T20: Small ship versus Large ship Economics...

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
The TLF 50 ton bay option...

Phew... Now I understand your earlier claims about the 5K dTon riders. They're T20 designs!

For a minute there I'd thought myself and the rest of the gang at the 'CT Starships' Group would actually have to pay attention.

In the words of the late great Emily Latella; Never mind...


Have fun,
Bill

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bhoins:
The TLF 50 ton bay option...

Phew... Now I understand your earlier claims about the 5K dTon riders. They're T20 designs!

For a minute there I'd thought myself and the rest of the gang at the 'CT Starships' Group would actually have to pay attention.

In the words of the late great Emily Latella; Never mind...


Have fun,
Bill </font>[/QUOTE]Actually Bill while they aren't as nasty in HG as they are in T20 they still do the same thing. A single Spinal penetrating hit will mission kill most ships, to include capital ships in HG. They are just less likely to simply vaporize them.

See this discussion and take note of the Harpy-II. Large Ships, Spinals and LACs.

 

[Chaos]

Flynn

Regarding your opening post...
(Disclaimer: I don´t have the full rules yet, so what I say now is mostly what passes for common sense)

Having many small ships definitely has the advantage of being able to be in several places at once, which is very useful if the threat in each place is low enough for a small ship to handle it - like, blockade/quarantine duty, customs patrols, anti-piracy patrols and so on, but probably not a full-scale war.
For example, it´s much more economical to stop and search a suspected smuggler with a frigate than with a battleship.

Also, while it may be that a number of smaller ships that are as powerful as one big ship may take longer to build, you can build many of them at the same time for the same money and effort as building one large ship, meaning you will have the first of them available a lot sooner in case you need them, instead of having one half-finished (and useless) large ship.

 

[Flynn]

I agree, Chaos. And welcome to the boards, by the way.

I think that the only thing that lends itself to a large ship universe would be pride on the part of the people controlling the money and starship development. Many of the comments here support that viewpoint, especially from the POV of T20 rules.

In my next ATU, or in whatever incarnation of some isolated area of the OTU I want to develop for my next 1248 campaign, I'll probably go with the Small Ship approach because of these discussions.

With Regards,
Flynn

 

[veltyen]

In some ways it mirrors the modern navies of the world.

The really large vessels are relegated to noncombat roles (transport, supply, carrier) while most of the fighting as such is done by frigates these days.

Remember a Nimitz class aircraft carrier is 100,000 dTon give or take. There is the occasional reason to have something that large, but not in direct fighting vessels.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

BTW, besides play balance, why can't you put more than one spinal in a ship?

 

[Flynn]

It's probably that there's a basic assumption that a ship only has one "spine", where such a weapon is placed for whatever structural integrity reasons exist in futuristic ship weapons. If there's not any weapons-based issues or structural integrity issues, perhaps that's not a concern aside from game balance.

Two more creds,
Flynn

 

[far-trader]

Flynn has it right as the main reason I expect. I do recall (TNE/FF&S1 maybe) allowing two spinals mounted (end to end) if the ship had enough length but you could only use one at a time.

That is the other reason of course. A spinal weapon is "aimed" by pointing the whole ship at the target. So if your ship is a porcupine of multiple spinals you can still only bring one to bear at a time. And you probably want the one spinal you bring to bear to be along your axis of thrust for best control so all those off axis spinals should suffer in aiming, probably a lot.

 

[aramis]

FF&S also allowed parallel mounts. Both fire at the same target.

Also, Spinals are not entirely aimed by pointing the ship, just mostly...

 

[Fritz_Brown]

I was asking because I could see a design where several spinals are mounted around the central axis of the ship (Edit the same axis end edit) (in a large enough ship). The key is to get them close enough to the central axis that you would get the equivalent of "centerline thrust" with multi-engine aircraft. Firing all of them at once would maintain your axis.

(Are there any canonical CT ships with a spinal mount that have a deck plan? I would like to see the visual of that.)

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Fritz88:
I was asking because I could see a design where several spinals are mounted around the central axis of the ship (Edit the same axis end edit) (in a large enough ship). The key is to get them close enough to the central axis that you would get the equivalent of "centerline thrust" with multi-engine aircraft. Firing all of them at once would maintain your axis.

(Are there any canonical CT ships with a spinal mount that have a deck plan? I would like to see the visual of that.)

Yes the AHL has a Canonical Deckplan. Supplement 5 Boxed Game Azhanti High Lightning. Deckplans are available here: FLibrary Deckplans page.

 

[mike wightman]

Hmm, replace a type T meson gun with seven type J meson guns...

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Hmm, replace a type T meson gun with seven type J meson guns...

If they are all firing at the same target, what's the point? (Especailly with PMOS Gunnery, in T20.

)

 

[mike wightman]

It would look pretty

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
It would look pretty

And dangerous! Pretty Dangerous!

That might even be a good name for the class

So would that be the point where the extra number of to hit rolls exceeded the chances of the single one by enough to cause more damage? That was the idea I got from the suggestion but didn't do the math.

 

[Jame]

Originally posted by Flynn:
BTW, for those wondering what system I was talking about, I refer you to the first word in the topic's title, "T20".

If you're willing to High Guard as T20-esque, then okay, fine. Use it to design ships under 10,000 tons, except for like planetary assault ships, tenders and repair ships. That way there are more smaller ships.

 

[aramis]

Multiple spinals has one advantage: can take more hits before the guns are down....

 

[Chaos]

Originally posted by Aramis:
Multiple spinals has one advantage: can take more hits before the guns are down....

But as soon as one gun is taken out, the working guns would no longer be centered around the "spine" of the ship. Assuming that particle weapons, at least, produce recoil, that might be a problem.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Originally posted by Chaos:
But as soon as one gun is taken out, the working guns would no longer be centered around the "spine" of the ship. Assuming that particle weapons, at least, produce recoil, that might be a problem.

That depends on two factors:
1) How close to the centerline these things are. If really close, then there won't be enough moment arm to worry about. It will be easily correctable with thrust.
2) How many of these things there are. 1 of 2 goes down, not so good; 1 of 3, not so bad; 1 of 4, not bad at all; 1 of 5, barely notice.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Aramis:
Multiple spinals has one advantage: can take more hits before the guns are down....

This of course assumes that there is still a ship left. Ships of this nature tend to get engaged with Spinals. In T20 in particular, and Traveller in general, a Spinal hit tends to reduce a starship to somewhere between mission kill and vapor.

Further, since there are more than one mount then a weapon-1 hit will remove an entire spinal. (Ooops.) So a fighter hit/pen can kill a spinal mount. Hmmmmmm!