Spinal rail guns? not come across them. TCS, you say? i was under the impression that was a mainly a fluff book. does it have a lot of extra ship options? I've gone with a PA spinal, type A-10, 4000 tons, 220 damage.
Just under 3 pages of new equipment. The Rail Guns aren't terribly effective.
A TLA Type A RG spinal would take up 4,050 tons, ammo is 20 tons per shot.
Damage would be 126, ignoring 3 points of armour as a penetration I weapon,
but the remaining armour reduces 20 points of damage per level, so 10 points of armour renders you impervious to damage.
I think they need to be beefed up and possibly reduced in size.
I haven't used Missile packs in any designs either, they might be effective at TLA. One ton of 12 missiles that take up a hardpoint and all fire at once, but can only be reloaded in port, looks like the Terrans used Missile boats...
anyway, i'm going to modify the design and make a "super destroyer" varient. since it's going to have quite bit more space for extras, what do you guys think would be useful capabilies for a destroyer? I was thinking something along the lines of a company-odd of marines, 1 or 2 boarding shuttles for customs work, and a few bigger shuttles for both moving the marines about and general cargo hauling.
Do Launch tubes incorporate a booster? Even so I don't think range would be greater than adjacent, although 10 x 20 ton balls of metal would make quite a mess of the paint work at least...
Right, my Tl 10 captial ship, Mk 2 (non spinal version). Apologies for the delay, but I have this really inconvinent thing called a job. I mean, the moneys nice, but i eats spare time up like something crazy.......
TL 10 Flight Deck Cruiser.
Size= 10,000 Dtons (CF), standard (100Mcr)
armour Crystalion 10 points (12.5% of hull. 1,250 tons, 50% base cost, 50Mcr),
Hull/Structure points: 142/142 3 sections each with 42/42
cost: 4963.83 Mcr with full complement of small craft and ammo. 3784.82 MCr “empty”
quick run down of changes:
Removed spinal and the missle bays, as being tonnage heavy and of questionable use at TL 10 against heavily armoured ships.
In their place, I installed 40 x 50ton PA bays, with Very High Yeild upgrade. +2 on all barrages, baby! (you missed that trick, McPerth. it's gonna skew the barrage fire results even more in favour of PAs), which is going to form the centerpiece of the ships offensive armament. I've also added a extra 20 turrets to beef up point defense.
With the thousands of tons of freed up space, I was able to install a 40 ton launch tube, and a respectable smallcraft group. 12 40 ton torp bombers and 16 10 ton fighters, plus fuel for 4 weeks flight and about 7 torps per bomber.
I also added two more slow pinnaces, both for general shuttle use, and because 4 slow pinnaces, can, by chance, carry enough torpedos to completely re-arm the bombers. I think it'd be a real sneaky trick: launch a strike, "bug out" to a pre-planned RV away form the mothership, re-arm, then launch a 2nd strike without giving away your carrier.
Still having a bit of tonnage left over, i doubled the size of the marine detachment, then staffed the ship to 120% manning to give it some ability to take crew hits, and added a score of spare staterooms for vistors, etc. and i still have a bigger cargo bay than before!
on the whole, i think this is a much more effective design than my first attempt. It's much more suitable for semi-independant ops. I can see one of these getting parked in a system and being able to exhert influence around a planet quite easily. It's perfect for a frontier or "early-days" navy, where a ship like this might be the biggest (or even only) navy vessal in a system.
Also, it's actaully cheaper, by about half a billion Cr, even with a full load. just for the ship with no stores or smallcraft, it's like 1.7 Billion credits cheaper.
its got two major weakness', off the top of my head.
1) No screens to deal with meason fire. It's got the space to retro-fit them, though, if ported into a higher TL setting.
2) It;s only J1, which limits it's strategic mobility. In a TL10 setting, it's no slower than any other ship, but agianst TL 11 or higher, it'd a bit slow. Then
again, a higher Jump ship would need to be bigger to carry the same payload.
Small note: I've done the price sums assuming the use of the 40 ton Torpedp Bomber form High Guard (pg 99) and the Mk III interceptor from Traders and Gunboats (pg 36), which are a TL12 and a TL11 design, techically. However, the only parts that are at those TLs are the computers. if you downgrade the computers to model/2s and the programs they run as well, the craft drops down to TL10. they;d be slightly cheaper but by about 1.2 Mcr per ship, which i felt wasn't worth worrying about on a 5 billion credit budget..
