Canon? Jump standard on fleet capital ships?

[Imeanunoharm]

Toying with a few ideas on capital ships and was wondering what is the minimum jump value that a fleet of imperial warships would run with? For some reason J4 comes to mind, but I might be remembering an older version of Trav. It seems J3 is more of the standard in MGT. I say this because fuel requirements are off the charts in the mid ranging making anything under 50K dton minimum rather hard to justify in terms of available firepower (with J4 fuel that is).

Is there anything in canon MGT that deals with this.

 

[AndrewW]

High Guard page: 70

Step 2 – Choosing Drives
In her campaign, Imperial warships have the maximum possible
thrust and at least Jump–3 performance.

Not that that be offical but it is a reference point.

 

[BFalcon]

Sector Fleet has this to say on the matter, if it helps...

VESSEL CLASSES
Within each class of vessel, several variants may exist. The following overview is a guide to the general capabilities of type rather than precise details of any given class. As a rule, Imperial vessels are designed to match “fleet mobility” requirements – i.e. Jump 4 and 6G acceleration. A few classes exceed this requirement, but the cost is too great for a significant portion of the fleet to be so equipped.

I'd interpret that to read: "All Navy ships should be J4, but a few ships will be either better (most likely recon or anti-piracy vessels) or slower (most likely the very largest, most likely non-combat ships)." I find the 6G a little high, though - I would have thought 4G would be sensible, allowing the power plant to match the power requirements of the jump drive, so saving huge amounts of money - only putting 6G on the smaller ships.

Also, flicking through HG, most of the Capitol Ships in there seem to be Jump-4, so...

Ultimately, the final decision is yours - if you think that the Navy getting across (top to bottom) a subsector in under a month (allowing refuelling time) is too fast, reduce it a little... if not, then...

 

[IanW]

Toying with a few ideas on capital ships and was wondering what is the minimum jump value that a fleet of imperial warships would run with? For some reason J4 comes to mind, but I might be remembering an older version of Trav. It seems J3 is more of the standard in MGT. I say this because fuel requirements are off the charts in the mid ranging making anything under 50K dton minimum rather hard to justify in terms of available firepower (with J4 fuel that is).

Is there anything in canon MGT that deals with this.

At TL15, the Imperial navy was mostly jump-4, with some jump-3 fleets.

At TL14 and below, which is what most Sector and Subsector navies are at, it was mostly jump-3.

Note that a fleet should have a bunch of jump-4 and up 'fleet couriers', as the firepower they bring isnt important as compared to being able to tell Command that you've found the enemy.

The best 'canon' source for this is the Fifth Frontier War boardgame by the way.

 

[Captain Jonah]

A number of older ships and squadrons run Jump 3

The hand me downs using the older ships from the main fleets are generally jump 3.

The most modern stuff is Jump 4 but because of the number of older battleships and cruisers many fleets and squadrons remain jump 3 to avoid leaving those 100K battleships behind.

Specialist raiders, frontier ships or rift designs run to jump 5. The only stuff with jump 6 is couriers and high speed transports.

The standard for the 3rdI should be jump 4 but depending on your campaign it could be a fleet of fresh built new J4 ships or a handful of new builds and a mass of older ships with jump 3.

That gives you the option of introducing the characters to "Damn its one of the new Destroyers, we can't outrun that one".

Check Sector fleet for more of a breakdown on the 3rdI navy. In terms of cannon its all over the place, 4th and 5th frontier wars, several versions of sector fleet, Fighting ships (several versions), fighting ships of the shattered Imperium, Mega traveller and TNE both had jump 4 as standard for the Imperial Main line fleet units. Dulinor’s flagship post Imperial assassination was jump 5 I believe.

T20 was set long ago and isn’t cannon for 1105.

But as usual its your game so its up to you :lol:

 

[locarno24]

That gives you the option of introducing the characters to "Damn its one of the new Destroyers, we can't outrun that one".

Ditto for the 6G drives. Thing is, there's no reason you can't build a 6-G capable warship, regardless of size, and such things have the advantage that they can avoid contact with anything they can't take down.

Alright, battlecruiser theory had its problems in major fleet warfare (see WWI) but fast raiders were a persistant nightmare in WWII.

 

[IanW]

That gives you the option of introducing the characters to "Damn its one of the new Destroyers, we can't outrun that one".

Ditto for the 6G drives. Thing is, there's no reason you can't build a 6-G capable warship, regardless of size, and such things have the advantage that they can avoid contact with anything they can't take down.

Alright, battlecruiser theory had its problems in major fleet warfare (see WWI) but fast raiders were a persistant nightmare in WWII.

