Proto-High Guard 5, take three

[David Johansen]

What if fighters had a chance to score critical hits, unshielded exhaust ports, power cores inexplicably installed in launch bays and the like?

Personally I've always liked anti-shipping missiles but they really aren't in the Traveller cannon.

 

[robject]

David: yes, those are all excellent role-playing scenarios for Traveller.


(1) All defenses are an order of magnitude better in capitals than cruisers.
(2) Capitals can take an order of magnitude more punishment than cruisers.

At least one of those must be true, and both might be true.



Amazing Defenses

If (1) is true, then capitals have strong layers of defense intended to shrug off all but the most powerful attacks. This ought to be closed to exploitation, while explicitly stating that tiny exposed exhaust ports can provide role-playing opportunities for rebel players in X-Wing fighters.

Example:
to block incoming nuclear missiles:

1D < Nuclear Damper Factor - Missile Factor + TL Delta
...where design enforces that secondary MF maxes out at X-6 at TL15, where X is the capital ship NDF at TL15.

But surely a ship can't simply swat everything 100% of the time (X-Wing fighters and exhaust ports). If, say, eight cruisers were to pool their secondaries, they surely have a chance at penetrating that Tigress' nuclear dampers.

That assumes that a battery factor represents one order of magnitude.



Amazing Toughness

If (2) is true, then starship components on capitals resist damage much better than on cruisers. Systems redundancy backing design could be one explanation for this. Armor is obviously another explanation.

Example 1:
Somehow, drives and batteries employ a damage track. For example, a Maneuver 6 capital ship has Maneuver Drive R. It takes 15 hits to reduce it to zero.

(insert arbitrary damage track table here:)

          A B C D E F G H J K L M N P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 
100t      1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
20kt      1 2 2 3 4 4 5 6 6 7 8 8 9
200kt     1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 4 5 5 5 6 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9

The chart above does NOT make a capital ship an order of magnitude tougher than a cruiser. Two cruisers could conceptually still take out a capital ship.

Example 2:
Damage tracks are for sissies. Uni-taskers are BAD DESIGN. Besides, we've already got armor, don't we? So let capital ships slather it on like sunblock. That presumes that the best massed secondary fire can't get past capital armor, or at least has the dickens of a time doing so.

So my eight cruisers mass-fire their Factor 9 Nukes at the capital ship, and manage to squeak past the defenses. I grab a bucketful of dice and roll for damage, singing a Viking song of smiting.

I roll enough points of damage to blow up a small moon, but the capital ship just gets scratched.

Sounds dissatisfying.

On the other hand, why am I attacking a dreadnought with secondaries? The heart of folly, and I should pay for it.

 

[robject]

One thing at a time, then.

To Hit.

range < TL - Target agility or something. Let's say it's a success.

Defenses. Defense then rolls at close range.

The Tigress has active defense at Factor 14.
The best secondary battery you can get in your cruisers are Factor 8.
You gang the squadron together to get an attack boost to Factor 9.

[nuke dampers] 1D < 14 - 9 + TL delta (0). 84% chance of success.

Call it a fail.

[beam lasers] 2D < 14 - 9 + TL delta (0). 16% chance of success.

Call it a fail.


To Pen. The missiles impact near the hull with a Massive Explosion.

A Factor 9 nuclear missile salvo does Pen and Rad damage.

Pen: 9D > Armor
Rad: 9D > Rad protection

What are the odds? Marc says "none", but assume that means "highly unlikely". So say the Tigress has armor 45, and the attack therefore has about a 0.5% chance of hitting.


Damage Inflicted

I see I've still put the cart before the horse, because the essence of combat is how damage is dealt.

 

[robject]

First Things First

And so I'm here at damage.

ACS has ship sheets.
High Guard has damage tables.
There's also things like the UPP.
There's hit boxes governing broad areas of capability.
Minis games have a cumulative difficulty mod to represent increasing levels of damage.


Ship sheets are typically custom for each class of ACS. They are a tactical damage map of a ship. They represent tactical design decisions. Once completed, they conceal part of the combat rules for us, while enriching the design of ships. But are they really needed for BCS? Probably not.

Damage tables are handy; they're already done. They account for incremental hull damage, radiation damage, interior damage, and critical damage. They can be manipulated in various ways.

A UPP-like thing is compelling; after all this is Traveller. But the devil's in the details: how many numbers represents an entire ship adequately? Do you end up with a USP? If not, then you really have sections with hit boxes, don't you?

Hit boxes are also enticing; they remind me somewhat of the "engineering section" of Book 2 prefab hulls. Why not define the sections of a ship, as Mike suggested, and track damage to them?

The single difficulty mod or damage level is less appealing to me. It's great for minis though - easy to track and use.

 

[kilemall]

Nowadays I look at conventional warhead missiles in Traveller and treat them more as a form of short range mass driver with a shotgun burst of high velocity penetrators, either entirely kinetic, or perhaps APHE or HEAT submunitions.

