Fleet Battles: Where?

[Infojunky]

Consider this, if Close Range is 8 Light Seconds, it puts the entire Earth Moon system and 100 diameter limit within close range of a fleet sitting in orbit.

But, in Trav that isn't Close range. So, that isn't an answer to my question.

Ah, but in several of the rules sets it is.... And a lot of the arguments within this thread have referenced ideas and tactics that sprang from those rules. And as MgT doesn't have a functional fleet combat system one needs to look farther afield.

 

[Sevain]

3) stage two is continue to harass auxillary vessels while ignoring major combatants. Other SDB's would defend planetary targets and assist with defense forces. It makes mention of ships stationed in gas giants to attack refueling enemies. To quote the article, "The boats station deep with the gas giant lie in ambush waiting for ships to refuel; they are most vulnerable then, and a large percentage of casualties are inflicted on the enemy during fueling operations." Again, much is alluded to here, but never an explanation of why, or how a 10,000 ton ship needs to fear a 400 ton SDB (even a half dozen of them) while refueling. The ship should have more than enough firepower to swat them from the sky.

Operating in a gas giant is difficult due to the heavy gravity. If you look at the expanded movement section of High Guard you notice that you need to expend up to 2,5 points of Thrust to keep yourself from falling into the giant. That would leave a military ship with 6 Thrust only 3 Thrust for manoeuvring and dodging. We do know that even Thrust 1 ships can refuel at a gas giant, but that requires a pilot check which implies a specific orbit that is probably quite predictable. While you are refuelling your ability to disengage or manoeuvre is limited.

Why would you limit yourself to a 400 ton SDB? Build a 5 000 ton craft, give it airfins, high thrust, fuel scoop and say 6 month's supplies. Your defender now lie in wait for quite a long time. Then give it a stealth hull and long range meson weapons to maximize the odds of it surprising the enemy tankers. Build a second ship of similar design, but have that ship climb up on the other side of the giant to cut off any tankers attempting to flee upwards. You have committed 10 000 tons of ship to the gas giant's defence, but your enemy probably has to commit 20 000 tons of warship to match your firepower. Even then you can still give battle, since you do have a place to retreat to.

Even if the system falls your presence still forces the enemy to commit a significant force to guard any refuelling operations at the gas giant. Even if you have been destroyed your enemy will want to commit that force, since it is very difficult to know if all the boats in the gas giant have been eliminated.

 

[phavoc]

Operating in a gas giant is difficult due to the heavy gravity. If you look at the expanded movement section of High Guard you notice that you need to expend up to 2,5 points of Thrust to keep yourself from falling into the giant. That would leave a military ship with 6 Thrust only 3 Thrust for manoeuvring and dodging. We do know that even Thrust 1 ships can refuel at a gas giant, but that requires a pilot check which implies a specific orbit that is probably quite predictable. While you are refuelling your ability to disengage or manoeuvre is limited.

There is an expanded space combat section, and an alternate movement section. So just to be clear you are referring to the alternate movement section right? The alternate rules take into account vector movement, and in the case you are using (and using the example given in the book), a ships vector would be altered slightly closer to the gas giant based on straight-line maneuving. Any ship in the atmosphere of a gas giant pays the exact same penalty, so in many instances the issue would offset itself. Plus unless the SDB is configured for atmosphere work it's not necessarily going to be more maneuverable than the ship refueling.

If you are talking about a decently sized, and armed ship, it would use barrage tactics against SDB's attacking. And even though they are armored, they have no screen protections and would be decimated by meson, nuclear and particle-accelerator damage that their armor can't help them with. Firing nuclear weapons in return might not be as effective, as larger ships tend to be the ones with expensive screens.

Where SDB's might excel is attacking tankers, or freighters. While the JTAS article acknowledged that, it also stated that much of the initial damage to a fleet taken by an attacker is the result of their ships being attacked while attempting to refuel. Which implies NOT auxillary ships being attacked, but mainline warships.

Why would you limit yourself to a 400 ton SDB? Build a 5 000 ton craft, give it airfins, high thrust, fuel scoop and say 6 month's supplies. Your defender now lie in wait for quite a long time. Then give it a stealth hull and long range meson weapons to maximize the odds of it surprising the enemy tankers. Build a second ship of similar design, but have that ship climb up on the other side of the giant to cut off any tankers attempting to flee upwards. You have committed 10 000 tons of ship to the gas giant's defence, but your enemy probably has to commit 20 000 tons of warship to match your firepower. Even then you can still give battle, since you do have a place to retreat to.