So, once agian, questions? critques? mistakes (i know thier must be one in thier somewhere)
Right, my Tl 10 captial ship, Mk 2 (non spinal version). Apologies for the delay, but I have this really inconvinent thing called a job. I mean, the moneys nice, but i eats spare time up like something crazy.......
TL 10 Flight Deck Cruiser.
Size= 10,000 Dtons (CF), standard (100Mcr)
armour Crystalion 10 points (12.5% of hull. 1,250 tons, 50% base cost, 50Mcr),
Hull/Structure points: 142/142 3 sections each with 42/42
cost: 4963.83 Mcr with full complement of small craft and ammo. 3784.82 MCr “empty”
quick run down of changes:
Removed spinal and the missle bays, as being tonnage heavy and of questionable use at TL 10 against heavily armoured ships.
In their place, I installed 40 x 50ton PA bays, with Very High Yeild upgrade. +2 on all barrages, baby! (you missed that trick, McPerth. it's gonna skew the barrage fire results even more in favour of PAs), which is going to form the centerpiece of the ships offensive armament. I've also added a extra 20 turrets to beef up point defense.
Yes, I missed the upgradings for extra barrage modifiers, but it seems my main point (until de appearence of mesons, PBs are the best weapons, and forget about missiles) hit home .
This aside, I guess I'm too contamined with CT/MT limits to bays to think about them most times .
With the thousands of tons of freed up space, I was able to install a 40 ton launch tube, and a respectable smallcraft group. 12 40 ton torp bombers and 16 10 ton fighters, plus fuel for 4 weeks flight and about 7 torps per bomber.
I also added two more slow pinnaces, both for general shuttle use, and because 4 slow pinnaces, can, by chance, carry enough torpedos to completely re-arm the bombers. I think it'd be a real sneaky trick: launch a strike, "bug out" to a pre-planned RV away form the mothership, re-arm, then launch a 2nd strike without giving away your carrier.
Still having a bit of tonnage left over, i doubled the size of the marine detachment, then staffed the ship to 120% manning to give it some ability to take crew hits, and added a score of spare staterooms for vistors, etc. and i still have a bigger cargo bay than before!
on the whole, i think this is a much more effective design than my first attempt. It's much more suitable for semi-independant ops. I can see one of these getting parked in a system and being able to exhert influence around a planet quite easily. It's perfect for a frontier or "early-days" navy, where a ship like this might be the biggest (or even only) navy vessal in a system.
Also, it's actaully cheaper, by about half a billion Cr, even with a full load. just for the ship with no stores or smallcraft, it's like 1.7 Billion credits cheaper.
its got two major weakness', off the top of my head.
1) No screens to deal with meason fire. It's got the space to retro-fit them, though, if ported into a higher TL setting.
2) It;s only J1, which limits it's strategic mobility. In a TL10 setting, it's no slower than any other ship, but agianst TL 11 or higher, it'd a bit slow. Then
again, a higher Jump ship would need to be bigger to carry the same payload.
Small note: I've done the price sums assuming the use of the 40 ton Torpedp Bomber form High Guard (pg 99) and the Mk III interceptor from Traders and Gunboats (pg 36), which are a TL12 and a TL11 design, techically. However, the only parts that are at those TLs are the computers. if you downgrade the computers to model/2s and the programs they run as well, the craft drops down to TL10. they;d be slightly cheaper but by about 1.2 Mcr per ship, which i felt wasn't worth worrying about on a 5 billion credit budget..
So, once agian, questions? critques? mistakes (i know thier must be one in thier somewhere)
I agree it seems quite a nice design for its TL. It's versatile and has quite a hard punch. Personally I'd change the bombers for more fighters, but that's a matter of taste/doctrine, not a fawlty design matter.
It has no meson screens, among other things, because they are TL 12...
If it faces TL11 or more ships, the short jump capacity will not be the worst of its problems, as it would have to face meson guns too...
Well, the neat thing about the hangar sizing in Mgt is that 4 10 ton hangers and 1 40 ton hanger are the same tonnage, so swtiching to an air wing of 64 10 ton fighters would mostly be just a question of adding in the extra staterooms, and since you're dtich the torpedo stowage, you're set for space.
