hardpoint limitation

[Shadow Shack]

Several traveller ship design systems have now moved on from that silly CT HG limit on bays.

The bay should just require the ship be able to find the space (volume) for it. The actual firing port need be no more than one hardpoint/unit of surface area.

Fully agreed, fifty tons is fifty tons and should have no problem fitting within a 400 ton hull. I just haven't crunched the numbers to see what might need to be nixed to accommodate the extra 48 tons beyond the canon pair of missile turrets.

 

[atpollard]

Several traveller ship design systems have now moved on from that silly CT HG limit on bays.

The bay should just require the ship be able to find the space (volume) for it. The actual firing port need be no more than one hardpoint/unit of surface area.

Fully agreed, fifty tons is fifty tons and should have no problem fitting within a 400 ton hull. I just haven't crunched the numbers to see what might need to be nixed to accommodate the extra 48 tons beyond the canon pair of missile turrets.

IMTU, I prefer to link the size of the weapon to the size of the ship and how it functions.

Extrapolating from the 1 turret per hardpoint and 1 hardpoint per 100 dTons, I come up with TURRETED weapons capable of rapid tracking and point defense limited to 1% of the volume of the ship. Thus a 5 dT Barbette would require a hardpoint on a 500 dTon ship to be able to function as a Point-Defense weapon. It also means that a 1/3 dTon Turret designed to hold a single Laser/Missile/Sandcaster would require a ship of 34 dTons or greater to function as a PD Turret.

Extrapolating from the 100 dT bay per 1000 dTons, a ship can mount up to 10% of its volume in a large slow turret designed as a main-gun against comparable ship, but too slow for point defense. Thus a 50 dT bay can be mounted in a 500 dTon hull. It also means that a 1 dTon triple turret can function as a "Bay Weapon" in any ship of 10 dT or greater and a 5 dT Barbette can be mounted as a "Bay Weapon" in any ship of 50 dT or greater.

Weapons beyond 10% of the volume of the ship, must be mounted as fixed "Spinal Mounts" and fire along the axis of the ship, being aimed by pointing the ship at the target. For the large Spinal Mounts of HG Capital Ships, this changes nothing. However it now allows a 100 dT bay to be mounted on a ship as small as 200 dTons as a forward facing "spinal mount". [It is hard to devote more than 50% of a ship to weapons and still have room for the minimum components to function as a ship.] So at the extreme low end, a 10 dTon fighter might mount a 5 dTon Barbette as a fixed "Spinal Mount".

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on what precisely a bay looks like and how it's installed on a spaceship.

At four hundred tonnes, it could look like a space going tank with an enlarged turret.

 

[atpollard]

Depends on what precisely a bay looks like and how it's installed on a spaceship.

At four hundred tonnes, it could look like a space going tank with an enlarged turret.

One could argue that controlling torque becomes the issue. When the turret is 25% of a ground tank, the tracks in contact with the ground hold the tank in position. For a 400 dTon starship with no ground friction, rotating 1/4 of your mass 180 degrees will rotate the turret 135 degrees and the ship 45 degrees the opposite direction. Now 1/4 of your MD thrust is being used to keep the ship from turning when the turret rotates.

At 1% of ship mass (like a 1 dT Turret on a 100 dT ship), the torque is negligible. At 10% of ship mass (like a 100 dT Bay on a 1000 dT ship) the torque is small enough to ignore. As the percentage grows, it will become a significant factor at some point (like when you rotate a 100 dT Gun on a 200 dT Ship and half the ship turns one way as the other half turns the opposite direction and you need half a Gee just to keep the ship pointed forward) ... and more if you turn the bay faster.

 

[warwizard]

One could argue that controlling torque becomes the issue. When the turret is 25% of a ground tank, the tracks in contact with the ground hold the tank in position. For a 400 dTon starship with no ground friction, rotating 1/4 of your mass 180 degrees will rotate the turret 135 degrees and the ship 45 degrees the opposite direction. Now 1/4 of your MD thrust is being used to keep the ship from turning when the turret rotates.

At 1% of ship mass (like a 1 dT Turret on a 100 dT ship), the torque is negligible. At 10% of ship mass (like a 100 dT Bay on a 1000 dT ship) the torque is small enough to ignore. As the percentage grows, it will become a significant factor at some point (like when you rotate a 100 dT Gun on a 200 dT Ship and half the ship turns one way as the other half turns the opposite direction and you need half a Gee just to keep the ship pointed forward) ... and more if you turn the bay faster.

