System Defense Fleets

[McPerth]

Better would actually be to drop to one plasma. The secondaries provide no useful defense or offensive capacity, they're just there to soak up wpn-1 results.

Even in this function the fusion is better than plasma(soaking 5 hits instead of 3). I also assume those seccondaries are anti fighter too. Even if your ships are heavily armored, fighters may slowly erode your weaponry. effectively taking your ships out of commision.

One thing you must take into account when using fighters, though, is that here COs tactics skill may begin to tell.

IMHO, they are not as important among large ships (BRs, BBs, Cruisers, etc), as most of them can be assumed to have a CO with a tactics skill 3-4, so cancelling each other. On fighters, though, I guess tactics skill will be rarer and lower, so, I'd give Capital ships against fighters a +1 computer size to reflect this (in HG rules, MT complicates things a little, I'm afraid)

Ahhhhh, and in here lies the true problem with most all of these arguments. Yes you build you fleets around missiles (or meson or PAs), but you need balance. Missiles can beat mesons, mesons can beat PAs, hopefully if you look at it, PAs can beat missiles (I know Tobias thinks they can, but not tested it). All these pit X vs Y or this is the biggest ship killer arguments are moot, because nothing can fight unsupported.

If you bring along X number of fighters with your riders, presumably that gives the gerbils X value to spend on something to counter the fighters. If you bring along X number of PAs to counter the Gerbils, the Gerbils can spend X on countering the PAs. Yes I think if you really test the system *as written*, the best option is to build your fleet round missiles, but they can not stand unsupported, nothing can.

Agreed. And if you build your fleet arround MG, Or arround missiles to fight those MG, or with PAs to fight those MB... you'll find, sooner or latter the fleet built just to fight yours. So most fleets must be a compromise able to fight anyone of them, yet not the better against anyone of them.

BTW, if you wonder why I said this fighter/BR ratio, it is more or less the one found on the 154th. There, IIRC,the BT carries 7 BRs and 300 fighters. I reduced the BRs per tender to 5 to better fit your 100 BRs. Its composition with its Tender/base, 7 BRs, 7 missile escorts and 300 fighters fits well all said here (though some more escorts could be in order).

Though to be honest, I've been of the opinion that the rules as written are seriously broken in regards missiles and in my own games I hobbled them long ago with magazine requirements (though nowadays I'd do it with cost too); so I haven't fought an "as written" game for over 15 years. I've been working on hobbling mesons too recently in an effort to make big ships last longer. I've not found the right balance, but I hope to get there.

And to be honest, I've never played a large campaign, nor even a TCS contest, so all my numbers are pure theory. So. you win in real experience, don't worry how old is it.

 

[Tobias]

Yes I have allowed for the fact that each missile hit has a 3.665% of killing the boat outright.

Hm? The radiation hit alone has a chance of 33.333% of killing the crew.

 

[Tobias]

Behold the throwaway cruiser:

Ship: Ajax
Class: Achilles
Type: Warship
Architect: Tobias
Tech Level: 15

USP
         B-K131BJ3-F99900-450N9-0 MCr 13,252.878 13 KTons
Bat Bear             2     55 18   Crew: 134
Bat                  2     55 18   TL: 15

Cargo: 200.000 Fuel: 5,330.000 EP: 1,430.000 Agility: 0 Shipboard Security Detail: 13
Craft: 1 x 30T Boat
Fuel Treatment: Fuel Scoops and On Board Fuel Purification

Architects Fee: MCr 132.379   Cost in Quantity: MCr 10,605.302


Detailed Description

HULL
13,000.000 tons standard, 182,000.000 cubic meters, Needle/Wedge Configuration

CREW
20 Officers, 114 Ratings

ENGINEERING
Jump-3, 1G Manuever, Power plant-11, 1,430.000 EP, Agility 0

AVIONICS
Bridge, Model/9fib Computer

HARDPOINTS
Spinal Mount, 8 50-ton bays, 30 Hardpoints

ARMAMENT
Meson Gun Spinal Mount (Factor-N), 8 50-ton Missile Bays (Factor-9), 5 Triple Beam Laser Turrets organised into 5 Batteries (Factor-4), 5 Dual Fusion Gun Turrets organised into 5 Batteries (Factor-5)

DEFENCES
20 Triple Sandcaster Turrets organised into 2 Batteries (Factor-9), Nuclear Damper (Factor-9), Meson Screen (Factor-9), Armoured Hull (Factor-15)

CRAFT
1 30.000 ton Boat (Crew of 2, Cost of MCr 15.000)

FUEL
5,330.000 Tons Fuel (3 parsecs jump and 28 days endurance)
On Board Fuel Scoops, On Board Fuel Purification Plant

MISCELLANEOUS
70.0 Staterooms, 200.000 Tons Cargo

USER DEFINED COMPONENTS
None

COST
MCr 13,370.257 Singly (incl. Architects fees of MCr 132.379), MCr 10,590.302 in Quantity, plus MCr 15.000 of Carried Craft

CONSTRUCTION TIME
165 Weeks Singly, 132 Weeks in Quantity

Try them against hamsters on a 1:9 ratio or Gerbils 1:12. Note that this is not at all an optimized ship against missile boats. It is designed as a general purpose warship.

