Missile Intruder [aka submarine]

[Uncle Bob]

Originally posted by secretagent:

I think Larsen has explained himself quite well, but I would like to expand a couple of points.

Here then is my crime. I don't use all the OTU and I am still fidgeting with the design.

No, your "crime" was implying you were working in the OTU while actually changing the rules.

I have been attempting to creat something to break the hold of the battleship/dreadnought much as some tried to do in the 1870's and 1880's. I have tried to stay within the general boundaries of High Guard and not create a "super ship" that breaks the rules

You failed. Your Intruder didn't break the rules, but every other combatant IYTU does.

I see you are an engineer by training. I happen to have been and still very much am a historian by training and outlook.

Fair enough. I have BS in Physics and Mathematics, and have worked in IT, but my MA is in History. I find no incompatability, as you can't bull**** your way through History the same way you can in other Liberal Arts.

So, I ask you, with your engineering bent, what weapon would fit into a ship this size or a ship under 3000 tons that would have a fair to remote chance of damaging a larger warship?

I assume you mean very much larger, perhaps two orders of magnitude (say, 10,000-100,000 tons). Simple answer, there ain't. Unless you change the rules.

How about this, a nuclear detonation laser. An extra-large missile warhead detonates out of range of nuclear dampers (and antimissle fire?) and delivers a gamma-ray beam equivalent to a particle beam spine mount. Reduce chance to hit and double movement defence so it ain't much good except against merchants, cripples, and docked ships.

 

[shield]

Hi,

Just a few thoughts

Turning on the globe at 40% and running. That will drop your 6G to about 4G. Now every DE in supplement 9 is a 6G beasty, they will soon catch your ship and bound it into dust, unless you can jump away. You can't escape on M drive.

Hitting a ship in space dock. True the dampers etc will be off, and the structure of the spacedock, attached maintenance boats etc. will obstruct any laser and sand turrets, but there will be layers of picket ships, sensor drones, sensor stations on outer planets etc. It is almost certain that someone will spot the black globe against the stars when you are in weapons range. At longer ranges the approach is still dicey.

Also if you attempt to jump out after attacking the dock, you will be in the gravity well and will probably mis-jump.

Attacking armed merchants - you don't need a stealth ship, any pure warship with a good computer, a full military weapons load and decent agility will massacre even quite large armed merchants unless they can jump away. The merchants are just too slow, with a rubbish computer and diffuse weapons fire. they probably can't even hit a decent escort.

Also if you are doing commerce raiding, the cost of the black globe F1 will buy you another gazelle CE, and a F4 globe will buy you a Kinnuir. Its probably better to have more cheaper ships, you will catch more merchants.

Cheers
Richard

 

[jchurchill]

LW:

After the globe is dropped and the first combat round is done, there is *no* surpirse in the HG2 combat rules.
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Understood and that point the idea would be for the ship {MI] to run for it if it is attacking something other than merchantmen or small warships like close escorts. Does that make sense?


There are no sensor rules either, so there is no 'long range snorkling'. Everyone knows where everyone else is, it's all a matter of hitting, penetrating, and causing damage.
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I seem to recall there are rough rules in Book 2 about this. Otherwise I will have to admit that I am creating my own rules.


So have I, and so has most of the 'ct-starships' group. We had wait for the internet before we could found our eGroup. It's now a Yahoo group. Check it out, bring your 'sub' designs too.
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Thank you for the invitation. I'll work on it some more and see if I can make it more useful and "playable"


"50 ton bay at TL 15 = 9 not <9."

Again, how do you recieve a 'crippling' hit when your weapons factor is equal to or less than 9? Those batteries have am automatic +6 drm on the tables so there's no chance of rolling a critical hit. Those batteries factors are smaller than their target's size codes, so there's no chance of being granted a critical hit. How can a sinlge fuel-1 or weapons-1 hit be viewed as 'crippling' on even a light cruiser?
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I was counting nuclear missiles against a ship that had no screen defences. Subsequently I was not employing the +6 DM for nuclear --only for HE missiles. Perhaps this a perversion of the rules or overawed respect from a non-scientist for the power of nuclear explosions.