At 17 tons a fighter (13 ton hanger and a stateroom for the pilot and mechanic), you can carry suprisingly large numbers, even on what is quite a small ship. at TL 11, A 50 KT carrier might well be able to carry a thousand 10 ton craft (17,000 tons, not that much more than some spinal mounts).
thats starting to approach scary numbers. arm them with 2d6 pluse lasers and your looking at a barrage of 2000 points!
It has no meson screens, among other things, because they are TL 12...
If it faces TL11 or more ships, the short jump capacity will not be the worst of its problems, as it would have to face meson guns too...
well, like i said, theirs room to add in meson screens as the TL goes up, espically since the P plant shrinks 125 tons/20% at TL 11.
by the way, the wiki seems to imply that the vlani never developed meson weapons. Is that actuallly cannon, or just gurps playing with things? they also say that vlani didn't use spinal mount ships before the mid-IW period either, though thats more or less in line with what we worked out anyway (it;s not really viable at TL 10, and i doubt its much better at TL 11.
by the way, the wiki seems to imply that the vlani never developed meson weapons. Is that actuallly cannon, or just gurps playing with things? they also say that vlani didn't use spinal mount ships before the mid-IW period either, though thats more or less in line with what we worked out anyway (it;s not really viable at TL 10, and i doubt its much better at TL 11.
IIRC that's not only true, but the using of them by the Solomani demoralized them because they were remembered of the ships closing Sabmiqys and exploding from inside (the first Vilani encountering with meson attacks, though by then they didn't know that). Sorry, I cannot give you exact reference for this right now, but (again IIRC) it was in a challenge that told about Sabmiqys.
I read again HG and found this:
So, they seem to be useless against mesons (which, IMHO, is coherent with them decaying inside the ship, so not being affected by armor).
Thanks, page 42 line 3 mentions Meson hits, but I checked with page 77 and the effect is to half radiation damage. Since the biggest Meson Spinal does 540damage and is divided by 6 for radiation damage anyway the extra reduction
still gives an auto crew hit and 2/3 chance of a computer hit, so not as useful as I though.
I think I'll keep it, as in theory an Imperium warship will be facing ones from a lower TL.
right crit tables, for your viewing pleasure and Scrutiny:
once i've written the bio for this, i'll post it in The Fleet as another fine addition to the board.
Hmmm, I'm wondering whether it would be worth building a 7.5 kton design
to test against it, as with only 2 section, each section can take more hits than a 10kton design?
Hmmm, I'm wondering whether it would be worth building a 7.5 kton design
to test against it, as with only 2 section, each section can take more hits than a 10kton design?
I honestly think that would be "down to the dice" and our relative skill at MGT ship combat than anything inherit in the designs. plus the particulars of the test, like what range we start at, does the admirial have it;s smallcraft aloft at the start, and how long does it take to re-arm a bomber*?
But paring the design down by 25% wouldn't be hard, and would mostly be stripping the figther wing out (and adjusting the turrets, ect).
Is there any chance of you putting the design in an excel 2003 spreadsheet please?
*genuine question, by the way. Is the turn around time for re-arming a smallcraft mentioned anywhere? I'd just houserule it at, say, 1d3+2 rounds (18-30 minutes.) each, personally. Short enough to happen in a combat, long enough that they are out of play for a meaningful time
Right, Dagrill, it's done. unsuprisingly, the numbers didn't quite add up when i used the spreadsheet, so it's slightly different to the written one, but the only major change was i remebered to add the computer programs to the ship.
however, it now seems to cost about 200MCr more than when i added it by hand, so i might have added something twice (been over it repeatedly, not sure where i went wrong)
just let me upload it to google drive, and I'll link to it.
Side note: I haven't realized that the roll on the Radiation Damage Table in page 79 was on 1d6 instead of the usual 2d6, but makes quite more sense.
Is that fact written someplace (I couldn't find it)?
I could it find it in writing either, but it says 2+ rather than auto in some areas
and 0 (zero) rather than 7+, 8+ etc in others and there are no modifiers, so it is the only logical explanation of the table.
The only error I've spotted is the bridge costs 150 MCr, not 15 MCr.
The rules do make it look like 0.1 per ton, but the period is to indicate the credit abbreviation, if you check the sample craft in the back it makes it clear.
. it's gonna skew the barrage fire results even more in favour of PAs), which is going to form the centerpiece of the ships offensive armament. I've also added a extra 20 turrets to beef up point defense.
