Naarmilii, Missiles, Torpedoes...And You (IMTU)

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Not that I am an expert but,

I have noticed everyone here seems to think you only get one shot per turn of combat with laser weapons. What if it isn't just one shot, what if it is more like 20 minutes or 1000 seconds of blasting the area and what is actually does the damage and hits is the fact that it looks like a bloody rock concert in space due to all the beams and missiles flying around.

Seems to make more sense to me that 1 shot only.

 

[tater]

I think the issue here is underlying assumptions. Your statement illustrates one such: you assume ships in space stand out like a sore thumb, and it's just a matter of training your guns accurately enough. Well maybe, maybe not.

Break as few laws of physics as possible. If we can do it now, there is no reason to assume that it becomes impossible later. Ships stand out like sore thumbs, period. There is no way around it unless you postulate radiators into jump-space or something. Which you are welcome to do.

Underlying assumption: either it takes a really long time to line up a single shot - and then it's still less than an even chance - or you've been shooting a lot of times and it's so hard to hit that all of them together over 20 minutes amount to no more than a 15 in 36 chance of hitting

Or the designers didn't do the math.

High Guard: a game turn takes 20 minutes during which you get one shot. Odds of a hit for a single laser are 15/36 plus or minus a variety of mods. Ranges are a nonspecific "short" and "long": lasers are -1 at long range. "Agility" plays a role here, subtracting directly from the roll to hit.

Underlying assumption: either it takes a long time to line up a single shot and it's still only 15 in 36, or - again - you've been shooting a lot and it's so hard to hit that all of them together amount to no more than a 15 in 36 chance of hitting. A new assumption: the targetted player can apply energy to drives to make himself a harder target.

Bad assumptions. Again, I suggested that you can assume that traveller ships have amazingly slow rates of fire. The rationale would be using less power (heat dissipation). Course the same lasers, etc have those slow rates of fire when on tanks, etc, too. "Hold them off with the gauss gun, it's 20 minutes before the tank can shoot again!" I'm cool with that, actually, but within some range based on target size, I would go for more realistic to-hits. Non-evading targets are nearly automatic hits (I call a hit a damaging hit, you can hit, but just warm the hull (target spinning, other beam smear, etc, etc).

What does all that tell us? Well, among other things, that - in Traveller - it's hard to hit even a nonmoving target at space combat ranges. It is most emphatically not a sitting duck. Is it because our turrets are inaccurate? Maybe. Is it because our sensors aren't giving us pin-point information? Maybe - MegaTrav leans that way.

We can get the pinpoint information and beam pointers right now. I know people who work on them.

Let's look at the sensors. Given the inverse square law, how many of those radiated gigawatts are reaching your sensors after travelling 300 million meters? Answer: 1/90 quadrillionth. So, the energy radiating from the ship may start in gigawatts, but by the time it reaches your receivers a light second away, it's measured in millionths of a watt. If I have it right, that's tiny, but not as tiny as it seems - it's about what a naked-eye star looks like, assuming this thing is radiating visible light. Sensors don't really care - they're content with infrared.

Yep, and current sensors can do a complete sky survey to something like magnitude 12 in 4 hours. A Scout ship is visible easily to current IR telescopes at a ls, just from keeping the crew compartment habitable. BTW, the brightest star in the sky (northern hemisphere) is ~10^-7 watts/m^2. Dimmest naked eye stars about 10^-11 W/m^2. The quantum efficiency of the eye is 1-4%. Astronomical CCDs? ~95%. Vastly better. You can go another 5 magnitudes and see with basically instant integration times (like the eye). If a missile explodes sending shrapnel they could likely track THAT in real time, too. Seeing targets is a non-issue.

Second question: if I'm a warship designer, and I place the radiators so the defender can put the bulk of the ship between you and them, how much of the energy is reaching your sensors now?

You are presuming that it is possible to hide because you already know where the enemy sensors are so you can radiate away from them? How do you know where they are? Assume yo can directionally radiate away from enemy. Enemy places remote sensors around the system. You also cannot maneuver, at all. Any burn is visible from anywhere in the solar system. Can't hide, sadly (I really wanted a better combat system to be like submarines in space... then we did the math). Bruce's definitive sensor rules for TNE were grossly optimistic in favor of stealth, and still it was very, very unlikely. The author of that is an IR astronomer.

Or would you assume it was because it took a long time to get enough sensor information on the target to get a precise enough shot.

I'd assume the rules are badly thought out.

Point 1: Turns are 16.7 to 20 minutes long, depending on which space combat version you play. One can go quite a long way in 20 minutes.

Doesn't matter in the least. Turns are arbitrary. At the point the trigger gets pulled (wherever that is in the turn) the sensor information is the distance in light-seconds old, period.

As I've pointed out above, even seeing him with pinpoint accuracy is a hard trick: you're trying to deduce his precise position and course to tenths of an arc-second based on intermittent bursts of millionth-watt energy traces being received through your sensors.