 

[McPerth]

Assuming them armed with fusion guns (factor 5) and computer 9, they'd hit you on a 10+ (16.7%), overcoming your sandcasters on a 1+ , so damaging you 16.7% times, most of them weapons or maneover hits, that will seriously downgrade you effectiveness (for factor 8 missiles, the possibility to overcome a factor 9 damper is halved, and if reduced to 7, it is just 1/6 of a factor 9).

Against them, you could face your factor 3 lasers and factor 5 fusion (if you changes as I suggested before, as I assume you could spare your 1 dton and 1 EP needed tor the conversion). Lasers will hit on a 13+ (assumed agility 6 and size 0), and fusion on a 12+ (if they are plasma guns, 13+), so you will mission kill (any hit will, as you'll roll 3 criticals if the fighters are unarmored) about 2.8% of your firing...

I'm afraid I took the wrong table when doing my numbers (I used missile table instead of beams).

Correct numbers are: fighters would hit on a 12 (2.8%), they still penetrate automatically your sandcasters.

Your secondaries, though, are useless against them, as you'd need 15+ to hit for lasers and 14+ for fusion guns. So you should decide between leaving them to slowly erode your fleet or firing them your missiles (they'd hit on a 10+), so leaving the BRs to keep destoying you.

 

[skyth]

Try them against hamsters on a 1:9 ratio or Gerbils 1:12. Note that this is not at all an optimized ship against missile boats. It is designed as a general purpose warship.

The Agility 0 means it's going to be scrubbed extremely quickly.

 

[Tobias]

The Agility 0 means it's going to be scrubbed extremely quickly.

Not really. The nuke damper is the actual defense against missiles. They need a 10+ to overcome it.
Sure, forgoing agility as defense may seem unorthodox. But for agility-6, jump-3 you'd need a ship several times as large (about 40,000 tons, which partially eliminates your agility advantage.) Having three times as many ships is a better defense than putting an additional 7+ to-hit roll between you and your enemy.

The ship is immune to basically everything except nuclear missiles and spinal mounts, and against these strength in numbers is a better form of defense than agility.

P.S.: Yes, in theory pulse lasers could damage it. One weapon-1 in 36 hits.

 

[AndreaV]

Behold the throwaway cruiser:

Try them against hamsters on a 1:9 ratio or Gerbils 1:12. Note that this is not at all an optimized ship against missile boats. It is designed as a general purpose warship.

Good, but you need to pad out the USP. Take out two missile batteries and add in a PA and repulsor. Remember each means the gerbils/hamsters have to score 9 more wpn-1 to kill this ship (in this case since two are missing; 18 * 90ish fires IIRC)

And yes, padding the USP is something else I've long since house ruled out in my own games.

 

[Murph]

True Meson T beats PA T hands down. Again, that is why back in the day, the players had lots of 19,999 ton cruisers, or 74,999 ton ships nothing bigger, to kill all the 500,000 ton battleships. Also everything was TL 15, and Min-Maxed based on Trillion Credit Squadron. To them, the battleships were just meat on the table, and their killer cruisers ruled space per the TCS/High Guard rules of the time.

I was not defending it, just remembering how rules are written



Alternatively, the amount of energy is enough to devastate a 200 kdton ship and you're just overkilling when using it against a 20 kdton ship :devil: (anyway, fusion energy is cheap, and as you have nothing more adequate...)

One place the size has importance is when confronting PA spinals. Sometimes we forget not all big ships are MG armed, some carry PAs (don't ask me why, as they have no real advantage I've found in the rules, but that's how OTU ships are). When hit by such a Spinal, a 20 kdton ship would suffer more criticals than a 200 kdton one (they may even overcome armor on the former).

 

[Murph]

Looking back at at Trillion Credit Squadron and the rule system encouraged this sort of Min-Max approach, and so any ship over 74,999 tons was useless in combat against Meson guns, with PA guns being worthless essentially.

