Dec Update - Spinal mount weapon damage

[Nerhesi]

I think they have a ship that carries like 6 battle riders now, each with a spinal... I believe it is the fighting ship supplement?

But - we have to remember how adversely affected by armour and screens spinal mounts used to be. If you had 15 armour, you shrugged off some major damage... in MGT1

 

[Chas]

DEC Update

Regards the December update this has headed off in a different direction from what I personally felt was more ideal. There are several points of discussion here, I'll start with this

All spinal weapons suffer DM-4 when attacking targets of 10,000 tons or less, and DM-8 when attacking targets of 5,000 tons or less. Spinal weapons cannot attack targets of less than 2,000 tons unless they are stationary or are caught in the blast by accident!

The issue is you can make battle riders with these low tonnage low power high damage spinals as presented in the December High Guard easily at less than 10,00 tons. And can squeeze a 5000 ton. Which makes the battle rider vs. cruiser a much worse proposition that it already is on a ton per ton basis including the tender. The capital ship ought to at least have the same chance of hitting the battle rider as the battle rider has of hitting it.

But the general weight / damage output of this current entire spinal mount + ship design matrix now means there is another winner in the optimum ship design.
The 120k ton or there abouts battleship with its own hanger battle riders.
There's a definite point once the heavy cruiser has gone up to battleship status with all the armor and it's own maxed out spinal mount that from there on the optimum weapon system that can be included in the ship is... another spinal mount. So for every x tonnage in jump and maneuver all a dreadnought is going to be doing is putting in a spinal mount battle rider, then another, then another. Till it is sitting behind a screen of spinal battle riders and a mighty fleet element in itself.

This spinal mount spawning dreadnought has all the cards - full hardpoint usage, plus additional hardpoints off the battle riders, multiple spinal mounts attackers, with the mother ship still fully armed and armored and there to be point defense or otherwise.

If we up the weight of the spinals then things get a bit more under control. The replacement tonnage paradigm in the 100k plus tonner gets less attractive, and the spinal battle rider gets to be big enough to be hit.

 

[Chas]

So here's the TL15 5000 ton battle rider with a type E particle accelerator. There are no essential crimps or compromises with this. It's straight up nasty and I would suggest a direction the edition wants to avoid otherwise this becomes the be all and end all.

 

[arcador]

Do I read correctly? Spinals now deal HUNDRED TIMES the damage they dealt before?

 

[Chas]

Yes.

 

[Nerhesi]

I was just weighing in on this to Matt.

So here is the current paradigm with the new spinal rules:

a) Meson Spinals are obsolete. Particle Spinals are less tonnage for the same damage. Armour doesn't figure out into spinal damage (really.. 15 armour vs up to 36,000 damage? haha). This needs to be addressed.

b) 5000-ton spinals doing up to 36,000 (avg 21,000 dmg). A 100,000 dton ship has 40,000 hull. On average, a 7,500 ton battle rider can 2 shot a 100,000 ton cruiser. This needs to be partially fixed. By this I mean, a 100kton cruiser dying from 2 spinal hits is fine. But the spinal hits can't be coming from tiny dinky super small battle-rider. I would think youd want a 4-to-1 ratio, so that the ship carrying a cruiser-killing-spinal should at least be 25,000 tons (basically meaning, your top spinals needs to be 20k tons)

c) Otherwise - the damage levels themselves are fine.


Proposed Solution:

A) Significant Increase to Spinal Bay Tonnage costs. Your 6DD spinals should be in the range of 20k ton, with your lowest ones being around 1k ton. Meson should increase just as much.

b) Armour should factor into Particle damage somehow. Not a lot, perhaps even have armour work as a % against particle weaponry (like double armour %, so 0-30% damage absorbed). This means That hey - Particle is smaller, less costly, but suffers from armour. Meanwhile Mesons are the massive things that will completely ignore your silly armour!

Thoughts?

 

[Nerhesi]

And by thoughts - I mean it looks like me and Chas are saying the exact same thing as well.

