The Compleat "maybe we'll fix that" Requirements List

[whartung]

Secondary large mounts could certainly be added to the largest sized ships as well. Why couldn't a 500,000 dton sphere have multiple PAs that would usually be mounted spinally on a 10,000 dton ship?

Of coursed, you can already do this in TNE. The basic premise for a TNE spinal is that it limits maneuverability of the firing ship, and the target must be facing the gun mount (either front or behind). Since facing is unimportant in basic TNE, they use the maneuver limitation to act as the technique to "aim" the ship.

In Brilliant Lances, the spinals are mounted (typically) in location 1 and can only fire straight in front of the ship. Then it's simply this narrow arc that and the fact that the ship must maintain the proper facing that limits the ship. Spinals are also more difficult to employ in BL because there are dead zones in the arcs of fire for the Bow On facing, so in theory ships can't be 'aimed at' because they're out of arc. That would need to be fixed, frankly. Give it a 15 or 30 deg arc and chart it accordingly. It's allowed 60 degrees in Battle Rider, and then facing is optional as is.


You could in theory mount another spinal, but you'll start running in to surface area limitations to where the gun can't fit. Guns are mounted in a specific location, there's 20 locations, so each location has only 5% of the total surface area.

If you look at the FF&S design sequences, if you "build a bay big enough", you can mount large guns in them. The bays take guns that are simply "big enough to fit" the size of the bay. So, it's not a real leap to take the design sequence for a bay and tweak it for longer weapons, but ones that don't traverse (and thus have similar arcs of fire like spinals, even if not firing in the direction of the axis of the ship). Such guns would take less surface area, and less overall volume like a bay, since they don't need the empty space to move.

In the end, they're big guns and aimed like a WWII tank destroyer -- the ship is the gun mount.

The TNE, FF&S, and BL systems improve upon much of these things. A minor nit with them both is they don't offer Jump mechanics in their sequence of play. How can I jump out of combat? Not really clear.

BL is the most complicated system, with it maneuver and such. BR is lightweight BL, better suited to "ships with crits". And the BL design sequence isn't terrible, a light weight FF&S system. It's the weapon sequences that make FF&S design a real pain. BL gives some standard turrets and barbettes and small spinals to aid that problem.

 

[AndreaV]

Want to open this debate again?

As you know, I have several reasons more to keep with the multi-raider tender (most of them quite difficult to reflect on the rules, but I cannot take out of my mind this comes from a roleplaying game and tries to reflect reality), from command and control to squadron integrity...

Perhaps, I've thought about it and come up with some more ideas. But not in this thread

In MT it's no strange to see published battle ships have multiple redundant screens. The only use I see for that is just in case a critical destoys your screen, or to compensate for the screens -1 results. Even so, if you're receiing criticals or interior explosions, I don't believe that would help you too much...

True, but with the Plankwells its not a case of redundant backup screens (something I agree is a good idea) but a single rather deficient screen I put it down to a simple design flaw.

 

[AndreaV]

Not quite what I had in mind. Let me give you an example. The ship design system does not allow a ship to carry more than one spinal. Is that because

A) Ships with multiple spinals self-destruct the moment they try to fire more than one at a time.

B) Ships with multiple spinals are not cost-efficient.

c) The Imperium and its rivals and enemies all have a religious ban against ships with multiple spinals/there's a treaty that bans the building of ships with multiple spinals/everyone erroneously believe that ships with multiple spinals are not cost-effective, and here are the rules for multiple spinals in case you want to make up your own TU with ships with multiple spinals.​

See what I mean?

Another example: It's not allowed to build ships with the same kind of weapons in spinal and bays. Is that because it's impossible to do so, because it's a bad idea to do so, or because the combat system can't handle it?

A third example: You can't carry more than two people per 4T of living quarter. Is that because military people will mutiny if they get stacked three to a stateroom, or because the Imperium doesn't like to treat its spacers with undue harshness? Is hot-bunking disallowed because shipping twice the number of people will cause the life support system to break down, and if so, what are the rules for installing extra life support equipment?


Hans

Ahhhh yes I get your point.

