What works? How are ships and vehicles armed?

[Spinward Flow]

This seems to be the case.

So when your military procurement board makes recommendations for the outfitting of fleets, which would you prefer as an admiral for a trillion credits spent on construction?

1. 10x Meson-T 50k ton sleds
2. 24x Meson-N 20k ton sleds
3. 31x Meson-J 14k ton sleds

Choose wisely.

As a side benefit, since you were talking about marine complements for each class, if you use the "trillion credit budget" to build as many ships of each class as you can, how many marines (total) does a fleet of 10/24/31 ships organized as a single fleet bring to a theater of operations? This is a question that has two potential lines of response ... "enough" and total ... in other words, even if the total number of marines in the fleet is roughly the same (because 3 per 1000 tons or whatever ratio you chose), is that number of marines "enough" for the types of missions they might be called upon to undertake (offensive operations, not just defensive against possible boarding actions/security breaches).

The only real downside is that the meson-N can't autocrit 50,000 ton ships, such as those that might carry it.

To be fair, with +14 bonus hits on the Interior Explosion AND Radiation damage tables, which ignore hull armor ... do you really NEED automatic critical hits ON TOP of all that in order to score "mission kill" levels of damage throughput onto a target hit by a Meson-N?

I mean, granted ... there's no kill like OVERKILL (from a Meson-T) ... but still ... at what cost?

Personally, I would prefer to have the higher quantity of Meson-N sleds over the higher quality (well, tonnage) of the (fewer) Meson-T sleds.

By the way, I notice a lot of people's sample ships don't seem to use the trick of having a battery of each type of weapon to spread out weapon damage hits and slow down degradation of the main gun (I'm sure the gunners on the lasers and fusion guns find it a huge honour to be 'armour' for the spinal mount).

I was waiting for someone else to mention that point (so I wouldn't have to).
Using "additional batteries" in order to "soak" incoming damage to weapons is a time honored tradition (at the naval architect's offices).

 

[Badenov]

The only real downside is that the meson-N can't autocrit 50,000 ton ships, such as those that might carry it. A meson-T autocrits anything under 300,000 Tons. There's also a reduced penetration chance vs meson screens and a few hull forms. As it still gets a pile of juicy interior explosions and radiation hits, and more weapons for your credit it's probably still a better deal.

The meson-N hits a sweet spot for size/power requirements vs penetration of meson screens. The meson-J just doesn't (and can only autocrit fairly small spaceships).

By the way, I notice a lot of people's sample ships don't seem to use the trick of having a battery of each type of weapon to spread out weapon damage hits and slow down degradation of the main gun (I'm sure the gunners on the lasers and fusion guns find it a huge honour to be 'armour' for the spinal mount).

I agree the Meson N hits a sweet spot. Do you need a battery of each type? When you only have one battery, you degrade by the amount of the weapon -n, but it says the firing player chooses, though it has to be distributed as evenly as possible. The ship with the N is pretty tweaked out as it is, but I could lose the pinnace and squeeze in a couple batteries that could menace the paper-thin armor of the stock ships and, as you say, act as damage absorbers.

On that last point, my version has hit distribution with two weapon hits on the table- the more common probable one goes to the largest weapon available so spinal then bay then turret, and the other hit is surface only and goes smallest to largest.

I can see the point of more wapons just to suck up the hits.

 

[Badenov]

By the way, I notice a lot of people's sample ships don't seem to use the trick of having a battery of each type of weapon to spread out weapon damage hits and slow down degradation of the main gun (I'm sure the gunners on the lasers and fusion guns find it a huge honour to be 'armour' for the spinal mount).

I just noticed the rules actually make more batteries a problem. It says each weapon hit destroys an entire battery of the firing player's choice. The natural choice is to take out the spinal first. It's only the very last weapon that gets reduced by one USP rather than taken out. So technically better to have only the Spinal mount than have the spinal and another battery, so it will only lose a letter and not get taken out entirely.

And now that I reread, I am more confused about batteries. They do not appear to be accounted for in the USP at all?

