What works? How are ships and vehicles armed?

[Badenov]

Until the rebellion kicks off the Imperium has not fought a TL15 peer opponent. The closest they came was TL14 vs TL14 Solomani Rim War and TL14 vs TL14 Frontier Wars, and TL14 vs TL14 brings a completely new dynamic - larger power plants.

Now that's an interesting observation. Still, a TL14 vs TL15 is a near-peer situation, and certainly the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Frontier Wars involved the TL14 Zhodani? TL15 vs TL 14 is a bit different than TL15 vs TL15, the Nuke Dampers aren't as effective, though the Meson Screens are very close, the spinal weapons are bulkier and a smidgen less effective (the minimum M Meson-equipped ship is still a smidgen under 20k, so -6 to be hit, but there's a +1 for computers, so TL15 needs 9-10 to hit, TL14 needs 11-12 to hit. That's a very hard ask for your space captains. The TL14 only gets Particle S, so fewer size-based crits, but a Particle S is still nearly as effective as the T.

There's still opportunity for lessons learned, is my point.

 

[whartung]

Just for lolz.

possibly +1 for Pilot 3

After creating 100K random Book 1 characters, only 6 came out of the Navy with Pilot of 3+.

Not motivated enough to try that with extended chargen from HG.

But, just pointing out that 3+ pilots might be hard to find.

275 if you count a total of all of the other services (Scouts, Merchant, Navy).

 

[Badenov]

Just for lolz.



After creating 100K random Book 1 characters, only 6 came out of the Navy with Pilot of 3+.

Not motivated enough to try that with extended chargen from HG.

But, just pointing out that 3+ pilots might be hard to find.

275 if you count a total of all of the other services (Scouts, Merchant, Navy).

That's why I said 'possibly'. I totally agree with Pilot 3+ being a tall ask. But these are the ships they'd be going in, if they existed. I'd be interested in the actual number of sailors in the Navy. You could extrapolate by saying 0.006% of whatever the canonical number turns out to be.

 

[mike wightman]

Now that's an interesting observation. Still, a TL14 vs TL15 is a near-peer situation, and certainly the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Frontier Wars involved the TL14 Zhodani? TL15 vs TL 14 is a bit different than TL15 vs TL15, the Nuke Dampers aren't as effective, though the Meson Screens are very close, the spinal weapons are bulkier and a smidgen less effective (the minimum M Meson-equipped ship is still a smidgen under 20k, so -6 to be hit, but there's a +1 for computers, so TL15 needs 9-10 to hit, TL14 needs 11-12 to hit. That's a very hard ask for your space captains. The TL14 only gets Particle S, so fewer size-based crits, but a Particle S is still nearly as effective as the T.

There's still opportunity for lessons learned, is my point.

Yes but you are learning them backwards

TL14 fought TL14 and likely analysed results and improved designs. TL15 comes along and improves screens and repulsors vs TL14 opponents, and reduces the size of power plants giving quite an advantage, as well as the spinal improvements. Then there is the icing on the cake, the universal DM of 1 granted by your superior computer. +1 to hit, +1 to penetrate while they are at -1 to hit and -1 to penetrate.

The Imperium built their first fleets at TL12, increasing TL as the centuries progress. I don't know the TL of the Vargr they fought, or the Julian Protectorate that defeated their expansionism. It is noticeable that the Imperium didn't even try to re-conquer the Terrans who were likely TL12 or TL13 at the time of "recontact"

<slight aside, I often wonder why news of Sylean expansion and their declaration of Empire never reached the Terrans, or if it did why they didn't take steps...>

 

[mike wightman]

Just for lolz.



After creating 100K random Book 1 characters, only 6 came out of the Navy with Pilot of 3+.

Not motivated enough to try that with extended chargen from HG.

But, just pointing out that 3+ pilots might be hard to find.

275 if you count a total of all of the other services (Scouts, Merchant, Navy).

It times of war you draft all the scouts and merchants who test for pilot 3+

 

[Spinward Flow]

<slight aside, I often wonder why news of Sylean expansion and their declaration of Empire never reached the Terrans, or if it did why they didn't take steps...>

Are you talking about IY zero, the founding of the Third Imperium?
The thing that ended the { checks notes } ... LONG NIGHT ...

I suspect that interstellar trade (and thus, communications) between Sylea and Terra were ... "intermittent" ... to the point of being the last time either had received anything from each other being on the order of over 1500 years ... so ...