Ah, there it is! You're using house rules! That answers everything.

I guess so. Sorry for the confusion but I also don't recall anywhere in High Guard where it is stated that dampers and repulsors are constantly running all the time. If I am mistaken then again sorry for the confusion. [No need to provide page cites to HG unless you wish to...]


Yeah, the damper isn't running because the warship is at dock; of course the dock doesn't have a damper either, or the picket ships, right?
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I was think ing that the MI could evade the pickets because pickets are might be further out. Also, because "submarines" are not extant in OTU and are new in my IMTU cruisers and lesser warships tend to prance about on their own. Cruisers operaed singly up until 1st World War without destroyer screens so I was assuming that this might be the case in IMTU.


nucs are still effective because the dampers aren't running and the armor factor is less than 6? Slap on 6 levels of armor and even nucs can't roll a critical hit result.
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But only the heavier cruisers and dreadnoughts have such levels of armor, no?


The unsuspecting cruiser has no picket ships? No one guarding the 'harbor' or 'dock', even though the area is viewed as 'safe'?
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Yes but see my rationale above such as it is and again Scapa Flow, Pearl Harbor, Taranto as real life examples of laxity? And two of those success were against countries that were already at war? If an attack is not expected? I understand you may disagree but history is full of lax procedures and overconfidence...not so much a technical issue as a human nature issue?


What you didn't make clear is that this is an IMTU exercise; you've added assumptions and conditions that do not apply to the OTU.
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Well, I thought I was not straying too far outside the rules of High Guard and I will admit that I am a recently returned dabbler. Mea Culpa,
nolo contendre etc etc...

Tell me again why the area is seen as so safe that the vessel needn't run it's damper but there also aren't enough DDs or DEs flitting about?
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Cruisers operating on their own? And if as you say all ships are detected far enough away then putting screesn into place would be a matter of seconds or a minutes at most? I'm just throwing this out to you for thought? In your game all ships may run about constantly with all defenses operating at all times but does this interfeere with ships boats and the like? Do you ever have a time where ships are not running screen defenses?
[all of this omits black globe of course]


Entirely irrelevent, that type of stealthy manuevering does not and can not occur in the OTU. It may occur in YTU, but then it has no relevence for anyone else's TU *unless* they use your house rules.
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Well I was trying to bring it in and make it work logically. Obviously IMTU I can do any old stupid thing I want. My intial post was to get informed feedback and opinions regarding the logic and the rules of what I was doing. I dod not expect that anyone would want to bring this into their game and I was not going to say that I had the answer to any great problem.

Yet another house rule needed to make your design work.
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Guilty guilty guilty. But not an irrational rule?
I am really trying to avoid magic supership BS here. I think you appreciate that. I hope you do.


LEW - If you have the time, check out the DGP article 'Project Blackheart' ..."
our MI generally resembles the Nemesis, but the DGP vessel carries a weapon that can actually harm other ships. The MI does not, unless we use your 'intermittent dampers' house rule and even then basic armor levels still work against the MI.
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Is this in print? Where to find it? If someone else has already got a better design then I will waste my time on another projest.


How big are merchantmen IYTU? Do the navies in YTU ship everything in PC-sized Beowulfs and Maravas? There are no merchantmen over 1000 dTons?
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I have huge freighters. to ship everything in 200 to 400 ton merchants would make little or no sense. I'm not an engineer but I have spent many dull years in federal courts representing ships and shipowners so I have a decent familiarity with the economics of shipping and cargo.


Let me state it again; The MI's main battery is too small to do the job the vessel was supposedly desinged for.
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yes, I get your point. Back to the drawing board and I thank you for your constructive criticism.


