Alternate Launch Tube rules

[AnotherDilbert]

IF the current rules had hangars having a better launching rate than 1 craft every six minutes... That's absurdly slow, and not at all realistic. So if you have a tube, why the heck is it so massive and big? It does NOTHING for launching bonus (Aside from 10 fighters/turn). Crap, flaptops in the pacific managed faster launching rates than that.

I think the current rules assume a separate hangar for each craft, so that you can launch ALL craft in 2 rounds, or 3 rounds with Docking Space. When you draw deck plans you can combine it into a bigger boat bay, but still launch quickly? As per the Launch Tube rules neither the ship nor the craft may expend any thrust during this time.

 

[Nerhesi]

That to me is on implementation of a tube.

It doesn't have to be 10 hangars with a long tube infront. It can be 10 hangars with a minitube to eject infront of each. This looks like a pockmarked ship side similar to the hive.

So currently, you have 200% ship size hangars, taking X turns to launch (2? 3?)

With tubes designed to launch 10 craft, and you aiming for the 1 turn launch, you'd be taking up 210% (docking space plus tube).

The problem now is this fullhangar requirement for tubes making them 300%+

 

[AnotherDilbert]

With tubes designed to launch 10 craft, and you aiming for the 1 turn launch, you'd be taking up 210% (docking space plus tube).

The problem now is this fullhangar requirement for tubes making them 300%+

It takes one round to manoeuvre a craft into ‘firing’ position within a launch tube but, once there, it takes a single combat round to release it into space or an atmosphere ...

Launch Tube launches 1 craft per round, at 10 times the tonnage. With Full Hangar that is 1200% of craft tonnage... Or I have misunderstood something again.

 

[phavoc]

That to me is on implementation of a tube.

It doesn't have to be 10 hangars with a long tube infront. It can be 10 hangars with a minitube to eject infront of each. This looks like a pockmarked ship side similar to the hive.

So currently, you have 200% ship size hangars, taking X turns to launch (2? 3?)

With tubes designed to launch 10 craft, and you aiming for the 1 turn launch, you'd be taking up 210% (docking space plus tube).

The problem now is this fullhangar requirement for tubes making them 300%+

Rules for tubes mean you have buy each one, and they aren't cheap tonnage wise. Sure, they could all service the same hangar bay/storage area.

Full hangar requirement is straight outa Space Stations, and applies ONLY to starships. The argument for that was you needed a lot of space to load/unload. In SW you saw a ship like the Falcon inside of starship hangars sometimes, or hangars on the ground. In BG (original) you had the Eastern Alliance destroyer inside the galactica's landing bays. I didn't make any of that up, just pulled it straight from the books. At first I thought it was too much, but over time I've gotten to be more OK with the idea. Besides, Traveller has always talked about Dtons, not the shape the ship is in order to have those Dtons. And we all know it's the shape of your starship, then the size of it, not how you use it. For, uh, docking. Okay... multiple puns there!

 

[Nerhesi]

Yeah _ I kind of assumed that is something that absolutely must change and I mentioned that. Perhaps I should have bolded it or so

The current tube size to launch ONE craft is nuts. I think the current problem would be significantly downgraded if:

a) Launch tube only needed docking spaces not full hangers
b) Only required 1D minutes total to launch a craft (not this confusing 1D + 1 combat round? just 1D minutes, simple)
c) Could be used during evasion/dodging/combat/carrier expending thrust etc...

At that point it would be simply.. full hangars at 200% of craft size, 1/2 the launch rate, and severely crippled in combat vs tubes at 210% craft size, full launch rate, and no problem in combat.
You'd also need to apply the same changes done to Tubes to Recovery decks (10 craft recovery instead of this 1 craziness)

Perhaps some mention should be made to the fact that it may not be the most effective method to stick a 100 hangars outwardly facing on your hull as well... maybe a different way of them taking damage or so. But I dont think we need to venture far from making tubes something mind-blowing.

