Heavy Turrets and Barbettes

[mike wightman]

I wanted to up-gun the military ships in a "small ship" MTU, here's what I came up with.

TL10+ heavy turret - costs 2 MCr, requires 2 tons of interior volume for fire control etc. It contains 8 mounting slots:
missile rack/sandcaster - 1 slot
pulse/beam laser - 1 slot per weapon
plasma/fusion gun - 4 slots per weapon
TL16 PAW - 7.5 slots
TL18 PAW - 3 slots
TL18 meson gun - 7.5 slots
TL18 disintegrator - 4 slots

TL14+ barbette - costs 4 MCr, requires 5 tons of interior volume for fire control etc. The barbette can only be mounted on ships that have armoured hulls. It contains 15 mounting slots. It may mount any of the weapons above, plus:
TL14 PAW - 15 slots
TL16 meson gun - 15 slots
TL17 disintegrator - 15 slots

TL15+ light barbette - costs 3 MCr, requires 3 tons of interior volume for fire control etc. The barbette can only be mounted on ships that have armoured hulls. It contains 10 mounting slots. It may mount any of the weapons above, plus:
TL15 PAW - 10 slots
TL17 meson gun - 10 slots

YMMV

 

[mike wightman]

By the way, the stats for the meson gun and disintegrator are:

Meson gun - Cost 8 MCr at TL16, 4 MCr at TL17+; 20 EP
Disintegrator - Cost 10 MCr at TL 17, 5 MCr at TL 18+; 16 EP

Note: the meson gun turret is a GURPs Traveller introduction, consider it canon at your peril ;
the disintegrator and high TL PAWs above are taken from the MT weapon tables (apart from the TL17 disintegrator barbette - that's one of mine too )

 

[mike wightman]

Oh, and disintegrators:

For High Guard - roll to hit as an equivalent factor PAW; nuclear dampers must be penetrated, roll as for a nuclear missile but with a bonus of +2 to penetrate; for each hit that penetrates roll for damage once on the surface damage table, once on the radiation damage table and once on the internal explosion table.

For T20 - d20 damage die, threat range 15, critical damage x5, radiation d10; range 45000
Nuclear dampers add their rating to the ship's AR versus disintegrators.

 

[jappel]

Interesting stuff, Sigg! I really like this as an approach to differentiate between the truly military and "armed civilian" vessels on the small end. Have you had a chance to playtest the new weapons under either HG or T20?

Small ship universe with meson guns... <shudder>... talk about your eggshells armed with sledgehammers...

 

[jfwking]

Hummmm.

If the turret restrictions are still kept to 1/100 dtons then 4 heavy turrets on a patrol cruiser gives 32 missile launchers or beam lasers.
Thats one factor 8 laser batt or four factor 4s or one factor 6 missile batt.
Thats the same firepower as a 1000 dton ship with 10 turrets on a 400 dton hull.
Possibly a bit too much firepower and a little unbalancing because you know that players will move heaven and earth to get thier hands on one or two or six no matter how military only they are.
Energy weapons are set too big, you get two in a normal turret, you may want to change the above size to 2 so you get 4 in your monster turret.

 

[mike wightman]

Hello ther Captain Jonah.

Yup, I did say upgun

The problem with fitting too many heavy turrets or barbettes to a 400t patrol cruiser is finding the EP to power them, and non-nuclear missiles are ridiculousley underpowered in HG and T20 compared to LLB 2 anyway IMHO

By the way, fusion gun and plasma gun turrets are two tons and can mount two energy weapons per turret in HG/T20/MT, that's what I based the heavy turret on. I just thought "what if you replaced the energy weapons with lasers, hmm..."

Don't forget, for barbettes, it has to be an armoured 400t hull

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by jappel:
Interesting stuff, Sigg! I really like this as an approach to differentiate between the truly military and "armed civilian" vessels on the small end. Have you had a chance to playtest the new weapons under either HG or T20?

Thanks jappel.
I've found that if you don't upgrade the weapons somewhat then armoured ships can take some beating in HG combat. If you can hit each other with turret weapons at all that is

In T20 it's worse. Because of the armour reduction then three weapons in a turret don't do much SI damage. Linking them means you can get more damage, but not as much damage potential a firing individual turrets.

