Speaking of Commerce Raiding; Keith Ships

[Blue Ghost]

Some of these posts have gotten me thinking about the old Book 2 and High Guard rules and I was wondering what others thoughts are on some of the basics. Specifically, I've always wondered what others thoughts are on what a turret, barbette, and other type weapons really are and what they look like.

I know over the years my views have changed on many of them, but to tell you the truth I never really understood what a berbette is really supposed to be.

Maybe this might be best as a separate post though, but I'd really be interested in other peoples thoughts. (I'll try and maybe put one together tommorrow).

Regards

PF

A barbette is a semi exposed weapon that fires from behind a piece of protection. Which has always puzzled me, since this implies that the weapons for starships were mounted externally, or had an engineering that implied some form of firing from "behind the hull" so to speak, but without the full protection of a proper turret.

Think of a canon on a sailing vessel, or rather a battery of them. That's a barbette.

 

[jappel]

A barbette is a semi exposed weapon that fires from behind a piece of protection. Which has always puzzled me, since this implies that the weapons for starships were mounted externally, or had an engineering that implied some form of firing from "behind the hull" so to speak, but without the full protection of a proper turret.

Think of a canon on a sailing vessel, or rather a battery of them. That's a barbette.

Or, perhaps, the implication was that the meaning of the term changed over time?

 

[Blue Ghost]

Or, perhaps, the implication was that the meaning of the term changed over time?

Oh, quite possibly.

 

[Whipsnade]

Your aspersions on MT are quite wrong, Bill.

Wil,

Do tell.

The MT combat system for ships IS high guard, adapted to the task system and a grid.

If it uses the task system it's not HG2. Only two Traveller RPG skills are specifically used in HG2, ship tactics and fleet tactics. There are vague mentions about using other skills but, given the metagame concerns about the small size of the 2D6 "decision space" and the quick way it can be distorted, plus in the in-game fact that an opponents will most likely have equal skills in gunnery, screens, piloting, etc., RPG skills are of little utility in a wargame.

As for MT's asinine "grid" movement, HG2 has "virtual" or "relative" movement and, if movement is desired, is explicitly linked to Mayday's vector system.

Also, almost every canonical ship design from CT was redone in MT terms, tho' most were released on the net...

Hence my use of the word published.

... rather than in print.

So you did note my use of the word published? And you point about published MT versus published CT designs is?

Only in the last 10 years has HG really seen a resurgence, and that due to T20, which has a compatible design system.

I'll have to disagree with that. While the Yahoo group ct_starships is roughly 10 years old and it did spark interest, the TML and other Traveller net groups were trading far more HG2 designs than any other well before that. They are all still trading more HG2 designs too.

I notice you didn't address my "Designed as more of a wargame than a RPG, and the design decisions reflect that" contention.

As I wrote, I'd love to see bays in sub-1Kdton ships, flexible battery assignments, and many other goodies, but I also understand why GDW made the design decisions they made.

I'm not agreeing with all those decisions and I'm not defending all those decisions, instead I'm explaining what I believe was the thinking behind all those decisions.


Regards,
Bill

 

[BlackBat242]

A barbette is a protective circular armour feature around a cannon or heavy artillery gun. The name comes from the French phrase en barbette referring to the practice of firing a field gun over a parapet (defensive wall) rather than through an opening (embrasure).

Before the complete introduction of the fully enclosed armoured gun turrets, a barbette was a fixed armoured enclosure protecting the gun. The barbette could take the form of a ring of armour around the gun mount over which the guns (possibly fitted with a gun shield) fired.*

In warships from the age of the dreadnought forward, the barbette is the non-rotating drum beneath the rotating gun turret (properly known as the "gunhouse") and above the armoured deck on a warship. It forms the protection for the upper ends of the hoists that lift shells and their propelling charges (e.g. cordite) from the magazines below.

When applied to military aircraft, a barbette is a position on an aircraft where a gun, or guns, are in a mounting which has a restricted arc of fire when compared to a turret. As such it is frequently used to describe the tail gunner position on bombers such as the B-17 Flying Fortress.