Make it more of a commitment to mount spinals, because they let you kill things that are way above your class. This is good! But we can't have it so good that it becomes the only thing that makes sense

 

[Chas]

The important point about my comment is the weight of the spinal mount. It has to be a chunk heavier. You don't want battle riders that small able to mount the big spinal mounts
a) with regards the relative size of battle riders and how you can fit them on x ton battle tenders and even inside cruisers themselves. The current paradigm is ridiculous where you can effortlessly fit the largest possible weapon on a 5k hull.
b) in relation to the new to hit rules for spinal. You have battle riders with spinal mounts that essentially cannot be hit by who they are attacking. Again this is a no no. The cruiser has to be on an equal footing when it comes to hitting the other spinal mount ship.

Essentially as it stands the entire ship of the line concept is made redundant, or the ship of the line is in itself only changed into being a glorified battle tender, storing battle tenders inside the hull. It's step backward to the old rules where only battle tenders made any sort of sense.

 

[Nerhesi]

Agreed. The damage values are fine. But they can't be coming from a 5000-ton ship. that top end damage needs to be the 25kton spinal mount WEIGHT... so arguably maybe mounted on a 35k ton ship.

As for targeting penalties, yeah I think we need to have flat targetting penalties for using a spinal in the first place - just like MGT1 had. But it shouldn't be even harder to hit small-capitals. Perhaps a -4 to hit anything with a spinal, period - (MGT1 had it as a -6).

 

[wbnc]

It seems to e that the adjustment made to spinal mounts don't make big ships useless..it just means that smaller ships are now MORE effective.

The entire reason the Destroyer was invented was to screen against small fast ships/bats with torpedoes. IN this case the spinal mount takes the place of the torpedo. It has the power to inflict heavy damage, at decent range, and can be fit into a fairly small capital ship/battle rider.

Up till now the escorts and screens were fairly superfluous..they lacked the power to decide a battle when faced with dreadnoughts and Heavy/Battle Cruisers. Even with spinal mounts they will not have the same defensive abilities. ( reinforced hulls/bulkheads/multiple screens etc..) since a large portion of it's internal space is going to be dedicated to the spinal mount and the reactors to power them. However they have the raw firepower to force a 100k ton ship to treat them with a great deal of caution.

Yes, Lightly armored 10K capital ship can knock a fairly good dent in a Battleship. But since they lack the robust hulls, and defenses that a dreadnought will have those spinal mount armed light capital ships can be swarmed by bay armed corvettes/frigates.

This will force a balanced mixed force rather than a force dominated by one type. A Dreadnought reliant power will have to treat a force made up of multiple squadrons of Light Capital ships with great care. While at the same time unless the Light warship force has extreme numerical superiority it can be shredded by the massed fire of the battleships secondary weapons/bays/missiles/torps.

Any force that is likely to be created with the new damage and such, will HAVE to be balanced and including a healthy screening/escort/striking force of lighter ships.

IN short...
I like to think of it as a shift from age of sail fleets where ships of the line which could pummel anything smaller to splinters with impunity. To a more first WWI-inter war era scenario. Where Battle-groups had to be on the defense against small lightly armored, fast ships with a weapon that could punch a hole in even the largest warships.

 

[Nerhesi]

Good of you to chime in PSI

I think we all agree that it does force more variety, and that is a good thing (tm).

The problem is the 10k destroyer is not knocking a fairly good dent PSI, it's crippling with a chance of annihilation in one hit - a 100k cruiser.

It doesn't promote fleet variety, it kills it. There is functionally no need for bigger ships, it actually makes bigger ships a-bad-design-choice. Period.

You want ship killers? 5-10k hulls. You want some orbital bombardment, bays and such - 10k ship I perfect!

You want carriers? Excellent - 10k ships!

Anything bigger is literally eggs in one basket with zero increased effect. Infact - it's reduced effect due to the risk

 

[wbnc]

Good of you to chime in PSI

I think we all agree that it does force more variety, and that is a good thing (tm).

The problem is the 10k destroyer is not knocking a fairly good dent PSI, it's crippling with a chance of annihilation in one hit - a 100k cruiser.

It doesn't promote fleet variety, it kills it. There is functionally no need for bigger ships, it actually makes bigger ships a-bad-design-choice. Period.

You want ship killers? 5-10k hulls. You want some orbital bombardment, bays and such - 10k ship I perfect!

You want carriers? Excellent - 10k ships!

