What do you think a space battle...

[McPerth]

There may be non-nuclear sources, but finding something non-nuclear that puts out power in the 1 to 3 hundred thousand megawatt range while remaining inconspicuous from orbit is rather challenging.

True, but some non-nuclear sources (as geotermical ones) may be used to recharge batteries and allow for some sporadic fire (maybe fro 2 shoots a day to 1 shoot every 2 days).

It seems not much, but planetary invasion may take a long time, and this could be eroding the invader fleet on the long term.

I don't know of any rules addressing atmospheric impact on EM sensors. Seems to me that'd be a problem, not insurmountable, but ground-based passive sensors might not have the range that space-based ones would. However, neutrino sensors won't be affected by that. Under MegaTraveller, neutrino sensors are best in conjunction with EM sensors, but they can be made to work alone at higher techs - just with some loss in range. At TL 14-15, it's a base 11 on 2d6 with bonus for computer rating and penalty for range in 25,000 km intervals (so 3+ for someone in orbit at TL 14, 2+ at TL 15). As for weapon lock, it's as easy for a ground-based neutrino sensor to pick up a ship's power plant as for the ship to pick up ground-based power plants.

If we assume passive EM is degraded by atmosphere, this creates a situation where ground-based batteries don't have as much range as space-based weapons - but space-based attackers are going to have the same problem picking out ground-based targets, perhaps moreso since they're having to do so against the backdrop of a planet while the ground-based defender's trying to identify something floating alone in vacuum. This leads us into the canon situation where attacking spacecraft are having to get in reasonably close to the world to attack targets on the surface - and thereby coming within range of ground-based fire - while defending ships far enough out in far orbit may be outside the protective umbrella of shore batteries.

The sensors use in atmosphere (and gravity well, for densiometers)was highly discussed in this thread.

Other than locating the power plants and sending down troops to destroy them.

Or to destroy the sensors.

I also believe that there are some war regulations in the way to your don't use your deep meson sites as a guerrilla and I won't need to leave all your civilian population without power to silence them or something similar.

We tend to forget about the civilian population a planet has (and that is usualy what makes the planet valuable), and that can be used as a bait (if you force us to make a costly assault the civilians in the zone will suffer the most).

Of course, political reasons of fanactism may overrule those conventions (as in IE or in the Rebelion at large, mostly while the Black War), and results use to be catastrophic (mostly for the civilians caugth in the middle).

 

[barfoo]

Which ship combat rules are you assuming to be your base line?

LBB2 and Mayday have some subtle but telling differences, HG is a completely different paradigm.

Then there is TNE Battle Rider, which is an often overlooked but really good ship combat game.

Mayday and BattleRider were really good games to get a feeling for what I think is the essence of Traveller space battles; very long ranges (waaaay beyond visual) and vector movement.

LBB High guard felt more like the age of sail but I loved the design system back when it was new (second edition, first edition was horrible).

If you feel like experimenting with vector movement, custom ship designs, fairly realistic sensor rules with double blind hidden movement WITHOUT referee, dummy markers etc you can always try my own free space combat paper and pencil / boardgame at:
http://vectormovement.wordpress.com/about-intercept/

Yes, this is certianly banging on my own drum but please send me feedback if you try it. I'd be glad to answer any questions, suggestions and maybe play a game by mail if anyone is interested. You can mail me at backman4*telia.com but replace the * with something more appropriate, or message me here at CotI.

 

[mike wightman]

Thanks for posting the link

Looks pretty good - I've downloaded the lot and I'll play it a few times this week. I'll let you know what I think.

First obvious question - why squares and not hexes?

 

[barfoo]

Thanks for posting the link

Looks pretty good - I've downloaded the lot and I'll play it a few times this week. I'll let you know what I think.

First obvious question - why squares and not hexes?

Squares work well with naming using coordinate systems (my scan is centered at X=7, Y=13 style), using hexes typically require you to have hexnumbers printed inside each hex which makes for much coarser playing field. The second argument against hexes is that if you would go 3D squares could be equally treated along all coordinate axii while using hexes would be an added square dimension on top of the hex board.

We also started out doing space combat on grid paper and we already did our rpg personal combat on grid paper it all came along naturally.