CT Only: Light ships weapons.

[infojunky]

Sitting here in my hospital bed ideas are a dime a dozen.

Light starship weapons, commonly seen on smallcraft and small starships, thinking along the lines of railguns, mining lasers and light plasma weapons as such. All generally maxing out at half or a third of short range. Example the point defense guns in The Expanse.

 

[McPerth]

First of all, I hope nothing serious and you'll recover soon...

As for those light weapons (I understand vehicle weapons against starships is what you're refering here), I guess the combat rules from One Small Step (IIRC) from MT:HT could be somewhat adopted to CT through striker stats (though, not know ing Striker, I'm cannot be sure it would work).

Something like seeing what weapons can penetrate a starship hull, and if they so do, roll a usual damage could work, if that's possible...

 

[Condottiere]

Current rule of thumb seems to be hierarchical, personnel, vehicle, spacecraft, and divide damage by ten at each stage.

 

[agorski]

T5 has this. See https://www.travellerrpg.com/index.php?threads/the-rocinante.38714/

 

[Vargr Breath]

Sitting here in my hospital bed ideas are a dime a dozen.

Light starship weapons, commonly seen on smallcraft and small starships, thinking along the lines of railguns, mining lasers and light plasma weapons as such. All generally maxing out at half or a third of short range. Example the point defense guns in The Expanse.

Wow! I hope you're OK and out of there soon.

 

[coliver988]

Sitting here in my hospital bed ideas are a dime a dozen.

Light starship weapons, commonly seen on smallcraft and small starships, thinking along the lines of railguns, mining lasers and light plasma weapons as such. All generally maxing out at half or a third of short range. Example the point defense guns in The Expanse.

And ditto - hope things are going well, and you can get back home soon!

 

[infojunky]

First of all, I hope nothing serious and you'll recover soon...

This year I hope. The colon mutinied in the worse way.

As for those light weapons (I understand vehicle weapons against starships is what you're refering here), I guess the combat rules from One Small Step (IIRC) from MT:HT could be somewhat adopted to CT through striker stats (though, not know ing Striker, I'm cannot be sure it would work).

I try real hard not to engage Striker as it’s numbers used to rate Traveller or way off. In that doing up a ship’s laser gives you a weapon that ignores starship armour.

Something like seeing what weapons can penetrate a starship hull, and if they so do, roll a usual damage could work, if that's possible...

honestly I am looking to fill the Smallcraft scale with some detail.

 

[McPerth]

The main problem here is that the two scales are q uit difficult to reconcile. As I see it, it would be like trying to confront infantry/tank against combat ships in WWII. While the heaviest gun tanks mountes was 122mm (5"), this was kist desroyer weaponry for ships, and eve nthe heaviest artillery used on land (aside from some German protptipes that needed a full train to move) was, AFAIK 8", just Cruiser artillery for ships...

What I suggested, in AHL terms (as they are quite similar, if not outright the same, as Striker, AFAIK again) would be that once a spaceship is hit, roll normally for damage (+pen, -armor). Any result of light wound or higher would mean a roll in the damage table (I'm thinking in LBB2 system, not HG).

I guess that would mean most weapons are fully ineffective, but that's right to me, as even a full battalion of fusiliers would not really damage a "minimally armored" ship in WWII (and this "minimal armor" would be quite heavy when compared to a tank).

If you just make it as hits done to the ship, you 'd also make most weapons ineffective agains it, or you will end up wit ha system that allows if enough people just fire bows against the ship, enough hits will be accrued to affect it (in fact, tis happens in MT, where due to the minimal damage for exceptional to hit success, enough stones thrown against a tank will end up by damaging/destroying it).

 

[agorski]

I guess that would mean most weapons are fully ineffective, but that's right to me, as even a full battalion of fusiliers would not really damage a "minimally armored" ship in WWII (and this "minimal armor" would be quite heavy when compared to a tank).

In the Battle of the River Platte the 6" guns of the British light cruisers were mostly ineffective against the Graf Spee, but they did pepper the superstructure and maybe took out radar and gun directors.

I also seem to remember that the Bismarck, while not being heavily damaged at first, lost the ability to fire back because gun hits vibrated/rattled internal gun control systems.

 

[willtron3030]

Get well soon, @infojunky.

A GAU-8 delivers over 200,000 joules per round, and fires more than 60 rounds per second. And @Condottierre's guideline above says Spacecraft weapons are 10X that.

okes at calculator: A 3kg slug from a railgun travelling 3km/s carries 13.5MJ, about 125% of the total KE of all 60 of those GAU slugs combined.

