mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I very much doubt if the game designers ever considered the physics behind their rules 
Thoughts and ideas on "fixing" High Guard
- Thread starter Carlobrand
- Start date
What is desirable
-Fuel tanks shattered: Change it or move it to the critical tables (who the hell builds a ship with fuel tanks that can be taken out with a single hit)
-Armour should reduce the number of automatic criticals by mesons (since it represents not just a thick skin but improved internal subdivision and protection)
-Missile magazines are an absolute must (when you are throwing tens of thousands of missiles you need to reload)
-Fuel tanks shattered: Change it or move it to the critical tables (who the hell builds a ship with fuel tanks that can be taken out with a single hit)
-Armour should reduce the number of automatic criticals by mesons (since it represents not just a thick skin but improved internal subdivision and protection)
-Missile magazines are an absolute must (when you are throwing tens of thousands of missiles you need to reload)
The Fuel Tanks Shattered result is clearly high on everyone's list, as is the problem with meson fire. Missile magazines rank pretty high too.
Basics on weapons, leading up to some thoughts and ideas -
Beam laser: delivers about 250 million (mega) joules as a beam of light or x-ray to a small spot of hull, basically burning a hole to get at the soft innards. Striker pen 73 to 125 thousand kilometers, 65 to 250 thousand, 55 to 1.25 million.
Pulse laser: as beam laser, but a stronger, shorter pulse. Striker pen 79 to 167 thousand kilometers, 71 to 333 thousand, 63 to 1.67 million. Gets a +2 on High Guard damage rolls.
Energy weapon: turret delivers 250 to 500 million joules as a stream of extremely hot, extremely fast plasma, burning/burrowing a hole. TL10 P Striker pen 67 to 7 thousand kilometers, 55 to 14 thousand, not relevant beyond that. TL11 P (250Mw) Striker pen 69 to ~8 thousand kilometers, 57 to ~15 thousand. TL12 P Striker pen 71 to 8 thousand kilometers, 59 to ~17 thousand. TL12 F (500Mw) Striker pen 83 to ~18 thousand kilometers, 71 to ~36 thousand. TL14 F Striker pen 87 to 21 thousand kilometers, 75 to 42 thousand. Does not get a damage bonus, oddly enough, but does get a bonus to penetrate sand. Bays - not clear if they're one big well-aimed weapon or several turret-size weapons in a bay, but they don't get any better damage result, ergo no increase in penetration, ergo likely the latter.
Particle Beam: turret model delivers about 1250 million joules as a beam of near-light-speed hydrogen atoms, if I'm reading it right:
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/npb.htm
For the density of armor we're dealing with, primarily superheats the armor (apparently by releasing gamma and x-ray photons on impact with an atom) at the point of impact - well, "deep inside" the point of impact since there tends to be a lot of empy space between molecules even in a solid and a given particle moving close to light speed's likely to penetrate a ways before it encounters a molecule of the target. Not sure how deep, but we seem to be talking about burning a hole to get to the soft innards again - and some radiation effect from the gamma. Striker pen - no equivalent, but delivering five times the power does tend to suggest greater penetration, though to what degree I don't know. Bays - same comment as with energy weapon bays. Spinals: very clearly one big well-aimed weapon, at minimum 100 times the power of the turret (125 gigajoules), can be up to 200 times (250 gigajoules), and there appear to be some tech level improvement involved. ; +6 to penetration irrespective of power or tech level.
Mesons: not much to say, they deliver their energy inside the target, pi mesons ghosting through matter before decaying into gamma photons at a precisely chosen range from the gun. Striker describes this weird effect like a fuel-air bomb explosion: everything inside a given radius getting mulched, literally, but no effect outside the zone. Not sure how that's accomplished with a burst of gamma, but if they're able to dictate precisely the range at which the mesons decay, perhaps they can also dictate the volume of space into which the mesons are deposited before decay, instead of having them all explode outward from a central point. Power ranges from 50 gigajoules for bays to 125 to 300 gigajoules (equivalent to up to 75 tons of TNT, 0.075 kilotons) for spinals. In other words, a spinal meson is roughly equivalent to a small nuclear device going off inside the ship. However, possible issues include mesons decay being a probability thing (resulting in a "football" decay curve with about half decaying where intended, a quarter decaying early, and a quarter decaying late), and some sources saying that pions won't "ghost" through nuclei but will instead "knock a chip" from a nucleus and then continue on with reduced energy, so there's be some level of interaction with the hull armor with the result that sufficient thickness of armor will draw energy from the beam as pions lose energy to nuclei and decay prematurely.