Anything bigger is literally eggs in one basket with zero increased effect. Infact - it's reduced effect due to the risk

10K ships make a great force for highly mobile combat, they are cheaper to build, and can toss out a lot of firepower if they are spinal mount armed...if highly specialized they have enough room to carry a truckload of fighters, and other small craft.

Only one small problem though...those 10K spinal mount armed warships are sinking 30-50% of their tonnage into a single weapon. they are putting a lot of eggs in that one basket. And 10K carriers can devote any real firepower into the mix other than their fighters....no carrier should ever be able to stand up to a direct fire exchange with a like sized ship..it's a waste of space to mount those systems. So what yo end up with is a force of specialized ships, that each have an exploitable weakness.

An opponent could neutralize a force of 10ks to a great extent by deploying a force of smaller 1K attack ships/corvettes armed with bay weapons.....for every 10 K, they build 5 1K ships and the remaining tonnage goes into carriers,fighters, attack craft.

Against a force of 1k and below vessels,that spinal mount is now a lead weight....it's less effective against small ships, On top of being useless against fighters, and eats up a big chunk of tonnage and hardpoints...Not to mention if power systems take a hit then a ship may not even have the reserve power to fire its spinal mount.( and if the enemy is deploying ion cannons, or emp torps..that's likely)


With greatly diminished ability to counter smaller ships, due to the tonnage taken up by the spinal mount, they have to decide on how to proceed engage the fighters, or engage the corvettes/fast attacks. if they go after the fighters the fast attacks come in and rake them with their bay weapons, if they go after the fast attacks the fighters close and engage in strafing runs...or stand off and launch hundreds of missiles.

And if they are heavily armored load fighters with a railgun barbette... (2 Fighters/3 Missile/laser craft/1 railgun fighter/gunship)

If i really want to be nasty I arm jump frame transport carried 100 ton gun boats with 50 ton railgun bays....now I can build ten gunships, 3 corvettes, and the remainder in fighters and carriers...
those 10K ships are now in a bad way....they can destroy one enemy ship with certainty, maybe 2 or three ..but they are facing five.( or more, I'll have to look more closely at the numbers..which I am not that good at. but considering you can build several 1K ships for the price of a single spinal mount it doesn't look good for the 10Ks)

However if I built say one 100k ship per five to eight 10K ships, they can stand up to the onslaught and provide massed counter fire against those swarming 1K ships. forcing the enemy to build bigger ships, and fewer swarm ships.

My reasoning on that is that...
Only a fraction of it's mass is devoted to it's spinal mount, and it has ten times s many hardpoints. It can afford to split hardpoints between anti-ship weapons( bays) and anti-fighter/missile turrets.. reducing the effectiveness of a swarm of 1K ships greatly by forming a core to the fleet.

an enemy without 10K spinal mount warships they cant focuse enough firepower to deal with the 100ks, which means they need spinal mount 10Ks or their own Big Boys.

Now The 10K ships have to deal with their counterparts to safely focus on the big ships..which means they slug it out, supported by smaller vessels, and support fire from the big boys.

in addition The 1Ks now have to worry about those massive battle wagons at the rear of the fight..a long range slavo of bay weapons is enough to shred them outright. While the 1ks are still going to be able to ignore the spinal weapons involved to a great extent, and they can still overwhelm the 1ks by attacking in groups. They cant do the same to the force reinforced with 100ks...the 100Ks just mass too much firepower/armor/screens/point defense.


even if the 100Ks simply standoff while the smaller ships try to break through the enemy screening force. they change the nature of the battle, by forcing the enemy to build to counter them. Instead of a mass of 1K fast attacks, they have to build their own 10K, and 100K warships.

 

[Chas]

I've gone through this in a couple of threads and it doesn't quite work like that wbnc because of reasons which I'll outline as soon as I get off the phone

 

[phavoc]

The issue is one of players building ships that don't reflect reality. Nobody builds warships that are one-trick ponies. Ships have a primary mission and their armament reflects that. The now-retired OHP frigates had missiles, a naval gun, torpedoes, sonar, a helo and even a CIWS system. It could do a number of missions, none of them exceedingly well, but that was also it's purpose - a generalized naval escort.