 

[Condottiere]

Gotta look up if battery configuration is soft and/or hard wired.

 

[Enoki]

So, the heavy version is 98,336.11MCr and 50,000 tons, not terrible, and USP BH-P126BJ4-E09900-009T0-0. Meson screen 9 will make the J mesons much less effective and agility is still 6, for a -5 to be hit. Sadly, I had to cut the Marine complement down to 660 (the other had nearly 800), but I wanted to cram it into 50k tons to keep it in the target size DM.

It's interesting that unlike RL battleships, HG heavily armored warships are not vulnerable to tiny torpedo boats and thus do not need a screen. Basically, there's no reason to build anything other than the big battlewagon.

That was my thinking with an exception: The smaller ships do the everyday grunt work, convoy escorts, anti-piracy, show the flag at lower end systems, that sort of thing. The big battleships are a 'fleet in being.' They sit 'at anchor' somewhere being the ultimate threat and every once in a while, have to go do a Trafalgar or Jutland.

 

[Badenov]

That was my thinking with an exception: The smaller ships do the everyday grunt work, convoy escorts, anti-piracy, show the flag at lower end systems, that sort of thing. The big battleships are a 'fleet in being.' They sit 'at anchor' somewhere being the ultimate threat and every once in a while, have to go do a Trafalgar or Jutland.

Well, so that depends on how pirates are equipped. Is armor restricted to the military? Past a certain value? If a pirate is just an unarmored merchant ship repurposed, it's vulnerable to more or less everything. But if a pirate is a stolen military ship run by a deserter crew, it's only vulnerable to the big spinals, and your convoy escorts may as well be made of paper unless they're part of this fleet in being.

 

[whartung]

If you have 10 batteries of Factor 9 (say) Lasers, each hit takes out a battery (10, 9, 8...) until the last hit, which then starts knocking down the factor.

So, after 12 hits, you'll be having a single battery of factor-7 lasers.

I'd argue that if you ORIGINALLY have more than one battery, the last hit takes out the last battery entirely. Its all a matter of how you parse "if ship has only 1 battery of a weapon".

But, anyway, with regard to spinals, a weapon hit knocks a factor off the spinal.

 

[Badenov]

If you have 10 batteries of Factor 9 (say) Lasers, each hit takes out a battery (10, 9, 8...) until the last hit, which then starts knocking down the factor.

So, after 12 hits, you'll be having a single battery of factor-7 lasers.

I'd argue that if you ORIGINALLY have more than one battery, the last hit takes out the last battery entirely. Its all a matter of how you parse "if ship has only 1 battery of a weapon".

But, anyway, with regard to spinals, a weapon hit knocks a factor off the spinal.

So, I've got that part. But how does the USP note that you have multiple of a battery? It looks like if you have a rating 8 beam laser battery, you have 30 beam lasers (in 10-30 turrets, presumably). How do you note down a second battery? I ask because the explanation in HG p 35 is self-contradictory.

 

[Spinward Flow]

So, I've got that part. But how does the USP note that you have multiple of a battery?

You see those two lines under the USP?

• batteries bearing
• batteries

That's what tells you how many batteries there are for different weapon types recording their code numbers into the USP.

So, install 10x triple missile turrets (10 tons) and 10x triple sandcaster turrets (10 tons) plus their crew and you've just added a code: 7 missile battery (1) and a code: 9 sandcaster battery (1) in a TL=15 starship. Those 2 batteries can absorb 7+9=16 hits that don't have to go into the spinal mount, meaning that it takes "that many more hits" to reduce the weapon code factor on the Meson-N.

 

[TamsinP]

So, I've got that part. But how does the USP note that you have multiple of a battery? It looks like if you have a rating 8 beam laser battery, you have 30 beam lasers (in 10-30 turrets, presumably). How do you note down a second battery? I ask because the explanation in HG p 35 is self-contradictory.

It's assumed that all batteries of the same weapon type will have the same number of weapons and, therefore, factor. The number of batteries is listed below for total and bearing.