Missile: turret missile is a 15 cm wide missile per Striker and SS3. HEAP penetration 45 (??) as designed by Striker. Assuming a 10 kg warhead (SS3)and the Striker tac missile design rule about a warhead being 1/20 the mass of a shell of the same power, it could fit a pen 55 HEAP, which would make more sense. Nuclear is likely a 0.1 kt nuclear warhead; given the numbers getting shot down and the impressive power of even the smallest nuke, small and cheap is better. 0.1 delivers a Striker penetration of 60 to a range of 30 meters and is deadly within 15 meters - something not captured in High Guard but understandable given that it represents around 400 gigajoules of energy, enough to vaporize 56 tons of iron. However, the black globe rules imply a more conservative 25 gigajoules, implying either the device is detonating at some distance from the globe/hull or the warhead is only around 0.01 kt.
So...
Basics on weapons, leading up to some thoughts and ideas -
Beam laser: delivers about 250 million (mega) joules as a beam of light or x-ray to a small spot of hull, basically burning a hole to get at the soft innards. Striker pen 73 to 125 thousand kilometers, 65 to 250 thousand, 55 to 1.25 million.
Pulse laser: as beam laser, but a stronger, shorter pulse. Striker pen 79 to 167 thousand kilometers, 71 to 333 thousand, 63 to 1.67 million. Gets a +2 on High Guard damage rolls.
Energy weapon: turret delivers 250 to 500 million joules as a stream of extremely hot, extremely fast plasma, burning/burrowing a hole. TL10 P Striker pen 67 to 7 thousand kilometers, 55 to 14 thousand, not relevant beyond that. TL11 P (250Mw) Striker pen 69 to ~8 thousand kilometers, 57 to ~15 thousand. TL12 P Striker pen 71 to 8 thousand kilometers, 59 to ~17 thousand. TL12 F (500Mw) Striker pen 83 to ~18 thousand kilometers, 71 to ~36 thousand. TL14 F Striker pen 87 to 21 thousand kilometers, 75 to 42 thousand. Does not get a damage bonus, oddly enough, but does get a bonus to penetrate sand. Bays - not clear if they're one big well-aimed weapon or several turret-size weapons in a bay, but they don't get any better damage result, ergo no increase in penetration, ergo likely the latter.
Particle Beam: turret model delivers about 1250 million joules as a beam of near-light-speed hydrogen atoms, if I'm reading it right:
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/npb.htm
For the density of armor we're dealing with, primarily superheats the armor (apparently by releasing gamma and x-ray photons on impact with an atom) at the point of impact - well, "deep inside" the point of impact since there tends to be a lot of empy space between molecules even in a solid and a given particle moving close to light speed's likely to penetrate a ways before it encounters a molecule of the target. Not sure how deep, but we seem to be talking about burning a hole to get to the soft innards again - and some radiation effect from the gamma. Striker pen - no equivalent, but delivering five times the power does tend to suggest greater penetration, though to what degree I don't know. Bays - same comment as with energy weapon bays. Spinals: very clearly one big well-aimed weapon, at minimum 100 times the power of the turret (125 gigajoules), can be up to 200 times (250 gigajoules), and there appear to be some tech level improvement involved. ; +6 to penetration irrespective of power or tech level.
