Warship Roles

[Scott Martin]

Trying to wrap my head around the varioous roles of military starships, and how the weapons mix inter-relates with that.

In T5, I think that fighters should have a different *role* than they did in HG. This is why I am currently advocating to have Plasma weapons returned to the space arena.

Battleships rule deep space
Fighters rule the "interface" between the surface of a planet and high orbit, probably about 100,000 km
Escorts swat fighters (and other escorts if no fighters are available)

Battleships have big, slow-firing energy intensive long range weapons and rapid fire "short-range" point defence weapons
Smaller starships will be like scaled-down battleships
Fighters would have one of three basic configurations:
Lots of small fast firing weapons (superiority or anti-missile role)
a very small number of big (ship killer) short ranged energy weapons
A mix of the above for "general purpose" duties

SDB's could be "fighter" armed or "battleship" armed, depending on dployment: an SDB stationed inside a gas giant or ocean is more likely to have massively nasty short ranged weapons. This will tend to encourage fuel tenders for capital ships, since losing a tender to an SDB is a much better alternative than losing a battleship to an SDB.

Fighters survive by avoiding engagement. In a "deep space" role they would die by the scores attempting to close to "ship killer" range, but would probably be ignored if they stayed out of "point defence" range of the fleet and concentrated on anti-missile duties. In "interface" range (opposing a planetary assault) they would use "ground clutter" to hide until a tempting target came within "sprint" range, at which point they would use high thrust to attempt to close with the target before they could be destroyed.

Planetary assaults with this model would probably park the battleships and other heavy combatants out at about a light second out, with escorts at about 1/2 LS, and fighter support running "sweep and escort" missions before the main planetary landings. If fighters are not carried by the attacking fleet then small escorts or assault landers get this duty, and get to play "chicken" with the planetary defences: Too far away from the planetary surface and they won't provoke a response, too close and they get killed without doing a lot of damage to the defenders. I'd see this turning into attritional warfare, and the worst nightmare for a battleship captain (especially the most junior one!) would be to lose his escort screen and be forced into the role of "bait" for still viable fighter defences.

The "Imperial Rules of War" should prevent capital ships from just glassing a world in frustration, but this may not be a constraint for other polities (or, say, Lucan) so these polities would tend to build less escorts and fighters.

This may not be "Canon Traveller" but it preserves all of the ship *classes* and I think that it is internally consistent.

Comments?

Scott Martin

 

[atpollard]

It has been suggested (by Bill C) that an Imperium based on Nobles owing ships to their superiors is interesting, but will not work if confronted by an enemy with a “national army” type of fleet. While I agree, a hybrid system could exist where only the Emperor has ships with Spinal Mounts (or as an alternative, greater than 100,000 dTons) and the nobles build and control the smaller ships. Think about the advantages.

 

[atpollard]

An old rule of thumb for balancing offense and defense was a ship should be designed for an attack by its own weapons. Pre HMS Dreadnaught, a good ship had an even mix of large, medium and small guns. Post HMS Dreadnaught, ships relied primarily on all large guns (and the bigger, the better). In the modern era, missiles count, big ships are only there to deliver the missiles to the battle (but Traveller lacks the modern “one hit kill” weapon that modern ships confront.)

 

[sgbrown]

If you have efficient ECM measures and scrap the notion that huge computers always mean better firing solutions, then lots of fighters with "ship buster" missles or close range fusion guns woul give the game a WWII Naval battle "feel". The fighters would be a lot more like PT boats than airplanes, but other than that....

 

[mike wightman]

What about the spinal meson gun?

In High Guard one hit could mission kill a ship.

Perhaps what fighter/bombers need is a one shot meson gun.

 

[atpollard]

Originally posted by SGB - Steve B:
If you have efficient ECM measures and scrap the notion that huge computers always mean better firing solutions, then lots of fighters with "ship buster" missiles or close range fusion guns would give the game a WWII Naval battle "feel". The fighters would be a lot more like PT boats than airplanes, but other than that....

WW2 combat "feels" the way it does because there are no missiles. Why not fire the "ship buster" missiles from the "carrier" and create a modern Cruiser?