You aren't limited. The Dragon class SDB is supposedly the most popular one out there, and it's 400tons. You could build larger ships, no doubt about it. Bigger non-jump capable ships are getting into the battle-rider configuration too.

The issue with that is the money spent on a 5,000 ton SDB might be better spent on a dozen 400 ton SDB's. A single ship can only be in a single place. A dozen ships can be in port, under repair, patrolling around your primary planet, patrolling the system, or lurking deep in a gas giant waiting. And all that done simultaneously. The 5,000 ton ship cannot - it must choose which action it's going to be in and abandon the others.

The other thing is that gas giants are H-U-G-E. Trying to zip around the planet to cut off a fleeing ship is kind of improbable, if not impossible. It still takes time to circumnavigate, and the fleeing ships gets to go 'up' in a straight line. And, depending on just how 'deep' the SDB is in the atmosphere, it has to follow in-atmosphere flight rules rather than vacuum space ones. Speeds are reduced because of atmospheric pressure. If the ship comes up it may be vulnerable to High-guard fire, and thus lose the protection of lurking.

Even if the system falls your presence still forces the enemy to commit a significant force to guard any refuelling operations at the gas giant. Even if you have been destroyed your enemy will want to commit that force, since it is very difficult to know if all the boats in the gas giant have been eliminated.

Yes, that's one of the reasons that SDB's are worrisome to an attacker. They are meant to be able to stooge around for long periods after an attacker may have seized the primary world, performing recon, raiding and even some strike missions. Hidden bases in the outer system, Oort cloud or asteroids allow them to refuel and re-supply. The one problem that ones hanging in a gas giant would be that they'd need to leave for supplies (fuel's there for the taking). I suppose it's quite possible to build grav supply platforms that could be accessed that carry supplies and are hidden as deep down as their design allows to prevent being crushed by pressure.

 

[Condottiere]

And for some reason, only smallcraft upto sixty tons can exceed six gees in acceleration, which means they're more manoeuvrable in that soup.

 

[phavoc]

I have been watching this conversation to and fro, for a whiles now. And not one of y'all has mentioned ore considered the Engagement Envelope. Looking at the breath of Traveller for examples I find that Fleet rules tend to have a Envelope that is multiple Light Seconds across, while smaller ships tend to have a envelope of a around a light second.

That is a possible tactical deployment model. What are its strengths and weaknesses vs. many other possible deployment models?

Consider this, if Close Range is 8 Light Seconds, it puts the entire Earth Moon system and 100 diameter limit within close range of a fleet sitting in orbit.

Close range in the CRB is defined as 1-10km. Short is 10km up to 1,250km. Light travels about 300,000km in one second. For your definition of close range (8 light seconds), that's 2.4 MILLION kilometers. That definitely falls within the Distant range band.

To put that in further perspective, it's 400,000KM from the surface of the earth to the moon. And to travel the distance of 8 light seconds, using a 1G ship, is about 800 minutes (13hrs). Assuming you had a 6G ship, you could cut down the transit time to 326 minutes (5.4hrs). I used the tables in CRB for those numbers.

100D from earth is 1.27million KM, so it takes a 1G ship about 7hrs to reach the limit. Yeah, it puts a defender's fleet within range of anything income, but it's not like you can pop up and hit them before they get to battle stations. But, in stellar terms, 100D is pretty close.

 

[phavoc]

And for some reason, only smallcraft upto sixty tons can exceed six gees in acceleration, which means they're more manoeuvrable in that soup.

A flight of 30ton fighters equipped with fusion beams could zip in at 16G's (I haven't tried to squeeze one in though). At 40tons you could put particle accelerators on them, but the speed drops to 12G max.

Small fighters with the proper weapons might be even more deadly to refueling ships than an SDB. The only problem is how you base them. A carrier, a mobile platform (i.e. carrier without movement), or a station.

 

[F33D]

Why would you limit yourself to a 400 ton SDB? Build a 5 000 ton craft, give it airfins, high thrust, fuel scoop and say 6 month's supplies. Your defender now lie in wait for quite a long time. Then give it a stealth hull and long range meson weapons to maximize the odds of it surprising the enemy tankers. Build a second ship of similar design, but have that ship climb up on the other side of the giant to cut off any tankers attempting to flee upwards. You have committed 10 000 tons of ship to the gas giant's defence, but your enemy probably has to commit 20 000 tons of warship to match your firepower. Even then you can still give battle, since you do have a place to retreat to.

