Why all the hate for large ships?

[mike wightman]

Yes, I DO want the quote. The Acceleration compensation systems I've seen quoted would have to either (1) induce a reactionless acceleration (which the relevant text in TNE does not provide for) or (2) transfer the momentum.

Seriously?

Fair enough - soon as I get home I'll dig out Traders and gunboats and several other references to what the acceleration compensators do.

By the way, if you are relying on TNE to prove your point that's cheating (Totally different ship paradigm from the CT era).

In TNE and T4 you can stack acceleration compensators to produce very high G ratings - just look at the fighter in T4 - M14 isn't it?

Again, I'll check.

 

[aramis]

In TNE and T4 you can stack acceleration compensators to produce very high G ratings - just look at the fighter in T4 - M14 isn't it?

They don't negate the need for increased structure at all.

And they're a separate line item in MT, as well, so you know...

 

[Mithras]

The Traveller article writer Andy Slack had an article on creating Book 2 fleets in White Dwarf magazine in the mid-1980s. I'm going to quote parts of it in another thread. But this is what he said on his website about his reasons for writing the article:

High Guard vessels and fleets are fine for mass military actions and tournament play, but
I have found that in normal Traveller adventures the amount of time spent designing them
is wasted. Smaller units like the famous Gazelle class or my own Explorer class (WD40)
have their uses, but in general can be replaced by ordinary Book 2 designs without any
loss of flavour. Huge craft like the Azhanti High Lightning are negligibly large - their
firepower and marine contingents are such that if they appear in a game at all individual
characters in a small ship stand no chance whatsoever, unless the opposing captain is an
idiot. The average game or commission is instantly unbalanced unless the heavy cruisers
are kept off-stage - so what's the point of spending days designing them?

In 1984 my twin daughters were born, and suddenly the time I had used to
design ships (amongst other things) went away for ever. This started me
down a path of ruthless simplification in all my gaming, of which this was
the first result. I came to the conclusion that designing new starships, while
fun, essentially contributed nothing to the game - that the standard designs
provide everything you need to run a role-playing campaign, and that the
details of any ship much over a thousand tons just don't matter. Your
Mileage May Vary...

I like that phrase 'ruthless simplification', though I am not like that, I have time to think about designing ships and build them, what put me off from doing so in the past was the fact that all those vast big guns were out there already. It was a big ship universe where the big ships were already in play, named and statted (Fighting Ships).

 

[Tobias]

the dynamic loads (not the static, but dynamic) are impressive. And, except for T4 & TNE, all design systems essentially have no internal structure, only a skin and floors...

That's like saying that CT ships have no airlocks, no communications and no sensors. Nitpicking these highly abstracted design systems for technical intricacies does not make any sense to me at all.

For reference, the Nimmitz masses some 100,000 tons. The same as a 10,000Td lightly armored ship. Not the biggest thing built, but one of the biggest shell-loaded designs out there... and she'll break under 1G dynamic loading.

How do you arrive at that conclusion? I mean, the Nimitz can obviously stand a constant acceleration of 1G and she is obviously designed to survive enormous stresses (she'd better be.)

As for TNE: you can't make big CT style warships (100KTd & up) under TNE, as you rapidly run out of room both for internal structure volume and for radiator area.

There are canonical examples of larger ships in TNE, and the structural volume rules at least don't support your conclusion. Even for larger ships, the structural volume is negligible.

 

[rancke]

The big problem with really big ships is, as others have pointed out, that the combat system leaves no reason to build them. There is thus a discrepancy between the rules and the large number of really big ships that canon tells us that everybody (who can afford it) in the OTU builds. (Note the 'large numbers'. You could come up with justifications for building a few large ships for prestige purposes, but not, IMO, the numbers implied). Some people give priority to the rules and would resolve the conflict by eliminating all those big ships. Others (like myself) give priority to setting information and would resolve the conflict by amending the rules (Last we discussed it, some sort of increased survivability for larger ships seemd to be the popular choice).