Unless you are at visual ranges < 1km you simply do not need fast turret rotation to track the target's motion, the need for turret rotation is actually based on the mounting ship's agility, as the ship is doing it's utmost to not be where the enemy's 250MW laser beam is heading to. I think the whole 1 hard point per 100 TD is moot, just mount a 100 ton hanger bay and pump out 25 2 ton drone/fighters that utilize the carrier's fire control for their targeting.

 

[atpollard]

Unless you are at visual ranges < 1km you simply do not need fast turret rotation to track the target's motion, the need for turret rotation is actually based on the mounting ship's agility, as the ship is doing it's utmost to not be where the enemy's 250MW laser beam is heading to.

You need fast rotation to counteract your own agility evasive maneuvers, like the stabilization system on a tank gun that keeps the weapon on target as the vehicle moves over rough terrain.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I always figured there was some kind of gyroscopic stabilization that worked against the natural push of the turret so that a ship could "fly straight" while traversing its turret.

 

[atpollard]

I always figured there was some kind of gyroscopic stabilization that worked against the natural push of the turret so that a ship could "fly straight" while traversing its turret.

That sounds reasonable, and when the turrets are 1% of the volume/mass of the ship the "gyroscopic stabilization" is a tiny fraction of the ship easily ignored as included in some larger component in the design sequence. When the "turrets" are 25% to 50% of the volume/mass of the ship the "gyroscopic stabilization" seems like it would become a significant system that needs to be accounted for (like a dedicated 1G MD & PP sized to stabilize the "turret" ... as a WAG).

 

[mike wightman]

There isn't actually much to move with the laser emitter. Forget what you see on the TV and movies - lasers will not resemble 12" gun turrets. Changing the orientation of the beam emitter may be no more than electrostatically altering the parameters of the mirrors in the emitter...

 

[Blue Ghost]

That sounds reasonable, and when the turrets are 1% of the volume/mass of the ship the "gyroscopic stabilization" is a tiny fraction of the ship easily ignored as included in some larger component in the design sequence. When the "turrets" are 25% to 50% of the volume/mass of the ship the "gyroscopic stabilization" seems like it would become a significant system that needs to be accounted for (like a dedicated 1G MD & PP sized to stabilize the "turret" ... as a WAG).

Thanks. I mean in terms of game play it's a non-issue; the weapon goes one way and then another and the ship and crew don't know any different. Though it might make for an interesting critical hit during starship combat.

One of the issues I've overlooked in the game is that starship weaponry for ACSes is all vanilla flavored. One laser fits all, so to speak. Beam laser does one hit, pulse does 3, missiles do 1d6. Eh, what if Traveller starship combat were a little more like Star Fleet Battles, in that you had various different weapons; a "light", "medium" or "heavy" lasers? Missiles with submunitions? Antishipping missiles verse anti-fighter or even anti-missile missiles? But I guess that's all house rule stuff.

Starship combat was a rarity for all my groups, but it did happen. And fortunately my players were smart enough not to keep the pressurized … save one time, but that's another story. So, no catastrophic failures from vanilla flavored weapons. But it begs the question of if you had the cash would you upgrade your ship's laser to something that had more punch but sucked up more juice from the PP? Would you splurge on another turret as per the house rules in this thread?

Interesting stuff.

And for all the starship combat we had, there were no casualties.

 

[warwizard]

My sons and I can and did some amazing things with the TNE and T4 FF&S rule sets coming up with point defense laser clusters that mounted lots of little rapidly firing short range lasers (2 hex range for 1 DV), .05 m2 area per emitter with about 10 to 15 of them in a standard 1 ton "turret", each one with a 600 ROF, for 6000 to 9000 shots per 30 minute turn or 6000/1800 to 9000/1800 shots per second or 3 to 4 shots per second. The ship had 6 full up 6g HEPLAR drives, one for each direction, and was able to power three of them and the point defenses at the same time. The ship concept was one giant plug of armor on the base of a cone configuration, with the meson gun firing through the armored plug. Tactics were to maneuver to keep the armored plug facing the hostile enemy ship, while using the X and Y thrusters to keep from being a nonmoving point when firing the meson gun. The point defenses were on the sides of the cone to take out any missiles that were attempting to get shots at the unarmored sides.

 

[Fovean]

I mean, you could check out MgT 2e High Guard. Ion weapons, tachyon weapons, multiple types of missiles and torpedoes, lasers and energy weapons, railguns, new spinals, etc.

Power allocation is a thing in MgT 2e, and there are new defenses as well, including point defense systems.

Overall, simple and abstracted like CT/MgT ship combat always has been yet with new options to spice things up and get away from the vanilla.