Few competitive strategies?

[AnotherDilbert]

After skimming the combat and design systems and making a few designs, I can only see three ways to win a fleet battle:

1. Fighters with massive reaction drives.

2. Battle Riders with Particle spinal and massive reaction drives. Spinals are short ranged and needs reaction drives to get into range. Reaction drives excludes the possibility of jump drive.

3. Keep your distance and pound the enemy with missiles bays. The need for massive bays to overwhelm PD prohibits high jump, perhaps J-2. Bays fire a quarter as many torpedoes and PD is half as effective, so against GOOD PD torpedoes risk annihilation, so use missiles instead. Missiles can now be fired at close range, so you have a chance against fighters.

Traditional battleships are not competitive.

All other weapons are not worth it. If you go with missiles you have to go all out, a half-hearted effort will be useless against good PD. Any fleet without good PD will be a sitting duck against missiles

Spinal Battle Riders can't win against fighters. Spinal Battle Riders without reaction drives can't win against missiles. Spinal Battle Riders with reaction drives can't win against Spinal Battle Riders without reaction drives. Even if you can close in on missile boats and kill them, they will have launched enough missiles to kill you too, in a few rounds. All together spinals are not worth it.

Carriers are extremely vulnerable. As soon as they jump into a system, anywhere in the system, they are at Distant range to all enemies in the system. They must jump out or die, leaving their carried craft unsupported. This is a minor problem for fighters, who must be able to survive a few weeks without a base, making then bigger and more expensive. Fighters and Battle Riders will have no way to retreat, they must win or die.

 

[Nerhesi]

Traveller is not a competitive game - but you obviously know that, and you meant what we all want - which more versatility and flavour. Despite that, you've already listed 3 competitive strategies. That is triple the strategies from MGT1 (smallcraft or bust - mathematically)

3 competitive strategies is actually better than some of the competitive games that are out there. I speak from experience in playing RTS and miniature games, where you didn't have competing strategies, you unfortunately had 1 strategy, but many tactical ways to fight with that strategy. That basically means at the moment, we are actually pretty golden.

Let me also offer some counter-strategies to what you've proposed:

a) Counter to #1. Fighters with massive reaction drives are still susceptible to missiles. I can launch 12 missiles at turn at each fighter for the low cost of 30 tons and a fraction of the cost. Your fighter cannot defend itself and will be facing a ridiculous slew of missiles.

b) Counter to #2. Battle Riders with massive spinals and reaction drives actually give up a huge advantage of being a battle-rider, that is - their ability to carry more weaponry. At that point in time, you are just a spinal with less hull - sure you can make it into range faster, but you're giving up a ton of extra firepower. This option also guarantees that your battle-riders are worse in every way (worst-of-breed if I can use that business term) vs any battle-riders - because the other battle-riders dont care how fast you get into range, just how well you last and dish it out. So while your rocket-engine Spinal Rider is zooming in, my Spinal Rider with Very Long range Medium bays is picking you apart.

c) The problem with this argument, strategically is not only the limit of ammunition (which applies to both massive and 1 on 1 engagements), but the enemies ability to strategically avoid them, EW them down and PD them. You have two options, Distant range and Very Long Range:
Distant range missile overwhelm tactic: Literally a dozen or two dozen turns to EW the missiles down and the get -6 when they finally reach you.
Very Long range missile overwhelm tactic: You are now in range of Tachyon & Particle beams. The enemy will still EW, and PD your missiles down.

In all cases - Point-defense is amazingly effective now vs missile volleys as well. You can now get 3D PD PER Hardpoint. That is a significant deal. Take a look at the new PD batteries.

Large battleships, I have made sure, are a force to be feared in this edition. Finally. Not only can you now carry a large spinal for a relatively small portion of your weight, you will be packing magnificent bay weaponry that will make you deadly combatant. Not only do Large Bays inflict a pounding at long range, but as a 100kton ship, you are immune to crits from ANYTHING except large bays and spinals. Weapons that can only really be carried by your colleagues (capitals)

I've personally made it my mission to make MGT2 one of those very very rare games (competitive or otherwise) that give you meaningful options, and versatility, WITHOUT making everything the same underlying system (like Hero system and so on). I think we're in great shape - and it is evident by what you've pointed out here

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Traveller is not a competitive game - but you obviously know that, and you meant what we all want - which more versatility and flavour. Despite that, you've already listed 3 competitive strategies. That is triple the strategies from MGT1 (smallcraft or bust - mathematically)

3 competitive strategies is actually better than some of the competitive games that are out there. I speak from experience in playing RTS and miniature games, where you didn't have competing strategies, you unfortunately had 1 strategy, but many tactical ways to fight with that strategy. That basically means at the moment, we are actually pretty golden.

