Ok, What is the Role of a close Escort?

[AnotherDilbert]

First iteration:

MCr 400, 400 Dt, J-4, M-6, Agility-6, streamlined, scoops, purifier.
Armour 5, so the M-drive is safe from civvies and safe from crits by nukes.
Heavy on sandcasters, to counter the hopefully few hits that will slip through the agility.
An extra stateroom, emergency low berth, and some cargo space for extended patrols.
Jump fuel in internal demountable tanks, so can free up some internal space for reduced range.
No small craft, have to economise somewhere...

Not too bad?

CE-41469J2-530000-25003-0        MCr 421         400 Dton
bearing     3     11  2                           Crew=10
batteries   3     11  2                             TL=15
                   Low=1 Cargo=8 Fuel=199 EP=39 Agility=6

Dual Occupancy                                        8       527
                                     USP    #      Dton      Cost
Hull, Streamlined   Custom             4            400       
Configuration       Needle/Wedge       1                       48
Scoops              Streamlined                                 0
Armour              5                  5             24        19
                                                              
Jump Drive                             4    1        20        80
Manoeuvre D         M                  6    1        23        48
Power Plant                            9    1        39       117
Fuel, #J, #weeks    J-4, 4 weeks            4        39       
Purifier                                    1         3         0
                                                              
Bridge                                      1        20         2
Computer            m/9fib             J    1        26       200
                                                              
Staterooms                                  5        20         3
Staterooms, Half                            6        12         2
Low Berths          Emergency               1         1         0
                                                              
Cargo                                                 8       
Demountable Tanks   J-4                     1       160         0
                                                              
Triple Turret       Missile            3    2         2         5
Mixed Turret        Full                    1         1       
  Weapon            Pulse              2    1                   1
  Weapon            Sand               3    2                   1
Mixed Turret        Full                    1         2       
  Weapon            Fusion             5    1                   2
  Weapon            Sand               3    1                   0
                                                              
Nominal Cost        MCr 526,64           Sum:         8       527
Class Cost          MCr 110,59          Valid        ≥0        ≥0
Ship Cost           MCr 421,31                                 
                                                              
                                                              
Crew &               High     0        Crew          Bridge     2
Passengers            Mid     0          10       Engineers     3
                      Low     0                     Gunners     4
                 Extra SR     1      Frozen         Service     1
               # Frozen W     0           0          Flight     0
                  Marines     0                     Marines     0

And here comes the drop tanks:
In peace-time you can add a drop tank or two, reducing performance to J-3 and M-4. This allows you to reduce the internal demountable tanks, freeing up say 80 Dt cargo, enough for a module with a couple of small smallcraft, a section of marines, and some extra cargo space. You can still make J-2 if the tanks are shot up.

This would increase mission endurance and facilitate harassing civilians.

 

[aramis]

As usual the issue is trying to combine two superficially similar but actually very different ship paradigms.

What I always wanted as a supplement was a warships book for CT LBB:2. since this has not been forthcoming, I have done the next best thing, collect the options that make sense to me as additions to LBB:2 to build warships rather than the civilian/paramilitary ships that it churns out.

Bk 2 is very much an age of sail kind of feel... the difference between warship and civilian in the age of sail was filling the cargo decks with guns and ensuring there were hatches for them.
The Bk 2 equivalent is, by lack of bigger guns or more Hardpoints, adding fighters. 10 Td for the fighter, 1/2 ton toward's the mechnic's SR, and 4 for the pilot's SR.

The Gazelle and the Kinunir were hybrids of LBB:2 and LBB:5 with some unexplained terms - what exactly is a heavy laser?

Presumably just more damage and maybe a bit more range ...
2 damage instead of one, and a +2 to hit, IIRC. Oh, wait, that's the PA Barbette...

 

[AnotherDilbert]

As usual the issue is trying to combine two superficially similar but actually very different ship paradigms.

Agreed, the Type T and the Gazelle are very different things.

What I always wanted as a supplement was a warships book for CT LBB:2. since this has not been forthcoming, I have done the next best thing, collect the options that make sense to me as additions to LBB:2 to build warships rather than the civilian/paramilitary ships that it churns out.

What can you do in LBB2 to make a warship?

Oversized power plant and decent computer? Add fighters? You have no available armaments or defences better than a Free Trader.

 

[whulorigan]

The Gazelle and the Kinunir were hybrids of LBB:2 and LBB:5 with some unexplained terms - what exactly is a heavy laser?

Presumably just more damage and maybe a bit more range ...
2 damage instead of one, and a +2 to hit, IIRC. Oh, wait, that's the PA Barbette...

So a Heavy Laser is basically the equivalent of a Pulse Laser with +2 "to hit" bonus instead of "-1", without the radiation damage "skew" toward crew hits of a PA Barbette.

 

[mike wightman]

Which is why there should be a rules supplement for warships in the LBB:2 paradigm.

So far, I have the following in my mash up:

up gunning consists of quad turrets, barbettes, bays and fixed mounts all the way up to spinal;
military weapon upgrade is the particle accelerator and then meson gun

For defence I have options for armour, nuclear dampers, repulsors, meson screens, black globes, rapid pulse plasma guns and fusion guns for point defence.