Even if the system falls your presence still forces the enemy to commit a significant force to guard any refuelling operations at the gas giant. Even if you have been destroyed your enemy will want to commit that force, since it is very difficult to know if all the boats in the gas giant have been eliminated.

Your points are completely valid. The long and short of it is, all else being some what equal, you need a much larger space ship force than the system's defenders have. Otherwise, you WILL fail and be either quickly driven out of system or destroyed.

 

[Jame Rowe]

I would think that most fleets would be organized vertically in order to maximize coverage.

 

[Infojunky]

Close range in the CRB is defined as 1-10km. Short is 10km up to 1,250km. Light travels about 300,000km in one second. For your definition of close range (8 light seconds), that's 2.4 MILLION kilometers. That definitely falls within the Distant range band.

Ah, but the TMB doesn't have any fleet mechanics, as such. As such I looked at the entirety of what is Traveller for fleet rules. And with that selection process many of the rules significant portions of a Light Second as a Increment (Also note with a related significant increase of turn length).

To put that in further perspective, it's 400,000KM from the surface of the earth to the moon. And to travel the distance of 8 light seconds, using a 1G ship, is about 800 minutes (13hrs). Assuming you had a 6G ship, you could cut down the transit time to 326 minutes (5.4hrs). I used the tables in CRB for those numbers.

Ok, that is approx 210 minutes to get to moon with a dead stop at the end. About hour shorter flying by. But that really isn't the consideration here, since we are talking about naval battles which by their nature take a long time.....

100D from earth is 1.27million KM, so it takes a 1G ship about 7hrs to reach the limit. Yeah, it puts a defender's fleet within range of anything income, but it's not like you can pop up and hit them before they get to battle stations. But, in stellar terms, 100D is pretty close.

4 some-odd hours without a Turnaround, 6 and change with. So the numbers aren't out of reason for fleet engagement ranges. Remember Traveller Fleet engagements are modeled off of Jutland for the big ships and have a similar timing. Whereas the ship combat sim in the TMB like the one in CT's basic LBBs is some cross between Age of steam and Modern Naval engagements (i.e. the Missile is King).

But mostly I am talking about scale, the Big ship universe operates differently from the small ship universe. Mostly with the change in scale of their weapons.

 

[Jame Rowe]

I would think that most fleets would be organized vertically in order to maximize coverage.

That is to say, they're organized "vertically" compared to the enemy, sort of like in the "wall" formation from the Honor Harrington series.

 

[F33D]

I would think that most fleets would be organized vertically in order to maximize coverage.

That is to say, they're organized "vertically" compared to the enemy, sort of like in the "wall" formation from the Honor Harrington series.

As far as maximum # of weapons to bear. You can't make a "wall" in space. There is too much of it [space] to do so.

 

[Condottiere]

You'd want the ships to be close enough together to support each other in defence, and mass coordinated fire on the offence.

As regards to gas giant refuelling, ships in High Guard can fire into the soup once the ships in Low Guard have pinpointed any SDBs lurking there, the point being to disrupt any attack runs against the ships in skimming mode, as much as to actual hit them.

 

[phavoc]

I would think that most fleets would be organized vertically in order to maximize coverage.

That is to say, they're organized "vertically" compared to the enemy, sort of like in the "wall" formation from the Honor Harrington series.

The HH universe used broadsides as the baseline for the bulk of their weapon systems that could be brought to bear. Traveller uses overall Dtons to determine the number of weapons that can be brought to bear. Most combat, I assume would be of fleets heading towards one another, or possibly a pursuit-style combat. The HH universe is also far more friendly to missiles than Traveller, giving them very long ranges (if I recall correctly effective graser range was about 1million KM, powered missile envelope was about 13m KM, which was later vastly increased (and decreased with more effective countermeasures and ECM).

So how you organize your fleet doesn't have any effect on Traveller combat, just the tonnage of the ship in how many weapons can be brought to bear.

