1 question on Huscarle Fleets

[JMISBEST]

After thinking about what Bardicheart wrote about The Nobles of Deneb Sector I have 1 question on Huscarle Fleets. Can you please help me?

Since the peace treaty said The Deneb Nobles can't own ships massing more then 2,000 tons but doesn't actually state anything about having ships massing more then 2,000 tons under their command what's to stop them hiring Privateers that have ships massing more then 2,000 tons or bribing corrupt Senior Sector Navy Personnel to loan them ships massing more then 2,000 tons

 

[Anonymous]

Remember when the Lords of Terra ruled that the ecclesiarchy "cannot have men under arms" so they armed all the nuns and created the Adeptus Sororitas?

 

[PsiTraveller]

Make Breakaway hulls of 1000 tons each. Each section has M Drive, J Drive (if you want to Jump), and weapons for a 1000 ton ship. have the ships connect together with connectors and you can string a chain of them together.

The only thing you cannot make is the really large spinal weapons.

Then again make a 2000 ton spinal weapon and connect it to a series of support modules as needed.

 

[Old School]

from a realistic standpoint, whatever bureaucrat wrote the rules regarding the 2,000 ton limitation probably thought of these options and accounted for them.

Assuming they didn’t, which would means there are a bunch of idiots in positions of authority in the Imperium (I suppose that’s not a stretch), then I would say that thumbing your nose at the Emperor to try to get around the technicalities of an Imperial ruling is a good way to find your “technically legal” fleet facing the business end of a dreadnaught’s spinal cannon.

And you can’t make a spinal weapon of only 2,000 tons, and even if you did you’d still be way overmatched by the Navy.

As for bribing Naval officials, that sounds like a good way to get yourself executed.

 

[Anonymous]

Plenty of examples of treaty loopholes in our history.

The German war machine at the start of World War 2 would be an interesting place to start research. It is a mix of lax oversight by the enemy, civilian equipment converted to carry weapons, and exploits like having too many police, and just why did their police have infantry and heavy weapons training?

I can imagine a megafreighter with weapons that can be added in refits, in a nationalised merchant marine with navy crew. Some of which crew may be "on holiday/retired", and not training or active, as private star-mercs in some other sector.

edit: Auxillary Carriers, pilots as above.

 

[Old School]

I wouldn’t want to be on that converted mega freighter when it runs i to a squadron of Tigress Dreadnaughts sent to put down any brushfire the local nobles want to start.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Find a really big asteroid, hollow it out and build whatever you want. Hide the asteroid as a processing plant/spacestation concept. Or build a secret fleet in an empty hex. You just have to move all the material into the empty hex.

 

[Condottiere]

1. The Germans offshored their arms industries to circumvent scrutiny, I think Switzerland, Sweden and Holland; Holland, I believe, they developed further submarine technology.

2. They also made an agreement with the Soviets to train and develop armoured doctrine.

3. Pilots were trained using gliders.

4. Since the army had to be reduced to a hundred thousand, they could pick and choose the most promising and talented officers and troop leaders, and train them to command and administer units two levels above their stated pay grade.

5. As regards to two kay tonne tin cans versus half a megatonne dreadnought:

 

[Anonymous]

I’m still waiting for official ramming rules. I’ve asked about it before. (Edit: also coming alongside and jumping with them inside the field)

I also note that a ship can have years of sublight maneuvering endurance and it seems like this might be somehow important to the military, at least if they want to send their fancy battleships home and not have them sitting there waiting months for the raiders to return. I strongly suspect the manoeuvre drive gravity limit was an attempt to address this (edit: but I don’t remember if Mongoose ships have the 1000D? drive limit)

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

While I haven’t seen anything about m-drive limitations in any of the Mongoose books I own, the ongoing Deepnight Revelation Kickstarter suggests that there is indeed some form of limit.

Right now it’s only been hinted at through previews, but the fact that some ships have special deep-space maneuvering thrusters kinda suggests that normal m-drives does have some form of limit, guess we’ll see exactly how it works soon

 

[Anonymous]

While I haven’t seen anything about m-drive limitations in any of the Mongoose books I own, the ongoing Deepnight Revelation Kickstarter suggests that there is indeed some form of limit.

Right now it’s only been hinted at through previews, but the fact that some ships have special deep-space maneuvering thrusters kinda suggests that normal m-drives does have some form of limit, guess we’ll see exactly how it works soon

I dind't see that in the text. Is it in the comments or video interviews?

Perhaps it is the opposite and these drives are super fast but don't work inside the limit? Generation ship engine?

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Let’s see... The Rift Hauler transport from the Deepnight Legacy adventure found here and the Deepnight Scout from update #2 (here) are both equipped with “Deep Space Manoeuvring System”.