True, but it could also slag both of them. The MI can do great harm to the 'small fry'; those ships under 800 dT on which it can get an automatic critical hit in the first combat round. The MI would be a pike amongst the minnows against SDBs, PC-sized merchants, Type-T patrollers, and the like. The trouble is, those aren't the only ships out there.
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I realize that and maybe that is the flaw. I need to test it against 50,000 to 100,000 merchants too. I would think that it could "sink" one of those as well or am I wrong in my thinking?

Because Traveller is a RPG, most of the canonically described ships have been skewed towards the PCs end of things. To paraphrase Bruse Johnson, using descriptions of Pc vessels to make assumptions about navies and megacorp merchantmen is like using a snapshot of Indian Ocean dhow traffic to make assumptions about the USN and Lykes Lines.
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I understand that too. As a child of USN officers and having had dealings with Lykes Lines
I understand your point and think it is well taken
[the old Lykes headquarters is visible from my office window and I have sued Lykes in an antitrust matter. Obviously before the Lykes bankruptcy]

Are you going to 'waste' a black globe on a vessel that can only beat up 'small fry'? On a vessel that will get stomped more often than not?
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I thought I rasied that point in my initial post and it certainly was part of my thinking. Is this a good design or a waste of time? Of course history is littered with poor designs so even if it is as worthless as you observe then I will have it fail and be dropped as a harebrained idea from some junior officers at the Admiralty building.


Have no fears, my blood pressure is fine. I'm a long time ship combat crank
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apparently yes.


and am always on the look out for new ideas and new tricks that work.
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As am I.


Sadly, the MI isn't one of them. She can't fight in her weight class and is far too expensive an option for smacking around 'small fry'.
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I'm sure you have heard it before but "it sounded like a good idea on paper."

 

[jchurchill]

Dutch Uncle Bob wrote"

No, your "crime" was implying you were working in the OTU while actually changing the rules.
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I did not think I was really but 1000 apologies. Sue me, I guess.


You failed. Your Intruder didn't break the rules, but every other combatant IYTU does.
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Apparently. I'll look at High Guard again.


Fair enough. I have BS in Physics and Mathematics, and have worked in IT, but my MA is in History. I find no incompatability, as you can't bull**** your way through History the same way you can in other Liberal Arts.
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Depends on where you went to school too. Not all the liberal arts are vast fields of bullshit but there is lot of it that goes on and shame on the professors who let it happen. I'm looking for interesting analogs but not trying to "repeat history" in this campaign. Perhaps I have strayed over the line. {and personally it is very aggravating when people distort the Santayana quote into "history repeats itself."]

I assume you mean very much larger, perhaps two orders of magnitude (say, 10,000-100,000 tons). Simple answer, there ain't. Unless you change the rules.
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Ok. A good answer. Direct and to the point. Many thanks.


How about this, a nuclear detonation laser. An extra-large missile warhead detonates out of range of nuclear dampers (and -2? to antimissle) and delivers a gamma-ray beam equivalent to a particle beam spine mount.
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Interesting idea and thanks for the suggestion. Would the MI suffer the effects as well or can it stay out of range? Or is the MI Black globe idea scrapped altogther?

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No good deed goes unpunished
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Your signature line is the motto on my family coat of arms. Another one that I should adopt is:

"A camel is a horse designed by a committee"

 

[jchurchill]

Richard, thanks for your excellent "few thoughts" all of which were not particularly well though out on my part.

Turning on the globe at 40% and running. That will drop your 6G to about 4G.
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Doh.


Now every DE in supplement 9 is a 6G beasty, they will soon catch your ship and bound it into dust, unless you can jump away.
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doh.


You can't escape on M drive.
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I knew that much.

Hitting a ship in space dock. True the dampers etc will be off, and the structure of the spacedock, attached maintenance boats etc. will obstruct any laser and sand turrets, but there will be layers of picket ships, sensor drones, sensor stations on outer planets etc. It is almost certain that someone will spot the black globe against the stars when you are in weapons range. At longer ranges the approach is still dicey.
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doh!