The spinal mount issue would be similar to what naval designers dealt with with the introduction of the Dreadnought. It's predecessors stuffed all kinds of multi-caliber guns on ships to engage the enemy at short, medium and long range. As a result the ships didn't do any of the things extremely well. Dreadnought made it so that the main guns could engage the larger targets at a distance. It utilized escorts to take on other escorts who could sink it with torpedoes. As naval designers learned from the Dreadnought you started seeing more balanced capital ships. I would say the Bismark/Tirpitz were excellent ships with a good mix or primary and secondary armament.

And I would say it's fair to argue the Vanguard was the ultimate design of the big-gun battleship. Mainly because it was the last all-gun battleship that was built and it was able to take advantage of lessons learned during WW2 and incorporate them into it's design.

So would an enemy deploy a dozen 10Kton Battleriders to maximize the number of spinals they could bring to bear? You bet! Would it be wise? That depends. Countering that sort of attack force could be a swarm of torpedo-armed fighters, or perhaps your escorting screen who would be hard for the battleriders to hit with their main weapons. For every advantage a weapon system or design gives you, there is an offset one. Say you have a 500Kton Tigress hopping into a system and there are 6 battle riders there to oppose it. The Tigress may opt to deploy it's fighter screen to weaken the battle riders before engaging them directly. It has sufficient secondary armament to engage smaller ships that choose to engage it. The battle riders are essentially one-trick ponies - deadly, but nonetheless they have a great deal of their tonnage dedicated to that one-shot weapon.

So I don't see the need to weaken spinal mounts because some player may decide to build just battle riders for their naval force. A battle rider can't do much other than engage capital ships. It's a great offensive/defensive weapon in times of war. But in times of peace, it's not so good. And players are always going to skew their designs so there's no need to try and make rules to stop that. It's an exercise in futility.

 

[Chas]

Going back to your comment wbnc about the 1k builds, these pan out better as 2k builds, with more space available for bays while still being unhittable by spinals. The issue though is that these in turn are vulnerable to the rider level below them... the fighter. Because they've got weight in bays they can't beat off a fighter squadron (And their bay weight is also not optimal, if you were to get 100k ton of the 2K build vs a single ship of 100kton you lose firepower). The spinal battle rider is similarly in trouble up against a good fighter squadron so you might as well go with the common denominator and go for massed fighters as your screen.

So all that happens in this new paradigm battle is that there's a huge fighter brawl as the screens battle it out and whoever wins that gets the opportunity bring their spinal battle tenders into play unhindered. That's an even fight though, it has nothing to do with jump enabled ships vs. riders + tenders. You might say why not just have all out fighters, except that some people are going to bring armored fighter carriers and armored battle rider tenders to add their firepower to the fighter scrap, (your 100 K ships) and you'll have the spinal mounts coming into play then. If somebody is silly enough to ignore brining spinals entirely then their armored carriers will get fried by riders that can blast them quicker than extra fighters can kill the riders. Spinal Riders will just power through the screen till they drive off the covering 100kt and allow their own armored riders win the fighter battle for them. But that's a completely different ship battle concept to what the classic traveler is supposed to be.

What you're saying is correct phavoc, the pros and cons are true which ever way the rules optimize a build of a fleet. The point that we're stating here though with the current spinal weights and fire power output is that the classic Traveller concept of having ships of the line, cruisers and dreadnoughts as the key pins of the fleet is made redundant, it just doesn't make sense to do these fleet elements. There's always going to be a balance to consider with strategic operation etc etc. But the balance has now swung too far the other way towards riders.

Now on a ton per ton basis with battle tender, you have 5 battle riders of this size fighting a 100k ton ship as a pretty much best case situation for the big ship. The five battle riders are doing 35000 hull points on average per spinal hit per battle rider. That is, there is a real chance the big ship will never even get a shot off, it will be destroyed out of hand by the riders in the first turn with 3 out of five of the riders hitting. If the ship does get to go first it has to destroy a minimum of 3 of the tenders in a turn to ensure survival. So it needs to do 6600 points of damage with its bay weapons. You're going to be very lucky to get a full 2DD of a fusion gun for this per 100t medium bay the optimum option. Let's be kind though and assume a best case scenario of saying you do minus tech level 15 armor = 70-15 pts = 55 points a hit. So the 100kt ship needs to do 120 hits to destroy the 3 tenders. Let's assume 3/5 for riders work and for the bays work. So to get an equivalent strike rate the 100k ship needs, 200 bays. 20000 tons dedicated to bays plus power, only. Doable in jump 3 in a dedicated build, a squeeze in jump 4 with nothing else. In reality it's not likely to pan out that way if the battle ship wants its own spinal or other weaponry. But what's actually happening here? You have a 100k ship that has 50/50 chance of being annihilated outright by a few riders, when even in a best case scenario, the 100k ton ship is going to blast a few riders and be crippled doing it... while the tender escapes. It's not a sustainable strategy.

