Aircraft Carriers in Space
- Thread starter AndrewW
- Start date
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
Interesting read.
In real life as we advance towards sub orbital flights with the ability of fighters and bombers to be anywhere on the planet in 30 minutes the carriers are becoming not so much obsolete as in need of a change of focus.
At present the limited range of fighters means you need a mobile airstrip to get them close enough to use. With that no longer being an issue you still have a use for a mobile highly protected centre of influence/logistics but this does not need a huge and expensive carrier. In fact a couple of marine transports, some fleet logistics ships and an escort group gives you the ability to project support and power, send in the marines or provide large volumes of aid in a much cheaper package than a carrier group.
In traveller terms, well this comes back to the whole are fighters viable thing. Can fighters really hurt 100,000Dton plus ships with meter thick armour and laser weapons. Do fighters have any other role which justifies keeping carriers around.
Since fighters cannot FTL they need to be carried, that means carriers. Throwing a handful of fighters on every ship is fine if you are operating close to support. Larger purpose built carriers bring many advantages and can be equipped to handle a lot of things that a destroyer with a single flight on board cannot do. It is more efficient (and more vulnerable) to concentrate fighter logistics and C&C. A fleet with every ship carrying a few fighters can put 48 fighters in space, a fleet with a dedicated carrier can also put 48 fighters in space.
In the first fleet every ship is just that little bit less effective in combat due to the volume given up for fighters, crew, logistics and maintenance for the fighters and so on. Four 10Dton fighters, pilots, a hanger/maintenance area, fighter specific stores, ground crew etc all add up to missing a bay weapon on that destroyer.
In the second fleet every ship is a bit more capable but they are down one ship since the carrier does not fight. However you have a single central control over the fighters allowing for carefully planned and coordinated fighter attacks making the fighters much more effective as well.
The author notes that he likes Battlestar Galactica but he highlights a few points I also wondered about. Still a series about humans surviving the Cylon attack on their home worlds would be fairly short if the Cylons used their tech advantage and simply wiped out the fleet half way through the first series.
From our point of view we have to look not so much at real world physics as how the rules work. The rules say fighters are present and need carriers. So the answer to the question is YES we do have carriers in space :wink:
In real life as we advance towards sub orbital flights with the ability of fighters and bombers to be anywhere on the planet in 30 minutes the carriers are becoming not so much obsolete as in need of a change of focus.
At present the limited range of fighters means you need a mobile airstrip to get them close enough to use. With that no longer being an issue you still have a use for a mobile highly protected centre of influence/logistics but this does not need a huge and expensive carrier. In fact a couple of marine transports, some fleet logistics ships and an escort group gives you the ability to project support and power, send in the marines or provide large volumes of aid in a much cheaper package than a carrier group.
In traveller terms, well this comes back to the whole are fighters viable thing. Can fighters really hurt 100,000Dton plus ships with meter thick armour and laser weapons. Do fighters have any other role which justifies keeping carriers around.
Since fighters cannot FTL they need to be carried, that means carriers. Throwing a handful of fighters on every ship is fine if you are operating close to support. Larger purpose built carriers bring many advantages and can be equipped to handle a lot of things that a destroyer with a single flight on board cannot do. It is more efficient (and more vulnerable) to concentrate fighter logistics and C&C. A fleet with every ship carrying a few fighters can put 48 fighters in space, a fleet with a dedicated carrier can also put 48 fighters in space.
In the first fleet every ship is just that little bit less effective in combat due to the volume given up for fighters, crew, logistics and maintenance for the fighters and so on. Four 10Dton fighters, pilots, a hanger/maintenance area, fighter specific stores, ground crew etc all add up to missing a bay weapon on that destroyer.
In the second fleet every ship is a bit more capable but they are down one ship since the carrier does not fight. However you have a single central control over the fighters allowing for carefully planned and coordinated fighter attacks making the fighters much more effective as well.
The author notes that he likes Battlestar Galactica but he highlights a few points I also wondered about. Still a series about humans surviving the Cylon attack on their home worlds would be fairly short if the Cylons used their tech advantage and simply wiped out the fleet half way through the first series.
From our point of view we have to look not so much at real world physics as how the rules work. The rules say fighters are present and need carriers. So the answer to the question is YES we do have carriers in space :wink:
The concept of the dedicated carrier with only limited ship-ship weapons dates back to the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, when battleships still ruled the seas and the treaty was intended to restrict everyone's construction of them. Carriers were limited to destroyer-size guns to prevent someone from putting a few aircraft onto a battleship, calling it a carrier and thus side-stepping the limit on battleships. Aircraft weapons evolved until they could threaten capital ships, meaning the aircraft were just as effective as any capital ship's weapons, which is why battleships became obsolete.
Fast-forward to the future where starships take the place of sea-going ships. As Captain Jonah said, can fighters do significant damage to capital ships the way they can now? If they can carry the same sort of lasers and missiles as capital ships the way present-day fighters carry the same missiles as capital ships, then fighters are worth having. If not then they're little more than a nuisance. And unless there's something like the Washington Naval Treaty in force then there's nothing to prevent a ship from carrying both a load of fighters and some big weapons of its own, which is why Babylon 5's Omega class destroyers were battleship and carrier rolled into one.
