[High Guard] Weapon and component questions

[AnotherDilbert]

I was only joking about 10 g, that would be extremely unusual, albeit possible, in ships. Fighters on the other hand...

The Merc may have a part of the Common Areas organised as a sick bay, but without the expensive special equipment (Med Bay) that gives a DM+1.


I would skip the fixed sizes for ships.

I would do something special with the turrets, just another bay or three will not make much difference. Note that Traveller does not keep track of firing arcs (usually), ships are assumed to roll to bring all weapons to bear.

[Bardicheart]

I was only joking about 10 g, that would be extremely unusual, albeit possible, in ships. Fighters on the other hand...

The Merc may have a part of the Common Areas organized as a sick bay, but without the expensive special equipment (Med Bay) that gives a DM+1.


I would skip the fixed sizes for ships.

I would do something special with the turrets, just another bay or three will not make much difference. Note that Traveller does not keep track of firing arcs (usually), ships are assumed to roll to bring all weapons to bear.

You might have been joking but I got sneaky and found my 20 dT so she's now a peppy 7 G thrust vessel. I get a chance to clean up my notes I'll post them later today maybe, just have the two pinnace's left to do stats for.

I'd like to skip the fixed sizes as well, but keep the "classifications" so far as what is a frigate vs a cruiser and so forth since that was very much part of the setting. But leave enough flexibility so there could be a 30k dT "heavy cruiser" and so forth. FS did keep track of firing arcs (I have the original Noble Armada rules) and also had "maneuver ratings" for ships which was the equivalent of the old Agility rating in Traveller (which I kinda wish they'd bring back). Still mulling over how I'll handle that as well.

I still would not want to serve on a merc cruiser without a proper medical bay, cause being shot is way less fun than it sounds.

[Condottiere]

You can't group turrets any more as batteries.

With point defence you can, but those are preset up.

[Bardicheart]

You can't group turrets any more as batteries.

With point defense you can, but those are preset up.

Okay... fine... I'll just include Virtual Gunner software as a back up for injured gunners.

Anyways, thanks for the clarification.

[steve98052]

Some editions of Traveller have had size limits that depend on technology level. Is that the case in Mongoose second, or does the million dton limit apply to all TLs?

If the maximum size of a ship (or starship) varies with TL, then the ship classes would vary with the size limit. For example, if the biggest ship that can be built at a TL is 100k dtons, 50k dtons would qualify as a battleship, maybe a dreadnought. But with the million dton limit, 50k dtons might be a light cruiser.

Besides the TL limit, there's the matter of small ship rule sets, like Book 2 classic rules, where 5000 dtons is the largest possible ship (or is it just the largest possible standard hull?), and Clement Sector, which has an intermediate size limit.

[Bardicheart]

If you're referring to my FS conversion, it seems to have a higher top end TL than OTU, somewhere between TL 16 and 17. If you include the Vau it hits TL 18 easily. The size cap was purely from the FS setting as written, that was what the authors came up with and so I was, at least initially replicating that. Given that you don't need jump drives or fuel which often take up 50% or more of the hull, those ships may be smaller but they'll be packed with more stuff.

[AndrewW]

Some editions of Traveller have had size limits that depend on technology level. Is that the case in Mongoose second, or does the million dton limit apply to all TLs?

What million dton limit?

[Condottiere]

Mongoose First required a technology level thirteen computer to go beyond a hundred kay tonnes.

Whereas in Classic, computer factor seven at technology level thirteen limited you to a megatonne.

[Linwood]

Having a ship size limit based on FTL technology (jump drive or whatever) makes sense to me, to a point. Setting a ship size limit based on computer size or technology level - not so much.

[baithammer]

If your computer can't handle the calculations for a jump, having the bigger jump drive isn't going work so well.

[Condottiere]

1. Jump programmes need to be written at a corresponding technological level, maybe because of the compiler?

2. All you then need is a computer with enough bandwidth, not necessarily the corresponding technological level; so it's definitely not an issue of performance, just RAM.

3. You need a large enough jump drive built at the corresponding technological level to take full advantage of the range.

4. And enough fuel.

[Bardicheart]

Another question.

