Merchants weapons

[swordtart]

No where in the rules does it say pebble rounds can only be used vs boarders in fact the fact that we do have a scale says just the opposite it’s just very hard to do enough damage to have any effect.

HG2022 only gives a damage for pebble rounds with reference to boarders. It doesn't specify what damage it does to anything else (and it gives no damage for normal sand rounds).

I don't have access to the earlier MGT2 versions, but MGT1 had different rules.

 

[tytalan]

HG2022 only gives a damage for pebble rounds with reference to boarders. It doesn't specify what damage it does to anything else (and it gives no damage for normal sand rounds).

I don't have access to the earlier MGT2 versions, but MGT1 had different rules.

The rule doesn’t specify says it can only target boarders its list a damage vs boarders. Saying it can’t target a ship is an assumption because the rules do say that “ This is designed as a basic offensive round for a sandcaster. When targeting boarders, pebble canisters cause 1DD damage (Ground scale). They do not provide protection against laser, energy or particle weapons.” While the CRB is written very differently and does say it can only target boarders its” Sand may also be directed against incoming boarding parties. If the Gunner (turret) check is successful, each target in the boarding party suffers 8D point of damage at Ground scale (so do not multiply it).” You can interpret it how ever you want but as been pointed out if Pebble can’t target ships it makes no sense to even have the round.

 

[swordtart]

The rule doesn’t specify says it can only target boarders its list a damage vs boarders. Saying it can’t target a ship is an assumption because the rules do say that “ This is designed as a basic offensive round for a sandcaster. When targeting boarders, pebble canisters cause 1DD damage (Ground scale). They do not provide protection against laser, energy or particle weapons.” While the CRB is written very differently and does say it can only target boarders its” Sand may also be directed against incoming boarding parties. If the Gunner (turret) check is successful, each target in the boarding party suffers 8D point of damage at Ground scale (so do not multiply it).” You can interpret it how ever you want but as been pointed out if Pebble can’t target ships it makes no sense to even have the round.

Yes, my post referenced where I originally quoted the HG2022 words that also provides the reference in CRB.

Since no damage is specified against non-boarders then my reading would be that it does none. Pebble rounds do 1D*10 damage against boarders. That is potentially more useful than 8D6 as it changes the probability curve (Min damage is 10 vs 8, average damage is 30 vs 24 and max damage is 60 vs 48). It is statistically more damaging at the cost of being single purpose for exactly the same cost. That seems advantage enough.

If you want to build a space shotgun then I would say that point defence batteries are much more credible base since they are specifically designed to physically damage missiles not just flesh bags. I wouldn't allow it though

 

[rinku]

As I pointed out earlier, the precedent of personal armour being doubled vs personal scale shotgun pellets is probably enough of a justification that ship hulls can ignore sand and pebble damage. As spacefaring hulls, they ARE built to cope with micro collisions and thick enough to stop 500 rads, even if they don't have a rated space combat armour value.

I think the vehicle combat rule that vehicles add their TL in bonus (ground scale) armour vs ground scale weapons under 4D definitely applies to ships. But as they are x10 scale and an unarmourd starship is much tougher than an unarmoured air/raft, maybe apply that to ALL ground scale weapons?

 

[Condottiere]

Depends a great deal as to how thick a given spacecraft's hull actually is.

Since it is one dice of damage for pebbles, that would have as much potential to penetrate a hull as a beam laser.

The problem with utilizing point defence in the role of anti spacecraft weapons, is that we don't have enough details to ascertain actual damage, nor range.

 

[rinku]

Depends a great deal as to how thick a given spacecraft's hull actually is.

Since it is one dice of damage for pebbles, that would have as much potential to penetrate a hull as a beam laser.

The problem with utilizing point defence in the role of anti spacecraft weapons, is that we don't have enough details to ascertain actual damage, nor range.

But 4D shot has the same effect on armour as a 2D laser would. It's not just the raw damage here.

I do think it's in the territory of "I've run out of other options. This is technically possible and may do something if luck goes my way". So there's less need for a hard and fast rule - Referee's judgement call on the spot based on the specific circumstances will do. IMHO.

 

[Condottiere]

Never enough time as getting out to the 100D limit can take days.

Transit Times
Distance (km) 1G
10,000,000 17.6 hours

And this is the reason I find a chase at close range to be highly unlikely. The big ship stands off and threatens the target with ranged destruction. Once they "heave to" (shut down the drives) then they can send across a small craft with boarders to off-load some cargo. If the target opens fire on the small craft then the small craft does its best to escape while the mothership punishes the target.

Options include surrendering immediately upon receiving the ultimatum.

However, if you go the honey badger gambit, the target changes direction, closes the range to dogfight, and empties it's magazines.

