High Guard 3

[robject]

Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
Datalinking starships to allow massing of fire, offensive and defensive, may seem like the logical next-step.

[...]

This purpose would also be served by grouping fighters into squadrons and then wings (or whatever). It saves huge amounts of time.

If we go the next step to allowing starships to group together, we could, in effect, roll all lasers for an entire fleet all at once . . . and that goes a little too far for me.

[...]

But the concept itself is sound. Recall those cute little mass-combat rules in Mercenary. It would be nice if simplistic rules like that could be made for starship combat, so the referee (for instance) could quickly determine the outcome of, say, the clash of fleets in Zarushagar in 1118, then reporting the time-delayed results back to the players.

Or, alternately, the players might be in the crew of one of those fleets. The first couple rounds might be on full-fleet granularity, then as the fleets get whittled down, the units are broken down further as the fights get more granular, until finally the players' squadron are doing ship-to-ship skirmishing, boarding actions, and/or hasty repairs.

 

[robject]

Unrelated to combat. I want to know if people have thought about these topics that I've been thinking about.

Hulls and Book 2's Drive Potentials


Part I: T4's Hulls Table

Last night I paged through T4's Quick Starship Design System and pulled out some numbers from the fundamental rules. I had High Guard handy as a reference.

Looks like, with startling regularity, a ship's hull costs MCr4 per 100 tons, with around a 10% premium for streamlining, perhaps 20% or so for airframing, and a couple of nudges for the hull shape. From a CT perspective, the T4 hull table has a appallingly low signal-to-noise ratio.

Likewise Jump drives, Thrust plates, and HePLaR drives, except these are quite regular, and somewhat unrelated to the percentages found in High Guard.

Digression: T4's Weapons Better?

And so I conclude that T4's benefit to starship design, if any, lies in its weapons rules alone. Although I am not clear on whether it lists weapons as single guns or batteries. Anyone know? It has (I think) range effectiveness (is that the same as att/pen distinctions?). I'd like to know how this compares with MT.

Part II: CT-friendly Extensible Drive Potential Table

Finally, I want a Drive Potential Table that looks like Book 2 but delivers more flexibility than HG. I'm currently looking at 2 solutions:

(1) Specify drives for 9 hull sizes, and instruct the user to scale the numbers up or down for larger or smaller hulls (or even better performance, under certain circumstances):

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> Performance 1 2 3 4 5 6
Hull
100 A B C D E F
200 B D F G H J
300 C F H J K L
400 D G J K L M
500 E H K L N P
600 F J L M P R
700 G K M P R T
800 G K M Q S U
900 H L P R U V

...something like this, anyway.</pre>[/QUOTE]Thus a 5000-ton ship with jump-3 would have a K-rated jump drive, whose cost and volume are ten times that of the K-rated module for a 500 ton vessel.

(2) The logical extension of the above is to simply define 9 drive types, and have the designer 'bundle' multiple drives to improve performance:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> Drive potential table

Hull: 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
Drive: A B C D E F G H J

Rating Jump(MCr2/t) Manu(MCr2/t) Pwr(MCr3/t)
* +3 +1 0
A 2 1 2
B 4 2 4
C 6 3 6
D 8 4 8
E 10 5 10
F 12 6 12
G 14 7 14
H 16 8 16
J 18 9 18

(*) is initial overhead or something
(all numbers made up)</pre>[/QUOTE]Thus, the 5000-ton jump-3 starship would have three 'E'-class jump drive modules, each displacing 130 tons and costing MCr260. A far trader would have two 'B' modules, for a total of 14 tons and MCr28. I suppose this also means a 10 ton fighter can pull 18 G's with 18 'A' maneuver modules at 10% the volume and cost (3.6t @ MCr3.6).

The nice thing about this way is that hits to the drive will take out a random module, which is a nice way to emulate 'hit points'. Sort of.

The weak point is that (for example) a 100,000 ton jump-1 vessel would have only one 'A' module -- one hit point, in other words. Suggestions welcome.

The final extension of all that, of course, would be to just have 'jump modules' computed based on hull and jump number. I think that's what T20 does. For some reason, I don't want to go that far.

