Of Railguns And Launch Tubes

[F33D]

Back to the topic, quite possibly, a rail gun weapon is purpose built to achieve the top acceleration for a projectile. Anything else make the unit more expensive. A railgun projectile is also much smaller than even a ten ton craft. Making a launch tube that also fires projectiles would be a massive, and very expensive, complication plus a logistic nightmare in combat. What would have priority?

Same class, very different species.

Yes, this would make the most sense. I don't see building a dual purpose tunnel as being efficient (cost effective). Launching a fighter at 10 Gs for 1 second doesn't give you any real advantage over the fighter just puttering out of the hanger.

 

[Condottiere]

Spinal mounts decrease in tonnage as the tech level increases, but unlike missiles, presumably the bullet remains the same size.

 

[phavoc]

Yep, you missed quite a bit. Trav has NON Grav space drives of multiple G ratings.

I'll continue discussing after you have read the Mgt ship rules more thoroughly.

I can see trying to talk to you is a waste of time. I will refrain from doing so in the future.

High Guard page 42: "The gravitic drive is the standard for spacecraft throughout the Imperium....".

It's the standard, but not the only. High Guard provides rules for reaction drives, which are perfectly useable on crewed vessels. Traveller often glosses over important details in the setting, but it's prett clear to me the game assumes some sort of inertial or acceleration damping. Certainly it has characters being thrown around at 6G casually enough that personally I find it hard to see what else could be going on, but that's just my opinion.

Simon Hibbs

Different settings have different drives, and different levels of explanations. I went back to my SOM that talked about thruster plates, being a graviton drive, etc, etc. The explanation offered is interesting, but as I read it how the field used gravitons doesn't necessarily convey acceleration as such to the ship. In fact it states "...thrusters are able to produce a reactionless thrust which allows a ship...". Later on in the same section it talks about inertial compensators. But if you have inertialess drives, you have no inertia to compensate. And since intertialess drives don't exist in MGT universe, the explanation from SOM doesn't help.

And I very much agree with you in that the rules do gloss over some very important areas. Hand wavium indeed.

For over three decades, artificial gravity and inertial compensators have been clearly part of Traveller whether in passing text or the fact no one floats around ala 2001 or all the graphics show a gravity architecture or in actual construction rules. I do remember a long time ago there was mention that part of the development of each maneuver drive was associated inertial compensators. Might explain the Thrust 6 limitation. The ICs are meant to keep you in place in hard maneuvers at your maximum thrust.

Artificial gravity has, but not inertial compensators. At least nowhere can I recall them spelled out as such in MGT literature, or even CT. They do get mentioned briefly in SOM, but the explanation provided doesn't match the explanation for how thruster plates work (i.e. they are inertialess drives).

The issue hasn't been reading between the lines, it's been one of trying to discern if they DO exist, or if some other related form of gravity control is acting instead of them. It actually does make a difference, though from a gaming perspective it's irrelevant (as are most of the postulations on the board).

Back to the topic, quite possibly, a rail gun weapon is purpose built to achieve the top acceleration for a projectile. Anything else make the unit more expensive. A railgun projectile is also much smaller than even a ten ton craft. Making a launch tube that also fires projectiles would be a massive, and very expensive, complication plus a logistic nightmare in combat. What would have priority?

Same class, very different species.

Spinal rail gun projectiles are 20Dtons in size. The smaller bay-sized railguns fire much smaller projectiles. With an electromagnetic tube it should be possible to simply apply less power or adjust the settings to accommodate a slower launch speed. But it could indeed be a massive pain in the ass to adjust that sort of thing in mid-fight.

 

[Reynard]

"... but as I read it how the field used gravitons doesn't necessarily convey acceleration as such to the ship. In fact it states "...thrusters are able to produce a reactionless thrust which allows a ship...". Later on in the same section it talks about inertial compensators. But if you have inertialess drives, you have no inertia to compensate. And since intertialess drives don't exist in MGT universe, the explanation from SOM doesn't help."

They describe a reactionless drive which is supposed to means movement without engine thrust. The ship still moves and turns still involve the physics of inertia; everything on the ship wants to go straight. An inertialess drive would be some sort of ubertech bubble around the ship.

 

[Epicenter]

OK, here's my question. Is there any reason why the spinal mount railgun from MgT TCS cannot be used as a launch tube for 20 ton fighters when it is not being used as a weapon?

I've always had the impression that a launch tube is a coilgun, not a railgun. In a coilgun, nothing actually touches the barrel. In (modern) railguns, the round actually touches the barrel, so must be a very specific dimension.

