Highly Abstract Squadron Design & Combat

[robject]

This topic was prompted by the system-defense topic, which is currently under full steam, and posts made by Oz and Sigg regarding Fifth Frontier War counters.

My Goal

The issue is, how to model Traveller squadron battles in a highly abstract but Traveller-reasonable way?

My goal is to map Traveller squadrons to highly abstract squadron-level units in such a way that combat is simple, generally informative, yet still within the ballpark of "real" Traveller squadron combat. In other words, something that will let me pit squadron against squadron without requiring a lot of time.


My current, major problem is: fine-tuning the point-buy system, so that cruisers or battle riders are not always preferable to dreadnoughts. The tradeoffs have to balance.


There are a bunch of other problems with the rules, of course. But I like its level of simplicity.


Notation
As a convenience, I use this notation:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">K.TJ S A-B-D <cost> <name>
K = Classification or Allegiance
• C = Colonial
• I = Imperial
• Z = Zhodani
T = Squadron Type
• B = BatRon
• C = CruRon
• R = Battle Rider Squadron
• D = DesRon
J = Jump Number (0-6)
S = Streamlining (facilitates fueling & ortillery)
• P = partial streamlining
• U = unstreamlined

A = Attack Factor (0-F)
B = Bombardment Factor (0-F)
D = Defense Factor (0-F)

<cost> Cost
<name> Name</pre>[/QUOTE]Way 1: Building a Squadron Squadrons are built via a point-buy system. Every point in the statistics list (JMP, ATT, BOM, DEF) is bought. Streamlining also costs one point.

In order to model the increasing power of larger weapons, point cost depends on the squadron type.

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> Type ATT+BOM DEF Max Pts Cost/Point
BB - BatRon 8+ 7+ TL x 2 BCr50
CR - CruRon 4-11 2-7 TL + 4 BCr25
BR - Riders 6+ 4-6 TL x 1 BCr12.5
DR - DesRon 1-4 0-2 TL - 4 MCr400</pre>[/QUOTE]Way 2: Assembling a Squadron Squadrons may be assembled from pre-built ships:

ATT
Sum up all weapon ratings, treating battery factors as powers of ten. Convert the final result back to a factor number, ignoring fractions.

For example, suppose a squadron has a hundred factor-1 batteries, forty factor-3 batteries, and ten factor-4 batteries. Their sum would be 100 x (10) + 40 x (1000) + 10 x (10,000) = 1000 + 40,000 + 100,000 = 141,000. Converting back results in an attack factor of 5.

BOM
Sum up all missile, mine, and deadfall factor ratings, in the manner noted above.

DEF
Sum up all armor factor ratings, in the manner noted above.


Squadron Combat
When a squadron attacks another squadron, roll 1D, plus the aggressor’s ATT factor, minus the defender’s DEF. Multiply by 10. The result is the percentage of damage scored against the squadron. Damage is cumulative for the current turn only.

Dispersal. When a squadron is damaged at or above 20%, it is dispersed, and may not jump next turn, though it may attack. (Perhaps the squadron should also be unable to attack next turn. This would allow a squadron to block a more powerful squadron temporarily, as a delaying action toward some objective.)

Surrender. When a squadron is damaged at or beyond its cultural threshold for casualties, it will surrender. Human cultures have a threshold of 40%.

Destruction. When a squadron is damaged at or beyond 100%, it is effectively destroyed. All major ships are lifeless hulks. Up to 10% of the support vehicles may be intact.


Example 1: Kokirraks versus Gionettis.

I.C4 U 5-1-5 BCr 375 Gionetti
I.B4 U 8-0-8 BCr 1000 Kokirrak

The Gionettis roll a 3, plus ATT 5, minus DEF 8, sum 0. 0 x 10 = No damage to the Kokirraks.
The Kokirraks roll a 1, plus ATT 8, minus DEF 5, sum 4. 4 x 10 = 40% damage, and the Gionettis surrender immediately.

Example 2: Kokirraks versus Tronskias.

C.B3 U 6-0-6 BCr 750 Tronskia

The Kokirraks roll a 3, plus ATT 8, minus DEF 6, sum 5. 0 x 10 = 50% damage.
The Tronskias roll a 1, plus ATT 6, minus DEF 8, sum -1. No damage.
The Tronskias surrender with 50% damage.