Yeah, that'll ruin somebody's paint job, if you hit them.

 

[Condottiere]

It's one reason that warships have shakedown cruises.

 

[whartung]

The main problem here is that the two scales are q uit difficult to reconcile. As I see it, it would be like trying to confront infantry/tank against combat ships in WWII.

I dunno, I mean that's something TNE (FF&S) does.

Simply, all armor is the same. All guns are the same. That is, penetration is penetration. Armor stops penetration.

You can shoot a gauss rifle in TNE and it'll bounce off, like it's supposed to. At the same time, you can readily make an auto-cannon that will punch holes in to a starship.

That said, while the core is fundamentally the same, mechanically they are represented differently.

Small arms use a different mechanic against personnel than vs vehicle.

The game has two terms. "Penetration Value" and "Penetration Rating".

Penetration value is a measure of the weapon’s absolute ability to penetrate armor, and is the measurement most often used in vehicle combat.
Penetration rating is most often used in personal combat (page 285) and describes the relationship between a weapon‘s damage value and its penetration value. Penetration value = Damage value / Penetration rating. Likewise, Damage value = Penetration value x Penetration rating.

Penetration rating is the number of points of damage value lost for each level of armor value penetrated (thus the smaller the penetration rating, the better the penetration performance). Penetration ratings become higher (i.e., penetration performance becomes worse) as range increases. Penetration ratings are given by range, short/medium-long-extreme (penetration rating for medium is the same as for short). If a weapon’s penetration rating is Nil, it has no penetration capability.

Consider a shotgun.

It's rated at "Damage Value 4" with a "Penetration Rating of 3-Nil", that is it has a Pen Rating of 3 at short and medium range. That means for each point of armor, the shotgun loses 3 damage points. It can penetrate 1 point of armor (barely) but not 2. Shotguns and armor just don't mix well, much better for true "T-Shirt" environments. Cloth armor has a rating of 1, so a shotgun will punch through with 1D of damage (beats 4D!). A gauss rifle would do 3D.

Armor is all the same. Battle Dress has an armor rating of 8. Want to know how much armor a TNE Free Trader has? 10. The shotgun needs to do more than 24 points of damage to get through the Battle Dress, and 30 points of damage to get through the Free Trader. So, in both of those cases, the shotgun is just going to bounce off. (So is the gauss rifle, for that matter).

A Grav Tank with a 12Mj plasma gun does 40 damage and has a pen rating of 1-2-10. Short range, it loses one point of damage per armor point. A person in Battle Dress is going to take 40-8 = 32 points of damage (and since damage points convert to dice, that's 32 D6 damage -- this won't end well). Against the Free Trader is going to take 30 points of internal damage from the plasma gun -- which translates in to a Major hit. The Free Traders Jump Drive, for example, can take 2 Major Hits before being destroyed.

Thankfully, the Free Trader has a laser turret! Lasers are special, 1/9-27. This means that armor is 1/9th as effective against the laser, but it does 27 points of damage. The Grav Tank has 60(!!) points of armor up front. 60/9 = 7 (round up). The armor reduces the laser damage by 7. 27 - 7 = 20, so the Grav Tank takes 20 points of internal damage. 2 minor hits, which most likely damages the crew.

The bad news is that the tank is set up for ground combat which happens at a much faster rate than starship combat. The starship laser is designed for encounters measured in hours, not minutes. So the Rate of Fire of a starship laser is not very good compared to a tank. Theres a chance the ship laser can hurt the crew on the first hit, but if that doesn't take them out completely, then it's going sit there and eat plasma...a lot of plasma. Thankfully, most of what will be hit is likely the ships hold, but, not entirely. Absorbing plasma is never good in even the best conditions. This is where that pop-up auto-cannon comes in to play! (Of course, you can power the laser to fire faster.)

Now, if the laser had hit the guy in the Battle Dress, it would be doing 26 dice of damage. Which falls under the technical category of "owie".

 

[Grav_Moped]

I'd argue that the rate of fire from a starship turret laser is higher than that. The number of actual chances to hit per combat turn at space combat range is fairly low -- even though the Beam Laser is pumping wattage downrange continuously, the beam only intercepts the target for a fairly small fraction of the space combat turn.

In planetary-surface-range combat, that continuous beam is 250MW times the duration of a combat turn in the surface-combat system, every combat turn (give or take turret slew-rate limitations to target re-selection) and, given its ability to tag targets at light-second ranges, very accurate.

As in, if the target isn't continuously spinning to keep presenting a new side to the laser, the laser will keep targeting the same spot and burn through the armor at that point.