So I've done it mostly to make combat between armoured ships more interesting

Take a TL13 heavy laser turret for example fitted with six pulse lasers. That's a factor 4 heavy turret, +4 to hit and 4d10 damage. That's a lot to an unarmoured civilian ship. But to an armoured military ship with an AR of between 3 and 5 the damage drops significantly, and you still only roll one hit on the damage charts

Small ship universe with meson guns... <shudder>... talk about your eggshells armed with sledgehammers...

Those meson turrets are taken from GURPs Traveller: Starships, I've always found it a bit disappointing that only MT bothered to list weapons all the way up to TL21. So I was happy to find the meson turret in the book

 

[jappel]

With a nod to Captain Jonah's point, this does have to be balanced out - which by requiring armor and bigger power plants, means you're looking at a military-grade vessel. A freighter or armed auxilliary won't sacrifice cargo space for these. The question still remains about whether the trade-off is sufficient - hence my question about playtesting - but it sure looks like the right way to to.

One problem with the LBB2 days of yore is that there's little to distinguish purpose-built military ships from civilian versions packing weaponry other than crew make-up. High Guard addressed this somewhat but this goes further.

Sigg - do you subscribe to either CT-Starships or the TML? If not, mind if I cross-post these over to those lists (full credit given, of course)?

John

 

[mike wightman]

Don't mind at all, please go ahead.

 

[cmdrx]

Very interesting.

Here's a bit of trivia. Who was the maniac who developed the Turret/Barbette Mounted Meson gun?

That would be your friendly neighborhood Commander X!

I thought of those things being like the PAW barb/turret and based them on that, advancing the TL and multiplying the power. It was then I transfered them to the GURPS universe and submited them (along with the heavy lasers BTW) to GURPS:Starships. They got included as a GTL13 toy and they have stuck ever since.
I also sent the original idea to the CT Yahoo group and they got included in the MT conversions, which just happened to be going on at that time. So yes, I am guilty of giving fire to the mortals.

I have been converting my other WoMD from GURPS to HG/T20. Heavy Lasers, Quadpulse PD Lasers, Multifire Missile Racks, etc... all available from the website.

 

[mike wightman]

Commander, my hat is off to you sir.
I thought the idea in GURPs was too good to stay there.
All I've done, like you, is to follow the PAW barbette progression, given in MT, for meson guns. Starting at a higher TL obviously. I hadn't thought about the GURPs heavy lasers though. Why don't you convert them across and submit them to the Citizen's Downloads?
Tell me, have you coverted the extreme steller weapons like the disintegrator and the jump projector over to T20 yet, or the TNE mini spinal mounts?

Perhaps you could get a Traveller's Aide out of variant and very high TL starship components so that all this can become part of T20 canon? Add a revised ship combat system and it could be a winner

By the way, I can't find them in the shipyard section of your excellent web site. Are they hidden somewhere else?
<edit>forget that last question - found it in the r&d section<edit>

 

[mike wightman]

By the way, do you want to see the APAWs barbettes and turrets (I'll do spinals and bays when I work out all the details )

 

[cmdrx]

Haven't used the barbettes like you are for more weapon slots, I prefer them to be used for weapons that are powerful, but still bulky because of the technology (like the PAW-14 and Meson-16)

Heavy Lasers are basicaly the same as in GT. One big 3dt or '3 slots worth' weapon in a turret mount. What I did was compair the progression of USP with that of a standard triple beam laser turret and subtracted +1 from the USP. They are not as accurate as a triple turret, but they do pack a harder punch. In T20 the heavy laser does d12 and has the range as a pulse laser (45Kkm). They also ignore 2AR worth of Sandcaster when burning through it. It also gets a +5 on internal damage rolls.

In HG this translates to +2DM to penetrate sand, and -2 on the damage table. Also treat them as +1USP for determining critical hits in HG. (USP2 Heavy Laser would inflict 3 criticals on a size 0 target)

USP #of Units
2 1
3 2
4 3
5 5
6 7
7 10

add +1USP at TL13, and +2USP at TL16
Mcr2.5 and 3EP each.

