Terran Commonwealth -- Book 2 Starship Combat

[pendragonman]

Originally posted by tbeard1999:

The problem is not the number of turrets per ton. As long as the only non-fighter weapons system has no significant tonnage cost, carriers will be as well armed as battleships. For that matter, dedicated warships will be unnecessary and a waste of resources. Instead, there will be armed transports, armed cargo haulers and armed carriers.

Not my kinda universe. [/QUOTE]

You missed my point. The idea is to lessen the number of available hardpoints on carriers. If the cv hull can only have 1/4 as many hardpoints as a traditional warship then there is a sort of balance there, somewhat compensating for the fighters. If it is further decreed that carriers can not have more than a small amount of armor, then the balance is truly, in the WWII carrier sense, established.

Example: Applying the idea I had, your Indefatigable CV would have 60 fighters and at most 15 turrets/no bay weapons.

An equivalent 3000 dton battlecruiser would have 60 turrets, each being able to be quad turrets.

Now, if the Indefatigable was also thin skinned, making it a high risk venture to follow the fighters into close combat, we achieve parity.

The fighters (and much to the fighter jock's chagrin, the pilots themselves) become attrition units, i.e. cheaply replaced in view of the overall cost of a warship. Suppose that the carrier loses, say, half of its fighter compliment in a previous fight and is on its way back to port for reloads. During this trip it runs across the battlecruiser, also returning to base after combat. Damage control can bring back some of the damaged turrets but DC cannot rebuild blown up fighters.

 

[tbeard1999]

Originally posted by Chucky the Hammer:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by tbeard1999:

The problem is not the number of turrets per ton. As long as the only non-fighter weapons system has no significant tonnage cost, carriers will be as well armed as battleships. For that matter, dedicated warships will be unnecessary and a waste of resources. Instead, there will be armed transports, armed cargo haulers and armed carriers.

Not my kinda universe. </font>[/QUOTE]You missed my point. The idea is to lessen the number of available hardpoints on carriers. If the cv hull can only have 1/4 as many hardpoints as a traditional warship then there is a sort of balance there, somewhat compensating for the fighters. If it is further decreed that carriers can not have more than a small amount of armor, then the balance is truly, in the WWII carrier sense, established.

Example: Applying the idea I had, your Indefatigable CV would have 60 fighters and at most 15 turrets/no bay weapons.

An equivalent 3000 dton battlecruiser would have 60 turrets, each being able to be quad turrets.

Now, if the Indefatigable was also thin skinned, making it a high risk venture to follow the fighters into close combat, we achieve parity.

The fighters (and much to the fighter jock's chagrin, the pilots themselves) become attrition units, i.e. cheaply replaced in view of the overall cost of a warship. Suppose that the carrier loses, say, half of its fighter compliment in a previous fight and is on its way back to port for reloads. During this trip it runs across the battlecruiser, also returning to base after combat. Damage control can bring back some of the damaged turrets but DC cannot rebuild blown up fighters. [/QUOTE]

I don't think I missed your point. Your solution does not alter the problem that there is no reason to have a DEDICATED, non-fighter carrying warship in Book 2. Turrets have effectively no cost in displacement, so a purported "battleship" mounting (say) 30 turrets will have a HUGE amount of unused tonnage that cannot be devoted to firepower unless fighters are carried. The result is that the purported "battleship" is really just an armed transport.

In the Real World -- and in any sanely ordered sci-fi universe IMHO -- warships would devote a far greater percentage of their tonnage to weaponry and related systems than say, RMS Titanic. But in Book 2, a purported 3000 ton "battleship" is no better armed than a 3000 ton passenger liner.

Worse, the "battleship" has a huge amount of tonnage that CANNOT be used for weaponry, which would make a dedicated (i.e., non cargo-hauling) battleship absurd.

The easy way to fix these problems is to allow weapons bays. That solution is no more fussy than excluding certain types of tonnage from the 1 turret per 100 tons rule.

Nor can I see any logical reason to limit the number of turrets for a carrier when you presumably still allow a cargo ship to have turrets.

And since Book 2 has no armor rules, a carrier is no more vulnerable than a battleship.

 

[tbeard1999]

Originally posted by boomslang:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by tbeard1999:
What I have said -- and I feel that I'm repeating myself -- is that the only way to arm a starship in Book 2 is to mount weapons on turrets, and/or to carry fighters. Turrets effectively consume no tonnage, fighters do.

Turrets displace a minimum 3 dtons each on military ships: 1 dton for fire control, 2 dtons for the Gunner's half-stateroom, and this does not include either magazine space for extra rounds of sand or missiles, nor quarters for a dedicated Loader. (If you're giving each Fighter a dedicated Mechanic -- which no rule says it requires -- you might as well go ahead and give each turret a Loader to service it.)</font>[/QUOTE]

I don't see that quibbling over whether the tonnage cost of turrets is 0, 1 or 3 tons changes my point. And note that gunners can do other duties, so your assumption may not be valid.

