Rules Clarification: Sustained Damage Space Combat

[AnotherDilbert]

Simple change to make to so that Effect 6+ just gives you a Crit 1.

Quite.

Makes Called Shots deadly as hell though.

That is at least limited to Short range, so you have to make an effort to close in...

 

[swordtart]

The Laser is range limited (I guess?).
The Laser suffers a negative DM at longer ranges.
Evasion and Evasive Action will take that down a notch.

Agreed and LASERs will suffer more than missiles as they get the +1DM per missile to counteract it. But that is per surviving missile which if you fired at the same range as the Pulse LASER would allow at least one round of ECM and of course point defence.

Larger ships can't be critted by smaller bays.

True of either LASERS or Missiles so not a specific limitation of LASERs. Also you don't need that big a bay to crit a really big ship (say 50 times your size).

Larger warships probably have military hulls and much more armour. 4D damage from either missiles or bays just isn't cutting it against Armour 25-30.

So even more effective against missiles as they don't get to add the effect to the damage.

In a naval setting (where bays are an option) standard missiles and laser bays are useless, nukes with 1DD damage are the major offensive option, often penetration even heavy armour (Armour 25-30 or so). A Small Particle bay has the range, but still struggles to penetrate with 6D damage.

Most of the sub 10,000 DTon ships in HG have less that half a dozen armour points and the highest is less than the average roll of 4d6+6 (the effect you need before you even consider criticals). You need a Medium bay to get a crit on a 10,000+ DTon ship. By then the particle beam is doing 8D+ effect and an average roll is 34, so easily capable of penetrating 30 armour.

12 standard high-tech missiles can be launched by civilians from a few fixed mounts @ 0 Dt cost, not at all comparable to even a small bay. Perfect for a Subbie?

Critical rolls are not limited to bays for smaller ships. You can get crits with a turret.

A Free Trader or Subbie with weak sensors and non-optimised crew isn't likely to stop all that many of such a salvo with EW and PD, so will almost automatically suffer a major crit. Not something easily recreated with a few laser turrets without optimised gunners and software support.

Not sure what your point is here, you were the one bemoaning the fact that missile criticals spelled the end of capital ships. There are plenty of ways of killing a 400 Dton civilian ship.

Agreed, at medium range, against a 6-10 kDt medium-armoured target. Larger targets just ignore the crit. Heavy armour bounces the attack.

Pulse LASER bays are Long range. Most 6-10 KDt ships in HG seem to have less than 12 points armour. You setting may vary. Larger targets would require a larger bay so are not relevant to the example given.

Agreed, in a single vs. single ship action. Missile crits would mean many small missile boats launching many small missile salvoes. Naval doctrine would change.

Small missile salvoes can be destroyed in detail by sensor operators and point defence systems and large ships have plenty of them. I would see a pivot to lots of small ships with small bay weapons rather than the current small ships with dozens of turrets that require dozens of gunners and that will be largely ineffective against even a 2000+ Dton ship.

Agreed, unless the target was a heavily armoured warship.

Yes if the enemy ship(s) were more than 10,000 Dtons or had more than 20 points of armour attack would be foolish. In the end I setteld with a 200 Dton design* so that would be 1/50th the size and I think I'd allow the captain of the monitor to decline to engage without an accusation of cowardice in that case.

That was basically HG'16...

Can't comment never played it.

Agreed, but missiles are much worse than bays.
A 500 Dt ship with fixed mount missile racks can crit a BB at extended range. A bunch of Subbies can devastate warfleets...

I guess that is why they have so many Sensor Ops and point defence batteries. Not to mention smaller ships to harry and stop the little ships from getting in. I am thinking Anti-FIAC equivalent.

With a direct fire weapon you would need a Large bay and something like a 5000 Dt warship to carry it to crit BBs.

You only need to have the 5 hardpoints and 500 DTons for a Large Bay. I am sure you could fit that into a 1000 Dton non jump ship if you tried. You would only need a few gunners

Either way, BBs are non-viable as warships...

That would be an ecumenical matter.

* It has only one small Pulse LASER bay and came in at around MCr30 (including the thrust 6 small craft to take the crew off once the big ships start engaging the monitor in earnest. Hopefully total destruction could be averted for the 3 rounds it would take the escape boat to get away so the monitor isn't a guaranteed death sentence (though historically there have been such sacrificial picket ships)

 

[swordtart]

Simple change to make to so that Effect 6+ just gives you a Crit 1. Makes Called Shots deadly as hell though.

Agreed. That was my suggestion in the update thread. I hope I can count on your support.

 

[Terry Mixon]

True of either LASERS or Missiles so not a specific limitation of LASERs. Also you don't need that big a bay to crit a really big ship

So even more effective against missiles as they don't get to add the effect to the damage.