 

[Condottiere]

Hangars need to be big, otherwise they are garages.

 

[phavoc]

Lots would depend on your innards for your small craft. And how you see hangars actually working. They have multiple uses, from storing the craft, to allowing you to rear them to repairing them.

You need to look at this holistically, too. Most of the time the hangar will support low temp daily ops, and only occasionally does it need to support combat ops. But when the combat DOES occur you have to optimize your entire design for rapid deployment, recovery and rearming. That's the purpose of a Frontline combat carrier.

That means craft will fly in and out, and need room to manever around each other and deck crews. You will be toting racks of missiles and torpedoes from your internal magazines, and hydrogen fuel lines will be out and ready to plug into the ships.

So all of that means generous hangar space to do it all quickly and efficiently. That's where you start and work backwards from in your designs.

I don't think docking spaces rather than hangars would work any better. Still gotta get access to them.

Small craft should be able to launch under combat conditions, assuming they are warcraft. Non fighters I could see having a restriction on (civvies!).

I'm ok with the idea of LAUNCH tubes. But having them recover craft too is just downright stupid. Threading the needle on the way out requires no effort because your mechanisms are designed for that. But coming back in you may have a wounded pilot, a crippled craft, one with dangling ordnance that can't be ejected... a mistake means an accident and then your launch tube is blocked and useless.

I see no problem giving launch tubes some actual usefulness and a bonus. You are paying a lot for them, so they might as well be useful.

We still haven't really explored using the external hull as a flight "deck" to launch and recover craft. Elevators could bring ships up top to launch under their own power. Anti gravity fields couldake it act like an internal hanger though you'd never want crews on the outside in a combat environment, simply too easy to die. But high speed elevators could bring craft up for staging and down for refueling and rearming. There would be some extra tonnage involved, but much less than a tube. And if a tube offers no launch bonuses, there are better and more economical methods available.

I see no reason to save launch tubes if they don't fit the paradigm of usefullness. Just like I see no reason to support current small craft launch rates simply to justify launch tubes. One bad idea doesn't deserve to be saved by a worse one.

 

[Condottiere]

Launch tubes should take up hardpoints. Possibly, some forms of launch facilities as well.

 

[Nerhesi]

Launch tubes should take up hardpoints. Possibly, some forms of launch facilities as well.

Then so should hangars (as you allude too). And they should be completely in efficient at that.
If anything with an "outer component" needs hardpoints, then we should consider certain sensors/electronic, towing arrays, breaching tubes, etc...

Or we can simply limit the amount of "openings" on your hull based on the remaining space you have. Example, if after drives, bridges, weapons, and so on, you have 20% of your craft, then no more than half that can be lovely blisters of openings (hangars).

 

[phavoc]

Launch tubes should take up hardpoints. Possibly, some forms of launch facilities as well.

Then so should hangars (as you allude too). And they should be completely in efficient at that.
If anything with an "outer component" needs hardpoints, then we should consider certain sensors/electronic, towing arrays, breaching tubes, etc...

Or we can simply limit the amount of "openings" on your hull based on the remaining space you have. Example, if after drives, bridges, weapons, and so on, you have 20% of your craft, then no more than half that can be lovely blisters of openings (hangars).

I would be against any arbitrary ruleset designed to force people to use launch tubes. Make them useful, logical and fit within the paradigm. But if they are broke, then fix them.

I understand my pushing to make them relevant and fix gaps in the rules. I don't understand your resistance to making changes that benefit the overall system.

 

[Nerhesi]

Launch tubes should take up hardpoints. Possibly, some forms of launch facilities as well.

Then so should hangars (as you allude too). And they should be completely in efficient at that.
If anything with an "outer component" needs hardpoints, then we should consider certain sensors/electronic, towing arrays, breaching tubes, etc...

Or we can simply limit the amount of "openings" on your hull based on the remaining space you have. Example, if after drives, bridges, weapons, and so on, you have 20% of your craft, then no more than half that can be lovely blisters of openings (hangars).