TCS is competitive, but agreed about most systems.

a) Counter to #1. Fighters with massive reaction drives are still susceptible to missiles. I can launch 12 missiles at turn at each fighter for the low cost of 30 tons and a fraction of the cost. Your fighter cannot defend itself and will be facing a ridiculous slew of missiles.

The missile bay needs to be in an armoured survivable warship, so more like 300 dt and 200 MCr. A 35 dt 80 MCr fighter with a single offensive weapon, single PD laser and sensor operator with signal processing will kill quite a few missiles, but obviously lose to cheaper fighters.

b) Counter to #2. Battle Riders with massive spinals and reaction drives actually give up a huge advantage of being a battle-rider, that is - their ability to carry more weaponry. At that point in time, you are just a spinal with less hull - sure you can make it into range faster, but you're giving up a ton of extra firepower. This option also guarantees that your battle-riders are worse in every way (worst-of-breed if I can use that business term) vs any battle-riders - because the other battle-riders dont care how fast you get into range, just how well you last and dish it out. So while your rocket-engine Spinal Rider is zooming in, my Spinal Rider with Very Long range Medium bays is picking you apart.

Spinals w reaction can't win against obvious strategy, and Spinals w/o reaction can't win against obvious strategy. I think we have just concluded that Spinal riders are not a competitive strategy.

c) The problem with this argument, strategically is not only the limit of ammunition (which applies to both massive and 1 on 1 engagements), but the enemies ability to strategically avoid them, EW them down and PD them. You have two options, Distant range and Very Long Range:
Distant range missile overwhelm tactic: Literally a dozen or two dozen turns to EW the missiles down and the get -6 when they finally reach you.
Very Long range missile overwhelm tactic: You are now in range of Tachyon & Particle beams. The enemy will still EW, and PD your missiles down.

In all cases - Point-defense is amazingly effective now vs missile volleys as well. You can now get 3D PD PER Hardpoint. That is a significant deal. Take a look at the new PD batteries.

If you launch 1000 missiles, basically nothing but PD matters. EW will be small enough to ignore and all missiles will hit regardless of any -attack.
A laser turret (~3 dt) will kill around 5 missiles. A PD Battery (~20 dt) will kill around 3D ≈ 10 missiles. I will not use PD batteries.

Large battleships, I have made sure, are a force to be feared in this edition. Finally. Not only can you now carry a large spinal for a relatively small portion of your weight, you will be packing magnificent bay weaponry that will make you deadly combatant. Not only do Large Bays inflict a pounding at long range, but as a 100kton ship, you are immune to crits from ANYTHING except large bays and spinals. Weapons that can only really be carried by your colleagues (capitals)

A traditional Imperial BB (J4, 9G, Prot15) has a payload of around 14%. It will not have a useful spinal, or secondary large bays. At 200 kt with say 200 med miss bays and 1800 laser turrets it can't hurt itself with missiles. The traditional Battleship is not viable.


I think missile boats and fighters are competitive, but careful testing might prove me wrong. If so we are back to one competitive strategy...

I've personally made it my mission to make MGT2 one of those very very rare games (competitive or otherwise) that give you meaningful options, and versatility, WITHOUT making everything the same underlying system (like Hero system and so on). I think we're in great shape - and it is evident by what you've pointed out here

We agree on the goal. I'm not quite so optimistic about the outcome...

 

[Chas]

That is a very pertinent topic and well worth considering in depth. I think we need to keep in mind that these rules have yet to be actually play tested thoroughly and there will be bumps along the way. The problem too with this kind of rule set is that there will always be one optimum usage and the rest of the details provided become redundant - an example is the tachyon weapon, when you crunch the numbers and add in advantages it's basically never better than an advanced particle accelerator and what's the point of even including it.

Carriers are extremely vulnerable. As soon as they jump into a system, anywhere in the system, they are at Distant range to all enemies in the system. They must jump out or die, leaving their carried craft unsupported. This is a minor problem for fighters, who must be able to survive a few weeks without a base, making then bigger and more expensive. Fighters and Battle Riders will have no way to retreat, they must win or die.