Hans

 

[mike wightman]

Here are a couple of quotes regarding the acceleration compensators. One or the other of these paragraphs is present in nearly every supplement or adventure that detail ships.

S7 page 7:

Gravity: Most ships have grav plates built into the deck flooring. These plates provide a constant artificial gravity field of 1 G. Acceleration compensators are also usually installed, to negate the effects of high acceleration and lateral G forces while maneuvering. A ship's passengers would be unable to tell whether they were
moving through space or grounded on a planet without looking out a view screen.

A1 page 17:

Gravity: The ship decks have grav plates built-in to provide a constant 1G floor field. These plates may be turned off only through computer instructions. In addition, the ship itself is under the influence of acceleration dampers which negate the effects of acceleration while manoeuvring.

Shall we also bring up the magical micro-meteorite and radiation shielding the manoeuvre drive produces?

 

[Tobias]

The big problem with really big ships is, as others have pointed out, that the combat system leaves no reason to build them. There is thus a discrepancy between the rules and the large number of really big ships that canon tells us that everybody (who can afford it) in the OTU builds.

That depends on what you mean by "big". A 50 Kton ship is ten times bigger than the largest Book 2 ship, and that's what you arrive at when designing an N-Spinal-armed, jump-3, Agility-6, optimum defenses ship.

 

[rancke]

That depends on what you mean by "big". A 50 Kton ship is ten times bigger than the largest Book 2 ship, and that's what you arrive at when designing an N-Spinal-armed, jump-3, Agility-6, optimum defenses ship.

That's a big ship. A really big ship is a 200,000+ battleship, of which the Imperium seems to have quite a lot.

It explicitly has 8 Tigresses per sector, which means somewhere between 160 and 224 depending on how 'sector' is interpreted (I'm doubtful that, for example, the Alpha Crucis sector has a Tigress squadron stationed (Not saying it couldn't have; just saying I doubt it)).

The total number of battleships is impossible to nail down, but assuming the proportions of BatRon to CruRons in the FFW countermix is representative, we're talking about roughly 720 squadrons or something like 5000 battleships.


Hans

 

[Jame]

Its not really that big ships are hated. Its that while the system allows them to be built, there is no good reason to build one.

Pretty much. Though I also think that smaller ships have more cachet (for me, I like ships of about 20k to 30k tons as a good max for starships).

 

[Mithras]

Shall we also bring up the magical micro-meteorite and radiation shielding the manoeuvre drive produces?

I don't want to derail the thread, but I would like to know about this. I always wondered how Traveller ships fared without the use of the 'force fields' of other SF settings ...

 

[Dragoner]

I don't want to derail the thread, but I would like to know about this. I always wondered how Traveller ships fared without the use of the 'force fields' of other SF settings ...

They wouldn't, small ships are not more realistic than the big ones, they are all just fantasy.

However, in my mind I've always justified the protection from micro-meteorites, radiation, etc. as either the ship does have a sort of repulsor field around the hull, or one is created by the energization of bonded superdense hull material; Phlogiston basically.

 

[mike wightman]

I don't want to derail the thread, but I would like to know about this. I always wondered how Traveller ships fared without the use of the 'force fields' of other SF settings ...

Ok - it's mentioned in the CT boxed adventure Beltstrike that ships under power are protected from micro-meteorites and radiation by a field produced by the manoeuvre drive.

 

[BytePro]

Ha - dynamic stresses, relativistic impactors, solar radiation, inertial compensators, high-speed atmo thermodynamics, heat dissipation -> I double-wave everything away with gravitics...

Granted, the weapon systems particularly don't scale particularly well, but I do like large ships - though most of the size range I consider non-atmo capable (inline with my gravitics 'rationalizations' - heck, I need some limits).

I feel they are useful as background color; places for ships to meet and players to adventure in (one or two sabotage adventure played out on such); and, as cargo, colony, party and luxury vessels that can essentially be a setting. Larger military ships are basically carriers, especially jump carriers (so everyone jumps at once), in my settings. [Note, I ignore the combat RAW - such ships require narrative mechanics, IMO.]

