Questions: Spinal Mounts

[AnotherDilbert]

Battle rider. Whats that? I'm not that familiar with Traveller lore.

A battlerider is a ship intended for major battles, often with a spinal, without a jump drive, instead carried on other jump carriers or tenders. A battlerider plus tender is generally cheaper than a battleship with the same performance, so it's a cheap way to get more spinals into combat.

Instead of the spinal you could have 50 large torpedo bays...

Hmm... Is there a good defense against this? I'm having fun toying with different designs for the sake of making them.

Electronic Warfare and Point Defence. At TL10 the defence is not enough, large ships are not survivable against torpedoes.

 

[steve98052]

Ah, TL10, that is J-1, basically a battle rider, they are a bit iffy. It's different at TL11+.

Battle rider. Whats that? I'm not that familiar with Traveller lore.

A battle rider is a giant fighter that depends on a carrier for jump.

A Jump-1 ship is not a battle rider. When Jump-1 was the peak of technology, a Jump-1 fighting ship was a standard combat starship. In a fleet of ships with higher jump, it might reach the theater of combat on a carrier, but it can still retreat via jump if retreat becomes necessary, or in a hit and run raid. With Jump-1 drives but two jumps worth of fuel, it can attack and retreat on its own, as long as its task force has a secure system within Jump-1.

By contrast, a battle rider must either win a battle, be part of a fleet with jump-capable ships that can cover rendezvous with carriers (which have few defenses other than other ships in their fleet) long enough to retreat via jump, or surrender.

 

[Condottiere]

Get into a long range shooting match.

 

[Reynard]

The dscription is in HG2e page 5. More precisely, a battlerider is a system ship. It has no jump and relies on a tender to reach other systems. Like a carrier, the tender carries many of these destroyer and cruiser size vessels then hangs in the back line with other support ships. The purpose is you now have destroyers and cruisers with better arms, armor and systems replacing jump drives similar to smaller system defense boats.

 

[DivineWrath]

The dscription is in HG2e page 5. More precisely, a battlerider is a system ship.

I forgot about those early pages. I'll go read them again. Good information to know if you like designing ships.

Anyways. Is there anything I can do to make combat more personal and less missile blips on the radar? I was getting excited on the idea of having 2 TL 10 cultures/civilizations duking it out and stuff. Any anti missile missiles or giant beam laser that fires across the horizon that takes out hundreds of missiles?

Instead of the spinal you could have 50 large torpedo bays, launching 1500 torpedoes per round. With Multi-Warhead Nukes that is average 49500 damage after armour with auto-hit. Even 200 laser turrets would only destroy ~400 torpedoes, still auto-killing itself with a single salvo from Distant range.

Funny thing I did recently. I did the math on how much it would cost to nuke the ship the way in the manner you described. 900 MCr. I'm thinking that maybe jumping away and coming back 2 weeks later might be a good strategy. Let your opponent blow money on missiles and then have real fight when they run out.

 

[Reynard]

That's why ships have a mix rather than relying on one type of weapon. Missiles and torpedoes have range good for softening targets while energy weapon have stamina by virtue of no ammo.

Watch many scifi tv shows and movies that feature space battles. The masses of ship combat are background and plot device while the actions of the heroes determine something more important to the outcome. As an example, as the battle rages all around, the players' ship on it's own or leading a small group of ships faces it's own opposition as they fight for a special goal. Ships explode all around but what happens in front of the camera is what matters.

 

[Condottiere]

A fighter is distinct in being rather difficult to target individually.

I'd say that a monojump battleship calibre spinal mount weapon platform is the equivalent of a coastal battleship.

A battlerider is a monitor, under Traveller terminology, that has an Uber ride.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

A Jump-1 ship is not a battle rider.

As noted above battle riders have a problem with retreating, that can be solved by giving the BRs jump-1 capability so they can jump to a prearranged rallying point to be picked up by their tenders. It also reduces the exposure of the tenders. The cost is rather high, though.

When Jump-1 was the peak of technology, a Jump-1 fighting ship was a standard combat starship.

Of course, but to be useful it would have jump fuel for several jumps aboard, depending on local system density. You'll have a problem squeezing in a spinal taking 50% of the ship and 20 - 30% jump fuel.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Instead of the spinal you could have 50 large torpedo bays, launching 1500 torpedoes per round. With Multi-Warhead Nukes that is average 49500 damage after armour with auto-hit. Even 200 laser turrets would only destroy ~400 torpedoes, still auto-killing itself with a single salvo from Distant range.

Funny thing I did recently. I did the math on how much it would cost to nuke the ship the way in the manner you described. 900 MCr.

Missiles are probably priced per dT, compare with the core book missile price. So 1500 MWNuke torpedoes would cost 1500 / 3 × 0.6 = MCr 300?

I'm thinking that maybe jumping away and coming back 2 weeks later might be a good strategy. Let your opponent blow money on missiles and then have real fight when they run out.

That is the only real defence I have been able to come up with against overwhelming missile attacks.

The problem is if you want to defend something, like your homeworld, it's a bit problematical to jump out and leave it to the tender mercies of an invading fleet.

 

[DivineWrath]

Yeah. This strategy really favors the one on the offensive. Your homeworld is not a place you want to leave undefended. Its a lose-lose that results in your homeworld being undefended. I'm trying to consider other counters.

One idea is remembering the fact that using nukes near inhabited worlds is considered a major crime by the 3rd Imperium. In the event that the 3rd Imperium or other authority doesn't exist, using nukes near inhabited worlds is not going to make you very many friends. It may even make some enemies in the process.

Another is asteroid planet monitors. Both kinds of asteroid ships add armor and considerable hull points to the ships. Buffered planetoids add +4 armor and +50% hull. If the +4 armor stacks with 10 armor, then the ship will have 14 armor to resist attacks. Against hundreds of torpedoes, that extra armor might make a lot of difference. The extra hull points would help too.

 

[Condottiere]

You probably should set up a networked concentric missile defence system.

The attacker has the initiative, but your ordnance factories are close by, so you should have an infinite amount of sand and counter missiles available.