 

[whartung]

But how does the USP note that you have multiple of a battery?

It doesn't. It's not part of the USP.

The USP is not the entirety of the ship.

 

[Enoki]

Well, so that depends on how pirates are equipped. Is armor restricted to the military? Past a certain value? If a pirate is just an unarmored merchant ship repurposed, it's vulnerable to more or less everything. But if a pirate is a stolen military ship run by a deserter crew, it's only vulnerable to the big spinals, and your convoy escorts may as well be made of paper unless they're part of this fleet in being.

The limiting things with pirates are

1. Money. They don't have some unlimited amount like a big government.
2. Access to yards to build ships. Yards building pirate ships don't come along every day.

Pirates, if they're smart, avoid engaging warships of any sort whenever they can. They're in if for the money, not for fighting battles. If pirates, or deserters, do manage to get their hands on a serious warship they still are faced with the above.

Where can you get it fixed or serviced? How do you crew it when it takes a lot more manpower than you've got. Your crew doesn't have the skills set necessary to use half of the stuff onboard. Then there's the near 100% certain fact the military in general is going to come looking for you.

In a case like that, it'd be far better to scrap and part the ship out or find another military that is willing to buy it.

 

[kilemall]

The limiting things with pirates are

1. Money. They don't have some unlimited amount like a big government.
2. Access to yards to build ships. Yards building pirate ships don't come along every day.

Pirates, if they're smart, avoid engaging warships of any sort whenever they can. They're in if for the money, not for fighting battles. If pirates, or deserters, do manage to get their hands on a serious warship they still are faced with the above.

Where can you get it fixed or serviced? How do you crew it when it takes a lot more manpower than you've got. Your crew doesn't have the skills set necessary to use half of the stuff onboard. Then there's the near 100% certain fact the military in general is going to come looking for you.

In a case like that, it'd be far better to scrap and part the ship out or find another military that is willing to buy it.

At one point the RL Caribbean pirates had bigger ships then the RN could afford to send, being tied down by the Dutch threat.

The pirates could beach and scrub off barnacles and replace damaged wood, but they couldn’t replace sails readily, not being textile manufacturers. I’d say that’s functionally equivalent to not being able to service jump drives.

Their best bet was to take new ships with fresh sails.

The pirate republic so to speak was defeated by the ultimate weapon- they could keep their ill gotten gains with an amnesty, no prosecution, but they had to swear an oath to pirate no more.

The profit that motivated them acted to denude the crews and soon very few ships could sail- making the holdouts much easier to overcome with the forces that could be mustered.

 

[Badenov]

It doesn't. It's not part of the USP.

The USP is not the entirety of the ship.

View attachment 5616

Ah, the sample USP instruction I was looking at was only the first line. As I look at the example ship Kinunir's stat block, I see now where those lines are and how they're used.

 

[aramis]

I just noticed the rules actually make more batteries a problem. It says each weapon hit destroys an entire battery of the firing player's choice. The natural choice is to take out the spinal first. It's only the very last weapon that gets reduced by one USP rather than taken out. So technically better to have only the Spinal mount than have the spinal and another battery, so it will only lose a letter and not get taken out entirely.

And now that I reread, I am more confused about batteries. They do not appear to be accounted for in the USP at all?

In CT Bk5 (either), you can only have one category of weapon per type, so if you have spinal mesons, you cannot have bay mesons nor barbette mesons... if you have turret lasers, you cannot have bay lasers.
In MT and T20, you can have a spinal, a number of bays,, and a number of turrets/barbettes... but only one spinal, all bays of a given weapon type have to match, all batteries of barbettes or turrets have to match...

In a proper Bk5-80 USP, the number of batteries is listed below the battery's strength USP code. How many can be brought to bear is the line below that.
In MT, You have 3 entries per type (Spinal, Bay, T/B), but the USP doesn't have a monolithic string... it's a larger, 1/4 to full page layout.

T20 USP...

As you can see, the right hand callout box is the batteries list.
So, given that many of the designs are CT Bk5...

