Launching Carried Craft Prior to Combat

[BlackBat242]

Which is precisely why the clarification was written as it was:

Battle Formation Step, p. 38: All carried craft are assumed to begin a battle on-board the carrying vessel. Referees and players may agree to adjust this as part of a specific scenario as needed.

That sentence is not in my copy of HG... © 1980, with the number sequence 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 below the copyright paragraph.

Mine says "Vessels carrying craft (large or small) may launch or recover them. (bolding mine)
Implying they might have already been launched.

Here is the scan.

Note the next page starts with Initiative Determination Step.


The "clarification" is a change in the rules.

 

[rancke]

The "clarification" is a change in the rules.

The description of the Battle Formation Step describes the actions that can be taken in the Battle Formation Step of any turn, not just the first. Nevertheless, you wouldn't interpret that to mean that a fleet can recover fighters during any given turn unless there are fighters to recover, would you? So the rule can, perfectly reasonably, be interpreted to mean that, sure, a fleet could, theoretically, recover fighters during the first turn, except that there are no fighters to recover.


Hans

 

[robject]

Those of you who've been putting up with me all these years know that I've long advocated the idea that Traveller naval combat has been missing a major component. We've plenty of tactical and strategic models, but no operational ones. We've models for moving between star systems and models for fighting battles, but we've no models for moving within a star system prior to a battle. This middle step has been missing for over thirty years.

This element is something Don and I would like to see produced for Traveller. I note that Traveller now has (very nice) sensor rules that span a system, which can support an integrated fleet combat game. I've quoted and summarized (usually summarized) your points about it before. I'd like to see an official product from FFE within the next couple of years. OK the next decade. OK before I retire. OK before I die.

Come to think of it, a nice concise (but comprehensive) list of considerations might help prime the pump. Maybe. But, I reckon you've already done that a few times before, and I suspect Don has those posts at his fingertips; if so, then never mind.

 

[Hal]

Hi Guys,
I had pretty much said my piece back on CT-STARSHIPS, and it pretty much leans the same way as Matt has been leaning throughout this thread. But, I've a few other points that might be worth keeping in mind.

As I mentioned at CT-STARSHIPS, High Guard only tracks the events of the battle between fleets from the moment the fleets are in engagement range, on down to when the last salvo is fired and the last ship breaks off from combat or is distroyed. What happened prior to the two fleets coming within engagement range is of no importance as far as the actual combat rules are concerned - any more than what happens subsequent to the battle's conclusion is of any concern. No victory point rules, no repair rules for battle scarred ships on a permanent level, etc. That is, not until some of those rules were introduced in TCS.

The irony here is, that people who want to point out various possibilities for the game and love to argue about the merits of boarding a hostile ship - are forgetting to apply that "wisdom" to fleet engagements.

If a fleet does not wish to be engaged, and has the ability to jump - that fleet WILL jump. If a fleet does not wish to be engaged, and has an enemy fleet rushing to meet them via normal space manuevering - all they need to do is head DIRECTLY for the enemy fleet just as fast as they can. If the two fleets meet headlong - they might get one, maybe two rounds worth of firing, before they pass each other at high velocity and get out of range.

In short? A fleet engagement is akin to the issue of matching velocities with a target ship to engage in boarding activity. Only when both fleets are relatively matched and prepared for battle will they even be able to engage in battle. THIS is what High Guard has neglected to factor in - and what the "clarification" fails to consider.

Almost ZERO fleet engagements will be of a kind that requires all carried ships to be carried within their hangars. Nearly ALL fleet engagements capable of lasting for more than an hour (3 turns) will require that the fleets made a strong attempt to match relative velocities before engaging in battle.

But, that's me. I won't even mention "what about those ships with 2 month's fuel duration for their powerplants. High Guard and/or Trillion Credit Squadron have zero rules about life support durations - so what now?" (Ok ok, so I did mention it <g>)

Well, enough on that. Were this a survey, my vote on the clarification is "if it is designed to be houseruled by the referee for his/her campaign from the start, why bother to clarify the rule at all? The clarification is not a clarification simply on the grounds that it states that default is all ships are carried unless the Referee says otherwise."

In short? I honestly think it is a mistake to introduce it - and I will ignore it for my own campaigns and can't wait for the day when some rules lawyer says "Look at the clarification" for which I will say "Look at it yourself. It says it can go either way. My way is the other way."

 

[Matt123]

My apologies to all, I've been away a few days & obviously had a bit of catching up to do. Hense the sudden burst of posts.

Cheers

I wonder if I should also mention that High Guard doesn't include sensor rules? (does it? I don't recall any and don't see them on a quick glance)

And that even Book 2 sensor rules are such that detection of other ships is at best 600,000km?