The term "barbette" is often, used with military aircraft of World War II, to refer to remotely aimed and operated gun turret, which itself has no human presence directly within its mechanics-the German Messerschmitt Me 210 and Me 410 Hornisse had twin remote turrets, one per side, for rearwards defense, the Heinkel He 177 had such a turret for its forward dorsal defense.


*

 

[atpollard]

Traveller defines a barbette as a large turret and provides a perfctly clear example of one on the Gazelle Class Close Escort.

"Particle accelerators are also available in barbettes. A barbette is similar to a turret, but larger." - CT Bk5, p30

If you apply the 1900 definition of a 'Dreadnaught' to the 100k+ dTon starships that bear that name, you will run into problems as well.

 

[sabredog]

When applied to military aircraft, a barbette is a position on an aircraft where a gun, or guns, are in a mounting which has a restricted arc of fire when compared to a turret. As such it is frequently used to describe the tail gunner position on bombers such as the B-17 Flying Fortress.

BlackBat's point here is the one I would have to agree with the most as likely way the barbette is applied in HG, or similar to say, the 5"/50 casemate guns found on the Arizona: limited arc of fire and behind sliding or dropped doors (or depending on the weather, just canvas in this case).

But I have always assumed the restricted arc of fire with a bigger weapon than you can put in a turret, in order to provide something between a turret and a bay was the general idea of the barbette in Traveller no matter how the word was used at various times in wet navy history.

 

[Rigel Stardin]

Everyone know I'm doing the Leif Ericson build. I figured I'd get the answer here alot faster. According to Sabredog's description of the ship of the Ericson it has 2 100 ton Missile Bays. One of my missile Long range missile stamps measure 5 meters and (with launch equipment and packaging) is approximately 1 meter in diamater. That would give me 3 missiles per 3 meter high deck.
Now, I laid out a 25 ton missile bay (50 by 10 1.5 meter squares) not realizing that he had 2 100 ton bays :O. When I did the math for how many missiles would be in that bay I came up with 450 missiles per 100 tons. What the heck? Who needs a fleet when one 100 ton bay (Invasion fleet in my universe is 64 vessels) 7 missiles in each one?
Crud, I designed a planetary bombardment invisioned with a 1000 missiles, thinking four of them would be enough to bomb the stuffing out of a planet? Now you're telling it's common for warships in Traveller to carry 450 missiles?

Imagine this:

GM: My cruiser moves into range of the Ericson actting very hostile towards you. What do you do?

Player: Warn them to stand down.

GM: They fire a shot across your bow telling you they have no intention of backing down and your Tactical officer indicates they have a target lock on your ship.

Player: I give the order to my weapon's officer to fire two salvos from both missile bays.

GM turns pail: 60 missiles?

Player smiles: Dodge that *&^%$$#!.....

The question I have to ask, is how many missiles are in a one hundred ton bay?

 

[sabredog]

Somewhere there used to be a number, but it was probably back in HG1 when you also had to build a missile magazine in order to have enough for planetary bombardment.

You can look at it a couple of ways - first way is that the missiles are much bigger than the ones a Scout will shoot out of a turret, more accurate, and longer range. So you probably don't need a huge number except for ortillery. Therefore it's kind of like today's missile cruiser that shoots 20 -30 missiles out of it's vertical launch boxes in a matter of a few minutes, overwhelms the enemy in a Yamato-Missile swarm thing, and then it's empty. But....it probably doesn't need to use them all at the same time since they are good missiles, etc.

Or, like in my house rule: they are bigger than the ones shot out of a Scout turret, have longer range, and are faster, more accurate, etc. But a 50 ton bay carries 12 and fires 4 at a time, while a 100 ton bay carries 24 and fires 8 at a time. They are about 25cm sized warheads as compared to the 15cm warheads in the smaller turret version. For every ton of missile magazine you get a 4-missile launch box to reload the bay weapon with. The boxes are kicked out by the launcher when they are empty.