Also if you attempt to jump out after attacking the dock, you will be in the gravity well and will probably mis-jump.
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DOH!

Attacking armed merchants - you don't need a stealth ship, any pure warship with a good computer, a full military weapons load and decent agility will massacre even quite large armed merchants unless they can jump away. The merchants are just too slow, with a rubbish computer and diffuse weapons fire. they probably can't even hit a decent escort.
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Indeed. And there are many good designes out there.


Also if you are doing commerce raiding, the cost of the black globe F1 will buy you another gazelle CE, and a F4 globe will buy you a Kinnuir. Its probably better to have more cheaper ships, you will catch more merchants.
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True. Unless I go after some harebrained idea like a "pocket battleship."

Cheers
Richard

Cheers to you.

 

[Whipsnade]

Mr. Agent,

Let me begin again. It seems that not only did I start off on the wrong foot, I started off on the wrong 5280 *feet*!

Now that I know the details of YTU; intermittant screen use (cranky electronics that require constant repairs and tuning ala early radar, yes?) and truly independent cruiser operations (like 1870-1920, the Germans lost a surface raider in 1915 due to a coal fire and explosion and no one knew about it - the Entente spent the next year looking for her!), I like the idea of your MI. She can sucker punch and still try and get away.

She's still pricey though. Perhaps another IYTU tweak could be cheaper BGs? Of course then more ships would carry one, so you'd have to come up with a reason why the MI has one and her prey does not. Maybe BGs have an upper size limit?

I like home brew rules and personal TUs, I use my own all the time. By now you've read me blather about my flexible battery rules and my take on low berths. Believe me, I've got plenty of others; how does a *strict* system generation system grab you? Habitable worlds are *maybe* ONE per subsector and all those other airless rocks, planetoid belts, and gas giant moons boast tiny habitats of a few thousand souls. It's not the OTU, but it is fun! Lots of 'outback' and very long trade routes.

Please keep working on your MI ideas and please keep sharing with us what you create. As I said in my last post, I assumed you were working in the OTU and posted accordingly. That was *my* mistake, not your's. You made none.


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[Uncle Bob]

Originally posted by secretagent:
...
Interesting idea and thanks for the suggestion. Would the MI suffer the effects as well or can it stay out of range? Or is the MI Black globe idea scrapped altogther?

I am not offering judgent on the black globe. The PDL missile would detonate a safe distance from the launching vehicle.

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No good deed goes unpunished
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Your signature line is the motto on my family coat of arms. Another one that I should adopt is:

"A camel is a horse designed by a committee"

My family's motto is "An I may", which is a little arrogant for my idiom. I considered a number of mottos from www.Despair.com, but I like, "Quitters never win, winners never quit, but those who never win and never quit are idiots."

 

[jchurchill]

Let me begin again. It seems that not only did I start off on the wrong foot, I started off on the wrong *feet*!
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Your delivery was a bit stern but your observations were appreciated. I went back and looked at my very first post and it is not all that clear that I had strayed from OTU but essentially I am combining "Diplomacy" with Traveller. [Two of the greatest games ever created IMHO]

Now that I know the details of YTU; intermittant screen use (cranky electronics that require constant repairs and tuning ala early radar, yes?)
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A better rationale than "gee that humming is driving me crazy" or "we better save fuel and turn these things off."


and truly independent cruiser operations (like 1870-1920, the Germans lost a surface raider in 1915 due to a coal fire and explosion and no one knew about it - the Entente spent the next year looking for her!), I like the idea of your MI. She can sucker punch and still try and get away.
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Yes but the sucker punch apparently does not have enough "punch" in it.

She's still pricey though. Perhaps another IYTU tweak could be cheaper BGs? Of course then more ships would carry one, so you'd have to come up with a reason why the MI has one and her prey does not. Maybe BGs have an upper size limit?
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I had thought of that and piked about 4000 tons as a size limit but that is an arbitrary selection.


