Modifying ships in game

[Icosahedron]

Originally posted by boomslang:
The BFMA is pretty much ideal for Q-ship applications, in my experience. It doesn't have the range (lack of fire control, perhaps) for full-on space combat, but in a boarding scenario, it suddenly becomes highly relevant that Striker says it does as much damage as a Spinal Mount A gun... displaces less than a stateroom, too...

Yes, I noted that power anomaly when I looked at the BFMA. I house ruled that (Book S2 Rule 75/4) High Guard ratings should be TEN TIMES their value, giving the smallest Spinal gun a coverage of 1 metre diameter on the table. That brought them more into line with the 'instant surrender' explanation of PAWs. This seemed reasonable, given that the Size A Spinal has 500 times the power input of the BFMA!

For boarding purposes, I ruled that its Factor was dependent on whether it was an original feature on an Imperial warship (6), an original feature on a colonial warship (3ish), a professional retrofit to a warship (X minus 2) or a stolen gun lashed into a turret by the ships engineer (always 1 at best).
I've never had cause to use one though, BFMAs are NOT classified as legitimate ships gunnery for Law Level purposes, making them a bit of a liability.

 

[boomslang]

Originally posted by Icosahedron:
I've never had cause to use one though, BFMAs are NOT classified as legitimate ships gunnery for Law Level purposes, making them a bit of a liability.

I've always ruled that any weapon that does radiation damage qualifies as a "nuclear" weapon under the Imperial Rules of War. In addition to the implied prohibition on bay and spinal mounts to civilians (cf. Supp 5 and the "demilitarization" of the Lightnings), this then specifically restricts PAWS -- even barbette mounts -- from unsupervised PCs.

It's the PAW that's most ripe for abuse; its high probabilty of influcting crew casualities in lieu of structural damage makes it optimal for corsair activities: just thoroughly hose the target with particle fire, then board the largely-undamaged ship and dispose of all the corpses. Step 3: Profit!

I'm still at a loss to explain how Al Morai got a waiver of the IRoW to field PAW-armed Gazelles as "route protectors". Probably required intevention by some shares-owning noble or something. Of course, IMTU, the Gazelle/Fiery mounts fusion guns instead of PAWs, precisely because they blow stuff up mo' bettah...

 

[GypsyComet]

Al Morai has a Noble or three in high places. That or a StarMarc license or the equivalent. Such a license provides the right to carry such hardware, IMTU, but it also puts your ships on the short list for certain types of IN "requisitions" and on a similarly short list when piracy reports come in from your last reported location...

 

[Ishmael]

I bet with off-the-shelf cookie-cutter ships designed with 100's years testing behind them, the amount of over-engineering will be tiny and stuff will be rated to the bare minimum neccessary to keep production costs down ( witness chevy auto transmissions of the 80's..just about any hard use will cause them to grenade )

with all systems designed to operate togther with little wiggleroom, any major change will cause unfortunate problems..perhaps randomly as parts fail when pushed to and kept on the edge...even if they're not pushed too far over the edge

 

[The Oz]

One of the more common mods IMTU was to add "gunnery computers" to the turrets. These computers (usually Mod1/bis) would run the gunnery programs for the weapons in the turret, allowing the ship's main computer to focus on maneuver/evade and jump programs.

I figured there would be lots of spare Mod1/bis around from all the junked Type S's, but I still made it hard to set up the software and it still took cargo space.

 

[Whipsnade]

Oz,

Brilliant! Consider that idea stolen!


Have fun,
Bill

 

[vegascat]

That computer would have to be linked with the main ships computer for manuvering and sensor information. It would add layers of complexity and chances for breakdowns/degridations of the system.

 

[boomslang]

Originally posted by The Oz:
One of the more common mods IMTU was to add "gunnery computers" to the turrets. These computers (usually Mod1/bis) would run the gunnery programs for the weapons in the turret, allowing the ship's main computer to focus on maneuver/evade and jump programs.

Very interesting.