It's not that hard to see him. The ship must radiate every single watt of power produced (save whatever is shot out as weapon fire), plus the heat of the crew. Given beam weapons that deliver damaging energy at long ranges, the amount of power is vast, even assuming ridiculous efficiency for all systems. Ships cannot hide. They just can't. They are EASY targets to spot, with current tech. With off the shelf tech, in fact.

Note that one problem is the canon requirement for really long-ranged beam fire. It requires huge energies. Would really be better with more realistic, shorter ranges in some ways. The TNE "grav focused" lasers actually make a lot of sense as handwaving.

Point 2: how do you know that a ship equipped with inertial damper systems and grav generators can not execute a 90 degree turn in 1 second? Have you calculated the g-forces at the ship's end points to check your assumption?

Yeah, we did the math back in the 90s. It was far, far =, far above 6 gs, even for a scout ship. For a long spinal mount ship... hundreds.

But, again, he's not trying to evade the laser: he's trying to make it harder for you to guess precisely where he is. It's not about 1 second: 16 to 20 minutes leaves a lot of time for course changes and random boosts to make it harder for you to make that guess.

No, it is ONLY about 1 second at 1ls. You don't guess where he is if he is bigger than the distance he can move in 1s. Shoot at the CM. Guessing is if you want to aim for a particular spot on the hull only. It is only about the 1 second, really. Nothing else matters.

Sure you can miss. Game mechanics clearly say you can miss even if the target obliges and sits absolutely still.

Then it is broken.

I am willing to work hard to make canon seem reasonable, but not in the face of stuff I cannot suspend disbelief on. I can suspend disbelief on psionics, but not basic physics.

You can assume some pointing errors, for sure. As I said, I am in favor of misses at longer ranges, and ineffective hits in some other band of ranges due to smear, etc. But inside some range it is impossible to not hit the target with virtually every shot. Inside a closer range it is impossible not to land a damaging shot with every discharge. ANy system that doesn't deal with this is broken.

Sure, you can hit a bullseye with a rifle at a hundred yards, assuming decent skill, a good rifle and time to aim; now try doing it on a dark cloudy night while someone's randomly moving the target.

No, shooting with the gun bore-sighted and clamped down aimed dead center. Someone randomly moves the target at the same time the trigger is pulled, but is only allowed to move it part of the raidius of an inner target ring.

My goal in messing with combat systems back in the day (and I still want to) is to make a system with a CT feel that uses as many rational assumptions without breaking the feel of CT. Still, if you play traveller with anyone who is a physics geek (I did, stopped when a couple of us had kids a few years ago, and we were just talking about starting again), they will immediately see huge flaws in basic assumptions of traveller based on what they know they can do right now in their labs (we have 2 huge weapons labs here (3 if you count the AF weapons lab), and many of my friends work at one or the other).

You can still have misses as I said at the first. "Effective misses," too (hit warms hull, lacks energy density to do real damage). At close range... nope.

Make anti-missile fire easy. Assuming your laser can kill a missile at all, then every shot can kill a missile, or at least a very high chance. They are not crossing targets, they are intact stationary targets. Overwhelm the lasers, get hits. Maybe detonate your KKMs and spread shrapnel (which is accounted for in the AM fire missing a few).

We did a lot of messing around with a Battle Rider based system (BR mechanics very similar to Mayday) and with such rules player ships could get in combats and live, battles with small fleets gave reasonable results, noting out of sorts with canon. We tried to make a set of criticals that mission killed ships. Combat doesn't have to result in every unit destroyed outright.

 

[tater]

I have noticed everyone here seems to think you only get one shot per turn of combat with laser weapons. What if it isn't just one shot, what if it is more like 20 minutes or 1000 seconds of blasting the area and what is actually does the damage and hits is the fact that it looks like a bloody rock concert in space due to all the beams and missiles flying around.

Seems to make more sense to me that 1 shot only.

Yeah, I agree, there are certainly multiple shots per turn.

I'm not trying to suggest a system where all hits are automatic, merely trying to calibrate a combat system to reality in a reasonable way. I could mess with many other space combat systems, the only one I actually care about is traveller, and even when working on FFS2, etc, I wanted it to be more CT-like. I always default to CT.

I want a HG-like game with a mayday movement system (for fleet actions Battle Rider is actually perfect with Task Forces each as a single counter). I also like the 0.1 ls hex scale. Earth moon 11-12 hexes apart is a good scale. I want it to be easier to play than HG in terms of rolls, and I want it such that with perhaps a few extra levels of detail added it works for player scaled ships. At that scale inside 10 hexes becomes close for beam fire vs capital ships. PD fire being very effective protects plays in smaller ships from missiles quite well, and KKMissiles are scaled shrapnel wise so that they do laser like damage for the most part (your scout ship won't have a bay missile fired at it). Sure, if you get 1-2 hexes away each laser will likely deal multiple hits, but they are punching 1cm holes. Some systems damaged, and you are likely "jousting" anyway (closing at high relative velocity, then separate just as fast) as 1 combatant probably doesn't want combat anyway.

