Sorry, I haven't been paying close attention.
How were these trade volumes calculated?
Most Efficient Ship by TL for Cargo to X Parsecs
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Sorry, I haven't been paying close attention.
How were these trade volumes calculated?
There is a house rule I have long borrowed from Mithras to level this playing field: restrict the number of weapons per turret based upon vessel classification.
Thus, commercial/civilian ships may only mount single turrets, and paramilitary (including long-range explorers) and Mail ships may mount doubles, but only commissioned active-duty military vessels may mount triples.
With this, your average Type T "Spacewedge" Patrol Cruiser with four triples actually outguns a 1000-dton non-Mail-hauling freighter with ten singles.
I also allow Anti-Missile and Return Fire without dedicated Gunners. (This is a whole Imperial Rules of War and "Those Damn Dirty Zhos" separate issue -- after much parsing of canon, it appears to me that in the 3I, robots are OK for defense, but specifically not OK for offense. Look at how the Anti-Missile Fire program works for a case in point.)
So your typical 1000-dtonner will pack perhaps a single sandcaster and a single missile rack along with eight single lasers; undermanned and casting sand defensively, the lasers are only useful for point defense, and so you can get by with at most two Gunners -- even double-duty ones -- and some luck.
This feels about right to me.
Note that if a subbie has a Mail contract, it can double everything in turrets (or in Solomani-style fixed mounts, for that matter). Also note that holding a Mail contract will be generally incompatible with being a pirate mothership, so an upstanding subbie is unlikely to engage many Patrol Cruisers as a matter of course. Unless one or the other has been hijacked and is clandestinely running corsair, in which case the situation has Adventure Hook written all over it.
Proneutron
SOC-13
A real world example. Marine and aviation engines (where failure has consequences far beyond that of road vehicles) measures usage for maintenance purposes in hours of operation rather than calendar dates or distance traveled.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
If tanks had two hundred and fifty hours between engine overhauls, commanders would be careful as to where and when they commit them.
Engine maintenance in Five Kay is more an administrative annual event, costing peanuts. Comparatively.
Engine maintenance in Five Kay is more an administrative annual event, costing peanuts. Comparatively.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
GURPS Far Trader.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
I could I guess, but it is very rough, with no concessions for user-friendliness. It also contains a lot of other calculations, hiding the useful bit in a mass of numbers.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
I don't really like such artificial limitations. The standard merchants are already limited to 1 hardpoint per 200 Dt.
Limiting the players Free Trader to 1 single turret is too punishing, I think.
I have experimented with robots, but I just end up with fully automated ships, possibly with a token sophont supervisor.
But that defeats the purpose of a RPG largely set in space, so I use the crew requirements strictly. There might be robots doing the actual work, but there is also a sophont crew herding them by law, custom, or prejudice...
Or just maybe small virus outbreaks have happened before, so fully automated ships are strictly banned?
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
Proneutron
SOC-13
We currently have the ability to fully automate weapons systems on our mil craft today, for many years actually. We don't because final responsibility must be able to be placed with an entity that can be held to account...
I think it is an ethical issue for the IRoW.
It would seem that using any means available to save sophont life is morally permissible, but building machines capable of automatically taking sophont life on their own initiative is not. (This would include prohibiting land mines as well, for instance. In contrast, deadfall bombs and other targeted WMDs are permissible if launched manually.)
So, Anti-Missile Fire and Return Fire are probably characterized as self-defense, but using the Target program requires input from either a sophont Gunner or the Return Fire program. (Optionally, have Target require a sophont Gunner either way, leaving Anti-Missile Fire as the only automated software option. That seems limited and reasonable as it eliminates the grey area of whether externally-triggered Return Fire is truly "automated" or not.) Missile and Sand launches cannot be automated at all with the default, legal software, of course.
(I should note that ECM, Auto/Evade, and Maneuver/Evade-6 also function relatively autonomously and automatically, but they are not offensive-fire programs.)
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AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
I suspect such moral qualms would melt away rather quickly in the next major war...
I think the IRoW only limits others, not the Imperium itself. According to the novel the Imperium routinely sterilises inconvenient worlds, or so I have heard.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
Return Fire and Anti-Missile software does not automate the tasks, they just allow fire in the Laser Return Fire Phase at all, I believe. A gunner is still necessary.
The Gunner can probably be a robot, automating the turret completely.
Proneutron
SOC-13
Not in the USA unless it was a nuc war. As it stands now no country that is a potential enemy would last on the seas (therefore cannot project non-nuke power needed for a large scale war) thus there would not be the pressure needed in the USA to change that policy.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
Controlling the seas is nice, but not enough. Letting a peer power control the rest of the world would be seen as a massive victory for that other power.
A major war would see the army and air force engaged in a land war in Eurasia, otherwise it would not be a major war. After a few months of heavy losses quite a few holy cows might be reevaluated.
While I believe it is correct that the US Navy can't be challenged at sea it might be wrong. We simply don't know how a modern war would work. Air defences might be more or less effective than be currently believe. High velocity anti-shipping missiles may be more or less effective than we believe. Missile storms launched at carrier groups might be effective or completely ineffective.
The US Navy recently remembered that they had ignored coastal ASW operations, leaving them vulnerable to coastal diesel subs. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-small-stealth-submarine-sweden-sunk-navy-aircraft-carrier-72196
I'm sure that is adressed by now, but how many other threat vectors have been discounted as irrelevant, that an enemy might exploit?
Since Anti-Missile Fire does not allow interaction from a Gunner and does not use the Target program while exceeding normal turret fire control limits, it is more like ECM in operation than it is Return Fire. Thus, it is automated in function. (Like most effective point-defense systems need to be.)
(Personally, I always prefer to use ECM anyway; it has a better To Hit roll and can take out an effectively unlimited number of missiles. In my operational doctrine, Anti-Missile Fire is only for last-ditch backup if ECM doesn't get the job done and you have a large-enough computer to run both simultaneously.)
As to the 3I's unappetizing habit of sterilizing entire worlds, note that that process always involves a high-authority sophont decision-maker and forcedly-obedient subordinates to implement. (MWM explicitly deals with this process and its moral consequences -- for better or worse -- in AotI.)
The IRoW prohibition against warbots is probably just another irrational over-reaction to known Zhodani practices -- I imagine it's in the same vein as the Psionics Suppressions.
Also, the formulation "Warbots = Evil = Enemies" helps support the mythology of moral superiority the unabashedly feudal 3I tells itself.
Proneutron
SOC-13
Not possible with no control over the seas. Thus not a possible scenario. The VAST majority of Earth's population lives a short distance from the oceans. Unless you control that you can NEVER control much of the Earth. Sorry, not an issue. The evidemce is that no country without control of the oceans has EVER been able to do so. Ipso facto
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
The Mongol Empire had a pretty good stab at it... their naval victories were...
Proneutron
SOC-13
They were not able to hold what they had. That was because lines of communication were poor because they all involved land lines across inhospitable geography. Makes my point even more.
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