Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
According to the narrative, (minor) fast reaction force flagship.
Imperial Navy has a light cruiser in subsector response flotilla.
Imperial Navy has a light cruiser in subsector response flotilla.
Gionetti class Light Cruiser
- Thread starter mavikfelna
- Start date
mavikfelna
Emperor Mongoose
Ok, so I changed my assumptions. This is a light, fast task force leader so I kept the spinal but changed it to a particle beam, which is 1/3 the size. It's got the command bridge but I didn't add additional staterooms, but there are enough that officers doubling up mean you could have an admiral, in a high stateroom by himself, and 34 staff. If the ship being a raider instead of a taskforce leader then the officers have individual staterooms.
Gave it 6 armor. It's not nearly enough, but it's something and when acting as a fast raider it should be ok facing off with SDBs. Added armor to the M-drive, power plant, sensors and bridge.
In addition to the particle spinal, I removed the missile turrets and added 10 medium meson bays, 100 particle barbettes and 70 beam turrets. Raised the point defense batteries to 5, and sandcasters to 30 and added 20 torpedo interceptor turrets. Does anyone actually use torpedos?
Upped the nuclear dampers to 8 and the meson screens to 6.
Changed to hangers and gave it 500 tons total of space, so you could use a bunch of light fighters or have lots of cutter modules or whatever you want.
Cost is still high, but I think this is a better design for a light raider/squadron leader.
What do you think? Still to expensive? Can we make it better?
Gave it 6 armor. It's not nearly enough, but it's something and when acting as a fast raider it should be ok facing off with SDBs. Added armor to the M-drive, power plant, sensors and bridge.
In addition to the particle spinal, I removed the missile turrets and added 10 medium meson bays, 100 particle barbettes and 70 beam turrets. Raised the point defense batteries to 5, and sandcasters to 30 and added 20 torpedo interceptor turrets. Does anyone actually use torpedos?
Upped the nuclear dampers to 8 and the meson screens to 6.
Changed to hangers and gave it 500 tons total of space, so you could use a bunch of light fighters or have lots of cutter modules or whatever you want.
Cost is still high, but I think this is a better design for a light raider/squadron leader.
What do you think? Still to expensive? Can we make it better?
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
High Guard Twenty Sixteen has a command bridge for the Gionetti class.
Without getting into the weeds, the problem with the Gionetti might be that it was used as an example as to how much you can stuff into a thirty kilotonne hull, when a meson type jay was a kilotonne.
Without getting into the weeds, the problem with the Gionetti might be that it was used as an example as to how much you can stuff into a thirty kilotonne hull, when a meson type jay was a kilotonne.
I think you are on the right track here. Some other suggestions (not in the book, but hey, IMTU...):
Systems
Flag Bridge (Flotilla) - 50 Dtons 100MCr - Scaled for command and control of small groups of ships
Flag accommodations - 50 Dtons 25MCr - Includes accommodations for 6 senior staff, flag wardroom and other facilities reserved for senior staff.
NOTE - The flag bridge would get an armored bulkhead.
Marines - Seems too small of a complement for a 30k Dton ship. It would probably be more of a half-company (65-80) in order to have enough to actually do something. And i'd include a squad or even a platoon of battle-dress (24 is good number) - which means you need a morgue (30 tons at least) for their armor. I'd increase the armory size to fully 10 Dtons to store their arms and some heavier gear if they deployed planetside for something. You also want the marine detachment to have plenty of space for small arms, adequate ammunition and armor storage.
Airlocks - I think there are way too many, especially for a combat vessel. You'd want an adequate number, but not so many that you couldn't guard or secure all of them. Maybe a dozen per side, and half as many on the ventral/lateral portions. Military ships think far more about access than a civilian would.
Staterooms:
I'd give the Capt, XO, Chief Engineer, Marine leader, and maybe a couple of other officers their own single rooms (so Captains, and Commanders/Lt. Commanders). Lt's and Ensigns can share. Might also give 2-3 rooms to the senior non-coms since they kinda run the ship day-to-day.
