Imperium capital ships of the 5FW - some thoughts

[Condottiere]

THAC0.

Seriously, you'd have to abstract a range of performance per factor.

 

[Nelphine]

Erm, the hg system seems simpler than what sigtrygg proposed and gives value to a skill? What am i missing?

 

[Nelphine]

Has anyone come up with a decent way to convert ships to having ATT/DEF numbers like you'd use in strategic wargames vs. having to care about all the different bays/etc?

The main problem here is the scale. Most wargames assume some kind of roughly comparable ships. Traveller has 10 ton ships up to 1 million+
Any values that work at one end are absurd to the point of useleas at the other.

 

[phavoc]

The main problem here is the scale. Most wargames assume some kind of roughly comparable ships. Traveller has 10 ton ships up to 1 million+
Any values that work at one end are absurd to the point of useleas at the other.

I'm assuming a larger ship would just scale up the ATT/DEF numbers, or some sort of tracker to keep track of damage.

At scale having one more missile battery vs a laser battery just kind of blends in.

 

[Nelphine]

Sure, but if you have a scale where 10 attack destroys 1 defense for a 10 ton ship, then in most wargames, that means either 20000 attack annihilates 19991 defense. Or if you say that it needs 20000 attack to destroy 2000 defense, then suddenly 12 attack doesnt wreck 3 defense.

In either case there are significant problems at one end or the other.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

We did try to do this on CotI recently, e.g.:
https://www.travellerrpg.com/index.php?threads/high-guard-1-5-1979-edition.43100/post-645023

The problem is that you get a logarithmic scale where more or less all fighters have factor 1 and battleships have factor 9. Most of the differences between ships are lost in the cracks.

Just use the counters from Imperium of FFW, or something similar?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I'm assuming a larger ship would just scale up the ATT/DEF numbers, or some sort of tracker to keep track of damage.

MgT HG Fleet Battle?

 

[collins355]

There is a system in T4 Imperial Squadrons that helps you do the FFW type counters and fight a strategic wargame on your choice of sector hexmap.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Something from many, many years ago.

Ships are rated as follows, a-a-a attack factors for spinal - bays - missiles, and d-d-d for armour-screens-point defence and jump number

Start with a TL9 and factors of 3-3-3/3-3-3 J1 for a BB. For heavy cruisers 2-2-2/2-2-2 J1, and other cruisers/escorts at 1-1-1/1-1-1 And then use the same TL based increases and points swapping mentioned earlier (based on HG80 breakpoints). You can lower one factor (including jump number) to increase one of the others, you can also reduce a factor by1 to gain 1 squadron of fighters.
Jump number above 3 comes with a cost - jump 4 you must reduce 2 factors, jump 5 costs you 4 factors, and jump 6 costs 6 factors.

For attack and defence factors there are several TL break points, above TL9 add 1 to the initial factor as follows..

Attack
+1 TL11
+2 TL13
+3 TL15
Defence
+1 TL10
+2 TL12
+3 TL14

Factors can also be reassigned to cover things like carrying battle riders, carrying fuel/drop tanks, carrying troops and their vehicles...

 

[RogerMc]

IIRC Power Projection from BITS did a pretty good job.

 

[collins355]

IIRC Power Projection from BITS did a pretty good job.

Yes, but it is a ship-vs-ship, squadron-vs-squadron system, not a simplified fleet combat grand strategy game. There is a "Strategic Game" in the back of PP:F but it is just Trillion Credit Squadron using the Power Projection rules and ships to resolve battles. It is not going to help you resolve fleet combat quickly using a few key stats like FFW or T4 Imperial Squadrons.