Big ships don't dogfight. Small craft should not have energy weapons.

Well, smallcraft installed energy based weapon systems have lower power requirements, and castrated ranges.

Dogfighting also hasn't really been thought out as runs contrary to every small craft that is fitted with an energy weapon. Small craft have fixed points, max range for fixed points is Close and at Close you are dogfighting. No small craft in any of the books is capable of firing an energy weapon for more than a couple of shots as they don't have big enough plants and don't have batteries.

I can't say I don't find the dogfight rules questionable, but they're currently canon.

Dogfighting needs completely rewriting as it is nonsense (sorry Mongoose).

So the logical conclusion from your point is that anyone who puts themselves in that position is at a massive disadvantage. Why would any pirate do so?

Most of it is likely inertia and legacy.

It should be noted however that a small craft can have any number of smaller weapons that can be operated from fixed mounts that don't consume firm points or power. If your pirate is closing to board having a number of vehicle or personal weapons facing forward wouldn't be much of a problem. A medium Gauss Canon would only use 1 Dton, does 1DD, has AP10(AP1 ship scale and double that with AP rounds), Auto 3 and has a magazine of 200 rounds. It has an extreme range of 8km, so it is plenty capable for dogfighting.

Remember when dogfighting you use the vehicle combat rules, not the spaceship combat rules. I find it too difficult to resolve it consistently and frankly I have been forced to ignore it. With more work you might be able to make it make sense (for example if you fit only ground scale weapons), but as they stand they just don't work and any conclusions you draw from them are inconsistent with the rest of the game, the example ships and the settings.

It's rather vague on the actual implementation of groundscale weapon installation, so certain leeway has to be afforded.

The way I could interpret it, is to install four quarter tonne weapon systems into a single one tonne turret.

How much could I stuff into a seven tonne, probably five tonnes usable, barbette?

Range is somewhat iffy, considering microgravity vacuum environment.

 

[tytalan]

Since no damage is specified against non-boarders then my reading would be that it does none. Pebble rounds do 1D*10 damage against boarders. That is potentially more useful than 8D6 as it changes the probability curve (Min damage is 10 vs 8, average damage is 30 vs 24 and max damage is 60 vs 48). It is statistically more damaging at the cost of being single purpose for exactly the same cost. That seems advantage enough.

No where near enough to justify the loss of being able to be used to defend against lasers and statically your actual more likely to do less damage with pebble vs sand plus it is literally described as offensive. It a matter of interpretation it calls pebble an offensive where it doesn’t say so for sand.

 

[rinku]

Well, given that you can change cannisters in a few minutes, it's not totally a matter of "can't use it vs this or that". Less a binary choice made before the fight and more of a weapon change during it.

Clearly the default is Sand, but if they're not shooting lasers at you and are intending to board, you may want to spend a space combat turn switching to Pebble cannisters.

 

[Vormaerin]

Right, because you probably have a big stack of them in the hallway beside the turret and not down in the cargo hold. But, yes, I am aware that turrets contain extradimensional spaces. Which is why a triple turret can hold 12 missiles, 20 canisters of sand, and the fire control station all in 1 dton. Even though all three of those things are a dton each.

 

[rinku]

Well, unlike a laser most of an ordnance turret is magazine, not weapon. If the missiles or cannisters are in cargo, they need extra stuff like crates to stop them rolling around the floor and so on, I guess.

But if you want to increase the amount of missiles that can be stored per dTon, by all means do so.

 

[Vormaerin]

Sure, if you want to say some of your 20 canisters are some other type, that's fine. But a merchant ship isn't going to have a different type of ammo just around to swap out beyond the original 20.

Also, my point was that if you have a traditional Beam-Missile-Sandcaster turret you mysteriously get the same amount of missiles and sand canisters in your magazine as if you have a triple missile or Triple sandcaster turret.

 

[Arkathan]

The mystery is less that you get twelve missiles for any size turret, but that you can get twelve missiles and twenty sand cannisters in a double or triple turret at the same time.

 

[phavoc]

Historically Q-ships were simply armed merchantmen (armed liners were called AMC, or armed merchant cruisers) meant to lure in and deal with U-boats. They weren't armored like a warship, though some took on wood or other floation-friendly cargo's in order to be able to take a torpedo hit and stay afloat in order to engage a U-boat. They were marginally successful in WW1, but less so in WW2. Success for both q-ships and armed merchant cruisers pretty much relied upon surprise.

There is a series of fictional books called the Oregon Files written by Cussler and other authors that has a more modern-take on a Q-ship. It's armed with SAM's, cruise missiles, torpedoes and cannon. Somewhat armored, but essentially a q-ship that relies upon surprise to eliminate opponents.

