Small Ship High Guard

[infojunky]

I have been playing with several ideas recently, the most often occurring is how to use Book5 in a small ship universe.

Tenth scale ships in that bays are now five and ten tons and the spinal mounts and screens are divided by ten as well.

In this hardpoints are still one per 100 dTons with bays only taking one hardpoint as well.

Note PA barbettes are bay weapons while turrets still exist.

The second part is how to convert all of this into Book2 rules. Which for weapons damage is USP equals hits, basically converting the excess critical hits rule starting a zero size.

Armor is along the lines of first edition Book5 in either a ship is armored or it isn't, armored gives 4+ save vs. Hits. (Note I haven't played this rule a lot yet but it seems to work).

 

[McPerth]

In August 2016 flykiller and mike wightman played some small ship combat using HG system. You can review them in the following threads:

• http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=36605
• http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=36598
• http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=36574

Aside from being entertaining and instructive, I guess they may help you in this project...

 

[infojunky]

In August 2016 flykiller and mike wightman played some small ship combat using HG system. You can review them in the following threads:

• http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=36605
• http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=36598
• http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=36574

Aside from being entertaining and instructive, I guess they may help you in this project...

I'll look at those, but my rules set a combination of Mayday and Book2.

The rewrite of the Kunnir is lot more frightening with two PA 5 dTon bays and two 10 dTon missile bays.

 

[kilemall]

I've got a whole thing worked out with mashing LBB2 and LBB5 ships on the same combat resolution system, with LBB2 movement.


I'm almost happy with the missiles, the only thing I've got left is hopefully making the spinal weapons easier to resolve.


The trick is to convert everything to tons damage and fractional damage to the tonnage, and weapon damage too.


Throwaway freebie, do your missile design with SS3 and just multiply all the costs x15. In other words turret missiles are 50kg, bay missiles are 750kg. Each bay missile slot takes 1 ton, each 50-ton missile bay shot is 1 missile and each 100-ton missile bay shot is 2 bay missiles (so 25 shots each).

 

[mike wightman]

Are you intending to keep weapon USP ratings and battery rules or are you going to cap small ship weapons at the size of individual turrets?

Limiting USP ratings for turrets, 1-5 depending on weapon and TL gives you a clear distinction from bay weapons that tend to then have higher USP ratings.

Which damage tables are you going to use - will you keep the auto crit rule for weapon USP vs ship size?

 

[mike wightman]

By the way here is a thread from 16 years ago where I brought up using HG for PC scale combat:
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=3895

Some interesting discussion and I have changed a lot of my ideas over the years, but it may be worth a look.

 

[infojunky]

Are you intending to keep weapon USP ratings and battery rules ore are you going to cap small ship weapons at the size of individual turrets?

I am trying to ditch USP ratings, so yes capping damage at the single turret level.

Limiting USP ratings for turrets, 1-5 depending on weapon and TL gives you a clear distinction from bay weapons that tend to then have higher USP ratings.

Which damage tables are you going to use - will you keep the auto crit rule for weapon USP vs ship size?

Right now it is a variant of Book2 table, without critical hits. As for the auto crit rule I am using it to generate the number the number of hits a mount delivers, said formula is based on a size zero ship, so as such it works out USP is the amount of damage.

 

[kilemall]

Are you intending to keep weapon USP ratings and battery rules or are you going to cap small ship weapons at the size of individual turrets?

Limiting USP ratings for turrets, 1-5 depending on weapon and TL gives you a clear distinction from bay weapons that tend to then have higher USP ratings.

Which damage tables are you going to use - will you keep the auto crit rule for weapon USP vs ship size?

Who are you asking the question of?

 

[infojunky]

Who are you asking the question of?

I assumed it was towards me.

 

[mike wightman]

It was

 

[vegas]

I've got a whole thing worked out with mashing LBB2 and LBB5 ships on the same combat resolution system, with LBB2 movement.

Care to write it up and share with the rest of us? Would love to check it out.

 

[infojunky]

Care to write it up and share with the rest of us? Would love to check it out.

Actually am working on it. Right now its bits and pieces.

The base is Book2 turns, with Mayday movement and simplified computer rules. Damage table right now is Book2 without a critical hit entry.

Drive hits I am still figuring out, well drives in general. I am big fan of small fast ships vs lumbering battle wagons.

The weapons are as described before in this thread.

 

[whartung]

Actually am working on it. Right now its bits and pieces.

The base is Book2 turns, with Mayday movement and simplified computer rules. Damage table right now is Book2 without a critical hit entry.

Drive hits I am still figuring out, well drives in general. I am big fan of small fast ships vs lumbering battle wagons.

The weapons are as described before in this thread.

Mayday does have a paragraph or so mentioning High Guard. It's mostly to convert the hex distances in to long and short range.