As for putting a few fighters on every ship, that is worthwhile if the ships don't always go around in big fleets. Think of present-day destroyers and frigates which carry a few helicopters that can scout, hunt submarines or even carry anti-ship missiles.
Fast-forward to the future where starships take the place of sea-going ships. As Captain Jonah said, can fighters do significant damage to capital ships the way they can now? If they can carry the same sort of lasers and missiles as capital ships the way present-day fighters carry the same missiles as capital ships, then fighters are worth having. If not then they're little more than a nuisance. And unless there's something like the Washington Naval Treaty in force then there's nothing to prevent a ship from carrying both a load of fighters and some big weapons of its own, which is why Babylon 5's Omega class destroyers were battleship and carrier rolled into one.
As for putting a few fighters on every ship, that is worthwhile if the ships don't always go around in big fleets. Think of present-day destroyers and frigates which carry a few helicopters that can scout, hunt submarines or even carry anti-ship missiles.
In Traveller terms:
Can fighters threaten capital ships? - Yes
The biggest energy weapon carriable by a fighter (40 dTon plus, Power Plant L plus) is a Very High Yield Particle Barbette. Combine with military-grade fire control (+3 or better) and you can quite realistically threaten even armour 15 ships with barrage attacks, especially with the Fast Strafing Run order.
Alternatively, a fighter can carry antiship torpedoes. With each weapon slot theoretically being usable for torpedoes, the number of torps which a fighter wing can heft at once compares favourably with a torpedo bay - even disregarding the multi-hundred-dTon ship you need to mount it on.
Fighters also add advantages in the other direction - it is a lot cheaper to mount streamlined fighters on a non-atmospheric carrier than to use a streamlined warship for in-atmosphere fire support. Ortillery can be used from outside the atmosphere but is not exactly a discriminate weapon for close air support missions.
Are carriers useful? - Yes
As noted, fighters cannot be made jump-capable. Hence they need a carrier to be strategically useful as anything other than an alternative to SDBs.
Dispersed versus dedicated carriers? - Both
Both arguments above are compelling and correct. What you tend to find is that small ships - which aren't intended to stand in the line of battle anyway and usually operate alone - will benefit most from a small organic fighter component. I think the navy frigate in fighting ships has a handful of light fighters on board, in fact.
By comparison, the big ships which operate in a fleet should be designed to operate in that fleet, and as such combined carrier/battleships aren't the best plan - you end up with naff compromises like the Azhanti High Lightning rather than a true gunship.
Can fighters threaten capital ships? - Yes
The biggest energy weapon carriable by a fighter (40 dTon plus, Power Plant L plus) is a Very High Yield Particle Barbette. Combine with military-grade fire control (+3 or better) and you can quite realistically threaten even armour 15 ships with barrage attacks, especially with the Fast Strafing Run order.
Alternatively, a fighter can carry antiship torpedoes. With each weapon slot theoretically being usable for torpedoes, the number of torps which a fighter wing can heft at once compares favourably with a torpedo bay - even disregarding the multi-hundred-dTon ship you need to mount it on.
Fighters also add advantages in the other direction - it is a lot cheaper to mount streamlined fighters on a non-atmospheric carrier than to use a streamlined warship for in-atmosphere fire support. Ortillery can be used from outside the atmosphere but is not exactly a discriminate weapon for close air support missions.
Are carriers useful? - Yes
As noted, fighters cannot be made jump-capable. Hence they need a carrier to be strategically useful as anything other than an alternative to SDBs.
Dispersed versus dedicated carriers? - Both
Both arguments above are compelling and correct. What you tend to find is that small ships - which aren't intended to stand in the line of battle anyway and usually operate alone - will benefit most from a small organic fighter component. I think the navy frigate in fighting ships has a handful of light fighters on board, in fact.
By comparison, the big ships which operate in a fleet should be designed to operate in that fleet, and as such combined carrier/battleships aren't the best plan - you end up with naff compromises like the Azhanti High Lightning rather than a true gunship.
I think one of the prime targets for small craft like light fighters and bombers is smaller craft that have to choose between armouring and weaponry and manoeuvrability. While a 50,000 ton ship might have 15 points of armour, a 3000 ton frigate that runs at M-6 might only have 6-10 points. These are prime targets for fighters mounting P-beams and pulse lasers.
I think carrier craft are mainly going to end up as harriers instead of primary strike craft as they are today. They're not going to be killing huge cap ships (probably). That's the task of dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers. Instead they'll be annoying the frigates and destroyers, slowing them down and crippling them so that they can't do exactly the same to your line of battle ships.
I think carrier craft are mainly going to end up as harriers instead of primary strike craft as they are today. They're not going to be killing huge cap ships (probably). That's the task of dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers. Instead they'll be annoying the frigates and destroyers, slowing them down and crippling them so that they can't do exactly the same to your line of battle ships.