 

[kilemall]

I already have this worked out in my ct/hg mashup but kind of require the full system especially for the lasers.

Quick and dirty steals, postulate PD lasers that are 10% in cost and energy, have an engagement range of 1000km and fire every 10-30 seconds and three can fit in one rack.

For railguns use PA bays power/cost with meson to hits (ignoring hull and and meson screen) and only usable at close range. 50 ton bays mounted like spinal weapons for ships. No radiation hits, double the surface hits, and can be used as antimissile PD.

VRF Gauss guns were born to be antimissle PD, but Striker has them not able to punch ship hull. So I guess go either CPR autocannon upped to at least 41 pen to avoid energy use, mass driver to the same for even more targeting at the expense of power use, or Striker standard plasma/fusion cannons with rapid fire. Get close and tear ships to ribbons.

Of course ammo use needs to be tracked and power provided.

Or go californium rounds. Fabulously expensive, but hey how many of those small ships are packing nuclear dampers and victory is priceless.

This close in weapons thing is why most serious ships are going to board inspection/prize crews with small craft.

Don’t risk the main ship at suicide death range, stand off let the nasties show their hand hitting the boat then destroy them.

The Gazelle gig looks like a mission necessity to me, not just atmo errand lighter.

 

[Spinward Flow]

The Gazelle gig looks like a mission necessity to me, not just atmo errand lighter.

The Gazelle Gig is actually a pretty decent bit of swing role runabout play.
To be honest, I have to wonder if a Close Escort "style" of ship role might have been done better as a sort of low end carrier for like 3 fighters that would do all the front line legwork while the carrier remains "safely" in the reserve (LBB5.80 combat rules). You then wind up with essentially 3 mobile turrets in the form of the fighters. Ideally speaking, you would want those fighters to be armored so they can tank a hit (or few).

With 3 fighters, a small carrier could maintain a 24/7 CAP of the space around the carrier, with a 2nd fighter on offline standby and the 3rd fighter on downtime maintenance with the crew getting rack time as a routine (uneventful) patrol rotation. Sounding general quarters would of course involve launching the 2nd and 3rd fighters (presumably in that order) to supplement the fighter currently patrolling away from the carrier.

Having a large enough displacement to host 6 fighters would be ideal, since that would allow a 3 watch rotation of 2 fighters per watch to enable wingman coverage during patrol flights.

Bump it up to 8 fighters and you've got a 4 watch rotation (6 hours each) per 24 hour day cycle.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The Gazelle Gig is actually a pretty decent bit of swing role runabout play.
To be honest, I have to wonder if a Close Escort "style" of ship role might have been done better as a sort of low end carrier for like 3 fighters that would do all the front line legwork while the carrier remains "safely" in the reserve (LBB5.80 combat rules). You then wind up with essentially 3 mobile turrets in the form of the fighters. Ideally speaking, you would want those fighters to be armored so they can tank a hit (or few).

With 3 fighters, a small carrier could maintain a 24/7 CAP of the space around the carrier, with a 2nd fighter on offline standby and the 3rd fighter on downtime maintenance with the crew getting rack time as a routine (uneventful) patrol rotation. Sounding general quarters would of course involve launching the 2nd and 3rd fighters (presumably in that order) to supplement the fighter currently patrolling away from the carrier.

Having a large enough displacement to host 6 fighters would be ideal, since that would allow a 3 watch rotation of 2 fighters per watch to enable wingman coverage during patrol flights.

Bump it up to 8 fighters and you've got a 4 watch rotation (6 hours each) per 24 hour day cycle.

Go a little bigger, add a telepath with ship tactics, and you've got a Shivva-class Patrol Frigate.

 

[McPerth]

In the Battle of the River Platte the 6" guns of the British light cruisers were mostly ineffective against the Graf Spee, but they did pepper the superstructure and maybe took out radar and gun directors.

Even those 6" guns were naval artillery (albeit light) against a very lightly armored ship...

And it's even probable the heavy artillery from an infantry division (usually 150 mm, so 6 " guns) could also damage those ships, and even some systems of a Battleship (until those ships return fire with probably quite heavier artillery), but most guns from tanks would be ineffective

A Grav Tank with a 12Mj plasma gun does 40 damage and has a pen rating of 1-2-10. Short range, it loses one point of damage per armor point. A person in Battle Dress is going to take 40-8 = 32 points of damage (and since damage points convert to dice, that's 32 D6 damage -- this won't end well). Against the Free Trader is going to take 30 points of internal damage from the plasma gun -- which translates in to a Major hit. The Free Traders Jump Drive, for example, can take 2 Major Hits before being destroyed.

