[Deneb Sector] 2000 dT Huscarle Cruisers

[Condottiere]

Shoes are surprisingly important; they make a statement about your views on life, your perceived position on it, and the perception you want others to have on it.

Though I'm surprised she didn't take along matching handbags.

 

[Bardicheart]

Haven't had a lot of free time to work on this lately but so far I think I've pretty well finalized the stats for the Voshtar and have gotten a start on the deck plans and general hull shape of the ship.

I've also come up with general concepts for quite a few more ships ranging from other 2000 dT "flagships" to escorts, troop transports and corvettes. So its looking like if I fully flesh this out I may be designing a dozen or more ships. A lot of them I'm planning to build around TL 12, to represent both some ships that are older, but also used for smaller ships to fill out their fleets while reducing costs and maintenance. None will be quite like the Voshtar, she was one of a kind and also a good starting point and learning experience. I'll post more when I have it.

One thing that has been lacking is that there isn't a lot of info on the various nobles in Deneb sector so I think I'm just going to make up 5 or 6 fictional "houses" each with their own style and design philosophy and build around that. That should give a nice bit of variety in ship types, styles, and capabilities.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Missiles and fighters are probably the strongest approaches at this scale. Watch out so the regular ships don't get outclassed.

 

[steve98052]

Shoes are surprisingly important; they make a statement about your views on life, your perceived position on it, and the perception you want others to have on it.

Though I'm surprised she didn't take along matching handbags.

They also protect your feet from hazards on the ground.

I once made a non-player character whose distinctive Absolute Black brand boots (so named for their extremely low albedo) were one of her prized possessions.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[Bardicheart]

Gravitic fashion accessories are all the rage this season you know. :lol:

Still trying to get back to this, between the holidays and a power outage due to weather I've had a few distractions. Also Steam sales, they've contributed to the distractions.

 

[Bardicheart]

Missiles and fighters are probably the strongest approaches at this scale. Watch out so the regular ships don't get outclassed.

Almost forgot to ask, by "regular ships" you mean which specifically?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Almost forgot to ask, by "regular ships" you mean which specifically?

With "regular" ships I mean something like your ship, unlike ships optimised to launch missiles or fighters. A "regular" warship would balance mobility, armaments, and defences, like a Gazelle or Ghalalk.

E.g. a missile boat can be optimised to launch from Distant range, not having to suffer return fire, so can omit some defences such as armour. Not a regular ship...

 

[phavoc]

To echo what the others are saying, this is where the questions and issues of naval architecture start falling apart between PC-designed min/max designs and what a normal naval architect would do. Ships generally tend to be general purpose, as AnotherDilbert said, they have to balance multiple functions. While there are specialized ships out there, most tend to be able to do a little of all things. If this is an area of interest to you I highly suggest you try and pick up a copy of Conways Eclipse of the Big Gun - Warships from 1906 to 1945. I've always felt this is somewhat in the mileu that Traveller has modeled it's naval system from. It's a great primer on warship designs by classes, and it covers the changing technology starting with HMS Dreadnought. In hindsight it makes perfect sense to remove torpedo launchers from battleships, but for a period they were standard equipment. When the guns got bigger and more accurate the heavier ships could concentrate on what they did best and leave torpedoes to cruisers and below. There is also a follow-on book to Eclipse, which covers naval designs from 1945 to modern day. Together the two books provide a lot of insight into why certain things were done.

And I also think that your references to racial/political entities tending to favor certain styles and emphasis on armament adds more depth to the gaming environment. A polity that favored missiles over guns means their designs would be optimized to try and keep the enemy at a distance. Though this does mean that their traditional enemies will design their ships to offset this advantage, so maybe they would forgo some missile armaments of their own in favor of heavier missile defenses or more armor/speed to close the gap and tear into the lightly beam armed missile ships.

If you want to take that design offset further, think about the fleet support structure as well. Missiles aren't cheap, and if you expect to have ships that have to be able to throw them in large quantities during battles that means you'd need more colliers to provide ammunition re-supply, which ties up more of the fleet's budget in just ammunition. And live-fire training is also more expensive as well, even with training missiles. From a gaming perspective this might mean that your missile-favoring polity tends to deploy fewer ships, or perhaps they have a general lower level of training due to the increased costs associated with their armament choices.

 

[steve98052]

For live fire missile training, I think I'd use missiles without warheads, and instead extra high capacity batteries, so that after being fired they'd have enough power left to maneuver themselves to a recovery zone, maybe swarming themselves into clumps for the convenience of the recovery pilots.

Of course if we assume that kinetic impact is their sole attack, rather than warheads, they may not have any space for extra battery power.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

To echo what the others are saying, this is where the questions and issues of naval architecture start falling apart between PC-designed min/max designs and what a normal naval architect would do.