Except it's not quite that bad - a TL15 ship has a maximum armour of 15 - and a very high yield particle barbette or a nuclear torpedo will punch through that with only an average damage roll; short of ridiculous levels of tech, you cannot make a Traveller warship immune to weapons carriable by small craft.
AndrewW said:
HG, p.42: "[Radiation shielding] provides 6 extra armour points against radiation damage from nuclear weapons, particle beams and fusion guns." (emphasis mine)
Radiation damage is separate from the normal damage from an attack, covered on HG p.79, and can only cause crew, computer, and sensor hits. The 6 extra armor does not protect against the direct/blast damage of beams/nukes, so a TL 15 ship with max armor and radiation shielding would have 15 armor for determining the normal damage from a particle beam or nuke torpedo and 21 armor for determining the additional damage inflicted by the associated radiation.
Except in the rulebook inflicting rads on the crew is 'radiation crew hits' not 'radiation damage'. Damage is a hull/structure thing to my mind
I've always seen it as the nuke equivalent to reflec - I'm happy to be told no, but will allow it to work to full effect in any game I gm, if only because at 0.25 MCr per dTon, it's one of the most expensive upgrades going - often costing 1/3 the price of a warship - and it has no effect on radiation hits until the armour is cracked, since armour >12 takes no radiation hits until damaged. It's just a massive white elephant under the strictest reading.
I've always seen it as the nuke equivalent to reflec - I'm happy to be told no, but will allow it to work to full effect in any game I gm, if only because at 0.25 MCr per dTon, it's one of the most expensive upgrades going - often costing 1/3 the price of a warship - and it has no effect on radiation hits until the armour is cracked, since armour >12 takes no radiation hits until damaged. It's just a massive white elephant under the strictest reading.
locarno24 said:
In the Core Rulebook, yes. However, HG has a "Radiation Damage" chart on p.79 which is similar to the Damage chart on Core p.150, but, rather than giving a number of hits inflicted (which are then rolled on a separate table), the Radiation Damage table directly gives rolls (apparently on 1D) to inflict a Crew hit, a Computer hit, and/or a Sensor hit.
locarno24 said:
Agreed on it seeming overpriced, but I don't see reflec as a good analogy. A laser does all its damage via a single mode (thermal effects caused by intense light) and reflec at least partially negates that mode, so it reduces the full damage of the attack. Nuclear explosions, on the other hand, have two modes of damage: The primary damage mode is the physical blast and radiation is a secondary mode which can cause additional damage. It just doesn't make sense to me that shielding against radiation would also reduce the blast damage. I could see an argument for it reducing the normal total damage if radiation were the primary damage mode, but it's not. (Feel free to substitute another word for "mode" if it works better for you. I don't know where I picked that usage up, but it somehow feels "right", so I don't think I just made it up...)
Actually, given that Rad Shielding reduces radiation exposure from meson weapon hits, perhaps the reason it's so expensive is that the shielding is incorporated into every wall and bulkhead throughout the ship rather than just being a part of the outer hull. That would definitely raise the cost, although it still seems high even so.
Regardless, this aspect of the rules really needs to be revisited. It's not written very clearly in general. (HG42 says Rad Shielding gives 6 extra armor against radiation hits from fusion guns, particle beams, and nukes; HG79 says that it completely negates radiation hits from fusion guns and nukes and that a ship with 8 or more armor is immune to radiation hits from everything but meson guns, so why not just say that Rad Shielding provides immunity to radiation hits from all non-meson weapons? HG42 also says that Rad Shielding both blocks 1000 rads and gives the effect of a Hardened Bridge; a Hardened Bridge blocks 1000 rads; does this mean that radiation exposure for bridge crew on a Rad Shielded ship is reduced by 1000 rads or 2000? The Radiation Rules on HG79 talk about "Damage Bands", a term which does not appear anywhere else in Core or HG...)
Somebody said:
Per MgT Core, p.112, a nuclear damper "Reduces fusion gun and nuclear missile damage by 2d6, removes automatic crew hit from nuclear missile attacks". The Radiation Attacks rules on HG p.79 add that "Ships with nuclear dampers or radiation shielding will suffer no radiation damage from nuclear weapons or fusion guns."
They have no effect on particle beams.
As above
Remember - a radiation damper doesn't make radiation go away - it stops it being generated in the first place.
A small radiation damper field will limit radiation from a nuke going off within its bubble (analagous to a nuclear missile), but won't help shield you from the radiation already emitted outside the bubble (the focussed 'radiation' - i.e. stream of subatomic particles which forms a particle beam)
Remember - a radiation damper doesn't make radiation go away - it stops it being generated in the first place.
A small radiation damper field will limit radiation from a nuke going off within its bubble (analagous to a nuclear missile), but won't help shield you from the radiation already emitted outside the bubble (the focussed 'radiation' - i.e. stream of subatomic particles which forms a particle beam)