Reading through the starbase section of Hg 2e I was looking at the mineral refineries. Specifically a TL 10 refinery produces ore at the rate of 1 ton per ton of refinery and needs 1 crew per 20 dT of refinery. So far so good, that part is clear. However in the next section on Smelters which can refine the ore into raw materials. Here we only have a flat production rate and power consumption per dT. There's no mention of crew requirements. My question is, should there be a crew requirement or are we to assume the smelters are fully automated? Has this come up before and if so is there some answer or general consensus on the requirements?

To my mind, it seems like the same crew requirement should be applied here as for the refinery, but that's also based on TL which isn't given for smelters (so we'd have to assume maybe same as the refineries). So for TL 10 that would be one crew per 20dT of smelters. If a base had 200 dT of TL 10 refinery it could produce 200 dT of ore per day needing 10 crew to run the machinery. To smelt that into raw materials you'd need 800 dT of smelters to process the 160 dT of ore (less 40 dT that turn out to be crystals, gems and precious metals that apparently don't need smelting, assuming average asteroid yields) into 80 dT of raw materials per day. If the same crew requirement was applied that would require another 40 crew, which to me seems reasonable but its not specified in the rules.

50 dT per day of common raw materials would be worth 0.25 MCr
30 dT per day of uncommon raw materials would be worth 0.6 MCr
30 dT per day of crystals and gems (no smelting required) would be worth 0.6 MCr
10 dT per day of precious metals (smelting doesn't seem to apply here but you kind of think it would) would be worth 0.5 MCr
for an average daily production value (assuming average asteroid yields) of 1.95 MCr, not exactly rolling in the money considering the volume of material being processed (although the refinery and smelters would pay for themselves in about 1 year of operation, but that's not including the power costs / fusion plants to power it, paying the employees, etc).

Thoughts?

[Old School]

I’d say no additional crew needed for the smelter if you already have the refinery, but that’s just my personal bias rather than any interpretation of the rules. I think the crew level requirements for refineries and manufacturing are high, especially at futristic tech levels.

[AnotherDilbert]

Specifically a TL 10 refinery produces ore at the rate of 1 ton per ton of refinery and needs 1 crew per 20 dT of refinery. So far so good, that part is clear. However in the next section on Smelters which can refine the ore into raw materials. Here we only have a flat production rate and power consumption per dT. There's no mention of crew requirements.

Perhaps being overly pedantic I note that Smelters are not a new heading, but a subheading of Refineries. Hence I consider them a special kind of Refinery with the same properties, unless overridden in the text. So, I use the same crew requirement for Smelters as given for Refineries.

50 dT per day of common raw materials would be worth 0.25 MCr
30 dT per day of uncommon raw materials would be worth 0.6 MCr
30 dT per day of crystals and gems (no smelting required) would be worth 0.6 MCr
10 dT per day of precious metals (smelting doesn't seem to apply here but you kind of think it would) would be worth 0.5 MCr
for an average daily production value (assuming average asteroid yields) of 1.95 MCr, not exactly rolling in the money considering the volume of material being processed (although the refinery and smelters would pay for themselves in about 1 year of operation, but that's not including the power costs / fusion plants to power it, paying the employees, etc).

I haven't run any economic model, but any industrial equipment that pays for itself in a single year will be very profitable, even if 1000 Dt of ship or station is not exactly cheap.

[Condottiere]

Return of Investment can also be based on available opportunities (or alternatives), and business risk. And since Traveller precognitively gives us the tech tree, disruptive technologies can be anticipated.

Also, you can model economics in Traveller, but like the genre itself, it's basically more fictional and fantastic, moreso than scientific.

[phavoc]

Apologies if any of this has already been asked and answered but I hadn't seen it and while playing around with the rules and various components I came across some bits I wasn't clear on.

p. 17 states that Command Bridges can only be put on ships of 5,000 dT or larger? Why is this?

Sorry, coming late to the conversation. Flag bridges should be sized around what their purpose is (e.g. what size elements are they meant to control). Plus there is more to it than just a bridge. So let' start with where you might see them.