But even if it is, well, 3 dtons isn't much cost for a turret, even for a civilian ship.

So big deal...the 3000 ton Luxury liner TITANIC has to spend 90 tons to mount the EXACT same armament as the 3000 ton dreadnought DEVASTATION. Yuck. Worse, there's no way that the DEVASTATION can mount more firepower than TITANIC even though DEVASTATION'S designers would be willing to allocate 1000 tons to firepower...if they could.

Also, lasers don't require loaders and 50 kg missiles would just about *have* to be autoloaded.

The way to fix these problems is simple -- add weapons bays. This allows ships that are DESIGNED to be warships to allocate tonnage to firepower without carrying fighters. It also gives us a good reason to have non-carrier warships.

This was High Guard's solution and it worked fine. It's a simple retrofit.

So...non-carriers have no more weapons capacity than carriers. This makes the non-carrier warchip redundant. In such a universe, *every* sensibly designed warship would carry fighters.

Unless it was carrying extra jump fuel in place of fighters, so that it can be a raiding/striking intruder. The 3000dton, J-4 CV has around 1200 dtons available for payload; in lieu of 6-to-10 Fighter squadrons, that's an entire additional J-4 fuel load, for example.

In practice, fleets almost never engage fleets of equal strength; that's an artifact of TCS tactical fleet duels. Furthermore, there are other targets and situations to deploy fleet elements against, such as commerce and logistical infrastructure, where a battleship's firepower is more than adequate, but where fuel may be hard to come by.

My assertion is that there is no way to directly use tonnage to increase firepower except by carrying fighters. I don't see the point of noting that internal tonnage could be allocated to fuel.

And while it is possible that fleets seldom fight on equal terms, I don't see what that has to do with designing the most efficient military vessels.

At the end of the day, Book 2 does a creditable job of designing non-military starships. It does not do a good job of designing military starships unless you like everything to carry fighters.

I don't, so I use a pretty simple fix.

 

[tbeard1999]

Originally posted by BillDowns:
Even though I would echo boomslang's comments on 3 dtons min for military turrets, I totally understand what tbeard is saying. One of the ways in which CT is broken is how a miniscule turret, which takes no space, is able to hit & damage a target 300,000 klicks away.

An modern OTO Melara 76mm turret is a 2-deck mounting. The actual turret itself is about 1.5 meter half-dome, and underneath it is the mechanism to turn it. This part takes a full deck, and has a footprint of about 1.5m square. And that's 1 gun. The USN Mk 45 125mm mount is about 4.5m footprint. Perhaps house-ruling this arrangement will help you, tbeard.

Well, I don't really have much problem with the ranges in CT. Lasers are a sci-fi trope and it wouldn't feel right to remove them or give them their real-world anemic capabilities. The same is true of fighters. In real space, there's no reason for fighters. A missile would be better, cheaper and more capable. But fighters are COOL.

The turret problem is simple. If you are gonna have armed civilian ships, then weapons cannot consume much interior space. No problem with that. However, Book 2 gives you no significant way to devote interior tonnage to firepower except by carrying fighters.

And Book 2 fighters are NASTY. They take an average of 2-3 hits to kill each. They can fire 3 missiles per turn for 3 turns. Since missile automatically hit the target if they survive anti-missile fire, the lack of a computer does not hurt a fighter, nor does having a good computer help the target.

These two facets of Book 2 create a situation where fighters are not only the only way to distinguish military from non-military craft, but are so powerful that a military starship designer would be foolish not to carry fighters. Even allowing for crews, a fighter will give you 3 missile racks for 12 tons. AND BOOK 2 HAS NO ALTERNATIVE WEAPON SYSTEM TO PUT IN THAT SPACE.

 

[baldfish]

More vs better ships

I simplified the conundrum very early one when I started playing in 1980. rather than accept it as a physical limitation of starship engineering. (silly thought after conquering the stars in said spaceships really) I simply put forth that the 1 turret per hundred tonnes rule was simply a law put forth by the empire to discourage piracy and other unhappy/competitive elements within imperial borders. Mind you, I am fully aware that canon does not support this, but it is a VERY logical extrapolation of the 1 per 100 rule. We can bend light and blind physics, but we can't dedicate over %6 of hull to guns? I respect canon, but not in the face of human inventiveness!
Happy Travelling.

 

[Ishmael]

I think I'm going to go by surface area as the limiter for turrets even though they do take up interior volume for mechanical-gizmo stuff. and I think I'll let designer choose the volume of the turret ( to be able to hold bigger weapons ) with interior volume taken being proportional to that. Something for me to try.