I would be against any arbitrary ruleset designed to force people to use launch tubes. Make them useful, logical and fit within the paradigm. But if they are broke, then fix them.

I understand my pushing to make them relevant and fix gaps in the rules. I don't understand your resistance to making changes that benefit the overall system.

My resistance is not to changes that benefit the overall system. In fact, that is what my changes are espousing.
My resistance is to changes that hurt the overall system - which is exactly what the increased speed launch will do.

You can come up with whatever you want Phavoc - but game balance for me is key. Of course a perfect balance is a pipe dream but the proposal about increasing fighter engagement speed via tubes would be a massive issue. I have no problem with making tubes worth it - but lets do that then. Make tubes worth it, without having to screw with anything else. No point fixing something as niche is Launch Tubes and then realising the massive woops we just created.

 

[phavoc]

My resistance is not to changes that benefit the overall system. In fact, that is what my changes are espousing.
My resistance is to changes that hurt the overall system - which is exactly what the increased speed launch will do.

You can come up with whatever you want Phavoc - but game balance for me is key. Of course a perfect balance is a pipe dream but the proposal about increasing fighter engagement speed via tubes would be a massive issue. I have no problem with making tubes worth it - but lets do that then. Make tubes worth it, without having to screw with anything else. No point fixing something as niche is Launch Tubes and then realising the massive woops we just created.

So you are advocating for launch tubes that provide no launch speed boost? So lets dissect that then. How would they work? The craft is 'loaded' into the tube, accelerates out and leaves the ship under it's own power. Okay, fair enough.

So now let's put that same craft in a hangar. It accelerates out and leaves under it's own power. Same as the tube, which would make sense because the tube now implies no additional launch capabilities.

The difference here is that the launch rates of the tube are far higher than the hangar. Why? Where does the advantage of the tube come in? It's comparitively huge. It does nothing but take up space. There's no reason why you could not launch small craft that were organized in an orderly fashion from the hangar bay in the same way. But the rules make hangars less attractive for the (as I see it) sole purpose of justifying the existence of a launch tube, and as the only way to quickly launch small craft from a ship.

As I have continually pointed out, this does not pass the common sense test. Arbitrary rules (1 hard point per 100 tons) has at least some justification and reasoning behind it. Other rules (1 week in jump space) also does. But neither of them have a in inherent conflict with something else within the rules. And launch tubes vs. hangars does.

So I would put the question back in your court - justify the existence of launch tubes AND provide for reasonable hangar launch rates.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Just a thought here, but...

I'm in favor of launch tubes acting like catapults. They have to provide some edge, after all. I can also accept the idea that a recovery system has to be a vastly different design than a narrow tube to work (a large open area feels better).

The major problem, in my eyes, with the catapult route is that fighters will be able
To reach thrust numbers of around 50 G, which is insane. 6 G used to be fast, now it's 9, but when combining all different thrust sources it gets crazy.

But what if that is the problem? Should M and reaction drives really be able to boost each other? I get the "afterburner" reasoning, but I believe the achievable numbers are too high. It's been my understanding that an m-drive of a certain thrust number can also counteract g-forces up to this number, but if 15 g can be added to this, then the counter-grav part of the drives must be way more powerful than the thruster. Perhaps limit the total thrust boost somehow, and blame the grav compensators?

Thrust 24 is insanely much imho, more than twice the speed of missiles!

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Oh, and to keep the above relevant to the topic, perhaps launch tubes could generate their own grav compensating fields and thus be the only way to combine thrust above +10, whereas M and reaction combination could never yield more than +3, +50% or +100% or something... There could also be a limited max thrust of 25 total due to no grav compensators being more powerful than that. Thus launch tubes would allow max thrust without spending reaction mass, or... Eh I don't know.

 

[phavoc]

That's a possibility. A launch tube should be able to impart a bonus to small craft. And no small craft should be able to outrun a missile speed wise, assuming same tech for missile drives and small craft drives. Missiles need no limitation due to human squishyness.

