Small bay weapons?

[BlackBat242]

David Drake has a sci-fi trilogy (Igniting the Reaches, Through the Breach, Fireships) in which spaceships carry their armament internally, then open ports and extend the muzzles of their energy cannon outside the hull to fire.

The series is based on Sir Francis Drake's voyages.


I had thought this was too contrived... until I found a thread on the Warships Projects board about a class of corvettes/gunboats Finland built in the 1960s.

They had two multi-barreled anti-sub rocket launchers mounted internally, which swung outside the hull to fire.


How do you guys picture bay weapons functioning?


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Finnish Turunmaa-class gunboats

The Finnish Turunmaa-class gunboats carried two RBU-1200 anti-submarine rocket launchers. The RBU-1200 launchers were mounted inside the ship.

The bulkhead behind the launcher is fitted to slide up and over the launcher, in the manner of a garage door made up of horizontal panels. You can see the segments, the hinges, the rails it slides up&over on, and the locking lugs on the sides of the segments. At the left outboard edge of the plate the launcher is mounted on can be seen the pivot-hinge next to the door in question. The mount rotates on that pivot and would clear the door.

In action the the door is opened, the RBU is swung outside, and then the door closes to keep the blast out from the hull. The RBU is fixed forwards for firing and is fully external.

This is because this model uses manual reloading, although larger RBUs are reloaded automatically. This system stops crews from having to run around the cramped deck of a small ship in a seaway... especially in the snow, wind, & waves of a north Baltic winter. They can reload and maintain the RBU in comfort.

The door is just aft of the 04 in this pic:

 

[FreeTrav]

David Drake has a sci-fi trilogy (Igniting the Reaches, Through the Breach, Fireships) in which spaceships carry their armament internally, then open ports and extend the muzzles of their energy cannon outside the hull to fire.

The series is based on Sir Francis Drake's voyages.


I had thought this was too contrived... until I found a thread on the Warships Projects board about a class of corvettes/gunboats Finland built in the 1960s.

Don't forget that this was also a pretty much standard sort of arrangement in the age of "wooden ships and iron men".

It also seems to be common in MilSF; in addition to the David Drake series you name, it applies to his Republic of Cinnabar Navy series (Daniel Leary/Adele Mundy series), and apparently also to David Weber's Honor Harrington series. Dave Grossman's Two-Space series uses it, too, but that's a very special case - to explain why would be significantly spoily, so I'll just suggest that you read the two books, The Guns of Two Space and The Two Space War.

 

[Max]

I never envisioned space weapons being like this but it does make sense actually. I always pictured energy weapons bays as being internal with a "barrel" sticking through the hull and the machinery inside, but this makes sense too. The crew would have to be vacc suited and the bay would be kept in a vacuum so it wouldn't be subject losing atmosphere in combat. I think for smaller weapons it wouldn't work like this, a regular missile turret would have an airlock for the missile (like a torpedo on a submarine) and turrets/barbettes would still be 'barrels' sticking through the hull. (Particularly on a warship) it would make sense as a way of minimizing battle damage too, to have bays in vacuum with armoured blast ports which retract when the weapon fires (except for meson guns which can go right through the hull). As long as operating in vacuum isn't a serious problem this makes a lot of sense.

 

[sabredog]

I've always imagined this was how the HG bays worked since the rules state that when the bays isn't equipped with weapons it can be used to carry cargo, small craft, air/rafts, or whatever the bay was big enough to hold. This implies that the bay is a bay and equipped with some kind of doors for keeping the stuff inside so it doesn't just float off in zero-g, or fall out in atmosphere. Likewise you don't want the launchers and weapons to be burned off during skimming or re-entry.

The idea that ships have to be streamlined to enter atmo, or at least partial so to skim fuel again implies that bay weapons (since turrets may already be assumed to be streamlined since all the Book 2 starships use them) must either inside the ship with closed doors (which fits with the "bays can hold other stuff" rule), or, that bays on streamlined ships are streamlined along with the hull and not interchangeable with other bay weapons from non-streamlined craft (which doesn't follow the HG rules).

As for my TU solution - I decided that bays were merely big turrets analogous to the heavy turrets on capital ships today, and if the ship is partially/fully streamlined then the bays are contoured as such, too. You can't swap out a bay and use the space for cargo, but you could always swap out for another bay weapon.