TCS pg. 38 Tactical Intelligence and the following section The Outer System

 

[Matt123]

OK then

Launch all 500 of your fighters (per the example above) before battle is ever engaged, at 10 per turn (over 16 hours) and I'll just loiter over here out of range ...snip...

lol. On the one hand you are suggesting that battle is unpredictable so I should/would launch all fighters without knowing that we are about to engage.

On the other hand you are saying that battle is not unpredictable and you do have the certainty of knowing when we are going to engage, waiting for my pilot exhaustion!.

The real penalty in the above scenario is when that fleet decides it needs to leave. Escape by maneuver to the outer system & 500 of your short duration fighters die. Escape by jump and you lose 480 of your expensive fighters. Both give or take a few turns dawdling in the reserve to pick up what you can, a case for satistical combat resolution if ever I saw one!

 

[Matt123]

Who ever said anything about "all fighters being launched"? Maybe someone else, but not me.

I did. The debate isn't really about the logic behind launching or not launching fighters before the game, the logic has been well debated and all arguements appear to be out.

The interpretation to not allow carried craft (this affects battleriders, etc as well) to be launched, basically hinges on insisting that launch facilities are only justified if you start combat with all craft carried.

It is flawed on two levels. Doctrinal - no fleet commander would engage without considering putting all possible birds in the air, especially as you can see and prepare for what is coming.

And at the component/ship design level - Launch facilities represent a bottleneck for launch and recovery. Fleet commanders knowing this will minimise the launch bottleneck and cope best they can (badly if they are very constrained) with the recovery bottleneck imposed by the designer.

Touching on ship design, home planets automatically carry craft, have no cost, launch everything on turn one and places them on the 100 diameter limit well within 20 minutes ready to destroy intruder carriers (with surprise on thier side) before they can launch fighters. Surprise!

Play balance is deemed not a consideration, neither is the rules being intuitive. And the scenario that the preferred interpretation creates as a 'norm' is widely believed to be highly implausible.

So why pick it as a standard? Most here have already stated they will house rule it out & no one has named a scenario where they can or will house rule it in!

Go figure.

Cheers!

 

[Matt123]

HG2 reduces space combat to it's most basic component and only it's most basic component; combat. A player controls offensive and defensive fire allocations, damage control, how/when to break off combat, and nothing more. There is no maneuvering, no real tactics, there's no map, and none of the other things you unconsciously assume are present because they are present in nearly every other wargame. A Hg2 battle consists of nothing but shooting, shooting, more shooting, and damn little else.

I agree with most of that, it also includes launch & recovery and makes assumptions about the context of the battle. Without a context we may as well be discussing chess. We do have a context and HG is a key element of the whole. You cannot seperate the two. HG is a subset of Traveller not a disparite component like chess is to Traveller.

HG2 doesn't pretend to model anything that occurs prior to the battle, that's beyond the context in which it operates.

hmmm, except the existence of political masters, ship designers designing to a fleet design doctrine, assumptions regarding minimum jump and maneuver capabilities, the existence of somewhere to escape to via maneuvre or jump, the HG2 rules for damage control & emergency repair and costs for repairs at starports. Do I really need to go on.

HG2 has a context, the only real question is whether this interpretation reflects a 'norm'.

...snip... but only during the battle itself. Launches at any other time are not part of HG2's narrow focus because they are beyond it's context.

Absolutely. Its purpose is to resolve combat, not predetermine how the player deploys his forces.

All HG2 could do is model the actual torpedo, bombing, and strafing runs performed by the aircraft on either side.

Which creates a battle where fighters start launched despite that their carriers are in the system. I don't have a problem with this, this operational/tactical level gaming is the happy home of GM's wishing to create scenarios. The campaign however doesn't require
a GM to create scenario's.

Hence the Traveller reality of arriving, achieving surprise and still being caught with your pants down despite having several hours notice. At Midway, if either Admiral had done this, well...

Cheers

 

[Matt123]

What some want(ed) to do was make the game rule say that any or all craft could be considered launched prior to that first turn without any other situational conditions factored. Or have I misread the intent there?

No you have it correct.

Name a representitive battle that would start with all craft on board.

What that would do among other things is make the whole of the launch facilities rules pointless. Who would choose a dispersed hull with no armor over any other hull with armor? Nobody. Who would spend the extra credits, volume and crew requirements for launch tubes? Nobody. Everybody would use the free no crew required 1 launch per 10Kton of hull per turn.

Only if you are considering purely un-representative (fun, but its not Traveller RL) battles to the death. For GM generated scenario's the GM decides anyway. For campaigns, argueably the reason for HG2's existence, launch & recovery facilities are vital.

* trade one unreality for another before somebody harps on that, though the unreality of the High Guard rule of launching in turn one at least preserves the general game of combat and design that is High Guard

How? By encouraging abuse of the rules favouring dispersed structure carriers? They have enough benefits already, cheaper, 25% more carried craft, free launch & hanger facilities, no flight crew needed, launch & recover everything in one turn, double up as ablative armour at need (shock, horror, you wouldn't do this in a campaign game! No & I wouldn't start a game without considering launching all craft either...).