Example 3: Kokirraks versus Atlantics.

I.C4 U 6-1-7 BCr 450 Atlantic

The Kokirraks roll a 2, plus ATT 8, minus DEF 7, sum 3. 3 x 10 = 30% damage.
Atlantics roll a 6, plus ATT 6, minus DEF 8, sum 4. 4 x 10 = 40% damage.
Kokirraks surrender with 40% damage.
The Atlantics may not jump for another turn.

Note that the Atlantics only had a 16% chance of winning, versus 66% for the Kokirraks.

 

[flykiller]

travelleresque, huh?

in-system terrain, such as gas giants and other refueling/defense/base locations? travel times between such using manuever factors?

leadership factors?

planetary defenses?

endurance and resupply? morale? maintenance and repair capability?

weapon effectiveness/ineffectiveness against certain ship types?

or is it all like HG - line 'em up, everybody shoots, see who's left?

 

[Uncle Bob]

For LBB, three words,
Trillion Credit Squadron

 

[robject]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
For LBB, three words,
Trillion Credit Squadron

This is more like High Guard meets Fifth Frontier War.

Too high level for morale, although the "surrender" rule touches on that. Similarly, too high level for endurance, although there may be room for that.

There's room for fleet leadership; that's called the Admiral.

Planetary and system defenses are bought and rated just like jump-capable squadrons. Give 'em J0 and they're system-bound.

Weapon effectiveness/ineffectiveness against certain ship types is most definitely well below the resolution of these rules.

In system terrain and travel times -- there's most definitely room for that here.

It's also possible to break a squadron down into task forces, to permit smaller engagements and strategies, and possibly even some kind of tactical movement.

 

[whartung]

I don't recall TCS actually having an combat system. It was more an economic system, and perhaps the statistical combat resolution system (i.e. if we're throwing 100 2D6 rolls, and you need 8+, you get X results, etc.) to help eliminate dice rolling.

The thing that obviously comes to mind is FFW, but those were probably hand tuned rather than calculated.

Battle Rider also has a system to convert FF&S ships into a simple set of ATT/DEF numbers, at the ship level.

The problem with point systems is simply coming up with an appropriate price for each ship, and what are you using for the price.

Simple example here is adding in the price of a J-Drive. Certainly a J-Drive has little to do with an actual combat rating, but needs to be considered economically. If you don't consider a J-Drive for combat points, then a jump enabled ship will naturally have a lower combat point value simply because it will mount less weapons due to the space consumed for jump fuel.

I don't know about the Order of Magnitude feel of the system. It's a tried and true technique, and lets "1000 fighters == 10 cruisers" so to speak, but it's obvious from your given design that the "meat" of the attack comes from the 10 factor-4 batteries. The rest are not combat effective, unless you plan to rescore the fleet after each combat. (There seemed to be no mention of what "40%" damage means in terms of the next combat sequence and actual effect on the squadron.)

Also, there's no aspect, as presented, of critical hits. Most of the Traveller rule sets pretty well rely on critical hits to take ships out, particularly large ships.

Finally, there's also no consideration for defensive effectiveness and weapon mix. Sandcasters don't work very well as defense against Meson guns for example.

All that said, I'm totally for a high level squadron level "designer" friendly system.

 

[robject]

Originally posted by whartung:

The problem with point systems is simply coming up with an appropriate price for each ship, and what are you using for the price.

Right, and compromises are made for the sake of simplicity.

Simple example here is adding in the price of a J-Drive.

Right - the J-Drive has to hurt. My simplification makes each jump number cost the same as a point of ATT, BOM, or DEF.

I don't know about the Order of Magnitude feel of the system. It's a tried and true technique, and lets "1000 fighters == 10 cruisers" so to speak, but it's obvious from your given design that the "meat" of the attack comes from the 10 factor-4 batteries. The rest are not combat effective, unless you plan to rescore the fleet after each combat. (There seemed to be no mention of what "40%" damage means in terms of the next combat sequence and actual effect on the squadron.)

Essentially, yes. The points where my rules differ are in restrictions and simplifications. I've ignored the 1000 fighters = 10 cruisers issue, and I realize I must address it by limiting the general size of squadrons, like LBB4 ranked mass combat by number of people.