 

[Mace]

Hit boxes are also enticing; they remind me somewhat of the "engineering section" of Book 2 prefab hulls. Why not define the sections of a ship, as Mike suggested, and track damage to them?

You could take this a step further and include damage control, with the outcome of a successful damage control intervention removing the odd 'tick' in a hit box?

Just a thought and now back to lurking. ;-)

 

[pendragonman]

You could take this a step further and include damage control, with the outcome of a successful damage control intervention removing the odd 'tick' in a hit box?

Just a thought and now back to lurking. ;-)

and with that we are playing star fleet battles

 

[David Johansen]

We're already getting that in the form of the Squadron Strike Traveller game that's coming out with all the hit boxes you could ask for.

I think High Guard should try to be about big picture fleet actions rather than capital ship duels.

I really like that ACS damage reduces letter codes rather than drive potential as it should take more damage to kill a bigger ship. I'd keep it for High Guard. It doesn't hurt to have commonalities between subsystems. Ideally the game should cover what happens when a battleship's spinal mount hits a scout/courier.

Of course, I think there needs to be a penalty to hit for spinal mounts equal to the size of the ship. That covers the issue of pinpoint killing small targets with a gun that requires the whole battle ship to rotate when aiming. It also lets us look at bigger weapon mounts having an independent modifier with standard turrets being ideal for engaging adventure class ships but not so great at killing battleships.

 

[robject]

We're already getting that in the form of the Squadron Strike Traveller game that's coming out with all the hit boxes you could ask for.

This is from a desire to balance critical hits with survivability ("one shot one kill, unless you're tough"). In that respect it's influenced more from Battle Rider than Squadron Strike. Also influenced from Eurisko.

Take a High Guard ship design and abstract by one degree everything that's not important to the critical hit table, and see what you have.

 

[robject]

For instance, if your battleship is getting attacked by a Factor 7 missile salvo, and I want less bookkeeping than High Guard, then I'm looking for a different probability -- the probability for critical damage. Similarly however, a critical hit hurts a battleship, but vaporizes an auxiliary.

But still, the attack and defense tasks use High Guard's layered tasks.

On the gripping hand, this means that defenses are keyed to stop attacks of the same factor.

Now, if we pivot on tech level, then low TL battleships could be made more susceptible to non-spine attacks.

What about game changing technology? That is taken care of by the lack of defenses for a time.

To Block Missile Attacks with Beams:

Roll 2D or less, Target DMs: +TL, +C&C Delta

     --- Attacking Factor ---
Def  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  
 1   0  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  
 2   1  0  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  
 3   2  1  0  -  -  -  -  -  -  
 4   3  2  1  0  -  -  -  -  -  
 5   4  3  2  1  0  -  -  -  -  
 6   5  4  3  2  1  0  -  -  -  
 7   6  5  4  3  2  1  0  -  -  
 8   7  6  5  4  3  2  1  0  -  
 9   8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1  0

 

[flykiller]

starship components on capitals resist damage much better than on cruisers. Systems redundancy backing design could be one explanation for this. Armor is obviously another explanation.

perhaps another is internal vs external? "capital" ships can take more damage not because they are different, but because they have relatively more internal components shielded by external components from external weapons effects?

or is this consideration being ignored here and all ship weapons are functionally meson guns of varying effects?

So let capital ships slather <armor> on like sunblock. That presumes that the best massed secondary fire can't get past capital armor, or at least has the dickens of a time doing so.

perhaps armor is ablative? or does armor continue to exist and function regardless of number of hits?

 

[kilemall]

Trigger Warning- Fandancing in progress-

You'll see this when I get close to a final on the Mayday Guard hit resolution, but I'm looking to layer armor, distance and defenses in a progressive reduction way such that you end up just rolling once to hit, and then it's X damage rolls to roll with defenses weakening or stopping the damage up front or partway through.

Virtually no tables besides the damage one.

Free yourself from the tyranny of 3 rolls before you even get to damage.

 

[flykiller]

trigger warning - specific questions

well, what I asked about was internal vs external, and ablation. for example, does armor take hits, or is it constant? if it takes hits, does it take automatic hits if it reduces the number of damage rolls or does it have to be hit specifically?

 

[robject]

Fly, you're asking how armor should work, how it could work.

ACS uses armor which soaks damage automatically, but is itself weakened when overcome. If I use that model, then we know armor can be whittled down, and an originally impervious battleship can become vulnerable to secondaries.

You're also asking if perhaps battleships just have internal fortitude -- redundancy or toughness due to size and efficiency of scale. I think that's reasonable, and the mechanic I've been using to represent that is in how secondaries (including defenses) are rated -- they get a factor boost based on the ship's size. Perhaps armor should, as well.

