Maximum Viable Battleship Size

[Whipsnade]

Yes, agility is very good, but it is also very expensive.

Losing is even more expensive.

As a quick estimate a rider with Meson N, agility 6, and armour 15 is 10 kT and GCr 10. With agility 0 it is 6300 dT and GCr 6. With tenders included I still get 10 slow riders for 6 fast riders.

You're not building near carbon copies whose only difference is agility. While the Agility:6 craft will be carrying the same meson spinal and screen as the Agility:0 craft, little else like size or secondary batteries will be even being remotely similar.

It's been long noted that at higher TLs, HG2 battle success trends towards the side who brings the most spinals.

At short range...

Battles start at Long range, not short. (The +2 Short DRM. does help both sides.)

Anyway, the same observation I made regarding Wil's proposed Mano a Mano battle also holds here. You're throwing idealized designs at each in no context other than a budgetary one.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

You're not building near carbon copies whose only difference is agility. While the Agility:6 craft will be carrying the same meson spinal and screen as the Agility:0 craft, little else like size or secondary batteries will be even being remotely similar.

They were minimal proof of concept builds, they had the same secondary armaments except for a few turrets.

It's been long noted that at higher TLs, HG2 battle success trends towards the side who brings the most spinals.

Quite, and cheaper platforms means more spinals.

Battles start at Long range, not short. (The +2 Short DRM. does help both sides.)

We start at long but we have 50% to choose range every round. If the battle is slow we have some time. As noted Meson J has less than 10% to kill a fast enemy.

DM+2 is for everyone, but it helps the slow ships much more, since the slow ships are hit anyway, but it significantly increases the chance of hitting the fast ships.

Anyway, the same observation I made regarding Wil's proposed Mano a Mano battle also holds here. You're throwing idealized designs at each in no context other than a budgetary one.

Certainly, but you have to start somewhere. I was trying to illustrate a point: max agility is not always automatically superior.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Something to remember about those tournament ships - they were capped at TLC.
As you advance through the TLs the nature of the 'best design' changes, which is one of the most overlooked, and best, features of HG.

Yes, the fleet was built to very specific requirements, such as TL and number of pilots.

A TL 15 fleet would be rather different, but we can recognise some features such as size K "riders".

 

[SanDragon]

Which is not consistent with the text of what's left behind in Striker (nor, for that matter, in HG).

In striker, nothing is left standing within the area of effect of a meson spinal. It turns a minimum 10m circle into rubble, destroys any building or vehicle outright, and kills any life forms. Even the ground itself is disrupted

I think they wanted to leave that to the disintegrators...

 

[aramis]

Take a look at the tournament-winning fleet in JTAS#10. It has missile rocks, meson "riders", and particle "riders". It probably requires a better tactic than tossing everything you have into the line of battle and see what happens.

If you build your entire fleet around a single design, you invite the enemy to take advantage. E.g. if you build standard riders, the enemy will counter with particle spinals. If you build a few BatRons of particle-proof planetoids, that is much less attractive.

The "single best build" will become the "single worst build".

You do not need to mix every fleet, but you need to keep the enemy guessing.

The actual winningest fleet was a bunch of small spinals. Look up Eurisko.

 

[flykiller]

The actual winningest fleet was a bunch of small spinals. Look up Eurisko.

look up where? I try "eurisko" on duckduckgo and mostly I get a computer language.

how small?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The fleet in JTAS#10 is Eurisko. The most common ship is a missile rock.

Eurisko class:
BA-Eurisko BA-K952563-J41100-34003-0 MCr13.030.385 11,100 ton

 

[AnotherDilbert]

look up where? I try "eurisko" on duckduckgo and mostly I get a computer language.

how small?

http://members.pcug.org.au/~davidjw/tavspecs/best_tml/Starships%20%28HG%29%20-%20Professor%20Lenat%20and%20EURISKO's%20Winning%20Fleet.htm

Scroll down a bit.

 

[Garnfellow]

So can we sketch out where these TL inflection points are?

At what TLs do battleships work? How about fighters?

Is the old battle rider/battleship divide based on TL?

 

[flykiller]

ah. thanks.

that fleet is something only a computer algorithm could design.

"I suspect that all those crappy extra weapons are not really weapons, but armour".

"drop tanks", gives rider benefits without the carrier.

yeah, I see how it all works.