Most of the sub 10,000 DTon ships in HG have less that half a dozen armour points and the highest is less than the average roll of 4d6+6 (the effect you need before you even consider criticals). You need a Medium bay to get a crit on a 10,000+ DTon ship. By then the particle beam is doing 8D+ effect and an average roll is 34, so easily capable of penetrating 30 armour.

Critical rolls are not limited to bays for smaller ships. You can get crits with a turret.

Not sure what your point is here, you were the one bemoaning the fact that missile criticals spelled the end of capital ships. There are plenty of ways of killing a 400 Dton civilian ship.

Pulse LASER bays are Long range. Most 6-10 KDt ships in HG seem to have less than 12 points armour. You setting may vary. Larger targets would require a larger bay so are not relevant to the example given.

Small missile salvoes can be destroyed in detail by sensor operators and point defence systems and large ships have plenty of them. I would see a pivot to lots of small ships with small bay weapons rather than the current small ships with dozens of turrets that require dozens of gunners and that will be largely ineffective against even a 2000+ Dton ship.

Yes if the enemy ship(s) were more than 10,000 Dtons or had more than 20 points of armour attack would be foolish. In the end I setteld with a 200 Dton design* so that would be 1/50th the size and I think I'd allow the captain of the monitor to decline to engage without an accusation of cowardice in that case.

Can't comment never played it.

I guess that is why they have so many Sensor Ops and point defence batteries. Not to mention smaller ships to harry and stop the little ships from getting in. I am thinking Anti-FIAC equivalent.

You only need to have the 5 hardpoints and 500 DTons for a Large Bay. I am sure you could fit that into a 1000 Dton non jump ship if you tried. You would only need a few gunners

That would be an ecumenical matter.

* It has only one small Pulse LASER bay and came in at around MCr30 (including the thrust 6 small craft to take the crew off once the big ships start engaging the monitor in earnest. Hopefully total destruction could be averted for the 3 rounds it would take the escape boat to get away so the monitor isn't a guaranteed death sentence (though historically there have been such sacrificial picket ships)

I made a 125 ton ship (the Skeeter) delivered by a redesigned Antiama-Class Fleet Carrier. It could carry 400 of them, if I recall correctly. It was the smallest I could get a small bay weapon (modular for swapping out). There was quite a discussion here about how they would affect fleet combat, but I think they be danged effective as they can deliver criticals to ships up to 10,000 tons.

 

[swordtart]

I made a 125 ton ship (the Skeeter) delivered by a redesigned Antiama-Class Fleet Carrier. It could carry 400 of them, if I recall correctly. It was the smallest I could get a small bay weapon (modular for swapping out). There was quite a discussion here about how they would affect fleet combat, but I think they be danged effective as they can deliver criticals to ships up to 10,000 tons.

Ha, normally I am the one who designs as low as you can go. 400 chances of a critical every turn would be interesting to say the least

 

[AnotherDilbert]

True of either LASERS or Missiles so not a specific limitation of LASERs. Also you don't need that big a bay to crit a really big ship (say 50 times your size).

A Large Bay of 500 Dt vs a bunch of fixed mount missile racks of 0 Dt isn't a bit deal?

So even more effective against missiles as they don't get to add the effect to the damage.

In a naval context with naval armour, we are presumably launching nukes @ 1DD, not civilian missiles.
Missiles do damage per hitting missile, not per turret.
In general missiles do more damage.

Most of the sub 10,000 DTon ships in HG have less that half a dozen armour points ...

Sure, they are junk, always has been. The originals were junk in CT too.

... and the highest is less than the average roll of 4d6+6 (the effect you need before you even consider criticals). You need a Medium bay to get a crit on a 10,000+ DTon ship. By then the particle beam is doing 8D+ effect and an average roll is 34, so easily capable of penetrating 30 armour.

Normal approach battle starts at Distant Range, you have to out manoeuvre the enemy to get closer...

Attack with Medium Particle Bay:
Effect = 2D + 5[Gunner] +5[FireCtrl] +6[Size] -6[range] -3[evade] -5[dodge] -8[difficulty] = 2D-6, hit chance 72%, average Effect 1.

Average damage 1.5×20=30, chance of crit ~2%.


Until you have exhausted the targets capability of dodging, you are not doing much damage or critting.


Without dodging you are doing average 4.7×20=94 damage, 49% chance of critting, and 8% of a Severity 4 crit:

To incapacitate a ship with a Sev 4 Fuel crit, you need about 100 such attacks...


With the DM+6 to hit larger ships we can fight at Distant range, but we are not doing all that much damage, and no auto-critting with direct fire weapons...

Not sure what your point is here, you were the one bemoaning the fact that missile criticals spelled the end of capital ships. There are plenty of ways of killing a 400 Dton civilian ship.

There are two different use cases: Small civilian ships and larger naval ships.