One of the overlooked notions in Traveller's emphasis on mainframe architectures is the notion of cluster computing. You'd probably want the computer running M/E to at least message the dedicated Gunnery computers, to coordinate attitude control with fire control, but the idea of a distributed computer network is worth pursuing. TCS (for example) technically forbids it, but that's never stopped a determined effort...

Certainly, there's no need for the computer running M/E to be the same computer that's running Generate. You might even appeal to the Battlestar Galactica protocol and prefer task-dedicated computers, even to the point of not networking them (except in obvious cases like Generate + Navigate or Gunner Interact + Multi-Targ).

There are definite implications for the design of huge planetary defense grids...

Much food for thought; are ~150 Model/1 computers in a cluster equal to a model/9? Hmm....

 

[The Oz]

Originally posted by vegascat:
That computer would have to be linked with the main ships computer for manuvering and sensor information. It would add layers of complexity and chances for breakdowns/degridations of the system.

Of course!!!

That is what made it so much fun (for me, not for the PCs who had to sort out all these problems). Nothing like having the jury-rigged databus crash just as the pirate pinnaces close in to attack....

 

[flykiller]

Much food for thought; are ~150 Model/1 computers in a cluster equal to a model/9?

sure, with some limitations.

http://www.ps3forums.com/showthread.php?t=62064

 

[BlackBat242]

If engines and powerplant are being replaced with more powerful/larger models, then I require 50% of "new-build" time and 25% of "new-build" hull cost, plus the purchase cost of the new equipment.

If they are simply being replaced with smaller units of the same power, then the time and additional costs are halved.

I also require that the "tear-down" phase of rebuilding take at least 25% of the "new-build" time, and cost at least 15% of the "new-build" hull cost.

While some funds can be regained by trade-in/sale of the old equipment, remember to apply depreciation based on how many years since initial installation and months since annual maintenance. I assume a 40-year service life for major components... after all, that is how long the finance companies will set a loan on a new ship, right?


Outer hull modifications are similar in cost and time, but re-arraingement of internal bulkheads/equipment locations vary greatly depending on just what they want to do.


In all of this, remember... time and money are your Referee Control Factor... along with available shipyard tech level & space, and local government interference.

 

[BlackBat242]

OK, this came up in a game I ran... the Psi in the group teleported a shaped-charge H.E. missile warhead into the bridge of a 200t Aslan Combat scout that was raiding a asteroid belt mining facility.

The bridge, computer, and power plant were damaged beyond repair, but the Imperial (ok, Terran) licensed Merc unit wanted to rebuild it to serve alongside their modified 300t armed merchant.

The ship had been built at T.L. 11, but (due to a current contract with Naval Intelligence) they had access to a Navy base T.L. 12 shipyard.


A few Mcr of debt (loan from NavInt) and several months later, they had a 200t Aslan combat scout with the T.L. 11 Aslan jump & maneuver engines, but a T.L. 12 Imperial computer, bridge, and powerplant of the same ratings.


And a long-term Special Ops contract with NavInt (unbreakable by the mercs) to pay off the debt.

"You want us to do What? Where? To Who? No way!"
"Do you want us to repossess the scout?"
"ok, when do we leave."

 

[mbrinkhues]

I have always compared the Spaceships with current day ships rather than plains or one-of prototypes like SpaceShuttles. And at least for civilian ships:

+ They have a lot more access and maintenace space than a car. You can pull cylinders away from port on a ship diesel IRL

+ If properly designed replacing engines is not that complicated or costly. Replacing the steam engines in the channel tugboats by diesels was considered cost-efficient in the 1950s. And those tugs where mostly pre-war stuff.

And the Italiens replaced the engines of Battleships in the late 1920 (Andrea Doria class)

+ Ship hulls are designed for some overstress partially to make sure there will be no stress-fractures (causing a ship to draw water) and partially to allow for emergency measures (like wiring the emergency valve shut to get the barge of the bar). Drawing vacuum is even more dangerous

+ The "financing time" has little to do with the lifetime. Bank financing is based on statistics like "ship losses over time" (i.e a A2 has a 0.1 percent chance per year to be lost to pirats), RoI quotas etc. Ships are payed of mortgage wise long before they are worn out since that is the point where you really cash in on the investment.

