Black Globe Generators Help

[BFalcon]

Here you have simply piqued my curiosity I don't recall a "several hundred times per second" or any rate of flicker for that matter. Of course my memory being what it is I could have read it once and just don't recall it now. Do you recall where you read this?

Flicker rates are on HG, p50 and does mention "hundreds of times a second".

Just thought I'd point that out to you - although I still cringe at the thought of a TL16+ race that could afford to waste BGGs like that, so I'm staying out of it...

 

[Solomani666]

...what I'm saying (we're all saying if I grok it and may be so bold) is that the light bulb instantly (speed of electricity in decent wire is or nearly so the speed of light) shuts off when you throw the switch. Current does not continue to flow for any additional finite time worth mentioning. Any EM you are perceiving is residual heat of the filament or if far enough away the light that left the bulb when it was turned off but still hasn't reached you.

Completely incorrect. Nearly every reaction in the physical world has some sort of inertia.

Same thing with the BGG. Switched or exploding. It is off. Instantly. No delay. No packing extra energy into it after the fact.

If explosions happened instantly an atomic bomb could never detonate.

Cite please, or it didn't happen I'm not saying the USN didn't slag a railgun or three when firing but it was not the way you seem to be imagining it and the comparison doesn't fit.

Think what you will.
Plenty of examples even on YouTube of non naval experiments.
You are not privy to the rest.
I will say this much. Most railguns slag after only a few shots.

Here you have simply piqued my curiosity I don't recall a "several hundred times per second" or any rate of flicker for that matter. Of course my memory being what it is I could have read it once and just don't recall it now. Do you recall where you read this?

High Guard Page 50

No, not the way I understand it. The only energy dealt by the BGG is that of the capacitors. And the only destruction dealt by the BGG is what the capacitors can hold. Turning on a BGG that has zero capacitors will be a non-event. The BGG will not activate. And having only a very minimal level of capacitors will shorten the amount of BGG destruction and capacitor explosion to the same very minimal event.

OK. So maybe you need some capacitance to start the field effect, and maybe some more to ensure that the field completes before self annihilation.

Still the field needs only to be active for several milliseconds.

The field does the killing, NOT the capacitors.
Once the field goes on the damage is done.

Remember, we are not trying to sustain a BGG field here.
The object is to destroy a ship and the delivery vehicle in the process.

Yes it will overload in a spectacular fireball.
The trick is getting the generator to initiate for several milliseconds before it explodes.
At TL16 I figure they have solved that 'little problem'.

.

 

[zozotroll]

I dont understand why it bothers you if the ship get explooded. So what? Eithr the BGG eats it, or it eats pat of it then blows up. Still, either way very bad for the target. What I dot see is how you are going to hit a moving target, giventhat you cant change speed or direction inside a BGG. I get that you only want to activate it atthe last, but that means it is as vulnerable as ny other missle, and once you use one, killing all missles bercomes a major effort.

Owen

 

[locarno24]

The other question is how close it actually needs to be and how big a field it can project.

Given a black globe is...well...a globe*... the field is obviously not skin-tight around any ship which is a common traveller shape (wedgey/cylinderesque things).

The only ship optimised to pack the most ship inside a given field is, of course, the Tigress.


Now, assuming I can fire up the globe generator and it stabilizes in the 0.01 s before it, and I, explode, it will create a neat, hollow sphere of unspecificed** thickness with a certain radius around the generator. Using it to slice-and-dice a ship, obviously you'll core out a hemisphere (if you were resting on the hull) or portion thereof (if you were stood off from the hull).

Now this will cut through any armour, because unless you get into the realm of materials with spacial distortion tech built straight in to the structure (Xeelee/Vorlon/Yaskodray level stuff) it doesn't matter what you are; if you're more-or-less conventional matter your atoms simply cease to exist, no fracture surfaces or chemistry involved.

In order to do significant damage, said 'cut' needs to slice out a significant chunk of a hull - ideally literally bisecting a ship. This is going to depend on the radius of the globe relative to the size of the ship, which is something the rules don't really address.

Since in capital ship design, Black Globe generators count as screens and as such are dependent on reactor rating, i.e. power relative to the size of the ship, but not on ship volume.