 

[robject]

Look at the critical hits table in HG2, or the critical hits covered in BR. They deal with things like

S: Spine
C: "C&C" (Bridge / Computer)
H: Hangars
J: Jump Drive
M: Maneuver Drive
P: Power Plant
Troops / Frozen Watch
Fuel

S-CHJ-MP

Emphasize those terms, and de-emphasize secondary terms. If the result starts to look more like a UPP than a USP, then you're seeing the sort of thing I'm seeing.

Note: I'm disregarding hull configuration in this post. It is important with attacks, but not with damage.

 

[flykiller]

Fly, you're asking how armor should work, how it could work.

uh ... yeah ...

more specifically, I'm asking what you're considering implementing.

armor can be whittled down, and an originally impervious battleship can become vulnerable to secondaries

this makes sense to me ...

You're also asking if perhaps battleships just have internal fortitude -- redundancy or toughness due to size and efficiency of scale.

... but this seems vague. size and redundancy matter of course, but for specific reasons, thus not all hits are equal. say a factor 9 meson bay, a smaller weapon, gets a "hit" on the maneuver drive of a 500k ship with maneuver 1, a fairly large system in its own right, as large as an entire ship. is the weapon large enough to inflict an immediate effect? if not then does it have a cumulative effect requiring bookkeeping? does it have an effect in certain critical areas (crew command) but not others (access and parts)? or do you just say "no possible effect" and move on? will an increasing weapon factor be required to inflict any damage on an increasingly larger system? in hg2 a hit is a hit regardless of weapon factor or ship size factor - do you mean to continue this or to start parsing out damage? layering armor, distance and defenses in a progressive reduction way such that you end up just rolling once to hit sounds great, but when you streamline the combat system that way you necessarily wind up streamlining the results too.

 

[robject]

not all hits are equal.

HG2 handles that in two ways: first through probability; Battery Factors are half of that. The other way is the fundamental split between the "regular" battery attack tables, and the two "spinal" attack tables. They are both probabilistic, but the spine tables represent different probabilities.

say a factor 9 meson bay, a smaller weapon, gets a "hit" on the maneuver drive of a 500k ship with maneuver 1, a fairly large system in its own right, as large as an entire ship. is the weapon large enough to inflict an immediate effect?

Yeah, that's a 5,000 ton maneuver drive. HG1 and HG2 deals with this by normalizing the target components. All targets are considered equal in weight and value. Typical damage decrements values, while ship size code shifts the severity of damage, and critical hits render things inoperative regardless.

My preference is to ignore incremental damage, and take the Battle Rider approach, regarding probabilities for critical hits only, and only recording crits. Still requires bookkeeping, though less. Still requires paying attention to layered defense -- in fact the attack mechanic is not really affected by how damage is handled. The probabilities change.

But, I don't know if I REALLY want to do that. For example, I'm still thinking "ALMOST CRITICAL" hits.

layering armor, distance and defenses in a progressive reduction way such that you end up just rolling once to hit sounds great, but when you streamline the combat system that way you necessarily wind up streamlining the results too.

You're right, and that's why it's sooo important to think about how damage should work. I don't want hit points, yet I do want two squadrons to duke it out over an hour's game time.

 

[flykiller]

My preference is to ignore incremental damage, and take the Battle Rider approach, regarding probabilities for critical hits only, and only recording crits.

... having a simulationist frame of mind and viewing ships as entities rather than as collections of stats I would reject this utterly, but from a game perspective, and from a captain's perspective, and from a historical perspective, this actually sounds quite good.

I don't want hit points

then perhaps a compromise - assign critical hits based not on ship size but on size of the component affected. I believe this would automatically scale all weapons to all targets - targets meaning targeted systems. telling fighters to "aim at their defensive batteries" might take on good game meaning.

 

[robject]

... having a simulationist frame of mind and viewing ships as entities rather than as collections of stats I would reject this utterly, but from a game perspective, and from a captain's perspective, and from a historical perspective, this actually sounds quite good.

It indeed leaves the simulationist cold. And that's a big part of the High Guard experience.

then perhaps a compromise - assign critical hits based not on ship size but on size of the component affected. I believe this would automatically scale all weapons to all targets - targets meaning targeted systems. telling fighters to "aim at their defensive batteries" might take on good game meaning.

Now there's a good idea.

 

[robject]

A sectional or segmented model of a ship could give me a UPP-like string for damage tracks.

C&C - Troops - Hangars - Primaries - Secondaries - Engineering

Number of crits could be straight tonnage-based ("1 hit per 50,000 tons"), but I suspect it is more like a curve.

This works with my "Not QUITE Crits" preference.

Swinging to the wild side, the number-of-crits-based-on-component-size could instead be the Pen target number on 2D. This would essentially be a Size Factor for the component. So for example the granularity -- the progression of average number of hits -- would run like 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 6, 16 (or something like that). Size 12 components would probably be larger than a Tigress.

Rather lopsided. But it would give a component two values: an attack factor, and a size factor of its own. Roll the size factor or greater to kill it.