For the game system to work as intended with cruiser et al being viable, the battleships need to:
- be able to hit riders on an equal footing, you can't have spinal riders being too small for spinal cruisers to attack, that new minus system to hit bites badly. If the cruiser's spinal can't hit the rider then that is tonnage going to waste in the cruiser and it might as well be all bays (i.e. the spinal cruiser concept is a dead idea).
- you also need that the fire power rules are balanced in the setup up I've noted there where a reasonable number of bays will still take out a rider on a turn shot basis. It's already not really feasible, if nuclear dampers end up nullifying the fusion bay for example which they could do, forget it happening in any way or form. Doing 8d/turn as your best shot particle bay/ton/hardpoint you will be scratching the surface of riders while the ships of the line are being blown up every turn.
- the rider needing to be big enough that the heavy dreadnought isn't just going to be made into the heavy spinal rider carrier, or the rules adjusted to deal with this in some manner. That's a straight tonnage thing.

 

[phavoc]

What you're saying is correct phavoc, the pros and cons are true which ever way the rules optimize a build of a fleet. The point that we're stating here though with the current spinal weights and fire power output is that the classic Traveller concept of having ships of the line, cruisers and dreadnoughts as the key pins of the fleet is made redundant, it just doesn't make sense to do these fleet elements. There's always going to be a balance to consider with strategic operation etc etc. But the balance has now swung too far the other way towards riders.

Now on a ton per ton basis with battle tender, you have 5 battle riders of this size fighting a 100k ton ship as a pretty much best case situation for the big ship. The five battle riders are doing 35000 hull points on average per spinal hit per battle rider. That is, there is a real chance the big ship will never even get a shot off, it will be destroyed out of hand by the riders in the first turn with 3 out of five of the riders hitting. If the ship does get to go first it has to destroy a minimum of 3 of the tenders in a turn to ensure survival. So it needs to do 6600 points of damage with its bay weapons. You're going to be very lucky to get a full 2DD of a fusion gun for this per 100t medium bay the optimum option. Let's be kind though and assume a best case scenario of saying you do minus tech level 15 armor = 70-15 pts = 55 points a hit. So the 100kt ship needs to do 120 hits to destroy the 3 tenders. Let's assume 3/5 for riders work and for the bays work. So to get an equivalent strike rate the 100k ship needs, 200 bays. 20000 tons dedicated to bays plus power, only. Doable in jump 3 in a dedicated build, a squeeze in jump 4 with nothing else. In reality it's not likely to pan out that way if the battle ship wants its own spinal or other weaponry. But what's actually happening here? You have a 100k ship that has 50/50 chance of being annihilated outright by a few riders, when even in a best case scenario, the 100k ton ship is going to blast a few riders and be crippled doing it... while the tender escapes. It's not a sustainable strategy.

I had mentioned somewhere (maybe this thread, maybe elsewhere... I forget now) to offset this issue make the spinals scale up and down damage wise. So your multiple 10kDton battle riders with their single spinal mount will do damage to the 500kDton Tigress, but it will be vastly scaled down. Maybe you go with a 2X/3X/4X/.... multiplier. IF your target is 2X time the size of you, your damage is reduced by 10%, 3X it's reduced by 20%...all the way up to 50%. That means your smaller spinal mount ships CAN (and should) do some massive damage to a larger target than them. However it means that unless they can cripple the target in a few hits they are going to be toast.

Conversely you scale UP the damage going the other way. So your ship that is 2X the tonnage of it's target gets 25% more damage, at 3X it gets 50%, 4X is 75% and 5X or larger is 100% extra damage. That should keep those fighters off your back... err, I mean it should provide clear advantages and disadvantages to ships.

