T20 Bay Design

[yinkin]

I'm stuck. How do you determine how many actual weapons are in a bay? Specifically, how many missile tubes and thus how much ammo do you need?

I've looked at several designs that people have on their websites but they seem to have random amounts of ammo (or some appear to be missing ammo altogether).

Thanks for your help.

 

[veltyen]

In T20 missiles/bay weapon doesn't appear to be addressed. I use the following rule of thumb.

50 missiles in a bay volley.
The breakdown is as follows.
50 dTon bay
- 10 dTon crew area
- 20 dTon firing area
- 10 dTon dedicated sensors
- 10 dTon intergral storage

100 dTon bay
- 20 dTon crew area
- 20 dTon firing area
- 20 dTon dedicated sensors
- 40 dTon intergral storage

This is from the fact that a 30 missile battery is only about 1-2 USP below the output from an equivalent bay (at some tech levels the battery is better off), and that the USP of the 50 vs 100 ton bay is very similar

Just my take on it. The problem with missile bays (under this system) is the 2.5dTon of ammo per trigger pull. Far better to go meson or fusion.

 

[fredofmars]

I did some work on missile bays for High Guard. I give the number of weapons per missile bay that I calculated using specified assumptions.

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

I don't have T20 yet, so I can't be specific about that yet.
- Joseph

 

[BetterThanLife]

I was just thinking similar thoughts.

The progression from USP-7 to USP-9 doesn't work in a straight proportionate number of missiles when you go from 5-7 vs 7-9 (Especially when you are dealing with 50 ton bays.) But highguard mentions that a 50Ton bay battery round is 50 missiles and 100ton battery round is 100 missiles. (Or was that MT?)

I figure T20 uses the same amount but it isn't mentioned anywhere. I really wish they would have done more playtesting on the bigger ships. (Probably my one real complaint with the entire T20 rules, which considering what was accomplished is pretty impressive.)

 

[mike wightman]

Battery rounds were a MT invention.
And I agree with your comments on big ship combat in T20. I do like the way bay meson guns have been made more effective than in HG, but they've probably been made a bit too powerful for the combat system.

My biggest gripe is the lack of effectiveness of missiles in eveything from High Guard onwards. In CT LBB2/Mayday/SS3 missiles are ship killers - but not in HG etc.

Back to the topic.

The conversion notes in Striker book 2 mention that the standard turret mounted missile have a warhead the equivalent of a 15cm CPR gun round, while bay mounted missiles have warheads equivalent to 25cm CPR gun rounds.
It goes on to say that there are 25 launchers in a 50t bay and 50 launchers in a 100t bay.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Actually in HG, missiles are still ship killers, if your target is a 200T Free Trader.

Fire a 2 turret battery with Nukes at a Free Trader and see what happens. (Generally it goes poof, but just in case fire twice at it.

)

I knew I read that somewhere.

(It has been a while.) The problem with using bigger missiles for the bays is that you no longer know how many missiles fit in a magazine. Just because there are 25 bigger launchers in a Bay, You get half as many missiles in a Magazine? And how does that deal with the TL jump on either the 50 Ton bays or teh 100T bays. (Or the justification of going one TL and getting the same punch out of half the payload?)

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Battery rounds were a MT invention.
And I agree with your comments on big ship combat in T20. I do like the way bay meson guns have been made more effective than in HG, but they've probably been made a bit too powerful for the combat system.

My biggest gripe is the lack of effectiveness of missiles in eveything from High Guard onwards. In CT LBB2/Mayday/SS3 missiles are ship killers - but not in HG etc.

Back to the topic.

The conversion notes in Striker book 2 mention that the standard turret mounted missile have a warhead the equivalent of a 15cm CPR gun round, while bay mounted missiles have warheads equivalent to 25cm CPR gun rounds.
It goes on to say that there are 25 launchers in a 50t bay and 50 launchers in a 100t bay.

 

[veltyen]

As it happens TA#7 lists missile bays by "volleys". There is 50 missile per 50 dTon bay and 100 missiles per 100 dTon bay.

That's about as definitive as I can think of.

 

[BetterThanLife]

I was afraid of that. Talk about ammo hogs.