HMS Dreadnought

[phavoc]

Here's an interesting article about the original arguments concerning gunnery mixes at the turn of the 20th century. There is some parallel here to Traveller, though the way hardpoints work it's not quite the same. And there aren't any splashes to worry about to determine range finding...

But if you haven't read about the arguments then, it might be interesting. There's also a book called Dreadnought by Robert Massie, concerning the building of Dreadnought. But unless you are VERY interested in the politics and familial issues behind England/German of the time, don't bother. Out of like 800 pgs, only one chapter is devoted to HMS Dreadnought.

The article can be found here - http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/dreadnought-the-super-battleship-changed-naval-warfare-19573

 

[Condottiere]

I always thought that removing the wing turrets would have given Fisher an intermediate dreadnought armoured cruiser with three double turrets of twelve inchers along the centreline.

 

[locarno24]

Interesting read.

There is some parallel here to Traveller, though the way hardpoints work it's not quite the same. And there aren't any splashes to worry about to determine range finding..

Traveller will never have exact parallels to naval warfare with the mechanics as we have them - it's a good start, but the metaphor always wears thin in some places.

- The ability to reliably aim a big gun was the real driver behind dreadnought working as a concept - a nineteenth century "First-Rate" battleship's forty-gun broadside was essentially a sawn-off loaded with buckshot compared to a dreadnought's three-round rifle burst; a better plan if you lack the ability to employ it effectively. Whilst I can only speak for 1st edition, hitting with starship weapons is not difficult - most of the time a gunner can expect to have a net positive DM - especially a military character of the kind you'd expect to be manning 'big guns'; once you add together a decent DEX (or INT, depending on your views), Gunnery/1 and so on, actually hitting is often a bit of a formality. Equally, the fact that a ship's ability to evade is the same whether it's a 1g kilo-dton Trader or a 12g Jester-class superiority fighter that's smaller than the weapon mount of a bay weapon is both ridiculous but also makes the idea of multi-barrelled "cloud of flak fire" weapons pointless.

- The big issue is penetrating damage. Battleships could take light cruiser weapon hits with very little risk, and traveller has the same issue - any warship (hell, even small craft) can rack up enough armour to ignore light weapons, so it's a case of "if a weapon won't go through 14-15 points of armour reliably it's pretty useless" - hence, barbette weapons and larger are the key choice. Again, part of this is an artefact of rules mechanics; plaster a real-life ship with enough (relatively) light weapons fire, and whilst you won't get through the citadel armour belt, you'll destroy gun mounts, sensor and comms systems, etc. You wouldn't stop a modern main battle tank with a 20mm cannon, but if you were able to spread several hundred rounds liberally across it, I'm pretty sure you'll break something it'd rather not have broken - a track, an aerial, a lense, a pintle-mount, that sort of thing. Traveller assuming a common armour value across the entire starship somewhat limits this possibility.

- There is no analogue to the torpedo - by which I mean that whilst there are big-ass missiles called "torpedoes", they don't have the same advantage that torps do over shells and surface-based missiles - namely hitting underwater and exploiting the physics of "being a ship that floats" - a starship doesn't 'sink'.

 

[phavoc]

Interesting read.

There is some parallel here to Traveller, though the way hardpoints work it's not quite the same. And there aren't any splashes to worry about to determine range finding..

Traveller will never have exact parallels to naval warfare with the mechanics as we have them - it's a good start, but the metaphor always wears thin in some places.

- The ability to reliably aim a big gun was the real driver behind dreadnought working as a concept - a nineteenth century "First-Rate" battleship's forty-gun broadside was essentially a sawn-off loaded with buckshot compared to a dreadnought's three-round rifle burst; a better plan if you lack the ability to employ it effectively. Whilst I can only speak for 1st edition, hitting with starship weapons is not difficult - most of the time a gunner can expect to have a net positive DM - especially a military character of the kind you'd expect to be manning 'big guns'; once you add together a decent DEX (or INT, depending on your views), Gunnery/1 and so on, actually hitting is often a bit of a formality. Equally, the fact that a ship's ability to evade is the same whether it's a 1g kilo-dton Trader or a 12g Jester-class superiority fighter that's smaller than the weapon mount of a bay weapon is both ridiculous but also makes the idea of multi-barrelled "cloud of flak fire" weapons pointless.