At the moment, coilguns are less efficient than railguns. This might change in the future. In a futuristic coilgun accelerator weapon design, it might be possible to use it as a launch tube, the rules don't cover it but I would allow it to happen, but the system would have to be built from the very beginning to handle this. The combined weapon/accelerator would cost the same as a launch tube and a railgun combined and would take up as much room as x1.5 of the greater of the two weapon systems. You'd also have to convince your pilots to be shot out of a big cannon. Otherwise, I should think that adjusting the velocity of the weapon to be lower and acceleration pattern of the weapon to be more gradual could be handled with the proper software and safety interlocks for craft to experience a safe and reasonably comfortable launch.

Though I reiterate, convincing your fighter pilots to accept this may be something of a hurdle.

 

[Condottiere]

I like to see the drones complain. On the other hand, shooting them out of spinal mount railguns may have ignited off the Cylon Revolt.

 

[simonh]

Different settings have different drives, and different levels of explanations. I went back to my SOM that talked about thruster plates, being a graviton drive, etc, etc. The explanation offered is interesting, but as I read it how the field used gravitons doesn't necessarily convey acceleration as such to the ship. In fact it states "...thrusters are able to produce a reactionless thrust which allows a ship...". Later on in the same section it talks about inertial compensators. But if you have inertialess drives, you have no inertia to compensate. And since intertialess drives don't exist in MGT universe, the explanation from SOM doesn't help.

reactionless and intertialess are totally different things. A reactionless drive simply generates thrust without pushing against anthing. In a rocket the thing that's pushed against is the combusting rocket fuel. In an ion drive it's ionised heavy metal ions. So a reactionless drive just doesn't have an exhaust, but otherwise pushes the ship along just like a rocket would, but the ship still has inertia and will still resist being pushed about.

I'm not entirely clear how an inertialess drive is supposed to work. If you nullify the inertia of the ship, you'd still need to push it aroudn the make it move, it would just be easier. The problem is, it would be easier for any force, not just the force exerted by the drive. That could lead to some hillarious/horrific consequences depending on your sense of humour.

Artificial gravity has, but not inertial compensators. At least nowhere can I recall them spelled out as such in MGT literature, or even CT. They do get mentioned briefly in SOM, but the explanation provided doesn't match the explanation for how thruster plates work (i.e. they are inertialess drives).

Well, Traveller never mentions windows on starships either, or airlocks but we all kind of assume they still have them.

Simon Hibbs

 

[AndrewW]

Well, Traveller never mentions windows on starships either, or airlocks but we all kind of assume they still have them.

It doesn't?

One of the airlocks has been blown open.

Tom, you go through the front airlock and push off, drifting for several seconds before bouncing off the hull of the other ship.

Your magnetic boots catch on, and you can walk over the skin of the ship towards the airlock, gingerly stepping over the areas melted by the lasers.

Cutlass: The standard shipboard blade weapon, often kept near airlocks to repel boarders.

AIRLOCKS

Venting Atmosphere: If a compartment is connected to an airlock,
then the air can be vented from that area.

If the ships are docked, then the attackers may cross over safely via airlocks.

Airlock

And that's just a sample...

 

[Reynard]

He's right about the windows.

 

[simonh]

He's right about the windows.

It's a fair cop, but I'd like the court to take decades of airlock-less Traveller into consideration.

Simon Hibbs

 

[phavoc]

reactionless and intertialess are totally different things. A reactionless drive simply generates thrust without pushing against anthing. In a rocket the thing that's pushed against is the combusting rocket fuel. In an ion drive it's ionised heavy metal ions. So a reactionless drive just doesn't have an exhaust, but otherwise pushes the ship along just like a rocket would, but the ship still has inertia and will still resist being pushed about.

I'm not entirely clear how an inertialess drive is supposed to work. If you nullify the inertia of the ship, you'd still need to push it aroudn the make it move, it would just be easier. The problem is, it would be easier for any force, not just the force exerted by the drive. That could lead to some hillarious/horrific consequences depending on your sense of humour.

We already know that Traveller drives are NOT intertialess. Ships drives have inertia that must be countered with thrust. I did conflate reaction with intertia though.

Well, Traveller never mentions windows on starships either, or airlocks but we all kind of assume they still have them.

Simon Hibbs

Reynard beat me to it. But if you wanna know about windows all you gotta do is look at the pictures. Hell, some of those pictures even have airlocks in them.

 

[Condottiere]

Going by illustrations, they do have windscreens.

 

[F33D]

Going by illustrations, they do have windscreens.

Going by illustrations, many have huge rocket nozzles for propellant based thrust while the ships have no rockets at all...