Few competitive strategies?

[AndrewW]

You pay for it: Each single turret on a small craft takes a ton, and a gunner that must have a stateroom somewhere.
The default fixed point armament takes no tonnage.

A lot of small craft (such as most fighters) aren't intended for longer periods of operation and don't carry staterooms.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

A lot of small craft (such as most fighters) aren't intended for longer periods of operation and don't carry staterooms.

No, but they have to be ferries to the battle. In general the gunner will make the carrier bigger and more expensive.

If we cannot screen the carrier (as we currently cannot), the carrier must probably jump out of the system, hide in a planetary ocean, or something as long as enemy forces are in-system. Hence any carried fighters will have to have life support and quarters for a few weeks.

In short the gunners stateroom will show up somewhere in your fleet budget.

 

[Chas]

A lot of small craft (such as most fighters) aren't intended for longer periods of operation and don't carry staterooms.

No, but they have to be ferries to the battle. In general the gunner will make the carrier bigger and more expensive.

If we cannot screen the carrier (as we currently cannot), the carrier must probably jump out of the system, hide in a planetary ocean, or something as long as enemy forces are in-system. Hence any carried fighters will have to have life support and quarters for a few weeks.

In short the gunners stateroom will show up somewhere in your fleet budget.

Not sure about the issues with the carrier. The whole point is they will be way behind the line of battle, and in most cases able to move at speeds that only specialist long range high thrust vessels will be able to get to them. We've looked at floating hulk tenders but my personal opinion is that they will be M drive fleet capable, and at least have some defense.

There has to be a common sense limit to missiles and we need to implement a rule to stop any silliness like a missile hitting a target around Jupiter from Earth.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

There has to be a common sense limit to missiles and we need to implement a rule to stop any silliness like a missile hitting a target around Jupiter from Earth.

I agree that that would be desirable, but as it is anything above 50 000 km is Distant range and your sensors can see and you missiles can hit.

 

[Nerhesi]

There has to be a common sense limit to missiles and we need to implement a rule to stop any silliness like a missile hitting a target around Jupiter from Earth.

I agree that that would be desirable, but as it is anything above 50 000 km is Distant range and your sensors can see and you missiles can hit.

I think this is something we all agree on that needs to be limited. Distant = 50,000km - 100,000km. Anything beyond that is "forget it"

We aligned? If so we simply thump Matt then politely ask him to indicate that (and it requires no Core rulebook check really)

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Agreed, that is simple. I would make it a bit longer, say Distant Range is 50 000 km - 300 000 km [1 ls] (roughly the distance to the Moon).

Even better would be:
Distant (50 Mm - 1 ls) Can hit with missiles, bad hit chance.
Very Distant (1 ls - 5 ls) Sensors can see badly, stealth matters
Far (5 ls - 1 ly) Sensors can see large stationary targets like planets and space stations.

 

[Nerhesi]

Agreed, that is simple. I would make it a bit longer, say Distant Range is 50 000 km - 300 000 km [1 ls] (roughly the distance to the Moon).

Even better would be:
Distant (50 Mm - 1 ls) Can hit with missiles, bad hit chance.
Very Distant (1 ls - 5 ls) Sensors can see badly, stealth matters
Far (5 ls - 1 ly) Sensors can see large stationary targets like planets and space stations.

Agreed.
50,000 km - 300,000km = Distant, -6 to hit with Missiles (Although all this really means is fire with 6 more missiles to be ok.. so we need a way to make this actually really bad - not just 6 missiles worse )
300,000km - 5,000,000 km = Base difficulty for all sensors rolls becomes 14+ (so thats before all stealth modifiers and so on)
5,000,000 km + = Sensors are basically "ahoy! Land ho!" and thats about it

 

[AnotherDilbert]

You can automate it rather than using a gunner.

Yes, but fighters generally do not have overlarge computers, since that will be the overwhelmingly most expensive component. Also a Virtual Gunner has max skill-2, which is good, but no DEX, and no sophont augmentation possible, making a Virtual Gunner much worse than a real good gunner with all reasonable upgrades.

Add to that historical and cinematic reasons I generally assume a sophont gunner in each turret, much like the Millennium Falcon (or a WWII bomber).