The FS solution - OK *my* FS solution - is the 6G battle rider on a jump-4 tender ... with a jump-1 drive for bugging out if the battle goes the wrong way. 11% of hull volume is pretty darn cheap for not losing the whole ship when things go south.

 

[phavoc]

Modern front-line ships-of-the-line should be Jump 4. Older secondary fleets would be Jump 3. Colonial and system ships may be as low as Jump 1 or 2.

As far as their drive ratings, heavier units (battleships, dreadnoughts, assault carriers) would be 4-G. Anything faster than that is probably smaller, and would be stupid to hang around in their range for any length of time.

Smaller units like carriers, heavy cruisers & battle cruisers and even some light cruisers might mount 5-G drives. You would also see a lot of smaller escort vessels with 5-G drives.

The small 6-G drives are going to be installed on couriers, scouts and perhaps up as far as a light cruiser. The amount of space you need to dedicate to the drives takes away from armaments and armor.

Jump riders and SDB's are somewhat of an exception. They need to be able to get in/out of a battle area as quickly as possible because they cannot run away on their own. And since they don't have to devote any space to jump drives, they are able to mount larger maneuver drives.

Fleet support vessels will be in the 3 or 4G area. They need to keep up with the fleet, so they need to have roughly the same capabilities.

 

[andreav]

I don't know about MgT, but I did a detailed analysis for HG under CT. The most cost effective mix for a *jump capable* capital ship is J3 M5, with riders coming in a J4 M6. Now the really weird thing is for the riders the cost of tenders is almost exactly (we're talking less than 0.5% difference) a linear progression based on the number of riders they carry. That means that due to the higher start up costs for multi-rider tenders, unless you are building hundreds of the things (I think they break-even point came around 250 riders), the best rider option is a single rider with a single jump shuttle.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I read in a Wiki that Jump-6 is a secret kind of thing so that Imperium leaders get their mail faster than the Jump-4 X-boats can deliver.

 

[SSWarlock]

I read in a Wiki that Jump-6 is a secret kind of thing so that Imperium leaders get their mail faster than the Jump-4 X-boats can deliver.

That came out of CT and is still a good rule of thumb, especially for outlying sectors like the Spinward Marches.

 

[GypsyComet]

I read in a Wiki that Jump-6 is a secret kind of thing so that Imperium leaders get their mail faster than the Jump-4 X-boats can deliver.

That came out of CT and is still a good rule of thumb, especially for outlying sectors like the Spinward Marches.

And it applies specifically to the IISS run XBoat network (which is J4) and the secret couriers (J6). It isn't a Navy thing.

 

[F33D]

I read in a Wiki that Jump-6 is a secret kind of thing so that Imperium leaders get their mail faster than the Jump-4 X-boats can deliver.

That wiki is incorrect. It isn't J6 drives/ships that are "secret". It was/is the fact that there are dedicated J6 couriers operating for the High nobility so as to get them news before the "masses" receive it.

 

[Hans Rancke]

I read in a Wiki that Jump-6 is a secret kind of thing so that Imperium leaders get their mail faster than the Jump-4 X-boats can deliver.

That wiki is incorrect. It isn't J6 drives/ships that are "secret". It was/is the fact that there are dedicated J6 couriers operating for the High nobility so as to get them news before the "masses" receive it.

The secret is that the particular companies that constitute the "Imperiallines Network" work for the Emperor (directly; they are owned by holding companies that ultimately owned by the Emperor's Office of Personal Transportation) and have clandestine functions.

The story of how Norris got the jump on everybody else after Strephon was assasinated does claim that the common folk don't get news any faster than through the J4 X-boats, but that story is completely unbelievable on several levels.

There's a canonical reference to Oberlindes Lines owning some J5 couriers. AFAIK there were no mentions of J6 ships in private hands until I mentioned one in "A Festive Occasion" (a passenger liner owned by Tukera), but that the IN has J6 couriers is canon, and the ship design system allows PCs with enough money to have J6 ships built for them. Even if J6 was a military secret, J5 definitely isn't, so private couriers would be outracing even an optimized X-boat service (And canonically the X-boats are very far from optimized; they average a measly 2.6 parsecs per week).

And even if civilian news had been restricted to J4, 34 fleet admirals Behind the Claw (there are 34 regular fleets stationed in Deneb, Reft, Tobia, and the Spinward Marches) would have gotten the word by J6 courier and been duty bound to notify the respective dukes of the duchies they were stationed in. By the time Norris gets the word, most of his peers will already have heard the news.


Hans


PS. sorry, I don't know the syntax for