Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Ten percent casualties per engagement tends to be considered alarming.
Ship's Crew Numbers
- Thread starter Badenov
- Start date
Doing a Silly Test, throwing 10,000 ship fleets against each other, each ship had a 50% chance of destroying an enemy ship in simultaneous rounds.
After 10000 such battles, 83% were determined in the first round. And by that I mean that whichever fleet had the greater numbers after the first round, eventually defeated the other fleet entirely. Mind, it was not cheap. The best margin was 1200 ships remaining for the victor, the worst was a single ship.
But, after the first round, if you were down, odds were high that you were out.
Badenov
SOC-12
Yes, but you have to degrade all the other weapons once before you degrade the spinal again. And yes, a bull missile barrage from a tigress will certainly render one of the 19k-tonners useless, but there are a bunch of them, and it takes nearly the full volley of the Tigress to do one. Maybe two, though they'd not be quite as degraded. Possibly still not useful in a fight.
But then you could only degrade them by one, which probably wouldn't be noticable.
And still the best of them in the wiki.
That's another one I had misunderstood. I had read it as dividing the crew into a number of sections equal to the crew rating, which would give the same number of crew hits to kill all crew on a ship. On a 19,999dT ship, it looks like it'd become 20 sections with about 19 crew per section. So taking 3-4 hits in that case is survivable, although, as you point out, the Fuel Tanks Shattered result is what ends the fight and people just sit there and wait to see who wins the fight. If they're the last on their side fighting, they'll have to defend against the boarding unless the victor want to offer terms.
From what?
He's not in the dumbest 3% - Education isn't just about having passed academic exams, but about being able to retain and use that knowledge. This guy obviously isn't going to be at all flexible in his thinking, but he knows his stuff. He probably tests well as well, so he looks good on paper. He also managed to learn the skills you'd expect of a young pilot/command-track officer, so he's clearly not got any learning difficulties when it comes to formal training.
All in all, he's the sort of officer that, given his family connections, keeps getting promoted because he looks good on paper and as long as he never runs into a crisis, performs well. He's also every COs nightmare, because they know that he's got the initiative of a pile of rocks, and if it hits the fan he'll be worse than useless, but because of his apparent competence they can't just stuff him somewhere out of the way. This is the sort of officer that gets a lot of good men killed should he ever have his deficiencies tested for real.
Badenov
SOC-12
He's not in the least-educated 3%, no. He is in the lowest int 3%, and I agree with the assessment that he's book-smart and maybe even takes exams well, at least if they're the sort of exams you can pass by memorizing things. As you say, if he needs to improvise, it will go poorly.
Badenov
SOC-12
That's much more nuanced and certainly a lot more kindly observed than I imagined the character. But it occurs to me that 2-12 isn't the limit of the human condition. It's simply a limit to playable characters. Below 2 in whatever stat, the character isn't appropriate to play.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
The point isn't useless, you can always repair the missile damage during the battle. The point is slower, it takes longer to kill each other...
Biggest and most imposing at parade, sure.
Probably even best per unit.
But any other capital ship class in FS would win with equal budget...
Quite, or just screen it and have a tender pick it up for transport to a shipyard.
LBB2'81, p5:
Assuming a competent medic and decent Endurance that is 4+ (33/36≈92% chance) to survive each thawing.
Badenov
SOC-12
Oh, the missile hits, sure. I'm not really considering any hit but the final meson hit meaningful, though I appreciate that a large enough nuke missile barrage can severely degrade you. Per errata, you can't use any weapons after you've been fuel tanked. With the meson hit, rolled as 14 hits for a Meson N, the best you can do is have your emergency crews, now that they're still alive, patch the fuel tank as best they can, so hopefully an ally can come and give you a few tons of fuel, so you can limp back to base.
This may be so, when I went through all the DNs on travellerrpg.com, I did not look at price.
Depending on whether a Tender is capable of towing the 500,000 hulk.
Oh, you're talking about waking the sleeping watch? Yeah, I know the tactic of overplanning the sleeping watch so that after that initial casualty rate, you'll have as many as you want alive.
This brings up a whole different question that may warrant its own thread: who takes low passage if not forced into it on pain of death? Is the entire frozen watch comprised of the terminally depressed? They're not going to be happy to be woken up. And I'm not taking a ride on any ship that tells me there's an 8% chance I'll die by going. This isn't 1650 when there was at least an 8% chance of horrible death from pretty much anything you did. And how can you say medical care is TL15 if you can't wake someone up when the process is nearly here at today (https://www.alcor.org/)?
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Aging rolls can take a stat below 2, still perfectly able to play, especially in CT.
The consensus over the years has been that military low berths suffer no chance of death, since there is no rule in HG for the frozen watch revival to roll immediately for a potential crew hit.
There have been many house rules over the years to fix the crew hits and fuel tanks shattered results, the crew sections fix is not very good IMHO.
The consensus over the years has been that military low berths suffer no chance of death, since there is no rule in HG for the frozen watch revival to roll immediately for a potential crew hit.