Reasonably we can automate nearly every crew member with a robot, or even just a robot brain, saving all life support and space necessary for meat-heads, but where is the fun in that?

 

[Chas]

Reasonably we can automate nearly every crew member with a robot, or even just a robot brain, saving all life support and space necessary for meat-heads, but where is the fun in that?

There may not be any fun in a limited role playing game, but strategically you'd have to because of the attrition rate with fighters. You can't go back to the starport to get another shipload of elite crew - you can do so with a bunch more drone fighters.

Historically the UK almost lost the Battle of Britain because they were about to run out of trained pilots - they could build more fighters but couldn't train the pilots quickly enough.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Reasonably we can automate nearly every crew member with a robot, or even just a robot brain, saving all life support and space necessary for meat-heads, but where is the fun in that?

There may not be any fun in a limited role playing game, but strategically you'd have to because of the attrition rate with fighters. You can't go back to the starport to get another shipload of elite crew - you can do so with a bunch more drone fighters.

I agree that is makes sense. But when we start down that road all crew positions will rather immediately be automated, and people will only be in space as passengers. And that is not Traveller as I know it anymore.

So I object based on dogmatic prejudice.

 

[Chas]

Reasonably we can automate nearly every crew member with a robot, or even just a robot brain, saving all life support and space necessary for meat-heads, but where is the fun in that?

There may not be any fun in a limited role playing game, but strategically you'd have to because of the attrition rate with fighters. You can't go back to the starport to get another shipload of elite crew - you can do so with a bunch more drone fighters.

I agree that is makes sense. But when we start down that road all crew positions will rather immediately be automated, and people will only be in space as passengers. And that is not Traveller as I know it anymore.

So I object based on dogmatic prejudice.

:lol: actually I think there'd be a fair TL spread with this, or easy to design in. TL 12, you might have the rear PD gunner as being automated, TL13 can automate the sensors on a heavy torp bomber (70 tons), till TL15 when the fully automated drone becomes properly viable or at least only starting to become directly competitive vs. a human crew.

 

[AndrewW]

Historically the UK almost lost the Battle of Britain because they were about to run out of trained pilots - they could build more fighters but couldn't train the pilots quickly enough.

Until da Furor muddle with things again and ordered them to switch the focus from the fighter command bases to London, giving the UK the breathing room it needed. Later in the war both Germany and Japan had the problem of a lack of trained pilots.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Love the extended ranges, will be in next update.

 

[Nerhesi]

Matt - perhaps also a minor change to Distant range launches.

Not for torpedos, but missiles (to further give a nod to torps). The -6 for distant is counter intuitive (my fault I didn't catch it earlier). We basically say "distant is too far, so launch 6 more missiles" - kinda silly right?

I'd say halve the Effect of missiles launched from distant. -6 is so counter-intuitive and does nothing to 100s/thounds of missiles launched from distant.

 

[Condottiere]

I disagree with giving free tonnage to fixed weapons.

As regards to gunners, all the pilot has to do is point (the ship in the right direction) and click.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

You can't go back to the starport to get another shipload of elite crew - you can do so with a bunch more drone fighters.

The current combat system is rather non-lethal (aside from Radiation). When a ship runs out of Hull points it is destroyed, but the crew isn't killed. Assuming everyone is in vacc suits they just wait for S&R to come and collect them.

 

[Nerhesi]

You can't go back to the starport to get another shipload of elite crew - you can do so with a bunch more drone fighters.

The current combat system is rather non-lethal (aside from Radiation). When a ship runs out of Hull points it is destroyed, but the crew isn't killed. Assuming everyone is in vacc suits they just wait for S&R to come and collect them.

Yup I'm sure some are - It would be it be cool to have some sort of text-box description of like "Assume 20-60% casualties or so (2D3) or so"

 

[GhengisRexx]

Regarding combat lethality and crew casualties , since ships take a crit at every 10% hull damage threshold, I would probably house rule 5% crew casualties (half of those dead, half wounded), at each 10%). For a small pc ship some sort of save to avoid pc injury if the crit is to the station they are manning. Dead ship = 25% of the crew dead, 25% injured, 50% still functioning.