- The big issue is penetrating damage. Battleships could take light cruiser weapon hits with very little risk, and traveller has the same issue - any warship (hell, even small craft) can rack up enough armour to ignore light weapons, so it's a case of "if a weapon won't go through 14-15 points of armour reliably it's pretty useless" - hence, barbette weapons and larger are the key choice. Again, part of this is an artefact of rules mechanics; plaster a real-life ship with enough (relatively) light weapons fire, and whilst you won't get through the citadel armour belt, you'll destroy gun mounts, sensor and comms systems, etc. You wouldn't stop a modern main battle tank with a 20mm cannon, but if you were able to spread several hundred rounds liberally across it, I'm pretty sure you'll break something it'd rather not have broken - a track, an aerial, a lense, a pintle-mount, that sort of thing. Traveller assuming a common armour value across the entire starship somewhat limits this possibility.

- There is no analogue to the torpedo - by which I mean that whilst there are big-ass missiles called "torpedoes", they don't have the same advantage that torps do over shells and surface-based missiles - namely hitting underwater and exploiting the physics of "being a ship that floats" - a starship doesn't 'sink'.

All good points. It would be nice if Traveller had somewhat of the same process - A ship of X displacement can only mount X class armor. Or that smaller ships ability to maneuver was enhanced over large ships. Speed is one thing, but the agility of a 250,000 Dton battlecruiser should not be equivalent to that of a 1,000 Dton escort (and same goes for armor factors). This assumes, of course, they were designed for it in the first place.

Still I think there are some interesting parallels to be drawn. I've always considered Traveller to be similar to the early 20th century navies and civilian ships, at least tech wise. Otherwise I'd put Traveller somewhere in the 1700s, what with all the brigandage and how many merchants are armed.

 

[locarno24]

A ship of X displacement can only mount X class armor. Or that smaller ships ability to maneuver was enhanced over large ships. Speed is one thing, but the agility of a 250,000 Dton battlecruiser should not be equivalent to that of a 1,000 Dton escort (and same goes for armor factors). This assumes, of course, they were designed for it in the first place.

Exactly. Whilst I can accept that the size of a target is not specifically a major issue (when you can hit a ship at distant range, it's a sufficiently small target even if it's a big ship that its size doesn't really matter), but the effectiveness of evasive action must be proportional to both your size and acceleration.

A 300m long freighter that pulls 1G takes about 5s to accelerate out of the way (150m clear) of a shot aimed at where its existing velocity would place its centre of mass.
A 15m long fighter that pulls 10G takes a little over half a second to accelerate the 7.5 m to clear a similar shot - and trying to dodge by accelerating the length of a long, thin fighter is a 'worst case' situation.

In neither case can you dodge a shot "after it is fired", but a firing solution for the latter is going to require you to throw shots into a far larger volume (and the ship itself occupies a far smaller proportion of that volume) than for the freighter.

And yes, whilst I can get arguments that there are proportional effects, there is no way a medium fighter in the 30-odd dTon range can possibly carry armour which provides the same protection as the same TL of armour on a 20,000 dTon cruiser, if both are 'maxed out' to carry the greatest possible amount of armour. Whilst a TL limit on armour makes sense, a tonnage factor should really apply too.

Still I think there are some interesting parallels to be drawn. I've always considered Traveller to be similar to the early 20th century navies and civilian ships, at least tech wise.

Sounds about right. The nature of the rules seems to draw you inevitably towards 'big gun' armed ironclads.

 

[Condottiere]

I'd say that spinal mounts are as effective as torpedoes, being a single shot and not a salvo.

 

[simonh]

You don't need to limit armour on smaller craft, if you say that larger weapons inflict a certain minimum amount of damage irrespective of the armour on the target. That should 'discriminate' against smaller craft in the way that we want while also causing an attrition effect on larger ships so they can never get away completely unscathed.

