MegaTrav Fighter patrols

[McPerth]

Can't blame you for that, Aramis; the thing's giving me headaches.

Fully agree here

Glisten is another issue - the primary "world" is an asteroid belt. On the one hand, I can't defend it with organized inspections at the jump point because ships are accustomed to jumping right to the place - or close enough as makes no difference from my fleet's perspective. I'd have to come up with alternate defensive plans.

On the other hand, if you want to try going 0.03c in an asteroid belt, be my guest - but I hope you have a very good map, 'cause a rock the size of a baseball at those speeds is hitting with the force of a nuclear warhead. (KE=1/2MV^2; v=at=60m/s^2*86400s=5,184,000m/s; KE=1/2m(5184000)^2=m*1.344*10^13 joules, or energy equivalent to a 3kt explosion per kilogram.)[/QUOTE]

Frankly, I only put Glisten as an example of a HIPop world that would need to import basic things, an so, with an assumed high volume of merchant traffic. I didn't thought about the implocations it has to be an asteroid belt in the defense against jumping ships.

Which brings up a number of interesting questions:
1. CAN you do 0.03c when something as small as a grain of sand hits you like a ton of TNT? WILL it hit you like a ton of TNT, or will it become a grain-sized bit of million-degree plasma that drills through your ship like a hot needle through wax, taking most of its energy with it when it exits at the other end - and what is the impact of that on ship and crew? I don't know how many grain-sized meteors there are in any given volume of space, but it occurs to me that you're going to find out, having flown through some 224 million kilometers of space to get here and with another 224 million before you stop. Running into something bigger is likely to hurt.

Unless your pilot os called Han Solo :rofl:

2. How do missiles work at those speeds? That momentum confers enormous energy: the warheads are vaporized before they can detonate, but the impact alone carries as much energy as a nuke. However, would they even have a chance at penetrating sandcasters, or would sand hitting like 1-ton bombs shatter the missiles enough that the target would escape damage. Or would a sand grain superheated to million-degree plasma by such an impact simply drill through the missile like the aforementioned hot needle through wax? Would the missile likewise drill through the target ship like a needle through wax rather than apply that energy explosively? (Would we do better firing sandcasters at each other?)
3. Can the missiles even function at that speed, or is the small amount of doppler shift at that speed enough to confuse their targeting systems. Are their computer-brains able to calculate intercept angles for such velocities?

I guess you're right in most of this. You must attack without your missiles, only energy weapons.

The example given contradicts the rule given.

"A unit may change speed each combat round by up to its maneuver drive value. Thus if a unit with a maneuver drive-6 is moving at speed 10, the next time it takes a turn, it may reduce its speed to as low as speed 4, or it may increase its speed to as high as speed 16 or any value in between. Or it may leave its speed unchanged at 10."

That seems to indicate that deceleration is limited to maximum g's as well. Ergo, the rule is poorly worded and the clarifying example guides play.

As I said in my post before, I agree with you, but rules don't.

I guess you've already read the thread I directed you about this discusion. I thought like you until I read Whipsnade's answer:

I remember an "answer" addressing this problem written by one of the DGP bigwigs in one their Q&A columns suggesting that ships which chose not to "move" are simply zipping around in circles within a particular square.

Even so, you needn't convince me about this must be wrong...

No, you are not bombarding at those speeds. I don't see your missiles doing anything but vaporizing before they hit ground; you'd need something specifically designed to survive hitting atmosphere at those speeds, and then there's the problem of aiming. Fifth Frontier War - the only example of ground bombardment I know of - has a ship coming in to about 3000 Km to do it (specifically: you are placed on the map over your target, and planetary defenses can only fire on you at full strength if they're within 3 hexes of that spot - about 3000 km. - while they fire at half strength at targets in "close orbit", ergo you're very roughly in the vicinity of 3000 km from target.) You've got about a half-second to aim your directed-energy weapons and specially designed missiles as you flash past; I don't see you persuading an opposing player that you can do that. Also, you've confined your route to the point where there's a good chance the opposing fleet is out of your sensor range as you flash past, and a very, very good chance you're going to smack into orbiting trash while you're trying it. Best to pick one mission and stick to it.

Energy weapons may also be used to bombard. True, accuracy will be a problem, but you can do quite a lot of damage yet.