 

[Badenov]

Yes but you are learning them backwards

Well, the important thing is that they get learned correctly and I don't go around commissioning wastes of space. I can see a critic telling me 'You've wasted 25,000 tons of perfectly good vacuum with that ship.' Sadly, I can only wrap my head around a little bit at a time, and the most recent lessons would seem to be the most pertinent. I'm not bothered by changes between TL12 and 14 (unless I'm trying to build an older ship). Even then, with the cost of a PP based on the tonnage, the TL15 PP is much less expensive than the equivalent at TL14, making the TL15 ship less costly to buy. The Caveat is there's only like 4 TL15 planets in the whole of the Spinward Marches, so nothing's getting built fast, and I'm going to have to accept TL14 ships where I can because that opens my manufacturing base considerably and suffer with extant TL15 designs where they exist.

TL14 fought TL14 and likely analysed results and improved designs. TL15 comes along and improves screens and repulsors vs TL14 opponents, and reduces the size of power plants giving quite an advantage, as well as the spinal improvements. Then there is the icing on the cake, the universal DM of 1 granted by your superior computer. +1 to hit, +1 to penetrate while they are at -1 to hit and -1 to penetrate.

The Imperium built their first fleets at TL12, increasing TL as the centuries progress. I don't know the TL of the Vargr they fought, or the Julian Protectorate that defeated their expansionism. It is noticeable that the Imperium didn't even try to re-conquer the Terrans who were likely TL12 or TL13 at the time of "recontact"

<slight aside, I often wonder why news of Sylean expansion and their declaration of Empire never reached the Terrans, or if it did why they didn't take steps...>

I've got a couple TL12 designs on paper as an intellectual exercise, but they're kind of junk compared to TL15. They basically aren't any good outside their back yard.

 

[Spinward Flow]

I've got a couple TL12 designs on paper as an intellectual exercise, but they're kind of junk compared to TL15.

Which then begs the question of why you would expect them to be "near peer" competitive @ -3 TLs ...?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

So, the 10,000T Meson N ships are the cheaper ships. Meson J is half the size of gun, buy you can't make them more than 25% smaller, and needs a 9 to penetrate nuke dampers, so is pretty toothless right out of the box, and only a couple of hits away from degraded to uselessness.

Sure, but a Mes-J is only about half as likely to hit and penetrate. Penetrating on 9+ (15/35) isn't all that bad...
J: 6/36 × 15/36 × 26/36 ≈ 0.05 ≈ 1/20.
N: 6/36 × 21/36 × 33/36 ≈ 0.09 ≈ 1/11.

Now compare your 40 kDt rock vs a 18 kDt rock with Ag-5 and a Mes-J. They are equally difficult to hit and immune to PA and missile fire. You get twice as many Mes-J rocks Mes-N rocks.

By having twice as many guns, the Mes-J rocks will achieve as many kills as the Mes-N rocks, but with twice as many hull they can take twice as many hits. The Mes-N rocks would have to achieve twice as many kills total, or four times as many kills per gun, to prevail.

As far as I can tell, Defensive weapons fire is resolved before screens are resolved (Game turn sequence, p 46 bottom).

Yes, they are useless as defences, but they are a weapon category that absorbs weapon hits.

So, if the enemy throws in a PA and a Repulsor bay it will take seven weapon hits, not five, to degrade the spinal one step.

But small battleship-wise, ~20,000T, you're at most getting 20 missile bays, -2 for a 2000-ton spinal, -the number of repulsor bays you have, and so at TL15, a 10+ on the Damper is letting in 1 in 6.

Sure, but make a 1300 Dt SDB/rider with a single missile bay and a few turrets. You get 20 of them all with a size DM of -1 to hit.

How long will it take a meson spinal to kill all 20? How many weapon hits will they have inflicted before then?

Yes, but additional systems require additional tonnage. Anyhow, the crits aren't what kills you, they just add insult to injury, so mitigating them doesn't solve the main problem, which is 1 or 2 Fuel Tank Shattered hits.

PA spinals does not do Fuel Tanks Shattered, only mesons do.
Against a 10 kDt Mes-N rider a PA-T inflicts one single size crit, it's worth a few tons to reduce the risk of mission kill by half... A computer, extra screens, and a frozen watch is not even 100 Dt and about GCr 0.25.

About the most useful thing you could have would be a reserve fuel tank, though by the RAW, Fuel Tanks Shattered takes all fuel on a ship no matter where you hide it.

Quite, it's a definite mission kill.

'And the ship may not be refuelled' prevents you from holding fuel as cargo, though I suppose if you could do that, then repair the Shattered result with a 9+ roll per Damage Control and Repair (on page 44),

You can't repair fuel tanks during the battle, only after the battle.