Simon Hibbs

 

[phavoc]

You don't need to limit armour on smaller craft, if you say that larger weapons inflict a certain minimum amount of damage irrespective of the armour on the target. That should 'discriminate' against smaller craft in the way that we want while also causing an attrition effect on larger ships so they can never get away completely unscathed.

Simon Hibbs

As I see it there are two primary issues with armor - mass and structure. Armor has mass associated with it, and while MGT has never dealt with mass (just displacement tons) it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. More mass requires more energy to move it. And the bigger the ship the more mass it has by default. Both of those ideas relate to the concept that small craft aren't built to be armored like dreadnoughts - they shouldn't have the power to do so.

The second idea of structure has been missed by the game system since CT. Just putting slabs of armor on something doesn't mean it is useful. The energy of impact on the armor has to be safely channeled and absorbed by a well-thought out and designed superstructure. Without it your great big armor slabs will collapse as the underlying structure fails. What that translates into gaming ideas is that the bigger the ship and the heavier the armor, the more space that is required to properly design superstructure to allow for heavier armor. However Traveller has never tried to address that issue, even at it's most simplistic (limiting armor factor based upon size).

 

[Condottiere]

Armour isn't evenly distributed across a warship's superstructure, it tends to get concentrated where the designers believe it would be most vulnerable to damage.

The extreme case being the citadel concept, or all or nothing.

 

[phavoc]

Armour isn't evenly distributed across a warship's superstructure, it tends to get concentrated where the designers believe it would be most vulnerable to damage.

The extreme case being the citadel concept, or all or nothing.

Spacecraft aren't governed by the same ideals as water-borne warships. Ships may be engaged 360 degrees in space. I'm sure your neighborhood friendly fighter squadron would love to show warship designers the error of their ways for not applying proper armor with directed attacks. :twisted:

And it doesn't change the structural issue. Even if you allowed for armoring that way, those areas that had heavier armor still must have proper structural support to function.

 

[Condottiere]

Ship positioning and angling counts for a great deal in less modern naval combat.

If naval doctrine is to present an overwhelming force when engaging with the battle line, I probably wouldn't bother covering the fuel tanks with armour, except for the reserve.

That means the engineering, magazines, weapon systems and bridge.

If I can engage at long range, I'd also try to angle the battleship to present sloped armour to the primary enemy threat, which might not be able to increase the armour factor, though it should to anything short of mesons.

 

[phavoc]

Ship positioning and angling counts for a great deal in less modern naval combat.

If naval doctrine is to present an overwhelming force when engaging with the battle line, I probably wouldn't bother covering the fuel tanks with armour, except for the reserve.

That means the engineering, magazines, weapon systems and bridge.

If I can engage at long range, I'd also try to angle the battleship to present sloped armour to the primary enemy threat, which might not be able to increase the armour factor, though it should to anything short of mesons.

With the exception of missile systems (which under Traveller need not be bearing on the target to launch against), crossing the "T" doesn't have much merit. In the abstract combat it's of no value. Old HG used to have a batteries bearing, based upon ship size and configuration. Even spinal mounts have no firing arc.

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on how much you can manoeuvre in six minutes.

If the smaller weapon systems had a higher rate of fire, you'll see ship designers and navy tacticians have to take this into account.

The idea for ironclads and predreadnoughts doctrine was that quick firing guns can mess up the upperworks and put them on fire (always dangerous), that the range was close enough to launch torpedoes effectively, and a mixed calibre of capital sized guns didn't matter, since they were intended to be used in direct fire, mostly as a coup de grace.

 

[locarno24]

Exactly. Assuming a combat round of six minutes, even a fairly lethargic starship can bring any weapon to bear in any direction. I only ever called "arc of fire" into question when you were talking about fixed weapons (spinal mounts and fixed mounts) which could still be turned to fire in any direction, but would become essentially useless if the m-drive went down.

 

[Condottiere]

My current doctrine revolves keeping my expensive line of battle ships at long range, which means you'd need to both match the speed of the opposing battle line and keep enough in reserve to move the hull around.