Don't overestimate your firepower. All other things equal, a T-meson has about a 6 in 36 chance of hitting a high-agility dreadnought-size ship beyond 50,000 km range - and it's not like a missile or a particle beam: with closing speeds measuring in meters per microsecond, I'm not confident your systems can time the thing well enough to ensure it goes off inside the target, not when the original design called for firing on targets at speeds measured in meters per second. It might not be an eligible weapon for this kind of scenario. (Unlike GDW, I don't believe in sitting there and waiting for the meson beam to blow me up. Agility is life at TL15.) Missiles have a 3/36 chance - assuming we don't rule they're automatically killed by sandcasters at those speeds.

True, Agility is life, but have you tried to design a ship with fair jump capability and high Agility in MT? Most MT BBs and Cruisers have agility 0, 1 or 2 at most.

You're hitting speeds the rules don't allow for.

Can you please quote me where in the rules is a speed limit? The top vaccum speed limit given in page 86 of the RM has been ruled out by the Consolidated MT errata given by DonM (page 36), as it gave you an absurd 4200 km/h for a 6 G ship (so, maximum speed would be about 1 square per 15 combat rounds for a 6 G ship...).

I don't pretend you're not right if we want to simulate physics, just playing devil's advocate with the rules as they're written.

If your focus is the game, expect to have to do a lot of debating before you and your opponent settle on what's "real" at those speeds. If you're focus is realism, consider the potential ramifications of hypervelocity in both directions. Assuming it's not going to kill you (big assumption), the plan makes for an interesting scenario, with a few limits and provisos. Among them:

1. Mesons aren't going to work.
2. I think sand is ineffective - it will certainly kill the missile, but at such a close range that the missile's mass and momentum remain a lethal threat.
3. Nuclear dampers are ineffective - killing the warhead doesn't stop the danger.
4. Warheads are irrelevant. Taking a warhead from intact to "flat" in a couple hundred nanoseconds does not leave time for explosives to go boom in any organized way, and a few tens of kilograms of explosion in amongst a kiloton-level impact aren't going to get noticed. The missile becomes hypervelocity superheated plasma on impact, too quickly for the warhead to detonate. Treat all missiles as nukes, but with no radiation damage.
5. Particle beams, lasers, and energy guns remain effective, and lasers remain effective as a defense against missiles (250 Mw will cut through 7 meters of steel: the missile's mostly vapor).
6. We'd need to agree on some random way of determining where my fleet was when you made your pass.
7. There might be some risk from space objects - you're going at speeds that might make it a bit tricky to spot and dodge a random meteor in time.

1. Once again you may well be right about mesons, but nowere in the rules (AFAIK) forbids you to use them due to speed.

2. About sandcasters, the sand will keep your initial speed, so dispersing from your ship as it will do if you're standing still (relative to your ship, off course).

3 and 4. The same will apply on your missiles if they hit the enemy, as their initial speeds will be (relative to their targets) like enemy's missiles (relative to you).

5, 6 and 7. Fully agreed.

 

[Carlobrand]

...Energy weapons may also be used to bombard. True, accuracy will be a problem, but you can do quite a lot of damage yet...

A terror strafing? You fiend! Here I am in the Marches trying to do FFW, and you're working for Lucan!

...True, Agility is life, but have you tried to design a ship with fair jump capability and high Agility in MT? ...

Not yet. Still coming up with an Excel form that will handle this insanity.

...Can you please quote me wehre in the rules is a speed limit? ... [and]
...Once again you may well be right about mesons, but nowere in the rules (AFAIK) forbids you to use them due to speed. ...

I seem to recall a vague "do what's fun" kind of thing somewhere, but that could have been a different game. Not relevant in any event. But ... whatever happened to:

... I think on a battle in a true war, more as a TCS battle may be in a campaign.

At any rate, it's mostly speculative, thought exercise. As with any game, the rules are whatever two buddies sit down and agree to. Your "devil's advocate" role is much appreciated - very stimulating.

...About sandcasters, the sand will kep your initial speed, so dispersing from your ship as it will do if you're standing still (relative to your ship, off course)...

Thought exercise again. High Guard/Megatrav handle sand differently than Mayday. HG/MT do it as a one-shot point-defense, presumably on the assumption that the ship is going to move (agility is life); Mayday let it persist as long as the ship doesn't move.

Now, sand launched from a projector has ALMOST the same course as the launching ship, but not quite. It has a vector associated with being projected from the launcher: it's a cloud spreading slowly outward from the launchpoint. Interferes with lasers, muddles missiles somehow - possibly acting as chaff, obscuring terminal sensor information. Presumably there's an optimal density of sand to accomplish that, and therefore an optimal point at which to launch it at an incoming missile, since physics decrees the cloud must continue spreading after launch and, Mayday nothwithstanding, eventually become too dispersed to be effective.