This is where the defensive half of the equation lies. You need Armor 20 to completely ignore hits from nuclear missiles and spinal particle beams, which is the goal of that class of ship.

Sure, but it makes them more vulnerable to mesons. TINSTAFL. 10 kDt Mes-N riders will see them as barely a speed-bump.

I'm not really worried about the autocrits on the buffered planetoid, they're 40,000 tons, hull N, that's no crits from the N Mesons, ...

Of course not, they have way too much armour for PA size crits.
Mesons kills by Fuel Tanks Shattered anyway, so size crits are kind of irrelevant.

Yes, but the Meson J is only about half as likely to get that hit through a Meson Screen, needing a 9+ (28%) as opposed on a Meson N that needs 7+ (58%). You'd need twice as many Meson J ships as Meson N ships, which isn't possible as described previously.

That was my original point, with half the kill rate, you don't need twice as many ships, you need ~1.4 times as many ships, as you get more guns AND more hulls (=can absorb more hits).

So, TL15 is ~300 years old. You would think they had time to build fleets of ships in the current TL and had wars to see what works and what doesn't? There have been 3 Frontier Wars (Third, Fourth, Fifth) fought at TL15, so you'd think people would have designs that take lessons learned at TL15 into account. Though as can be seen, these arguements go around in circles about what works on what.

Yes, old for the Impies, but the Zho and Sollies don't have TL-15 (yet). They presumably have TL-14 fleets well designed to fight Impie TL-15 fleets, which is a vast problem for them.

 

[Condottiere]

The Sword Worlders appear to have been able to hold their own.

 

[mike wightman]

Only by plot armour.

 

[Badenov]

Which then begs the question of why you would expect them to be "near peer" competitive @ -3 TLs ...?

I don't, the TL14s were near peer. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The Caveat is there's only like 4 TL15 planets in the whole of the Spinward Marches, so nothing's getting built fast, and I'm going to have to accept TL14 ships where I can because that opens my manufacturing base considerably and suffer with extant TL15 designs where they exist.

The same Hi-pop worlds where most of the population and most of the manufacturing capacity resides...

The Imperium is basically a few hundred hi-pop worlds, with thousands of minor outposts.

I've got a couple TL12 designs on paper as an intellectual exercise, but they're kind of junk compared to TL15. They basically aren't any good outside their back yard.

TL-12 is a completely different ballgame. Basically the only weapon that can touch a TL-15 warship is vastly expensive PA spinals, but armoured rocks are immune even against that...

TL-12 vs. TL-12 combat is dominated by attrition by missile turrets, yet spinals are the only weapons that can kill ships.

 

[Badenov]

Sure, but a Mes-J is only about half as likely to hit and penetrate. Penetrating on 9+ (15/35) isn't all that bad...
J: 6/36 × 15/36 × 26/36 ≈ 0.05 ≈ 1/20.
N: 6/36 × 21/36 × 33/36 ≈ 0.09 ≈ 1/11.

Now compare your 40 kDt rock vs a 18 kDt rock with Ag-5 and a Mes-J. They are equally difficult to hit and immune to PA and missile fire. You get twice as many Mes-J rocks Mes-N rocks.

By having twice as many guns, the Mes-J rocks will achieve as many kills as the Mes-N rocks, but with twice as many hull they can take twice as many hits. The Mes-N rocks would have to achieve twice as many kills total, or four times as many kills per gun, to prevail.

That's one place I hadn't gone. The non-planetoid version doesn't get the same efficiency with downgrading. That's definitely a good plan, and as you say, more targets makes it harder to make you inefective. I'm squeamish about falling back on Meson Js, but it seems valid.

Yes, they are useless as defences, but they are a weapon category that absorbs weapon hits.

So, if the enemy throws in a PA and a Repulsor bay it will take seven weapon hits, not five, to degrade the spinal one step.

So, with the small missile boats, the Repulsor can turn a trivial hit into nothing done. Possibly not worth the use of a bay, though?

Sure, but make a 1300 Dt SDB/rider with a single missile bay and a few turrets. You get 20 of them all with a size DM of -1 to hit.

How long will it take a meson spinal to kill all 20? How many weapon hits will they have inflicted before then?

That's not a job for a meson spinal, that's an easy single hit for a particle spinal which will slaughter it with size crits, or a Buffered Planetoid which will ignore the missiles.

PA spinals does not do Fuel Tanks Shattered, only mesons do.

Agree. Sorry if my ramble got mixed up.