The multiple spinals is a problem. FFS (both versions I believed) solved this by custom building spinals so you could theoretically build an appropriately lethal spinal for the Tigress. However this runs into the "dead with fireworks, marching band and motorcycle escort is still just dead" problem. The reason for just one spinal is structural, and the limits on size due to the aforementioned problem. Not that HG doesn't have this problem, its at the root of the whole J vs T meson ship issue.

The single type of weapon issue has been well known for sometime and every design system since HG and every proposed revision of HG has fixed it. All that's really needed is a change to the USP.

Staterooms? yes I've assumed this is a limitation of lifesupport. The solution is to separate out accommodations and lifesupport machinery.

Another issue that needs fixing in HG is the powerplant by the numbers issue. This needs to be changed to installing a specific amount of EP rather than an abstract PP number. Again an easy fix.

 

[AndreaV]

I disagree and would not accept that construction as a basis for discussion unless instructed to do so by Marc Miller and his minions.

EDIT: To elucidate: Fighting Ships has some good information and some bad information. The bad information should be ignored because it is bad, not because the bit next to it is bad, and the good information should most definitely not be ignored just because the bit next to it is bad.

And how do you distinguish between good and bad information? Bad information is demonstrably bad. Everything else is good until and unless it can be demonstrated that it is bad.

Most if not all the designs in fighting ships and indeed most of all published HG designs are flawed, some very badly. This demonstrably because they can't be designed under the rules they were designed under. I will quite happily ignore the technical specs in those designs because they're just plain wrong.

However, the "colour" text and information about Imperial naval strategy in it is not flawed and contains a wealth of useful information that needs to be kept

 

[AndreaV]

You forget that one of the major (apparent) disconnects between the rules and the setting is that by the rules the battleship won't have a larger meson gun than the heavy cruiser (I use the qualifier 'heavy' to indicate the smallest practical starship that has the biggest meson gun available) and its defenses are not significantly more effective than the heavy cruiser either.

I think a lot could be achieved if we divorced Traveller navies from 20-21st century ship designations and went to the something more along the lines of age of sail concepts. You have ships of the line, slow (ie lower jump) and armed to kill for battleline work. Frigates which sacrifice armour and/or armament to get more speed/range (ie higher jump) for cruising duties. You have sloops, small ships designed for patrol and escort work. And then round it out with auxiliaries to do all the "boring" jobs.

That may or may not be a good reason not to equip your heavy cruiser with BGs even if you can build them in numbers (I'd want someone to test it out before taking it as gospel). But the reason why the Imperium doesn't put them into many of its ships is that it only has a couple of thousand artifact BGs (less any that has gone on the blink over time) and can't build them in large numbers yet.


Hans

Black globes are rather overrated IMHO. Yes if you flicker them you get armour, but so does the enemy and you risk blowing up your ship. I think the Imperium doesn't make much use of them because they're not that useful.

 

[AndreaV]

That's been present since CT. Tho' many CT staterooms are roughly 3x4.5x?? meters (they're often under the curved or less than full height areas).

A stateroom (the actual room bit) is 2Dt, that works out as 3m x 3m x 2.5m. About the size of a small bedroom. You can fit a double bed in it, a wardrobe and a dresser, but its a tight fit.

 

[AndreaV]

Here's something to throw into the pot. RW warships are designed as a balance between four competing factors: Armament, protection, speed and range. In the 1st WW, German ships had a significant advantage of British because they were only designed to work in the North Sea while the RN built to work worldwide. Ships are also designed (usually) with protection appropriate to the level of armament they are expected to face, usually on a par with the level of armament they carry. You could theoretically build a 6" gun cruiser with armour on the level of battleship, but there's no point in doing so, since its wasted given the level of threat it is meant to face.

HG warships likewise appear to have four competing factors: Armament, protection, agility and range (jump). Agility is limited to 6, so its effect is minor (but not ignorable, agility 6 has a significant cost over agility 5). One of the problems is that armament and protection are thrown out of whack by the meson gun. However, if we go with the suggestion of using armour to reduce the number of damage rolls of a meson, we put them back in step somewhat. ForEx: to protect against a J meson you need factor-9 armour which reduces the J gun to one damage roll. However to achieve the same against a T meson you need factor-18 armour. At a stroke we require battleships to have more armour than a cruiser since they face a bigger threat.