What it doesn't discuss is things like battery mechanics for missile launchers and such, notably for missile bays. But those can be sussed out. Using simple curve fitting, I get:


Factor Missiles
7 42 (14 triple turrets)
8 57 (19 triple turrets)
9 72 (24 triple turrets)


this doesn't account for the TL boost in High Guard, just raw extrapolation of the missile table.

This is the math that Wolfram came up with:

# of missiles = 1.10714 * factor^2 - 2.15 * factor + 2.4

Feel free to maneuver 72 missiles in your games (I'd just use a single counter with OWIE! printed on it).

It also doesn't really reconcile 30 lasers shooting down 70 missiles in defensive fire.

But, it's good to have "data" to play with. Just one of the challenges of integrating the two.

Obviously the Mayday idea is to use HG combat resolution with actual maneuver ranges, uplifting a Book 2 ship to HG stats to suit combat, vs trying to lever an HG Bay or spinal into a detailed tactical game like Mayday.

 

[kilemall]

I'm not sure how you are getting those turret numbers. HG far as I can tell usually uses 10 turrets max for batteries, and has tech boosts to get those 8/9 factors.

 

[whartung]

I'm not sure how you are getting those turret numbers. HG far as I can tell usually uses 10 turrets max for batteries, and has tech boosts to get those 8/9 factors.

Bays have the higher numbers. At TL 10, 30 missile launchers (10 triple turrets) is a factor 6 From there, the 50 ton bay is a factor 7, and the 100 ton bay is a factor 8. All at the same TL.

Now, perhaps the bays launch bigger missiles that hit harder rather than simply more missiles.

All I was doing was simple extrapolation from the given chart to the higher factors to try to make the bays consistent and workable. "If we were playing Mayday and someone launched a 50 ton missile bay, what would it be like."

 

[infojunky]

Now, perhaps the bays launch bigger missiles that hit harder rather than simply more missiles.

Actually that is one of questions I have been beating my head over.

 

[vegas]

There is an in-depth write up analyzing missiles at Freelance Trav. I havent sat down and gone through at the reasoning, but he seems to show all his work. Might be worth a look.

https://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/shipyard/missilemags.html

 

[kilemall]

Oh I got that all worked out, extrapolating from SS3 and the missile bay descriptions from Striker's integration of ortillery.


Striker has the missile bays effectively being 1 dton per missile, so 50 missiles for the 50 ton bay and 100 missiles for the 100 ton bay.


The Striker bit further defines the missile diameters as a function of the HE warhead, so that can get you the missile size given that you know the bay missile has to be less then 1 dton and X diameter.


BTW I don't bother with HE effects from an HG bombardment, much more a kinetic thing most of the time, it would probably be a special shot or area effect thing to use actual explosives/submunitions.


Anyway, that led me to looking carefully at the missile bays and their relative power vs. a 'standard' turret missile.


Without going into the whole reasoning, I came up with a missile that is 15x the size and potency of a turret missile, and a very simple shot- 50 ton battery fire is one bay missile, 100 ton battery fire is two bay missiles.


The difference in relative power as the bays level up is all in the missile tech as it advances. The bay ones are armored and have big decoy/EW/advanced computers on board, averaging something like Cr100000-200000 per.


If doing CT SS3 shots then that would be 15 1d6 per missile and something like double the missile's G rating for -DM for evasion/EW/really expensive missile survival add-ons plus two hits to kill.



Easiest thing to do with SS3 would probably be to make a standard missile, multiply 15x then tack on Cr20000 for a survival package. Bay missiles would be 750kg, which fits nicely with the idea of a 1 d-ton silo that is mostly missile plus packing/control systems/launch.

 

[infojunky]

Speaking of missiles I pretty much ignore Striker. In that it had a set of rules bobbed on to simulate ships, which kinda work in terms of Striker terms but don't in terms of starships. Hence the muddled mess that MT is.

But the idea of standard vs. Bay missiles isn't a bad idea.

Also mucking around is the concept that ships thrust is limited by compensation, thus missiles can be pretty much any speed.

With those in mind we need to set a baseline for what a missile is. The 10g 1d6 damage with a endurance of five turns sounds good from here.

Then a bay missile of 10g 2d6 damage with five turns of endurance looks pretty good as well

Just so thoughts.

 

[kilemall]

Well that's 10G per HG factor, the SS3 conversion for direct impact is 1 hit every 3 combined delta vee (speed of missile +/- speed of target). So a turret missile hitting at deltavee 30 and assuming launch and target are 0 DV yields 10 hits +1d6 or whatever warhead effect.


I'm further more assuming a bit different mechanism for most missiles, the warheads are mostly heavy slugs doing kinetic damage by first getting a rapid boost and shot pattern from advanced HE, then their combined delta vee as per above. This matters because it determines armor penetration in addition to overall damage.


AND, that the relative damage levels that drop off between an HG battery hit of either variety and say an optimal turret SS3 swarm of missiles is explained by the combination of EW and maneuver to kinetic hit roll, yielding a buit-in wastage.