On the Taxonomy of Spaceships

[robject]

About the only way to test that belief is to create three sets of fleets:

Jump Capable Fleet for a given amount.
Battle Rider Fleet without jump capability for the carried units.
Battle Rider Fleet with Jump 1 for the riders.

Might prove to be interesting to see how well it works for say, Trillion Credit Squadron rules and see how well those battles play out.

No "mights" about it. It would be very enlightening, should be very fun, and ought to be very interesting, and I think it is necessary to be able to do this sort of thing to keep HG/TCS viable.

And here's where I come in and post a tangent. A bit of a rant perhaps, but here it is.

I find the above challenge to be highly compelling. I would LOVE to DO THIS. To be a part of it. Most importantly, to BE ABLE TO SHOW what the rules allow.

Unfortunately, DOING this is such a production that it NEVER HAPPENS. Even when High Guard was shiny-new, this was an exercise for hardcore designers with a lot of time to kill.

As a result, I think it's unnecessarily difficult to conduct the kinds of experiment outlined above. And yet I think it would be extremely valuable.


Warning. Hasty Generalization and Simplification of Terms Follows. Use Your Brain.

Bottom line: I think HG and TCS should be more accessible. Despite its conveniences for fleet battles, it's still a major production. I think there are two ways to do this, both of which should be considered:

(1) Mass combat abstraction. The TCS statistical hits rule goes in that direction - but there's not enough of it.

(2) Baked into the rules. Similar to #1 but distinct, this is the combat rules themselves which pushes down complexity by embedding it in the nature of the rules used. As a very different example of this, I give you Memoir '44: its rules are quite simple, but part of that is the way the results are baked into the rules in a way that players don't have to think about.

 

[Condottiere]

Field commanders tend to get stuck with the assets their high command allocates to them.

With you find yourself with disproportionate numbers of battleriders, you craft out a strategy that optimizes their capabilities in your campaign.

 

[mike wightman]

Traveller has a much better system for fleet combat then HG - the matrices in Imperium, Dark Nebula, Invasion Earth and Fifth Frontier War.

If HG ships (and TCS really missed a trick by not including this) could be rated as per the counters in the above mentioned games then fleet vs fleet engagement become easy to game.

HG ship combat is unmanageable once you have trillion credit squadrons fighting it out - even with the statistical resolution suggested in TCS.

 

[robject]

Traveller has a much better system for fleet combat then HG - the matrices in Imperium, Dark Nebula, Invasion Earth and Fifth Frontier War.

If HG ships (and TCS really missed a trick by not including this) could be rated as per the counters in the above mentioned games then fleet vs fleet engagement become easy to game.

HG ship combat is unmanageable once you have trillion credit squadrons fighting it out - even with the statistical resolution suggested in TCS.

I think a good fleet-level game also needs rules for crew morale and the presence of an Admiral. I don't know if FFW et al has this - do they?

 

[Hyphen]

Some of us believe that Class A starports on worlds with populations of less than a million to be extremely implausible and to require extraordinary explanations involving outsiders importing everything from the assembly infrastructure and workforce to most or all of the parts.

I've no problems in believing that a lo-pop world with a Class A 'port can build small starships. I've been trying to work out how to get Tavonni to Class-A, plausibly (so far, we can "assemble starships using imported jump drives", so still technically Class-B).

Of course, some of this depends on your ruleset - creating lanthanum jump coils (CT) is a far different thing to doping an entire superdense hull grid (MT) with the stuff...

 

[martletsquire]

A low population but highly automated world would be able to support a Class A easily.

So would a low pop world in the middle of a major trade route. Yeah, so they import, so what. Current shipyards today do that, importing everything from basic components to whole prefab interior sections or complete sections even.

I like the idea of basically a dedicated Class A world, especially for a frontier setting. Kinda like having Pearl Harbor/Hawaii supporting the US Pacific Fleet pre and during WWII. Or Port Royal during the heyday of the Spanish Treasure Fleet time.

 

[rancke]

I've no problems in believing that a lo-pop world with a Class A 'port can build small starships.

How low a population and how small a starship? Can one person build a Scout/Courier with no outside help?

The TCS answer is that to build 100T starships (i.e. to build and man the infrastructure needed to build one 100T starship at a time), you need a population of 100,000. Now, this is obviously a simplification, and I think that a 'one-crop world' whose basic livelihood is based on building ships and selling them to outsiders would be able to do it with a population of, say, 10,000. And a world that imported everything, including the infrastructure, (basically a shipyard built and manned by outsiders) might do it with a population of a 1000 (250 job slots). Would you argue for different numbers?

But whatever number you decide is possible (as in 'just barely possible'), you next have to come up with a story that explains how this situation came about. How did a population of 10,000 wind up building one 100T ship at a time? Why does anyone pay for having a shipyard that builds one 100T ship at a time constructed and manned in a different star system?

And even then I don't believe that such a world would qualify for a class A rating. Building starships is only one of the qualifications needed to earn such a rating. The port also has to have the capacity to provide repairs and annual maintenance for visiting starships in a timely manner.

A low population but highly automated world would be able to support a Class A easily.

Which would require an investment in automation from another world. The low population would not be able to finance it by themselves.

So would a low pop world in the middle of a major trade route. Yeah, so they import, so what. Current shipyards today do that, importing everything from basic components to whole prefab interior sections or complete sections even.

