Ship Sizes

[Ben W Bell]

There seems to be a massive disparity between the sizes of warships between CT and MT.
In CT you get patrol cruisers at around 400 tons, and in MT you get Cruisers at up to 100,000 tons. I realise the Patrol cruiser isn't a proper cruiser in the military sense but there are other size issues.
The Kuinir was a front line battlecruiser but at one 1200 tons.
Obviously not all the navy's ships will be the massive hulking behemoths of the main fleets but does anyone else think there is a disparity here?
Since the components of the fleets are spread throughout Imperial space why don't you see a 20,000 ton warship on picket duty in a system frequented by pirates instead of a 400 ton version. Especially since in Traveller size has little impact on actual speed. Though I suppose the larger ships would have trouble disabling a pirate vessel. They'd use their smallest laser and blow it to pieces.

 

[WendellM]

Interesting stuff, thrash. I remember designing "huge" 5,000 ton ships in high school between classes, then along came High Guard & Fighting Ships and *poof* those ships became destroyers...

 

[Ron]

I really enjoyed the relatively small ship sizes in early Traveller products. First, it makes believable the existence of Corsairs as a menace to interstellar trade. Also, as military ships weren't much larger than the small ships the players could have. Don't you guys agree with me that Megatraveller's Starship of the Imperium is an useless book for a roleplaying game? It appears that GDW was too much impressed with the Stardestroyers from Star Wars or to create battleships for games such as Fifth Frontier War. Perhaps there is still time for a direction shift. I can only hope that the 4th Imperium to be detailed in the upcoming TNE sourcebook will be closer to the original Traveller concepts.

 

[aramis]

Originally posted by Ron:
I really enjoyed the relatively small ship sizes in early Traveller products. First, it makes believable the existence of Corsairs as a menace to interstellar trade. Also, as military ships weren't much larger than the small ships the players could have. Don't you guys agree with me that Megatraveller's Starship of the Imperium is an useless book for a roleplaying game? It appears that GDW was too much impressed with the Stardestroyers from Star Wars or to create battleships for games such as Fifth Frontier War. Perhaps there is still time for a direction shift. I can only hope that the 4th Imperium to be detailed in the upcoming TNE sourcebook will be closer to the original Traveller concepts.

Wile FSotSI is one of the worst products ever released. it has nothing to do with the aspects you put forth. The original Fighting Ships (supp 9) was very useful in my games. Not as player ships, but to remind players WHY they can't get away with certain tyes of action.

Even before we found HG, the GM I was playing under had 50KTd ships.

 

[Simon Jester]

IMTU, I always handwaved the disparity as a result of the smaller ships were what the local shipyards could produce, with the larger battleships, carriers, etc., only manufactured in a few massive dockyards in the Imperium's core sectors. In reallife, smaller fishing boats and even freighter ships can be built in a wide variety of ports and shipyards; battleships, aircraft carriers and supertankers can only be built in a very few places around the globe.

Or the Imperium restricts the size of the ship hulls that provincial navies could procure (mainly to prevent larger ship hulls from falling into the hands of pirates and corsairs).

YMMV,
Simon Jester

 

[Ron]

Originally posted by aramis:
Wile FSotSI is one of the worst products ever released. it has nothing to do with the aspects you put forth. The original Fighting Ships (supp 9) was very useful in my games. Not as player ships, but to remind players WHY they can't get away with certain tyes of action.

Even before we found HG, the GM I was playing under had 50KTd ships.[/QB]

The Imperium hinted in early Traveller's books appeared to be unable to adequately defend all the space. Because of that, space piracy was possible and player's ships were on their own. The much extended Imperial Navy described latter appear to be much effective in controlling Imperial Space, which limits much of the players outlaw flexibility and makes corsair ships a little bit odd.

Also, why do I need full stats of a 50K dton ship to impress my players in their far trader? It is pretty obvious, without any stats that they are no mach to a battleship.

 

[StrikerFan]

The Imperium as hinted at in the very early LBB's didn't have much in the way of external enemies. Nor did it have Book 5: High Guard to allow large ships. Put the two together and you got Supplement 9: Fighting Ships, which had battleships of 500,000 dTons. I was designing million ton battletenders with High Guard, to carry swarms of 9800 dTon or 19,500 dTon battleriders at the time Supplement 9 came out.