Mesons: not much to say, they deliver their energy inside the target, pi mesons ghosting through matter before decaying into gamma photons at a precisely chosen range from the gun. Striker describes this weird effect like a fuel-air bomb explosion: everything inside a given radius getting mulched, literally, but no effect outside the zone. Not sure how that's accomplished with a burst of gamma, but if they're able to dictate precisely the range at which the mesons decay, perhaps they can also dictate the volume of space into which the mesons are deposited before decay, instead of having them all explode outward from a central point. Power ranges from 50 gigajoules for bays to 125 to 300 gigajoules (equivalent to up to 75 tons of TNT, 0.075 kilotons) for spinals. In other words, a spinal meson is roughly equivalent to a small nuclear device going off inside the ship. However, possible issues include mesons decay being a probability thing (resulting in a "football" decay curve with about half decaying where intended, a quarter decaying early, and a quarter decaying late), and some sources saying that pions won't "ghost" through nuclei but will instead "knock a chip" from a nucleus and then continue on with reduced energy, so there's be some level of interaction with the hull armor with the result that sufficient thickness of armor will draw energy from the beam as pions lose energy to nuclei and decay prematurely.
Missile: turret missile is a 15 cm wide missile per Striker and SS3. HEAP penetration 45 (??) as designed by Striker. Assuming a 10 kg warhead (SS3)and the Striker tac missile design rule about a warhead being 1/20 the mass of a shell of the same power, it could fit a pen 55 HEAP, which would make more sense. Nuclear is likely a 0.1 kt nuclear warhead; given the numbers getting shot down and the impressive power of even the smallest nuke, small and cheap is better. 0.1 delivers a Striker penetration of 60 to a range of 30 meters and is deadly within 15 meters - something not captured in High Guard but understandable given that it represents around 400 gigajoules of energy, enough to vaporize 56 tons of iron. However, the black globe rules imply a more conservative 25 gigajoules, implying either the device is detonating at some distance from the globe/hull or the warhead is only around 0.01 kt.
So...
...let's begin by agreeing that High Guard was intended as a simple combat system, and let's say we want a bit more complication in order to give us a better variety of weapons and weapon strategies.
Generally, with the base hull being a 40 and the turret weapons receiving a -6 to the damage roll but pulse lasers doing 2 better than that, it looks like most weapons were judged by their extreme range potential, with the 55-60 range being considered the norm. Serves for missiles, for lasers at extreme range, and for plasma guns at the edge of their range. This opens up some interesting possibilities:
Particle beam turrets are more complicated. They draw and deliver more power, but maybe half of that expresses itself as a gamma pulse. Still, I'd want to at least consider a +2 to the surface damage roll at all ranges, given the amount of power they're projecting.
This gives you an array of turret options ranging from:
Generally, with the base hull being a 40 and the turret weapons receiving a -6 to the damage roll but pulse lasers doing 2 better than that, it looks like most weapons were judged by their extreme range potential, with the 55-60 range being considered the norm. Serves for missiles, for lasers at extreme range, and for plasma guns at the edge of their range. This opens up some interesting possibilities:
- beam lasers can receive a +2 to damage at short range;
- pulse lasers can receive a +4 to damage at short range;
- fusion guns can receive a +4 to damage, as befits something that draws 500 megawatts, is twice the size of the laser mount, and is limited to short range only (and why they didn't do that in the first place is a puzzle);
Particle beam turrets are more complicated. They draw and deliver more power, but maybe half of that expresses itself as a gamma pulse. Still, I'd want to at least consider a +2 to the surface damage roll at all ranges, given the amount of power they're projecting.
This gives you an array of turret options ranging from:
- HE missiles, which draw no power and hit targets at long range more easily but get no damage roll advantage and are vulnerable to defensive fire;
- beam lasers, which get a small short-range damage bonus but suffer a long range to-hit penalty, though you can get higher weapon factors from large batteries, therefore hit more easily;
- pulse lasers, which get a good short-range damage bonus and a small long-range damage bonus but aren't as accurate as beam lasers;
- plasma guns, which are unchanged and remain bulky and limited to short range, though they see some advantage at TL11-12;
- fusion guns, which get a good short-range bonus but remain bulky, power-hungry and limited to short range;
- and particle beams, which offer you a roll on the radiation as well as the surface damage table, and maybe we can debate a +2 on the surface roll.
Nuclear missiles:
As I noted, there's a big discrepancy between the power of a nuke and what it's doing in-game. Clearly there was a deliberate effort to tone them down for game balance purposes, but given that we're talking about imposing missile magazines - limiting their numbers in battle - and that they have to penetrate dampers as well as all the usual defenses, we may want to re-evaluate that.