And so we have the problem: sand may interfere with the missile's terminal guidance, it may even kill a very fast missile directly - but this missile's flying a hundred times faster than any missile the system ordinarily deals with. At 6g, the target can alter its position by 30 meters in a second. Where an ordinary missile might cover 72 km in that time, the missile moves 5000 km in a second, so there's the very real likelihood that the sand could launch, foul the 0.03c missile at the range it would foul an ordinary missile - and end up irrelevant because the missile closes the distance to the ship on momentum before the ship can move out of the way. And, all things being relative, the same applies to your 0.03c ship encountering a regular missile.

3 and 4. The same wil lapply on your missiles if they hit the enemy, as their initial speeds will be (relative to their targets) like enemy's missiles (relative to you).

Yup. It would be a rather exotic scenario.

 

[McPerth]

A terror strafing? You fiend! Here I am in the Marches trying to do FFW, and you're working for Lucan!

Well, is MT. FFW is over years ago, Lucan is there...

(BTW, as sad as it can make me, I'm afraid Lucan was not the only one to resort to those tactics )

Not yet. Still coming up with an Excel form that will handle this insanity.

I wish you luck. The high power demands of most MT combat ships nearly preclude high agility on them, unless jumpless ships.

At any rate, it's mostly speculative, thought exercise. As with any game, the rules are whatever two buddies sit down and agree to. Your "devil's advocate" role is much appreciated - very stimulating.

Sure rules are what the players agree, after all the goal of any game is to have fun, not to have eternal discusions (if that's you want, you'd better enter politics, not gaming :devil.

I'm glad you feel this discusion stimulating, so do I, and that alone makes it worthy.

Thought exercise again. High Guard/Megatrav handle sand differently than Mayday. HG/MT do it as a one-shot point-defense, presumably on the assumption that the ship is going to move (agility is life); Mayday let it persist as long as the ship doesn't move.

Sure, and Mayday's (and book 2 system, for what is worth) way is (IMHO) more realistic. Another difference among them is that in Mayday/Bk2 system, sand affected all fire going through it, firendly or enemy, more or less in the way smoke is a fire hindrance for both sides in RW firefight. In HG/MT, you can fire lots of sand, and your own fire will be unaffected by it.

Now, sand launched from a projector has ALMOST the same course as the launching ship, but not quite. It has a vector associated with being projected from the launcher: it's a cloud spreading slowly outward from the launchpoint. Interferes with lasers, muddles missiles somehow - possibly acting as chaff, obscuring terminal sensor information. Presumably there's an optimal density of sand to accomplish that, and therefore an optimal point at which to launch it at an incoming missile, since physics decrees the cloud must continue spreading after launch and, Mayday nothwithstanding, eventually become too dispersed to be effective.

I didn't talk about the course or vector the sand will follow, I only said it will keep the speed. Of course, the vector will diverge from your ship's, that's what it is fired for.

And so we have the problem: sand may interfere with the missile's terminal guidance, it may even kill a very fast missile directly - but this missile's flying a hundred times faster than any missile the system ordinarily deals with. At 6g, the target can alter its position by 30 meters in a second. Where an ordinary missile might cover 72 km in that time, the missile moves 5000 km in a second, so there's the very real likelihood that the sand could launch, foul the 0.03c missile at the range it would foul an ordinary missile - and end up irrelevant because the missile closes the distance to the ship on momentum before the ship can move out of the way. And, all things being relative, the same applies to your 0.03c ship encountering a regular missile.

I can accept sand is thrown as a reaction to the missiles (you see them aproaching, so you throw sand to them), but against lasers? I think to be effective against lasers you must throw a sand cloud preventively (in the Mayday/Bk2 way), as you will have no warning about lasers incoming to throw the sand on its way.

Another thing to take into consideration is what would happen if some of this sand hits an enemy ship. Usually it has no power enough for the ship to even notice it (though in MGT sand can do some damage at close range), but if the sand has an initial speed of 0.03 C, you calculated (and I accept it) the energy released will be about 3 kt/kg. If we accept sand "grains" to weigth 1 gr, they will release energy equivalent to 3 tons of TNT each one. And I guess it wil lbe difficult to be hit by only one of them.

Yup. It would be a rather exotic scenario.

To say the least...

 

[Carlobrand]

...Sure, and Mayday's (and book 2 system, for what is worth) way is (IMHO) more realistic. Another difference among them is that in Mayday/Bk2 system, sand affected all fire going through it, firendly or enemy, ....

Good point. Handles missile fire more realistically too. Hyper-g same-turn missiles is a good deal less complicated for fleet engagements, but this business of being able to launch then as far as the sensors can see gets a bit ridiculous.