But I'll certainly agree that FSotSI was an almost complete waste of paper. The organization information at the front was OK, and the 20 ton fighter was solid, but the rest of the designs <shudder> were awful. I've never heard anyone take credit for the designs, either, I was asking Joe Fugate who'd created them right after it's release, because I couldn't believe how bad they were.

StrikerFan

 

[StrikerFan]

The Imperium as hinted at in the very early LBB's didn't have much in the way of external enemies. Nor did it have Book 5: High Guard to allow large ships. Put the two together and you got Supplement 9: Fighting Ships, which had battleships of 500,000 dTons. I was designing million ton battletenders with High Guard, to carry swarms of 9800 dTon or 19,500 dTon battleriders at the time Supplement 9 came out.

But I'll certainly agree that FSotSI was an almost complete waste of paper. The organization information at the front was OK, and the 20 ton fighter was solid, but the rest of the designs <shudder> were awful. I've never heard anyone take credit for the designs, either, I was asking Joe Fugate who'd created them right after it's release, because I couldn't believe how bad they were.

StrikerFan

 

[Ron]

Originally posted by StrikerFan:
The Imperium as hinted at in the very early LBB's didn't have much in the way of external enemies. Nor did it have Book 5: High Guard to allow large ships. Put the two together and you got Supplement 9: Fighting Ships, which had battleships of 500,000 dTons. I was designing million ton battletenders with High Guard, to carry swarms of 9800 dTon or 19,500 dTon battleriders at the time Supplement 9 came out.

You're definitely right. I am pointing out that I prefer the early version of the Imperium. A weak Navy and no major external threat means that I place my players in the role of explorers or messing them with piracy, thing which I believe would not happen in the latter developed setting.

Moreover, I believe that this was the initial design by choice (perhaps a question to Avery). Adding a external threat is important only in the strategic level but with few consequences to roleplaying -- at least I would like the Imperium to have some open frontiers, with no major enemy behind it.

As someone pointed before, it is possible that High Guard was inspired by Star Wars. In the early books, a cruiser was a rather small ship, at least compared to a Stardestroyer, which could disappoint some of the new customers attracted to Traveller by the movie.

Originally posted by StrikerFan:
But I'll certainly agree that FSotSI was an almost complete waste of paper. The organization information at the front was OK, and the 20 ton fighter was solid, but the rest of the designs <shudder> were awful. I've never heard anyone take credit for the designs, either, I was asking Joe Fugate who'd created them right after it's release, because I couldn't believe how bad they were.

StrikerFan

So, did he told you who actually designed them?

 

[StrikerFan]

Originally posted by Ron:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by StrikerFan:
But I'll certainly agree that FSotSI was an almost complete waste of paper. The organization information at the front was OK, and the 20 ton fighter was solid, but the rest of the designs <shudder> were awful. I've never heard anyone take credit for the designs, either, I was asking Joe Fugate who'd created them right after it's release, because I couldn't believe how bad they were.

StrikerFan

So, did he told you who actually designed them?</font>[/QUOTE]No he didn't, so I still don't know who it was who designed those wallowing pigs in space.

StrikerFan

 

[StrikerFan]

Originally posted by Ron:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by StrikerFan:
The Imperium as hinted at in the very early LBB's didn't have much in the way of external enemies. Nor did it have Book 5: High Guard to allow large ships. Put the two together and you got Supplement 9: Fighting Ships, which had battleships of 500,000 dTons. I was designing million ton battletenders with High Guard, to carry swarms of 9800 dTon or 19,500 dTon battleriders at the time Supplement 9 came out.

You're definitely right. I am pointing out that I prefer the early version of the Imperium. A weak Navy and no major external threat means that I place my players in the role of explorers or messing them with piracy, thing which I believe would not happen in the latter developed setting.

Moreover, I believe that this was the initial design by choice (perhaps a question to Avery). Adding a external threat is important only in the strategic level but with few consequences to roleplaying -- at least I would like the Imperium to have some open frontiers, with no major enemy behind it.