Grav compensator used to be default to 6G, but now we have afterburner on dreadnought to small craft, who can also mount the same equivalent levels of armor, so I'm not sure there are any more lines to cross.

 

[Nerhesi]

Grav compensator used to be default to 6G, but now we have afterburner on dreadnought to small craft, who can also mount the same equivalent levels of armor, so I'm not sure there are any more lines to cross.

Armour has always been a factor of material, not ship weight. I know it is your personal pref Phavoc to see smaller craft with less armour and larger craft with more; but that is just a preference of the Paradigm. Some games do armour as hitpoints, some do it as a threshold, seperate from hitpoints. I like the latter. I like the former if we incorporate agility mechanisms more clearly. However, that is a redesign.

As for Afterburners - some text to indicate how that much thrust is handled would be nice. Perhaps anything over 17Gs total (8Gs above the 9 handled via grav plating) is handled via some standard cockpit modifications. That would at least limit them to certain fighters as the pilots there are in some <<insert any mechanism here to have them survive that many Gs>>. For example, some lovely concept cockpit designs. So you dont have people walking around bridges or staterooms when a ship is doing 15+ Gs... I think this is a worth topic post Phavoc if you want to take it on. Some blurb in the M-drive section indicating when you need cockpits, and how many Gs can be tolerated with simply bridges and staterooms versus water/some other fluid/whatever weird system cockpit requirement.. or whatever else you want.

 

[Nerhesi]

So you are advocating for launch tubes that provide no launch speed boost? So lets dissect that then. How would they work? The craft is 'loaded' into the tube, accelerates out and leaves the ship under it's own power. Okay, fair enough.

...

So I would put the question back in your court - justify the existence of launch tubes AND provide for reasonable hangar launch rates.

I thought I did that? Lets just do high level then:

Launch Tubes:
1) They need smaller internal storage than a full hangar (sure you will need a maintenance area for 20 fighters or so, but not 1 per craft). This is a change from the current tubes need full hangars.
2) They allow you to launch regardless of the ships Gs expended or evasion.
3) They allow you launch multiple craft per tube (lets say 10) per space combat round.

Hangars:
1) Significantly larger than the smaller internal storage required for tubes.
2) Launch can only accomplished when the following is not in use: evasion software, no pilot evasion
3) Craft take longer to launch. I dont agree with your preference that launching should "reasonable" - it should be unreasonable in ANY hasty scenario. This is the equivalent of you being moored - not on a catapult on a flat-top. That is the above.
4) A limit on the amount of hangars you can have - as each hangar is basically a very very large opening on the outside of the ship. That surface area is going to get eaten up quick. Perhaps hardpoint is a good indicator, perhaps not - but having 300 opening hangars on your hull has to mean something.
5) Something to do with hangars being destroyed when taking hull damage. Whether it is being more susceptible to critical hits or just losing them every X hull.

Simple. Hangars are not something you carry your fighters in except in well.. exceptional circumstances. It's something for a ship-boats, a shuttle, cargo shuttles, special ops craft, etc...

Of course you may prefer full-hangars to be much more useful in a combat scenarios, I would disagree with that. I want them to be near useless in a combat scenario.

 

[phavoc]

Armour has always been a factor of material, not ship weight. I know it is your personal pref Phavoc to see smaller craft with less armour and larger craft with more; but that is just a preference of the Paradigm. Some games do armour as hitpoints, some do it as a threshold, seperate from hitpoints. I like the latter. I like the former if we incorporate agility mechanisms more clearly. However, that is a redesign.

When I see s small craft flying around with collapsed-matter hull plating, yeah, I do start to put mass into the equation. If we were talking about reflec, or hell, even sticking with crystal iron, I'd be ok and could see that as doable. But when you start making collapsed matter hull plating, my sciency-side starts coming out. Plus you can't just throw layers of hull plating on something and expect it to work well if you don't also build the underlying hull structure to both support AND channel that energy. When something rams into you at high speed that kinetic (and probably explosive) energy gets translated into something. If your super-duper hull can resist the hit... then the energy travels THROUGH the armor and into the ship itself. That's the joy of physics!

