Return of the Fighter

[AnotherDilbert]

If we insist on having a pilot onboard we would have to limit the performance and build better people.

Take a fit, well-trained pilot (skill-2, characteristic 10 [DM +1]) and add:
Skill augment, Pilot skill+1, Cr 50 000
Skill augment, Gunner skill+1, Cr 50 000
Skill augment, Sensor skill+1, Cr 50 000
Genetic Environmental Adaption (Hi-G), Cr 50 000
Muscular Bridging, STR+1, DEX+1, Cr 250 000
Physical Augmentation, DEX+2, MCr 1
Physical Augmentation, END+2, MCr 1
Cockpit Sensory Suite, check+1, Cr 500 000
Neural Jack, expert +1, Cr 50 000

Put him into a Scout Battle Dress with three Enhanced Mobility for DEX+15 and a Sensor Suite for Elec(sensors)+3, Cr 610 000

Add High Automation (DM+2) and a sub-command centre (Pilot DM+1) to the fighter.

For a total of Pilot skill +5, Sensor skill +6, END+2 (DM+1), DEX+18 (DM+6).


On the G-LOC Pilot-END check we get a total DM of +10, and the genetic adaption removes ~1 G from the table.

The mutated monstrosity can survive uncompensated 11 G for some time...

Pretty expensive (MCr 3-4), but compared to a MCr 120 fighter it's peanuts.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The piloted fighter limited to 20 G (9 G + 11 G) is even more expensive:



It would take longer to reach combat range (hence take higher losses), but would be even more deadly with the ridiculous task DMs the Pilot could achieve.


An expensive way of getting highly trained pilots killed?

 

[Geir]

You wouldn't need the virtual crew software anymore, so you'd actually save money... well, assuming the pilot doesn't need to multi-task.

 

[Condottiere]

How do you train a pilot?

Flight time.

So simulations versus actual operating cost of spacecraft.

Plus side of flying in space, unlikely to crash into the ground.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

You wouldn't need the virtual crew software anymore, so you'd actually save money... well, assuming the pilot doesn't need to multi-task.

To harvest every last DM, we would need a Pilot, a Gunner, and a Sensor Operator (or two), so offloading the crew is probably a good idea.

The fighter could also make a sensor sweep without crew.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

If we want to be really cheeky, we take the first drone fighter, put a mutated monstrosity pilot in a sub-command centre in a module, "remote controlling" the fighter.

We still get 25 G, but the pilot lose END-1 permanently on a fail. But with all the DM, he can't fail...


If the pilot concentrates on gunnery, letting the fighter fly itself, a "normal" attack DM now becomes:

-3  Evade
+1  Pilot Gunnery skill (or Elec(Remote) skill?)
+1  Gunnery skill augmentation
+8  Pilot DEX DM (DEX 27 with BD)
+1  Cockpit Sensory Suite
+1  Neural Jack
+2  High Automation
+1  Aid Gunners
+2  Winning dogfight
+4  Fire Control
+2  Sensor Lock
================
20  Attack DM

With a silly attack DM like that, we easily punch through even heavy armour:

Doing an average of 31 damage against armour 30, and average damage 76 against armour 15 with a 100% crit rate against smaller ships.

~50 such fighters would incinerate a 100 kDt battleship well within a single space combat round.

A single fighter would destroy ~10 000 Dt worth of destroyers within a round.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The crews of capital ships would be similarly augmented...

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The crews of capital ships would be similarly augmented...

Agreed, but perhaps not uniformly.

Capital ship commanders, pilots, main gunners, and perhaps sensor operators would be even better trained and augmented. Engineer #347 is probably not that well supported?

 

[Nelphine]

And how many such fighters get shot down before they're in range?

We really want to see if they can cost effectively kill that 100k ship

 

[phavoc]

Fighters in the modern sense of the term are lightly armed and armored, yes. Fighters in Traveller though are more a mix of modern day fighters and naval PT boats if naval PT boats could fly. Or maybe the better example of putting the two together would be the A-10. It is not lightly armored or lightly armed, but it is the last thing an enemy tank commander ever wants to see. lol

An A-10 isn't lightly armed and armored in comparison to say an F-22. And history is filled with one-ofd examples of aircraft with heavier than the norm weapons (Rudel's tank-buster Stuka, B-25s with 75mm nose cannon, or A-26 with their heavy nose armaments). The norm, however, isn't those.

