So the upshot of all this is that a purpose-built military vessel is still better than a tricked-up civilian vessel of approx the same class/capacity? Common sense would have pointed in that direction, but it's nice to see the system enables it.
CT Only: Ship's Boat -The Ultimate Fighter?
- Thread starter Golan2072
- Start date
So the upshot of all this is that a purpose-built military vessel is still better than a tricked-up civilian vessel of approx the same class/capacity? Common sense would have pointed in that direction, but it's nice to see the system enables it.
OracleBoyd
SOC-1
Freelance Traveller has Armor Factor rules listed for BB2 ships. I was planning to use it to armor up the Boat (which could also be upgraded to Comp 6 if you wanted). I am attempting to keep at least 8 tons of space available so it can carry a Military GCarrier.
Interestingly, with Comp6 and Armor6 it has virtually the same price tag as the 50T Fighter.
Interestingly, with Comp6 and Armor6 it has virtually the same price tag as the 50T Fighter.
I was talking Proto-Traveller here, as once HG is on the menu, a whole lot of new tools are available, from much heavier weapons to armour. A fully tricked-out HG heavy fighter would always be better than anything LBB2 could come up with.
The trade-off then would be 1 big and expensive Heavy Fighter (i.e. fully-equipped ship's boat) vs. 3 small Light Fighters (i.e. Fighter with the electronics which fit into it) for the same tonnage. So one polity might favor Heavy Fighters, the other favor Light Fighters and the third a mix of Light and Heavy Fighters...
Only if using HG's combat system. Heavy fighters prosper there because of the computer rules.
I always believed that the yatch were used as auxiliary patrol because of their ship's boat. Of course, purpose built Q ships looking like a yatch may exist and have all the assets of a SDB. But even a commercial yatch might be usefully pressed into patrol service because of that Boat.
have fun
Selandia
Fighter:
Target (1) - required by turret
Launch (1) - required to launch missiles OR Return Fire (1) for a laser fighter
Predict-5 (2) - for +3 to-hit
Manouver/Evade-5 (2) - for -Ship's Boat skill to enemy attack rolls
Attack +3
Defence -2
Ship's Boat:
Target (1) - required by turret
Launch (1) - required to launch missiles
Return Fire (1) to shoot lasers back
Predict-5 (2) - for +3 to-hit
Manouver/Evade-6 (3) for -5 (!!!) to enemy attack rolls
Gunner Interact (1) - for +Gunner skill to hit
Select-3 (1) - allows to choose target subsystem
Anti-Missile (2) - for anti-missile defensive fire
ECM (3) - allows a roll to explode incoming missiles
Attack +5
Defence -5
The Ship's Boat is a lot more flexible with anti-missle, ECM etc but let's just look at basic attack/defence.
The Fighter is a a total of -2 to hit the SB. (I think for hit on 10+, or 17%)
The SB is at a total of +3 to hit the Fighter. (I think for a hit on 5+, or 72%).
But cost aside for one SB, you can carry 3 fighters!
Let's imagine a target shooting competition between 1 SB and 3 fighters. We'll assume that each round the SB scores a hit and takes out one fighter, for easy calculation, and each round we will accumulate the chances of a hit on the SB by the fighters.
Round 1: The three fighters have a 43% chance of hitting the SB [1 - (.83 *.83 *.83)]. One fighter is knocked out.
Round 2: The two remaining fighters have a 31% chance of a hit [1 - (.83 * .83)]. One more fighter dies.
Round 3: The last fighter fires and has a 17% chance of making it's last shot.
The accumulated chance of the fighters making at least one hit is ( 1 - (0.57 * 0.69 * 0.83)] = 68%.
Which is within spitting distance of the SB's hit chance per shot of 72%. In reality the SB wouldn't necessarily be hitting every shot, so actualy I'm dramatically under-estimating the aggregate firepower of the 3 fighters in comparrison.
Yes the SB is a more capable ship in other ways, but having 3 fighters instead of one also gives you a lot of extra flexibility. Not all those fighters have to be equipped with the same software or weapons for example.
So I don't think it's at all a wash for the Ship's Boat.
Simon Hibbs
Target (1) - required by turret
Launch (1) - required to launch missiles OR Return Fire (1) for a laser fighter
Predict-5 (2) - for +3 to-hit
Manouver/Evade-5 (2) - for -Ship's Boat skill to enemy attack rolls
Attack +3
Defence -2
Ship's Boat:
Target (1) - required by turret
Launch (1) - required to launch missiles
Return Fire (1) to shoot lasers back
Predict-5 (2) - for +3 to-hit
Manouver/Evade-6 (3) for -5 (!!!) to enemy attack rolls
Gunner Interact (1) - for +Gunner skill to hit
Select-3 (1) - allows to choose target subsystem
Anti-Missile (2) - for anti-missile defensive fire
ECM (3) - allows a roll to explode incoming missiles
Attack +5
Defence -5
The Ship's Boat is a lot more flexible with anti-missle, ECM etc but let's just look at basic attack/defence.
The Fighter is a a total of -2 to hit the SB. (I think for hit on 10+, or 17%)
The SB is at a total of +3 to hit the Fighter. (I think for a hit on 5+, or 72%).
But cost aside for one SB, you can carry 3 fighters!
Let's imagine a target shooting competition between 1 SB and 3 fighters. We'll assume that each round the SB scores a hit and takes out one fighter, for easy calculation, and each round we will accumulate the chances of a hit on the SB by the fighters.
