Armoured Starships

[Captain Jonah]

Do you have any quick and simple solutions?

Off the top of my head and not number crunched so will need adjustment :wink:

Beam laser, pulse laser, P-Beam turret, P-Beam Barbette. Standard missile, Nuke. That is the list of weapons players are likely to be firing at ground targets with. Nukes in an atmosphere against vehicles, use existing nuke rules. Its a short list so stat them for vehicle scale.

Space combat turns last 6 minutes and (to my mind anyway) involve multiple shots and keeping a weapon on target for a while to damage it. So in a 6 second ground combat turn a pulse laser will fire only a few pulses rather than the hundreds it will fire over a space combat turn. A beam laser is on target for a second rather than the longer time it would be on target over a 6 minute turn.

Space combat weapons have very precise targeting and are designed for sustained fire, the actual energy per second does not have to be that much more than a grav tanks laser but the grav tank is designed to pop up, fire a few shots and hide again. The ship’s laser is designed to fire hundreds of pulses or to fire 30 second long sustained beams. Firing at any target even a space ship a few thousand metres away is vastly easier than firing at a spaceship 10s of thousands of kilometres away.

Missiles are single shot and will be hugely damaging but this is compensated for with a long minimum range.

Turret Beam laser, range line of sight (orbit), Skill Gunnery, Damage 6D (sustained beam, Add 4D per effect of the “to hit roll” to represent the beam being held on target).

Turret Pulse laser, range line of sight (orbit), Skill Gunnery, Damage 10D for first pulse. Every three effects adds 5D to the damage to represent another pulse hitting.

Turret P-Beam, range line of sight (orbit), Skill Gunnery, Damage 15D, weapon Ignores 60 points of the targets armour and will inflict an internal radiation hit on any target with less than 120 armour unless it is radiation shielded.

Barbette P-Beam range line of sight (orbit), Skill Gunnery, Damage 20D, weapon Ignores 80 points of the targets armour and will inflict an internal radiation hit on any target with less than 160 armour unless it is radiation shielded.

Weapons designed to target enemy ships at thousands of kilometres should have no problems targeting anything they can see so range is not a factor. However they are going to have a lot of problems with rapid changes in a targets aspect so there should probably be huge penalties for fast moving or dodging targets.

Vehicle scale Hull and structure is ten times the space scale (from high guard small craft).

Armour on a spaceship is (to my mind) designed for dumping vast levels of energy over the sustained periods of a deep space fight, it is no more capable of resisting an antitank shell than is the armour on a tank. Yes I know about micrometeorites and so on, spaced outer hull layers, gravatic drive fields etc will vaporise a lump of rock on impact before it does much harm. A hyper dense penetrator core of an antitank round should go straight through that with ease.

Ships are huge and should be able to soak up massive fire power, not bounce it. The best you can manage at tech 15 is 180 armour in vehicle scale or 15 on ship scale. So roughly 30 for being a starship plus 10 per point of space ship armour. Spaceship armour is all round, tanks can afford to concentrate armour on the front and weaken the flanks.

A Far trader would then be Armour 70, 40 Hull and 40 Structure at the vehicle scale. That is enough armour to stand off many attacks from hand held weapons and enough hull to sustain several hits from anti tank weapons.

A Fat trader would then be Armour 30, 80 Hull and 80 Structure. Many hand held weapons can damage the un-armoured space ships hull but it can soak a lot of hits.

In this way ships can take some damage and bounce a few hits but they are hardly uber weapons which is how I think it should be.

A Far trader at a starport should be able to stand off those rebel light armoured vehicles since its triple beam lasers can shred the wheeled vehicles with ease and the rebel hand weapons and light cannons have trouble with 70 armour. However the players need to be planning on taking off and leaving before the rebel heavy armour arrives since those 100mm Anti tank weapons (10D, 40 Armour ignored) will quickly start to hurt the ship.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Weapons designed to target enemy ships at thousands of kilometres should have no problems targeting anything they can see so range is not a factor. However they are going to have a lot of problems with rapid changes in a targets aspect so there should probably be huge penalties for fast moving or dodging targets.

How about area of effect? If an entire city block is turned into a crater...

Ground team calling in orbital support. "They are too fast. We can't get a bead on them."

Orbital gunner blasting away "Try and dodge that mother Tucker!"

 

[F33D]

Ok try this logic. :lol:

A 10Dton fighter with 10% of its volume given to armour over its entire surface area will have an armour thickness of between 6 and 9cm depending on its shape. This provides 12 points of bonded superdense protection.