Believe me, I've got plenty of others; how does a *strict* system generation system grab you? Habitable worlds are *maybe* ONE per subsector and all those other airless rocks, planetoid belts, and gas giant moons boast tiny habitats of a few thousand souls. It's not the OTU, but it is fun! Lots of 'outback' and very long trade routes.
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Randomly generated worlds can be very fast but often take more time justifing the bizarre contradictions. IM[humble]TU I have a cluster of worlds I am building that is corresponds [roughly] to Europe and a slew of lower tech worlds that resemble 19th century Africa and Asia that are busy being grabbed up by the higher tech "great powers." Things are open ended so that it will not just be the 19th century all over again but there is some feel to the game that the players can latch on to as comfortingly familiar. Cheesy perhaps but it allows me to play with my education in 19th - early 20th century European history [military and diplomatic]


Please keep working on your MI ideas and please keep sharing with us what you create. As I said in my last post, I assumed you were working in the OTU and posted accordingly. That was *my* mistake, not your's. You made none.
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Miscommunication has two participants and I should have made things a bit clearer rather than acting as barrister for the defence of my design. It always helps to have others analyse your assumptions and raise logical issues. If I use the MI it will be a better and more logically thought out design thanks to the input of all of you here.

 

[The Oz]

I find that after a little playing around with HGS (thanks, Andrew!!!) it's possible to get a factor-J meson gun into a 6000 ton hull along with Jump-3 and 2-G accel, and a factor-1 BG. You get over 300 tons left as cargo or....

(suggested IYTU rule coming up)

Single-use solid fuel rockets for changing the Intruder's vector while the Black Globe is on. If you say that tonnage equal to 1% of your ship's displacement buys one turn of 1G acceleration, you can put two sets of such "Booster Rockets" on this Intruder and change your vector twice by 1G or once by 2G while the BG is on, which ought to screw up anyone's search for the Intruder after it fires.

And with a factor-J meson gun this Intruder will do quite a bit of damage to =any= target, especially if you catch them with screens down and non-evasive (no Agility modifer).

However, I'd put this caveat on the use of those Booster Rockets: they put EP's into the BG equal to the EP's generated by that factor of the using ship's powerplant: I.e., if this Intruder uses one set of 1-G rockets, it puts EP into the BG equal to the output of a factor-1 PP for a 6000-ton ship: that's 60EP.

You could make the Booster Rockets more expensive (I'd put them at MCr1 per ton) or less efficient, or whatever other limitations you felt needed to make this idea work IYTU.

This still isn't a perfect solution for the Intruder: she can still be spotted against the starry background by picket ships or a good search, but she might just get away, and I suspect she'd be willing to attempt a jump from outside 10 but inside 100 planetary diameters to make her escape (there's a reason why all crew for Intruder service are volunteers).

 

[jchurchill]

Thanks OZ for the input. The crews are volunteer b/c losses may [will] be high.

 

[The Oz]

Originally posted by secretagent:
Thanks OZ for the input. The crews are volunteer b/c losses may [will] be high.

You're welcome; just remember to keep the Booster Rockets (if you decide to use them) so inefficient/expensive/useless that they're only really useful for this kind of ship and mission, otherwise all other warships (especially BG-equipped warships) will use the Booster Rockets and that'll distort regular naval battles. Think through the consequences before you do that.

Uptopic you mentioned that you were wanting something that would create conditions similar to the 1900's era where torpedo-carrying ships (and subs) first began to threaten but had not yet fully replaced big battleships. Another way to reach this might be (another IYTU rule coming up) to allow the introduction of the first anti-matter (AM) warheads for missiles. If such warheads have just become available at TL15, they would presumably be very expensive and somewhat rare. Also, they would present a safety risk to the ship using them, as any Weapon-1 hit on a missile battery with AM warheads might detonate the AM missiles. Lastly, they would be vulnerable to point defense like any other missile (except X-ray laser-warhead missiles or other standoff-type warheads, if used IYTU).