If we go into the naval comparison, the variation actually gets worse. PT boats of the USN were plywood, German and UK torpedo boats were metal hulled with no armor to speak of. As you get further up the chain you find escorts, frigates and even destroyers with very light to almost no armor. Even some light cruisers eschewed heavier armor for what you would expect for the type/class.

The thing is that armor still costs space and mass aboard any ship, and physics tells us that no matter how tough your armor is, the energy being absorbed by the tough armor has to go somewhere. And that means building sufficient structure to both support and channel that energy safely away from the impact zone so it doesn't simply crush the armor into the hull.

That's why you should never see (or the game design system allow) smaller craft to have equivalent armor factors of large warships. A fighter with armor 15 shouldn't be allowed due to how the physics or armor works. A craft of less than 100 tons would be armor 0 or perhaps 1 (assuming a 0 to 15 scale). Even destroyers should max out around 4 due to the same reasoning. Most of that is simply because you can't mount equivalent armor to that small of a vessel to have the same protection capability of say a heavy cruiser, let alone a battleship. The amount of hull and underlying structure would eat up too much of the internal space, and the absolute mass would make it into a stationary hull plate.

Mass isn't ignored in the game, buti it rarely is addressed directly. Which is fine in my opinion, since it's a game and not a simulation. Thermal heat is ignored, then again lots of people are ignorant that thermal management is a killer in space, and hiw hard it is to get rid of it. Personally I think the issue can be sidestepped by using some high-tech derivative of RTG technology. Maybe it's not 100% effective, but effective enough to dump most heat as electricity and then simply beamed into space as harmless microwaves or something else. 100% recycling gets too much into infinity machines.

 

[phavoc]

To the idea that a space pilot would suffer from G forces, that assumes that they would not be in a craft equipped with an inertial compensator. That seems unlikely with the tech available. We don't know much about the how those work exactly, but should be doable.

 

[Nelphine]

Normally the compensators are only able to compensate for g's up to the rating of the m-drive. Since these fighters ALSO have reaction drives, the compensators can't handle the extra.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

And how many such fighters get shot down before they're in range?

We really want to see if they can cost effectively kill that 100k ship

Particle turrets (or barbettes) will cut them to ribbons.
Whit the new armour rules, space is very tight aboard capital ships, so I assume turrets will be preferred for tertiary armaments.


The question is how many particle turrets a battleship will have. It must also presumably have laser turrets for missile defence.


If we start with a simple assumption of 100 kDt, 1000 hardpoints, 600 turrets, half each of particle and laser, so 300 particle turrets.


If we start with detection at Distant range and the target ships trying to keep distance open, the fighters will approach at 16 G or so.
Range will be Distant for three rounds, VLong for two rounds, Medium one round, and then dogfight, with quite a bit of Evasive Action.

With the same level of augmentation for the capital gunners it would be:

-3  Evade
-4  Range VLong
+1  Accurate
+2  Gunnery skill
+1  Gunnery skill augmentation
+8  Pilot DEX DM (DEX 27 with BD)
+1  Neural Jack
+1  Aid Gunners
+3  Adv Fire Control
================
10 Attack DM

The first three turrets will miss, because Evasive Action. The rest will do 10 average damage with a 92% chance of crit, at VLong range. Say 25 damage plus crits will destroy a fighter, so about three hitting turrets.

Six turrets will kill a fighter (on average). 300 particle turrets kills 100 fighters each round for 200 fighters killed at VLong range.


One round at Medium range:

-3  Evade
±0  Range Medium
+1  Accurate
+2  Gunnery skill
+1  Gunnery skill augmentation
+8  Pilot DEX DM (DEX 27 with BD)
+1  Neural Jack
+1  Aid Gunners
+3  Adv Fire Control
================
14 Attack DM

The first four turrets will miss, because Evasive Action. The rest will do 14.5 average damage with a 100% chance of crit, at Medium range. Say 25 damage plus crits will destroy a fighter, so about two hitting turrets.

Six turrets will kill a fighter (on average). 300 particle turrets kills 100 fighters each round for 100 fighters killed at Medium range.


So, we have 300 fighter killed, before they can start shooting.


Dogfight:

-3  Evade
±0  Range Close
+1  Accurate
+2  Gunnery skill
+1  Gunnery skill augmentation
+8  Pilot DEX DM (DEX 27 with BD)
+1  Neural Jack
+1  Aid Gunners
-2  Lost dogfight
+3  Adv Fire Control
================
12 Attack DM

The first ten turrets will miss, because Evasive Action. The rest will do 12.5 average damage with a 100% chance of crit, at Close range. Say 25 damage plus crits will destroy a fighter, so about two hitting turrets.