Easiest option is to decide the nuke is a 0.01Kt warhead - basically a small plutonium pit and a chunk of shielding (discarded on launch) so the missile can be handled safely aboard and still do it's job.
Option 2 is to decide the nuke is a 0.1 kt nuclear warhead in standoff mode: it gets its roll from detonating a short ways from the ship. In that mode we should consider some benefit for standoff, perhaps a bonus to penetrating sand and beam defenses, else there's no reason the thing can't hit point blank just like any HE missile.
Option 2 implies a potential contact mode: the nuke detonates on the hull, releasing enough energy to vaporize many tons of iron. Again, a big fraction is gamma, don't know how much, and about half - it being a blast - is going uselessly out and away from the target, but we're still looking at energies about 3 orders of magnitude above those of the typical laser or energy weapon, and now it's in contact with the hull. Dealt with properly, that's spinal-mount territory, on the order of a +16 to the damage table and we need to be considering extra damage rolls, 'cause this puppy's putting out - outside - what a high-power meson spinal's putting out inside.
Option 1 does offer the potential for less expensive nukes. MegaTrav nukes run Cr150,000 a pop, SS3 nukes run a million or more. Of course, MegaTrav might already be considering the nukes to be the 0.01 micronukes, given the price difference.
Thoughts?
As I noted, there's a big discrepancy between the power of a nuke and what it's doing in-game. Clearly there was a deliberate effort to tone them down for game balance purposes, but given that we're talking about imposing missile magazines - limiting their numbers in battle - and that they have to penetrate dampers as well as all the usual defenses, we may want to re-evaluate that.
Easiest option is to decide the nuke is a 0.01Kt warhead - basically a small plutonium pit and a chunk of shielding (discarded on launch) so the missile can be handled safely aboard and still do it's job.
Option 2 is to decide the nuke is a 0.1 kt nuclear warhead in standoff mode: it gets its roll from detonating a short ways from the ship. In that mode we should consider some benefit for standoff, perhaps a bonus to penetrating sand and beam defenses, else there's no reason the thing can't hit point blank just like any HE missile.
Option 2 implies a potential contact mode: the nuke detonates on the hull, releasing enough energy to vaporize many tons of iron. Again, a big fraction is gamma, don't know how much, and about half - it being a blast - is going uselessly out and away from the target, but we're still looking at energies about 3 orders of magnitude above those of the typical laser or energy weapon, and now it's in contact with the hull. Dealt with properly, that's spinal-mount territory, on the order of a +16 to the damage table and we need to be considering extra damage rolls, 'cause this puppy's putting out - outside - what a high-power meson spinal's putting out inside.
Option 1 does offer the potential for less expensive nukes. MegaTrav nukes run Cr150,000 a pop, SS3 nukes run a million or more. Of course, MegaTrav might already be considering the nukes to be the 0.01 micronukes, given the price difference.
Thoughts?
Just one comment on all you calculations: you transfer the Mw to MJ as direct conversión, but as the turn is 1000 seconds, the energy really delivered would be 1000 times higher. As I understand not all the 1000 seconds the fire is hiting the target, I understand the conversión should not be as easy, but if we assume they hit 1% of the time to be seen as a hit, the energy delivered would be (in Joules) 10 times the power (in wats) of the weapon.
Worth arguing. I find it very difficult to accept that a laser has to fire repeatedly over a 20 minute period to have a 50-50 shot at hitting a target once in that time. MegaTrav suggests lasers can fire once every 2 seconds. Striker suggests lasers can fire at least once every 15 seconds. Having a laser that hits once in 80 to 600 shots at ranges of under a lightsecond is just absurd to me. If others prefer that paradigm, I'm not about to tell them they can't, but I can't buy into it myself.
My preferred paradigm is to think of it as the ship taking an average of 20 minutes to line up the shot, gleaning enough information from sensors to aim the turret with the thousandths of an arc-second accuracy needed to put the beam within about a meter or so of the aim point at a range of one light-second.
(I understand modern hardware is accurate enough to aim far better than that far more quickly, but I am constrained by the circumstances presented in Traveller - unless we intend to errata all the game's to-hit requirements - and if you ask me whether it's more realistic to take 20 minutes lining up a shot or to fire off 600 shots in the hope that just one will hit, I'm going to vote for the former, not the latter.)