But those disadvantages are compensated by the really big bang such missiles would make. How big is up to you and how you want things to work IYTU. For a first approximation, I'd say that AM missiles use the same to-hit and to-penetrate tables as regular missiles (although nuclear dampers would have no effect on AM warheads), but when rolling damage you treat them as nuclear missiles (-6) and you subtract the missile battery factor as well, so a factor-9 AM missile battery would get a total of -15 on the die roll. AM warhead missiles would roll on the Surface Explosion and Radiation damage tables.

By the way, I'd say that any ship with AM warheads that takes a hit on a AM missile battery is automatically destroyed as the AM missiles detonate inside the ship. These things are touchy....

Most warships would only carry one salvo of AM warheads (for their first salvo, so they can get rid of them before any enemy incoming warheads arrive) and the rest would be the usual mix of nuke and HE missiles. Your Missile Intruder might carry more if it thinks it'll get away with multiple attacks.

In regular naval battles AM warheads would make the first round of battle a little more deadly: not a lot more since the enemy's defenses would be at their strongest for this first salvo. Any ship carrying more than one salvo of AM missiles will find itself the center of enemy attention.

Your Missile Intruder could be devastating using AM missiles (again assuming surprise means no enemy defenses and no enemy Agility or even enemy Computer bonuses), but MI losses will still be high from the enraged enemy pursuit. Adding in the Booster Rocket idea along with AM warheads could make your MI very effective.

One thing to remember about any BG-using ship: it can't see out when the BG is up. So attacking moving targets like convoys is much more difficult as (IYTU with BG-equipped commerce raiders) convoys would routinely "zig-zag" enough to throw off the intercept solution of a BG-equipped raider. Your MI might "surface" (drop the BG) and find that the convoy is over =there= instead of over =here= within weapons range. Your MI (and any BG-equipped ship) is best suited for surprise attacks against relatively fixed targets like planets and things in orbit around them.

 

[jchurchill]

I think this has been beaten to death but in case anyone cares here are the stats for the design:

B1267C2-A00040-20109- 2000 [1400]
crew 27 [officers 9, crew 18]
EP = 140
Agility 6

20 tons additional capcitors, 200 tons missile magazine. armored hull factor 10, 1 partical acc. barbette and two laser turrets.

High Guard mentions that

1. ships "generally" operate in fleets but that does not say always

2. under screens it states that unlike sandcasters and repulsors -- "screens are passive, they operate continously." But it is ambiguous as to whether this means 24 hours 7 days a week or whether it means continous after first activation. I interpreted this to mean continous after activation. The rules also say that screens can be turned off to save EP and give emergency agility. my "local" rule is that all screens can be activated within a few minutes as the longest. [1-6 minutes]

Fighting Ships:

p. 9 -- "...individual [cruisers]or pairs of cruisers are used to form the hard core of scouting or raiding groups." I read this to mean that a single cruiser operating alone as a commerce raider was not a violation of canon or at least a reasonable interpretation of canon.

If ships run without screens running at all times..e.g when not at battle stations ...then the only innate protection the vessel has is armored hull. the cruisers on p. 28 [light cruiser] and 29 [strike cruiser] have 0 armor..none. Even the armored cruiser has a factor 5 armor. [p.30]

If I read the cobat and damage tables in HG correctly...it is true that HE missiles get a + 6 DM based on size and or armor on damage table but
nuclear missiles get a - 6 on DM.

So, if light cruiser gets no modifier for armor and it's size modifer is cancelled out then there is a chance to roll a 2 for critical hit or a 3, 4 or 5 for internal explosion whic in tun couls lead to critical hit table then there is a possibility that the MI could cause a serious hit on a warship of at least light to midsize. Just not a high probability.

Against larger unarmored tanker/bulk freighters I think it could be very effective.

Thanks for humoring me ....