You should never see one on a ship under the size of a light cruiser. Destroyers flotillas operate as a pack, or at the discretion of, typically, a capital ship like a light cruiser. You could, I suppose, have a heavy destroyer variant, or even a command variant. But keep in mind that your destroyer is typically going to be too small to really be able to devote excess tonnage for command facilities. So a light cruiser would be proper to command destroyer flotilla's and below. A heavy cruiser would be proper for a cruiser squadron and below. Fleets, or true capital ships, such as battlecruisers and larger, would be on either dedicated command ships, or battlecruisers/battleships/dreadnoughts/monitors. A dedicated command ship would probably never be found in a battlefleet since it's neither defensively nor offensively strong enough to survive. Plus it's a target since it would be a unique design.

That brings up another point - flag bridges should be typically emplaced on standard class of ships so that an enemy cannot easily identify where the command structure is. Killing the fleet commander is a good way to cause disarray in the enemy, so these ships would be hidden among normal ships. Which means the command variants will typically give up something that is not easily determined externally in order to free up the tonnage necessary for the command facilities. So you may have a CA Blah class, and a command variant called a CC Blah-Blah class (CC being command cruiser).

And flag bridges are more than just a room. The size of the flag bridge is predicated upon how big of a fleet needs to be commanded - which also drives the size of the flag bridge crew. It's the fleet commander and his staff (officers and enlisted). The ship carrying the flag bridge needs additional communication and potentially sensors in order to communicate with the fleet and control the various aspects of it. And then there's the more banal aspect - fleet commanders are of higher rank. Which means some of them will outrank the ship's captain, thus their quarters will be at least as nice and large as the ship's senior staff. The larger the commander (e.g. commodore and up), the bigger the quarters. And there will also be the idea that the flag bridge staff will have their own mess and other separate areas from the ship's crew.

Here's what I had created for flag bridges (pardon the messiness, working from my written notes):

Three sizes (Small, Medium, Large). Flag bridges have 1 workstation per 2 dton displacement. The space inside a flag bridge is filled with large holo displays and repeater systems showing information from all ships in the fleet. Flag bridges cost 2Mcr per dton. They are required in order for multiple ships to engage in activities above squadron levels.

Example - Small - 24 dtons (4 tons reserved for systems). Used for 10 - 24 ship flotilla's. Typically found on DD/ CL / CVL's. 10 workstations (2 command, 8 standard), 2 large holo-displays. Crew is 1 commander, 1 XO, 3 command staff, 10 operators. Requires minimum 10 staterooms plus 10 dtons for briefing rooms and other spaces set aside for command activities.

Using all the blah-blah from above, we have a command variant of the CL Valiant. To accommodate a small flag bridge as the command ship of a destroyer flotilla (10 destroyers, 1 CL):
Flag bridge (small) - 34 dtons 68 MCr

Staterooms(10) - 40 dtons 5 MCr (I forget off top of my head how a stateroom is, so using .5Mcr ea)

Additional crew - Commodore (fleet commander), Lieutenant (XO), 1xLT, 2 Ensigns (command staff), 10 operators (various enlisted ranks).

When I've come up with my house rules for things I've tried to tie costs to size, and make them expandable rather than fixed. So if you wanted to increase the size of your small flag bridge, in the case of Bardicheat's wanting each of his various groups to be different, you could size up (or down) to give each ship a more unique flavor based on race, polity, etc. For some it's more detail than they might want, but others (like me) might find it more palatable to design ships that way.

[Condottiere]

1. Destroyer leaders were enlarged variants with command facilities.

2. Light cruisers eventually took over that role.

3. Fleet commanders normally commanded from the biggest, and presumably, most powerful ship under their command, for reasons of security, comfort, ease of communications, and prestige. Admiral McCormac does this in The Rebel Worlds.

4. Generally, you check what has the most antennas, and does the most chattering.

5. Sometimes, you might want to sit out being in the middle of the line, so transferring the flag to another suitable capital ship, like a carrier, is acceptable; for a heavy cruiser, you need a pragmatic reason.

6. The primary issue with command bridges in Traveller is that their cost is based on hull volume, possibly justified by their ability to control the entire ship; the other one is minimum hull size, probably connected more with minimum cost.

[AnotherDilbert]

That brings up another point - flag bridges should be typically emplaced on standard class of ships so that an enemy cannot easily identify where the command structure is. Killing the fleet commander is a good way to cause disarray in the enemy, so these ships would be hidden among normal ships.

Agreed, the simple solution is to put the flag bridge and flag staff staterooms in a module.

[phavoc]

I like to leave flexibility up to the designer so we don't have the same look and feel for everything