If you really want fighters, then they need to be faster than dreadnaughts and they need to be able to hurt warships. I don't think this can be done without at least "bruising" some of the traditional rules.

Increase fighter agility to 2 times G rating (or some other multiple) to make the things hard to hit.

If you really want a WW2 "gun" fighter, try this bend: allow a fighter to mount up to 5 x 1 dTon particle accelerators in a fixed barbette (perhaps on a 50 dTon fighter – 1 dTon of weapons per 10 dTons of fighter). Allow the Fighter to spend multiple turns recharging the weapons to reduce the PP size.

 

[robject]

So "Age of Sail" may apply to travel in Traveller, but doesn't apply at all to combat.

Age of Sail sort of breaks down when torpedoes come into the mix, eh?

Age of Sail also doesn't do much for "fighters". What's an Age of Sail fighter? A rowboat? Eeek.

 

[robject]

Back to Scott's thoughts.

Keeping plasma weapons in the space combat arena allows fighters to have a close-combat role -- plasma and fusion guns become the "knife fighting"-range weapons, very short range but also quite effective.

 

[sgbrown]

Originally posted by atpollard:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by SGB - Steve B:
If you have efficient ECM measures and scrap the notion that huge computers always mean better firing solutions, then lots of fighters with "ship buster" missiles or close range fusion guns would give the game a WWII Naval battle "feel". The fighters would be a lot more like PT boats than airplanes, but other than that....

WW2 combat "feels" the way it does because there are no missiles. Why not fire the "ship buster" missiles from the "carrier" and create a modern Cruiser?

-clip- </font>[/QUOTE]But for WWII there are torpedos - essentially water missles. The TU "fighters" I was referring to would be comparable to PT boats not dive bombers.

I concur that if you want the TU fighters to match the impact of airplanes (WWII to modern day)you have to tweak the base rules to make them more agile and significantly faster than the large ships. The problem is for space and the assumed traveller tech, I simply can't imagine a legitimate scientific reason for that to occur. Maybe I'm just too limited in imagination?

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by SGB - Steve B:
I concur that if you want the TU fighters to match the impact of airplanes (WWII to modern day)you have to tweak the base rules to make them more agile and significantly faster than the large ships.

Steve,

Sorry, but no.

Letting fighters become more agile and faster only improves their survivability against large ships. That's defense.

The offensive handicap fighters face is two fold: relative computer size and weapon battery size. It's a matter of hitting/penetrating; computers, and causing damage; weapons.

After a certain TL; around 13 or so, fighters fall behind in the computer race. You can build a fighter that carries a size 9 computer, you sacrifice other things though and you fighter balloons past the 50dTon size up to 99 dTon. Computers allow you to hit the other fellow. Once he has a positive differential of three or so, you're pretty much screwed especially if you're using small battery sizes.

Fighter battery size is the other part of the equation. When you're limited to one turret or barbette, you battery factors stay small. Maximum factors are:

Missile - 3
Beam Laser - 4
Pulse Laser - 3
Plasma Gun - 3
Fusion Gun - 5
PA turret - 2
PA barbette - 1

It's hard to hit and penetrate with those battery sizes already. If you're facing a negative DRM due to a small computer it gets worse.

Damage from those batteries, with the exception of nuc missiles, recieves an automatic +6 DRM on the tables too. Not only is hit hard to hit and then penetrate, the damage gets diluted too.

It's tough enough being a fighter. However once large ships get faster and more agile, once they carry larger computers and more armor, the fighter's job in the frontlines is finished.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Scott Martin]

Can we please avoid discussion on the rules *mechanics* of previous versions of Traveller?

I posted this in the T5 forum, not the "Fleet" forum for a reason...

Some specific questions I was trying to address were:

1) Do people want / expect a role for limited capability attritional combatants (Whether these are "Fighters", "PT Boats", "Gunboats" (AKA "Pinnaces with a 32 Lb Carronade") or "Pink Space Fairys" )

2) Does it make sense for such units to be severely range and/or sensor limited?