But the big point is all that, ALL OF IT, is situational and High Guard is not a set of situational rules. Trying to take the rules which allow for a situational condition (such as launching some craft before the engagement) and making it a simple rule that "any craft may be considered launched in the first turn" without addressing other situational aspects is a mistake.

Your concerns are misplaced. Name a recurring scenario within Traveller where the opponents don't get to see each other approaching! I'll of course describe it as an ideal GM generated tactical/operational scenario, but not typical.

Typical is arriving in system, deploying your fleet, appraching the home planet & watching the defenders scramble to get enough ships into space before you get into bombardment range. Great thing about home planets, you are garanteed to engage the defenders.

Cheers

 

[Matt123]

Dan brings up several of the issues that any model of pre-battle operational small craft launches would have to tackle. The model would have to address crew size, crew endurance, small craft fuel capacities, small craft quarters, and several other issues.

I don't see this.

Crew size, fixed by the designer.
Crew endurance, 36 turns
Small craft fuel, well in excess of 36 turns
Small craft crew quarters, allow combat well in excess of 36 turns (don't know how, but...)
Life support, at least 36 turns, concensus generally is at least 72 turns.

Leaving us with just the consideration that how long has the ship been operating before the battle. As has been argued plenty here, what happened before the battle is of no consequence. But regardless, its flying, using up some of that 72 hours of non-combat endurance before engaging for 36 hours of combat.

 

[Matt123]

The description of the Battle Formation Step describes the actions that can be taken in the Battle Formation Step of any turn, not just the first. Nevertheless, you wouldn't interpret that to mean that a fleet can recover fighters during any given turn unless there are fighters to recover, would you? So the rule can, perfectly reasonably, be interpreted to mean that, sure, a fleet could, theoretically, recover fighters during the first turn, except that there are no fighters to recover.

No fighters to recover by virtue of a 'clarification' decreeing it. Otherwise as you quite correctly point out the capacity to recover in turn 1 is there and an important tactical consideration if you choose to start with carried craft in the line.

Cheers

 

[rancke]

No fighters to recover by virtue of a 'clarification' decreeing it. Otherwise as you quite correctly point out the capacity to recover in turn 1 is there and an important tactical consideration if you choose to start with carried craft in the line.

My point was that the quoted rule was not proof, or even evidence, that it is possible to start a battle with carried craft deployed. Maybe you can, maybe you can't, but the rule could easily read the same either way.


Hans

 

[DonM]

Actually, Marc suggested just dropping the carried craft clarification. Does it hurt anything NOT to have it?

For that matter, are there any other HG clarifications on the stack that we could do without and it not bother anything?

 

[Hal]

Actually, Marc suggested just dropping the carried craft clarification. Does it hurt anything NOT to have it?

For that matter, are there any other HG clarifications on the stack that we could do without and it not bother anything?

In response to "Does it hurt not to have it?" - the question now becomes one of "Will this issue ever rise to the fore again?" How many times have you entered a washroom where a sign on the wall reads "Warning, door may open outwards." Probably because someone went to open the door by grabbing the handle only to have someone on the other side kick the door open, thereby breaking the other person's hand. Warnings along the lines of "Do not put a plugged in hair dryer in water" are basically a CYA warning - because someone did precisely that and then sued.

A clarification along the lines of "Status of carried ships prior to the commencement of battle is always up to the Referee" is simple, to the point, and does not make one "decision" for the referee the standard over the other opposing standard. And if the rule about all ships with carried craft must start the game carrying such craft is intended for competition games along the lines of TCS - then so state that the rule is for a very specific gaming environment. Clearly, competition games at a convention of neccessity functions differently than a normal refereed game. So why not just state the the rules are as they are for the specific circumstances for which they will be applied?

The clarification of rules where two people can legitimately get two opposing meanings from the same paragraphy requires clarification. Rules that are essentially the domain of the referee really should be left alone or stated as such. That's my take on it.

 

[BlackBat242]

Agreed.

The only situations I can remember in real-life carrier battles where one side started the actual battle with all their craft aboard ended very badly for those carriers (with the sole exception of Leyte Gulf, where it was only somewhat bad for the carriers.)

HMS Glorious vs Scharnhorst & Gneisenau is a perfect example of the scenario that the "clarification" places as standard... check it out for details. http://www.warship.org/no11994.htm
Summary: Glorious was steaming in waters known for potential of hostiles with all aircraft aboard. She was surprised (due to lack of scouting patrols) by the German battlecruisers, which sank her easily, along with both of her escorting destroyers. 45 survived of 1,519 crew.


The British Admiralty was annoyed that Capt D'Oyly-Hughes went down with his ship, as that meant they couldn't punish him for losing his ship through stupidity.

If the referee wishes to set up such a situation, fine... but it was not SOP for the Royal Navy's carriers.