 

[flykiller]

How about fighters?

a decent fighter takes up almost 100 dtons and carries a factor 3 missile capability - there's little reason to choose this over a 100 dton factor 9 missile bay. if you're determined to include them then fighters can plan a major role up to tech 12, from tech 13 to 14 they gradually become more ineffective, and at tech 15 they have little utility. again, in hg2 with its "battleline" - in any open map they'll always have great utility vs carriers, supply, fuel lighters, etc.

 

[kilemall]

T5 changed the parameters out of recognition with it's changes to how jump works.

If any object larger than the ship which just jumped manages to "sit" on that ship's jump entry point, the ship in jump is "pinned" in place and will exit jump space after the normal time at it's point of entry. A Beowulf can pin a scout/courier and be pinned in turn by a subsidized merchant who can be pinned by subsidized liner, etc., etc., etc., and the bigger battleship cam make it's enemy doesn't escape.

We now have a "reason" for those huge battleships. Not one that deals with weapons or damage, but one that deals with preventing enemy ships from escaping via jump space.

Regarding meson gun damage, we've two somewhat different explanations of such damage in canon. There's Striker's "Everything within this radius destroyed" explanation and HG2's "Roll this many times on these damage tables" explanation. The two are different and can only be reconciled in the vaguest manner.

Yes, if Striker's depiction of meson gun damage (which I quite enjoy) were applied to ship combat any ship hit would be turned into an expanding cloud of gravel. What works well in a miniature ground combat game, however, doesn't work as well in a paper & pencil ship combat game. All weapons in HG2 roll on damage tables so the meson gun does the same.

i thought about applying the Striker meson gun to my Mayday/HG version, until I started running sphere sizes on the spinal gun detonations.

An additional fun part is that the meson detonation doesn't necessarily have to be mass center, it could be on the edge of the ship and affect a combination of surface and internal targets.

I decided that the meson gun hits are a series of smaller detonations set in a spread pattern to generate a hit and can be randomly 1 each of surface/rad, surface/internal, rad/internal, or 2 of each.

That doesn't do anything about the criticals or the built-in weapon vs. hull payoff- I'd say allow multiple spinals, and the ranging thing I have in mind helps too.

 

[kilemall]

Something to remember about those tournament ships - they were capped at TLC.
As you advance through the TLs the nature of the 'best design' changes, which is one of the most overlooked, and best, features of HG.

Absolutely.

 

[aramis]

a decent fighter takes up almost 100 dtons and carries a factor 3 missile capability - there's little reason to choose this over a 100 dton factor 9 missile bay. if you're determined to include them then fighters can plan a major role up to tech 12, from tech 13 to 14 they gradually become more ineffective, and at tech 15 they have little utility. again, in hg2 with its "battleline" - in any open map they'll always have great utility vs carriers, supply, fuel lighters, etc.

The solution for fighters is a rules change - and it's a simple one.

"A flight of up to (TL+Computer) fighters can combine into a single battery."

Assuming the Earth Standard 16-18 bird squadrons, 1 missile each... A 4 and a 3 factor squadron, or 3×factor 3.

 

[Whipsnade]

Certainly, but you have to start somewhere.

That's very true. I'm just cautioning everyone not to attempt to derive too much from HG2.

For example, we know TL15 powers still build "fighters" despite the "fact" that they seemingly have no front line role in the HG2 combat system at TL15. The problem isn't with "fighters" however, the problem is with the extremely limited model HG2 provides.

Another example involves spinal-armed riders/warships. Both my post, your post, and hundreds of others at this and other fora have repeatedly proved that the "best" TL15 force will have as many fast, relatively small, spinal-armed warships as possible. However, we've also been repeatedly shown that TL15 navies build huge battlewagons instead(1). Again, the problem isn't with those battlewagons, it's with our extremely limited model.

I was trying to illustrate a point: max agility is not always automatically superior.

No, not automatically superior given the limited picture HG2 provides of OTU naval combat. However, high agility does confer benefits more often than not.

We can build and test "extreme' designs which can "prove" nearly anything, but the lessons derived from extreme designs really only apply to extreme designs. What's more, extreme designs are more a "hack" of the rules than anything else. Just look at the Eurisko designs for a perfect example of that.

Trying to sum all this up; when we parse the HG2 design and combat systems we quickly reach and then pass the point where we're learning more about HG2 and less about the OTU.


1 - T5 have provided an answer of sorts for why huge ships are built. I don't particularly like it, but it's canon.

 

[Whipsnade]

The solution for fighters is a rules change - and it's a simple one.

"A flight of up to (TL+Computer) fighters can combine into a single battery."

