Fixing the T vs J gun thing

[AndreaV]

Or more to the point not.

I thought I'd try a few simple ideas for fixing the light cruiser vs dreadnought dilemma in HG.

So starting out by designing J3 battleships and J4 rider/tender for J, N, R and T meson guns with varying levels of armour (one at 11 and one at 15 for most, with an extra one at 13 for the N gun). And plugging them into my hypothetical minor power budget to see how many of each I got and which weapon worked best.

Using unmodified HG, the N gun works out the most cost effective option, with the J gun a close second. But bottom line, the T gun is the least cost effective option and a fleet armed with any of the other weapons will beat it. Not good for established canon.

So first change: Move the dread Fuel Tanks Shattered to the critical table. This greatly reduces the lethality of the smaller guns. Unfortunately not enough. The T gun gets better but is still beaten by every other gun.

Second change: Have the meson screen act as armour reducing the number of hits and automatic criticals. This is better, the T gun is now more cost effective than the J gun, but the N and R still walk all over it.

So tried the same trick but using armour. Now here things got really interesting. Which gun was most effective became highly dependent on armour. When the ships were all armoured to factor 11 the N gun was most effective. Same if uniformly armed to level 15.

However, here was the crux, the armour 15 N gun fleet was extremely vulnerable to an armour 13 N gun fleet (to do with appropriate armour for level of threat faced). And the armour 13 N gun is beaten by the armour 15 T gun (think rock paper scissors).

Assuming ships are armoured to face the threat they pose the R gun worked out most effective on riders and the T gun on ships.

Sooooo... IMTU from here on in, I thrown away the concepts in Fighting Ships and now (IMTU) if it mounts a spinal its a line of battle ship. J guns are 4th rates, N guns are 3rd rates, R guns 2nd rates and the T guns 1st rates. The 3rd rates make up the bulk of the battlefleet, with 1st and 2nd rates being much rarer, reserved for flag duties. (some of this might seem a little familiar )

Cruisers are high jump missile armed ships for scouting and patrol work. Some of them work out as big as a LoBship, but they have a very different role.

Well works for me

 

[McPerth]

Have you tried the proposal made in other threads to change the 'fuel tanks shattered' for 'fuel tank shattered', destoying a variable amount of fuel depending on the size of the gun?

I guess (intuitively, not tested) that this would make the T gun quite more powerful than J or N , even if armor is not used against mesons...

 

[rancke]

Sooooo... IMTU from here on in, I thrown away the concepts in Fighting Ships and now (IMTU) if it mounts a spinal its a line of battle ship. J guns are 4th rates, N guns are 3rd rates, R guns 2nd rates and the T guns 1st rates. The 3rd rates make up the bulk of the battlefleet, with 1st and 2nd rates being much rarer, reserved for flag duties.

What about ships with smaller spinals? At TL15 it should be possible to make, say, A and E guns that took up a lot less space and required significantly less energy. They could be used for your 5th and 6th rates.


Hans

 

[Garyius2003]

And moogoose, whatever else they did with their J3 Imperial standard rule, fixed big ship combat. Not only the worst of the Old HG rules issues, but making up a reason why fighters exist (torpedoes launched from 40 ton boats escorted by 20 ton fighters and opposed by 30 or 20 ton fighters, equipped with bomb pumped lasers--but only if fired in mass).

Now ship design from the first Fighting Ships, downgraded from J4 to J3, make a lot of sense. Only with armor added to the missing J1 fuel tanks.

 

[mike wightman]

Something I posted a long time ago:

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=3597

 

[AndreaV]

Have you tried the proposal made in other threads to change the 'fuel tanks shattered' for 'fuel tank shattered', destoying a variable amount of fuel depending on the size of the gun?

I guess (intuitively, not tested) that this would make the T gun quite more powerful than J or N , even if armor is not used against mesons...

......


mmmm... lets see, if we move FTS back to the interior explosion table. It could work, you'd just need some mechanism to ensure that the T scored 100% and nothing else did. Problem is that anything like that would have to be based on the weapon factor and the R gun is only 2 factors smaller than the T (25 vs 27) and the N is still a factor 22. Plays with it in his head. If a FTS cost 4% per weapon factor, the R, S and T would be a guaranteed kill and the N would only cost 88% of the ships fuel. Yes that might work. R gun still trumps T, but if you add in the armour fix, it evens out with the R gun being for riders and the T for ships.

 

[AndreaV]

What about ships with smaller spinals? At TL15 it should be possible to make, say, A and E guns that took up a lot less space and required significantly less energy. They could be used for your 5th and 6th rates.


Hans

I'd go with the E and G.

Again playing in my head.

Mesons progress 1K, 2K, 5K, 7/8K, and looking at the table roughly speaking, the same EP cost drops one size the next TL. So if we add a 0.5K, 0.2K and maybe 0.1K (not sure may be too small).

Will get back to you on this

 

[McPerth]

......


mmmm... lets see, if we move FTS back to the interior explosion table. It could work, you'd just need some mechanism to ensure that the T scored 100% and nothing else did. Problem is that anything like that would have to be based on the weapon factor and the R gun is only 2 factors smaller than the T (25 vs 27) and the N is still a factor 22. Plays with it in his head. If a FTS cost 4% per weapon factor, the R, S and T would be a guaranteed kill and the N would only cost 88% of the ships fuel. Yes that might work. R gun still trumps T, but if you add in the armour fix, it evens out with the R gun being for riders and the T for ships.

Well, I didn't think about a percentage of fuel, but a fixed amount. If every FTS hit destroys 500 ton/factor of fuel(*), J rated meson gun would destroy 4500 ton, an N rated 11000 and a T rated 13500. Both N and T are likely to put out of commision a 25000 dton BR, but to put out of comision a BB, you'd surely need more than one hit, thus not only makes more powerful the bigger meson spinals, but also makes the BB quite more survivable than BR, and so makes sense they're still built.

(*) those 500 ton/factor are taken out of my hat, not a proven number. It would be mecessary more study to see how many tons/factor it should be.

 

[Metropolitan District 268]

Andrew -

I've been looking at that very equation recently and coming to much the same conclusion as you on the T Meson gun; but I come to exactly the opposite conclusion as you on the consequences.

What's the problem with the T not being "the best" just because it's the biggest and the most expensive? That's just standard law of diminishing returns, isn't it?

Go down a few tech levels and fight it out with ships which can't really be fitted with spinal mounts, and you might have concluded that the bigger a ship gets, the more firepower it has, and the "better" it is. Only, we all know that before long you'll bump your head against the "batteries bearing" rule ... and two smaller ships packing the same aggregate firepower will be able to bring more fire to bear and so trounce the one bigger ship.

The difference between the two scenarios?

None that I can think of.

The current rules ain't broke and don't need fixing.

Of course, if you want to change the rules to suit your conception of "how it should be" that's a referee's prerogative. But I'm quite happy with the idea that it's more cost-effective to send out more ships with smaller guns than fewer with bigger guns.

(In 1937 or thereabouts, an Admiralty war game study produced the surprising result that two 6" cruisers and an 8" cruiser could defeat a German "pocket battleship", despite the fact that the latter mounted 11" guns. The Admiralty concluded that their study wasn't an accurate simulation and "couldn't be right" - so they disregarded it. But when the study's scenario was put to the test at the Battle of the River Platte ... )