Small Craft:
2 modular cutters, 2 pinnaces, 2 ships boats and 2 launches. 10Dtons extra, but gives you ability to equally spread small craft between 2 hangars. One (or both) of the pinnaces are equipped as marine boarding/assault vessels.
The question now becomes - where to find the tonnage for this? The Hangar is more than adequately sized to shave a few hundred tons off. You can still store the 260dtons of craft (520 is needed for hangars). Depending on things, you could make the modular cutters (and launches) conformal hangars for basic docking and play around with the hangar space a little. The pinnaces are meant for marines, so I'd keep them hangar-based. With some judicious designs you can prolly find the space there for the other changes, or at least a lot of it.
As far as a writeup, to not break canon, you could call this a Gionetti Mod3 - An updated class that the Imperium has designed and deployed after experiencing numerous shortcomings of the original design. You could leave Mod2 blank or come up with a different version, maybe the Mod2 leaves out the flag arrangements and concentrated more on missiles and carried a larger contingent of small craft or drones meant to be deployed in a system for scouting.
That's all I've got off top of my head though. I like the changes!
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
Quick comments:
The original is streamlined (cone), like a scout, not that it really matters.
Why Heat Shielding? Expensive for no real use case?
Reflec? Very expensive... Improved Stealth might be more useful against low-tech opponents?
Armoured bulkheads are not all that good... They are cheap, but take space. A bit of extra armour would be more useful?
Woefully inadequate fuel processor, it takes more than a week to refine one jumps worth of fuel. For transport you want to jump every week, not every other week. Refine the fuel in a day or so?
J-1 worth of Fuel/Cargo containers would give useful amount of cargo at J-4. Or perhaps even a module giving some mission specific capability? Ground assault?
Barracks only for passengers, such as troops, not crew... You could reduce common areas instead.
More SensOps, many more...
High Automation is very expensive, I would only use for the DM+2, basically for fighters or long range snipers, otherwise I would rather have two ships...
Consider range of weaponry, consider Long Range upgrade for lasers and mesons. The ship is slow (can't choose range) and weak at Very Long range.
Torpedo Interceptor Clusters are weak one-shot weapons that can't be reloaded. Not for this ship. EW, Lasers and PD batteries take care of reasonable amounts of missiles and torpedoes.
Beam lasers only good for PD, no use for Accurate. I would use Pulse lasers with Long Range, very effective against weak armour, decent range.
Meson bays are very good, if range limited.
Hangars still for specific craft, Docking Facilities are for any craft.
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
I would do something like this:
Downgrade the spinal to a heavy bay. Gives useful punch at Distant range, frees up lots of space. With so little armour, we don't really want to fight someone that can shoot back...
More meson bays with Long Range upgrade, great at Very Long range.
Pulse Lasers with Long Range upgrade, great at Very Long range against weak armour and missiles.
23 SensOps with a Sub-Command Centre to let them all work and get a DM+1.
No automation, much cheaper, so more hulls, so more space covered. Advanced would free up 500 Dt at a cost of GCr 10. Not really worth it, make the ship a little bigger instead?
No bulkheads.
Docking Spaces for four Cutters (hangar for one of them for maintenance).
Docking Facility for another 200 Dt of random small craft.
J-1 fuel in Fuel/Cargo Container, so an extra 2850 Dt cargo space if restricted to J-4.
Half the cost of your version, I'll rather take two of these?
Downgrade the spinal to a heavy bay. Gives useful punch at Distant range, frees up lots of space. With so little armour, we don't really want to fight someone that can shoot back...
More meson bays with Long Range upgrade, great at Very Long range.
Pulse Lasers with Long Range upgrade, great at Very Long range against weak armour and missiles.
23 SensOps with a Sub-Command Centre to let them all work and get a DM+1.
No automation, much cheaper, so more hulls, so more space covered. Advanced would free up 500 Dt at a cost of GCr 10. Not really worth it, make the ship a little bigger instead?
No bulkheads.
Docking Spaces for four Cutters (hangar for one of them for maintenance).
Docking Facility for another 200 Dt of random small craft.
