Fleet sizes

[Kaye]

Came across this while browsing, might be of interest in the current discussion.

http://www.aleph.se/Nada/Game/2300AD/Stutterwarp Misconceptions.pdf

Specifically the part "Do all drives use Tantalum?"

This reminds one of the other ongoing discussion going on in the 'My 2320AD Universe'. The one about making ships available to PC's. When isomeres of similar metals are available, even with lower warp performance the payoff could be immense!

Niobium, Vanadium, Tungsten and perhaps others are not mentioned in the 'Stutterwarp misconceptions' article. And who knows: Perhaps Technetium can have purposes other than cancer treatment? But only for short range unmanned vehicles?
Hafnium is said to produce hard radiation when stimulated to perform a Jerome effect. That is not an issue for missiles. When all misiles can have their tantalum removed this frees up a lot of tantalum.

 

[BMonnery]

Hafnium is said to produce hard radiation when stimulated to perform a Jerome effect. That is not an issue for missiles. When all misiles can have their tantalum removed this frees up a lot of tantalum.

but produces other issues, like missiles having to be stored disassembled. Pity the ship with an online Hafnium drive that crosses the shelf.....

 

[Peter Schutze]

"Not quite approaching the floor were stutterwarp ceases to work (0.15)"

Ive never heard this, only the gravity well effect on eficiency.

If its true then it would seem gravity wells should stop drives working at all with the steep drop off in efficiency

 

[Peter Schutze]

"Hafnium is said to produce hard radiation"

All of these (m) isotopes produce hard radiation when changing to the base state.

 

[BMonnery]

"Not quite approaching the floor were stutterwarp ceases to work (0.15)"

Ive never heard this, only the gravity well effect on eficiency.

If its true then it would seem gravity wells should stop drives working at all with the steep drop off in efficiency

There being a lower floor is evidenced by the Bayern malfunction. How Bayern survived is amazing. One would guess some bright spark caught the error and ejected the coils causing the Bayern only to have a nearby nuclear explosion.

At 0.1 G the warp drive is insufficient to overcome the gravity well.

Engaging the drive within an atmosphere should causing immediate relaxation, and a kiloton "nuclear" explosion (rough conversion 1 kg Ta-180m = 10 tons TNT, orders of magnitude less than Pu-239, but there may be tons of the isomer). The Thorez or similar could be the ultimate terrorist weapon. Spin the drive up in the ground and 5 seconds later the city is engulfed in a nuclear fireball.

Something else to remember when discussing PC ships - every stutterwarp drive is a potential nuke.

 

[McPerth]

I understand the mínimum Warp Efficiency, and that too much mass for the Warp Drive may destroy it, but I thought it would destroy the Drive, not provoking an overloading of the coils.

IMHO (I concede you're more knowledgeable about 2300 than myself) the coils charge is not mass dependent. Should it be, a loaded ship (most so for freighters, where loaded and unloaded mass diferes more) should have inferior range than the same ship unloaded.

My take is that having too much mass for the drive (WE under 0.1) would overload the drive, destroying it, not the coils, producing the nuclear explosión you talk about.

An, in any case, I guess after the Bayern accident, there would be some fuses to avoid this overloading, or some computer control about the mass to avoid it.

 

[Murph]

IM2300U, I use Gadolinium like H. Beam Piper did instead of Tantalum. I also have a much larger fleet and civilian space force size. Texas has 24 warships (2nd hand ex ESA destroyers and cruisers), with the French, British, US, Brazilians, etc having over 100 warships each.

There's actually a serious problem in 2300AD with the number of warships, and honestly the number of ships in general.

1) One is the infamous "Tantalum Question" thing in the game. Tantalum isn't that rare on Earth. I mean, it's rare but it's not that rare. So why are ships, let alone warships, so rare? Tantalum on Earth is so rare that people fight wars over it. The rarity is supposed to explain the lack of ships in the universe. But it's not that rare. I mean we make all kinds of stuff using Tantalum today. If it was that rare, would they make detonation missiles from it? Colin in MgT2300 tries to explain it that it's an isotope of Tantalum, but it still doesn't quite make much sense. I think there should be more ships or there has to be some other hold-up that keeps ships from being really common.

2) Another "laugh out loud" bad breaking of canon is in the Invasion sourcebook itself. There's all kinds of hints that BMonnery's fleet strengths are generally considered accurate as printed. So you have like Japan with like six ships or something total in their space fleet. Then you have Kimanjano with the French Foreign Legion with 50 fighters there.

Say what? 50?!

Yes, 50 fighters. The Star Cruiser scenario suggests they're Martels. These things are like armor 10 (yes 10) monsters. 50 of those monsters could probably fend off the Kafers by themselves, no matter how many ships the Kafers send. But more seriously, even if that's the entirety of the Foreign Legion's fighter strength (it somehow seems unlikely) ... 50 fighters in 2300 could pretty much take the fleets of any other power listed in the game without even calling in the rest of the French fleet.