 

[Matt123]

Another issue that needs fixing in HG is the powerplant by the numbers issue. This needs to be changed to installing a specific amount of EP rather than an abstract PP number. Again an easy fix.

Fractional Power Plants that when rated are rounded down to the nearest whole number.

Fractional Power Plants already exist on ships that lose their drop tanks or riders, and are rounded down (or certainly should be) to get a whole number rating for combat damage/agility purposes.

And as you are suggesting, power plants should be designed to fit the energy needs of the ship, not comply with an abstract number that can inflate the ships size & cost by billions.

The classic example is a TL15 50kton Missile Cruiser with MD-6, PP-6 and needing 12EP to power its computer. To give the Cruiser Agility-6 will take either 500 ton and 1500 MCr of Power Plant to boost it to PP-7, or 12 ton and 36 MCr of Power Plant to boost it to PP-6.024, rounded down for the USP to PP-6.

 

[McPerth]

True, but with the Plankwells its not a case of redundant backup screens (something I agree is a good idea) but a single rather deficient screen I put it down to a simple design flaw.

Sorry, I missread your entry, understanding that they have 3 meson screens, not meson screens 3. I guess that's what happens when you skim read threads in a language that is not your's and without having properly slept

 

[McPerth]

On the topic of habitability stuff, here is a link to a US Navy document and another to a fairly old AIAA space station document.

http://doni.daps.dla.mil/Directives...ral Outfit and Furnishing Support/9640.1A.pdf

http://www.spacearchitect.org/pubs/AIAA-63-139.pdf

Both give recommendations for volume or deck square footage requirements.

One thing to keep in mind though is that on modern ocean going naval ships there is a move on to increase habitability even further. Specifically I believe that on ships like the new US Coast Guard cutters they have tried to accommodate almost everyone into either single, double, or quad staterooms (with a very limited number of 6 person staterooms that I believe were initially intended only for transient berthing). I believe that the initial plan (at least) was also for something similar for the LCS type vessels as well.

I think RW navies accomodation needs (aside from submarines) aren't really usable as comparison with starships needs, as in a surface ship the claustrophobic sensation is not the same. Even if you have cramped accomodations on a cutter, you have allways de possiblity of going to deck on you free time and enjoy fresh air and open spaces. You cann't do so in a starship (not for lack of open space on the outer hull, but better not try to 'enjoy' ir without a vacc suit :rofl: )

I guess the worst aspect of cramped accomodations on starship would be psicological, not physical.

Spinal weapons ought to be directly tied to the ship's size and configurations. There should be some variance as well; for example, larger PA's tend to have more energy output. Naturally, a needle or wedge would have an obvious advantage over a close structure, but let's not forget that spheres or flattened spheres could potentially use a spiral accelerator path to achieve higher energies.

Perhaps meson guns need a large aperture and therefore and inappropriate to needles but would be best on a cone???

Secondary large mounts could certainly be added to the largest sized ships as well. Why couldn't a 500,000 dton sphere have multiple PAs that would usually be mounted spinally on a 10,000 dton ship?

I keep on my oppinion that, as fixed mounts they are, angles spinals on a sphere/dome design are possible, but the oportunities to use more than one at once are rare enough (if ever exist) to make them a waste of resources.

Another issue that needs fixing in HG is the powerplant by the numbers issue. This needs to be changed to installing a specific amount of EP rather than an abstract PP number. Again an easy fix.

Another thing fixed in the MT design system...

 

[Birdrock]

HG warships likewise appear to have four competing factors: Armament, protection, agility and range (jump). Agility is limited to 6, so its effect is minor (but not ignorable, agility 6 has a significant cost over agility 5). One of the problems is that armament and protection are thrown out of whack by the meson gun. However, if we go with the suggestion of using armour to reduce the number of damage rolls of a meson, we put them back in step somewhat. ForEx: to protect against a J meson you need factor-9 armour which reduces the J gun to one damage roll. However to achieve the same against a T meson you need factor-18 armour. At a stroke we require battleships to have more armour than a cruiser since they face a bigger threat.

How about replacing one of the critical hits in the interior explosion table with Armor-1?