J-1 fuel in Fuel/Cargo Container, so an extra 2850 Dt cargo space if restricted to J-4.
Half the cost of your version, I'll rather take two of these?
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
Agreed.
There is no such function in Traveller, in space.
No armour means dead victim, not an effective warship, so in CT, so in MgT2.
The Traveller system does not work that way.
Traveller 57th century starships are not 20th century wet ships.
That entirely depends on whether it works.
In CT meson spinals kills any ship, of any size, quite effectively. In MgT2'22, not so much.
That is the result of the rule systems for 57th century starships, not of how 20th century wet ships worked.
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
That is the "Command Bridge", a ship bridge and a flag bridge, divided into as many rooms as you wish.
mavikfelna
Emperor Mongoose
I've always assumed the extra airlocks on big ships were really internal bulkheads or sturdier hatchways to help compartmentalize the ship. So I just sort of default to maxing them out on most designs. But I don't design much over 2000 tons normally so it's not really a big issue.
Capt and Flag Officer have High staterooms, All officers have single staterooms. But I did put all the gunners and Maintenance in barracks with te marines.
I'll fiddle more and post it later.
mavikfelna
Emperor Mongoose
What is a sub-command center? Per the spreadsheet, I can't add more sensor stations onto a ship larger than 7.5k tons. Why no bulkheads? They don't take up much space and prevent the first crit, right?
I use fuel/cargo on all my merchant ships but does a military ship need extra cargo space?
And I would have made it a wedge design, but that's a streamlined configuration and I didn't think it was appropriate for a large ship, especially if you're going to put armor on it. The design in the book uses a standard hull configuration so that's what went with.
AndrewW
Emperor Mongoose
Armoured Bulkheads should be an option, though I've never used the spreadsheet can't say why they wouldn't be in there.
mavikfelna
Emperor Mongoose
They are on the spreadsheet. Dilbert was saying to remove them. Where are the rules for Sub-Command Centres? I have an Auxilliary Control Room and it can be a sub-command from the looks of it.
mavikfelna
Emperor Mongoose
Ok, What do you think of this now? Better? I think it's better, but I'm still learning here. This is a completely different craft than the book design but it better reflects the reality that is ship combat in MgT2e. I'm still unsure about armor, even going up to 15 seems to not be very effective with the firepower from a big ship. Against small ships 6 is pretty decent.
This is a completely different craft than the book design but it better reflects the reality that is ship combat in MgT2e. I'm still unsure about armor, even going up to 15 seems to not be very effective with the firepower from a big ship. Against small ships 6 is pretty decent. Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Imperium Navy practice has cruisers armed with spinal mounts, heavy or light.
Exception might be bombardment, and/or missile cruisers.
Exception might be bombardment, and/or missile cruisers.
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
Sub-Command Centres are from Element Class Cruisers.
It's a small bridge's worth of control dedicated to a specific function, giving a DM+1. It's not a command bridge.
I guess it gives "some" sensor operators space to work, and offloads the primary bridge.
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
They take up some space and you'll die from damage faster than from crits...
Saving some space could save some automation, halving the cost of the ship.
You had 400 Dt bulkheads in a ship so cramped it had crew in barracks (saving 200 Dt) and automation doubling the cost of the ship.
They reduce the Severity of all crits, don't stop them. They're a nice to have, not a must have.
Does the Navy need to move stuff around?
Does the Navy need to move stuff around in warzones, where transports are to vulnerable?
I'll have to admit it's a nice to have, not a need to have.
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AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
We are approaching as good as it's going to get.Ok, What do you think of this now? Better? I think it's better, but I'm still learning here.
Armour 6 is weak, a pulse laser turret can easily do 16+ damage with Effect, easily punching through and delivering 10+ damage per turret.
Armour 15 would reduce that to low single digit damage per turret. Containable.
Armour 30 would remove turrets from consideration.
A Particle barbette (4D), something a fighter can theoretically carry, can easily do 16+ damage with Effect, delivering 30+ damage through Armour 6. Armour 15 would reduce that significantly.
