Battle tenders

[HobbitFan]

I was reading on the Traveller RPG wiki about the Fourth Frontier War. It mentioned battle tenders and their attendant warships being made obsolete by Battleships. However, I couldn't find a picture of these battle tenders on the wiki or online.

What do these ships look like?

 

[Infojunky]

I was reading on the Traveller RPG wiki about the Fourth Frontier War. It mentioned battle tenders and their attendant warships being made obsolete by Battleships. However, I couldn't find a picture of these battle tenders on the wiki or online.

What do these ships look like?

Pretty much like battleships..... They just don't have jump drives. ...

Oh you mean the tenders.... Yikes, I had better read the question.... Well, as I recall, mostly like large openwork frame sorta things. Kinda the definition of dispersed structure vessels. The Mega Traveller book Fighting ship of the Shattered Imperium may have had those pictures. And to be brutally honest the pictures where the only thing of worth in that book.... It is commonly referred to as Shattered Ships. Due to the amount of errata necessary to fix what was wrong with the book....

 

[locarno24]

Battle Riders are on the cover of the Battle Rider book:

But I'm afraid can't find any Battle Tender pictures. They are supposed to be a dispersed structure ship - so will probably be little more than a framework of docking arms for battle riders.

 

[Dave Chase]

B5 had a decent one on the TV show that raiders used to Jump into places.

It would fit well (image wise) for Traveller

Dave Chase

 

[phavoc]

Fighting Ships of the Shattered Imperium has battle riders and tenders in it. Though the specifications are for MegaTraveller, which if you aren't familiar with, they do have a lot of gobbledygook contained theirin.

 

[HobbitFan]

thanks guys. That tells me what book to look for!

 

[AdrianH]

B5 had a decent one on the TV show that raiders used to Jump into places.

It would fit well (image wise) for Traveller

Only if the battle riders are very small. It carried fighters.

On the other hand, the T'Loth class Narn cruiser seen in "Midnight on the Firing Line" could be a battle tender with two riders:

It is effectively a T'Rakk on either side of a central piece which is probably little more than a jump drive, manoeuvre drive and enough power and life support to keep them going. In reality this is because CGI designer Ron Thornton had designed the T'Rakk (or whatever he called it at the time) before B5; when he needed to come up with a cruiser really quickly in time for the beginning of the first episode, he stuck two of them onto this mid section. There's no evidence that the side pieces really were ships which could detach and fight by themselves in B5, but if they could, there's your battle tender.

 

[RichardP]

There is a small picture in the old classic traveller Supplement 8 Library Data A-M.

Its basically a small bridge / quarters module at the front end of a long spine, with an engineering module with all the drives and power plant. The rest of the ship is a dispersed structure of beams holding battle riders and jump fuel tanks. There will be a scattering of light gun turrets for self protection against fighters and SDBs. tenders will be big and valuable fleet units so it is worth having some protection / armament.