Assuming the Earth Standard 16-18 bird squadrons, 1 missile each... A 4 and a 3 factor squadron, or 3×factor 3.

That's not only an excellent solution, it's one of the least "intrusive" solutions too.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

a decent fighter takes up almost 100 dtons and carries a factor 3 missile capability - there's little reason to choose this over a 100 dton factor 9 missile bay. if you're determined to include them then fighters can plan a major role up to tech 12, from tech 13 to 14 they gradually become more ineffective, and at tech 15 they have little utility. again, in hg2 with its "battleline" - in any open map they'll always have great utility vs carriers, supply, fuel lighters, etc.

Yes, absolutely.

But we can leave out the armour on the fighters, on the principle that anything that will hit them will produce crits and kill them anyway. An unarmoured fighter can be ~20 dT at TL9. That is certainly usable.

If we use squadron rules, they can even hit themselves!

 

[AnotherDilbert]

That's very true. I'm just cautioning everyone not to attempt to derive too much from HG2.

For example, we know TL15 powers still build "fighters" despite the "fact" that they seemingly have no front line role in the HG2 combat system at TL15. The problem isn't with "fighters" however, the problem is with the extremely limited model HG2 provides.

Another example involves spinal-armed riders/warships. Both my post, your post, and hundreds of others at this and other fora have repeatedly proved that the "best" TL15 force will have as many fast, relatively small, spinal-armed warships as possible. However, we've also been repeatedly shown that TL15 navies build huge battlewagons instead(1). Again, the problem isn't with those battlewagons, it's with our extremely limited model.

Yes, but HG is just as much canon as FS. The "Meson Guns kills ships instantly" is rather firm canon, and that makes BBs impractical. The Imperium builds BBs as well as BRs. But no-one has mandated that the Imperial Admiralty is perfect and entirely corruption-free. It was 500 years since a warship fired it's guns in anger in Core sector. There has been a few small-scale colonial wars since then, but nothing that threatens Core or the Imperium as a whole. I do not think the Imperium feels very threatened.

Maybe the BBs are a form of pork-barrel spending? Maybe the BBs with marines and fighters are intended as space-to-ground assault ships to suppress insurrections and rebellions inside the Imperium? Maybe the naval sector command in the Spinward Marshes think they have too many assault ships and too few battle riders, so uses the assault ships in space combat in desperation? Fighters may not be able to hurt enemy fleets, but they are excellent for patrolling civilians and providing sensor coverage over the vast space of a solar system.

This is not a carrier:

LHA-6 USS America

No, not automatically superior given the limited picture HG2 provides of OTU naval combat. However, high agility does confer benefits more often than not.

Then we agree.

We can build and test "extreme' designs which can "prove" nearly anything, but the lessons derived from extreme designs really only apply to extreme designs. What's more, extreme designs are more a "hack" of the rules than anything else. Just look at the Eurisko designs for a perfect example of that.

Trying to sum all this up; when we parse the HG2 design and combat systems we quickly reach and then pass the point where we're learning more about HG2 and less about the OTU.

We basically have a choice of believing HG or FS. Fighting Ships is full of impractical and badly designed ships, so I choose to believe HG. You may choose differently, and obviously neither of us can say the other is wrong. As you pointed out in another thread forming an accurate understanding of an elephant, just by feeling its trunk, is rather difficult.

Eurisko is a viable strategy for TL12 fighting TL12. The missile rocks form a wall of battle necessary to have a reserve where ships can be repaired. The spinals are there to win the battle, the missile rocks are there so that we do not lose the battle. It has been given some thought and it is battle-tested against multiple enemy strategies. You may not like it, but you cannot dismiss it out of hand.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

So can we sketch out where these TL inflection points are?

At what TLs do battleships work? How about fighters?

Is the old battle rider/battleship divide based on TL?

The battleship is at least outdated by the Meson Gun, introduced at TL11, and practical at TL12.

Before then the nuclear missile rules space. I suspect planetoid hull battle riders is the logical answer. Note that we cannot kill heavily armoured planetoids with nuclear missiles, we can only deplete their fuel tanks.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Before then the nuclear missile rules space. I suspect planetoid hull battle riders is the logical answer. Note that we cannot kill heavily armoured planetoids with nuclear missiles, we can only deplete their fuel tanks.

Giving it minimal thought, battle riders makes little sense at TL10 and J-1.

Size A missile frigates looks tempting. Size A or K planetoids might work, but requires tankers to skim fuel. Fighters might work, but would suffer from auto-crits.