Just how successful a sci-fi Q-ship might be is debatable. Unless you are building a heavily armored ship, surprise is it's best weapon. Allowing a true warship to close and engaging first with weapons that give little warning would be the q-ships best advantage. Traveller is a bit different in that a lot of the ships in the game show the warships to be the largest ones, whereas after WW2 (and in some sci-fi, like the HH series) warships are powerful but mostly shrimps when comparing displacements with merchants. It's only the fact that warships are armed and most merchants are not allows the far smaller ship to rule over the larger ones.

In Traveller, since most of the adventure class ships are about the same size as the warships (and a merchant can mount as many weapons as a warship of it's same size), using real historical operational data for comparison doesn't really help with extrapolation. So any comparisons that are done rely upon using pure paper models - which usually leads into either neener-neener arguments or ones that end in the agree to disagree bucket. Traveller is, after all, a game, thus the fantasy model is applicable. However tactical arguments in a fantasy game based on fantasy operations should be taken with a grain of salt. Everyone is equally right/wrong.

 

[rinku]

Sure, if you want to say some of your 20 canisters are some other type, that's fine. But a merchant ship isn't going to have a different type of ammo just around to swap out beyond the original 20.

Also, my point was that if you have a traditional Beam-Missile-Sandcaster turret you mysteriously get the same amount of missiles and sand canisters in your magazine as if you have a triple missile or Triple sandcaster turret.

That is a very salient point. Easily dealt with using maths and common sense, but the point is taken.

As far as mixed ammo types.... eh. There's a bunch of different feed concepts that would allow the order of firing to be selectable. I don't have any real issue with the turret being loaded up with mixed ordnance. (edit, of the same category that is. Missile and cannisters should be in separate feeds)

 

[rinku]

Re historical warship size... it varied a bit. Destroyers and torpedo boats were used, probably more than cruisers and larger. Raiders could be bigger or smaller than their prey, probably leaning towards smaller.

(And don't forget that armed merchants were used offensively. Germany used them to good effect in both WW1 and WW2.)

Traveller warships are the same size as adventure class ships? Ehhh... maybe. The adventure sized fighting ships are escorts and patrol ships. They don't really count in naval terms except for communication and patrol. If a proper light cruiser with a small spinal mount or a bunch of particle bays turned up commerce raiding, it would probably be similar to the Admiral Scheer appearing on the horizon in 1941. And even if the merchant was a big boi of comparable tonnage, the "it can carry equivalent turrets" does not really matter.

But having said that, clearly commerce raiding is OFTEN done by the fighting adventure class guys, and Traveller ships are more likely to be armed. That situation is better looked at from an age of sail comparison, where the weapons were comparable, but the merchant carried less and worse trained crew, and even if it carried the same number of guns would likely lose a gun battle to a warship, and definitely lose a boarding action.

 

[swordtart]

Transit Times
Distance (km) 1G
10,000,000 17.6 hours

I may have been exaggerating for effect , even a modest 4 hours is 40 turns of combat and likely a literal lifetime if you are under attack.

But certainly there are worlds that lie within the 100D of the star and if you are caught when wild refuelling you might be very far from the nearest help. You'll need to add in scramble times to that as well. My experience is probably biased by my game currently being based in District 268 and specifically Tarsus.

Tarsus is 50 Million km from the centre of the star, but as Hote has a 100D of 116 Million km, Tarsus is still 66 Million km inside its jump shadow. A ship leaving Tarsus takes 45 hours at 1G to get to the jump point outside Hote's shadow. The 0.8 Million km jump shadow of the planet itself is irrelevant in this case.

 

[Condottiere]

I would tend to distinguish between a Que Ship, and an Armed Merchant Cruiser - though the one time they intersected, it made quite a tale.

 

[phavoc]

I would tend to distinguish between a Que Ship, and an Armed Merchant Cruiser - though the one time they intersected, it made quite a tale.

Yes, they were usually different. England used AMC's extensively for patrolling, and Germany used them for raiders. The poor bastards who had to man the guns didn't have any splinter protections because, well, putting a full turret on the deck would kind of expose it for what it was.

Oddly the AMC's could often outrun older cruisers since many were (comparatively) fast liners and the cruisers were 2nd or 3rd tier and were slow. I don't recall the name of the book I picked up at Half Price books about the AMC's, but it was an interesting read.

 

[Condottiere]

For Britain, at least, the allure for a full scale implementation, didn't last long.

Being rather thirsty engines, especially at speed.

But it was also a solution looking at a problem that could have been resolved with enough light cruisers.

As to where you'd get said light cruisers, I tend to think this where keeping mothballed second and third classes come in.