 

[robject]

Unrelated to combat. I want to know if people have thought about these topics that I've been thinking about.

Hulls and Book 2's Drive Potentials


Part I: T4's Hulls Table

Last night I paged through T4's Quick Starship Design System and pulled out some numbers from the fundamental rules. I had High Guard handy as a reference.

Looks like, with startling regularity, a ship's hull costs MCr4 per 100 tons, with around a 10% premium for streamlining, perhaps 20% or so for airframing, and a couple of nudges for the hull shape. From a CT perspective, the T4 hull table has a appallingly low signal-to-noise ratio.

Likewise Jump drives, Thrust plates, and HePLaR drives, except these are quite regular, and somewhat unrelated to the percentages found in High Guard.

Digression: T4's Weapons Better?

And so I conclude that T4's benefit to starship design, if any, lies in its weapons rules alone. Although I am not clear on whether it lists weapons as single guns or batteries. Anyone know? It has (I think) range effectiveness (is that the same as att/pen distinctions?). I'd like to know how this compares with MT.

Part II: CT-friendly Extensible Drive Potential Table

Finally, I want a Drive Potential Table that looks like Book 2 but delivers more flexibility than HG. I'm currently looking at 2 solutions:

(1) Specify drives for 9 hull sizes, and instruct the user to scale the numbers up or down for larger or smaller hulls (or even better performance, under certain circumstances):

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> Performance 1 2 3 4 5 6
Hull
100 A B C D E F
200 B D F G H J
300 C F H J K L
400 D G J K L M
500 E H K L N P
600 F J L M P R
700 G K M P R T
800 G K M Q S U
900 H L P R U V

...something like this, anyway.</pre>[/QUOTE]Thus a 5000-ton ship with jump-3 would have a K-rated jump drive, whose cost and volume are ten times that of the K-rated module for a 500 ton vessel.

(2) The logical extension of the above is to simply define 9 drive types, and have the designer 'bundle' multiple drives to improve performance:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> Drive potential table

Hull: 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
Drive: A B C D E F G H J

Rating Jump(MCr2/t) Manu(MCr2/t) Pwr(MCr3/t)
* +3 +1 0
A 2 1 2
B 4 2 4
C 6 3 6
D 8 4 8
E 10 5 10
F 12 6 12
G 14 7 14
H 16 8 16
J 18 9 18

(*) is initial overhead or something
(all numbers made up)</pre>[/QUOTE]Thus, the 5000-ton jump-3 starship would have three 'E'-class jump drive modules, each displacing 130 tons and costing MCr260. A far trader would have two 'B' modules, for a total of 14 tons and MCr28. I suppose this also means a 10 ton fighter can pull 18 G's with 18 'A' maneuver modules at 10% the volume and cost (3.6t @ MCr3.6).

The nice thing about this way is that hits to the drive will take out a random module, which is a nice way to emulate 'hit points'. Sort of.

The weak point is that (for example) a 100,000 ton jump-1 vessel would have only one 'A' module -- one hit point, in other words. Suggestions welcome.

The final extension of all that, of course, would be to just have 'jump modules' computed based on hull and jump number. I think that's what T20 does. For some reason, I don't want to go that far.

 

[The Oz]

Originally posted by robject:
But the concept itself is sound. Recall those cute little mass-combat rules in Mercenary. It would be nice if simplistic rules like that could be made for starship combat, so the referee (for instance) could quickly determine the outcome of, say, the clash of fleets in Zarushagar in 1118, then reporting the time-delayed results back to the players.

I have an incomplete set of such rules. I've not yet found a way I like to convert from tonnage losses to ship losses.

 

[The Oz]

Originally posted by robject:
But the concept itself is sound. Recall those cute little mass-combat rules in Mercenary. It would be nice if simplistic rules like that could be made for starship combat, so the referee (for instance) could quickly determine the outcome of, say, the clash of fleets in Zarushagar in 1118, then reporting the time-delayed results back to the players.

I have an incomplete set of such rules. I've not yet found a way I like to convert from tonnage losses to ship losses.

 

[robject]

Originally posted by The Oz:
I have an incomplete set of such rules. I've not yet found a way I like to convert from tonnage losses to ship losses.