 

[Carlobrand]

Break as few laws of physics as possible. If we can do it now, there is no reason to assume that it becomes impossible later. Ships stand out like sore thumbs, period. There is no way around it unless you postulate radiators into jump-space or something. Which you are welcome to do.

No they don't. Period.

See, I can do it too.

Or the designers didn't do the math.

Or the designers designed a game rather than a simulation. I might point out that their handling of personal combat damage also bears little resemblance to the reality - but it functions adequately for gaming.

This grows tiresome, to be honest. You're playing a game. The game is based on certain assumptions. As I've said - repeatedly - the games assumptions are badly out of date and often wrong, but they're the assumptions which make for the challenges. The assumptions define the game - in fact, most of the assumptions exist to create the challenge. The game is like all sci fi - there is as much "willing suspension of disbelief" as there is science. You do the "willing suspension of disbelief" thing and enjoy the game, or you toss out your entire Asimov collection because robots don't really act like that and a universe with no intelligent species but humans is a bit hard to swallow, then you follow it with your Pournelle and your Niven and ... you get the point.

There is an argument to be made for hiding ships in space. It is an extraordinarily thin argument, resting - as many Traveller arguments end up resting - on Traveller tech being fantastically advanced in some areas and yet ridiculously primitive in others. It is about as "real" as the idea that, if you get shot, you're gonna lose a chunk of your Strength stat rather than finding yourself struggling to breathe with a sucking chest wound, or finding yourself with a leg wound which allows you to shoot but not run, or finding yourself with an arm wound which allows you to run but not shoot - none of which is really captured in that loss-of-stat rule.

However, you ultimately only have two choices: activate that same willing suspension of disbelief that allows you to accept psionic robots and enjoy the more recent Asimov fair, and then thoroughly embrace the thin assumption and play subs-in-space Traveller and have lots of fun; or, if you are really, really hung up on ships in space absolutely, positively having to stand out like sore thumbs, abandon this game and create a game (or a mod of this game) which embraces that idea, and find a way to make that challenging and interesting for the player.

It's that last part that worries me. CT Book-2 already gave us a system where ship movement mattered little. It was fun, very different from HG, but it got quite bloody when there was more than a couple of ships involved, and that was still with folk missing half the time.

 

[tater]

CT (LBB2) has no sensor tasks at all that I recall (put most LBBs into a box during library remodel, and cannot find yet). It is always presumed you know where the enemy is, or perhaps at some very long range (from memory, sorry)).

As I recall, MT added all kinds of new sensors, (grav, etc), adding yet more ways to detect easy to detect spacecraft.

As for "no they don't" it's simply not true. Saying you can hide a spacecraft is like saying the Earth's atmosphere is mostly Helium. You can say it, but it just ain't so. Radiating into jumpspace, or other stuff is simply too ST:NG for me. When TNE first came out, then BL, I was stoked because finally there was stealth, active vs passive. This was a change from canon. Turns out canon was right there. HG has no stealth.

Again, regarding combat, I am not suggesting all shots hit, I am stating a fact, that within SOME range, no c (or near c) shot can possibly miss short of mechanical or fire control error. This is also not the same thing at all as damage. I can hit the wall with my flashlight app, every time I aim. Damage roll vs adobe bricks? Zero damage!

What does this mean for calibrating a combat system so it is somewhat realistic in feel?

You take this fact, and use it for simplifying some fire tasks. Point Defense (PD ) is a great place to start. Missiles (on topic again ) must intercept target, making them even harder to miss than ships. Nukes, HE, and KE missiles all need to effectively contact the target---within ~1 km for nukes, much closer for HE (HE with traveller missiles makes little sense except for at very low velocities since the KE of the missile likely exceeds the HE energy). KE weapons are presumed to disperse large clouds of shrapnel at a longer range. Det-lasers are longer ranged, still, maybe outside "PD" range. Regardless, PD lasers can simply kill a certain number of missile per turn. Rules should reflect this at some level, maybe reducing rolls with 1000s of missiles in play.

At longer ranges is where beams get troublesome. A laser that can do real damage at multiple light seconds is a death ray if scaled up. Luckily the universe rules that lasers in the whole universe must fit 3 into a 1 dton space I think I'd rather drop all beam weapon ranges down to a shorter scale. It changes nothing, really. Missiles become long range weapons, balanced by very effective PD fire. PD can be mitigated by KKMs detonating farther away, which means less chance to hit, or less damage (smaller, but more numerous penetrators). Gunner can always control the det range, too (for players) making it possible to do far more damage, at the risk of wasting the missile.