 

[Badenov]

So as I work through the design and try to optimize, I come up againt another limitation, sort of. Does the Power Plant Number need to be an integer? I can find no place that says so, though it makes filling out the USP strange, or slightly misleading. I can do some nice things if I can put in just the PPlant that's needed.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Does the Power Plant Number need to be an integer?

For USP code purposes it does.
However, there IS a way to incorporate "fractional" values into the (full) USP by taking advantage of the EP=x notation.

Let's say you've got a 200 ton form factor and for whatever reason you need to be getting EP=5 out of it.
5/2 = 2.5

So what you do is you enter a PP code: 2 on the USP line (because, round fractions down), but then annotate the notes with EP=5.
You of course need to construct sufficient tonnage of power plant to yield that EP=5 result ... which for this example would be 200*0.025=5 before using the TL multiplier for power plant tonnage. The following would be for a LBB5.80 custom drives build:

• TL=9-12 @ EP=5 requires 15 tons of power plant
• TL=13-14 @ EP=5 requires 10 tons of power plant
• TL=15 @ EP=5 requires 5 tons of power plant

So perhaps not quite the answer that you were looking for, but it's the best that we can do given the limitations of the method used for encoding this information into USPs. Just make sure to call out the "discrepancy" of a PP: 2 yielding EP=5 in a 200 ton hull in the fluff text explaining the design of the class (so it doesn't look like a typo/error, but rather something intentional/purposeful) and you should be good.

 

[Badenov]

So perhaps not quite the answer that you were looking for, but it's the best that we can do given the limitations of the method used for encoding this information into USPs. Just make sure to call out the "discrepancy" of a PP: 2 yielding EP=5 in a 200 ton hull in the fluff text explaining the design of the class (so it doesn't look like a typo/error, but rather something intentional/purposeful) and you should be good.

This is the exact answer I was looking for. I'm designing ships in Excel and it's super easy to start with the agility I want, calculate excess power needed based on the ship's tonnage, add the power used by the stuff I have installed, and add excess power needed and power used to get power required. I get a PP number with half a dozen decimal places, but I round for the USP just as you said.

 

[Spinward Flow]

it's super easy to start with the agility I want, calculate excess power needed based on the ship's tonnage, add the power used by the stuff I have installed, and add excess power needed and power used to get power required.

This is basically what I do with my own starship designs (except I use a text editor instead of an Excel spreadsheet). Calculate the power demand load (of everything you want to install) first and then compute how many tons of power plant are required @ TL to generate that supply of EPs. Divide the EPs by 1% of the hull displacement and then drop fractions to get an integer to put into the USP coding.

LBB2.81 drives make this process remarkably simple, since they generate 2 EPs per letter ... so Power Plant-A yields EP=2 ... Power Plant-B yields EP=4 ... and so on. The pattern "works" for anything short of the TL=15 drives (which go "off script" and don't follow the established pattern up until that point).

 

[Badenov]

I wonder at the TL of gear. Someone still making TL-3 ships today would be making galleons. Someone making TL-3 weapons would be making muskets with plug bayonets.

I am also looking at https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Technology_Level#Technology_levels. If TL12 gear was new a thousand years ago, I don't really understand how they have failed to keep up. Why are so few people at TL15? If Upgrading to a higher TL isn't better somehow, why is it a higher TL?

Obviously I am confused, but this is off topic, so no answer is expected. My only real questions are how common is thousand-year-old gear? And is there new-made TL12 gear still coming out? I've been working just off TL15 stuff because it is so much better, and Armor 15 really changes the combat dynamic. In Mg1, TL12 armor is nearly as good as TL15 (as far as stopping those turreted weapon hits), but it's not a full quarter of the ship's tonnage, so it's really only TL14 and 15 ships that can make themselves nearly invulnerable on the lighter side. Still, 26% of your hull to shrug off most non-spinal hits doesn't sound bad.

Are there no polities with a US-like defense budget that are willing to shell out for a fleet of these TL15 battlewagons? They would rule the galaxy.