Core Computers in Non Capital Ships

[phavoc]

Here's my take on that. When you purchase fire control for you ship, it should somewhat scale for the number of weapons you are using. Because it shouldn't JUST be a software package. It should encompass targeting arrays, weapons stations, sensors, redundant systems, etc. Software to control all the weapons of a 100,000 ton ship to ensure non-fraticidal activities should be expensive. But that 100MCr you spent for your heavy cruiser doesn't give you any more inherent accuracy than that 24MCr you spent for your 5,000 ton destroyer. It just requires MORE to do the SAME.

By the same token there really shouldn't be target limitations built into ships targetting software. By the 52nd century it should be robust enough to engage half a dozen targets simultaneously. That has always struck me as a odd limitation, or a better way to up the costs of things (as well as justify prices for computers).

Computer power should be sufficient to run all of the basics, as well as gunnery software. I personally prefer dedicated EW systems/software to the idea that ships "sensors" would function well in both roles. But if we are going to be doing that, then the ideas behind computers probably need to be re-thunk too.

What is the consensus on computer limitations? Would it be better to simply assume a standard computer has the capacity to do all the basic functions for that type of craft? And you simply price the 'computer' by tonnage? With the description reading that it covers all manners of electronics, internal sensors, etc?

 

[Nerhesi]

I think the particular point about Advanced fire-control not being used to fire weapons is because there is separate software that specifically does that. It is not a in-direct way to allow you stack.

In fact this is counter to design decisions that we made earlier to make sure player-ships (under 1000-ton) do not get trivially vapourized. Larger weapons (bays, spinals) purposefully have significant negatives that make them much harder to hit smaller ships... but now you can get a +8 without even taking into account crew skill, lock-on, pilot giving aid... No more dramatic escapes from larger ships now! That medium/large bay is gonna connect with your free-trader or custom 700-tonner and melt you like butter!

We really, need to avoid any further positive modifiers to attack rolls. It's a 2D game ladies and gents - lets be wary of these slew of positive modifiers.

I would say it is absolutely too-far to allow stacking, you're pretty much guaranteeing a +8 to the Spinal Weapon, or whatever large bay the ship may have. Again, a little nuts

I would think it is a massive benefit of the Advanced Software to be able to give a +3 to tens, hundreds or thousands of hardpoints, not to stack with basic fire-control. Firecontrol, is the cheaper option that can also make a single attack better (+4 or +5).

 

[PsiTraveller]

That is the problem summed up Nerhesi. It is easier to get a bonus to hit then it is to get a bonus to miss. Evasive action is against a single attack and costs a point of Thrust. This could give a good number, but also ignores any Stat bonuses. When making a pilot check Stat bonuses is added, but when actively trying to avoid getting hit any stat bonus is ignored.

Evade software has become king, it now gives a negative DM to all incoming attacks, but maxes out at -3 while Fire Control goes to 5.

Range band limits offers some protection if you can stay at a range that makes some of your opponents weapons useless. In first edition all weapons could fire with a -1 to -3 penalty (easily ignored by good gunner skills). So 2nd edition combat and ship design offers more choices and tactics. Stay out of range and attack with Long or Very Long range weapons and avoid the heavy damage of closer range turret weapons. Or a ship has to be designed with long range weapons, possibly increasing their cost with the advantage to get longer range. (or increasing tonnage to cancel out the advantage cost).

Armour does not scale so their is no advantage to adding it once Spinal weapons come into play, 15 points off of 1000 points of damage is not going to help.
Reinforcing the Hull to increase hull points is an option if you can give up the tonnage. This helps in smaller ships like SDB's to close in and take the damage and outlast their opponents, or stay at range and outlast opponents that way. This all involved the very high likelihood of getting hit. At best you can get TL +3 for armour, and that is TL of armour and +3 bonus from Refec to lasers. That is all that prevents damage.

 

[phavoc]

Range band limits offers some protection if you can stay at a range that makes some of your opponents weapons useless. In first edition all weapons could fire with a -1 to -3 penalty (easily ignored by good gunner skills). So 2nd edition combat and ship design offers more choices and tactics. Stay out of range and attack with Long or Very Long range weapons and avoid the heavy damage of closer range turret weapons. Or a ship has to be designed with long range weapons, possibly increasing their cost with the advantage to get longer range. (or increasing tonnage to cancel out the advantage cost).

Small ships, both evading, firing at long range should get hits based more on luck than anything else - assuming we follow through on the concept that smaller ships receive positive DM's for defense based on evade and pilot skills.

If you recall the Star Wars movies all the action between small ships took place at very short ranges. The same goes for most combat, both air and sea. The only thing that's really accurate at longer ranges is a missile, which really doesn't have limitations related to accuracy and range.

I'm starting to think that maybe there needs to be a blanket -DM to hit a smaller ship at range, thus forcing players to close the range bands and get into the slugfests that really make up the type of combat PC's should excel (or die...) at. A free trader and a pirate exchanging fire at long range should really be just shooting vacuum. Maybe we need to close the range to medium to start getting any sort of accuracy that you can expect to hit half the time, and short range where you lose all range-based DM's?