I wouldn't call it min/max-ing, but valid combat tactics. Going all out with missiles or fighters would make the fleet a one trick pony (albeit a very effective trick) though. Among dozens of noble houses, someone is going to try it.

And countering such tactics is something "regular" warships should consider at the design stage.

 

[Condottiere]

First you have to recognize threats, resources available, and decide how you want to fight.

While i always thought that having organic aircraft is actually a great advantage, it was pointed out to me that having all that aviation fuel on top really made it hazardous for a battleship during combat. The same with torpedoes.

This is something you could delegate to cruisers, since they're less likely to want to stay long in contact, and if they do blow up, less of a loss then a line of battle ship.

 

[phavoc]

For live fire missile training, I think I'd use missiles without warheads, and instead extra high capacity batteries, so that after being fired they'd have enough power left to maneuver themselves to a recovery zone, maybe swarming themselves into clumps for the convenience of the recovery pilots.

Of course if we assume that kinetic impact is their sole attack, rather than warheads, they may not have any space for extra battery power.

Accountants have proposed this for a very long time. There are training versions of missiles, torpedoes, etc, that in some cases allow recovery or in others they put a lead pipe in place of cluster bomblets (MLRS). But live fire is live fire, and militaries have resisted 100% use of only training rounds because the people that operate them in conflict need to train with the real stuff. If you KNOW you can make a mistake in training you can take that mindset with you to war. Which is why they have always had a mix of the two. Plus you need to have confidence in your munitions working correctly. The USN was plagued by bad torpedoes at the beginning of WW2 and it reflected in the users low confidence when using torpedoes against naval targets.

 

[phavoc]

To echo what the others are saying, this is where the questions and issues of naval architecture start falling apart between PC-designed min/max designs and what a normal naval architect would do.

I wouldn't call it min/max-ing, but valid combat tactics. Going all out with missiles or fighters would make the fleet a one trick pony (albeit a very effective trick) though. Among dozens of noble houses, someone is going to try it.

And countering such tactics is something "regular" warships should consider at the design stage.

I think based on the designs people share on this forum alone, ships are definitely min-maxed designs. It what players do in virtually all RPG games. They want the toughest, fastest, meanest ships to ever fly in the universe. Things like support costs, maintenance headaches, and other realities that naval designers have to trade-off never make it into the thought process.

Just compare them to the published designs for the same game systems and you'll see what I'm talking about. I believe you had designed a ship with like 2,000+ torpedo launchers to control the space around it. All within the rules of the game, but not something, I think, we would see in reality.

 

[steve98052]

. . . But live fire is live fire, . . . If you KNOW you can make a mistake in training you can take that mindset with you to war. Which is why they have always had a mix of the two. Plus you need to have confidence in your munitions working correctly. . . .

The conservatism of the Traveller setting would probably rebut the latter point. "We've been using these same torpedoes for 200 Standard Years. We know they work, as long as they're less than ten years out of the factory."

But the first point makes sense. The risk of complacency can be a disaster in real combat. Personally, I think a Traveller missile would be strictly kinetic anyway, so they'd be safe to recover, but not necessarily affordable, since the recovery drones would have to be fast enough to chase down missiles with spent batteries in a reasonable amount of time, and those might be uneconomically expensive.

 

[phavoc]

First you have to recognize threats, resources available, and decide how you want to fight.

While i always thought that having organic aircraft is actually a great advantage, it was pointed out to me that having all that aviation fuel on top really made it hazardous for a battleship during combat. The same with torpedoes.

This is something you could delegate to cruisers, since they're less likely to want to stay long in contact, and if they do blow up, less of a loss then a line of battle ship.

You are falling for the same trap that Jacky Fisher did when he came up with the idea for battlecruisers - arming them like battleships, but making them light and fast like cruisers. The theory seemed sound on paper but the reality of how navies deploy their hulls is different. While battlecruisers worked like a champ against cruisers and under (see the Battle of Falklands in WW1) against each other or worse, putting them in the line of battle with your battleships, they lost every time. And cruisers will, if they are smart or have a choice, choose to not engage battleships without some battleship support of their own. The battles of Savo Sound between the USN and IJN did some night-time dueling. The Long Lance torpedo really worked great against the USN (and allies, since Australia was there). But cruiser weaponry is sized for battle against cruisers. Battleships will outrange and outarmor cruisers

I don't quite understand your battleship & organic aircraft idea. There were some test designs that thought about taking the rear of the ship and adding a short flight deck instead of an after turret, but that was a bad idea in practice - the worst of all worlds. In space thought you have the example of the Argo, which arguable, was a planet busting success. Mix a wave-motion gun with standard battleship armaments and toss in an elite Black Tiger fighter squadron and you can fight your way across the galaxy to Iscandar!! Renegade Legion pared fighters with smaller craft and that worked out gaming and fictionally ok. It's a continual doctrinal argument of whether or not it makes sense in real battles though. Do you spend the tonnage to carry fighters, or do you spend (or save) the tonnage to make your ships tougher and better armored (or smaller and cheaper so you can afford more hulls)? Gamers don't have to face that idea usually. Though in the old Starfire gaming you had the ability to build an empire and then you had to balance your naval budget with hulls, repairs and refits. Strategic games try to take some of this into account that RPG's never, nor should, do.