A large Particle bay (10D) does average 30 × 100 = 3 000 damage through armour 6, 20 × 100 = 2 000 damage through Armour 15, and 5 × 100 = 500 damage through Armour 30.
With 100 laser turrets, 140 barbettes, and 2 large bays, it could do 100 × 10 + 140 × 30 + 2 × 3000 = 11 200 damage to itself per round, killing itself in a round or two.
With Armour 15 it would be something like 100 × 3 + 140 × 6 + 2 × 2000 = 5 140 damage per round, half as much.
The large bay still punches through, but the turrets are severely weakened.
But this is a inaccurate statement that does not reflect reality. Ships are built for their mission and deployed sometimes per mission. Look at Cleveland and Atlanta class light cruisers. Cleveland was a larger, more heavily armed and armored cruiser with a normal mission capabilities. Atlanta was an AA escort. Two Atlantas were lost is surface combat in Guadacanal area because that wasn't their mission but they were there when the enemy came and had to fight. Destroyers were typically unarmored and everyone built them and used them as such - in very large numbers. Thats reality - ships are designed and built to one specification, but in war you dont always get to choose where and how to fight to your strengths and not your weaknesses.
Show me historical combat data, fleet tactics and after-acrion deployment reports from 57th century. Since the rest of the game logically extrapolates from human history its only logical the rest of it does. US Navy still teaches from Mahan even though ships aren't typically fleets of gun-armed vessels within visual range of an enemy. Its done because the basic requirement for some of those ideas still exists. China has adopted some of the same principles advocated by Mahan because they are still valid.
The problem with blindly repeating Traveller isn't wet navy viewpoint is that we get the same thing we got when the computer program was written to win high guard tournaments - it was not at all a reflection of reality (or even the game), but it won every time due to rule exploits.
it's also another example of how Traveller rules are logically inconsistent within the gaming system. If meson kills are so easy then no one would build larger ships. The same thought process came about with real torpedoes, yet everyone still built battleships and larger ships in order to support larger gun platforms. Because battleships were still king of the seas. And nations thought they needed them in order to have/project naval power. Thats a human thing that one still should account for.
Traveller isnt wet navy, that much we agree on. But my arguments are consistently based on what we know through thousands of years of experience and history. If your premise is correct, then everyone would build meson spinal as soon as they could as the ultimate weapon. Why isnt every ship a small meson spinal armed combatant with maxed out meson screens? And why aren't there more effective meson defenses if they are the torpedoes of the 57th century? Or else why aren't there more black globe equipped ships to offset meson effectiveness?
I think those answers are because the game wasn't architected by war game designers who take such things into account because that's how things really work - every offense gets a defense as soon as practical, or before it exists. Thats how warfare works. In BC, AD or 57th century.
I think we all agree that some of the designs are real head scratchers, as are some of the systems. When taken individually they are ok, but when taken together as a system they begin to show logical anomalies. Its human tech and human logic. So while they may be spiffy, they are still understandable to us humans today. We dont use pilums or short swords today, but soldiers understand their application. Stargate had an episode that argues the other way - the asgard had advanced so far that they could not think in terms of guns and bullets to fight replicators. They needed less advanced humans to think that way. Though oddly they did not take the idea and make gauss weapons for humans. That would have been logical to eliminate the ammo problem. But that's tv for you.
TL
R - Traveller isnt wet navy, we agree there. But you are arguing a flat comparison and I'm arguing concepts, tactics and design. Two fundamentally different paths. We can agree to disagree and move forward.Thats not how they work. They should be considered entirely separate systems because they have two different functions and a ship is not controlled by a flag bridge - fleets are controlled by the flag bridge. A ships bridge is for the captain and crew of that ship to fight their ship, individually or as part of a fleet. There would be no controls or ship system repeaters. There would be workstations for fleet management, holo tanks to display the battle, things to show information a fleet commander needs to C3 a fleet.
HG should reflect this if its going to talk about them. And if you have one you need all the ancillary things that go with it - separate berthing, mess, meeting rooms, command facilities, even communications (though not sensors).