This is something that needs to be considered in the larger rule set of the fleet battles and I'm sure can be adjusted to. I.e. when a fleet jumps into a system, where it is and how it is positioned in terms of the likely target and then what happens in terms of creating a wall of ships between it and its carriers will all be tactics that need refining.

To be continued...

 

[Chas]

Large battleships, I have made sure, are a force to be feared in this edition. Finally. Not only can you now carry a large spinal for a relatively small portion of your weight, you will be packing magnificent bay weaponry that will make you deadly combatant. Not only do Large Bays inflict a pounding at long range, but as a 100kton ship, you are immune to crits from ANYTHING except large bays and spinals. Weapons that can only really be carried by your colleagues (capitals)

A traditional Imperial BB (J4, 9G, Prot15) has a payload of around 14%. It will not have a useful spinal, or secondary large bays. At 200 kt with say 200 med miss bays and 1800 laser turrets it can't hurt itself with missiles. The traditional Battleship is not viable.

Not sure about what you're saying with this one AnotherDilbert.
Are you saying a ship can protect itself with PD laser turrets to the point it can't be damaged by missiles from another equal weight ship, if so that is a good thing - it forces a spinal battle, right?
Also not sure about what you mean about a 'useful' spinal. Any spinal is useful in the sense its damage output efficiency is far greater than any other weapon for the tonnage. Are you implying the enemy is constantly retreating without allowing you to come into long range, staying at very long themselves?

 

[Chas]

As a note here there is also another still to be completed weapons system in the tactical array and that is the ion trait. Hits from a barbette will take out all the power in a small fighter... the effect of this still to be announced.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Are you saying a ship can protect itself with PD laser turrets to the point it can't be damaged by missiles from another equal weight ship,

In my example 200 med missile bays can launch 4800 missiles and 1800 laser turrets can kill around 9000 missiles per round. No missiles will hit.

if so that is a good thing - it forces a spinal battle, right?

I would say it forces me to give up jump fuel for more missile bays.

Also not sure about what you mean about a 'useful' spinal. Any spinal is useful in the sense its damage output efficiency is far greater than any other weapon for the tonnage.

The example Imperial BB might have a 2DD meson spinal instead of the missile bays. With 80 000 structure it is not very afraid of a spinal doing 7 000 damage. Instead of the spinal it could have ~300 small meson bays doing roughly the same damage, but at up to Very Long range and denying the enemy the possibility to Dodge all my attacks. I haven't crunched the numbers for energy weapons.

Are you implying the enemy is constantly retreating without allowing you to come into close range?

Yes, if my fleet is using missiles and your fleet is using spinals, I have no reason to close the range so I will retreat enough to keep you at Very Long or Distant range.


I think I'm saying something like this: The threat of me having a lot missiles forces you to have good missile defenses (basically lots of laser turrets). You having good missile defenses forces me to have all missile armament or none, if I have just a few missiles you will always kill all of them.

 

[Nerhesi]

The missile bay needs to be in an armoured survivable warship, so more like 300 dt and 200 MCr. A 35 dt 80 MCr fighter with a single offensive weapon, single PD laser and sensor operator with signal processing will kill quite a few missiles, but obviously lose to cheaper fighters.

Not sure if you're agreeing or not here AnotherDilbert. The fighter can't conduct PD as far as I understand (as it is using a firm point), and the concern about where the missile bay is mounted is countered by where is the fighter "mounted"? So either

Spinals w reaction can't win against obvious strategy, and Spinals w/o reaction can't win against obvious strategy. I think we have just concluded that Spinal riders are not a competitive strategy.

No - you just concluded that in a kiting battle, anything without very-long range direct fire weapons is not a competitive strategy. This is not always the case and actually very rarely the case in strategic battles (where there is some static objective).

This is not failing of any weapon, this is the reality of the specific scenario you've created. Just like I can say that fighters will always win if you need to take a planet with 1 ship, because a carrier can continue to blind-side you until you're very close - otherwise you will never achieve a line of sight on your target.

A laser turret (~3 dt) will kill around 5 missiles. A PD Battery (~20 dt) will kill around 3D ≈ 10 missiles. I will not use PD batteries.

Completely your choice - but probably not the most strategically sound position given how they're both 1 hardpoint. And both, when compared to missile bays plus the cost of missiles, are a fraction of the cost. And also can be used to defend multiple ships with PD software.

I think missile boats and fighters are competitive, but careful testing might prove me wrong. If so we are back to one competitive strategy...
We agree on the goal. I'm not quite so optimistic about the outcome...