 

[phavoc]

. . . But live fire is live fire, . . . If you KNOW you can make a mistake in training you can take that mindset with you to war. Which is why they have always had a mix of the two. Plus you need to have confidence in your munitions working correctly. . . .

The conservatism of the Traveller setting would probably rebut the latter point. "We've been using these same torpedoes for 200 Standard Years. We know they work, as long as they're less than ten years out of the factory."

But the first point makes sense. The risk of complacency can be a disaster in real combat. Personally, I think a Traveller missile would be strictly kinetic anyway, so they'd be safe to recover, but not necessarily affordable, since the recovery drones would have to be fast enough to chase down missiles with spent batteries in a reasonable amount of time, and those might be uneconomically expensive.

Well, the Traveller setting has some serious logical holes in it, but it's a game. The holes being that a TL8 missile is the same as a TL15 missile, that TL15 ships mount lower TL equipment, etc, etc. There are some exceptions obviously, for example the standard MG42 has changed little between it's introduction in 1942. The M2 Browning .50cal that we used in the US Army in 1933 also remains essentially the same. Unlike Traveller, though, the cost of it has remained roughly the same. To show the difference, in 1945 dollars the M2 Browning cost $1,560. In 2000 dollars (didn't find a more recent cost) it costs $14,900. Which, adjusting for inflation, the cost has remained nearly the same. The TL cost benefits provided in the game are probably overly generous, though one example does not a solid argument make.

I do know that other 'obsolete' tech is quite expensive today. Did you know that if you need a dot matrix printer (and many industries still use them, including multi-page prints!), you will spend today the same amount you would have spent had you bought one when it first came out? There are probably just as many examples of items that you can buy today that are much cheaper that fall more within the Traveller cost model. But military tech is probably not going to be one of them. What profit-seeking industrialist would allow money to leave their pocket?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I don't quite understand your battleship & organic aircraft idea.

Some WWII warships carried a few reconnaissance aircraft. Launch from a catapult, land in water, and recover with a crane.

Here an Arado Ar 196 aboard the Admiral Hipper:

 

[phavoc]

I don't quite understand your battleship & organic aircraft idea.

Some WWII warships carried a few reconnaissance aircraft. Launch from a catapult, land in water, and recover with a crane.

Here an Arado Ar 196 aboard the Admiral Hipper:

Yes, that's very true. They typically were added to heavy cruisers and above. The USN tried to mount them on Fletcher-class destroyers, but the experiment was deemed impractical. The first floatplanes were installed on WW1 warships. I've seen photos with various installation positions being on the A/B turrets, amidships, or on the aft X/Y turrets. The final classes of US BB's had fantail mounted catapults.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I think based on the designs people share on this forum alone, ships are definitely min-maxed designs. It what players do in virtually all RPG games. They want the toughest, fastest, meanest ships to ever fly in the universe.

Optimising things what engineers (such as naval architects) do. Any warship will have been optimised by hundreds of engineers. Building non-optimised ships is simply bad role-playing.

Terran warship designers have the problem of basically not knowing how the next war will be fought. Imperial warships designers should not have this problem, since warship design and hence warfare has been stable for millennia (at least until the Black Globe was discovered).

Min/max-ing characters is something completely different.

Things like support costs, maintenance headaches, and other realities that naval designers have to trade-off never make it into the thought process.

Because we have no rules or requirements to optimise for.

Just compare them to the published designs for the same game systems and you'll see what I'm talking about.

The small LBB2 designs were reasonably well optimised. The Fighting Ships designs were mostly just silly.

By recreating them in the more efficient MgT2 system they had to deliberately waste space to get back to the same silly designs. Using them as a benchmark of anything is not something I will even contemplate. Unless you want to postulate that the Imperial Navy is run by morons that does not have any idea how space combat works?

I believe you had designed a ship with like 2,000+ torpedo launchers to control the space around it. All within the rules of the game, but not something, I think, we would see in reality.

I'm sure I have: Missiles in MgT2 are only effective in overwhelming numbers, launching just a few is generally completely ineffective, so silly to waste space on.

Note that Traveller missiles are not WWII torpedoes or current shipkillers, they are just small attritional weapons that must be used in large numbers.

So, I think we are far likelier to see battleships with 2000 torpedo-launchers than with a measly 100 launchers.