Electronics - military sensors cost more, a CIC is an option, upgraded ECM and ECCM options.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

up gunning consists of quad turrets, barbettes, bays and fixed mounts all the way up to spinal;
military weapon upgrade is the particle accelerator and then meson gun

For defence I have options for armour, nuclear dampers, repulsors, meson screens, black globes, rapid pulse plasma guns and fusion guns for point defence.

So, basically LBB5 with smaller M-drives?

 

[mike wightman]

I have LBB:2 combat rules (and abstract PC scale rules) for each system, so very different from LBB:5

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I have LBB:2 combat rules (and abstract PC scale rules) for each system, so very different from LBB:5

Combat, yes, but ship design seems to use all the LBB5 components?

 

[mike wightman]

In order to maintain parity with the OTU I have to use the stuff presented, but adapted to LBB:2, rather than a different paradigm.
In order to have the x-boat, the Gazelle and the Kinunir all have the same underpinning rules.

And none of this - oh all the drives had a rating potential of 9 all along we just forgot to mention it for forty years (looking at you T5 and MgT)

 

[AnotherDilbert]

In order to maintain parity with the OTU I have to use the stuff presented, but adapted to LBB:2, rather than a different paradigm.
In order to have the x-boat, the Gazelle and the Kinunir all have the same underpinning rules.

The basic difference is vector movement vs. abstracted movement? You could just use LBB5 ships and combat tables with LBB2 movement and sensors?

I don't quite understand the adoration for LBB2, it's just like the personal combat system in LBB1: basically useless because it weird and overcomplicated, yet misses basic considerations, and gives ridiculous results. OK, it was a first generation attempt at RP combat, but not very successful. CT contains better systems...

And none of this - oh all the drives had a rating potential of 9 all along we just forgot to mention it for forty years (looking at you T5 and MgT)

TNE was even more different, and had potentially more than 9 G drives. MT had very different jump fuel, changing the performance envelope for ships. Each edition is different, use one of them at a time.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Power Plant 9 1 39 117
Fuel, #J, #weeks J-4, 4 weeks 4 39

400 * 0.09 = 36 ... not 39.

I presume that's just a simple typo (on the numpad of the keyboard) rather than a full on error factored into everything such that you're shorting yourself tonnage. Although ...

39 * 3 = 117

So maybe you do have a calculation error in there for a 400 ton ship.



Kind of makes me wonder how the design would necessarily need to change if it were TL "downranked" to TL=14 with a m/8 computer (and a larger power plant) or to TL=13 with a m/7 computer (and need to spend even more tonnage on armor than at TL=14).

In other words, have you designed a ship that can only be made to work at TL=15 but not before then?



Yes, there are worlds with TL=15 in the Third Imperium capable of supplying the industrial support base needed for such ship designs ... but those worlds aren't exactly plentiful or in all the locations you might want them to be for ease of logistics. In the Spinward Marches (for example) there are only 4 worlds that are TL=15 (Glisten, Rhylanor, Mora and Trin), but there are plenty more worlds that are TL=13 (Efate, D'Ganzio, Lunion and Strouden for starters).

Amateurs study tactics, while professionals always keep an eye on logistics.
Having the most absolute pinnacle of high tech isn't necessarily going to always be the best option, especially if doing so sacrifices quantity for quality (the singular superweapon versus the horde of crunchies, for example). Being able to repair and resupply during wartime when supply lines will almost inevitably be disrupted can potentially become a deciding factor, since forces you can't sustain in the field due to breaks in supply lines will attrition those forces over time even if they aren't in combat. Long lines of logistics can become a liability, rather than an asset, during wartime with hostile fleets maneuvering around.

In other words, don't let the Perfect™ become the enemy of the Good Enough™ to get the job done ... especially if the Good Enough™ has a broader base of support that will enable it to keep fighting longer under austere conditions of limited support.



Classic example of this phenomenon being that the Panther Tank was a technologically superior machine to the Sherman Tank, so a single Panther could destroy 10 Shermans ... but there always seemed to be an 11th Sherman out there ...

There are matchups where a technologically inferior force with quantity and logistics on their side can defeat a technologically superior force with quality on their side but logistics working against them.

 

[whartung]

It's still a warship, it's intended to survive a fight. Why else would you buy it?

The question is what kind of fight is it designed to survive and prevail in. It can't be universal.

Amateurs study tactics, while professionals always keep an eye on logistics.

Indeed, but tactics is you, a gun, and a tree to hide behind.

Logistics is an iron and lead mine, a smelter, a foundry, a gun manufacturer, a bullet manufacture, a gunpowder manufacturer, and transport, economy and population to support all that. And God know who put that tree there.

The best we have for the fundamental economy is Pocket Empires, since TCS was too coarse.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

400 * 0.09 = 36 ... not 39.

The ship needed 39 EP, so it got a 39 EP power plant. It is rated as a 39 / 400 * 100 = 9.75, rounded down to 9, power plant.