Twelve turrets will kill a fighter (on average). 300 particle turrets kills 25 fighters each round.

Each fighter will do ~30 damage, so 2500 fighter-attacks will kill a small battleship. 350 fighters will kill a battleship, with few remaining alive.

With the 300 fighters killed before dogfight, it would take 650 fighters (GCr ~85 + carriers) to kill a battleship.
More particle turrets would kill a lot more fighters. Not very economical.


The DEX+15 from BD is completely over the top, unbalancing the system both for the fighters and the battleship.

 

[Nelphine]

Yeah, that sounds like tonnage is larger than the battleship too. (650*70 = 45500 just for fighters before carrier)

We need something more economical for our fighters, or we're back to just making super dreadnoughts.

 

[phavoc]

Normally the compensators are only able to compensate for g's up to the rating of the m-drive. Since these fighters ALSO have reaction drives, the compensators can't handle the extra.

That's a big problem then for the any ship with reaction drives. Crews would be rendered helpless or at least severely impeded in their duties if their G-ratings exceeded their M-drive. Even a single G greater than their M-drive would make it virtually impossible for them to move around or get out of their seats.

It also open up another conundrum - if the inertial compensator cannot handle G's in excess of their M-drive rating, does that mean the orientation of the gravity onboard will change to being in the same plane as the excess thrust? As of now the crew aboard a ship does not experience the thrust and as far as their movements go, they feel gravity oriented towards the deck plating.

The laws of unintended consequences is especially heavy with this idea.

 

[Nelphine]

*shrugs* im reasonably certain its stated somewhere. It is in fact a big reason why reaction drives are Bad compared to M-drives, and why they very quickly go obsolete, and only ever get used for ships like this that have a very specific purpose where they can both justify and guarantee sufficient training and equipment for the crew to survive the reaction drive.

 

[Vormaerin]

The laws of unintended consequences is especially heavy with this idea.

Nah, the law of unintended consequences comes from the anti gravity and inertial thrusters and the reactionless drives. Once you start making up space magic, you aren't going to be able to play not space magic.

And, like most things, stuff was created for some purpose that makes sense (reaction drives stacking with m-drives to create especially fast fighters where the crew is in acceleration couches and other gear to resist the higher Gs) and gets slapped onto starships without actually carrying over the other stuff.

Just like there's all kinds of nonsensical side effects if you start putting fixed mounts (especially fixed mount missile racks) onto ships and the whole "pilot can fire all fixed mount weapons as a secondary action without penalty" rule that exists so single crew fighters can work suddenly applies to a starship with half a dozen "fixed mount" weapons that engage in abstracted space combat that doesn't consider facing...

 

[Vormaerin]

In TNE, the M-Drive was a reaction drive, so it had the inertial dampers tied to the HEPLAR rating. Mongoose Reaction drive ships should be tailsitters as the rules are written.

However, the rules are kind of vague. It specifically calls out the limits of gravitic compensation and inertial compensation in the "how M-Drives work.". But that M-Drive rule also says that they have compensation equal to Thrust. So you could argue that any reaction drive in the game, including TL 7 rockets, have it because that's all "thrust". But that seems problematic also.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

In TNE, the M-Drive was a reaction drive, so it had the inertial dampers tied to the HEPLAR rating. Mongoose Reaction drive ships should be tailsitters as the rules are written.

In TNE, "G Compensators" was a separate system, with capability tied to TL. It had nothing to with the chosen drive.

However, the rules are kind of vague. It specifically calls out the limits of gravitic compensation and inertial compensation in the "how M-Drives work.". But that M-Drive rule also says that they have compensation equal to Thrust. So you could argue that any reaction drive in the game, including TL 7 rockets, have it because that's all "thrust". But that seems problematic also.

MgT2'22 clearly separates gravitic M-drives and Reaction drives, so there is no reasonable confusion.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

And, like most things, stuff was created for some purpose that makes sense (reaction drives stacking with m-drives to create especially fast fighters where the crew is in acceleration couches and other gear to resist the higher Gs) and gets slapped onto starships without actually carrying over the other stuff.

It wasn't for fighters, it was for ships. It was just tossed in MgT1 in a supplement without much consideration (Scoundrels) for any other effects.

Fighters were plenty fast enough in MgT1, but needed internal space for "Structure" (more Hull points), so were not a good fit for reaction drives.