As someone pointed before, it is possible that High Guard was inspired by Star Wars. In the early books, a cruiser was a rather small ship, at least compared to a Stardestroyer, which could disappoint some of the new customers attracted to Traveller by the movie.
</font>[/QUOTE]I've never had a problem with the sizes, mostly because I always figured that the IN wasn't that omnipresent. In the Spinward Marches, for instance, in peacetime there's perhaps 20 CruRons and BatRons deployed, and most of the time those units will be within 2 jumps of their fleet bases. So piracy is certainly possible, it's not something you want to engage in in the Rhylanor system or at Glisten, but there's plenty of space farther out that you can do so if you choose. The big boys don't spend their time hunting small-time pirates, they're there to fight the Zho, the Swordies, or the Vargr if those threats make a major move (Vargr corsair raids aren't a major move, unless they get more serious than normal).

StrikerFan

 

[Ron]

StrikerFan,
Don't you feel its odd to a major power maintain a large Navy to keep its border but is unable to control its own space? I know that piracy is still common nowadays, but I would be surprised if the US Navy wasn't able to suppress most of pirate activity in US waters (I have no data about it, but I guess that there isn't much piracy in the US).

 

[T. Foster]

That's why I've come to favor settings where some external factor removes the big ships from consideration (i.e. the FFW or the Rebellion). They're all off fighting other big ships, leaving only small (5kton or less) ships to handle everything else (customs, antipiracy patrols, SAR, etc.). The closer you get to the "front" the more likely you are to encounter big ships in various capacities, defensive as well as offensive, but anywhere more than a subsector or so away a big-ships-vacuum leaves things at a more PC-manageable scale.

I also take the view that the Imperium doesn't maintain a navy anywhere near the size TCS would have us believe its capable of, because the member worlds just don't provide it the money to (the naval budget allows it to maintain a force just barely adequate to face external threats --which is why the Corridor fleets have to come bail out the beleagured Marches fleets during the FFW), and that the massive HiPop worlds that could afford to build their own private navies don't because they have better things to do with their money (and after all, maintaining a navy is the responsibility of the Imperium, not individual worlds). Rather than try to limit big ships through physical constraints (most/all of which lead to either many many more small ships or extremely expensive ships of any size -- both with equally deleterious effects on PC-scale activity as the standard big-ship model), I think the best way to limit big ships is psychologically -- give the people capable of building them reasons not to, and give what big ships there are reasons not to be involved in the activities of PCs.

I admit I haven't given the subject nearly as much thought as some people (i.e. Mr. Thrash, et al) and may well be ignoring/misunderstanding some key considerations, but since these assumptions give me the results I like I don't try all that hard to poke holes in them. YTUMV.

And lastly, FWIW, anyone who tries to set himself up as a pirate in a high-traffic, civilized region during peacetime deserves everything he gets. Modern RL pirates are found almost exclusively in third world backwaters, and I imagine the same will hold true for their 57th century equivalents (noting, though, that the likes of Reaver's Deep and Gateway sector, and even some parts of the Spinward Marches, ARE such third-world-backwater-equivalents).

 

[Antony]

This seems to have been one effect the TNE timeline tried to achieve. Very few large ships suvived the civil war and virus. Look at the biggest front-line warships of the RC. Though no doubt here and there some of the giants still exist they are few and far between and the surviving interstellar states generally cannot crew these giant vessels.

In my own Banners Sector game the Regal class battlecruiser (Ex - Imperic Star) serves as the orbital starport for the planet Alston. There are rumours of large warships like my BB15 Titan class dreadnought but these will very rarely be encountered (Luckily).

 

[StrikerFan]

Originally posted by Ron:
StrikerFan,
Don't you feel its odd to a major power maintain a large Navy to keep its border but is unable to control its own space? I know that piracy is still common nowadays, but I would be surprised if the US Navy wasn't able to suppress most of pirate activity in US waters (I have no data about it, but I guess that there isn't much piracy in the US).

There's not a lot of piracy in US waters, true enough, but there's something much more profitable and less risky: drug smuggling.

And the Imperium DOES control it's own space, it simply doesn't try to regulate it's own space. In my view of the Imperium's universe, the Imperium isn't overly concerned with affairs on any given world, that's that world's responsibility. If it becomes bad enough, the Imperium may intervene, but that intervention is likely to overturn the planetary government as well, so the planetary government will do it's best to avoid Imperial intervention. If that means buying SDB's to drive off pirates, they'll do it. If it means hiring mercenaries to do the same job, that's what they'll do. If they can bribe the pirates to move on, they'll do it. Or if they can bribe the pirates not to raid within some radius around the planet, that can be done as well. The last has some problems if someone finds out about it, but if your money has been carefully hidden and your alternate identity created....