Bay weapons (which logically have a fixed power need) are dependent on reactor rating to get a number per 1,000 dTons, whilst screens get a universal maxium per reactor rating - implaying a power need varying in proportion with the volume of the ship (like an M-Drive). That, to me, suggests power input defines radius of the field (which seems sensible, lacking any formal qualifications in TL16 spacial engineering***)

Which in turn means that to get a field which is of a meaningful size (and hence a meaningful 'cut') on a kilotonne (or even megatonne) capital vessel, you'll need a power plant of a capital vessel size. A Tigress would quite happily take a twenty-metre radius hemisphere being sliced out of it's skin and carry straight on fighting (I'd imagine a spinal mount would leave a crater at least that big!)

I suggest this ship is progressing more from 'kamikaze drone' to 'fire ship' in scale.


* Captain Obvious to the rescue! All may now call me "Peasant" for such stupidity.

** Since it's a spacial discontinuity rather than anything physical, assume a trivial thickness.
*** Incidentally, if anyone does have such a qualification, can they please let us know.

 

[zozotroll]

Another thing that cmes to mind is that unless you can make the silly things, you will have a hard time getting enough BGGs to mae mounting them on a missle at all practical. And if you can make them, you probably have a lot bettter things laying around that are designed to be offensive weapons. Tjose would be a beter thing to work on than trying to strap a BGG into a missle body, where it probably wont fit.

But does anybody have an idea about ramming another ship with a BGG on? Probably be a bad idea, but if you are thinking about it, you are probably inbad shape anyway.

Owen

 

[locarno24]

Unfortunately there are no ramming rules at all that I'm aware of. It's one of the things I see as missing from the ship combat rules.

Yes, it won't happen very often, but certainly a fighter should be able to ram a larger ship without much trouble - if Initiate Attack Run! is close enough to the ship to avoid defensive fire, skin-dancing fashion, then ramming is feasible.

For that matter, a high-thrust ship that's lost its weapons might well decide to try and ram a big, slow thing if desperate (e.g. stopping an ortillery barge about to commence some sort of egregious atrocity).

 

[RichardP]

The Old CT High guard had a dtn of capacitors holding 36EP. Striker says 1 EP = 250MW, so each capacitor is holding a lot of energy, a lot more than the quoted 650MW.

From memory CT & MT don't have a power requirement to turn on a globe.

Secret of the ancients CT ADV 12 mentions that the the globes were unstable above a certain diameter and they got round the problem by connecting them to capacitors to stabilize the globe.

As for size, they can get it around a 1M dtn battleship according to the rules, so the globe is upto several 100m diameter or more. TNE has a table to work out ship length given tonnage and config.

Cheers
Richard

 

[rust]

The Old CT High guard had a dtn of capacitors holding 36EP. Striker says 1 EP = 250MW, so each capacitor is holding a lot of energy, a lot more than the quoted 650MW.

So a dton of capacitors would store 36 EP or 9,000 MW. If my online cal-
culator can be trusted, those 9,000 MW would be the approximate equi-
valent of 7,750 tons of TNT. The Hiroshima bomb was the equivalent of
18,000 tons of TNT.

If all this is right (which I do not know, I just trust the calculator ...), one
would need about 2.3 dtons or 31.35 cubic meters (a cube with about 3.1
meters per side) of capacitors for a black globe which does about the sa-
me damage as the Hiroshima bomb.

It seems a normal nuke with the same damage potential would be both
smaller and much, much cheaper.

 

[barnest2]

Okay

You either go total stealth, or partial stealth, giving them the same radar signature as a common missile.
Bury a dozen or so in a missile barrage attack.
Determine the number of missiles that hit their target by dodge, ECM and turret fire only to determine the percent chance that one of the drones got through.

One drone hit and game over.

You BGG drones are going to be much, much bigger than a missile. The smallest black globe is ten tons, so guesstimating would put your Drone at about 30 tons in size, particularly if you want to be going at thrust 8. It's going to be at least 40 tons if you want to be faster.
With a clever drone command module, those engines, the power plant, and the globe generator, you're looking at about 134Mcr of drone.

Let's say you launch ten of them at my 200,000 ton ship amongst a barrage of much smaller torpedoes. Now, here are your problems:
-The drones are bigger targets
-The drones can be targeted by main guns, not just point defence.