As for the to-hit for beam attacks on ships, a "hit" is not hitting the target in most syetms, it's a hit that delivers enough energy to do at least some damage. Targets spin, and otherwise thrust such that there is beam spread. Beams rarely hit normal to the hull surface. Some hits have the beam only partially intersect the target (hit the edge of ship). Inside 1ls, we see that vs evading targets (generously allowed to instantly evade optimally at 6 gs) it gets impossible to even avoid meaningful hits at SOME range based on target size. Use a BR-like game system with 0.1 ls hexes, and set the to-hit as a function of range, with a size DM such that it becomes either automatic, or anything but a natural 2 hits within that range. If you have the better ship, you'll want to close to that range, if not, you'll stay away. You can make damage tables such that single laser hits will not be mission killing starships often if there are too many hits. HG has very few damage rolls for lasers considering how many per battery (1 hit if 1 laser firing, or 30). I'm not seeing any canon feel broken, I'm just seeing a more consistent, realistic system coming together.

In something like HG All you might need is better DMs for size and range on the beam and missiles vs beam tables. MGs are oddly better close in (lasers should always hit more, but in this case we are not talking actual hits, but meaningful hits. So a MG does better simply because it more rarely misses doing "real" damage.

Course I'm really more concerned about LBB2 sized ships.

Imagine a player in a 400 ton warship facing an enemy of 1000 dton in HG. The ships have equal armor. The ships both have 1 turret for every 100 dtons. The large ship has 4 triple lasers, and 3 sandcaster and 3 missile turrets, all out of ammo in this example.

Our player shoots his factor 6 laser battery at the enemy. He hits, and does 1 damage roll. The enemy ship fires HIS factor 6 laser battery and hits, and does 1 hit roll, plus 2 critical hits. The ship surfaces have equal chances of a shot intersecting something worth damaging. Neither can penetrate the target (only surface damage roll, and at +6). It makes no sense as it stands at all. None. It is poor game design. Clearly LBB2 makes more sense for this combat, but both are "canon," right? I'd argue that fixing combat systems such that you get the same results statistically playing with those 2 ships in a fleet action vs those same 2 ships as player level system is a good thing. Start with "real" assumptions, then build combat systems based on those. As it stands, the different systems don't replicate combat between them at all, because they all have different rules. Make handwaving to justify HG, then pay with LBB2 and get vastly different outcomes. In canon HG the 1000 ton ship kills the 400 ton ship first shot. In LBB2, they each shoot, and will do equal damage to each other each turn. If anything, the small ship will do MORE damage, because the larger ship is easier to hit.

Better to start with assumptions that gibe with reality, then make the 2 systems so they play nice.

Does that make sense?

 

[Carlobrand]

CT (LBB2) has no sensor tasks at all that I recall...

B2 has sensors, just no "tasks", no rolls: you detect automatically as long as they're within a half light-second - two light-seconds if you're a military ship. Once detected, the target can be tracked for three light seconds.

There is one caveat: "Ships which are maintaining complete silence cannot be detected at distances of greater than half detection range; ships in orbit around a world and also maintaining complete silence cannot be detected at distances greater than one-eighth detection range. Planetary masses and stars will completely conceal a ship from detection."

A ship running without active sensors, transponders, and so forth will get within a light second of a military ship and 1/4 light second of a civvie before the detectors start singing. If you're a civvie approaching a planet, you won't notice a silent ship in orbit until you're 18750 km out - which is scary close if he's a pirate.

As for "no they don't" it's simply not true. ...

Sorry about that, it was a statement of protest in reaction to that "period" bit (rude!), not a statement of position. I thought my later comments made that clear.

...Again, regarding combat, I am not suggesting all shots hit, ...

Now see, that's what's confusing for me. My basic position is: if you can see it, you hit it - at least with a beam weapon. Once you have a perfect resolution as to an object's location and vector, there's nothing that object is going to do that would make your turrets function less effectively - and there's no reason to suspect far future science can't point a beam as accurately as modern science, certainly not when given 1000 seconds to line up the shot. So, either it's hard to see the target, or it's easy and all beams WILL hit. Missiles can be fooled - a beam of light can not.

I think if you're going to go there, you should be brave and take it through to its logical conclusion: if you can see it, you hit it. Trying to compromise in order to create a chance for a miss just replaces one set of bad assumptions with a different set. We'll just have to work out other strategies for the target to defend itself - as for example your point about hitting but not doing damage.

You've got a lot of other good ideas, but there's a lot of potential for unexpected interactions. For example, HG/Striker/MT ships have a hefty basic "zero-level" armor, presumably to deal with micrometeor impacts. The stuff can stop a round from a WW-II tank, which is a lot for something that's supposed to be flying out of a gravity well. Drop the laser power and you might have to drop the basic armor in order to ensure the lasers can still do something - and that brings the question of whether what's left is adequate for micrometeor protection. I can see huge arguments going on over that.

Course I'm really more concerned about LBB2 sized ships.

Imagine a player in a 400 ton warship facing an enemy of 1000 dton in HG. The ships have equal armor. The ships both have 1 turret for every 100 dtons. The large ship has 4 triple lasers, and 3 sandcaster and 3 missile turrets, all out of ammo in this example.