In the civilian case a Subbie launching 12 missiles can easily crit another small civilian ship, without any tonnage or skilled gunners.

In the naval case a mass of Subbies can devastate any warfleet, if missiles automagically crit. The Subbies would die quickly, of course.

Small missile salvoes can be destroyed in detail by sensor operators and point defence systems and large ships have plenty of them. I would see a pivot to lots of small ships with small bay weapons rather than the current small ships with dozens of turrets that require dozens of gunners and that will be largely ineffective against even a 2000+ Dton ship.

Quite, but a GCr100 BB against 1000 Missile Subbies is 1000 incoming salvoes. Does the battleship have 1000 sensor operators? 1000 laser PD turrets?

You only need to have the 5 hardpoints and 500 DTons for a Large Bay. I am sure you could fit that into a 1000 Dton non jump ship if you tried. You would only need a few gunners

Sure, unless you'd want some survivability with defences such as armour and large M-drives.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I made a 125 ton ship (the Skeeter) delivered by a redesigned Antiama-Class Fleet Carrier. It could carry 400 of them, if I recall correctly. It was the smallest I could get a small bay weapon (modular for swapping out). There was quite a discussion here about how they would affect fleet combat, but I think they be danged effective as they can deliver criticals to ships up to 10,000 tons.

Something like the Skeeter is probably good, but the problem is keeping the carrier alive... The ~300 Dt J-3 version is only double the cost, less than the carrier, and it has more Hull, so more survivable. A 500 Dt J-4 version is getting a bit pricey?

Without large warships to kill, even small bays are probably overkill, leaving Long Range Particle barbette or turrets as the default direct fire weapon. And missiles, of course...

 

[swordtart]

A Large Bay of 500 Dt vs a bunch of fixed mount missile racks of 0 Dt isn't a bit deal?

Horses for course, I am not discussing whether it is optimal, I am saying that criticals are broken.

In a naval context with naval armour, we are presumably launching nukes @ 1DD, not civilian missiles.

You may choose to presume that. You setting, your presumptions. The rules however are universal.

Missiles do damage per hitting missile, not per turret.

And the default assumption is that not all will get through.

In general missiles do more damage.

And they cost more per shot and they are more vulnerable to jamming and point defence etc.

Sure, they are junk, always has been. The originals were junk in CT too.

They are however the exemplar and contradict your assumption that representative ships have 20-30 points of armour and generally use nuclear missiles.

As to the rest of it:

I think you have become focussed on winning an argument rather than exploring the issue. I have no interest in defeating you in an argument as I don't know you from Adam and it proves nothing.

I started out asking for a citation where it explicitly says Missiles cannot benefit from criticals as I had concerns. Having failed to provide that you decided to turn the argument into proving that missiles were just too powerful with criticals for that to be a sensible rule.

To show you it wasn't a missile only issue I posed the bay weapons but you then decided to change the argument to one about missiles being better than bays of LASERS.

Your current argument is that a lot of small ships with missiles can destroy big ships without needing criticals as they are so damn good and you would only be using nukes anyway.

About the only useful thing that has come out of this discussion is my recalling that as all missiles fired by a ship in a round are a single salvo and that ECM can only affect a salvo once per turn then really large barrages of missiles from a single ship will just swamp even a large ship as they can only use a single Sensor Op against it and only remove a few missiles per 10 turns max that they have. The salvos from lots of small ships can each be engaged with ECM as they are separate salvos. Knocking a dozen missiles out of a salvo of 120 isn't going to matter. Knocking a dozen missiles out of a salvo of 12 is going to stop it dead. You can deploy 100 fighters with 100 sensors ops in Close range and they can all have a go at EMC against 1 of the 100 salvos incoming or you could just have 100 on your own ship (or 100 mouse droids with Electronics (Sensors). Each droid would cost less than 1 missile. Point defence can cull the rest (and as many PD batteries as you want can target a single salvo).

However, since I am unlikely to fight such an engagement unless it is to test the theory, the outcome hasn't been worth the electrons expended in conducting the argument.

I am not interested in peoples opinions. I am very interested the evidence for those opinions.

The evidence you have presented does not convince me that my assertions below are incorrect.

1) That missiles can benefit from Effect 6+ crticals.
2) A 200 Dton ship with a small Pulse Laser bay is able to take on any of the sub 10000 Dton ships in HG with a reasonable chance of a one shot crippling hit at normal encounter ranges.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Something like the Skeeter is probably good, but the problem is keeping the carrier alive... The ~300 Dt J-3 version is only double the cost, less than the carrier, and it has more Hull, so more survivable. A 500 Dt J-4 version is getting a bit pricey?

Without large warships to kill, even small bays are probably overkill, leaving Long Range Particle barbette or turrets as the default direct fire weapon. And missiles, of course...

Well, carriers exist to do exactly this, so I’d imagine they hang way back and have other protections. In the end, all I did was change the fighters to larger sunlight craft.

