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Putting Together 'Starship of the Line'

I actually like a lot of Turtledove's stuff. BUT, I think he has a tendancy to take a 2 book idea and make it 4-6 books long. LOTS of filler in the middle books, with lots of reminders of who the characters are (in case you forgot who they were from 10 pages ago).

His World War books could have easily been condensed into 4-5 books rather than the 12(?) it is now. Having said that, I own all of them, in hardback, so what does that say about me?

I also LOVE Stephen Donaldson's stuff. It is, uhm wordy, but still good stuff.
 
BUT, I think he has a tendancy to take a 2 book idea and make it 4-6 books long. LOTS of filler in the middle books, with lots of reminders of who the characters are (in case you forgot who they were from 10 pages ago).


Plankowner,

Sam Carsten and zinc oxide. 'Nuff said.

Having said that, I own all of them, in hardback, so what does that say about me?

That you're an enabler? ;)


Have fun,
Bill
 
I suspected he was thinking of Star Wars dogfights or Star Trek battles (which is how we all picture space combat anyway, let's face it).
Any idiot who brought his ship into eyeball sighting range would most likely get killed. If he didn't get killed he would certainly be court-martialed for incompetence.
 
Devin,
The point I was trying to make was that multiple observers all sharing their "piece" of the sensor "puzzle" do and will greatly enhance the ability of all platforms to create hits.

Good point there.

My idea of the fire control solution goes something like this:

In sensor physics targets are referred to as either scintillating or non-scintillating. Scintillating targets give an all-or-nothing active sensor target, depending upon the orientating of the surface presented to the sensor, while non-scintillating targets always reflect at least a little of the energy back to the sensor. (This, of course, is why modern stealth aircraft have lots of flat or jagged surfaces.)

Building up a fire control solution takes time. Sometimes, though, you get lucky - several good sensor returns in a short space of time give you the information needed to calculate the target's range and velocity. That's when it's time to fire the spinal mount (or detonate the x-ray laser warhead.) Many shots may be needed in a short space of time to fill the target area.

(My calculations seem to indicate that the space-filling model of fire control isn't as good as I'd assumed - a 10% increase in range means a 75% increase in number of weapons needed for a 1m2 target maneuvering at 1G - and I'm generously assuming all shots are simultaneous. Someone, please check my math!)

This works for passive sensors too, except that passive sources are almost always non-scintillating, and thus easier to get a fix on.

Sensor physics is a fascinating field - it is possible, contrary to popular belief, to detect a target with a emitting/reflecting a signal below the average root-mean-square noise. (It just takes a long time and a lot of processing power.)

Devin,
As for your other assumptions, I strongly believe that analogies between historical naval combat and Traveller's ship combat can be and been drawn too far. People pick an era they like or that they believe fits Traveller well and then "milk it" to a point of absurdity. This practice does nothing but harm.

No argument here. When I take historical analogies, I tend to pick and mix, and I try to match apples with other apples rather than oranges (though I'm not so scrupulous about matching a Granny Smith with a Red Delicious.) For example, the discussion about torpedo-boats struck me as misguided because historically torpedoes operated in a very different way that Traveller missiles. (For one, even a few small torpedoes could seriously inconvenience a battleship; the ones that took down the Prince of Wales and Repulse were only 18" air-dropped jobbies; for another, with the exception of the 24" Japanese Long Lances, torpedoes were very short range.)

Traveller warships DO NOT line up like Nelson's 1st Raters, armor IS NOT confined to discrete slabs and belts like Jellicoe's dreadnoughts, and fighters DO NOT behave like Spruance's Wildcats.

I think ships would, of course, arrange themselves in some sort of formation, most likely a 3-d flying wedge or the like. Because the space restrictions on concentration of force are negligible, distances between fleets will likely dwarf the distance between friendly craft (except for pickets and anti-missile escorts.)

--Devin
 
>The point I was trying to make was that multiple observers all sharing their "piece" of the sensor "puzzle" do and will greatly enhance the ability of all platforms to create hits

I've always understood your idea .... its the logic of astronomy and modern telescopes .... either one very large one or dozens of co-operating ones

even when a ship has very good sensors and s/w driving it, it still can benefit slightly from "another angle" provided the commo lag isnt so long that the data becomes useless

I suspect that better software would be "reanalysing" data on a time received basis to improve the accuracy of each data point
 
I think ships would, of course, arrange themselves in some sort of formation...


Devin,

There's canonical support for that. In Battlerider for TNE an admiral's rating controls how many ships can "fit" in one hex without effecting their ability to maneuver and shoot. In other words, better commanders are able to create and control larger formations of ships while not impacting the ships' ability to move, "jink", and fire.

... (except for pickets and anti-missile escorts.)

Pickets and anti-missile escorts can be inferred given the nature of Traveller ship combat - especially given the idea of sensors. However (and sadly), no version of Traveller addresses this Sensor Question in the type and kind of detail we need to make pickets and escorts work. :( While we know escorts are canonical, we can't find a workable canonical role for them in Traveller ship combat. In a fleet clash, they're little more than filler; i.e. hmmm... gotta spend a trillion credits and my battleline only cost 990 billion... guess I'll build something small to use up the money...

Brilliant Lances has vessels handing off sensor locks to each other, but there is no similar canonical mechanism for large numbers of large ships. BL features ships well under 5000dTons and trying to handle even a small Classic Era cruiser BL-style would be insane.

Sensor pickets, flank observers, and anti-missile escorts should be a part of Traveller ship combat because the physics involved points very strongly to that. However, there are no rules for their use...

... unless you write some!


Have fun,
Bill
 
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