Understood. Can you describe what would be ideal to you?

 

[robject]

Originally posted by The Oz:
I have an incomplete set of such rules. I've not yet found a way I like to convert from tonnage losses to ship losses.

Understood. Can you describe what would be ideal to you?

 

[The Oz]

In the system I have, a force takes losses in battle as a percentage of the total force tonnage. This is OK as long as you don't need to know what happened to any particular ship in that engagement. If you do, somehow those lost tons need to be allocated to the ships making up the force.

For this, you need to have some idea of how many ships made up the force and what size they were, and then some mechanism is needed to divvy up the damage between them. Some ships should be killed, others just damaged (losing part but not all of their tonnage). How to determine which ships were killed, and which damaged, and how much of each, was where I got hung up.

I think that somehow losses should be tied to the type of combat (the "encounter type" from Mercenary). I feel that a fleet that is surprised should suffer more actual ships killed (because those ships weren't ready for battle and so had little defense, and because the enemy was more able to target specific ships because the surprised ships didn't have their ECM available) even if the overall tonnage losses are small, while a "Meeting Engagement" (my term for a Mercenary "Firefight") should produce more damaged ships and relatively fewer actual ship losses since damaged ships can more easily withdraw from battle (go into Reserve, in HG terms).

Of course, I'd also like to somehow take into account the presence of spinal meson guns, which (in HG) tend to kill or cripple ships with only one or a few hits. When squadrons with such weapons are present, actual ship losses (especially of capital ships) should go up. Spinal particle accelerators do the same, but only to smaller or more weakly armored vessels, so I don't think they'd need to be taken into account quite so much.

Plus there's the trouble of dealing with carried vessels like battle riders and fighter squadrons, although that would only be a trouble when they are surprised and caught aboard their tenders.

If you'd like to see it, I can write up my ideas (currently it's just some handwritten notes) and post them here for comment and discussion.

 

[The Oz]

In the system I have, a force takes losses in battle as a percentage of the total force tonnage. This is OK as long as you don't need to know what happened to any particular ship in that engagement. If you do, somehow those lost tons need to be allocated to the ships making up the force.

For this, you need to have some idea of how many ships made up the force and what size they were, and then some mechanism is needed to divvy up the damage between them. Some ships should be killed, others just damaged (losing part but not all of their tonnage). How to determine which ships were killed, and which damaged, and how much of each, was where I got hung up.

I think that somehow losses should be tied to the type of combat (the "encounter type" from Mercenary). I feel that a fleet that is surprised should suffer more actual ships killed (because those ships weren't ready for battle and so had little defense, and because the enemy was more able to target specific ships because the surprised ships didn't have their ECM available) even if the overall tonnage losses are small, while a "Meeting Engagement" (my term for a Mercenary "Firefight") should produce more damaged ships and relatively fewer actual ship losses since damaged ships can more easily withdraw from battle (go into Reserve, in HG terms).

Of course, I'd also like to somehow take into account the presence of spinal meson guns, which (in HG) tend to kill or cripple ships with only one or a few hits. When squadrons with such weapons are present, actual ship losses (especially of capital ships) should go up. Spinal particle accelerators do the same, but only to smaller or more weakly armored vessels, so I don't think they'd need to be taken into account quite so much.

Plus there's the trouble of dealing with carried vessels like battle riders and fighter squadrons, although that would only be a trouble when they are surprised and caught aboard their tenders.

If you'd like to see it, I can write up my ideas (currently it's just some handwritten notes) and post them here for comment and discussion.

 

[robject]

My next question comes from the HePLaR world... I was totally against HePLaR until Dave Nilsen's recent posting on it. Then I sort of liked the idea of severely limiting the acceleration time available to ships. Suddenly there is an economy to fuel consumption -- it's expensive to launch a ship, and expensive to travel insystem. Fuel is measured in G-hours of thrust.

Anyone thought about this?

 

[robject]

My next question comes from the HePLaR world... I was totally against HePLaR until Dave Nilsen's recent posting on it. Then I sort of liked the idea of severely limiting the acceleration time available to ships. Suddenly there is an economy to fuel consumption -- it's expensive to launch a ship, and expensive to travel insystem. Fuel is measured in G-hours of thrust.