Which is why I created a house rule for small craft as soon as I got HG to account for the reduced armour thickness based surface area/volume. HG (large hulls) get more armour points, small craft less. WAY ahead of you there.

 

[F33D]

I suggest that a design philosophy change came once standard M-drive came into being.

Once gravity is not an issue, air frame for lift is less of an issue. In previous versions of the game, ungainful slabs could take off and land with configuration making the big difference in air speed. It is reduced in MgT, but still here.

IMTU super strong hulls don't appear until TL 10. Prior to that vehicle armour is used. This can make interplanetary travel a little hairy prior to TL 10 unless they watch the speed.

 

[FallingPhoenix]

Which is why I created a house rule for small craft as soon as I got HG to account for the reduced armour thickness based surface area/volume. HG (large hulls) get more armour points, small craft less. WAY ahead of you there.

Because of the whole 'square-cube' thing (making a ship larger exponentially increases the volume of armor needed to cover the entire ship), shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't smaller ships be easier to armor more heavily?

 

[F33D]

Because of the whole 'square-cube' thing (making a ship larger exponentially increases the volume of armor needed to cover the entire ship), shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't smaller ships be easier to armor more heavily?

Actually it is the exact opposite. A 1 cubic inch box has 4 square inches of surface area. (4:1) surface area:volume

An 8 cubic inch box has 24 square inches of surface area. (3:1)

Since MGT figures armour by volume of hull, there is thicker armour on larger ships...

 

[FallingPhoenix]

Actually it is the exact opposite. A 1 cubic inch box has 4 square inches of surface area. (4:1) surface area:volume

An 8 cubic inch box has 24 square inches of surface area. (3:1)

Since MGT figures armour by volume of hull, there is thicker armour on larger ships...

Ah. So instead, the cost should be increasing exponentially...

 

[phavoc]

I've always tried to put the whole armor/weaponry issue into naval terms. Merchant ships and small craft really don't have armor on them (or shouldn't anyways). An assault shuttle should be impervious to small arms fire (of the gauss/ACR, maybe even 20mm variety), but a trooper armed with an FGMP-15 should be able to cause damage to the shuttle. Likewise vehicle weaponry should be able to damage starships, keeping in mind that you would not see ships like say a heavy cruiser sitting on the ground. In that case I think there should be something that would minimize the effect (with the exception of things like meson attacks, or nukes). But how often will a gaggle of grav tanks be firing on the heavy cruiser that happens to be sitting on the ground 25km away at the starport? Not very often. The armor factor of any ship should somehow be tied to its size... making uber-armored heavy fighters with the same damage resistance as a 500,000 battleship is just silly.

The other equation here is the weaponry that causes this damage. In WW2, the .50cal machine gun was capable of damaging DD's and on down. They simply didn't have the armor protection like larger ships. A modern MBT firing a 120mm APFSDS round will penetrate any current warship. I'm not quite sure what it would do if it were to be fired at the armored CIC area, but it wouldn't have any problem penetrating the hull and more than a few compartments. Ships aren't armored today like they used to.

But in return, a 5" gun would disable, if not destroy, most MBT's. And certainly more than a single hit would have the effect of taking out the tank. So in some sense, you could equate grav tank main weapons to being equivalent to starship weapons. After all, they are both designed to destroy, and tanks main targets are heavily-armored opponents that would have the equivalent protection of lightly armored starships.

I see beam/pulse lasers as the 5" guns, particle accelerators as the 8", 50ton bays as 12", and 100ton bays as 16" guns. Particle accelerators, and meson guns provide more 'oomph' due to their crew hits. Missiles are pretty straightforward, though I think there needs to be more sizes than just one. And torps really should be far more deadly, to account for their increased bulk.

As offensive tech has changed, so has defensive. A modern MBT anti-tank round cuts through anything less than chrobram (or equivalent) armor like it wasn't even there. So better armor was invented, or countertechnology (like reactive armor). Hand-held anti-tank rounds used to be kind of useless, now they are very deadly - at least till the tech changes again. I don't think the tech level really accounts for the differences. A TL15 ship, using the equivalent of say 1945 tech vs. 1990's, should solidly trounce a TL12 or lower ship. Though there are so many variables it makes it tough to put together an all-inclusive combat chart.

 

[AndrewW]

I see beam/pulse lasers as the 5" guns, particle accelerators as the 8", 50ton bays as 12", and 100ton bays as 16" guns. Particle accelerators, and meson guns provide more 'oomph' due to their crew hits.