...I can accept sand is thrown as a reaction to the missiles (you see them aproaching, so you throw sand to them), but against lasers? I think to be effective against lasers you must throw a sand cloud preventively (in the Mayday/Bk2 way), as you will have no warning about lasers incoming to throw the sand on its way ...

Good points, both. And then there's: how does one justify tagging a particular battery of sand against a particular laser battery when the lasers are all being fired by the same ship? Time for house rules?

And then there's the question of what you do when the sand canisters run out.

...Another thing to take into consideration is what would happen if some of this sand hits an enemy ship. Usually it has no power enough for the ship to even notice it (though in MGT sand can do some damage at close range), but if the sand has an initial speed of 0.03 C, you calculated (and I accept it) the energy released will be about 3 kt/kg. If we accept sand "grains" to weigth 1 gr, they will release energy equivalent to 3 tons of TNT each one. And I guess it wil lbe difficult to be hit by only one of them. ...

Yeppers - though naturally occurring micrometeors are having the same, er, ... impact ... on the guy doing 0.03c. By some estimates, Earth picks up between 30 thousand and 80 thousand tons of stuff each year, most of it dust and grains and such. Now, an 8000-mile planet makes for a big broom, but still - space isn't all that empty inside a star system, not for somebody shooting through 5000 kilometers of it every second.

I bet I could calculate a maximum speed on these things. Let's see, given a factor-40 hull ...

 

[Gojifam58]

Before there was an explanation about thruster plates, it was always assumed in our group that larger ships (+100Dts) rarely landed on planets with biospheres because they were using Fusion Torch drives while cargoes and passengers were transferred from Up-ports by grav-vehicles. When thruster-plates were introduced this changed a lot of our design philosophies and more aerodynamic designs came in, shoving the older designs to lower tech levels. For us grav-speeders became planetary defense fighters, while those light fighter designs meant to go deeper remained Torches, which caused one crew to use bungie cords to launch lt's fighters out of the rear Cargo hatch before they lit up!:rofl:

Since I never got into large scale engagements I can't comment on the mechanics of the rules needed. But I will put this thought forward - don't forget that their may be a lot of jamming going on during a Fleet movement as even in peacetime I doubt anyone's Navy would want the details of their operations known. This is where tech level really comes in as high tech jammers can pretty much always handle the sensors from lower tech ships. This would make screening forces that much more important as a T15 fleet would have better communications, and the extended fighter screen is important, especially in MT, as the fighters have 6G while most cruisers ans battlewagons are doing good to pull 4Gs. This is why I allowed fighters to get up to 8Gs in MTU since the Imperial Navy's minimum standard then was 6G and J4. That, and as a student of the Pacific War, I could see the wisdom of the deployment of most task forces. With the major units at the center, the cruisers would form the closest main "line" of defense, with fleet escorts dispersed around and inside this layer while the close escorts do their job closer to individual vessels. Since this is space the layers would describe an expanding sphere as each layer is added. Fighter would be the outer layer of this onion simply because they are (or should) be faster, cheaper, and far more numerous than any other type of craft you would find in a task force. There really isn't a way to hide such a force, just ways to mask it's exact positions, deployment, or composition. Personally this is where I think the fighters will come into their own for one main reason - the fighter pilot. From the first days of flight to even our now electronics filled wondercrafts, pilots are still encouraged to not ignore input from the Mk-1 eyeball which, in humans at least, is sensitive to movement. Should that not work, at least when fighters start blowing up the main force will get an idea where the fighting has started and will have more time to reposition itself for the coming battle.

 

[Carlobrand]

In this particular system, some of the sensors can't be jammed. We're picking up neutrinos from reactors, mass readings from the mass of a ship, stuff like that. Although, to be honest, I can't see why a culture with advanced knowledge of gravitics can't find a way to confuse a gravitometer.

As for the old Mark-1s, I'm not sure they're effective when you're dealing with ships at ranges of 4-500,000 km - you'd still end up depending on some sort of tech to magnify the field, and then you have the problem that the greater you magnify, the smaller the area you're covering. You'd still end up dependent on tech to make sure you were looking in the right general area.

Layers still work - the MT fighters have about as good a detection system as the battlewagons, and they're cheap, so you put them out far and they detect opponents before the opponents can detect the main fleet. I'd put an inner ring of destroyers to give the fighters someplace to fall back to in case they're overmatched. Depending on what's coming in, the core can either send up a heavy to reinforce the inner ring, or the layers withdraw to the core if there's too much for that.