Fleet Production

[mike wightman]

I think you may be onto something here OZ.

Spinal mesons could be given factors based on their size:
light - 0.5 1kt
medium - 0.7 2kt
heavy - 0.9 4-5kt
v.heavy - 1.0 7-8kt

then add an attack bonus based on the total number of bay weapons in the squadron.

For defense factor I think you are right with number of capital ship hulls plus 1 for all the escorts.

And bombardment factor based on total missile batteries looks right.

Now to figure out the numbers.

One last thing, spinal PAW attack factor ratings?

I don't see them as the capital ship killers that meson guns are, so would halving the meson attack factor work?

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by BMonnery:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
I suppose CruDiv119 could be stationed in part of the Spinward Marches not detailed in FFW.

A Division is part of a Squadron, so it may be in the of the existant CruRon counters. </font>[/QUOTE]CruDiv is just a variant term for CruRon according to the JTAS 9 article

 

[The Oz]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:

One last thing, spinal PAW attack factor ratings?

I don't see them as the capital ship killers that meson guns are, so would halving the meson attack factor work?

I agree that spinal PAs are not capital ship killers and halving their attack factor would probably be about right. I wish we had some canon sources for PA armed squadrons in FFW.

I'm thinking about the Bombardment factors. The 154th BatRon has 140,000 tons of combat capital ships (7x20,000 Nolikan BRs) plus another 45,000 tons of escorts (counting the heavy fighters) for a total of 185,000 tons. With a FFW Bombardment factor of "2" this equates to 92,500 tons per Bombardment factor. This works well for the 505th CruRon, which has 120,000 tons of AHL cruisers and maybe a few thousand more tons of escorts, say 140,000 tons all told. That works out to a Bombardment factor of 1 or maybe 2, depending on rounding, which agrees with the FFW value for the 505th of "1".

The trouble is that I can't see any counter in FFW that would have a Tigress-class DN in it, even a squadron built around just one Tigress. Under this definition (one Bombardment factor per 92,500 tons of combat ship) all by itself a single Tigress would have a Bombardment factor of "5" which is greater than any Imperial BatRon in the game actually has; indeed only three ScoutRons have such Bombardment firepower.

And this idea doesn't explain why ScoutRons have such Bombardment strength, either.

 

[mike wightman]

Does it work any better if only the number of missile bays is used?
It's a bit more complicated to calculate, but it may give a better fit.

Also, the only rules for bombardment capability are in first edition High Guard:

Magazine: Any ship with missile racks installed in bays may allocate a magazine equal in tons to the points used in determining missile factor for a bay or turret. The total of such points (unaveraged) is then available as a planetary bombing factor. Planetary bombing is not available to ships without missile magazines.

As to the scout's bombardment factors, they are all fully streamlined and can get into atmospheres to conduct straffing etc.

 

[shield]

Just throwing a small spanner into the works. from memory the 6-2-8 batrons are black globe equipped, which the 154st isn't.

Cheers
Richard

 

[The Oz]

Richard is quite correct; the four 6-2-8 squadrons are the ones with black globes in FFW....

I think we'd do better just trying to come up with a reasonable way to classify HG ships/squadrons in FFW terms, and forget about trying to match up FFW squadrons with canon references.

 

[robject]

^ Agreed. And I'm really pleased that such straightforward rules-of-thumb even partially work. That was a useful bit of memory recall, Oz.

 

[The Oz]

Originally posted by robject:
^ Agreed. And I'm really pleased that such straightforward rules-of-thumb even partially work. That was a useful bit of memory recall, Oz.

If I really =am= remembering it, and not just making it up myself from pieces of broken memory.


And we still need some way to assign bombardment values; the values on the FFW counters seem to include more than just the number of missile batteries.

 

[mike wightman]

Empty bays given over to planetary bombardment missiles and the like?

 

[shield]

If you are conducing planetary bombardment, it is probably number of individual targets (i.e tanks, planes, subs) that you can target given that even basic starhip weaponry should turn your average tank / plane into a fireball.