One could also establish a baseline tonnage to mount each class-type of spinal. A DD sized spinal (say 5k Dton) shouldn't be much of a threat to a massive ship. And any ship large enough to mount a spinal looses all negative DM's to being hit from another spinal. That will make it impossible to make smaller spinal mount ships that can evade larger ship's fire.

But there shouldn't be any artificial ruling to negate this. Any alteration needs to make logical sense and be incorporate into the design/technology. Arbitrary rules are annoying (to me at least).

As far as engaging tenders, that should happen extremely rarely, as tenders are beyond the battle line and the rules have it so that you have to penetrate the battle line in order to engage anything in the rear. Not to mention a tender should be way the hell away from any fighting since it's so valuable.

For the game system to work as intended with cruiser et al being viable, the battleships need to:
- be able to hit riders on an equal footing, you can't have spinal riders being too small for spinal cruisers to attack, that new minus system to hit bites badly. If the cruiser's spinal can't hit the rider then that is tonnage going to waste in the cruiser and it might as well be all bays (i.e. the spinal cruiser concept is a dead idea).

I put some ideas for this above.

- you also need that the fire power rules are balanced in the setup up I've noted there where a reasonable number of bays will still take out a rider on a turn shot basis. It's already not really feasible, if nuclear dampers end up nullifying the fusion bay for example which they could do, forget it happening in any way or form. Doing 8d/turn as your best shot particle bay/ton/hardpoint you will be scratching the surface of riders while the ships of the line are being blown up every turn.

I made the comment on the screens section that I thought nuclear dampers shouldn't affect fusion hits. After all it's really just more super-critical plasma, not a fission reaction, thus the screen should be useless against it. For plasma and fusion-based damage the defense should be some sort of energized armor that interleaves thermal protection as well as magnetic fields to reduce fusion damage. After all, the only thing that can contain the plasma of a fusion reactor is magnetic shielding. That principle should remain the same against plasma-based weapons.

- the rider needing to be big enough that the heavy dreadnought isn't just going to be made into the heavy spinal rider carrier, or the rules adjusted to deal with this in some manner. That's a straight tonnage thing.

Agreed (See above)

 

[wbnc]

Going back to your comment wbnc about the 1k builds, these pan out better as 2k builds, with more space available for bays while still being unhittable by spinals. The issue though is that these in turn are vulnerable to the rider level below them... the fighter. Because they've got weight in bays they can't beat off a fighter squadron (And their bay weight is also not optimal, if you were to get 100k ton of the 2K build vs a single ship of 100kton you lose firepower). The spinal battle rider is similarly in trouble up against a good fighter squadron so you might as well go with the common denominator and go for massed fighters as your screen.

So all that happens in this new paradigm battle is that there's a huge fighter brawl as the screens battle it out and whoever wins that gets the opportunity bring their spinal battle tenders into play unhindered. That's an even fight though, it has nothing to do with jump enabled ships vs. riders + tenders. You might say why not just have all out fighters, except that some people are going to bring armored fighter carriers and armored battle rider tenders to add their firepower to the fighter scrap, (your 100 K ships) and you'll have the spinal mounts coming into play then. If somebody is silly enough to ignore brining spinals entirely then their armored carriers will get fried by riders that can blast them quicker than extra fighters can kill the riders. Spinal Riders will just power through the screen till they drive off the covering 100kt and allow their own armored riders win the fighter battle for them. But that's a completely different ship battle concept to what the classic traveler is supposed to be.

What you're saying is correct phavoc, the pros and cons are true which ever way the rules optimize a build of a fleet. The point that we're stating here though with the current spinal weights and fire power output is that the classic Traveller concept of having ships of the line, cruisers and dreadnoughts as the key pins of the fleet is made redundant, it just doesn't make sense to do these fleet elements. There's always going to be a balance to consider with strategic operation etc etc. But the balance has now swung too far the other way towards riders.