Against a 10 kDt Mes-N rider a PA-T inflicts one single size crit, it's worth a few tons to reduce the risk of mission kill by half... A computer, extra screens, and a frozen watch is not even 100 Dt and about GCr 0.25.

The problem is you need -all- those things to mitigate the crit because you can't guess which one you're going to get, it's almost easier to push it up to 20,000T to avoid the crit. But it's a lot easier to not push the 10kT Meson N's into the line of battle until those Particle Ts are degraded past where they can do the size crit, and then you've got twice as many Meson Spinal attackers, and still with the +0 for size.

Quite, it's a definite mission kill.


You can't repair fuel tanks during the battle, only after the battle.

Ah, then that's a takedown, and no point to a fuel reserve. I hadn't read the repair rules carefully enough.

Sure, but it makes them more vulnerable to mesons. TINSTAFL. 10 kDt Mes-N riders will see them as barely a speed-bump.

They'll still need to make a 9+ to hit roll and beat the Meson Screen. That's not more vulnerable. It's as vulnerable as anything else with as much Agility as you can stuff into it.

Of course not, they have way too much armour for PA size crits.
Mesons kills by Fuel Tanks Shattered anyway, so size crits are kind of irrelevant.

Agreed, just mentioning.

That was my original point, with half the kill rate, you don't need twice as many ships, you need ~1.4 times as many ships, as you get more guns AND more hulls (=can absorb more hits).

This one, I don't think I understand how to calculate. But getting twice the hulls makes it work for me, though I'm still considering taking the Planetoid out of the rock-paper-scissors chain. It depends a lot on if the opposing force really leans into the missile bays. In that case, the Buffered Planetoid is still useful. But mathing out a Tigress salvo made me much less fearful of the missile attack.

Yes, old for the Impies, but the Zho and Sollies don't have TL-15 (yet). They presumably have TL-14 fleets well designed to fight Impie TL-15 fleets, which is a vast problem for them.

Yep.

 

[Rupert]

Now that's an interesting observation. Still, a TL14 vs TL15 is a near-peer situation, and certainly the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Frontier Wars involved the TL14 Zhodani? TL15 vs TL 14 is a bit different than TL15 vs TL15, the Nuke Dampers aren't as effective, though the Meson Screens are very close, the spinal weapons are bulkier and a smidgen less effective (the minimum M Meson-equipped ship is still a smidgen under 20k, so -6 to be hit, but there's a +1 for computers, so TL15 needs 9-10 to hit, TL14 needs 11-12 to hit. That's a very hard ask for your space captains. The TL14 only gets Particle S, so fewer size-based crits, but a Particle S is still nearly as effective as the T.

There's still opportunity for lessons learned, is my point.

My recollection is that the Imperium wasn't considered TL15 until just after the Solomani Rim War, so about year 1000. That makes the 4th Frontier War the Imperium's first at TL15, and it wasn't much of a war. The 5th Frontier War was the first major war with TL15 gear, so it's after that that you'd expect to doctrine from real experience and ships to fit that doctrine (both tactical and strategic) come into service - just in time for the Imperials to use them on each other.

 

[Badenov]

My recollection is that the Imperium wasn't considered TL15 until just after the Solomani Rim War, so about year 1000. That makes the 4th Frontier War the Imperium's first at TL15, and it wasn't much of a war. The 5th Frontier War was the first major war with TL15 gear, so it's after that that you'd expect to doctrine from real experience and ships to fit that doctrine (both tactical and strategic) come into service - just in time for the Imperials to use them on each other.

So my assumption about the TL15 start was based on what my GM had told me, but it seems that that was an IMTU thing. https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Technology_Level says that TL15 begins around 1105, so I suppose that makes TL15 fairly new in 1110, and the first of the newly planned TL15 ships coming out of shipyards.

That's a big change in my expectations: In 1110, all the TL15 capital warships were what people thought would be useful, with such lessons as could be rolled in from the 5FW, but the lessons learned there would not be fully digested in time to become part of common designs. If TL15 ships are mainly designed based on plans of what seemed like a good idea at the time, the number of designs that are less than ideal is a lot more reasonable.

 

[Rupert]

So my assumption about the TL15 start was based on what my GM had told me, but it seems that that was an IMTU thing. https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Technology_Level says that TL15 begins around 1105, so I suppose that makes TL15 fairly new in 1110, and the first of the newly planned TL15 ships coming out of shipyards.

But if you look at the entry for year 1000, it says 'Imperium at TL15', which is as the Rim War ends, and matches everything else.