Small ships vs. large ships at long range would be the reverse. A ship of a certain size should simply not be able to evade enough because it's too big of a target. Conversely, if you are in a tiny ship plinking away at a much larger one, it should be able to essentially laugh at your incoming fire. I don't like the idea that if you stay far enough distant from say a heavy cruiser that your tiny 400 ton SDB will eventually punch a hole through the armor. A gnat might escape the tail for a while, but it's never more than an annoyance, and when that gnat doesn't get out of the way of the tail, it's a dead gnat... And small starships should suffer the same fate when annoying their vastly larger brethren.

 

[ErinPalette]

In my imperfect experience, speed is what makes or breaks a space combat. A faster ship not only has a much higher likelihood of a higher initiative, but it has more options (evasion, lining up shots, etc) than a slower one. And a slower ship that is faced with an "Evade or Die" choice must reduce its running-away thrust in order to perform that evasion. Sure, there's the "more speed" option, but that has to be rolled each round with increasing difficulty.

That's what happened last week when I ran my simulation of PC ship (4G) vs SDB (6G). The SDB couldn't get a decent roll in and the PCs were evading like mad... but they were bleeding off thrust in order to do it. The SDB was able to keep closing the gap while still having enough thrust to line up shots. Eventually, probability states that the PCs would have rolled low or the SDB would have rolled high, and that would have been it for them.

 

[PsiTraveller]

It depends on how hard you want to push the rules to wrangle an advantage in a small ship.

Take a 600 ton ship. 6 turrets. If you put a couple of Particle Barbettes in that are budget tech they are 5.5 tons instead of 5, and only cost 4 million each.(1 disadvantage). But the bigger tonnage allows for better focusing and you take Very High yield.This puts the price back up to 8 million.
This gives a Very Long range attack (-4 due to range), that does 4D and a radiation hit. Fire Control 5 would cut that (say +3 on Barbette 1 and +2 on Barbette 2) so a -1 -2 to attack. Add in the Gunner skills and Pilot aiming and you probably have a positive attack roll at Very Long range.

Pulse Lasers add a +2 to the attack roll, you could make them Very Long range with a tech advance and do lower damage, but at a quarter of the cost. AP from Intense Focus is a good investment.

Speed is vital, and several threads mention the Thrust 9 as pretty much mandatory if you can get it.
I have been playing around and talking with my group. Overloading the attack to get a +6 Critical seems to be an interesting strategy. Rather than trying to get 10% damage as a cumulative Critical try and get a +6 Effect and do any damage at all to generate a Critical roll. AP again helps to cause damage, or Very High yield to increase the average damage on the dice.

 

[Condottiere]

Maybe penalize targetting, if the ship doesn't have approrpiate fire control, instead of worrying about bonuses.

Also, always been in favour of separate, dedicated computers for ship systems.

 

[phavoc]

In my imperfect experience, speed is what makes or breaks a space combat. A faster ship not only has a much higher likelihood of a higher initiative, but it has more options (evasion, lining up shots, etc) than a slower one. And a slower ship that is faced with an "Evade or Die" choice must reduce its running-away thrust in order to perform that evasion. Sure, there's the "more speed" option, but that has to be rolled each round with increasing difficulty.

That's what happened last week when I ran my simulation of PC ship (4G) vs SDB (6G). The SDB couldn't get a decent roll in and the PCs were evading like mad... but they were bleeding off thrust in order to do it. The SDB was able to keep closing the gap while still having enough thrust to line up shots. Eventually, probability states that the PCs would have rolled low or the SDB would have rolled high, and that would have been it for them.

Agility shouldn't necessarily be related to speed. I know the system allows you to do so, but it seems wrong to me. Though I'm not sure of how best to express that gaming-wise. A ship that can maneuver well is usually smaller and built to take the maneuvers (structurally speaking). You can have a very fast ship, but it might not be able to spin on a dime. The system just has never expressed any of this well.

What do you mean by "having enough thrust to line up shots"? Traveller space doesn't care about facings, so there is no need to ensure you ship is even pointing towards the enemy.

 

[phavoc]

In my imperfect experience, speed is what makes or breaks a space combat. A faster ship not only has a much higher likelihood of a higher initiative, but it has more options (evasion, lining up shots, etc) than a slower one. And a slower ship that is faced with an "Evade or Die" choice must reduce its running-away thrust in order to perform that evasion. Sure, there's the "more speed" option, but that has to be rolled each round with increasing difficulty.

That's what happened last week when I ran my simulation of PC ship (4G) vs SDB (6G). The SDB couldn't get a decent roll in and the PCs were evading like mad... but they were bleeding off thrust in order to do it. The SDB was able to keep closing the gap while still having enough thrust to line up shots. Eventually, probability states that the PCs would have rolled low or the SDB would have rolled high, and that would have been it for them.