Now on a ton per ton basis with battle tender, you have 5 battle riders of this size fighting a 100k ton ship as a pretty much best case situation for the big ship. The five battle riders are doing 35000 hull points on average per spinal hit per battle rider. That is, there is a real chance the big ship will never even get a shot off, it will be destroyed out of hand by the riders in the first turn with 3 out of five of the riders hitting. If the ship does get to go first it has to destroy a minimum of 3 of the tenders in a turn to ensure survival. So it needs to do 6600 points of damage with its bay weapons. You're going to be very lucky to get a full 2DD of a fusion gun for this per 100t medium bay the optimum option. Let's be kind though and assume a best case scenario of saying you do minus tech level 15 armor = 70-15 pts = 55 points a hit. So the 100kt ship needs to do 120 hits to destroy the 3 tenders. Let's assume 3/5 for riders work and for the bays work. So to get an equivalent strike rate the 100k ship needs, 200 bays. 20000 tons dedicated to bays plus power, only. Doable in jump 3 in a dedicated build, a squeeze in jump 4 with nothing else. In reality it's not likely to pan out that way if the battle ship wants its own spinal or other weaponry. But what's actually happening here? You have a 100k ship that has 50/50 chance of being annihilated outright by a few riders, when even in a best case scenario, the 100k ton ship is going to blast a few riders and be crippled doing it... while the tender escapes. It's not a sustainable strategy.

For the game system to work as intended with cruiser et al being viable, the battleships need to:
- be able to hit riders on an equal footing, you can't have spinal riders being too small for spinal cruisers to attack, that new minus system to hit bites badly. If the cruiser's spinal can't hit the rider then that is tonnage going to waste in the cruiser and it might as well be all bays (i.e. the spinal cruiser concept is a dead idea).
- you also need that the fire power rules are balanced in the setup up I've noted there where a reasonable number of bays will still take out a rider on a turn shot basis. It's already not really feasible, if nuclear dampers end up nullifying the fusion bay for example which they could do, forget it happening in any way or form. Doing 8d/turn as your best shot particle bay/ton/hardpoint you will be scratching the surface of riders while the ships of the line are being blown up every turn.
- the rider needing to be big enough that the heavy dreadnought isn't just going to be made into the heavy spinal rider carrier, or the rules adjusted to deal with this in some manner. That's a straight tonnage thing.

I dont see why you have to have parity between a 100k being able to hit a 10K as effectively as a 10k can a 100k....that's a drawback that's fairly reasonable...nothing can hit a smaller target as well as the smaller target can hit them. It forces people to think about their mix of ships, find a way to compensate for those weaknesses, and play more than tonnage to firepower ratios...the inherent weakness of 100k ships against 10k riders is means the other guy has to have some riders/destroyers/frigates as well....otherwise you get fleets made up of dreadnoughts/battlecruisers with token escorts.

as for the blunting effect of Screens and dampeners...now you have a real need for those other types of weapons... missiles, torps, even railguns preferably mounted on fast attacks that can get in without being shot to pieces by those spinal mounts. the heavy cost in bays is a two edged sword...the spinal 10ks cant pack as much point defense, anti-ship weaponry...the price it pays for being able to wreck a ship ten times it's size.

I see how you are arriving at your conclusions, and opinions..I just don't happen to see what you are pointing out as a serious issue.To me its a natural part of the advantage/drawback balance...to me that's how it should be. A single ship should be able to perform adequately in it's role. Adequately, not perfectly, and not across the board. dont take it as me saying you are wrong, or you aren't thinking it through..I can see you are.
I just see things differently

Battleships: fight battleships, and provide support fire with secondary guns. ( and force the enemy to deploy their own big ships)
Battlecruisers and attack destroyers/frigates: go after the big boys with their spinal mounts, using their size to get past the big boys spinal mounts.
Cruisers/destroyers/frigates: screen against smaller ships, and blunt fighter swarms.
fighters: swarm..they hit exposed capital ships, harass larger ships, and counter enemy fighters.

outside their natural habitat, or if pushed into roles outside their specialization...any ship should be at a huge disadvantage.all military tactics are based on overcoming your innate weaknesses, blunting/avoiding the enemies strengths, and/or taking advantage of an enemies weaknesses. Every single type will have it's own flaws and weaknesses...but that doesn't mean you don't build them..it means you build ships to cover those weaknesses.

 

[Nerhesi]

The issue gentlemen isn't that they're 1 trick ponies, it's the fact that 1 trick ponies are the tactically sound choice now.

You get ZERO value from building a bigger ship, because you need a ship that is literally more than TEN times bigger to actually be a bit more robust versus a spinal cannon. Not to mention the fact, that the bigger ship also gets hit more easily by spinals.