Barbettes are like casemate guns on capital ships, too...limited arc of fire (not that that really matters much since HG takes care of firing arcs with size of the ship), and the weapon either slides out of opened doors when the ship beats to quarters (streamlined version), or the doors close around the bay to seal it when not in use, but the weapon extends out through the doors.

Missile bays are either like the rotating box launchers on ships today, or open up with auto loading magazines from the rear.

BTW: no matter how you slice it, since in HG armor comes into play you also have to assume either the big turret idea or interior gun w/ armored doors concept to take into account that armor protects the weapon. The fact that exterior explosions on the damage table take out weapons seems to lean in the direction that at least some part of the weapon is sticking out there to be scrubbed off, but it need not be all of the bay - just damaging the part sticking out is enough for at the desired results.

 

[Icosahedron]

I've always pictured turrets to be of the Lancaster Bomber / Millennium Falcon variety, and bays to be a larger, half within the hull variety, looking a bit like the NCC-1701 shuttle bay.

 

[Whipsnade]

BlackBat242,

I'd think the RBU-1200 mounting is more akin to Traveller's pop-up turrets than anything else.

As for bays, as first described in HG2 they've always been internal or nearly wholly internal. The AHL deckplans show them as such too.

Sabredog's idea about weapon bays resembling large gun turrets is spot on - IF you also remember that most of that gun system occupies a multideck space within the vessel. The big rotating turret is just the only part of the system you see and it's the smaller part of the entire system at that.

In the OTU, missile bays are VLS types and will only show armored hatches externally, repulser and meson bays needn't extend anything beyond the hull, while only energy weapon and particle accelerator bays will sport a "turret".

While Max's idea of a bay opening armored doors to space to reveal a Honking Huge Weapon (tm) and it's handling crew is visually arresting, it's also not Traveller.


Regards,
Bill

P.S. Weapons work the way they do in both of Drake's "retrotech" series more because of the author's desire to invoke a certain era and less because of any technical considerations.

 

[Starviking]

It's not just the Finns. The Royal Navy's Limbo Anti-Sub Mortar was in a recessed pit in the Leander Class, and in the Canadian St. Laurent Class, which was based off the predecessor to the Leander, had the Limbos under cover.

The Canadian didn't just limit this to anti-sub weapons - the Sea Sparrow Anti-Air Weapon on the Iroquois Class flipped out from either side of a deckhouse forward of the bridge.

Of course, they had good reasons for keeping weapons 'out of the weather' - the North Atlantic was hard on men and machinery.

So, you really just need good reasons for keeping your weapons under hatches.

I'll note that TNE kept all of their weapons under cover - though this was probably more due to the 'laser array' concept in TNE rather than environmental concerns.

 

[Jame]

The Judges Guild Ley Sector book has a 1000 ton patrol ship with a 10-ton bay, and MGT has 50-ton bays that can be mounted on any vessel (something they got exactly right). I'd be interested in seeing an any-version variation on the 10 ton bay ... something that, say, launches a flight of 4-6 missiles if it's a missile bay, or a particle bay that does more damage than a turret PB, but less than a 50-ton PB.

 

[sabredog]

The first edition of HG had 10 and 20 ton bays - the AHL and Kinunirs had them for that reason. You could always put them back under house rules if you just extrapolate the HG values. Or hunt up the old HG edition.

 

[Whipsnade]

The first edition of HG had 10 and 20 ton bays - the AHL and Kinunirs had them for that reason.

Sabredog,

Neither the Kinunir or AHL classes have 10 and 20 ton bays.

The Kinunir-class' armament consists of "Dual ventral missile turrets, each with semi-automated missile launch racks. Charged/neutral particle accelerator tip turrets (port and starboard). Anti-boat laser batteries along dorsal surface."

The AHL vessels each have 24 fifty ton bays. The actual weaponry installed in each bay depends on which retrofit or modernization program an individual hull has experienced.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Whipsnade]

...and MGT has 50-ton bays that can be mounted on any vessel (something they got exactly right).

Jame,

While I personally like the idea of weapon bays being mounted on vessels below 1,000 dTons displacement and have run HG2 tourneys with that houserule in place, I cannot except MgT's invalidation of over thirty years of canonical ship designs. As with TNE's HEPlaR and lasers, the change simply effects far too much.

