The Compleat Battleship
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A quick search of Fighting Ships (S9) pg 15, the flavour text for the Destroyer Escort includes.
"Performance characteristics for this class make it capable of staying with most Imperial fleets (jump-4, 6-G acceleration), and thus this type of vessel can be found escorting most squadrons as well as more typical convoys."
Thats not a statement of doctrine though. If I find something more definitive, I'll post it.
True, but have you calculated the cost?
I'm not sure if the cost of a nuclear missile is stated in HG, but in MT it's kCr150 each, and a 50 ton bay launches 25 per salvo. So cost of a salvo is MCr 3.75.
To hit (assuming agility 6) you need a 6+, so about 10 out of 36 salvos will miss. They have to penetrate defenses. Repulsors (it rating 7+) will stop one salvo each batery. Beams and sand will stop about 6 in 36 (so 1 in 6) (assume 9 factor defense bateries). Dampers (also assume factor 9) will stop 30 in 36. So about 10% of your missiles will hit and penetrate (aside from those deflected by the repulsors).
12 out of 36 will give a weapon 1 damage. Assuming the ship has several seccondary weapon types you need 4-5 weapon hits to reduce one spinal by one factor.
So, you need more than 100 salvos to reduce one spinal by one factor, at MCr 3.75 per salvo... nearly MCr 400 per spinal reduction...
I know this doesn't count on a one battle fleet as used in TCS, but on a campaign or reality, more than one quartermaster would have peptic ulcers just thinking on this.
And don't forget the weapons grade radioactives needed to make all those 2500 nukes...
In Fighting Ships of the Shattered Imperium (MT) states (IIRC in the TL 13 BB, I cannot search it now) that it's the first one to attain the imperial specifications: J4 M4. In MT the maneover use to be quite less than in HG, and agility is rare to be seen, so it's possible that those specifications have been reduced from HG.
EDIT: Now I had time to review it. It's on page 44 (CA-13 Cruiser Armored), last sentence :
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Missiles come free in High Guard 
For what it's worth, I was playing around with HGS and the smallest ship that I could do armor-15, Jump-4, Agility-6, damper-9, meson screen-9, black globe-4, and a T-Meson was 651,000 tons.
With the spare space, I managed to put in 100 missile batteries and 5 Sandcaster batteries.
The smallest with a J Meson was 501,000 tons. Packs 150 missiles and 20 sand.
The calculations that everyone was using was ignoring that power plants can't be bought in fractional amounts. Always have to be 1% of hull increments.
For what it's worth, I was playing around with HGS and the smallest ship that I could do armor-15, Jump-4, Agility-6, damper-9, meson screen-9, black globe-4, and a T-Meson was 651,000 tons.
With the spare space, I managed to put in 100 missile batteries and 5 Sandcaster batteries.
The smallest with a J Meson was 501,000 tons. Packs 150 missiles and 20 sand.
The calculations that everyone was using was ignoring that power plants can't be bought in fractional amounts. Always have to be 1% of hull increments.
I'll trust you on the numbers & merely observe thats far less than 1% of the cost of the BB you are targeting.
For example the Plankwell is 120,000 MCr (roughly, per FS), it has a full USP, meaning it has all 7 weapon options. The first hit will reduce the Spinal by one, every 7 hits after that will reduce it again.
If your numbers are correct at around 100 MCr per succesfull weapon one, thats 100 MCr for the first Spinal hit plus 700 MCr for each one after that. To reduce it to say M where the factor-9 Meson Screen stops half the hits, will cost 5 x 700 + 100 = 3600 MCr or 3 % of the value of your target.
Additionally if these are all fired by fast frigates around 1200-1800 ton, the Plankwell will struggle to combat them.
But thats why BB don't travel alone, the risk of having thier combat stats degraded before meeting 'the real' adversary in other BBs, is just too high.
The real battle is among the escorts, not the BB's whom you really want to engage only other BB's.
Its why I went and designed my own test ships. All the arguments I've ever seen relied on these broken ships
The canon designs are somewhat broken, according to the text they're all J4, but according to their USP two are J3 (only the Plankwell is J4), which fits with my theory, except that the other two are seriously over size.
Mind you reducing the battleship fleet to J3 does take a horse and cart through Fifth Frontier War (which I believe is canonical).
Does make things a bit harder
Here things get interesting too. A high end J3 J meson ship comes in at around MCr21,000 and you can get 2.445 for a high end J3 T meson ship. Crunching the numbers, the J ships each has a 5.6% chance of hitting and penetrating the T ship making a total 13.1% chance that one of them will hit (and kill). The single T ship has a 22.5% chance of hitting and penetrating the J ship. So the T ship seems to clearly be the better investment.