One point: in High Guard, I believe that there is much less than one order of magnitude between weapon factors. This premium may force my system to diverge significantly from High Guard. On the other hand, I am mainly modeling squadrons where spinal weapons are the rule, in which case pea-shooters of various sizes are largely expended on support craft.

One possible adaptation I'm considering is how to show that a squadron is "understrength" or "overstrength", like LBB4's mass combat rules, in order to represent support levels for the ships of the line.

If I go that route, then damage would be cumulative.

Also, there's no aspect, as presented, of critical hits.

Correct. I'm hoping an abstract system like this one can rely more heavily on abstract probabilities.

Finally, there's also no consideration for defensive effectiveness and weapon mix. Sandcasters don't work very well as defense against Meson guns for example.

What that says to me is that squadrons using this system will tend to look rather homogenous, and building squadrons will tend to be conservative in both offense and defense, and thus render irrelevant differences between weapons and defenses; if the results aren't too boring (and they might be), then I'm okay with that.

 

[robject]

Originally posted by whartung:

Also, there's no aspect, as presented, of critical hits. Most of the Traveller rule sets pretty well rely on critical hits to take ships out, particularly large ships.

Finally, there's also no consideration for defensive effectiveness and weapon mix. Sandcasters don't work very well as defense against Meson guns for example.

As you noticed, this cannot possibly ever serve as a ship-to-ship combat system; nor can it take the movements and tactical actions of single ships into account. This can only build squadrons, and when you build a squadron, you're building a handful of main ships surrounded by support ships of varying sizes and capabilities.

I've boiled that down into allocating a handful of points into five characteristics. If that can meaningfully map to critical hits, then I'll do it. I don't know if it can or not. I assumed not, but I've been wrong more often than right.

Imagine the abstraction involved: in five numbers, this system summarizes the general capabilities of the 154th Battle Rider squadron: a massive tender, seven riders, seven Sloans, a couple hundred fighters, the Huscarles, and who-knows-what-else. Every ship there has a USP; every infantryman has a UPP. Thousands of digits, all boiled down to five numbers, or about 16 bits of information. A lot of detail boils away.

In High Guard, you have total control on designing a purpose for your squadron. Here, you have nearly no control over purpose. Its purpose is to pound the bejeezus out of the other guy, and to try to do so with an acceptable veneer of resembling the outcomes of High Guard engagements.

 

[whartung]

Well, I still think you need to focus on balancing combat factors independent of economic factors.

Using the J Drive system again, let's say for simplicity of discussion that a J Drive imposes a 30% detrimment on combat effectiveness.

So, if a non-J Drive ship would have 10 Combat Points, an equivalent hulled J drive ship would have only 7. They may both COST 10 "economic units", but in combat, it's 10 to 7.

I think that distinction will be important.

I agree with the focus on spinals, as that's pretty much what High Guard does. It really focuses on Spinal mounts and Critical hits, everything else is just slows down the designer and combat.

At a very high level it simply becomes thus:

Take 100 ships, give them "reasonble" TL appropriate Spinal Mounts, and reasonalbe screens/armor. Take 2 fleets of them, point them at each, and blast away.

Using the crit methodology of generic High Guard, some percentage of the ships will be outright destroyed/disabled, some will be "dispersed" (i.e. out of action for a turn), and the rest will be essentially unscathed.

Then, you can reduce the appropriate fleets and go another round. Equal fleets are essentially a coin flip (a LOT of coin flips, but it's basically luck to decide victor).

But, then take one of these fleets, and build an "equal", but 1 TL lower fleet and see how the results change.

My point is that this will give a good "Feel" for how the system should work. (You may have already done this).

In the end, what you end up with is a bunch of dead ships, and perhaps a bunch of dispersed ships. For RP/Campaign terms, any ship that was dispersed needs to be repaired.

When I say ship, you could use squadrons of 5 or 10, or whatever unit you like.

But, basically, I would focus on the spinal mount, and ignore the rest. Maybe that's not practical at the lower TLs where missiles tend to be more dominant, but even then you can't get a Factor G missile attack, only a factor 9. I can get a Factor G spinal.