Where does that put spinal mounts? Gustav?

 

[Captain Jonah]

My point, which was done hastily, sorry, is that you are likely to face turret weapons only when taking fire from a ship. Anything smaller than a starship hit by a bay weapon is dead as is anything next to it. Anything in the same block as a spinal hit is dead. No ship or ground vehicle has the armour to withstand those weapons. They simply become Area of Death weapons.

For the smaller stuff the easiest way would be to stat them in vehicle scale and account for the 6 second ground scale instead of the 6 minute space combat turn.

So Beam and pulse lasers, missiles, sand and turret/Barbette P-Beams. Six weapons to stat. Given the huge number of vehicle scale weapons floating around this is nothing (though the arguments over stats are likely to be long :lol: )

FallingPhoenix. Taken as a sphere the surface area of a ship increases far slower than its total volume. 5% of the internal volume spread across the surface area becomes thicker and thicker but under the MongT rules provides the same protection. 5% of a 10Dton fighter is 4.5cm thick and as bonded super dense gives 6 armour. 5% of a 100,000Dton ship gives 1.14m of thickness which provides 6 points of armour. This is a sphere so the values will change as you move to cones, cylinders etc but gives an idea.

Dtons.length..Volume of Arm...Surface Area m2...Arm Thickness
10.......... 7............7m3.............154...............4.5cm

1,000.....50..........700m3..........2827............24.8cm

100,000..140........70,000m3......61,575...........1.14m


A 10Dton small craft hull costs Mcr1, 15 points of armour on that hull costs Mcr1.25. A single missile launcher Mcr0.75, a 2G drive and power plant Mcr4. The cockpit costs Mcr0.1. Throw in a Dton of multi warhead missiles and you can happily kill entire units while hiding behind your impenetrable armour, or smart missiles and attack the top/rear of the enemy where they have next to no armour against ship grade weapons. All for approx Mcr8

A 20 space (10Dton) heavy grav tank costs Mcr2, to make it an AFV costs Mcr2, to fit the maximum armour costs another Mcr2.8. This an armour rating of 180 (max 270 with armour optimisation). Add a laser cannon Mcr1 and you have an extremely powerful ground tank that on paper cannot scratch the small craft and will die in seconds to the small crafts weapons if they hit anywhere other than the nose. Approx Mcr8

One costs approx Mcr8, the other costs approx Mcr8. One cannot hurt the other, one can kill groups of the other in one missile shot.

If you have the technology to make a super strong armour that is thin enough to fit around a 10Dton fighter why on Earth or any other home world would you not fit the same stuff on your 10Dton grav tanks?

You need to use vehicle scale armour and weapon stats for vehicle scale fights even if there is a starship involved. Divide/multiply by 50 is a clumsy fudge that does not work. :roll:

 

[Epicenter]

While this has gotten fairly crunchy, I guess my complaint with the entire "starships are too durable" thing is actually a complaint I have with my own view of how "realism" works. That is, even in a soft sci-fi setting like Traveller, people still should behave like ... people.

If starship armor and weapons are so effective, it must have occurred to someone in the Imperium (well, probably in the First Imperium tbh) that "Hey, why don't we use that stuff on our ground tanks? They'll be IMPERVIOUS to enemy fire!" More to the point, who wants to be a general of an army where your heavy tanks can get shot up by some passing tramp freighter and be unable to harm it?

Then of course someone would be like, "Let's put it on our APCs too" and eventually people would start fiddling with putting really beefy anti-grav systems on battle dress and putting that stuff onto battle dress.

Then of course, someone would start coming up with weapons that could harm that armor.

Through this cycle, you'd have to think by the age of Traveller, there'd be hand-held weapons that could harm starships. It's possible such a thing might not exist, but otherwise it's not really dramatic (to me) - it's bad storytelling when the players fly everywhere with their ship, treating it more like a car (they can drive everywhere) than a ship (that they have to leave at port) that's basically indestructible to anything on a planet.

 

[F33D]

Actually it is the exact opposite. A 1 cubic inch box has 4 square inches of surface area. (4:1) surface area:volume

An 8 cubic inch box has 24 square inches of surface area. (3:1)

Since MGT figures armour by volume of hull, there is thicker armour on larger ships...

Ah. So instead, the cost should be increasing exponentially...