StrikerFan

 

[Murph]

I tend to go with the larger ships are not really common, as in the US today, an aircraft carrier with supporting battlegroup is not really common either. Also the large main force ships would not be used for piracy suppression unless a pirate base was found.

The smaller ships (400-5,000 tons) represent the Coast Guard cutters, rescue vessels, and ships that smaller shipyards can build in quantity. The larger vessels are based at main worlds for protection.

Also remember that a solar system is generally a VERY big place. Very Big. There are lots of places to hide, and even at 6G, it would take a great deal of time to get to a vessel in distress, especially if the rescue requires large changes in Delta-V.

 

[alexhawman]

well said all, there are a lot of reasons both for and against the big ships, I have always felt that the big ships must be great targets for espionage based games, heck you could run an entire campaign in one of the 100000+ ton ships. the biggest probelm is as targets, sure you may need that much firepower but the bigger the ship the lower the return on firepower vs tonnage beyond a certain point, you still only mount so many spinal mounts on a ship

 

[StrikerFan]

Originally posted by enchantr:
well said all, there are a lot of reasons both for and against the big ships, I have always felt that the big ships must be great targets for espionage based games, heck you could run an entire campaign in one of the 100000+ ton ships. the biggest probelm is as targets, sure you may need that much firepower but the bigger the ship the lower the return on firepower vs tonnage beyond a certain point, you still only mount so many spinal mounts on a ship

Which is the reason behind battleriders: to maximize the number of spinal mounts per displacement-ton. IMTU, there are no non-obsolete IN battle-line units of 100,000 tons or more, because they're too vulnerable to a single penetrating meson hit.

StrikerFan

 

[gardclan]

Originally posted by StrikerFan:
Which is the reason behind battleriders: to maximize the number of spinal mounts per displacement-ton. IMTU, there are no non-obsolete IN battle-line units of 100,000 tons or more, because they're too vulnerable to a single penetrating meson hit.

High Guard addresses this... it seems that in the Fifth Frontier War, the Zhodani capitalized on one crucial weakness of the battle rider... the jump tenders! The Zhos would skirt the line of battle, smash the jump tenders, and then jump out system to the next objective leaving the very effective but now stranded battle riders behind.

Either way, if you have battle riders, then you must also have the massive jump tenders with which to carry them.

Now, if you can mount Factor T SPMG's on sub 100kT warships, you can pretty much smash just about anything... unless it has a VERY large MESON SCREEN... in which case the ships get larger again to offset the extra mass.

I could see the size of naval ships doing the yo-yo as the differing technologies shift in dominance. IMTU this is not a static thing at all.

 

[StrikerFan]

Originally posted by Darth Sillyus:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by StrikerFan:
Which is the reason behind battleriders: to maximize the number of spinal mounts per displacement-ton. IMTU, there are no non-obsolete IN battle-line units of 100,000 tons or more, because they're too vulnerable to a single penetrating meson hit.

High Guard addresses this... it seems that in the Fifth Frontier War, the Zhodani capitalized on one crucial weakness of the battle rider... the jump tenders! The Zhos would skirt the line of battle, smash the jump tenders, and then jump out system to the next objective leaving the very effective but now stranded battle riders behind.

Either way, if you have battle riders, then you must also have the massive jump tenders with which to carry them.

Now, if you can mount Factor T SPMG's on sub 100kT warships, you can pretty much smash just about anything... unless it has a VERY large MESON SCREEN... in which case the ships get larger again to offset the extra mass.

I could see the size of naval ships doing the yo-yo as the differing technologies shift in dominance. IMTU this is not a static thing at all.</font>[/QUOTE]Actually, that was in the Third or Fourth Frontier War, the battleriders were intentionally kept back and away from the front lines in the 1100s to avoid the loss of the battle tenders in battles where the riders would not win the fight (because there weren't enough of them). Only when the war was clearly on were the battlerider squadrons brought forward in numbers and used in concentrated groups.

Class-T meson guns aren't necessary, large numbers of class-J or larger are. T's were, IMTU, relatively rare, in fact, because the R's were nearly as good at cracking screens and the smaller J and N-guns were easier to mount on smaller ships.

StrikerFan