Also if you are firing at stuff on the ground, the horzin will limit bombardment area. 1 battleship will level everything in its area, but can't be in two placees at once.

Whilst Nukes will be fired at SDBs, I imagine that HE missiles will be used against army vehicles etc.

It is probably a set of weapons that equal a bombardment factor (i.e. 50 x missile bays etc.) This may explain why those scout squadrons have such a good bombardment factor. All those type S scouts with triple missile racks. They can probably target hundreds of tanks etc at a time over a wide area.

Cheers
Richard

 

[The Oz]

Maybe, Sigg, maybe.

I just looked at the range of values on the FFW counters to see if that helps any. These are all values for full strength counters.

Attack: from 0 to 8. The zeros are the auxiliary squadrons and some Colonial CruRons. The eights are six Imperial BatRons (8-0-4).

Bombardment: from 0 to 8. The zeros are the TankRons, AssaultRons, nine regular Imperial BatRons, six Zhodani CruRons, and two Swordie BatRons. The eights are all ScoutRons; the highest Bombardment value on a non-ScoutRon is only 5 and all of those are Zhodani. In fact, it looks to me like the Zhos have a consistently higher Bombardment factor than the Imperials. I'll do some statistics on this later.

Defense: from 3 to 9. Several squadrons have a 3 for Defense, but the 9 is found on eleven Zho BatRons. Again, it looks to me like the Zhos (and their allies) have consistently higher Defense values (lots of 8s and 7s), which might be an attempt to show how they concentrated their forces preparing for the attack: they had their ships assembled into full-strength squadrons while the Imps had their capital ships spread out in divisions and even singletons.

 

[The Oz]

Here's the statistics on the squadrons of FFW.

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> Attack Bomb Defense # Sqdns
Imp Col BR 3.56 3.44 6.56 9
Imp Col CR 1.24 2.00 6.24 17
Imp Reg BR 4.59 1.47 4.59 32
Imp Reg CR 3.46 3.50 6.35 26
Zho Col BR 3.67 3.33 6.67 6
Zho Col CR 0.80 2.00 5.80 10
Zho Reg BR 3.85 3.85 8.04 46
Zho Reg CR 2.93 2.25 5.61 28
Swordie BR 3.33 1.33 7.00 6
Swordie CR 1.00 2.00 5.00 7
Vargr BR 5.00 1.00 8.00 2
Vargr CR 3.00 3.00 4.00 3
Avg BR 4.04 2.82 6.67 101
Avg CR 2.37 2.53 5.85 91
Imperial SR 0 4.5 4.75 8
Zhodani SR 0 6.5 4.5 6</pre>[/QUOTE]All values are averages of all the squadrons of each stated type (all Imperial Colonial CruRons, etc.)

The low average Defense value for the Imperial Regular BatRons does lead me to think that perhaps they were split up into smaller formations, but their high Attack value argues against this. The Impies have higher Attack values but this is counterbalanced by the much higher average Zho Defense values.

 

[The Oz]

While looking further at the values for FFW squadrons, I noticed some interesting anomalies. There are a few Imperial squadrons that have higher Attack values than Defense values, which plays havoc with the idea that Attack values count meson guns while Defense values count hulls. Six Imperial BatRons are B3(8-0-4), and two are B2(5-1-3). There are also five Zhodani CruRons with Attack value equal to their Defense value C3(5-2-5)

 

[mike wightman]

Hull size could be a factor in this.
The B3 8-0-4 is one of those that gets a higher jump number when damaged isn't it? This suggests tender/rider to me.
So it could be lots of very light battle riders, with each hull onnly worth 0.5 of a defense factor because secondary batteries can do enough damage to them to achieve a mission kill.

 

[The Oz]

That's what I would think, Sigg. Note that these squadrons have no Bombardment factor either, which is just what you'd expect from a squadron of light battle riders; all they can fit into those tiny hulls is the meson gun. And yes, the 8-0-4 squadrons go from J3 to J4 when damaged.