OK, so you said you will stealth them to radar...I still have Lidar, a densitometer, an EM scanner. I can see you, at least if I have a sensor ops section who is on the ball...

Well, anyway, lets say one of them gets through, and cuts my battleship up. Now, you have used at least ten of your drones, which cost you... 1.34 billion credits.
First: I do not see you doing more than crippling a ship which is over 100,000 tons. You cut of a section, bulkheads slam down, iris' close, and those sections attached to the engineering section will still be active. You lose a section, but most of the ship is still functional.

Second: For that cost, and even for that tonnage, I can launch one hell of a lot torpedoes at you.

Third: I think you are going to need a lot more than ten drones to get through my ships PD and Main battery fire. I think it would be more like 50 to 100 drones. That would cost you more like 70 billion credits.

 

[barnest2]

Which in turn means that to get a field which is of a meaningful size (and hence a meaningful 'cut') on a kilotonne (or even megatonne) capital vessel, you'll need a power plant of a capital vessel size. A Tigress would quite happily take a twenty-metre radius hemisphere being sliced out of it's skin and carry straight on fighting (I'd imagine a spinal mount would leave a crater at least that big!)

Just read this post properly. This would mean you need a power-plant of at least 45 tons to power your black globe generator. This is going to push you into drones around 60 to 70 tons, rather than my 30 tonners above. This just makes you easier targets.
Also increases the cost... Hold on... 238Mcr.
So ten drones would be 2.38 billion credits, and 50 would be 119 billion credits. Hey look, that's a silly amount of cash, to cripple one or two ships.

 

[RichardP]

Rust

check the CT high guard rules, they mention how much energy goes to the capacitors per hit from the various weapons. You can use that to work-out how much capactors you need to absorb your nuke strike.

Cheers
Richard

 

[rust]

Rust

check the CT high guard rules ...

Unfortunately I have sold all of my CT stuff years ago.

 

[Solomani666]

First: I do not see you doing more than crippling a ship which is over 100,000 tons. You cut of a section, bulkheads slam down, iris' close, and those sections attached to the engineering section will still be active. You lose a section, but most of the ship is still functional.

Losing any section of a ship destroys it.

 

[rust]

Losing any section of a ship destroys it.

Not according to the Mongoose Traveller High Guard rules for space com-
bat. There the loss of an entire section does cripple or destroy a ship, it
does not automatically destroy the ship (page 78 ):

If a section is reduced to zero Structure, it is destroyed and the ship is
crippled or destroyed.

 

[locarno24]

Yes, but to lose a section of a ship means slicing off enough of a chunk to 'destroy' that section (e.g. bisecting it).

Given that each section of a capital ship could easily represent a 10,000 dTon volume or more, it's not necessarily as simple as 'bang, you're dead' unless you're (a) capable of generating a globe on a similar scale and (b) manouvrable enough to deploy it.

Fire a smaller globe and, as noted, you'll only slice out a hemispherical chunk but not necessarily do enough damage to kill the section (and hence the ship).

P.S. not sure Barnest2 meant 'section' in a rules sense or just 'a chunk'.

 

[barnest2]

Losing any section of a ship destroys it.

Do you want to answer the rest of what I said?
And no, that's rubbish. Modern warships can lose their entire bows, and not go down. Equally, they could lost their entire superstructures, and not be destroyed.
There is no reason that a ship that loses a single section should be destroyed, especially when it is a ship that has four of five sections.

P.S. not sure Barnest2 meant 'section' in a rules sense or just 'a chunk'.

A bit of both. It depends on whether we think the 'drone' can really generate a globe big enough to cut an entire section off.

Also, there is no reason a ship that loses a single section (particularly the bigger ships) cannot continue to operate. If, say, you lose a section that is made up entirely of crew bays and particle beam bays, what have you lost that is vital during that battle. Sure, you lose a lot of fire-power, but there is no way you lose the ship.

 

[Ishmael]

with the caps only holding 650Mw, you're going to need a hell of a lot of them to match even a 1 Megaton explosion.

1Megaton = 4.184E9 megajoules

good old fashioned nukes seems a lot more efficient