Anyone thought about this?

 

[robject]

Originally posted by The Oz:
If you'd like to see it, I can write up my ideas (currently it's just some handwritten notes) and post them here for comment and discussion.

Of course. Please do!

 

[robject]

Originally posted by The Oz:
If you'd like to see it, I can write up my ideas (currently it's just some handwritten notes) and post them here for comment and discussion.

Of course. Please do!

 

[mike wightman]

I've often thought that there ought to be a way to adapt the Invasion:Earth/Fifth Frontier War combat tables to High Guard Combat.

Something like roll for spinal mount attacks as per High Guard to hit, penetrate, and number of critical hits; but for bay/turret weapons use the afore-mentioned resolution system to get number of spinal mount equivalent critical hits.

Then distribute all the critical hits on the ships of the enemy fleet however you decide.

 

[mike wightman]

I've often thought that there ought to be a way to adapt the Invasion:Earth/Fifth Frontier War combat tables to High Guard Combat.

Something like roll for spinal mount attacks as per High Guard to hit, penetrate, and number of critical hits; but for bay/turret weapons use the afore-mentioned resolution system to get number of spinal mount equivalent critical hits.

Then distribute all the critical hits on the ships of the enemy fleet however you decide.

 

[The Oz]

I'll see what I can do. I am leaving on holiday starting this evening (my time) and may not be able to get it done until the New Year.

Where did Dave post about HePLaR drives? I don't think I saw it.

Sigg: that's kind of what I was thinking, that a fleet having spinal meson guns would somehow get extra chances to kill enemy ships, especially big ships. But how to do it I'd not thought of.

 

[The Oz]

I'll see what I can do. I am leaving on holiday starting this evening (my time) and may not be able to get it done until the New Year.

Where did Dave post about HePLaR drives? I don't think I saw it.

Sigg: that's kind of what I was thinking, that a fleet having spinal meson guns would somehow get extra chances to kill enemy ships, especially big ships. But how to do it I'd not thought of.

 

[mike wightman]

The problem I have is how to take account of defensive systems/armour etc.?

 

[mike wightman]

The problem I have is how to take account of defensive systems/armour etc.?

 

[The Oz]

Here's what I've done on an abstract combat system.

Abstract Naval Combat System

Assume two forces, one designated Intruder, the other Native. If using this with forces from a campaign game, usually the force owning the area where the battle takes place is the Native. Pirates should usually be designated as the Intruder unless defending their base.

First you determine the characteristics of the two forces engaged. Then combat is resolved between elements of those two forces. An element could be a small detachment or it could be the entire force. When combat involves only small elements it is assumed that the two forces are skirmishing for information and position during the time represented by the combat.

Step #1: Determine the type of each force.
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Force Type Table (1d6)
Roll Type
1 Pirates
2 System Navy
3 System Navy
4 Subsector Navy
5 Subsector Navy
6 Imperial Navy</pre>[/QUOTE]Step #2: Find the Tech Level and Efficiency for each force.

Force Tech Level: (1d3+6+DMs) (roll 1d6 and divide by two, rounding up)

DMs: +3 if Pirates, +4 if Subsector Navy, +6 if Imperial Navy

Force Efficiency: (1d6+DMs)