3) What weapons systems would such a platform mount?

I believe that the answers are "Yes" "Yes" and "Some kind of monster energy weapon" or "Some kind of monster missile".

The *only* reason that I can see for this type of unit to resemble a "single seat fighter" is because attrition units tend to get killed in droves, and if you know they are just going to get squashed, it makes sense to use as small a crew on each as possible. This was also true in Napoleonic times, with gunboats (pinnaces with a carronade in the bow) or war galleys (note that the rowing slaves whould be considered "engineering" not "crew" for the purposes of this discussion) having very small crews in comparison with "deep water" ships.

If "monster energy weapons" are in use at "knife range" then you're back to "one hit one kill" so spreading up your guns among a lot of eggshells makes more sense than putting them all into a single larger heavily armoured hull, although battleships may perhaps be closer to the WW1 configuration of largely heavy guns, some lighter weapons and a few "torpedoes" for limited close in punch and finishing off cripples.

By WW2 most battlewagons did not carry torpedoes: the Tirpitz being an obvious (and notable) exception.

Scott Martin

 

[Scott Martin]

Perhaps a more pertinent question would be "What naval era are we trying to emulate?"

IMO Traveller has always struck me as being most consistent with either Napoleonic or WW1 naval doctrine, with CT before spinal mounts being Napoleonic, and after spinal mounts as being more similar to the WW1 (Dreadnaught) era

Scott Martin

 

[flykiller]

Perhaps a more pertinent question would be "What naval era are we trying to emulate?"

the varying naval era doctrines were implemented in response to the conditions of their time. one of these doctrines, forcibly imposed on a high-tech interstellar jump setting, just isn't going to fit, and any attempt to make it fit will mangle the doctrine or the setting or both.

doesn't mean it wouldn't sell, though.

personally I'd prefer a more natural approach. examine the setting, then design the naval doctrine to fit it.

but I was never a good salesman.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Scott Martin:
Perhaps a more pertinent question would be "What naval era are we trying to emulate?"

Scott,

That is precisely the question we don't want to examine.

IMO Traveller has always struck me as being most consistent with either Napoleonic or WW1 naval doctrine, with CT before spinal mounts being Napoleonic, and after spinal mounts as being more similar to the WW1 (Dreadnaught) era.

And that is exactly why we don't want to examine it.

Since 1977 and with the best of intentions people have been trying to shoehorn Traveller ship combat into one faulty historical analogy or doctrine after another. It's Traveller as Age of Sail, it's Traveller as Dreadnoughts, it's Traveller as CVNs, blah, blah, blah, blah. No one those analogies are correct and none of them fit Traveller.

Why? Because the only naval doctrine we need to 'emulate' is Traveller naval doctrine.

Traveller communications resemble Age of Sail communications, but the rest of Traveller doesn't resemble the rest of the Age of Sail. Traveller weapons resemble Dreadnought weapons, but the rest of Traveller doesn't resemble the rest of the Dreadnought era. Traveller resembles Traveller and nothing else.

Traveller is Traveller. Stop trying to force it into whatever doctrinal straightjacket or faulty historical analogies your preconceptions provide.

Flykiller is entirely correct. We need to examine all versions of Traveller space combat and come up with a system for T5 that draws on them all. We don't need to recreate all the failures of the previous three decades by scrabbling to find some a historical analogy that doesn't exist.

You want to help T5? Study the previous versions of Traveller then and find the commonalities.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[travlar]

One way to make fighters useful is to make a weapon that shuts down meson guns. It should probably be short ranged and take many hits to do much, but this would make fighters useful, and make particle accelerators useful.

 

[Hal]

Some ideas come to mind that might help here.

Why not make it such that fleets have two components to Movement: Agility + Move?

Agility is what you use to keep from being hit
Move is the overall speed you use towards your target. Agility + Move = Manuver value.

Defensive Agility:
Make that equal to some factor times your Agility. Smaller hulls gain a bigger bonus per Agility utilized than do those Behemoth hulls. For example:

32.16 per second per second is 1 G acceleration right? A ship's hull that measures say, 20 feet in length can displace itself some 96 feet using 3G acceleration (Agility). The 1 Mile long hull trying to dodge using a 3 Agility is also only going to displace itself by 96 feet.