Our player shoots his factor 6 laser battery at the enemy. He hits, and does 1 damage roll. The enemy ship fires HIS factor 6 laser battery and hits, and does 1 hit roll, plus 2 critical hits. The ship surfaces have equal chances of a shot intersecting something worth damaging. Neither can penetrate the target (only surface damage roll, and at +6). It makes no sense as it stands at all. None. It is poor game design. ...

I'm not even going to try to defend that one. Never made any sense to me either.

Clearly LBB2 makes more sense for this combat, but both are "canon," right? I'd argue that fixing combat systems such that you get the same results statistically playing with those 2 ships in a fleet action vs those same 2 ships as player level system is a good thing. Start with "real" assumptions, then build combat systems based on those. As it stands, the different systems don't replicate combat between them at all, because they all have different rules. Make handwaving to justify HG, then pay with LBB2 and get vastly different outcomes. In canon HG the 1000 ton ship kills the 400 ton ship first shot. In LBB2, they each shoot, and will do equal damage to each other each turn. If anything, the small ship will do MORE damage, because the larger ship is easier to hit. ...

Uh?? Where do you get that one? Larger ship has an advantage - the way the damage system works in B2, it can take more hits.

I do agree the two systems might as well be two different games entirely - they don't reconcile.

Better to start with assumptions that gibe with reality, then make the 2 systems so they play nice.

Does that make sense?

Of course it does, it makes perfect sense - it just puts you in a "house rules" situation, unless you can managed to get the variant published and circulated. On the other hand, if you managed that, I'd be very interested in playing it.

 

[tater]

There is a range based on target cross section, assuming an evading target, where a SINGLE SHOT is not guaranteed to hit. You can see it, but cannot hit it every single shot. You can of course realistically raster a series of shots blanketing future position out to fairly long range. When I said not all shots hit, that's what I was getting at. Then of course the whole "effective" hits thing. If the shot intersects the target at all, it is in common language a "hit," but from a game mechanics standpoint, we might simply ignore such hits if they lack the energy density to penetrate useful structures. heck, we might ignore them if they damage areas that don't matter (empty hull).

It might be interesting to really go with the canon "beam" vs "pulse" laser paradigm. Beam lasers hold on target, and simply heat it at long ranges, and might start doing damage as range closes. Pulse does damage or misses. We'd need a sort of "heat" critical table (that might also get rolled on once per turn that radiators are compromised). Such a table might have damage at low numbers on 1d6, and a DM that starts out really high, and drops by 1 per turn or 2. 1d6 DMs: +10-n where n is consecutive turns the beam is in target within "can't miss" range.

The LBB "silent" rules are flat out wrong then. I liked them before the traveller-beta list days working on TNE, til we did the math. I came down more on the side of trickery rather than stealth (ruse de guerre) to get close if needed.

Larger ship has an advantage - the way the damage system works in B2, it can take more hits.

As I said, LBB2 is in a bankers box in the closet or my storage area. 120+ linear feet of new bookshelves, and no traveller stuff back up yet I was thinking in terms of damage rolls. Each laser would get a roll, right? So the 2 equally armed ships would at least have the same number of damage rolls. I was assuming there was some target size mod in B2. Been a while. Regardless, the 400ton ship is toast the first time shots are exchanged in HG.

I'm certainly in the "house rules" camp, though I'd like to retool my BSCS rules from TNE to be compatible with CT. I can bang out HG ships fast, and it's fun.

 

[Whipsnade]

As I said, LBB2 is in a bankers box in the closet or my storage area.

Dig it out and re-read it. Re-read Mayday too. There are lots of subtleties in both games your memory isn't providing you.

 

[tater]

Dig it out and re-read it. Re-read Mayday too. There are lots of subtleties in both games your memory isn't providing you.

I did find LBB2. Mayday doesn't matter, anyway, it's not "real" in traveller terms. To do that you need to mesh the movement with a real damage system (B2 or HG (or other, later system).

My example of B2 vs HG combat stands. Identical battles, vastly different outcomes every time. B2 is a long slog of a fight, HG has the smaller ship mission killed the foist time it is hit, and the chance of being hit is better than even per turn, so it lasts at most 2 turns, then gets blown to bits.

Both are canon. It is NOT a pure scale issue. yes, HG is more suited to large fleet actions, but HG fleet actions include small ships. All HG resolution vs small ships is very broken---that or B2 is.

I think HG should have calibrated itself on player ships. Not identical, but at least similar combats and outcomes to B2. Make the hit and damage tables work with player sized units. Then make the huge weapons (which were brand new for HG anyway) do super damage. Fleet actions then play out as they should (with big weapons dominating (or huge missile factors)), as do smaller units at the edges.

 

[tater]

Take an agility 6 small craft. Impossible to hit with lasers in HG until factor 8 at close range with equal computers. Spinals CAN hit that target.

In B2, even without gunner skill you can hit it under all kinds of situations, even at long range. And that system gives you 3 rolls to hit per triple.