There have been many house rules over the years to fix the crew hits and fuel tanks shattered results, the crew sections fix is not very good IMHO.
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AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
Yes, that is the game at TL-15, IF you have the armour and screens to make missile hits unlikely. Still the missiles will slow down the kill rate of spinals, making them useful. If the enemy skimps on defences, the missiles can be decisive.
At TL-12 or so, the game is inflicting missile hits faster than the other fleet can repair them.
Even the mighty Imperial Navy has a budget...
Unless you want a third of all crits to write off a major combatant, you need the tenders...
The desperate. You have to go, but can't afford regular passage...
Badenov
SOC-12
Yes, but not much below 2, yes? Legal, sure. Perfectly? I would hesitate to use that term.
This certainly makes much more sense, however the rules read.
So, even if the Fuel Tanks Shattered result can be ignored, a Meson N hit, with 14 damage rolls, is looking at 2-3 'Screens-3' hits, which your Meson Screen is a big piece of your defense, two Jump -2 hits, which is stranding you in system until you can repair, two Computer-2 hits and a chance at a Comp-1 also, so you're -1 to hit, +1 to be hit per point of computer rating you're down. This is a death knell, too, if not as immediate. 1-2 Power Plant -2 hits, which directly impacts agility, and so your ship's defense, and 1-2 criticals, which could be anything, but almost certainly pretty bad. The vessel is out of the fight regardless, the best it can do is withdraw and hope its not pursued. If it's pursued, it probably can't get away as the power plant hits will drop the agility. If your battle line was still intact, you could shift it to your reserve line, and maybe the +2 might help it escape from there if the power plant wasn't broken too badly, making escape possible with possible with Emergency Agility. I suppose it's possible to repair systems, but a 9+ roll isn't easy even if you're in the reserve, you need to be in the reserve with full crew and you can only attempt the roll once per system regardless of the number of hits.
So the crew hits errata give a much better chance for player crew to survive a ship subject to a spinal hit, for what that's worth, and ameding the fuel tank shattered result can give you a dramatic struggle, but you're not getting back in the fight soon regardless. So a spinal's hit takes you out of the fight pretty much regardless of the fuel tank. Even without the fuel tank takedown, the computer hits takes you from being hit on an 11+ to being hit on a 7+, or worse depending on how badly the power plant got hit, and probably no screens because you're on Emergency Agility, but even so an enemy with no other targets can finish off a damaged ship pretty easily.
Badenov
SOC-12
And doesn't spend it very wisely, judging from the canon ships
I'm assuming they can help patch fuel tanks and highline a few tons of fuel so you can limp back to port. Not writing off anything if I can help it, though there's a few old beasts I'd just as soon turn into razorblades to recoup the cost.
I can't imagine being that desperate. This is 'Assassin droid from the future is after me'-level desperate.
I can. It's like playing Russian Roulette but with better odds -- and winning gets you a potentially better new life somewhere else.
Or you need to take a very long (multi-jump) trip. You only need to roll once for the whole trip, while you save the per-jump passage costs each and every hop.
Badenov
SOC-12
8% vs 16%? Sure, if I had to choose between cryosleep and Russian Roulette, I'd give cryosleep a go. As far as for a multi-month journey? 8,000 credits for a cabin vs 1,000 credits, so 7,000 credits per jump for an 8% chance of not arriving. Well, why am I travelling? I suppose if I were on some Hellworld where every day was an 8% chance of death, I'd take the chance to leave. But it just seems like a bad plan otherwise.
Look at the data on the efforts and risks people took (modern politics not permitted) to escape East Germany and Cuba from WW2 until 1977 [The start of Traveller]. There were [literally] MILLIONS of men, women and children more desperate than "Low Passage"!
Badenov
SOC-12
Well, yes, but they weren't just looking for a better life. They were fleeing Hellworlds of their own. I'll buy that the 16th century colonists were just looking for a better life, though fleeing the Black Death was a thing, too. But a trip with an 8% fatality rate wasn't so much worse for them than everyday life. The only people leaving the US or UK in a boat today are rich and not taking risks. Even the Titanic's lowest-class passengers didn't think they had an 8% chance to die.
A better comparison would be a $400 airplane ticket. Would anyone take a chance on paying $50 for that plane ticket on the 8% chance that you'd be killed on arrival?
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AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
Agreed.
Fuel tanks can be patched (after the battle), but a PP or JD critical can't...
I agree that as a Far Future version of "Economy Airfare" the LOW PASSAGE rules as written ... FAIL. I think the Pulp Fiction (Dumarest or whatever) inspiration was more like desperate masses escaping from hellworlds in bulk by any means possible. I never used it in my games because it never made sense to me.
Medical Fast Drug is cheaper, safer and only requires a room full of standard Couches (like on a small craft).
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
I agree with your general assessment, I make the roll fail more a damage event.
Fast Passage though is not without problems. To me it’s as much a last ditch technology, as a crazy low metabolism rate also means a low immune system response, and other vulnerabilities like eyes drying out or wounds not healing.
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