True Meson T beats PA T hands down. Again, that is why back in the day, the players had lots of 19,999 ton cruisers, or 74,999 ton ships nothing bigger, to kill all the 500,000 ton battleships. Also everything was TL 15, and Min-Maxed based on Trillion Credit Squadron. To them, the battleships were just meat on the table, and their killer cruisers ruled space per the TCS/High Guard rules of the time.

 

[kilemall]

Doesn't make sense to limit a ship to just one spinal. The bigger ones should mount several.

 

[mike wightman]

Which is allowed if you use FF&S to build your ships.

Going by strict HG rules it isn't permitted, but it has popped up as a house rules variant over the years.

 

[McPerth]

Doesn't make sense to limit a ship to just one spinal. The bigger ones should mount several.

I disagree.

The same concept of spinal weapon means it is immobile respect to the ship (the whole ship must be maneuvered to aim it), and having more than one, even in posible (it must go all the lenght of the ship), will make them fixed relative to each other.

Unless the enemy is gentle enough as to put his ships in the exact angle for your multiple weapons to aim at more than one ship, they would be useless (unless they are as a double barreled shotgun, all aiming to the same ship).

I think on them (keeping all differences) as an ACW ironclad's ram. Any hit would (at least) severally damage its vicim, but only one caould be mounted on eahc ship, being anchored to the keel (to the spine of the ship in this case).

 

[Condottiere]

It depends on your rate of fire, but assuming each spinal mount can be shot each turn, you could combine them as a battery for aiming at one ship, or just turn the prow a bit to shoot at another.

Unless you have a broadside of them, in which case it may be how many movement points a ship has, since unlike bays (presumably), they can't swivel and target independently.

 

[CliffBates]

Looking back at at Trillion Credit Squadron and the rule system encouraged this sort of Min-Max approach, and so any ship over 74,999 tons was useless in combat against Meson guns, with PA guns being worthless essentially.

Again.. to say they [ships bigger than 75kton] were useless is an exaggeration that fails to take into consideration lots of aspects that increased sizes offer that you can't pull off in your 74.999Kton ship.

Also you get solid hits with PAs that you don't get with Meson guns... ok you have to go through armor.. but you are more likely to hit and there is no screen that interferes with it. PAs also do a good job reducing fighting ability of the ship as it often causes weapon hits.

 

[kilemall]

I disagree.

The same concept of spinal weapon means it is immobile respect to the ship (the whole ship must be maneuvered to aim it), and having more tan one, even in posible (it must go all the lenght of the ship), will make them fixed relative to each other.

Unless the enemy is gentle enough as to put his ships in the exact angle for your multiple weapons to aim at more than one ship, they would be useless (unless they are as a double barreled shotgun, all aiming to the same ship).

I think on them (keeping all differences) as an ACW ironclad's ram. Any hit would (at least) severally damage its vicim, but only one caould be mounted on eahc ship, being anchored to the keel (to the spine of the ship in this case).

I agree with the definition of the spinal weapon being a big long fixed tube that gives it it's hitting power, disagree that by definition they somehow can't fire on the same target within a 20 minute turn.

They don't have to fire at the same time, and maneuvering thrusters should allow for only a few seconds adjustment to point the ship, especially if the arc difference between the spinal weapons is just a few degrees.

 

[whartung]

I agree with the definition of the spinal weapon being a big long fixed tube that gives it it's hitting power, disagree that by definition they somehow can't fire on the same target within a 20 minute turn.

However, given that criteria, there certainly may be some upper limit as to how many spinals can fire in a particular turn.

 

[kilemall]

However, given that criteria, there certainly may be some upper limit as to how many spinals can fire in a particular turn.

EP, cost, space cost of supporting power plant and fuel.

 

[The Oz]

IMTU ships are allowed to carry spinal mounts as "Turrets" if the ship is at least 100x the size of the spinal. So 100kton BCs carry f-J "turrets", 200kton BBs carry f-N "turrets", and the Tigress carries f-R "turrets".

To make putting so much firepower into one hull a good idea, I also changed things to make larger hulls more survivable against meson guns.

I like battleships.

Of course I have to change the USP around a bit to record this.

 

[Murph]

Which brings me to a point of anger at MT/The Rebellion: Where the F*** are the Colonial Fleets. the system defense fleets? The Vargr are the Traveller equivalent of the Italian Armed Forces at the start of WWII. There is no way, no way even if the Imperial Fleets were moved that the Vargr corsairs and fleets could have bitten off as large a hunk as they could. On any half @ssed world the local fleets would have blown away the first TL 11/12/13 Vargr warships that showed up. It would have been no contest. So Where were the local fleets (I see them as being TL 13/14/15 for the most part).

 

[mike wightman]

The Vargr states are TL14/15 and possess battleships, battle riders and cruisers just like the Imperium, the Zhodani, the Solomani...