To me, that the French can just base 50 Martels in Kimanjano suggests that even if the French the biggest power in 2300, the other powers have to have pretty large fleets, especially the Manchus.




Humanity.

 

[Kaye]

but produces other issues, like missiles having to be stored disassembled. Pity the ship with an online Hafnium drive that crosses the shelf.....

Weird and wonderful things will happen to you in a very short time! :devil:

However, the drive coils have to be stored disasembled and be assembled just before being launched. This doesn't have to be an issue and the procedure can be automated and performed fairly quickly.
The missiles will be built to allow quick and automated assembly.

 

[McPerth]

Hafnium is said to produce hard radiation when stimulated to perform a Jerome effect.

but produces other issues, like missiles having to be stored disassembled. Pity the ship with an online Hafnium drive that crosses the shelf.....

If hafnium produces this hard radiation only when stimulated to perform a Jerome effect, then those missiles could be carried assembled, as while their own stutterwarp drives are off line the coils don't accumulate charge (this is the base for the whole tugs use to reach distances over 7.7 LY).

The main problem then would be about recovering undetonated missiles, as they should have such charges...

 

[BMonnery]

If hafnium produces this hard radiation only when stimulated to perform a Jerome effect, then those missiles could be carried assembled, as while their own stutterwarp drives are off line the coils don't accumulate charge (this is the base for the whole tugs use to reach distances over 7.7 LY).

The main problem then would be about recovering undetonated missiles, as they should have such charges...

Assembled but "inactive" drives apparently still accumulate charge. This is the risk of tugs take. The new drive must be assembled and brought online. The task is difficult (11+ on d10) with drive engineering as the skill, a typically skilled engineer will fail 80% of the time.

The ask is hazardous, so 3d6 on the failure table.

3-10 = retry (with determination check if 6-10, but this is probably unnecessary)
11-14 = mishap (2d6 on table below)
15+ = serious mishap (3d6 on table below)

Mishaps:

3-6 = superficial damage (drive is still okay and task can be attempted again, repair parts cost 1-10% of drive cost),
7-11 = minor mishap (drive is damaged, but no casualties, 5-50% of drive cost to repair),
12-15 = major mishap (drive seriously damaged, EP=1 explosion applied against engineers, 10-100% cost of repair),
16-18= total mishap (drive destroyed, EP=3 explosion applied against engineers, cost of repair 20%+, but 60% of the time nothing is salvagable).

The "normal" result of attempting to bring a drive online is a minor mishap. Tugships aren't viable because of the difficulty of getting the drive powered up.

Taking an active drive down is worse (15+ on d10), and has worse consequences.

A skill 3 engineer (CQ+2, typical well trained engineer) succeeds 30% of the time, gets a second chance 35% of the time, 12% of the time superficial damage occurs (try again, but long term repair costs), the remaining 23% of the time the drive is damaged beyond local repair and is no longer operable.

Bear this in mind, you break the drive about not quite half the time you try and bring it online.

Tugships are not truly viable for this reason.

The same applies to missiles. About one time in twenty the missile drive will explode, which is...... problematic.

 

[aramis]

Tugships can bring on the second drive while not under time threat. Cautious task. That 11+ becomes 7+, and the 15+ becomes 11+.

Also, a Navy Engineer of skill 3 is only 4-7 years into his career. Not likely to be a chief engineer's mate. The EMC is likely to be 12+ years in, and on the sharper side, so another 7 skill points in - skill 5, thanks to it being a career skill.

 

[Kaye]

*Snip* The same applies to missiles. About one time in twenty the missile drive will explode, which is...... problematic.

You have a point Bryn, when speaking of regular ships' drives. Tug drives and missiles are purpose built in order to be (dis-)assembled.
Bringing a Tug drive online becomes a Cautious task. That 11+ becomes 7+, and the 15+ becomes 11+. (As Aramis says).

Bringing your missiles online is an automated task followed by a function check (something like testfire on the 'Fun' range :file_22.
The remote piloting station or sensor operator can order the missiles prepared. This is an automated task with a 10+ chance of succes. 7+ means an opportunity to try again with the same settings; 5+ means automatic reset and <5 is a failure that requires manual reconfiguration before a retry can be performed. When <5 the missile cannot be fired that round.

 

[BMonnery]

You have a point Bryn, when speaking of regular ships' drives. Tug drives and missiles are purpose built in order to be (dis-)assembled.
Bringing a Tug drive online becomes a Cautious task. That 11+ becomes 7+, and the 15+ becomes 11+. (As Aramis says).

Nope. TD #11 (which is non-canonical) adds two more tasks.