I also cannot accept the MgT bay weaponry change when it was admitted by DonM on these fora that he, Robject, and Marc Miller missed the change when vetting Mongoose's version of High Guard. Mongoose Matt's assertion that the change would have most likely been have been signed off on if it had been noticed is little more than another weak rationalization after the fact.

I'd be interested in seeing an any-version variation on the 10 ton bay ... something that, say, launches a flight of 4-6 missiles if it's a missile bay, or a particle bay that does more damage than a turret PB, but less than a 50-ton PB.

I'd love to see that also, as a variation and not as part of the OTU.


Regards,
Bill

 

[robject]

The Judges Guild Ley Sector book has a 1000 ton patrol ship with a 10-ton bay, and MGT has 50-ton bays that can be mounted on any vessel (something they got exactly right). I'd be interested in seeing an any-version variation on the 10 ton bay ... something that, say, launches a flight of 4-6 missiles if it's a missile bay, or a particle bay that does more damage than a turret PB, but less than a 50-ton PB.

T5 (well, the draft) has bays that can go as low as 17 tons, and barbettes which can potentially run up to 16 tons. There are, of course, caveats and quid pro quos with the use of these things.

 

[sabredog]

Sabredog,

Neither the Kinunir or AHL classes have 10 and 20 ton bays.

The Kinunir-class' armament consists of "Dual ventral missile turrets, each with semi-automated missile launch racks. Charged/neutral particle accelerator tip turrets (port and starboard). Anti-boat laser batteries along dorsal surface."

The AHL vessels each have 24 fifty ton bays. The actual weaponry installed in each bay depends on which retrofit or modernization program an individual hull has experienced.


Regards,
Bill

On page 4 on my Classic Games Traveller book from FFE it says the AHL had (in the Ship Description paragraph) "Distributed along the dorsal and ventral surfaces are twenty-four ten-ton bays."

It then goes on to describe how variants were armed; each variant again having the ten-ton bays describe with it's variant's weapons for that size bay.

Now on page 5 it says in the detail breakdown with all the fake model names for the weapons and such that the bays are 50-ton bays, and on page 12 -13 they give both the first edition and second edition HG info and stats on the AHL variants explining that the two editions were different.

So, yes, the original AHL statistics had 10-ton bays...ok, maybe not 20-ton too, but at least the original HG AHL had the little bays that grew bigger in later editions.

As for the Kinunir, mea culpa...I thought the particle accelerators were 10-ton bay weapons, not just turrets. I never thought the design was any good anyway.

 

[Whipsnade]

On page 4 on my Classic Games Traveller book from FFE it says the AHL had (in the Ship Description paragraph) "Distributed along the dorsal and ventral surfaces are twenty-four ten-ton bays." (and) So, yes, the original AHL statistics had 10-ton bays...ok, maybe not 20-ton too, but at least the original HG AHL had the little bays that grew bigger in later editions.

Sabredog,

Total up the displacement of all the components in the HG1e version and you'll be in for an odd surprise.

Oh, and IIRC, a vessel still had to be > or = 1,000 dTons in HG1e to carry a weapon bay.


Regards,
Bill

 

[sabredog]

Sabredog,

Total up the displacement of all the components in the HG1e version and you'll be in for an odd surprise.

Oh, and IIRC, a vessel still had to be > or = 1,000 dTons in HG1e to carry a weapon bay.

I no longer have a copy of HG1e so whats the surprise? Lemme guess..like almost all the official designs the thing either went over or was well under the spec size?

As for the whole bay thing, regardless of edition, the biggest thing to remember in my opinion is that you have to have to deduct 1000 tons from the total available tonnage for weapon mounts for every bay weapon you add regardless of size of bay. Now, while that keeps things from going way overboard with ships just bristling with so many guns it'd take days to roll the dice, I think if you are going to house rule 10 and 20 ton bays back into HG then maybe 2 of those could fit on 1000 tons. Just a thought.

This also makes you ask if the things are really needed at all on ships much smaller than 5000 tons +? An awful lot of missile and laser turrets can do more damage on the small ship scale than one bay weapon. But if you at least allow 2 10 or 20 ton bays per 1000 tons, and 1 50 or 100 ton per 1000 then you have some rationale for even including them on smaller (5000 tons or less) ships. Personally, I'd rather have 5 triple missile and 5 triple laser turrets instead of one bay of any size unless I was designing a 20kt destroyer and needed a wide variety of weapons.