Therefore, by making small ships with single roles, you minimize your losses in actual combat (very long range spinals). I was not stating the 10k carrier would take on a spinal-ship (although it would and it would win if the engagement started at distant range. But it would lose against a good picket-ship with fragmentation missiles, and triple pulse laser turrets for example - whole seperate conversation). What I was stating was that because Spinals on a 5kton Ship (forget even 10k) can take out a 100kton ship, then it doesn't make sense to having anything over 10k.

As for the Tigress example - I can field lets 10, 5kton ships.. maybe 7kton, with 9G Thrust, for a fraction of the cost, that will annihilate the tigress from very long range. So that under 50k of military tonnage, annihilating a fleet flagship. The Tigress spinal will have a much harder time to hit as well.. and if you want to do get picky, it's fighters will get ripped apart by lets say 2 point-defense style ships escorting the 10 mini-spinals. All of this, for what I'm sure is a fraction of the tigress' cost. A small fraction. Because - once again, I have 5kton ships theatening 100kton ships.

Take the word spinals out of the equation. What we're saying is that 200ton free traders, can sometimes 1 shot 2000 ton corvettes. Thats not right folks

Overall gents, the damage values are right, the SIZE of the weapon is not for that damage

 

[wbnc]

Guys I get your point...but I am still wondering why this should NOT be the case. If put ships in unnatural situations, and outside of their natural habitat, of course the numbers don't add up.

why should a ship packing half it's volume in a single weapons system, and required subsystems, not be lethal in it's intended environment/role..and still not be vulnerable if it is caught in a situation that does not favor it.

Why should a Ship 10 times larger than it's target not have a huge problem hitting the smaller target. Especially with a weapon that requires that it points it's entire bulk at the target and track it while firing?

Historically this has been the case, those small ships with big guns could threaten even the biggest ship on the seas...now if they get it,they go boom. Their speed, agility, and firepower came at the cost of being rather fragile when hit by the main guns of a larger ship, or swarmed by smaller ships, and fighters.

In both cases their flaws were made up for by other ships, in formation and cooperating...

 

[phavoc]

The issue gentlemen isn't that they're 1 trick ponies, it's the fact that 1 trick ponies are the tactically sound choice now.

You get ZERO value from building a bigger ship, because you need a ship that is literally more than TEN times bigger to actually be a bit more robust versus a spinal cannon. Not to mention the fact, that the bigger ship also gets hit more easily by spinals.

Therefore, by making small ships with single roles, you minimize your losses in actual combat (very long range spinals). I was not stating the 10k carrier would take on a spinal-ship (although it would and it would win if the engagement started at distant range. But it would lose against a good picket-ship with fragmentation missiles, and triple pulse laser turrets for example - whole seperate conversation). What I was stating was that because Spinals on a 5kton Ship (forget even 10k) can take out a 100kton ship, then it doesn't make sense to having anything over 10k.

As for the Tigress example - I can field lets 10, 5kton ships.. maybe 7kton, with 9G Thrust, for a fraction of the cost, that will annihilate the tigress from very long range. So that under 50k of military tonnage, annihilating a fleet flagship. The Tigress spinal will have a much harder time to hit as well.. and if you want to do get picky, it's fighters will get ripped apart by lets say 2 point-defense style ships escorting the 10 mini-spinals. All of this, for what I'm sure is a fraction of the tigress' cost. A small fraction. Because - once again, I have 5kton ships theatening 100kton ships.

Take the word spinals out of the equation. What we're saying is that 200ton free traders, can sometimes 1 shot 2000 ton corvettes. Thats not right folks

Overall gents, the damage values are right, the SIZE of the weapon is not for that damage

Working with your argument here, the answer then seems to be shorten the range of a spinal mount. Missiles should always outrange energy weapons, and with a spinal mount you could simply say the beam starts to lose focus after X range. This means that ships would need to close and maintain a certain range. Maybe spinals need to be deadly at much closer ranges, thus giving ships that don't mount them a fighting chance to engage with bays and such. That means those bigger ships with multiple weapon systems can winnow their attackers down.

OR use the sliding scale I proposed. A 5KDton ship should be a threat to a 100kDton ship, but once they close to range those multiple ships should die, while the larger ship lives, albeit with some damage.