I think a significant factor we need to use here is the realistic requirements of needing to achieve something in space combat rather than have 2 fleets meets with the only objective of destroying one another. As we have seen from our experience in much wargaming and from the history of Traveller frontier wars and other conflicts, strategic resources, planets, etc.. are good ways to force closer engagements.

Otherwise AnotherDilbert, we're running into an age-old problem that plagues any gaming systems. If I'm faster and longer ranged, and nothing is constraining me.. I win! The eternal kite

 

[Chas]

Ah... you've actually brought up a couple of points there that have been referenced previously but have yet to be addressed...

Are you saying a ship can protect itself with PD laser turrets to the point it can't be damaged by missiles from another equal weight ship,

In my example 200 med missile bays can launch 4800 missiles and 1800 laser turrets can kill around 9000 missiles per round. No missiles will hit.

if so that is a good thing - it forces a spinal battle, right?

I would say it forces me to give up jump fuel for more missile bays.

I think I'm saying something like this: The threat of me having a lot missiles forces you to have good missile defenses (basically lots of laser turrets). You having good missile defenses forces me to have all missile armament or none, if I have just a few missiles you will always kill all of them

I don't think you can do this (TBC it's not straight forward and we're going to have to spend time here and get it right). Neither give up jump space nor focus all your weapons on missiles. If you're all missiles on turrets and then start including all bay missiles, it implies you've got no point defense yourself. Now as soon as you start using your bays for missiles then the opposition can start using PD for less weight than you're putting into bays. I need to double check the maths here, but the bay is putting out 12 missiles for 50 tons, the PD is destroying 10 of those missiles for 20 tons, the hard point equation comes into play. You could move up to medium bay for missiles but I think you run out of bay weight at medium bays before that starts moving the paradigm for the PD. The missile only attacker has put all their eggs in one basket - it's too risky. The opposition can destroy more missiles and have firepower left to destroy you (one spare bay of torpedoes will do it) that you can keep up with the missile overload attempt. You need a balanced approach, which works. However it could well be the PD is too heavy and this still needs to be adjusted for.


The issue with removing jump, is that the opposition can do it too. And then you get into the tonnage cycle that I've just noted.

However what is a major issue here, and something I'd brought up some time ago, is what happens a different TLs when your TL15 ship faces a TL13 ship, that simply by consequence of the natural limitations of its TL has a smaller Jump drive as standard. The advanced missile solves the conundrum for missiles, but hadn't for torpedoes with massed torpedo bays and this needs returning to. The advantages of TL for the jump doesn't compensate the space if you build Cr to Cr. The economic forces of what is 'too expensive' for the different Navies should be taken into account to balance for this. The Imperial Navy should be able to budget per ship far more than a sector Navy or older TL, something these rules just don't and probably can't attempt to account for. But that TL shift needs watching, how to fit more into the less space that Jump 4 has as a standard ship.

Are you implying the enemy is constantly retreating without allowing you to come into close range?

Yes, if my fleet is using missiles and your fleet is using spinals, I have no reason to close the range so I will retreat enough to keep you at Very Long or Distant range.

Yes, the sniper ship or Navy has been pointed out as a valid tactic and needs further consideration, like moving both spinal weapons up to very long range.

But in this scenario what happens when a ship is all PD and then a sniper large bay? Does that ship kill the all missile unit? Then that is good, we have a cycle of ships that can kill each other, which means there's no one good option. You can't put everything in one type of ship, you have to have some balance.

 

[Nerhesi]

I think the game, in terms of competitive scenarios, need to address infinite kiting gents. As I've stated in a couple of other posts as well - this is a problem in every game I've played. If you just say free-form fight it out, It always throws balance out of the window. Whomever is faster and can out-range the enemy simply wins.. no matter how inefficient or crappy the weapon is.

Traveller competitive scenarios need realistic objectives such planets, stations, pirate treasure hoardes of spanish gold, etc...

I think we also need a max range for Distant. Someone mentioned this before.. but it shouldn't be 50,000km to infinity (perhaps 200k km)

 

[Chas]

You just shouldn't be able to hit at distant, or not wanting this hard rule a very simple cap with the thrust of missiles and torps, you've only 1 turn left, that will never hit anything beyond x klicks, something that can be easily built into the fleet battle rules. Your long range missile can go further, it all makes sense.