The thing about organizing ships in a wall means your lighter escorts would be just as exposed to heavy fire from their heavies (and vice-versa). You want your escorts to deal with the trash and the other guys escorts. Trav heavy combatants have a weapons mix similar to that of WW1 ships where they had the big guns to fight the other guys big ships, and then secondary and tertiary armament to engage smaller targets at different ranges. Unlike WW1 warships though, if you happen to be duking it out with half of your batteries bearing you can continue to roll your ship to bring undamaged sections to bear.

There is no 'T' in Traveller to cross.

 

[Condottiere]

The idea came to me when I was reading one of the Lensmen sequels, heavily armour and place defensive systems on one side of the ship, and the long range weaponry on the other.

Not that the author actually did that, but the description of the fleet tactics was the inspiration.

 

[locarno24]

The HH universe used broadsides as the baseline for the bulk of their weapon systems that could be brought to bear. Traveller uses overall Dtons to determine the number of weapons that can be brought to bear. Most combat, I assume would be of fleets heading towards one another, or possibly a pursuit-style combat. The HH universe is also far more friendly to missiles than Traveller, giving them very long ranges (if I recall correctly effective graser range was about 1million KM, powered missile envelope was about 13m KM, which was later vastly increased (and decreased with more effective countermeasures and ECM).

That's mostly driven by the accelerations possible (hundreds of G for ships and even thousands of G for missiles) and the long range of gravetics, giving FTL sensor capability. Without that, energy weapons become much more important.

The rules don't specifically discuss formations - largely because they originate with one or two ships exchanging pot-shots with twin pulse laser turrets, and everything else is a bolt-on.

The whole 'wall of battle' thing depends. It's a 3D extension of the line of battle, which is good if your main concern is presenting your guns unobscured in a single direction. However, unlike HH ships, there's no need to keep big gaps between ships and clear one another's wedges. Equally, missiles and fighters are a 'thing' in the traveller universe (although the 'light fighter' is a joke you can gun it up to something much more serious quite easily by fitting better energy weapons and fire control), so placing ships in a mutually supporting shell for interlocking point defence also makes sense.

 

[phavoc]

That's mostly driven by the accelerations possible (hundreds of G for ships and even thousands of G for missiles) and the long range of gravetics, giving FTL sensor capability. Without that, energy weapons become much more important.

The rules don't specifically discuss formations - largely because they originate with one or two ships exchanging pot-shots with twin pulse laser turrets, and everything else is a bolt-on.

The whole 'wall of battle' thing depends. It's a 3D extension of the line of battle, which is good if your main concern is presenting your guns unobscured in a single direction. However, unlike HH ships, there's no need to keep big gaps between ships and clear one another's wedges. Equally, missiles and fighters are a 'thing' in the traveller universe (although the 'light fighter' is a joke you can gun it up to something much more serious quite easily by fitting better energy weapons and fire control), so placing ships in a mutually supporting shell for interlocking point defence also makes sense.

Conceptually it doesn't matter if you have a wall or not in Traveller. Combat turns are 6 minutes long and weapons that can be brought to bear has no correlation to direction of travel, or fire arcs. The only limitation is your tonnage.

As far as supporting other vessels goes, that too is an amorphous concept. So long as you are in the same range band your fire is equivalent to the ship next to you, or the one behind you, or the one 10 ships behind you.

There's nothing wrong with the idea behind it, but the game mechanics don't care. The combat system would need to be changed in order to fully accommodate things like formations, weapon arcs, etc.

 

[Condottiere]

Finally some use for Fleet Tactics.

Though fleet formations are meant to optimize the number of weapon system that can bear on target, not really necessary here, or as part of an overall defensive screen layered in depth, which is viable.

 

[F33D]

Finally some use for Fleet Tactics.

Though fleet formations are meant to optimize the number of weapon system that can bear on target, not really necessary here, or as part of an overall defensive screen layered in depth, which is viable.

With a round being minutes long all weapons on a ship can bear. There is no defense screening except for distance (unless you put a small ship RIGHT next to a large ship with the large ship between it and one ship firing on it).

 

[Condottiere]

Some ships might be specialized as anti-smallcraft and anti-missile platforms, and the objective of the opposing forces might be to take out those that aren't.

 

[F33D]

Some ships might be specialized as anti-smallcraft and anti-missile platforms, and the objective of the opposing forces might be to take out those that aren't.

Sure. I could see that given a missile flight path having to go past such ships to reach the ones behind. Wouldn't work well vs. small craft as they can simply circumvent as they don't have the limited thrust of a missile.