Only in the Bizzaro universe

 

[F33D]

You need to use vehicle scale armour and weapon stats for vehicle scale fights even if there is a starship involved. Divide/multiply by 50 is a clumsy fudge that does not work. :roll:

Naw. Only for vehicle sized space ships (up to ~40 dton). Otherwise, you are going illogical in the other direction and ignoring other stuff that I mentioned earlier.

This will entail changing some design stuff for the lower end small craft.

But, imtu those merge by TL 10. In other words, no one is making "tanks" then. They are making small craft that annihilate vehicles that are TL 9 & lower.

At some point the US Army switched from horses to armoured vehicles too. Gotta let it go when it no longer works vs. superior tech.

 

[CosmicGamer]

treating it more like a car (they can drive everywhere) than a ship (that they have to leave at port) that's basically indestructible to anything on a planet.

If a planet is so low tech it can't fly it's own ships would it have high tech ground forces? So yes, players could play being a bully in some situations. Actions still have consequences though. If nothing else, the sub sector noble may get pissed at them for causing mischief in one of their systems.

 

[phavoc]

Where does that put spinal mounts? Gustav?

In their own category. Or the modern-day equivalent of a nuclear charge delivered by cruise missile, large shell or torpedo. Not only can it obliterate your target, it can cause heavy damage to the surrounding area.

Granted, in Traveller (and most other game settings), spinal mounts are the biggest players on the block because the targets you are going after can survive nuke hits, ergo you're going to need a bigger boat, err, gun.

But some spinal mounts are DPS gods. The planet-killer lasers of the Death Star. The wave motion gun, well, it just rocks.

http://natural-order-guild.com/content/space-battleship-yamato-star-blazers-live-action-wave-motion-gun-sequence

 

[Captain Jonah]

Missing the point a bit.

Once you have this supposed super armour for space craft and start using it for vehicles then the same weapons that are used to penetrate that super armour on ships are going to be used to fight those super armoured vehicles.

It doesn’t matter if you set the tech level at 10 or 12 or 15. The guys on the ground are going to want vehicle support. That could be grav tanks, drone pods, gun ships or something else. But if they are all covered in the super armour then weapons to damage them will exist or warfare comes down to some sort of game of chess. I have three of my super invulnerable tanks in this city so it’s mine because you cannot damage my tanks, however you have two of your super invulnerable tanks in that town and one at the mine. Since I cannot damage your tanks then those locations are yours.

Yes a tech 8 tank clanking around on tracks is going to have a hard job hurting a spaceship in tech 12 armour. The tech 12 grav tank in the same armour is going to have a weapon that works just fine.

Space ships should not be invulnerable, they have the same tech as the vehicles. The single advantage they have is that they are much bigger and can soak up hits that would kill a grav tank.

 

[F33D]

Missing the point a bit.

Once you have this supposed super armour for space craft and start using it for vehicles then the same weapons that are used to penetrate that super armour on ships are going to be used to fight those super armoured vehicles.

No, I understand. However, the smallest "vehicles" that can mount the PP's & M-drives are going to be 10dton & greater. So for MTU, smaller combat vehicles become obsolete if there is the possibility of heavy >TL 9 combat happening. You just have to give up the idea of smaller viable vehicles as TL reaches higher levels.

 

[AndrewW]

It doesn’t matter if you set the tech level at 10 or 12 or 15. The guys on the ground are going to want vehicle support. That could be grav tanks, drone pods, gun ships or something else. But if they are all covered in the super armour then weapons to damage them will exist or warfare comes down to some sort of game of chess. I have three of my super invulnerable tanks in this city so it’s mine because you cannot damage my tanks, however you have two of your super invulnerable tanks in that town and one at the mine. Since I cannot damage your tanks then those locations are yours.

So something needs to come along, like when the tank came along and broke the trench warfare stalemate of WWI.

 

[mr31337]

So something needs to come along, like when the tank came along and broke the trench warfare stalemate of WWI.

I've heard it argued that it was economics not tanks that truly broke the stalemate of WWI trench warfare in any significant way. Of course that's far less glamorous, but it might apply to this situation as well.

 

[PFVA63]

Hi,

The more I think about this issue, the more it doesn't fully make sense to me.

Specifically, if a ship is on the ground there would seem to me to possibly be many parts of the ship that may not be fully protected by its "armor". Things like landing gear mechanisms, sensor panels, windows/port holes, open hatches, control surfaces, fuel skimming ports, fueling connections, etc would all seem to be potential weak points that might not be fully protected by a ship's "armor" and which may be susceptible to damage by a lot of different weapons. And even for a ship in flight low over a planet's surface these items may still seem to be potential weak spots in a ship.