 

[Nerhesi]

You just shouldn't be able to hit at distant, or not wanting this hard rule a very simple cap with the thrust of missiles and torps, you've only 1 turn left, that will never hit anything beyond x klicks, something that can be easily built into the fleet battle rules. Your long range missile can go further, it all makes sense.

That may solve a lot of things actually. I think you're on the right track bud.

Some sort of rule alteration for the Distant Range launches that either reduces chances, or makes EW super effective etc etc... Perhaps something as simple as "Missile Salvos (not Torps!) launched at distant range <<insert something that makes sense>> such that PD is doubled in effect"

You know the house-rule I always had.. it didn't make sense that people could hit fighters at very long range but not missiles or torpedoes. I simply assigned a -4 to hit missiles if you wanted to shoot at them at any range (not just point defense). I added this to any range penalties. Of course.. you'd have to keep track of where the missile salvo was..

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The fighter can't conduct PD as far as I understand (as it is using a firm point)

I do not see why not? I can mount a single laser turret on a firmpoint, that single laser turret is just the same as any shipborne single turret, so should be able to PD.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

A laser turret (~3 dt) will kill around 5 missiles. A PD Battery (~20 dt) will kill around 3D ≈ 10 missiles. I will not use PD batteries.

Completely your choice - but probably not the most strategically sound position given how they're both 1 hardpoint. And both, when compared to missile bays plus the cost of missiles, are a fraction of the cost. And also can be used to defend multiple ships with PD software.

I think I have to agree. Tweaking my example missile boat with PDBatteries doubles total PD effectiveness, making the ship more or less immune to missiles from a reasonable equal cost ship. Only multi-warhead missiles can get through PD, but will very rarely get through armour. At TL14+ only.

The PD Batteries are heavy enough to cost me almost half my offensive weaponry...

At TL13- the PDBatteries are still much worse than laser turrets.

 

[Chas]

The fighter can't conduct PD as far as I understand (as it is using a firm point)

I do not see why not? I can mount a single laser turret on a firmpoint, that single laser turret is just the same as any shipborne single turret, so should be able to PD.

I designed a 'heavy' torpedo bomber with a laser turret - according to my reading of the rules you could do it...

 

[AndrewW]

]I do not see why not? I can mount a single laser turret on a firmpoint, that single laser turret is just the same as any shipborne single turret, so should be able to PD.

Actually, it's not the same. A small craft weapon even mounted in a turret is treated the same as on a firmpoint in terms of the range restrictions and reduced power consumption.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Actually, it's not the same. A small craft weapon even mounted in a turret is treated the same as on a firmpoint in terms of the range restrictions and reduced power consumption.

Yes, sorry, of course. But that shouldn't matter for PD, right?

 

[Nerhesi]

Actually, it's not the same. A small craft weapon even mounted in a turret is treated the same as on a firmpoint in terms of the range restrictions and reduced power consumption.

Yes, sorry, of course. But that shouldn't matter for PD, right?

We need to be careful here as this area is open for interpretation. Point Defence in the core rules states: "Using a turret-mounted laser (beam or pulse), a gunner can destroy incoming missiles."
We can go back and forth all day on does "turret" mean spacecraft "turret" or can it also applies to firmpoint turret. Obviously without clarification I tend to err on the not-allowed in this case. Even though reading the firmpoint section you can take it the other way.

However, I think its best that we take a look at it from both the allowed not / allowed and see the impact. Because if we allow it (and therefore allow all spacecraft to mount 3 fixed points for 1 hardpoint), we simply have a better PD solution to missiles and torps.

So we know that at the maximum, of 24 missiles per hardpoint, we assumed an average of 5 missiles being removed by triple turret PD, perhaps 6 for above average gunners.
If we allow a firmpoint to be PD (on smallcraft and otherwise) then you lose your DM +2 to PD, for triple turret status. However, you gain 2 more "rolls" versus just one. Therefore, you have trade One 2D+5 roll for Three 2D+3 rolls.

Therefore:
Pros: 9 missiles per hardpoint instead of 5 (on average).
Cons: Reduced range of the offensive capability of such things.
Cons: Inability to defend others (at least at Short range, maybe even at close)

So it isn't too powerful (granted, it's twice as powerful as the normal pretty much).

That brings the ratio to 3:8 (9:24) of defense to offense for PD:Missiles vs the heaviest bays. It's up to 3:4 vs Medium bays.

So.. now I'm in favour - more options

 

[AnotherDilbert]

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.

 

[Chas]

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.

You can automate it rather than using a gunner.