That's always been the problem with low tech HG combat. The ships just sit on an arduous rotisserie getting their weapon mounts burned off until they simply fly away all smokey and charbroiled, where as with spinals, ships crack open like eggs in a microwave from crits.

I don't know if you can really get a good feeling across that divide from good Spinal tech vs Eleventy Hundred turrets.

Also, this won't work well with the small ships. 100's of SDBs attacking each other. It CAN sorta work, but it really doesn't scale to the large ships.

But, simply: Spinal mount, armor/screen, TL and ship size (can be morphed in to DEF). That's about it in terms of controlling factors IMHO, everything else is just set dressing.

 

[robject]

Sound advice re focusing on spinals, Wharty.

Most likely, I'd tally up the "major" weapons and forget about the rest. This way, beefy squadrons count their spinal mounts (and perhaps their 100t bays), and itty bitty Kinunir squadrons can tally up their particle accelerators and triple laser turrets.

As for preventing the "10,000 fighters equals one dreadnought" problem. Maybe I could also get away with imposing a "chain of command" rule, where only the best 8 ships (in other words, the main elements of any squadron) are considered for determining ATT/BOM/DEF. All those fighters are suddenly moot. Kind of painful to think of. Maybe there's a better way. This way is sufficiently abstract, however.

Re different TLs: good catch. No, I haven't done this anaylsis. But, in a way, Sigg and Oz have done some of the heavy lifting for me: they've profiled the likely ATT/BOM/DEF numbers for many of the prominent squadrons from 5FW using a consistent mechanic, from Tigress to AHL. I used their system to profile some less important squadrons (a Kinunir group, a Tronskia group, and a couple others), and derived my abstract rules from their more involved ones. The differing TLs of the squadrons gives me a rough guide as to how to penalize lower TL squadrons, in points. Work In Progress.

 

[Jeffr0]

As for layering in tech/design philosophy/criticals type stuff.

It looks like you're resolving things with a pair of secret & simultaneous die rolls. (And ya don't even need a chart, either.) Nice and simple!

Maybe you can have some bonus effects depending on the die roll...

Things like...

"Rolled an even number" Evasive maneuvers... reduce your damage taken by 5%. (For 'nimble' units?)

"Doubles" Shock and awe... do double damage this turn. (For spinal ships?)

Not too many, but maybe you can slip in enough of these type rules to capture the flavor of the various types.

 

[robject]

That's a clever idea. Hmmmmm.

 

[Ptah]

A suggestion on the fighter problem, that adds another number but maybe some nice tactical options. How about an anti-fighter rating (AFR) derived from the small weapons. The damage these could do to large ships would be reduced but very effective on small ships.

Fighters would have an AFR not an ATT because of there weapons smaller size. AFR would work like ATT if at very close range. The idea is that fighters would have to close (this can be done in abstract) to effectively use there weapons. 1000 fighters would equal a cruiser if they got in close, and could be very destructive if you didn't have a good AFR for your squadron.

The AFR dedidcated non-fighter ships I'd call escorts.

It does add one more number though to the counter, but I think that only takes it to 6, which still fit rather well.

Another suggestion on AFR level weapons, maybe no criticals for them. I love the idea of doubles that hit equal criticals, easy to remember. Maybe hits damage a squadron but don't degrade its performance while critcals degrade performance across the board. So you end up with two damage counters per squadron one normal (blue) and another critical (red), if you want to track damage by counters instead of on a card or sheet.

I'd actually recommend the sheet. With only 5 or 6 stats each line of a sheet of paper could be a squadron. A whole fleet could be on one piece of paper.

Just thinking off the cuff here. Liking what you've laid out so far.

 

[travlar]

Originally posted by whartung:
But, simply: Spinal mount, armor/screen, TL and ship size (can be morphed in to DEF). That's about it in terms of controlling factors IMHO, everything else is just set dressing.

The problem with that is that the 1,000 fighters will ignore your spinal mount, and at some point start reducing its effectiveness (looking at it from a HG perspective). And, if all you have is a spinal mount, every one of those weapon hits degrades your spinal mount.

 

[robject]

Ptah, those are points worth considering. It might be nice to get some tactical possibilities opened up with such a small increase in complexity.