Would jump capable ones be better? Maybe, but I was exploring a better fighter at the time because they get rooked bad. Cross the 100 barrier and things improve for them a good deal.

I will look at the 300-ton version you suggest, though. The idea is interesting.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I think you have become focussed on winning an argument rather than exploring the issue. I have no interest in defeating you in an argument as I don't know you from Adam and it proves nothing.

Strangely I got the same impression about you... Just a breakdown of communications, I guess.

I started out asking for a citation where it explicitly says Missiles cannot benefit from criticals as I had concerns.

Agreed, the best I can show is a general assumption in the HG'16 beta program. Destroying large warships with crits was a topic of discussion, IIRC.

Having failed to provide that you decided to turn the argument into proving that missiles were just too powerful with criticals for that to be a sensible rule.

Agreed.

To show you it wasn't a missile only issue I posed the bay weapons but you then decided to change the argument to one about missiles being better than bays of LASERS.

No, not really, just that missile salvoes inflicting auto crits would break the system even worse than crits from direct fire weapons.

Your current argument is that a lot of small ships with missiles can destroy big ships without needing criticals as they are so damn good and you would only be using nukes anyway.

No, small missile ships could defeat large warships WITH auto-crits, even easier than direct fire weapons could crit. The damage would be trivial in either case.

 

[Condottiere]

Weapon system selection depends on what you think you'll be shooting at.

Also, different missiles have different effects, which can be more damaging on the target.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Weapon system selection depends on what you think you'll be shooting at.

And defensive system selection depends on what you think will be shooting at you.

Both are important.

 

[swordtart]

No, small missile ships could defeat large warships WITH auto-crits, even easier than direct fire weapons could crit. The damage would be trivial in either case.

Can you provide a specific example rather than hopping all over the place.
Describe the small missile ship exactly as I suspect any specific attack mode can be defeated at relatively low cost. we are talking a unicorn ship here so I don't expect a source, just a valid design.
Describe the specific large warship (and the source) that can be destroyed by crits from a missile salvo but not from crits from a direct bay weapon that fits in the same sized ship.

I have described my candidate but it's full stats are here.


8 (+4)

Lethal Bean	Dton	MCr	Notes	Power
Hull (Buff Pl)	HP 120
LostTonnage
Arm (Crys)
M	T1
PP (TL12)
Fuel (Power)
Bridge
Computer	10/Fib
Sens	Mil
Sml Bay	P LASER
S/W	Fire Control/2
State Room (2)
Barracks (6)
Common
Docking Space	For Lifeboat
Lifeboat (5Dton)	Custom Thrust 6 Seats 8 + Pilot
Biosphere (5)	Feeds 10
Cargo
TOT

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I did consider stealthing it, but decided not to bother. As a buffered asteroid in the right environment it would be fairly innocuous. It has 12 armour which will shrug off many attacks and of course the 120 Hull points are no minor (12 hits required for a sustained damage critical).

The main armament is from the bay LASERS. These are effective enough against normal pirate vessels that the monitor might be called upon to attack. There is a spare hardpoint for a turret which might be used in some configurations, but it requires an additional gunner and adds cost.

There is a commander (who has his own cabin) two junior officers (sharing a cabin) and 6 ratings in barracks allowing for 3 shifts of Sensor Op / Pilot, Gunner and a Commander. The second shift will be within a ship round of an action station (the ship is pretty small) but the third shift would be asleep and therefore would take time to rouse when action stations was sounded.

The life boat is for when the ship gets too knocked about and the crew need to escape. If they can launch before the main ship is destroyed thrust 6 gives them a fair chance. It is more for morale and for occasional resupply purposes. Monitors that are on station closer to a suitable

Since it is so cheap (in warship terms) 4-5 could be scattered about in lieu of a more conventional SDB.

It relies on highly trained and motivated crews, graduates of Naval Academy usually specially selected for DEX for gunners and INT for Sensor Ops. Officers will have Leadership. In their first term since graduation, crew Skills are at least 2 in their role skill and 1 in two others, but many have been promoted and their base skill could reasonably be 3 plus their Stat bonus for an effective level 3-4 in their primary role skill. All crew will their basic training with two of those skills at at least 1. They will also have any rank skills.

Monitors mostly just provide a deterrent effect, but in times of high alert they perform a secondary function of picket duty. They tend to run silent as possible and lurk near critical infrastructure (gas giants etc.). Like ballistic subs you know they are in system but don't know exactly where. When acting as pickets, if an unexpected warship of under 10 kDton jumps in they are to attack immediately creating confusion and maybe dealing a crippling blow before reinforcements arrive. If an attack would be suicidal then they can just report but offensive action is both expected and significantly increases the chance of promotion or field commission. The age of the crew also tends to result in higher aggression.