Generally speaking, most game systems have treated armor levels and mass together, even if it's not listed independently. They do that by allowing less armor on small craft before they start to loose maneuverability and the things that keep them alive when attacking larger craft. I think agility ratings would be a great thing. But not every Trav system took them into account. GURPS tried to do both (mass and agility).

As for Afterburners - some text to indicate how that much thrust is handled would be nice. Perhaps anything over 17Gs total (8Gs above the 9 handled via grav plating) is handled via some standard cockpit modifications. That would at least limit them to certain fighters as the pilots there are in some <<insert any mechanism here to have them survive that many Gs>>. For example, some lovely concept cockpit designs. So you dont have people walking around bridges or staterooms when a ship is doing 15+ Gs... I think this is a worth topic post Phavoc if you want to take it on. Some blurb in the M-drive section indicating when you need cockpits, and how many Gs can be tolerated with simply bridges and staterooms versus water/some other fluid/whatever weird system cockpit requirement.. or whatever else you want.

Before there weren't specific intertial compensators mentioned, it was just kind of assumed they were there in your grav plating inside of your ship. But ships topped out at 6 G's, and it was never detailed how small craft dealt with it, they just did. Now we have ships that can go 4x the speed of the older ships. So does that mean the intertial compensators are real and can scale up? And you are right, it's very ill-defined. We wouldn't even necesarily need to change any rules if there was simply more explanation of the tech surrounding it. I LOVE game systems that at least explain why their technological magic works in the first place. It's Science-Fiction, so multiple universes, stutter-warp drives, jump drives, etc... all of that can work and work well if you just define and explain the parameters of it working. But don't say "we are a science-based" game system when you ignore whole fields of it willy-nilly.

 

[phavoc]

I thought I did that? Lets just do high level then:

Launch Tubes:
1) They need smaller internal storage than a full hangar (sure you will need a maintenance area for 20 fighters or so, but not 1 per craft). This is a change from the current tubes need full hangars.
2) They allow you to launch regardless of the ships Gs expended or evasion.
3) They allow you launch multiple craft per tube (lets say 10) per space combat round.

Hangars:
1) Significantly larger than the smaller internal storage required for tubes.
2) Launch can only accomplished when the following is not in use: evasion software, no pilot evasion
3) Craft take longer to launch. I dont agree with your preference that launching should "reasonable" - it should be unreasonable in ANY hasty scenario. This is the equivalent of you being moored - not on a catapult on a flat-top. That is the above.
4) A limit on the amount of hangars you can have - as each hangar is basically a very very large opening on the outside of the ship. That surface area is going to get eaten up quick. Perhaps hardpoint is a good indicator, perhaps not - but having 300 opening hangars on your hull has to mean something.
5) Something to do with hangars being destroyed when taking hull damage. Whether it is being more susceptible to critical hits or just losing them every X hull.

Simple. Hangars are not something you carry your fighters in except in well.. exceptional circumstances. It's something for a ship-boats, a shuttle, cargo shuttles, special ops craft, etc...

Of course you may prefer full-hangars to be much more useful in a combat scenarios, I would disagree with that. I want them to be near useless in a combat scenario.

Storage - Sure, if you slot everything in place, you could get more (i.e. you could pay for conformal storage ratio instead of a full hangar). HOWEVER, if you do so, you still must maneuver each one of those craft out of place and slot them into the hangar tubel. AHL had a racecar style launch system, that rotated craft and had them stored vertically. I believe that is what you are stating, yes? And if you look at the deck plans they also had that sort of area to do repairs and such. BUT, that was simply a storage process, and could not support re-arming and re-fueling all the craft in large numbers. They had to be rotated through stations to have that happen. And if something happened with one of the, or the track system, you were screwed.

