System Attack Boats
- Thread starter jatay3
- Start date
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
In the small ship Traveller Universe I would say yes.
Under the large ship paradigm then your SDBs have to be the equivalent of Battle Riders anyway, so you may as well leave Battle Riders in the blockaded system while your Tenders go and do something more useful, like pick up more Battle Riders
Under the large ship paradigm then your SDBs have to be the equivalent of Battle Riders anyway, so you may as well leave Battle Riders in the blockaded system while your Tenders go and do something more useful, like pick up more Battle Riders
Pros & Cons:
Pro:
In utilizing SDB's instead of Ships - you do have the ability to launch an offensive with freed up ships. SDB's for their cost and such are better all around than ships of the same cost.
Con:
In the event that you need to remove your accumulated assets, you will require an amount of time equal to assets divided by transports all times a round trip journey for the transports. If a relieving force were to show up against the blockading units - their only recourse would be to scatter if outnumbered, or fight if they think they have a chance. In High Guard, this would be analogous to disengaging via acceleration or not even engaging the enemy at all.
Pro:
In utilizing SDB's instead of Ships - you do have the ability to launch an offensive with freed up ships. SDB's for their cost and such are better all around than ships of the same cost.
Con:
In the event that you need to remove your accumulated assets, you will require an amount of time equal to assets divided by transports all times a round trip journey for the transports. If a relieving force were to show up against the blockading units - their only recourse would be to scatter if outnumbered, or fight if they think they have a chance. In High Guard, this would be analogous to disengaging via acceleration or not even engaging the enemy at all.
Hal's Con case is exactly the situation presented to a defender in FFW, but with the caveat that a system can not be fully controlled until all SDBs are destroyed, so sometimes hiding is better. That would lead me to think that there is no one treatment of SDBs, that it varies from system to system, with some systems choosing to go with a small number of heavy SDBs (like Regina) or with large numbers of smaller-sized ships (like the 200-ton TL15 SDB in Supp 9).
BetterThanLife
SOC-14 1K
BTW that little 200T SDB from Sup9 is a nightmare to deal with. You basically need a spinal to take one out. They can't hurt a capital ship but they can sure tie them up shooting at them while other things are going on.
That of course does depend on which rule set you are using but in HG or MT and even to a lesser extent T20 (Any meson works in T20) it holds. I am not familiar enough with any other variations to make that statement, but I would assume they still hold true.
HehOriginally posted by Hal:
You gonna keep your secrets or are you going to discuss what you two did?
I used standard definitions (SDBs and Battle Riders are non-jump, etc), and my friend designed all his with "emergency jump drives"; J1s.My SDBs came in three tonnages; 500, 1,500, and 5,000. I never really intended my SDBs to defeat an incoming fleet, only to deny total control until a relief force could arrive. I used a pretty conventional set of parameters; max armour, M6, AG6, lots of missiles, and, on the heavy boats, screens. After that, I altered each design for tech levels from 14-7 (and, boy, were those low-tech boats crappy). Part of my plan included bulk carriers and tenders so I could move SDB squadrons to worlds that were incapable of standing up squadrons either due to tech level or population but needed some sort of defences because of their strategic value.
I also developed a 1,000 ton "Fast Attack Craft", which was basically an SDB carried on my bigger carriers and fitted with a meson gun bay. After I designed my FAC, it seemed logical to make contingency plans to utilize garrison forces as "provisional attack squadrons"; scoopinh up SDBs into their tender or bulk transport and hauling them along with the fleet.
Unfortunately, we never actually managed to play out our theories, but we sure had fun designing our galaxy
Hopefully, though, we'll be able to put some of them to the test soon. We're starting over with one system each (at TL9) located in the same sector. We've also cobbled together rules on how to increase tech levels, increase population, and how to generate admirals in such a way as to make it at least semi-realistic
Sounds like fun
If you don't have POCKET EMPIRES, you may want to take a look at it - might be fun to modify for your own use. I've been awfully tempted to modify it for use with GURPS. Thing is, I'm like a donkey in the center of a circle that some Yahoo decided to ring with bales of hay... which direction do I go??? ARrrrrrgh!