I know its overly gearheaded approach, but without a group to play with, thats become how I have to play the game. sigh

 

[Mithras]

why not make hangerage take up a helluva lot more space?

 

[Bob Weaver]

Launch capability a la Bk-5

If you are looking for a way to make carriers less effective, compared to combat craft without fighters, why not take another rule from Bk-5, about requirements for carrying fighters? On p. 32 of Bk5 (2nd ed) the rules state that "small craft are carried at their own tonnage on ships 1000 tons and under; they require tonnage equal to 130% of their mass within the hulls of larger ships. Add to that the rule on launch facilities, on the same page.
This reads "ordinary launch facilities for a ship allow one craft to be launched per turn per 10,000 tons of hull." (emphasis mine). That right there is a significant limiter. The launch tubes are even worse: tubes capable of launching 40 ships per turn take up 250 tons, not counting the tonnage of the fighters themselves.
Now you may need cruiser escorts to protect the carrier while it slowly launches the fighters, one at a time.

 

[Bob Weaver]

One more thought occurs to me: if you expand the Bk-2 damage tables so that hits to the hold/vehicle bay are more common the carrier can lose fighters before they are launched - or if the launch tube is hit, the fighters are trapped inside. As an aside, doesn't it seem a bit silly to have the only effect of a "hull" hit result be decompression (which only works once) given that 18 out of 36 possible 2D6 results are "hull hit"? (spots 6 & 7 on a 2-12 table). Just my Cr 0.2.

Cheers,

Bob W.

 

[The Oz]

If you're going to have Bk2 combat resolution for warships, you need new hit location tables. I'd recommend three to four; one for warships, one for cargo carriers, one for other private vessels (yachts, scouts) and one for small craft. Perhaps something like this?

New Damage Location Tables:

Die
Roll	Warships	Merchants	Private		Small Craft
2	Critical	Critical	Critical	Drive
3	Jump		Jump		Jump		Drive
4	Maneuver	Maneuver	Powerplant	Drive
5	Powerplant	Fuel		Fuel		Cargo
6	Fuel		Fuel		Fuel		Cargo
7	Fuel		Cargo		Hull		Hull
8	Fuel		Cargo		Cargo		Hull
9	Hull		Hull		Cargo		Cargo
10	Wpn		Powerplant	Maneuver	Cargo
11	Bridge		Bridge		Bridge		Bridge
12	Cargo		Wpn		Wpn		Wpn

Powerplant includes any fuel purification plant.
Hull includes staterooms, low berths.
Cargo includes small craft, vehicles, magazines.
Wpn includes bays, turrets, spinal mounts, defensive screens.
Bridge includes auxiliary bridges, fighter control stations.

Critical Hits
Die
Roll	Effect
1	Jump
2	Powerplant
3	Maneuver
4	Computer
5	Bridge
6	Explode

The basic ideas behind these are that warships tend to have lots of jump fuel and weapons, while merchants have more cargo space. If you have carriers in your universe, I'd do damage to them as cargo ships, with the "cargo" hits getting the fighter bays.

 

[boomslang]

As an aside, doesn't it seem a bit silly to have the only effect of a "hull" hit result be decompression (which only works once) given that 18 out of 36 possible 2D6 results are "hull hit"? (spots 6 & 7 on a 2-12 table).

The real effect of those multiple hull hits should show up after the combat is over: every last one of them has to be individually repaired (or planetfall made somewhere with a breathable atmo) before vacc suit air supplies (including reloads) run out, or people are going to start suffocating. 15 man-minutes and a skill-modified roll per hit to repair, as per B2, and don't forget the clock has already been running since the first hull breech forced everyone onto vacc suit life supp.

It ain't action-packed, but it could be nail-biting in its own right...

 

[aramis]

Mayday provides that there IS a limit on hull hits. I just don't remember what it is. I used 1 per 20 tons, but I am certain that was a houserull derived from mayday.

 

[tbeard1999]

why not make hangerage take up a helluva lot more space?

Seems to me that this idea, while simple, will have undesirable effects on the roleplaying aspects (at least IMTU). If you (say) double the tonnage of hangers, you will make carriers less viable, but you'll also make it much more costly for PCs to carry air rafts, ATVs, etc. There's not much justification (IMHO) for making fighters uniquely more costly to carry than other vehicles. Plus, I *like* carriers. I just want "surface combatants" to be viable as well.

And altering the tonnage for vehicles will require reworking existing designs and may even render certain commercial designs economically unviable.

I'd rather just do it like High Guard and allow tonnage to be dedicated to weaponry.