Agility shouldn't necessarily be related to speed. I know the system allows you to do so, but it seems wrong to me. Though I'm not sure of how best to express that gaming-wise. A ship that can maneuver well is usually smaller and built to take the maneuvers (structurally speaking). You can have a very fast ship, but it might not be able to spin on a dime. The system just has never expressed any of this well.

What do you mean by "having enough thrust to line up shots"? Traveller space doesn't care about facings, so there is no need to ensure you ship is even pointing towards the enemy.

 

[Nerhesi]

I'm glad you guys are seeing the problem here. Although Psi, I'm actually treating pilot evasion as total pilot skill, specifically because it doesn't state skill "ranks", and skill in the rest of the document is modified by cyberware, characteristics, modifiers, technology, etc and so on... so generally, if those things makes you shoot someone better, they should make you avoid being shot better.

Is it a logical explanation that is not directly explicitly stated by RAW? Yup. Is it against RAW? Nope

Even with my interpretation, we still dont want Advanced Fire Control and Fire Control stacking!!!

 

[ErinPalette]

What do you mean by "having enough thrust to line up shots"? Traveller space doesn't care about facings, so there is no need to ensure you ship is even pointing towards the enemy.

Aid Gunners: A pilot may attempt to aid his gunners by providing a more stable firing platform along the optimum attack vector. The pilot makes a Pilot check to start a task chain with his gunners, as described on page 60.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Nerhesi: I played it safe when talking about Pilot skill and just took the literal ranks in a skill from the book. Skill is the ranks, and a skill check is rank + attribute bonus, at least that is how I read pages 56 to 57. I did not want to assume the attributes added to the Skill. And it could add a lot, what with stat bonus and maybe cybernetic enhancement. A good reason to have heavily modified folks in your employ.

 

[Nerhesi]

Yup, technically, with stats with implants can drive your evasion up. However, they can also drive your to-hit up as well

I've found that with all things being equal, to-hit is still away ahead due to the higher thresholds they have

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Reasonably you can run several instances of the same software, but they should never stack. Running, say, two web-browsers at the same time doesn't display web pages any different.

This have been undefined since LBB2, so it would be great if it was clarified.

 

[phavoc]

What do you mean by "having enough thrust to line up shots"? Traveller space doesn't care about facings, so there is no need to ensure you ship is even pointing towards the enemy.

Aid Gunners: A pilot may attempt to aid his gunners by providing a more stable firing platform along the optimum attack vector. The pilot makes a Pilot check to start a task chain with his gunners, as described on page 60.

Ah, ok. Makes sense.

So does anyone allow for a pilot to exercise both positive offensive (in this case, "lining up shots" AND negative defensive (adding Pilot skill to evade) DM's in the same round? That seems to me that you are double-dipping at the DM trough. IF you are flying like crazy to avoid someone hitting you, then you really shouldn't be able to "line up" yourself with the enemy vessel. After all they would be doing the same.

 

[ErinPalette]

So does anyone allow for a pilot to exercise both positive offensive (in this case, "lining up shots" AND negative defensive (adding Pilot skill to evade) DM's in the same round? That seems to me that you are double-dipping at the DM trough. IF you are flying like crazy to avoid someone hitting you, then you really shouldn't be able to "line up" yourself with the enemy vessel. After all they would be doing the same.

1) Nothing in the current rules says you can't.
2) You aren't Evading *everything*, just a single attack. Dodging everything required the Evade program.

 

[Nerhesi]

And we have to think less of dodging/evading as some WW2 jinking...

This is definitely more of a "evasive maneuvers Gamma 5!" etc etc... more proactive than reactive

 

[phavoc]

So does anyone allow for a pilot to exercise both positive offensive (in this case, "lining up shots" AND negative defensive (adding Pilot skill to evade) DM's in the same round? That seems to me that you are double-dipping at the DM trough. IF you are flying like crazy to avoid someone hitting you, then you really shouldn't be able to "line up" yourself with the enemy vessel. After all they would be doing the same.

1) Nothing in the current rules says you can't.
2) You aren't Evading *everything*, just a single attack. Dodging everything required the Evade program.

In any case you ARE evading "everything". If you have five attackers and five weapons you can, within the rules, evade on five attacks and line up for five individual ones, correct? I think the only limitations are targeting software

I'd have to look at the rule book to be confirm.

 

[MongooseMatt]

An interesting point, Erin. We have not stated that you cannot run the same software twice at the same time... and I am not sure I want to restrict that.

As for the particular point on Fire Control... just because it says you can't, does not necessarily mean you can I would be tempted to say that this is one of those areas that I would advise against, but if a ref really wants to...

As for Cores in small ships - yup, no issue with that at all. Could easily end up costing more than the actual ship, of course...

 

[PsiTraveller]

So the cost of Core ship computers needs to be redone, because as written right now it is cheaper to buy a lower tech Core computer that runs more bandwidth than a higher tech non Core.

Unless the tech level of the computer is what determines the tech advantage for the missile targeting bonus for tech levels during the missile attack run?

Actually what DOES make a TL 15 ship a Tl 15 ship when shooting a TL 7 missile at a TL 12 ship that grants a +3 Tech level bonus? Sensors? Computer?