This matters, because traveller fleets (canon) include hundreds (thousands?) of fighters. (never liked fighters, but they are canon)

 

[Carlobrand]

Yeah, I always loved agility - and hated it. I loved designing these ships that were next to impossible to hit, then I'd step back and say, "How the heck do you fight a war when a naval battle runs a week?" And then there was that whole business with the Sword Worlders - how the heck are they a credible threat when they couldn't so much as lay a weapon on an Imperial? And then there was the never-ending missile supply, pulled from some bag of holding, no doubt.

I think you could run a serviceable High Guard game more consistent with Book-2 canon if you dropped the agility rule altogether and implemented ammunition rules. Would be bloody though - I'd hate to pilot a fighter in that game.

 

[tater]

I am going over some old posts I made about doing a revised HG back in the beta list days. Might revive it, I want a better HG, damnit

 

[tater]

I wrote the following in 1996:

The problem with trying to fit canon regarding missiles is that the
canon is inconsistant.

Book 2 deals with small ships. Missiles are fairly nasty (1-6
laser hits worth, and hits knock systems that are useful down).

Mayday is similar to Book 2 in this regard.

HG gives us missiles that trash sub-thousand ton ships pretty well,
but only scrape the surface features off larger armored ships (what
we have a tendency to aim for in our discussions is HG since it
generated the most ships).

The Missiles Supplement in JTAS made missiles very nasty indeed.
Nuke missiles might do tens of hits where most combat results were
significant system degradation.

MT was more like HG.

TNE has missiles that critical sub-thousand ton ships, and damages
others until armor value is pretty big.

Reality tells us that KE will dominate damage on all but the nastiest of
nukes (that and contact-burst nukes, I guess). Det-lasers have a place,
too, in that they can increase the chance of hitting. There is also no
reason not to expect larger missiles to be around to defeat PD systems
that can only kill small targets.

 

[Whipsnade]

I did find LBB2.

Read it again because you missed a few important points which invalidate your "point".

Mayday doesn't matter, anyway, it's not "real" in traveller terms.

Mayday is LBB:2 put through the Series 120 lens. It's as "real" for Traveller as Imperium or Dark Nebula.

To do that you need to mesh the movement with a real damage system (B2 or HG (or other, later system).

You mean like Mayday did from the beginning when it provided a range bands to hexes conversion for HG2? Or didn't you read that bit either?

My example of B2 vs HG combat stands.

No, it doesn't. You not only comparing apples and oranges but you're also ignoring important parts of the rules for both games.

Identical battles, vastly different outcomes every time.

Seeing as one is meant for roleplaying and the other is meant for wargaming, shouldn't the outcomes be different? Different modes of play produce different results.

B2 is a long slog of a fight...

How often have you played LBB:2? I'm asking because you've only a partial grasp on the rules you're bitching about.

In LBB:2 and unlike HG2, every hit has a chance of being a critical hit. Every blessed one. No need for large batteries, no need to account for ship size. Every hit, even one from the single laser aboard a ships boat, can become a critical hit. HG2 may have more critical hits result from a given hit, but only LBB;2 gives every hit a chance of being critical.

In LBB:2 and unlike HG2, every single missile hit has a chance of becoming multiple hits. One missile strike will produce 1D6 rolls on the damage table and each of those can become critical hits in turn. HG2 may see missile hits occur more often, but LBB:2 will see more damage occur from each hit.

Both rule sets see small ships killed by "scrubbing off" turrets and fuel but, thanks to it's critical hit and missile hit processes, only LBB:2 can see a battle involving small batteries ending earlier. Also and unlike HG2's rules, LBB:2's damage rules can see the game end earlier too which is something else you've overlooked or ignored.

In LBB:2, damage is applied the instant it occurs and not at the end of the turn. This means a ship which earns the initiative can mission kill it's opponent without receiving any damage in return. When we remember that LBB:2 is all about roleplaying ship combat - and you need to keep that firmly in mind - it becomes obvious why LBB:2 damage occurs when it does: The course of a battle can be significantly effected by the players via roleplaying.

... HG has the smaller ship mission killed the foist time it is hit...

Only if it faces large batteries aboard large ships. Stack the LBB;2 ships with up against each other with in eye towards HG2-type critical hits and you'll see that only one ship, the corsair, routinely lands criticals on it's most likely opponents. The patrol cruiser and merc cruiser don't have batteries to land criticals on anything larger than a free trader. However, if you apply the LBB:2 critical hit rule, every ship can land criticals on any other.

(Mayday, the Series 120 version of LBB:2, takes it even further. Two cumulative hit rules mean a ship hit so many time in one turn or so many times over so mant turns is destroyed. Because a Mayday scenario is meant to be played in under 120 minutes, ramping up the damage process was a deliberate design decision.)

You may find it surprising that ships designed for LBB:2 perform better in LBB:2 combat system than the later HG2 system, but I don't think many other people would.

... and the chance of being hit is better than even per turn, so it lasts at most 2 turns, then gets blown to bits.