Assemble the drive - difficult (SDE or Elect/2 or Mech/2) - 3 hrs
Calibrate online drive - difficult, uncertain (SDE) - 6 mins

Which doesn't overwrite the core book - bring drive online - difficult, hazardous (SDE), 30 mins.

So:

Assembling the drive - difficult
Bringing assembled drive online - difficult, hazardous
Checking the drive is working - difficult, uncertain

Why? Because an assembled offline drive still accumulates charge.

 

[BMonnery]

Also, a Navy Engineer of skill 3 is only 4-7 years into his career. Not likely to be a chief engineer's mate. The EMC is likely to be 12+ years in, and on the sharper side, so another 7 skill points in - skill 5, thanks to it being a career skill.

If that's the only thing skill points are being spent on.

Remember, skill-1 is equivalent to a college degree, skill-2 a masters and skill-3 or 4 a PhD.

Buying a skill, and only that one results in.

Year 1: skill-0
Year 2: skill-1
Year 3: skill-2
Year 5: skill-3
Year 7: skill-4
Year 10: skill-5
Year 13: skill-6
Year 17: skill-7
Year 20: skill-8
Year 25: skill-9
Year 30: skill-10

However, the shipcrewman has several other skills to purchase, and unfortunately GDW never defined how many points you get to spend on initial training (probably Edu/2). A decent military crew is CQ+2 (skill-3).

 

[aramis]

Initial Training is free for first turning point in a career, and each turning point, high int/edu folk get extra points every turning point.

You senior noncoms are most likely to be pretty close to one point a year on key skills; Engineers don't have multiple needed skills (unlike some Traveller editions). And senior non-coms are likely to spend a point or two on leadership, but really shouldn't have too much in leadership.

 

[BMonnery]

Initial Training is free for first turning point in a career, and each turning point, high int/edu folk get extra points every turning point.

How most people do it, but not actually what the rules say. They say you get a pool of skill points to spend on those skills only - but never actually defines the number.

You senior noncoms are most likely to be pretty close to one point a year on key skills; Engineers don't have multiple needed skills (unlike some Traveller editions). And senior non-coms are likely to spend a point or two on leadership, but really shouldn't have too much in leadership.

Leader? Bureaucracy? Vacc suit? Computer? Theoretical science? Electronics? Mechanical? Survival? etc.

Bearing in mind the seniors typically only have 15-20 skill points to spend on these.

 

[Kaye]

Nope. TD #11 (which is non-canonical) adds two more tasks.

Assemble the drive - difficult (SDE or Elect/2 or Mech/2) - 3 hrs
Calibrate online drive - difficult, uncertain (SDE) - 6 mins

Which doesn't overwrite the core book - bring drive online - difficult, hazardous (SDE), 30 mins.

So:

Assembling the drive - difficult
Bringing assembled drive online - difficult, hazardous
Checking the drive is working - difficult, uncertain

Why? Because an assembled offline drive still accumulates charge.

I was unclear there. Sorry 'bout that, guv.
Bringing the missile online involves assembling the drive and checking it. This is basically a mechanical (mechatronical) task. A very precise one though.
I assume that this task is quicker -though of comparible complexity- for a small drive like the one on a missile or armed drone which has been purpose built and designed in order to be disassembled and re-assembled.

 

[BMonnery]

I was unclear there. Sorry 'bout that, guv.
Bringing the missile online involves assembling the drive and checking it. This is basically a mechanical (mechatronical) task. A very precise one though.
I assume that this task is quicker -though of comparible complexity- for a small drive like the one on a missile or armed drone which has been purpose built and designed in order to be disassembled and re-assembled.

A "small" 100 kW drive is still a 7 ton device. Stripping and assembling it is a task equal to rebuilding a jet fighter.

 

[whartung]

A "small" 100 kW drive is still a 7 ton device. Stripping and assembling it is a task equal to rebuilding a jet fighter.

Well it certainly adds a bit of work either way to the missile management issue, especially in relation to the whole "SW Drives gain charge whether they're operating or not" meme.

That implies that if missiles have SW drives, then they are either in enough component parts to not gain charge, but need to be reassembled in order to be made ready and/or the needs of those drives need to be considered in the regular discharge maintenance routine. Something that I imagine is simply ignored for the time being.

 

[aramis]

How most people do it, but not actually what the rules say. They say you get a pool of skill points to spend on those skills only - but never actually defines the number.

Wrong, B. It's EXPLICITLY what the rules say - those are not levels, but points in the initial training entries.

So Space Military with "Combat Rifleman: 1, Sidearm: 1, Melee: 1, Mechanical: 1, Electronic:1, PSuit: 2" gets you, assuming 18yo, skill levels CRM 0, Sidearm 0, Melee 0, Mechanical 0, electronic 0, PSuit 1. See 2300AD page 9.

The example confirms the literal text, and the literal text was not changed between editions for that passage that I'm aware of.