Separate subtopic: the reserve. Kill the rule? Amend it? The idea of a few agile boats holding an entire fleet at bay while giant tankers and tenders cower behind them safe from enemy fire seems a lot silly to me.
Should we set a mass rule? The total mass of craft on the line must exceed the mass of craft in reserve.
Should we set a numbers rule? If the number of attacking ships exceeds the number of defending ships, the number of attackers in excess of the defenders may outflank the defending line and conduct attacks on the reserve as if they had achieved a breakthrough. The defender selects which of the attackers ships are tied up by his line; remaining attackers may bypass the line and attack ships in reserve as in a breakthrough.
Another idea: missile options. Some of this may not be new.
- Nuclear missiles can be used as a missile defense: a nuke can be launched and popped off a kilometer or so from the ship, timed to destroy any missile inbound. One nuke would kill missiles out to a couple hundred meters. Treat as - I'm not sure how to treat this. Treat one missile as equivalent to a factor-9 beam or sandcaster? Treat a battery of 30 as equivalent to 30 factor-9 beams/sandcasters? Given the area a nuke can sterilize, it should provide a significant - if expensive - defense.
- HE missiles can be used as missile defense, locking on missiles and intercepting them or exploding in their path. Treat as equivalent to a sandcaster battery of the same factor. (Not an optimal way to use missiles since sandcasters can achieve higher factors with fewer turrets, but it gives a ship beset by large numbers of missiles an additional defense.)
- Lasing missiles consist of a small nuclear warhead surrounding by lasing rods: the pulse of the warhead on detonation causes the rods to emit an x-ray laser pulse before they are destroyed. Treat a battery of missiles as a battery of pulse lasers of one factor higher, i.e. a factor-7 missile battery is equivalent to a factor-8 pulse laser battery, a factor-9 missile battery is equivalent to a factor-A pulse laser battery - in other words it gets a +1 to hit and penetrate. Treat the resulting lasers as being at short range regardless of the actual range. As the missiles are detonating a good distance away from the target, they are not subject to defensive beams, sandcasters, or dampers, though the resulting laser burst is subject to sandcasters. (This provides increased flexibility to the missile launcher, while the ammunition lasts. Even with the bonus to factor, lasers are not as accurate as missiles, but it gives the missile-armed ship an intermediate round more powerful than HE missiles and less vulnerable to defenses than nuclear rounds, for a slight cost in accuracy.)
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Line of battle, reserve, flanking and breaking the line.
As I've mentioned upthread I use squadron cards and escorts are present along with the ship they are screening.
I modify the initiative rule to give the +1 to the fleet that commits the most capital ships to the line - I count a capital ship as one that can mount a bay weapon so 1kt is the minimum.
I still use the HG1 rule that if you set the range to short for 4 consecutive turns you can break the line, and thus get a free shot at the reserve.
Flanking attacks are made by splitting your line of battle and allocating some ships to flanking - this lowers the number of ships for initiative purposes. The opposing fleet can also declare a flanking attack and you end up with 2 lines of battle - best way I can think of describing it.
If a flanking squadron breaks the line it may attack the reserve, or if it manages to set the range to short for two turns it uses the breakthrough rule.
An unopposed flanking attack attacks the reserve but the reserve is allowed to return fire.
As I've mentioned upthread I use squadron cards and escorts are present along with the ship they are screening.
I modify the initiative rule to give the +1 to the fleet that commits the most capital ships to the line - I count a capital ship as one that can mount a bay weapon so 1kt is the minimum.
I still use the HG1 rule that if you set the range to short for 4 consecutive turns you can break the line, and thus get a free shot at the reserve.
Flanking attacks are made by splitting your line of battle and allocating some ships to flanking - this lowers the number of ships for initiative purposes. The opposing fleet can also declare a flanking attack and you end up with 2 lines of battle - best way I can think of describing it.
If a flanking squadron breaks the line it may attack the reserve, or if it manages to set the range to short for two turns it uses the breakthrough rule.
An unopposed flanking attack attacks the reserve but the reserve is allowed to return fire.