By the bye, I'm thinking of being able to create counters, and use them on any 1"-hex starmap. For example, here's a squadron (actually a task force, which is a fraction of a squadron, containing only one main ship, but that's neither here nor there) of rather wimpy BBs. By my current draft rules, it uses 19 points (is it streamlined? no idea!) and therefore costs BCr950 ... which seems like a very poor value for the money. Which tells me there must be some TL constraint going on that I need to identify.

And here's a Kokirrak squadron, unfortunately without the jump number. Obviously an earlier test counter.

And the Plankwells. And Tigresses. Yes, the numbers appear to be wrong. They're old test counters, made a year or more ago.

 

[flykiller]

All those fighters are suddenly moot. Kind of painful to think of.

since you're going abstract, instead of thinking of "fighters" think of differing attack/defense factors.

rough guessing while eating lunch -

capital ship factors - good against capital ship and planet factors, not so good against secondary weapon factors

secondary weapon factors - good against other secondary weapons factors, somewhat good against capital ships and planets

screens - reduce capital ship factors, worthless against secondary weapons factors

etc.

 

[robject]

Yeah, that's sort of along the same lines of what Ptah's suggesting.

 

[The Oz]

Perhaps you could add designators to the ratings:</font>

• "s" equals spinal meson guns</font>
• "p" equals spinal PAs</font>
• "m" equals missile bays</font>

and no designator is everything else.

These designators would then interact with similar designators for the defenses. In this case I'd set up the designators to indicate what weapons the ship does not have defenses against. You'd have to decide what level of defense is "enough" to avoid the defensive modifier.

Then in combat, ships that have a weapon that the target does not have the defenses for would get a modifier to make damage/destruction more likely.

 

[robject]

Basically you're creating a variant of signal/receptor pair notation, adapted for squadron battles. That would make the model more robust and significant. I wonder how much it would impact playability, or indeed if it is practically seamless.

It might require a bit of thinking when attacks are made, and might mandate tables for ease of use, which adds a bit of downtime as players perform a lookup. That would be a bummer. So the trick is to add this functionality without adding complexity.

 

[robject]

...but in fact, what you, Flykiller, and Ptah are headed at is more or less a USP applied to squadrons instead of singleships. Which is generally not where I want to go. I'm trying to generalize away from that.

How one might adapt/extend the USP to represent squadrons could well be a profitable (and new) topic altogether.

 

[The Oz]

Getting back to basics, then.

In TRAVELLER, the higher the jump factor, the less tonnage the ship has for other uses, like weapons and defenses. So these three things end up being balanced against each other (the classic trio of firepower, defense, and mobility). But in TRAVELLER there's also a maximum tonnage you can spend on these things (in strict HG rules). By my back-of-the-envelope calculations:

Jump:
16% gives J-1 at TL9
28% gives J-2 at TL11
43% gives J-3 at TL12
53% gives J-4 at TL13
66% gives J-5 at TL14
73% gives J-6 at TL15

These tonnage percentages include drive, jump fuel, powerplant and powerplant fuel.

Weapons are usually a maximum of 10% and often less (a Kokirrak-class BB has 14,730 tons of weapons, that's only 7.36% of the total tonnage). Smaller ships with spinal mounts (battle riders) will have more, of course. If powerplants and fuel are included, weapons might reach 15% to 20% of total displacement.

Armor (max factor available at that TL):
40% at TL9
33% at TL10
36% at TL11
26% at TL12
28% at TL13
15% at TL14
16% at TL15

Agility (6-G, includes powerplant and powerplant fuel):
41% at TL9-12
35% at TL13-14
29% at TL15

Some of this will overlap, of course. A ship with a high Jump rating won't need quite as much tonnage for max Agility since the Jump powerplant can also run the Maneuver drive.

These percentages give some idea of the tradeoffs any "squadron" design system should be forcing players to make.

At the tactical level, the one thing I'd like to see would be a designation for battlerider squadrons as opposed to battleship squadrons. Riders should have better ATT/DEF factors (no need to carry jump fuel) but should have some kind of trouble breaking off action above just needing full jump fuel tanks. Having battleriders behave that way would add a lot of TRAVELLER feel without much complexity, I think.