+ Depending on how you see Traveller-Ships maneuvering (Vectored thrust or straight thrust + maneuver jets, I'd say the latter for freighters) any reinforcement is quite simple since it's only along one axis

+ Traveller is a lot about "modular components" or "Lego in space". That actually results in a few oversized parts to make "one size fit all". You find that a lot with cars today where they accept a few extra kilograms for a reduced number of parts in the system.


So I would go easy on the costs of a replacement work if the group remains within limits (say 1g->2g) while making the really big ones (say 1g->4g) special builds that can not be done as a refit at all.

 

[Scott Martin]

Originally posted by The Oz:
One of the more common mods IMTU was to add "gunnery computers" to the turrets. These computers (usually Mod1/bis) would run the gunnery programs for the weapons in the turret, allowing the ship's main computer to focus on maneuver/evade and jump programs.

Hi Oz

I use FF&S variant rules, and many of my point defence turrets (commonly used by merchants) have a built-in sensor system, computer and MFD (and some have a battery bank) so that the turret does not need to interface with the existing systems on a merchant vessel.

In many cases the sensor suite (3 hex / 90,000 KM Passive array) is significantly more capable than the "main" ships system: I require sensor hand-offs from the fire control system to the ships main system for anything other than the turret to track the target.

FF&S is nice because it lets you do this level of detail, it's nasty because the amount of work to get this level of modularity is *extreme*

Scott Martin

 

[The Oz]

I've used FF&S to add nice toys to my campaigns (like the battledress and munitions my Imperial Marines wear) but as you say, it's way too much work to use for everything.

I like your PD turret. I invented some PD lasers and anti-missile missiles for my CT campaign, but I used the TLAR system to build them.


TLAR = That Looks About Right

 

[Scott Martin]

I've been too busy to add stuff to scottmartin.ca for a while, but I'll see if I can scrounge the point defence turret design and "HTML-ify" it enough to make avalable.

It's an MFD and 4 small X-Ray focal arrays with 12 - 1/4 damage both with range steps to match the PEMS array, along with a flight computer to run these subsystems and a workstation for the gunner. It crammed pretty tight, but I remember tweaking and having enough room to pack a battery with enough juice to fire all of the arrays once (at 10 shot burst, not the 800 ROF they were designed for)

Yup, the flight computer is a hack to the system, but since a less capable (cyber implanted head-mounted) computer can be used to interface with an MFD, but a (larger, more expensive) flight computer couldn't I mangled the rules a tad...

My house rule allows flight computers to interface with up to 3 subsystems (in this case MFD, PEMS and a "free" slot which could be used to tie into the main computer net or a commo device to allow this turret to control missiles)

Scott Martin

 

[Scott Martin]

Did I mention that this all fits into a standard 3 dT socket mount?

Point defence turrets are easy, lasers that actually pack a punch are a bit harder, but merchant ships don't generally carry Barbettes, so I needed a system for merchants to carry.

enough hits from that whopping 48 pen laser can scrape sensors off a warship, but since most military vessels carry more than 60 armour, this just isn't a threat to a real warship (although it's plenty to keep battledress and low TL tanks pinned down...)

Scott Martin

 

[The Oz]

That's pretty much how I set up my TLAR point defense laser/anti-missiles: enough punch to deal with any reasonable incoming warhead (and so enough to be useful against light-to-moderately armored ground targets) but nowhere near enough to harm starships.

 

[GypsyComet]

In truly modular fashion, I designed my Pulse Laser PD can to be compatible with any ship with the 3-ton socket. How? I included all the necessary power...

http://members.aol.com/gypsycomet/P-Laser.html

 

[Scott Martin]

I have modular systems that install dedicated power plants in cargo space for "privateer" conversions. As you have noticed there are significant issues installing the power plant capacity for high ROF weapons (the PD lasers I use can draw as much as a Kininur barbette on full pulse, despite having absolutely no "punch") Of course if that's what is standing between you and a missile swarm, I'd be happier shunting all the power from the M-Drives to ensure that the missiles get intercepted: most merchies can't outrun missiles.


Scott Martin