As I understand it, Blaser is just this, a continuous beam that tries to focus on enemy ships, some tiems achieveing it and sometimes not. That's (again as I understand it) why they are more acurate (as it allows you to focus like tracer bullets on a machinegun) but less powerful than Plaser. Plasers are short energy pulses, so delivering more energy on a single pulse, but either hiting or missin in full. Plasma and Fusion will be more like Plasers, while PAs and MGs could be both. Of course missiles are out ofthis discussion.
But even for those weapons delivering short bursts of energy, the factthat they need continuous power makes me think (again my understanding, not absolute truth) that they have some kind of accumulators that accumulate the energy to reléase it in those short bursts, that are quite more powerful tan the Wattage they need (if a weapon that needs 250 Mw power fires every 10 secconds, it can accumulate energy along this time frame, firing a burst of 2500 MJ. If it only wants to deliver 250 MJ every 10 seconds, 25 MW power would be enough, by using accumulators, and that is important when power matters).
Just considering numbers would mean a Dreadnough will only stop one fighter, so, if you have 20 battleriders in your battleline and 4 tenders in reserve, and the enemy comes to you with 200 fighters/SDB, they could just allocate one fighter/SDB to each your BRs and use the 180 spare crafts to attack your BT, probably stranding most your BRs even when losing the battle...
Either tonnage or batteries must be entered into the equation to make it believable, as always IMHO.
That would in line with logic. In a 3D environment, having a "line" of ships to prevent movement of a foe is pretty much an impossibility.
So we're looking at two ideas. Either one line with superior numbers getting to end-run around the flank to strike the rear, or forming up as multiple lines with the extras declared flanking attacks and - if they penetrate - they get to attack the rear. And a point that numbers alone might not be a realistic emulation.
Part of the problem, of course, is it's hard to visualize how they're pulling off this line/reserve thing in 3-D space combat, so visualizing a variation on the theme is doubly hard. Frankly, I'm not troubled by the one-dreadnought-only-stops-one-fighter bit, 'cause if five fighters head off in five directions, the dreadnought can still only go in one. However, a foe with inferior numbers trying to protect vulnerable ships is going to try to use its numbers to the best advantage - circling up the wagons, so to speak. Contracting the lines like that, a dreadnought - any ship, given the ranges of these weapons - can cover a rather wide frontage. Maybe that cards and flanking lines business would handle it best. Certainly the cards sound like a good way to handle large numbers of ships.
Let's try looking at this another way: how do we justify lines and reserves? Fun way to do things at a gaming convention, but how do we rationalize it? Here's this group of ships, trying to make things dangerous enough to keep their opponents from getting at the reserves - but a dreadnought is not going to hesitate to "run over" a fighter to get to a vulberable target, even if the fighter's agility means it can't lay a glove on the fighter. Fighters likewise - if you can't hit them, why should they stand back dueling when they can just race past you and go kill tenders?
And, why can't they just take those nice long-range weapons and just shoot whatever's hiding behind the line? (Actually, that one might be answered by Mike's HG1 rule: they can. They just have to press the line hard enough, 4 consecutive turns, that it falls back until the reserve ships are in range, though I wouldn't treat it as a breakthrough, 'cause the reserves are going to be maneuvering too, to keep the line between you and them. I'd allow long-range shots instead.)
What precisely does the "line" represent, that a dreadnought doesn't just ignore it and plow full thrust at the folk in the reserve? Is there something about getting too close to the enemy that makes you more vulnerable than you'd be at the usual combat ranges, something that makes an armored dreadnought or agile fighter reluctant to just plow on through?
Another thought: perhaps we should allow fleets to "spend" agility to gain a tactical advantage. Instead of the die roll, we conduct a bidding war. The fleet's agility is the agility of the least agile ship: the fleet can bid anything from zero to that number in its effort to win initiative. We roll to see who bids first, then take turns bidding, one point at a time, until one side yields or runs out of initiative to spend. The winner wins initiative, but the agility bid in the effort is lost by both sides: ships subtract what is bid from their agility during the succeeding combat turn.
So, you could keep your fighters at agility-6 only by letting your opponent choose his range, or you can press but pay the price in the coming combat.