DMs: +1 if Subsector Navy, +2 if Imperial Navy, +3 if Pirates

Step #3: Find the mission and size of each force. The size of the engaged forces may be predetermined by the players or set up as part of a campaign.
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Mission Table (1d6+DMs)
Roll Mission
1- Strike
2 Battle
3 Siege
4 Patrol
5 Patrol
6 Patrol
7+ Patrol</pre>[/QUOTE]DMs: +1 if Native, -1 if Intruder, +1 if System Navy, -1 if Imperial Navy, -2 if Pirates
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Force Size Table (1d6+DMs)
Roll Tonnage Unit Equivalent
-1 500 tons Corvette
0 1,000 tons Destroyer Escort
1 2,000 tons Corvette Div/Destroyer
2 5,000 tons Destroyer Escort Div/Fleet Escort
3 10,000 tons Destroyer Escort Sqdn/Destroyer Div
4 20,000 tons Destroyer Sqdn/Fleet Escort Div/Lt. Cruiser
5 50,000 tons Fleet Escort Sqdn/Lt. Cruiser Div/Hvy. Cruiser
6 100,000 tons Lt. Cruiser Sqdn/Battlecruiser
7 200,000 tons Hvy Cruiser Div/Battleship
8 500,000 tons Hvy. Cruiser Sqdn/Battleship Div
9 1,000,000 tons Battleship Sqdn
10 2,000,000 tons Task Group (1xBatRon, 2xCruRon, plus escorts)
11 5,000,000 tons Task Force (2xBatRon, 4xCruRon, plus escorts)
12 10,000,000 tons Fleet (4xBatRon, 8xCruRon, plus escorts)</pre>[/QUOTE]DMs: +1 if System Navy, +2 if Subsector Navy, +3 if Imperial Navy

Note: A Division (Div) has 4 ships of the type stated; a Corvette Div has 4 corvettes. A Squadron (Sqdn) has 8 ships of the type stated; a Destroyer Squadron has 8 destroyers. Excess tonnage in a squadron is considered to be made up by ships of the same class but larger in size (not all battleships are exactly 200,000 tons). Cruiser Squadrons (CruRons) in Task Groups, Task Forces, and Fleets are a mix of Light Cruiser Squadrons and Heavy Cruiser Squadrons. Task Groups, Task Forces, and Fleets have enough escorts to make up any excess tonnage, usually at least one squadron of escorts (a mix of destroyer escorts, destroyers, and fleet escorts) for every Battleship Squadron (BatRon) or CruRon.

Combat Resolution

Step #1: Find the size of the engaged element of each force. The result is read as down so many levels from the size of the entire force on the Force Size Table. So a "Down 3" result for a 200,000 ton force (Hvy. Cruiser Div) would give a 20,000 ton engaged element (Destroyer Sqdn).
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">
Element Engaged Table (1d6+DMs)
Roll Result
0- Down 4
1 Down 3
2 Down 3
3 Down 2
4 Down 2
5 Down 1
6 Down 1
7+ Full</pre>[/QUOTE]DMs: -2 if Siege or Patrol mission, +1 if Battle mission, +2 if Strike mission

Step #2: Determine the type of encounter between the two engaged elements.
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Encounter Type (1d6+DMs)
Roll Type
-3 Intruder Surprised
-2 Native Attacking
-1 Native Attacking
0 Native Attacking
1 Native Attacking
2 Meeting Engagement
3 Meeting Engagement
4 Meeting Engagement
5 Meeting Engagement
6 Intruder Attacking
7 Intruder Attacking
8 Intruder Attacking
9 Intruder Attacking
10+ Native Surprised</pre>[/QUOTE]DMs:</font>

• + Intruder Fleet Tactics skill minus Native Fleet Tactics skill (can be negative)</font>
• +1 if Intruder committed smaller element</font>
• -1 if Native committed smaller element</font>
• +1 if Intruder on Battle mission</font>
• +2 if Intruder on Strike mission</font>
• +1 if Native on Patrol mission</font>
• -1 if Intruder on Siege or Patrol mission</font>
• -1 if Native on Siege or Strike mission</font>

Step #3: Each engaged element rolls to determine what losses it inflicts on the other engaged element. An element that was surprised cannot inflict any losses.

Losses are measured as a percentage of the tonnage of the firing element that is lost by the element being fired on. So if a 10,000 ton element fires on a 200,000 ton element and gets a result of 50% losses, the 200,000 ton element loses 5,000 tons of ship (50% of 10,000 tons).
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Combat Results Table (1d6+DMs)
Roll Losses (% of element's total tonnage)
-2 None
-1 1%
0 5%
1 10%
2 20%
3 40%
4 50%
5 60%
6 80%
7 100%
8 200%
9+ 400%</pre>[/QUOTE]DMs: </font>

• + Firing element Tech Level minus target element Tech Level (can be negative)</font>
• + Firing element Force Efficiency minus target element Force Efficiency (can be negative)</font>
• +1 if firing element is attacking</font>
• +3 if firing element has surprise</font>