That's because HG2 is a wargame and LBB:2 ships were designed for another combat system.

It is NOT a pure scale issue.

It most certainly is a scale issue and that's because...

... yes, HG is more suited to large fleet actions...

Being a wargame designed to handle large numbers of large ships in large numbers, HG2 must dish out large amounts of damage to produce results more quickly. Complaining that ships aren't damaged quickly enough in LBB:2 compared to HG2 is like complaining a company of T-34 tanks isn't damaged quickly enough in Advanced Squad Leader compared to PanzerBlitz.

... but HG fleet actions include small ships. All HG resolution vs small ships is very broken---that or B2 is.

It's not broken, it's realistic. Outside of Star Wars, tramp traders which choose to attack battleships are going to quickly end up looking like a puppy hit by a cement truck. For a guy complaining about a lack of realism, I find it surprising that you want such an unrealistic model.

I think HG should have calibrated itself on player ships.

Are you serious? How the hell can you calibrate a Tigress vis a vis a Beowulf?

Not identical, but at least similar combats and outcomes to B2. Make the hit and damage tables work with player sized units.

Good sweet christ... You actually want a battle between Plankwell squadrons to be handled at a RPG/player level rather than a wargame level? Have you any conception of how long such a battle would take? It would be like using PT boat rules to model Jutland...

Then make the huge weapons (which were brand new for HG anyway) do super damage.

And those huge weapons doing super damage are going to do what exactly to the LBB:2 size ships you're so concerned about?

Fleet actions then play out as they should (with big weapons dominating (or huge missile factors)...

Fleet actions already play out that way in HG2.

... as do smaller units at the edges.

And small units have no business tangling with the big boys. Choose to fight too far outside of your weight class and you're dead. That's realistic and changing the rules for it to be otherwise is not.

You need to understand a system and the design assumptions behind it before making changes. Read the rules and play out some games. What you think you know may not be so.

Good luck.

 

[tater]

Seeing as one is meant for roleplaying and the other is meant for wargaming, shouldn't the outcomes be different? Different modes of play produce different results.

I think the results should be roughly the same assuming identical units played in both systems, though in roleplaying the level of detail needs to be higher in some areas (the "hull" results matter for players, someone has to slap the patch on). Big picture. Fight 10 Close Escorts vs X enemy ships of some type in both systems, and compare the results. You'd expect over large numbers of plays that one side or the other would win more often in both systems. If player A always wins in HG, and always loses in B2, something is clearly broken.

How often have you played LBB:2? I'm asking because you've only a partial grasp on the rules you're bitching about.

In LBB:2 and unlike HG2, every hit has a chance of being a critical hit. Every blessed one. No need for large batteries, no need to account for ship size. Every hit, even one from the single laser aboard a ships boat, can become a critical hit. HG2 may have more critical hits result from a given hit, but only LBB;2 gives every hit a chance of being critical.

In LBB:2 and unlike HG2, every single missile hit has a chance of becoming multiple hits. One missile strike will produce 1D6 rolls on the damage table and each of those can become critical hits in turn. HG2 may see missile hits occur more often, but LBB:2 will see more damage occur from each hit.

You are completely right here, my bad.

2.8% of hits will critical.

In HG 72.22% of my factor 6 attacks will hit. The smaller ship will automatically get 2 criticals then, 72% of the time. In B2, the ships get 12 rolls at 8+ or 9+ (range dependent). So 41.66% or 27.77% chance to hit. Expect 5 hits with the former, 3 hits with the latter. Assume the worst. It means on average it will take 9 turns or so for the beam weapons in LBB2 to do 1 critical. Note that BOTH combatants have this chance, unlike HG where the larger one does, but not the smaller. Ever. So in HG the 1000dton ship gets 2 crits on the smaller 72% of turns, and either ship gets a critical in B2 ~14% of the turns.

Changes the magnitude of my statement slightly, but not the overall results at all.

Both rule sets see small ships killed by "scrubbing off" turrets and fuel but, thanks to it's critical hit and missile hit processes, only LBB:2 can see a battle involving small batteries ending earlier. Also and unlike HG2's rules, LBB:2's damage rules can see the game end earlier too which is something else you've overlooked or ignored.

CAN, sure, but incredibly unlikely. It ends almost certainly in 2 turns in HG, and better than not in 1 turn. In HG the battle can ONLY end one way, regardless of time, too. The larger ship is NEVER criticaled in HG by the smaller.

In LBB:2, damage is applied the instant it occurs and not at the end of the turn. This means a ship which earns the initiative can mission kill it's opponent without receiving any damage in return. When we remember that LBB:2 is all about roleplaying ship combat - and you need to keep that firmly in mind - it becomes obvious why LBB:2 damage occurs when it does: The course of a battle can be significantly effected by the players via roleplaying.

I agree, you are right. I've said I think B2 is better in many ways.