Launch Rates - You need to look at more examples here. Let's use the USN LHA's and the F-22s that are going to be replacing the Harriers. EACH launch station listed on the deck can simultaneously launch their craft. It's usually done in order for safety, but combat launches skip a bunch of rules to get birds in the air fast. Combat tempo operations are totally different than peacetime ones, but you still try to train for combat, and sometimes you still do the same things, but usually for safety and cost you have a 2nd set of 'normal' operational guidelines. And I still go back to the flattop days of WW2 when any navy that had carriers flew exactly as I was describing, except they did it from the flight deck, not the hangar. We are also talking planes that required lift vs. small craft that have anti-gravity generators. So at 150% in size, you'd have vertical clearance to fly above someone if you wanted. Small craft being launched from a tube cannot evade either. In neither situation can a craft evade UNTIL it is clear of the launching ship. So long as the small craft is INSIDE it's launching vessel, it is NOT affected by the maneuvers of the launch vessel. Plus since most small craft have high thrust-to-mass ratio's, they would be clear of the carrier quickly. Plus, the carrier will impart the same directional energy upon any small ship being launched from it, so no problem there. If you have ever sky-dived out of a Cessna, you know that your fear of being hit by the tail is totally unfounded - your direction towards the ground is pulling you a parabolic arc away from the tail. Space would give a similar boost to small craft launching from a carrier.

Limits on Hangars - You can easily put the necessary structures in place to make hangar doors just as tough as anything. After all, the outer doors ARE the hull. And if we are ok with allowing putting battleship level hull armor on a fighter, we should be equally ok with putting armor-factor 15 hangar doors on a ship. As far as surface area being eaten up, you would think a 500 ton turret/bay would require FAR more hardpoints than it does... but it doesn't. So what's good for the goose is good for the hangar! If you can have 300 docking clamps with 300 airlocks, surely you can have 300 hangar doors? And with hull armor the same on hangar doors as not, critical hits wouldn't be an impact.

It's not that you don't raise valid points, because you do. However, the points you are raising aren't ALSO factored into other parts of the game limitations and mechanics. They are being used to try and justify launch tubes. And, I think at least, in every instance I've pointed out that the rules seem arbitrary and not based upon the same assumptions used elsewhere. To me that is bad design, and selective bad design. "Oh, it takes 30 min to launch a small craft from a HANGAR", ok... but then it only takes a single turn to launch / dock from a conformal docking zone, which recovery is FAR more complicated because you have nearly ZERO excess space - unlike a hangar.

And that's a big logic problem. Hangars DO offer more space, more depth, more width.. .yet they are PENALIZED for it. That makes no sense, which is why I continue to argue against it. IF the rules get justified and equally applied to everything, I may disagree, but at least if meets the requirement for acceptance. However I won't roll over and accept bad design just because.

 

[Nerhesi]

Hangars DO offer more space, more depth, more width.. .yet they are PENALIZED for it.

I think this is key right here. Yes you are penalized in combat for having a lovely space that you can conduct repairs and walk around in.
I think all your flat-top real world example isnt' taking into account a carrier that is evading fire.

But you know what, lets approach this with a fresh start.

Forget tubes - completely.

a) Having docking spaces be the piss-poor parking lots that they are. Also make sure they are the no-combat launch, takes 2 space combat turns to launch the craft. Repairs to craft are at a -4 due to cramped area.
b) Have hangers remain as is for size and cost, and launch craft in 1-turn. No penalty for combat launches. No penalty to repairing as you have all the space you need. Hangar space can be combined to create a larger hanger with a shared "launching area".
c) Ensure recovery deck is a quicker method of recovery craft. So multiple craft in 1-turn.

Rather than try to create the tube for some added functionality, treat it as an abstraction of this "full hangar" which is twice the size of a craft. On craft floorplans, you can choose to arrange the 2xcraft space worth of "full hangars" in whatever way you want. It can be 20 hangars with a long tube... or it can be 20 hangars arranged near the hull exterior for quick blister like launch.