We did discuss the DSM system a little somewhere, let’s see if I can dig out the relevant bits... ah yes, here it is:

Well, that has always been a thing, but we have not touched on it too much until now (never been really relevant). But yes, if you go a very, very long way from a mass, your m-drive becomes a whole lot less efficient. Banging about Charted Space this was never really an issue, but it is a Thing.

 

[M J Dougherty]

The short and simple answer is that if you're within a star system you're within a gravity field suficent to permit normal m-drive operation. Out beyond the heliopause and off in deep space (empty hexes) you need a DSMS.

 

[phavoc]

Just to clarify, heliopause is about the solar wind from a star, and at the outer edges of the system it basically peters out and the particles no longer are able to travel forward due to pressure of, for lack of a better term, "deep space". For Sol that's about 100 AU, and each star system will be affected differently. Oort shells (again using Sol as an example) are out to 100,000 AU. There may be additional planetary objects out there, but we really have no data on them and probably wont' for quite some time.

Hopefully someone will ensure the explanation doesn't require any hand wavium and would explain why an M-drive works equally well in a strong or weak gravitational field and would not work at, for example, a distance of 150,000 AU or so from a G-class star. If you link it to gravity (or even the heliopause) then the distance will be different depending on the star type.

I don't think this will break anything else by introducing such a thing simply because I really don't know people who do any adventures in the space between the stars. The only one that comes to mind is the Keith Brothers Sky Raiders set of adventures. This is different than the changes put forth where now grav sensors could detect gravitational changes from oort objects, or jump traffic in systems light years away. That particular piece of gear doesn't fit well within Traveller history or tech and potentially caused inconsistencies elsewhere. I would hope the goal would be to NOT cause those inconsistencies.

 

[JMISBEST]

Can we get back to what the subject is about?

 

[JMISBEST]

Can we get back to what the subject is about?

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Thanks for the clarification, Martin!

Are regular m-drives completely useless in empty hexes, or merely operating at vastly reduced efficiency?

In a regular game it most likely won’t matter, even for the various multi-jumping ship designs (there are a couple of 2x jump-3 capable scout ships for example, plus the courier from the Element box). Even if they jump into an empty hex they most likely only stay long enough to plot the next jump and then move on.

A deep-space refueling operation on the other hand is another matter. Say that a cruiser needs to cross a rift. It jumps into an empty hex halfway through, accompanied by tankers with enough fuel to make the jump back themselves in addition to filling the cruiser’s tanks so it can continue on its mission. They’re all equipped with regular m-drives, no DSMS. Would they be unable to rendezvous with each other in order to transfer fuel, or would it just take longer than usual?



To return to the original question that started the thread, I’d say it depends on how the treaty was written. If I were to GM it, I’d personally rule that hiring privateers would be the same as flying them under their own flag, so forbidden. Trying to bribe corrupt navy personnel sounds extremely risky, but i they can somehow convince the navy to place a few ships within their territory it might be doable. Command of those ships would still fall under Imperial navy though...

Now, even if hiring privateers breaks the treaty it would be possible to do it, for a time at least (Assuming they find a private party with a large enough ship that’s willing to sign up for an illegal contract...)

The real problem starts when others find out about the illegal deal, and if they decide to take action. An angry visit from an imperial navy cruiser squadron is not a fun experience... Remember that we’re talking proper 50,000 dt cruisers here, not the small adventure scale ships.

 

[Condottiere]

I'm going to do a little speculating here:

1. (Gravitational) islands in the sun.

2. I presume it's too much effort to reconcile the engineering of the MongoVerse and Tea Five, and would over complicate stuff anyway.

3. Thrusters are only one percent efficient beyond a thousand diameters of a gravitational well, which is still viable, if the destination is close enough; in an empty hex, a good astrogator would be worth his weight in gold, if gold had any weight in space, or was worth anything.

4. NAFALing.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm going to do a little speculating here:

1. (Gravitational) islands in the sun.

2. I presume it's too much effort to reconcile the engineering of the MongoVerse and Tea Five, and would over complicate stuff anyway.

3. Thrusters are only one percent efficient beyond a thousand diameters of a gravitational well, which is still viable, if the destination is close enough; in an empty hex, a good astrogator would be worth his weight in gold, if gold had any weight in space, or was worth anything.

4. NAFALing.

2. To reconcile each game with just itself would be a mammoth task.

3. I suspect deceleration will be the problem. You boosted there at regular drive and now have to decelerate on 1/100 drive. So you probably boosted there on 1/100 drive to start with and now the whole trip sucks.

 

[M J Dougherty]

Somewhere in the GDW Traveller materials (might be T4 though) there is a statement that M drive only works properly close to a planetary gravity well. This is at odds with the constant acceleration formulae dating from CT days. To reconcile this we assumed that the drive works OK within a star's gravity well, and the Heliopause makes a useful in-game break point. Outside that distance the drive only provides 1/100 of the normal thrust.

You probably should work out the thrust dropoff on a constant basis if you're moving between planets, but that's more maths than anyone deserves.