Aiming for dead of center mass for either of those hulls means that you will always hit the 1 mile long hull using a 3G agility dodge, whereas against the 20 foot long hull, it can move at least 4 of its hull lengths away from your point of aim, causing you to miss it easily.

So why not do it that way? Example:

Hulls up to 50 dtons: Defensive bonus = 2+ 3xA.
Hulls up to 100 dtons: Defensive bonus = 2+ 2A
Hulls up to 1000 dtons: defensive bonus = 1 + 2A
Hulls up to 10,000 Dtons: defensive bonus = 0 + 2A
Hulls up to 20,000 dtons: Defensive bonus = 2A/3
Hulls up to 50,000 dtons: Defensive bonus = A/2
Hulls Up to 75,000 dtons: Defensive Bonus = -1 + A/2
Hulls up to 500,000 dtons: Defensive bonus = -2 +A/2

Something like that (I'm using numbers to illustrate concept, not that I expect you to use the above as is!)

Also?

Have four range groupings:
Extreme
Long
Regular
Short

Short range can only be achieved by hulls that are 1,000 dtons and smaller. Against Larger hulls, they GAIN as a bonus to hit twice the "base" hull penalty size to hit. In the HIGH GUARD table, some hulls have a +1 bonus to hit, while others have a +2 bonus to hit. At Close range, that would be +2 and +4 respectively. The catch? In order to get into close range and attack, the defender gets to use his defensive fires allocated to anti-fighter work FIRST. Survivors of that get to attack second.

Note: there is a requirement that weapons used in an anti-fighter role must be allocated for that role at the start of the turn. It is possible for example, that a Destroyer may want to save its lasers as anti-fighter platforms, only to discover that the opponent didn't intend to go "close" with his hulls. Those weapon systems allocated towards defensive work would not be available towards offensive later in the turn.

Just some "thinking outside of the box" as it were. Use, abuse, modify, or mutilate the ideas presented above as you see fit

 

[Hal]

I forgot to mention - When you do a Range contest to see what ranges the battle continues at, use the speed of the slowest moving ship rather than the highest - like always. Thing is, if you built a series of Manuver drive 5 hulls, and they are HUGE such that they need to use Agility 3 just to have any effect on fires against them - you know that those HUGE ships just slowed the fleet down to a relative speed of 2. This way, a fleet commander needs to decide whether or not to use full flank speed or to use a speed that is more beneficial defensewise.

 

[mike wightman]

The ship size DMs in High Guard sort of almost do the "modified agility" rating.
Perhaps extending the table of "Target Size DM (to hit)" would be a simpler way to do it.
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Size Code DM to hit
0 (zero) -2
1 to A -1
B to K 0
L to P +1
Q to T +2
U to X +3
Y+ +4</pre>[/QUOTE]Since we have no idea what the T5 ship combat system will look like - let alone fleet level engagements - then starting with a base of High Guard may be the best way forward.

 

[mike wightman]

Ships could have to allocate agility to either defensive DM or maneuver, with the above size codes always in place then as you suggest a big ship will have to expend more of its maneuverability and thus can't set the range of battle as easily as smaller ships.

This could allow for tactical movement to be added to High Guard beyond the simple "pick the range for this turn".

You'd need a counter for each ship or smallcraft squadron so that individual units can attempt maneuver within the the engagement.

This is also helped by resricting the range at which different weapon systems can fire - I'd limit turrets to close range only, mesons to short etc.

close short medium long extreme

Thus the close range fighter/gunboat with its energy weapons cannonade can threaten - but only if it survives to close range.

 

[atpollard]

Originally posted by Scott Martin:
Do people want / expect a role for limited capability attritional combatants (Whether these are "Fighters", "PT Boats", "Gunboats" (AKA "Pinnaces with a 32 Lb Carronade") or "Pink Space Fairys" )

Let me go on record as saying that there will NEVER BE "Pink Space Fairys" In My Traveller Universe!