So maybe the Defense factor is something like:

One point for every capital ship hull of 30,000 tons or more, and 0.5 point for every other capital ship hull, plus one point for enough escorts.

Of course, this leads to trouble calculating the Attack factors, since those light battle riders can't have very big meson guns (factor-J usually), which would be discounted when figuring the Attack value.

And does anyone have a reason why most CruRons =lose= Jump capability when they get damaged? If a damaged squadron represents lost ships, so that Battle Rider squadrons go =up= in Jump capability as they lose hulls, why would CruRons (only) go =down=? BatRons don't lose Jump rating when they get damaged, even the ones we think are battleships. AssaultRons and TankRons don't lose Jump rating when damaged, neither do ScoutRons.

I suspect that GDW did it to make the CruRons behave a little differently from BatRons, just to add some variety to the units, otherwise CruRons and BatRons would be nearly the same.

 

[robject]

Perhaps CruRons stick together, and there's a decent chance that an individual damaged cruiser can jump away with its squadron rather than being annihalated.

 

[The Oz]

That's probably the explanation that someone from GDW would have used, but it doesn't explain why a battleship can't do the same thing; after all BBs are bigger and tougher than CAs and you'd expect a BB to suffer damage and still get away even better than a CA.

I think it was done just to make CruRons act differently from BatRons. Notice that it makes raiding with CruRons a little more risky; taking any damage might mean you can't get away from the pursuit.

 

[robject]

Sounds likely. Actually, that last bit makes a lot of sense, since cruisers should in effect not be able to take as much of a beating. But Battleships ought not behave like battle riders...

So the current guesstimates are:

Attack Factor

1. Spinal Meson
Is this table too detailed? Is it just as useful to make two entries, say < Factor T = 0.5pt, >= Factor T = 1 pt?
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Spinal meson
size (Factor=?) Points
1kt 0.5
2kt 0.7
4-5kt 0.9
7-8kt 1.0</pre>[/QUOTE]2. Spinal PAW = half the value of the corresponding sized spinal meson.

3. Add an attack bonus based on the total number of bay weapons in the squadron.

Defense Factor

DEF =
0.5 point per light cruiser (light "capitol ship"),
plus 1 point per medium cruiser and up,
plus 1 point for a sufficient number of escorts.

Bombardment Factor

BOM = based on # total missile batteries (logarithmic?)


So Then

So then, if I wanted to have two HG squadrons scrap it out using the quick-and-dirty FFW rules, I could use the above heuristic to calculate their values, then have a very short slug-fest and see who comes out on top?

For example, a battle rider group with a Jump-3 tender and three riders with heavy spinal mesons and bay weapons might qualify as a 4-1-3. Depending on the actual numbers, that is.

 

[The Oz]

That's about what I'm thinking, Robject, although I would base the Attack rating on the factor of the spinal mounts, not their tonnage. I don't think a TL11 factor-B spinal meson gun should get the same rating as a TL14 factor-S, even if they are the same tonnage. Maybe something like this:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">HG Factor FFW Attack
A through D 0.25
E through J 0.33
K through N 0.5
P through R 0.75
S or better 1.0</pre>[/QUOTE]with spinal PAWs being one-half of that.

I don't think I would add a bonus for bay weaponry. To my mind bay weapons are covered by the Bombardment rating in FFW.

 

[robject]

Thank you, Oz, factors look better than numbers anyhow. I'm still wondering if the factor granularity really matters that much. Isn't the imprecision in the guesstimation greater than the precision of the table above?

Isn't it convenient that squadrons have 4-8 major hulls (more or less)?

Hey, this might be a useful mechanic for creating squadrons in High Guard. Define the desired performance measurements and get an initial cost + feasibility estimate, then move to a more detailed design.

For example, suppose Regina Orbital wants to produce a squadron. TL limits would impose the number of 'points' of JMP, ATT and BOM per DEF (limiting range and offensive power by TL and total volume of ships, that is).