilians aren't going to get to see much of the inside of an active warship, for the most part. (Maybe the brig, but those are pretty easy to extrapolate as well. If they manage to escape -evil laugh! - then they're going to be too busy trying to get off-ship to do a lot of exploring. How many player groups have enough members to try to actually take over even a cruiser? I mean, you're talking needing a couple of hundred people to even furnish a skeleton crew...)

 

[Theophilus]

I would like to know.

So far I've seen the Kokirraks and courier from the preview.
And here I see mentioned the Tigress and Azhanti.

So here is my question:

Is this just a "mongoosification" of the origianl Fighting Ships (Supp9), or are there new designs?

 

[Qstor2]

I was wondering where the Donosev is? There's a few new MGT Scout ships in the scout book but no Donosev yet. I expected it in the Fighting Ships book.

Mike

 

[Spinward Scout]

Looked at this at my FLGS today. I think I'll buy Traders and Gunboats instead. Not that it isn't impressive that they made those deckplans, I just don't ever see a need to use it with normal adventuring. Maybe if you are running a fleet battle...

 

[Galadrion]

A fleet battle isn't going to need deck plans until and unless you get into boarding actions... and if you've reached the point of boarding one of these capital ships, you've probably blown it up. I mean, before you can get a significant number of Marines on board (and you'll need a significant number - the bigger ships can have thousands of crew, almost all of whom will be armed combatants), you'll need to eliminate a significant portion of whatever point defense weaponry is on the ship. In doing that much damage, you're probably much more likely to cause catastrophic damage to the ship itself, rendering a boarding moot.

For fleet battles, you're going to get far more use out of the ship information than the plans. And unless you're in a comparable ship, the battle is likely to go "big ship fires, little ship goes boom!

 

[Theophilus]

I repeat myself:

Is this a mongoosification of the supp9 fighting ships?

 

[Qstor2]

I repeat myself:

Is this a mongoosification of the supp9 fighting ships?

There's a few new designs and some of the ships are in MGT Traders and Gunboats.

Mike

 

[captainjack]

Crossposted from Mongoose boards, FWIW:

Just got mine, too (thanks Game Kastle).

Howsabout a quick review ? : Looks good ! Solid B+/A
A bit more detail please ?: Okay here's some impressions.

Overall, the level of detail is comprable to the original CT fighting ships, although (I think) less designs are included, and unlike the CT product, it has deckplans for all the ships. If you think deckplans are a complete waste of time, it'll have lots of wasted space for you.

I have not gone over the designs with any kind of toothed comb, so those kind of issues can't be included in this review; but I can say I'm very satisfied with it, and would reccomend it to most Traveller Refs, as well as most gearheads who like, or at least tolerate grudgingly (you know who you are )the MGT way of things.

That is unsually.... terse..... of you, Captain:

Well, okay, since you asked, here we go !

The designs include some interesting new fighters that fill a couple of missing slots in the games TOE -also, at least three have rather good potential for player interaction (note: I probably will misremember the names, but it should be obvious):

The Ground assult ship (looks like the old xp thunderball ?) Could be an opponent, or a very useful insystem hauler if bought as surplus. In a military or merc campaign they could well have this as a landing boat.

Carrier support fighter As an encounter, and as a very useful auxilary if the players are scavengers, or conversely, as an opponent if the players are scavenging, possibly where they shouldn't (ya think ?) ;

The system defense fighter -this is a useful GM ship that gives the players somthing to avoid, but which could be fought off with most player size ships.

The Gyro fighter. This is a wonderfully quirky high tech military experiment. No doubt it'll offend someone for some observed shortcomings, but do remember:miliatry boondoggles and disasters are at least as common as the wunderweapons (for every T-34 there is a KV-2). And some of them get deployed regardless of sense or sensibility (cf the F-104 ).

There's the J-6 courier which may or may not work as a design -that got discussed already from the preview. I see it as another not quite successful design, but quite capable if deployed as a J5 courier with the understanding that the J6 capacity is for utter emergencies only. Or, one can upgrade the engines to +2 tech and use the saved space for powerplant fuel, OR add this to any library data:

"The ScX6 was produced by Quateroli Enterprises of Junction as the flagship of their new "pro-imperial line" . Unfortunately, due to production difficulties at the source it was unable to utilize the intended high performance Drake-Tallboy Rt2z-1104 M-drives . To meet deadlines, the design was approved for the available, but unfortunately larger, R337-1006 Juliana-Gotard drive (aka "chatterbox"), effectively reducing its range to J5. A planned refit of the design to J6 specifications has unfortunately been repeatedly tabled due to budgetary concerns" . Conway's Fighting Ships of the Third Imperium , 1108 edition

The 3K destroyer is a nice size ship quite capable of absolutely putting down almost any civilian ship you like, as well as all the nifty paramilitary (and pirate) ships and gunboats in T&G.

The Armored cruiser is a nice design, and also makes a good battleship for a smaller ship campaign; as does the light cruiser, which fills in for a star destroyer quite nicely in such campaigns. (check the art if you have any doubt)

The bigger ships are a good selection of capital class ships of the Carrier and Battleship types, as well as some hybrids like the Strike cruiser. The AHL is there, again making a god show as the upper sized capital ship in a medium ship campaign, but the mapping scale inherent in an 8x11 booklet precludes its original use: a venue of onship minis combat....for that, the original "box o' paper" Azanti will still be needed.

The Tigress.....well, heck I think its cool. Your mileage may vary. I have no real practical use for the big ship deckplans, other than as general coolness and ogling, but the official writeups are very useful. And there is always the possibility of an adventure in a mysteriously abandoned Plankewell or somesuch silliness. Plus, in a small ship universe, they make great "old empire" relics. One of my favorite foundation and empire stories is built around the political crisis that occurs when one of the Successor periphery states finds an intact fiirst empire destroyer that is bigger than whole fleets at that timeperiod.

It might have done with a few more ships between the destroyer and the Armored cruiser or AHL, but that's a minor issue. I don't like the art, but that's me, and in my dogheaded opinion, art is a fairly unimportant issue for most gaming products, as long as it doesn't actually make me heave -and this is quite competent art, and generally accurate to the deckplans, just in a style I dislike.

I cannot and will not comment on typos, editing and layout issues: life is too busy for me to worry much about such stuff right now.

So: probably a C-/C if you hate deckplans; a B+/A depending on how critical you feel sparseness in the midrange (10k-50k) ships is.

[Transmission ends].

 

[Jame]

Excuse me, Cap't Jack, but what do you mean, "sparseness in the 10-15000 ton range?"

Are there no ships of that size range in the book?

 

[Theophilus]

I'm really more of a background info kind of guy, when deployed, where used, how used, etc.

Really use big ships more a a background for pc's rather than in campaign use.