A Free Trader is a unarmored ship, in ship terms, and yet at longer distances is imprevious to this 12MJ plasma gun, while the tank is not at the laser at any distance...

VRF Gauss guns were born to be antimissle PD, but Striker has them not able to punch ship hull.

And, IMHO, it should be ,as they are tue equivalent to a high TL heavy machinegun or point blank gun as a nowdays meroka or phalanx CIWS (wikipedia), not an anti-ship gun

 

[whartung]

A Free Trader is a unarmored ship, in ship terms, and yet at longer distances is imprevious to this 12MJ plasma gun, while the tank is not at the laser at any distance...

Regardless, the point being if you want to have a running battle with a Free Trader, a Grav Tank, and a guy in the Grav Tank with a shotgun, the TNE system will accommodate you.

Which is moot here because this is a CT thread, so I'll shut up about it.

And, IMHO, it should be ,as they are tue equivalent to a high TL heavy machinegun or point blank gun as a nowdays meroka or phalanx CIWS (wikipedia), not an anti-ship gun

It would surprise me not on iota that a Phalanx et all would make swiss cheese out of any modern, commercial vessel. Below the water line? Likely not (at the water line, probably). The water is great as "free" armor. If it has a height advantage, shooting down through the deck, I think there's a real danger of it damaging the water integrity of the vessel. All a matter of whats in the way to stop the rounds.

But it would make short work of the bridge and communications room.

 

[McPerth]

Regardless, the point being if you want to have a running battle with a Free Trader, a Grav Tank, and a guy in the Grav Tank with a shotgun, the TNE system will accommodate you.

This also happens in MT, but the result would be any of the usual ships characters use (and y200 dton or less) would be quite likely to be destroyed on a single hit from most starship weapons, at least until penetration begins to diminish with distance (about 5 Km in atmosphere, 5000 Km in void), and just a few hits beyond that...

It also allows you to confront other weapons against a tank or ship, but due to the automatic hits (disregarding armor) for exceptional success, even a heavy armored ship could be destroyed by throuwing stones to it if enough stones are thrown...

Which is moot here because this is a CT thread, so I'll shut up about it.

Which means we should not discuss other versions rules, but we can use them as examples (and in the case of MT, for what I've read here, is quite comparable to striker)...

It would surprise me not on iota that a Phalanx et all would make swiss cheese out of any modern, commercial vessel. Below the water line? Likely not (at the water line, probably). The water is great as "free" armor. If it has a height advantage, shooting down through the deck, I think there's a real danger of it damaging the water integrity of the vessel. All a matter of whats in the way to stop the rounds.

I guess current merchant ships are quite less amored that Traveller starships, as, while they also have to confront presure, starships are aslo armored against cosmic radiation and micrometeor damage. Again my guess, but if they can endure micrometeors, 20 mm b ullets from a CIWS would probably just scratch its paint...

See that, again in MT, disposable space systems can have armore as low as 8, so I g uess this is the minimum to sustain it when radiation and micrometeors are out of the equation, and even lighter armored enclosed aircrafts can reach orbit... The armor up to 40 (the minimum for a spacecraft) is for long durability ones.

But it would make short work of the bridge and communications room.

That don't use to be enclosed, as in a spaceship...

 

[Spinward Flow]

Please note that in CT Striker parlance ... 40 armor = 33.6cm of hardened steel equivalent.
And here are the multipliers used in CT Striker:

• TL=5 Soft Steel: x0.8
• TL=6 Hard Steel: x1
• TL=7-9 Composite Laminates: x2
• TL=10-11 Crystaliron: x4
• TL=12-13 Superdense: x7
• TL=14-15 Bonded Superdense: x14

So, running the numbers, here are the actual armor thicknesses needed to achieve armor 40 using the various materials:

• TL=5 Soft Steel: 33.6/0.8 = 42cm
• TL=6 Hard Steel: 33.6/1 = 33.6cm
• TL=7-9 Composite Laminates: 33.6/2 = 16.8cm
• TL=10-11 Crystaliron: 33.6/4 = 8.4cm
• TL=12-13 Superdense: 33.6/7 = 4.8cm
• TL=14-15 Bonded Superdense: 33.6/14 = 2.4cm

As you can see, those starship bulkheads do not need to be incredibly thick/heavy at higher tech levels (with TL=14-15 hulls needing a proverbial "one inch thick" bonded superdense protection layer to be durable spaceworthy).

Reference for this information was CT Striker Book 4.