Mostly, my settings require battlestars

(Read Galactica TOS - though my early estimates, back in the day, placed it in the 2.5 million dton range!)

 

[aramis]

That depends on what you mean by "big". A 50 Kton ship is ten times bigger than the largest Book 2 ship, and that's what you arrive at when designing an N-Spinal-armed, jump-3, Agility-6, optimum defenses ship.

Thats supertanker sized.

Mike, your argument with the gravitics - the source doesn't say it does what you claim it does.
I can see how you're getting that read, but given the later canon materials, I don't buy that they are reducing the structure needed.

If one claims the M-Drive is a variation of the Dean drive, then sure, no problem... but ships under dean drive are in constant free-fall, not constant thrust. Wholly different design paradigms.

And the beltstrike "screening" is just a dumb idea that doesn't seem to be taken up in canon anywhere else. Tho' it does tend to reinforce the idea of a Dean Drive.

 

[Hyphen]

Strictly a personal opinion, but ...

... have you ever tried to map one of the darn things?

Yes, I mapped out the _Bonventure_, a mere 13K "pocket" cruiser based in my Tavonni campaign. And I have enormous respect for the folks at Mongoose who mapped out the Plankwell, Tigress, etc in RTT's Fighting Ships - it's a real PITA to do.

But you do end up with a cool high-tech dungeon crawl!

 

[abomination]

I like big ships.

Battleships roughly 1500 crew 75000 disp

Cruisers Roughly 550 crew, 75000 disp (faster, but more lightly armed & armoured than a battle ship)

Light Cruisers 550 crew, 37000 disp
Strike Cruiser 131 Crew 35000 disp (faster, but more lightly armed & armoured than a light cruiser)

Frigates 111 crew, 12000 disp.

However the properly big ships are commercial bulk transports (800000 tons) & luxury liners (75000 tons).

For the most part I'm less bothered about how they work in space combat, as much as they provide a belivable back drop for the players. I've 90% completed deck plans for the super tanker / container ship (not that bad as most of it is empty space), & have rough plans for the liner (loosely based on the Queen Mary)

 

[Hemdian]

I got into Traveller around that start of the 5FW. HG2 was out and AHL was out which basically suggested larger ships. Then Supp9 came out and it’s been the basis of IMTU ever since. In other words my early Traveller experiences are what colour my view now, and I suspect that may be true for others. We tend to make emotional decisions and then use our intellects to rationalise them.

 

[mike wightman]

You know you may be onto something here.

I started with LBB1-3 and didn't get LBB5 until long after playing through the early adventures and drooling over supplement 7.

Small ship universe was the way the OTU started - A1 Kinunir gave us 1.2kt battle cruisers and descriptions of battles where they could hold the line against the Zhodani, Mayday had cruisers as 800t.

High Guard at a stroke completely changed the ship paradigm of the OTU, and I guess I never really liked it all that much., despite the fact I like designing HG ships and tinkering with the HG rules.

 

[Mithras]

Yes, if you read through Adventure 1: Kinunir, you would think those ships are some of the toughest the Imperium has to offer. And back in the small-ship universe of 1979 or whenever, I suppose that was true.

You know you may be onto something here.

I started with LBB1-3 and didn't get LBB5 until long after playing through the early adventures and drooling over supplement 7.

Small ship universe was the way the OTU started - A1 Kinunir gave us 1.2kt battle cruisers and descriptions of battles where they could hold the line against the Zhodani, Mayday had cruisers as 800t.

High Guard at a stroke completely changed the ship paradigm of the OTU, and I guess I never really liked it all that much., despite the fact I like designing HG ships and tinkering with the HG rules.

 

[Mithras]

I've 90% completed deck plans for the super tanker / container ship (not that bad as most of it is empty space), & have rough plans for the liner (loosely based on the Queen Mary)

Sounds like a nice way to spend an afternoon! I've always wanted to deckplan a biggish ship, and starting with a cargo hauler is a quick way forward!