It would increase the costs of the components. If the population is too low to manufacture its own basic necessicities, it would also require importing food, housing, household goods, clothes, etc., etc.. And, of course, you can't import service industry services -- doctoring, teaching, policing, etc..

I like the idea of basically a dedicated Class A world, especially for a frontier setting. Kinda like having Pearl Harbor/Hawaii supporting the US Pacific Fleet pre and during WWII. Or Port Royal during the heyday of the Spanish Treasure Fleet time.

But there's still going to be a minimum population to support all that activity, and a military shipyard world wouldn't qualify for a class A rating, because Class A worlds provide services for civilians.

BTW, did they build warships at Pearl Harbor?


Hans

 

[aramis]

BTW, did they build warships at Pearl Harbor?


Hans

Not exactly. They build a few dozen auxiliaries.

http://www.navsource.org/archives/14/5501.htm
http://www.shipbuildinghistory.com/history/shipyards/3public/pearlharbor.htm

Hell, Ketchikan and Sitka, Alaska, both have "construction yards"... and they're small towns.
http://www.shipbuildinghistory.com/history/shipyards/5small/inactive/allenmarine.htm
http://www.shipbuildinghistory.com/history/shipyards/5small/active/alaska.htm

Any of them could turn out one-off warships if the weapons and plans were made available.

 

[The Oz]

I think a good fleet-level game also needs rules for crew morale and the presence of an Admiral. I don't know if FFW et al has this - do they?

Give me time; I'm working on it.

 

[martletsquire]

In support of a low pop Class A system, I give you the following possibilities:

A MegaCorp setting up a ship manufactory in a new area. Ships in equipment and supplies, ships out finished components and whole vessels.

A Naval Yard set up by a multi-system or larger Government. An advance base with repair/rebuild and manufacturing support. In peacetime - makes small to medium ships. In wartime - repairs ships.

A Dictatorship/High Tech Totalitarianism - For personal or national pride, darnit.

A high tech level yard could be mostly composed of bots, droids and auto-fabbers, with only humans as supervisors or final fitters. A high tech huge auto-fabber could ingest components and raw materials and eject finished sections or even whole ships.

And you can't shy away from the coolness factor of a planetoid of Techno-Wizards, who utilize science in ways that seem magical. (Due to control and development of processes known only to them, or to a higher tech level or such)

 

[Hal]

If there is enough interest in running an "experiment", then we'd have to find a way to make it work now wouldn't we?

Something to think about...

 

[rancke]

In support of a low pop Class A system, I give you the following possibilities:

Remember that a class A rating requires more than just the building of an occasional ship. It requires the provision of civilian shipbuilding, repair, and maintenance.

A MegaCorp setting up a ship manufactory in a new area. Ships in equipment and supplies, ships out finished components and whole vessels.

In addition to the added overhead for shipping all the infrastructure and population, also have to fund system defenses to protect valuable infrastructure, parts, and finished ships from marauders, thus adding a lot to the overhead.

How low a population, what size ships, how many ships at a time?

A Naval Yard set up by a multi-system or larger Government. An advance base with repair/rebuild and manufacturing support. In peacetime - makes small to medium ships. In wartime - repairs ships.

Military ships, not civilian ships, thus not providing class A ratings.

How low the population, what size ships, how many ships at a time?

A Dictatorship/High Tech Totalitarianism - For personal or national pride, darnit.

Wouldn't a prestige project like that be built in the home system?

How low the population, what size ships, how many ships at a time?

A high tech level yard could be mostly composed of bots, droids and auto-fabbers, with only humans as supervisors or final fitters. A high tech huge auto-fabber could ingest components and raw materials and eject finished sections or even whole ships.

Sounds very costly and in need of considerable system defenses.

How low the population, what size ships, how many ships at a time?

And you can't shy away from the coolness factor of a planetoid of Techno-Wizards, who utilize science in ways that seem magical. (Due to control and development of processes known only to them, or to a higher tech level or such)

Oh yes I can. Because if such automated factories are possible, they would be employed for other purposes, increasing the per capita income of high-tech populations a lot more than the rather pedestrian increases the Traveller rules allow for.


Hans

 

[Condottiere]

Work can be subcontracted throughout a subsector, with large low tech components made in a hi-pop world, like commercial hulls, while small expensive ones could be done by a low-pop hi-tech world.

 

[McPerth]

I think a good fleet-level game also needs rules for crew morale and the presence of an Admiral. I don't know if FFW et al has this - do they?

IMHO, as stated in some other threads, more than crew morale what is needed is crew quality. In HG (I assume we're taling about CT), the only crewmembers whose skill afects the game are the Fleet CO (Fleet Tactics skill, that modifies initiative), ship's CO (Ship's Tactics skill, that modifies effective computer number) and Pilot (pilot skill, that modifies effective agility). As for the rest of the crew, they can all of them bu untrained conscripted people, for what is worth...

About aldmirals, I expect most fleets to be maneaged by competent staffs, so the individual aldmirals having less effect that in the Age of Sail. I expect the effect of individual aldmirals to be anecdotic to negligible...

OTOH, staff effect would be greater, and could be represented in strategic games as per side (be it empire, pocket empire, individual planet, etc...) or fleet (planetary/subsector/imperial, even being different in each planetary and subsector fleet); but I expect its effect being more in the strategical picture (intelligence, readiness, supply, etc...) than in the tactical one (where crew quality may affect more).