In other words, have you designed a ship that can only be made to work at TL=15 but not before then?

Yes, it's a TL-15 ship. A TL-14 ship would be different.

It's designed to capitalise on the Imperium's tech advantage over most potential opponents. A Zho TL-14 ship intended to fight Imperial TL-15 ships would face very different trade-offs, and result in a different ship.

A Zho TL-14 ship firing on an Impie heavy fighter would need at least a factor 7 missile battery to be able to hit. Basically it would be impractical to use anything smaller than missile bays if you want to hurt any well-designed Impie craft. So, the Zho would have to build larger ships.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The question is what kind of fight is it designed to survive and prevail in. It can't be universal.

The original Gazelle JTAS presentation defined the Close Escort role thus:

JTAS#4, p18:
GENERAL SPECIFICATIONS
Naval tactics in the Imperial Navy call for large ships to be accompanied by well-armed, small fighting craft capable of engaging the enemy at long range, before they approach the principle ships in a task force or convoy. These small ships may be fighter craft carried by the larger ships, or they may be independent close escort vessels.
Thousands of close escorts have been built in the past several centuries, and hundreds have been built in the Gazelle Class.

It's not a Type T, it's supposed to survive fleet skirmish combat against at least a near-peer enemy with military hardware, not just a corsair with civilian weapons.

 

[kilemall]

I don’t know that I buy the mod 9 computer as a basic component of small ACS CEs. You size to equal or economically better your opposition, which at the sub-1000 ton level is going to be mod 3-4. Mod 5 should do for most.

PA is a terror weapon in ACS sized combat precisely due to the crew hit skew.

In LBB2 the difference between civilian craft and military is the longer detection range, the ability to jump on unrefined fuel, fighter power up beyond the hardpoint limit, usually all hardpoints built in, building advanced missiles from the missile supplement, and computer/software.

The latter is often overlooked, but put a big enough computer on and pay for the best programs, and coupled with extra power plant you can double laser fire, be very difficult to hit, have hit advantage and effectively gain long range fire.

Nobody ever plugs in the cost of that software into their ship builds. It’s a hefty percentage of total cost. But another differentiation between civilian and military ships.

Speaking of expensive and terror weapons, the missile supplement allows for nuclear ship missiles. You won’t have common use of these weapons if for no other reason then their 1 million per cost not to mention a desire to avoid normalizing/civilian use of that level of destruction. But it is another differentiating characteristic of civilian vs military.

 

[kilemall]

The original Gazelle JTAS presentation defined the Close Escort role thus:


It's not a Type T, it's supposed to survive fleet skirmish combat against at least a near-peer enemy with military hardware, not just a corsair with civilian weapons.

That’s still small ship universe where the Kininur is a battlecruiser.

 

[Drew]

So, what would I require from a Close Escort?

Can keep up with the fleet, so J-4 & M-6.
Can refuel independently, so streamlined and with purifiers.
Can fight a tech-disadvantaged heavy fighter, or its tech-disadvantaged counterpart. (TL-14: Zho, Solomani, Kkree.)
Considerably cheaper than a much more combat effective bay-armed frigate (GCr ~2), so costs less than GCr 0.5, preferably cheaper.
Can kill civilian rabble without needing to be towed to a yard afterwards, remain mobile and combat effective. (So no drop tanks...)

Can I build that? Highly questionable...


Design considerations:

Must be able to hit a Zho (Solomani, Kkree) heavy fighter, so at the very minimum factor 3 missiles batteries and a m/9 computer. (Getting expensive already...)

I would think the Cyclone Class patrol boat used by the navy is probably the best representative of a LBB2 escort.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I don’t know that I buy the mod 9 computer as a basic component of small ACS CEs. You size to equal or economically better your opposition, which at the sub-1000 ton level is going to be mod 3-4. Mod 5 should do for most.

It's a LBB5 ship. In LBB5 combat the computer is paramount, the difference between a m/9 and a m/5 is a warship vs. a helpless victim.

Let's say we have a m/5 and are fighting a ship with a m/9: A factor 3 missile hits on a roll of 5+ +6[agility] +1[size] +9[target comp] - 5[ship's comp] = 16+, can't hit, can't inflict damage.

The enemy shoots an identical battery and hits on a roll of 5+ +6[agility] +1[size] +5[target comp] - 9[ship's comp] = 8+, can hit.

One ship will win without taking any damage against a squadron of the cheaper ship type, was the computer worth it even if it's a third of the cost of the ship?

PA is a terror weapon in ACS sized combat precisely due to the crew hit skew.

In LBB5 it's a paperweight. It can't hit a barn from the inside, and it can't inflict Crew hits even on unarmoured ships.

 

[Condottiere]

Close escort implies that the starwarships stick very close to their charges.

They probably have a bay weapon to equivalize a depth charger, and point defence for the smallcraft and missiles that get through.

The Gazelle is an odd fish, probably more in line with British interwar sloops.

 

[Condottiere]

Hurricat equivalent would be a light fighter launched from a merchantman.

Escort carriers could hold upto forty light or medium fighters, to screen the convoy, or six to twelve bombers and/or patrol craft.