Only if it faces large batteries aboard large ships. Stack the LBB;2 ships with up against each other with in eye towards HG2-type critical hits and you'll see that only one ship, the corsair, routinely lands criticals on it's most likely opponents. The patrol cruiser and merc cruiser don't have batteries to land criticals on anything larger than a free trader. However, if you apply the LBB:2 critical hit rule, every ship can land criticals on any other.

This is my point, actually. Not that one is better all the time, but they produced markedly different outcomes. Ships that are dominating in HG, and not in B2, etc.

(Mayday, the Series 120 version of LBB:2, takes it even further. Two cumulative hit rules mean a ship hit so many time in one turn or so many times over so mant turns is destroyed. Because a Mayday scenario is meant to be played in under 120 minutes, ramping up the damage process was a deliberate design decision.)

Yeah, makes sense, I meant it wasn't "canon" in that Maytday outcomes were not to be considered the "norm" in the traveler universe. As I have said, I prefer "narrative" canon over rules in terms of judging things.

You may find it surprising that ships designed for LBB:2 perform better in LBB:2 combat system than the later HG2 system, but I don't think many other people would.

Of course they do, they were written together.

That's because HG2 is a wargame and LBB:2 ships were designed for another combat system.

It most certainly is a scale issue and that's because...

Being a wargame designed to handle large numbers of large ships in large numbers, HG2 must dish out large amounts of damage to produce results more quickly. Complaining that ships aren't damaged quickly enough in LBB:2 compared to HG2 is like complaining a company of T-34 tanks isn't damaged quickly enough in Advanced Squad Leader compared to PanzerBlitz.

Not at all the same. If you play an operational level game vs tactical (though HG is really sort of in between), you would expect that you'd have similar final outcomes, or something would be wrong with one or both systems (note in HG the turn lengths are also nearly the same).

So take a Company in ASL, and in PB, and fight identical scenarios to the extent possible. To be fair, use the TO&E from PB to establish exact units used in ASL. Play the scenario multiple times in each, and look at the counts of lost units, AND look at the big picture (who wins the battle). Are the results basically the same? We'd want the "big picture" to be the same more likely than not. The unit counts dead/wounded? If that meshes they are very well calibrated, but the big picture is what matters.

It's not broken, it's realistic. Outside of Star Wars, tramp traders which choose to attack battleships are going to quickly end up looking like a puppy hit by a cement truck. For a guy complaining about a lack of realism, I find it surprising that you want such an unrealistic model.

Who said tramps would attack BBs? I don;t recall saying that. A BatROn of Tigress has 2400 fighters. I don't have Sup9 in front of me. What is the agility of the IN Heavy used there? So a "typical" fleet action could certainly include many more small craft than BBs. A few orders of magnitude more.

Are you serious? How the hell can you calibrate a Tigress vis a vis a Beowulf?

See above.

Good sweet christ... You actually want a battle between Plankwell squadrons to be handled at a RPG/player level rather than a wargame level? Have you any conception of how long such a battle would take? It would be like using PT boat rules to model Jutland...

Where did I say this? I said "player sized" units. Not "player units."

Players are in the 100-1000 ton range for their ships, usually (and on average towards the bottom of that).

HG actions in CANON often, perhaps TYPICALLY, involve more ships of "player size" than any other, by a wide margin.

A detached element os a BatRon jumps in to find a similar enemy unit in a system, and combat ensues. 1 BB, with some escorts fights another single BB with some attached escorts. 2 BBs in the fight, maybe a couple cruisers, and a handful of DDs on each side? Reasonable? 18 ships all bigger than 1000 dtons... How many fighters, then? 100? Small craft outnumber large ships.

A

nd those huge weapons doing super damage are going to do what exactly to the LBB:2 size ships you're so concerned about?

Vaporize them, obviously. Forget the BIG weapons, HG works for those just fine. What about the hundreds and hundreds of small turrets?

Fleet actions already play out that way in HG2.

Yeah, because you ignore small units until the end because you can't hit them

And small units have no business tangling with the big boys. Choose to fight too far outside of your weight class and you're dead. That's realistic and changing the rules for it to be otherwise is not.

Like the canon fighters? I hate fighters, BTW, but there they are in all the books. I'm in the "bigger is better" camp for spacecraft. Still smaller ships don't work well, even smaller military ships (frigate/DD type battles).

You need to understand a system and the design assumptions behind it before making changes. Read the rules and play out some games. What you think you know may not be so.

I haven't in a while, but I played many HG and mayday games years ago. Fewer LBB2 games, as they were in RPG settings, then we switched to a hex map for space reasons. I played out many stupid BL games, and BR, too. Stock, and with alternate rules.

Note again that my 400 ton vs 1000 ton example is unchanged in outcome, even though I forgot the 2.8% of critical in B2 in the example.

HG always has the 1000ton ship winning (it takes at most 1 hit per turn, doing regular damage, and does at most 1 regular, and 2 criticals per turn to the enemy). In B2, the smaller ship CAN win, as both ships have exactly equal chances to damage and critical the other.