--Ty

 

[tbeard1999]

If you are looking for a way to make carriers less effective, compared to combat craft without fighters, why not take another rule from Bk-5, about requirements for carrying fighters? On p. 32 of Bk5 (2nd ed) the rules state that "small craft are carried at their own tonnage on ships 1000 tons and under; they require tonnage equal to 130% of their mass within the hulls of larger ships. Add to that the rule on launch facilities, on the same page.
This reads "ordinary launch facilities for a ship allow one craft to be launched per turn per 10,000 tons of hull." (emphasis mine). That right there is a significant limiter. The launch tubes are even worse: tubes capable of launching 40 ships per turn take up 250 tons, not counting the tonnage of the fighters themselves.
Now you may need cruiser escorts to protect the carrier while it slowly launches the fighters, one at a time.

I'm not looking to make carrier less effective. Rather, I am looking to make it possible to have dedicated "surface combatants". Book 2 does not really allow this. There is a strict limit of 1 turret per 100 tons, with an insignificant amount of internal space required (1 ton for fire control). This means that a 5000 ton cargo ship can easily have comparable armament to a 5000 ton dreadnought. In fact, there will be little difference between the two ships. Other than the dreadnought *maybe* having faster drives, it can carry as much cargo as the cargo ship.

That does not work for MTU; I want there to be carriers *and* dreadnoughts *and* poorly armed merchantmen.

That said, I don't necessarily object to adding launch tubes. But since I'm not really trying to weaken carriers, they aren't a high priority for me.

 

[tbeard1999]

If you're going to have Bk2 combat resolution for warships, you need new hit location tables. I'd recommend three to four; one for warships, one for cargo carriers, one for other private vessels (yachts, scouts) and one for small craft. Perhaps something like this?

New Damage Location Tables:

*SNIP*

If you have carriers in your universe, I'd do damage to them as cargo ships, with the "cargo" hits getting the fighter bays.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I like the idea of different hit location charts for broad classes of ships. As an aside, all my charts and rolls use 1d10. This allows me to roll LOTS of shots at a time and use statistical resolution easily. But I like your idea of several charts. Some thought would need to be given to what constitutes a "carrier", etc., (probably "a ship that devotes at least X% of its tonnage to fighters or somesuch).

--Ty

--Ty

 

[tbeard1999]

an aside, doesn't it seem a bit silly to have the only effect of a "hull" hit result be decompression (which only works once) given that 18 out of 36 possible 2D6 results are "hull hit"? (spots 6 & 7 on a 2-12 table). Just my Cr 0.2.

Cheers,

Bob W.

I imagine that the rationale is that unless something important is actually hit, a spaceship probably *can* absorb an almost limitless number of hits. Spaceships don't sink. They can't burn -- simply evacuating the air will eliminate a fire. Nor do they carry huge numbers of explosives that can be detonated by out of control fires.* The problem though is that this makes a spaceship combat *game* kinda dull.

*That said, I wonder if liquid hydrogen is as stable as the rules assume? Would l-hyd just "leak out" if hit by a laser, or could it explode?

 

[pendragonman]

Don't know that the l-hyd would explode. Absence of oxygen. But what about rapid (perhaps explosive) ablation of the l-hyd, would that have similar effects to explosion? And what happens when the l-hyd leaks into the interior (and oxygenated) spaces? Perhaps then we can have explosion or fire effects?

Just a guess.

 

[aramis]

The concentrations will likely not hit the explosive levels (which are a fairly narrow range, actually) in the case of interior hydrogen leaks.

Fires are most likely to be caused by electrical failures and current arcs within a pressurized environment... in other words, a critical hit.

 

[captainjack]

H2 fires......

But what about the gouts of steam, flashing red lights and everyone flying to one side ?

When my players ship took a hit once, and I was describing the situation, they were bummed that the damage wouldn't leave a cool smoke trail behind their ship...then they thought about it and insisted that the H2 would burn with the leaking O2 and leave a smoke trail. Then that the bedding carpets and furniture in the cabin would at least burn .... I gave in...so they could have MUCH more danger of an internal explosion, just cause "you can't have a fight without ships trailing smoke...." ******PLAYERS******* the main flaw in a well thought out campaign, I tell you.

Cap

 

[Golan2072]

I imagine that the rationale is that unless something important is actually hit, a spaceship probably *can* absorb an almost limitless number of hits. Spaceships don't sink. They can't burn -- simply evacuating the air will eliminate a fire. Nor do they carry huge numbers of explosives that can be detonated by out of control fires.* The problem though is that this makes a spaceship combat *game* kinda dull.

One thing to remember is that a starship in combat is usually under thrust, which means that its structure is under constant stress by the acceleration (unless you're using a totally inertialess drive, that is). If the ship's main structure is hit too badly but the engine keeps running, it might collapse under this stress...