Dropping the standard for Imperial battleships to J3 makes the Imperial fleet fit canon descriptions of it. Unfortunately it is without doubt a retcon and means some canon has to be overwritten. I think its an acceptable change, mind you its not for me to make
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Fifth Frontier War, most of the initial Imperial squadrons are J4. My proposal to drop the standard to J3 IS a retcon (or at least involves so much hand waving that you'll get airborne). But by dumping this bit of canon we fix a much bigger canon issue. Worth the trade off IMHO.
Here's a puzzler for you. According to HG launch and recovery occur during the fleet allocation phase. Now can a tender drop its riders and fall back to reserve in the same turn? The rules are actually rather vague on this. I rule they can't, and if they can't it can make life interesting. Forces tenders to endure at least one round in the line, or deploy to the reserve delaying the arrive of the riders till the second round.
Interesting, maybe, but hardly realistic. Assuming two fleets approach each other, they're going to see each other long enough in advance to deploy riders. In fact, they should be able to deploy riders and leave the tenders far, far behind the battle.
BTW, I'm quite sceptical about the canonical extreme vulnerability of riders on the defensive against an actack by an overwhelming force. Oh, they're vulnerable, all right, but they're not an automatic loss. If the riders are mounted when the attackers arrive, the tenders can just jump out with them, same as if they were ships. If the riders are deployed, there may well be time for them to be recovered before the attacker get into firing range. If the attacker jumps into the system in actual range of the defenders, they'll lose a number of the ships that arrive early, the tenders will jump out, and the riders can scatter and head for the outer system for recovery.
If only the tender survives an attack, how much of the cost of the entire combo do the riders represent, on the average?
Hans
True enough under normal circumstances. However if you wish to achieve tactical surprise it can be an issue. And certainly makes for some interesting scenarios.
BTW a decent T meson rider runs to around MCr 17,500, and a single rider tender about MCr 20,000, so that puts the rider around 46.7%
Yes, a tender can launch ships and be put in the reserves.
Vs a sizeable fleet, any single ship under 1000 tons will not last a turn without losing all its weapons or just dying due to criticals, giving the opponents a free round of firing on the reserve in the same turn.
There are two situations where stripping weapons from a ship becomes 'difficult'. The first is Planetoids armoured to factor 20+ and impervious to weapon-1 damage results. These will not be small ships.
The second is the un-armed ship. Yep. Un-armed. Assuming it is not destroyed by criticals (as you would expect of most craft under size 9), it is impossible for it to be 'rendered incapable of firing offensive weapons'.
IMTU I'd rule that breaks the intent of the rule, but it is interesting. The Planetoid IMO is fine, if a little frustrating to the opponent watching his meson spinals getting reduced whilst trying to king hit the planetoid.
No no no. No. Nope! ^_^ Within the letter of the rule, it starts out incapable of firing offensive weapons (not having them.) Within the spirit of the rule, the whole question is just plain silly.
That's the difference between a roleplaying game and a wargame. If a rule is just plain silly, an RPG referee can just plain ignore it, but for a wargame (an unmoderated one, of course) the players have to agree to disregard it.
Hans
But in this case it's not a question of disregarding a rule. It's a question of interpretation, and in this case I really don't think that a reasonable interpretation of the rule would say that an unarmed ship was anything but 'incapable of firing offensive weapons' whether it achieved that status during a battle or at the shipyard.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
Known: Said ship has no offensive weapons. Cannot fire offensively during the round whatsoever.
Round one: Whether or not the opponent fires first or second, the opponent fires his offensive weapons, hits target ship, receives (at least) 1 weapon-1 hit.
End of round reconciliation phase: Ship With No Offensive Weapons cannot fire offensively. By rule, the reserve area can now be targeted as breakthrough occurs unopposed.
Round two: Targets in reserve are attacked as The Ship With No Offensive Weapons cannot stop the breakthrough.
Thus, Matt's whole conjecture is dealt with BY RULE. Q.E.D.
Round one: Whether or not the opponent fires first or second, the opponent fires his offensive weapons, hits target ship, receives (at least) 1 weapon-1 hit.
End of round reconciliation phase: Ship With No Offensive Weapons cannot fire offensively. By rule, the reserve area can now be targeted as breakthrough occurs unopposed.
Round two: Targets in reserve are attacked as The Ship With No Offensive Weapons cannot stop the breakthrough.
Thus, Matt's whole conjecture is dealt with BY RULE. Q.E.D.
What breakthrough? Space is 3D. If a ship is within the range of weapons it can be fired upon.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
We are discussing the HG ship combat rules. Please refer to them for details.
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