 

[Whipsnade]

I no longer have a copy of HG1e so whats the surprise? Lemme guess..like almost all the official designs the thing either went over or was well under the spec size?

Sabredog,

Got it in one.

I don't remember that exact size, but once you totaled up all the various component displacements the bays in the HG1e version of the AHL work out to well over 10 tons and much closer to the 2e fifty ton size.

Sadly, too many ships were caught either partially or wholly designed between the two editions.

As for the whole bay thing, regardless of edition, the biggest thing to remember in my opinion is that you have to have to deduct 1000 tons from the total available tonnage for weapon mounts for every bay weapon you add regardless of size of bay.

That's the biggest change Mongoose made. It wasn't that smaller available bay sizes, it was that they were available for smaller ships.

This also makes you ask if the things are really needed at all on ships much smaller than 5000 tons +?

Very much so. Very, very, very much so.

A bay equals 1,000 dTons equals 10 turrets. You can usually get the same battery factor with a bay that you can with 10 turrets. However, if you allow the bays we have now to be installed in for less than 1,000 dTons, they become a better choice than turrets.

The problem facing smaller vessels at higher tech levels in HG2 has to do with their growing inability to hit and penetrate. They face a growing computer gap and a narrowing agility gap while employing small battery factors. If you increase the battery factors, smaller vessels stay dangerous at higher tech levels.

Now, having small vessels stay dangerous longer is a good idea. It's why I've played with sub-1,000dTon bays for decades. Having small vessels stay deadly longer is not part of the OTU however. It's a fundamental change that invalidates most canonical warship designs either directly or indirectly.

The direct invalidation would mean that nearly all small vessels now resemble the LBB:2 designed Kinunir-class which is woefully "under-gunned" for it's size. The indirect invalidation would involve the weapons load-out of larger designs, more dangerous smaller vessels would mean larger vessels would carry more "smaller" batteries with which to counter them.


Regards,
Bill

 

[sabredog]

I see your point, I keep forgetting that bays are more efficient in forming effective batteries in HG since I don't often get to use the pure HG rules for combat. I blended HG with Book 2 IMTU since I prefer Book 2 combat on the player scale, and HG for window dressing. Or for gaming out major battles on those rare instances players actually get to participate.

So in my relatively small ship universe bays are still more effective for damage, but this is expressed in the range they hit at and the armor they can punch through. My naval doctrine also prefers beam lasers as anti-missile/small craft type weapons so they are used on the small ship level as independent weapon stations in those capacities.

Since at this level a 5000 cruiser will have an armor of 5, and the average PC or civilian ship an armor of 0-1 even a 50-ton PAW bay will ruin your day at twice the range of a laser, while at the same time your own lasers (if you can get to close range) probably won't do more than scorch the paint on the cruiser.

But I have stuck with the 50 and 100 ton bays. I've toyed with the smaller ones, but like yourself I think they might be too much, especially if more are allowed per 1000 tons - or on ships smaller than that. That's what barbettes are for anyway.

 

[Starviking]

The Condor class SDB and the Chameleon class commerce raider from FASA's Adventure Class Ships Vol.1 each have one 50-ton missile bay, on 500 and 800 displacement tons respectively.

 

[atpollard]

Personally, I would like to see a pair of Bay Missiles fixed mounted to a fighter.

 

[Jame]

Jame,

*snip*

I also cannot accept the MgT bay weaponry change when it was admitted by DonM on these fora that he, Robject, and Marc Miller missed the change when vetting Mongoose's version of High Guard. Mongoose Matt's assertion that the change would have most likely been have been signed off on if it had been noticed is little more than another weak rationalization after the fact.



I'd love to see that also, as a variation and not as part of the OTU.


Regards,
Bill

This just demonstrate the difference in the flexibility of what we individually consider canon. IMTU, it's like AIs and small computers - just because the 3I never did, doesn't mean that they couldn't, just that they didn't try. I, personally, think that there's room for it. Take my opinion, your opinion, think and satisfy yourself. :smirk:

Oh - it is important to note that I have never, ever, not once played space combat using the HG rules.