You know I am thinking of putting together a freebee PDF of these things. They are on the website for nothing anyway and a hardcopy would be useful for many. Hmmm. I'll check with Martin on how to do that.

 

[mike wightman]

Please feel free to add any of the ideas above

 

[Whipsnade]

Mr. Oddra,

Superb work, sir! I immediately stol^^^ (ahem) 'downloaded' your charts into my TU.

If I may be so bold... Jeff Zeitlin is the webmaster of Freelance Traveller and absolutely loves this sort of stuff. He has an entire section titled 'Doing It My Way' and your work should be there.

Slap together an essay of sorts; a post on steroids call it, alnog with some desinger's notes and send the whole caboodle to Jeff. Believe me, he'll jump at the chance to host it.


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[cmdrx]

Tell me, have you coverted the extreme steller weapons like the disintegrator and the jump projector over to T20 yet, or the TNE mini spinal mounts?

I tried the disinitegrator since I liked the TL17 Type A from MTs "Nail Mission" in Rebelion Sourcebook. I may have made the things too nasty for T20. I used the meson gun as a base (nasty enough) and went d100 with d20 radiation dice. The thing will generaly turn any ship into

Jump Projector should be relatively easy to do, I'd just use the MT stats, or the MT to HG conversions as they are on the Yahoo Group.

I do have something like a mini-spinal mount, but they are called ultra-sized bays. T4 actualy has 250dt bays listed and thats where I got the idea. You can fit 1 of these bays for every 30 hardpoints. I am also working on mini-spinals following the HG charts (i.e. would a TL13 Type A Meson be 500dt or less?)

I also converted the TNE and T4 Laser Bays. These things act like a Particle Bay in T20 but without the radiation damage and a much longer range.

I have not only mini-spinals, but mini-bays as well at 10dt and 25dt. 10dt needs 3 hardpoints and the 25dt (half bay) needs 5.

And thats only what I came up with in the past (checks calendar) 7 years!

Anyone want something converted to T20, just drop me a line and I'll see what I can whip up.

 

[far-trader]

Hey Commander, did you notice in the T20 Tech chart* that it lists Disintegrators as only TL16 heavy weapons! I was gonna have a crack at it but hey if you're in the mood go for it.

* 1st ed., pg. 194, of course it could be an error

 

[snrdg082102]

Evening Sigg Oddra,

Interesting design modification and unlike the esteemed Larsen E Whipsnade, following in the time honored tradition of sailors, I am acquiring your equipment list. Okay, I am stealing the list for MTU.

The following are specs for the TNE barbette and socket. FF&S (Mk 1, Mod 1) p. 12 column 2.

Barbette Hardpoint Socket:
Displacement: 6 tons
Price: MCr0.005
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> Type Displ. Vol. Dia. Height Surf. Area
Barbette 6 tons 84m^3 4.5m 5.25m 16m^2
</pre>[/QUOTE]

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by far-trader:
Hey Commander, did you notice in the T20 Tech chart* that it lists Disintegrators as only TL16 heavy weapons! I was gonna have a crack at it but hey if you're in the mood go for it.

* 1st ed., pg. 194, of course it could be an error

They are listed as TL16+ in CT as well, both in the TL chart and the nuclear damper write up in Mercenary.
I hope that means MT got the TLs wrong and we can lower the TL of all the disintegrator weapons (on the first page of this thread) by 1

The TL charts in DGP's Grand Census lists them as TL17+, so either DGP made an error, or the TL was changed.
I think we need an official ruling on this.
Who's going to ask Hunter?

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
They are listed as TL16+ in CT as well, both in the TL chart and the nuclear damper write up in Mercenary.
I hope that means MT got the TLs wrong and we can lower the TL of all the disintegrator weapons (on the first page of this thread) by 1

The TL charts in DGP's Grand Census lists them as TL17+, so either DGP made an error, or the TL was changed.
I think we need an official ruling on this.
Who's going to ask Hunter?

Hey that's right! Yeah, we don't need to bother Hunter with this, its just one more little bit of MegaErrata

I say we go on about our business and lower the TL for those puppies