Round 1: The three fighters have a 43% chance of hitting the SB [1 - (.83 *.83 *.83)]. One fighter is knocked out.
Round 2: The two remaining fighters have a 31% chance of a hit [1 - (.83 * .83)]. One more fighter dies.
Round 3: The last fighter fires and has a 17% chance of making it's last shot.
The accumulated chance of the fighters making at least one hit is ( 1 - (0.57 * 0.69 * 0.83)] = 68%.
Which is within spitting distance of the SB's hit chance per shot of 72%. In reality the SB wouldn't necessarily be hitting every shot, so actualy I'm dramatically under-estimating the aggregate firepower of the 3 fighters in comparrison.
Yes the SB is a more capable ship in other ways, but having 3 fighters instead of one also gives you a lot of extra flexibility. Not all those fighters have to be equipped with the same software or weapons for example.
So I don't think it's at all a wash for the Ship's Boat.
Simon Hibbs
I made a mistake in the above calculations. The Fighter only has 1 ton of available space and the Model/2bis computer requires 2 dtons. So it will have to be a Model/1bis computer with a capacity of 4 for MCr4.
So the loadout will be:
Target (1) - required by turret MCr1
Launch (1) - required to launch missiles MCr2 OR Predict-3 (1) for a laser fighter MCr6
Manouver/Evade-5 (2) - for -Ship's Boat skill to enemy attack rolls MCr5
So a missile fighter (MCr32.25) will be at +0 offense and -2 defense (given a skilled pilot); a laser fighter (MCr35) at +2 offense and -2 defense. An ace (Ship's Boat-3 or better) will increase defense and a rookie pilot (Ship's Boat-1) will decrease defense.
The Fighter comes with a Model/1 installed already; if you remove it, you have a total of 2dt available and can put a proper Model/2 in there.
In my experience, the generic 10dt Fighter is more useful as a missile-launching platform than a laser-carrying one, precisely because of the computer limitations. I go with the default Model/1, pack the extra 1dt with missile reloads (alternately, a couch for a RIO/loader plus half a dt of reloads), and rely on the 6-G acceleration (plus Maneuver/Evade) and/or massive clouds of sand thrown out by the carrier mothership for defense against enemy missiles and lasers respectively.
On the other hand keep in mind that there are many countermeasures to missiles, from ECM to anti-missile laser-fire programs. How effective are they when facing a fully-equipped warship with top-of-the-line electronics (i.e. best computer available with best loadout)?
About 42% against ECM, according to B2.
(.42 x 3.5 hits per missile x 3 missiles = 4.41 hits per Fighter per turn)
About 83% against each laser employed against them, according to B2.
Not too shabby.
And bear in mind that in B2, the tactical advantage lies with whichever side brings more weapons mounts to the battle...
I have used a 16 dton "wasp waist" module to stick into a modular cutter, bringing the maneuver up to 6G, and capable of mounting (in LBB2) any computer. It turns the old Type C into a much more capable platform, along with "sprucing up" any cutter. Even under HG2, it could mount a computer and an auxiliary powerplant. If you do that sort of thing...
It just occurred to me that in New Battlestar Galactica they used a mix of small fighters and larger min-shuttles with ECM and better sensors all the time. So maybe we should see the 10 ton fighter and 30 ton ship's boat as complementing each other rather than being mutualy exclusive alternatives.
Simon Hibbs
Simon Hibbs
Also didn't teh Cylons have a Heavy Raider in addition to the usual one?
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Might review my new entry in my TC IMTU thread for the computer rules, cheaper computers for small craft with appropriate fragility (but let's face it fighter jock, good likelihood you aren't going to shrug off that hit).
IF you want combat reliability, you have to pay for it.
If you like, think of the Traveller computers as less like a PC/Server and more like avionics with different 'modes' the craft is in to do X tasks. You're less being a menu/command line jockey and more turning a knob on Fire Control to 'Return Fire Mode' or 'Anti Missile Mode'.
IF you want combat reliability, you have to pay for it.
If you like, think of the Traveller computers as less like a PC/Server and more like avionics with different 'modes' the craft is in to do X tasks. You're less being a menu/command line jockey and more turning a knob on Fire Control to 'Return Fire Mode' or 'Anti Missile Mode'.
technically,an iPhone 6 is a 1970 mainframe's better... same OS (Unix), more interger ops, more floating point ops... and better graphics, too. And it has sound, wireless networking much faster than the 2-base-t of the mainframe...
I wouldn't be surprised to find that even the cheap Samsung Galaxy S3 mini I bought for 650 ILS (about $175) a month ago has more power than an 1970's mainframe. Again same OS family (Android which is also of the Unix family). Semiconductor technology advanced in great strides since the 1970's...
Hell, I started using a home computer in 1992, it was a 386 SX, 25MHz with 4MB of RAM (which was A LOT - "why the hell do you need more than 1 MB" we were asked by the vendor) and 120 MB of hard-drive space. It cost us about 6,000 ILS (about $2,000 back then, maybe even $2,500) with peripherals. My phone cost a tiny fraction of that and has memory and storage space greater by two orders of magnitude.
I don't think anyone back then in 1977 could've predicted the great increase in computing power and the massive reduction in computing power cost in the next 38 years and its effects on society (cue to the TL11 "Hand Computer" which costs Cr1,000 and is probably imagined as less powerful than my old TL7.5 Nokia phone).