 

[sabredog]

Also....since missiles are used at long range, while penalized for use at short range I've usually assumed that the racks, launchers, bays, whatever where empty by the time the ship closed to beam weapon range. It only makes sense to fire everything you have while you've still got the chance.

 

[Rigel Stardin]

My thoughts on missiles boiled down to real world examples.

The newer type destoryer use a box system which is reload when they are in port (Don't quote me because I have looked at my Jane's warship identification book yet) but they carry up to 32 missiles.

On Topic:

This is one reason why I didn't use the traveller model for weapons systems in bays. Bays to me means Robotech model (and I know what you are talking about). A commander of a ship want's that option to volley fire as many missiles as possible. I never got into HGS so I don't know how missile bays are handled or how volley fire would work under that system.

The second thing about having such large amounts of ordinance in one location means one critical hit could destroy your ship in a heartbeat (again real world creeps in).

Using your example, military archtects would use something simular to a torpedo launching system. The box of 8 would move down a rail system in a straight line. This would allow for crew members to push the missile containers to the launcher if the power went out. They there would be a manual way of loading the launcher.

So for the sake of this discussion, let say 20 tons for launcher reload system and another 30 tons for the turret. We're still looking at about a 225 missiles in each one of these bays. 450 missile is quite a lot for any ship to carry?

Using the model in this thread, 10 tons for the Loader and 15 for the turrent leaves you with 25 tons of missiles. That gives this ship about 112 missiles. And I'm just talking about long range missile here.

Either two things have happen in Traveller: The first being the missile are very large and do little or no damage to another warship or they geared the game towards particle weapons with missiles being an after thought?

 

[sabredog]

I know what you mean about it seeming like an awful lot of missiles, but when you look over the HG tables to see what it takes to hit and damage a ship with the things, it does take a lot of them if they are your primary weapon - and - energy weapons are not allowed at long range and beams are at -1DM.

Missiles have to get through anti-missile fire, repulsors, armor, and nuclear dampers (if they are nuclear, which are the only kind really bothering with in the game). So saturation is, as it is now, the name of the game. The Robotech-missile-swarm. And even then the damage is mainly surface, but.....

Since it starts at long range, a salvo or so of them can help "scrub off" some of the beam and energy weapons that do the real killing before you close ranges with the enemy.

So the strictly interpreted HG missile bay (even given the level of abstraction HG has already - I mean, what does a PAW bay look like? A bunch of the things, or just one honking huge PAW that's like a small spinal weapon of he same?) probably has a huge number of launchers (of whatever description you want) that ripples off a katyusha-like swarm until empty.

Because magazines were removed from the HG design rules I've taken that to mean the designers figure the actual number of missiles is inconsequential relative to the length of time the ship will need them for combat. In other words, since you really can't easily kill a capital ship in HG (or anything large enough to carry dampers and repulsors) with missiles, then closing to enemy and using beams is going to be more important, and the missiles (which are penalized for range at that point) become mainly small craft defenses along with all those little laser turrets.

You realistically might not have more than a few bay missiles left by the time you close anyway.

 

[sabredog]

And my ideas for how many are in a bay, etc., are for my "small ship" (5000t-) game which is the scale the players are active in. If they encounter some monster 250kt Imperial Navy battleship the spinal weapon they could probably fly inside and the PAW bay turrets bigger than their own ship are more worriesome than counting how many hundreds of missiles the beast can salvo every round.

So I scaled it down to a level where they might encounter a 3kt Colonial Navy destroyer with 2 missile bays and a PAW bay, and with my house rule while they might certainly be over-matched, if they actual decided to fight it for some insane reason, they might last long enough to get a chance to surrender or abandon ship before their 400 ton freighter is vaporized. It's a decision I made long ago to blend together some level of HG design with LBB2 to add more to the player-level RPG experience and has a lot more involved than just the bay weapon thing (custom hit tables for ships, sectional armor, protected "citadel"-type bridges, decoy drone missiles and "Growler" fighters, etc.)

But when the action switches from the LLB2 level to Hg because they get involved in a major fleet action, I go strictly with the HG rules or it would take days to resolve.