Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Missiles and Configuration

Our traditional missile configuration tends to be pencilesque, but that tends to be due to the necessities of aerodynamics.

In space, there is no air resistance, and more options are available.

The first ones would be long squarish, triangular or hexagonal profiles, which make storage more efficient and require minimal adaptation of the handling equipment and the launcher.

Then you have spherical and cubical.

That would probably require a major adaptations of the launchers, but actually may make handling easier.

Perhaps even adapt railgun bays and mass drivers to launch them as smart bullets.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Primitive, Prototypical and/or Budgetted Missiles

If you take the above options, your missile and/or launch systems get penalized.

Let's be fair, taking a thirty percent energy increase isn't kosher for a weapon system that hardly uses any.

Never been too fond of inaccuracy, so that leaves increased size, which is what I'm after.

The primitive and advanced options isn't very clear on the limitations of the options, such as how many times we can take penalties, though three is probably the maximum number of bonuses.

I'll assume the maximum number of penalties is two, so that will give a size increase of forty percent in volume.

You might think that's silly, since it will decrease the number of missiles you can carry, and you have to increase the size of your launchers, to which I'll say great. Turrets should be bigger, and firmpoints are a free lunch anyway.

So you've established that you're missiles take up 0.1166666666666667 tonnes and you can only squeeze in eight and a half examples in per tonne.

With that forty percent extra volume, you can now increase the range, or increase the payload, or add in more stuff like decoys.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Missiles and Acceleration

There are two interesting features in missile motors: their fuel tanks don't have a minimum one tonne requirement, and their acceleration seems wonky, when compared to stated technological level availability.

It is weird that spaceship acceleration stops on a dime at technological level twelve with sixteen; it's like a highway that stops in the middle of an uncompleted bridge, you know there should be more, but it's just leaves you hanging there,

Missiles are listed with maximum acceleration of fifteen; that works for me, since I usually don't bother improving anything beyond technological level fourteen, which that would be three short of.

The nuclear missile is available at technological level six, and has an acceleration of ten, and reaction rockets aren't available until technological level seven.

Then you have the ortillery missile with acceleration six, with a dice modifier penalty of minus six to hit anything that moves; what if the target is chugging along at acceleration one?

Technological level seven gives access to acceleration three, yet a technological seven standard missile has acceleration ten.

Acceleration ten isn't available until technological level ten.

Long range missiles are listed as having acceleration fifteen, but are available at technological level eight; acceleration fifteen is only available at technological level eleven.

 

[bluekieran]

Long range missiles are listed as having acceleration fifteen, but are available at technological level eight; acceleration fifteen is only available at technological level eleven.

I would suggest that "can go really fast" and "can go really fast while not experiencing enough Gs to squash meatbags into jam" are separate technological achievements.

 

[h1ro]

I'd suggest the rules are arbitrary - mass of a ship plays no part in it's acceleration, the drives no longer have a performance limit based on hull size - by making the drive size a percentage of the ship you want more G, you get a bigger drive.

Any hint that mass affected the performance (which with hull size you can kinda say it does) has gone in 2e.

Taking that over to missiles, I would guess that the different size missiles having different performances reflects a different drive design - standard M drives can't be made small enough.

Either that or if you're using the same drive technology, remove the variations in G on missiles.

With regard to drive progression stopping at TL16, Traveller has rarely handled anything over 15 or 16. 2e has brought options but it hasn't been woven into the whole game. I prefer to limit Traveller to 14 with the occasional 15 and rarer 16 cos of the old idiom about magic and sufficiently high tech.

 

[Condottiere]

Manoeuvre drive size minimum hasn't been established.

With two and a half tonne torpedoes you'd be tempted to.

Particle accelerator.

 

[h1ro]

Without establishing the standards from which you work designs, it's all up in the air and you can have whatever you like...

(Don't understand the PA reference either!)

 

[Condottiere]

Special effects.

I assumed that manoeuvre drives require a tonne, but it was pointed out that's never mentioned in Mongoose Second.

On the other hand, pound for pound, reaction rockets are five times cheaper, and missiles are disposable, and you lose half every five turns in flight.

This isn't a problem for torpedoes, and giving them a manoeuvre drive pretty much turns them into cruise missiles, who aren't going to be led astray every five turns.

 

[h1ro]

Reaction drives take a metric shit ton of fuel.

Hand waves are your friend...

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships require setting aside fourteen cubic metres for a fuel tank.

Missiles and torpedoes haven't unionized.

 

[h1ro]

Not yet, comrade...

 

[Condottiere]

Manoeuvre drives can substitute batteries, which I assume are required to power the electronics.

 

[h1ro]

Hmm, maybe but 2e lists the M drive as requiring power so you'd need a power source of some kind to run it. Batteries in the rules are good for one turn at the listed output (which makes them kinda useless) tho I am sure the numbers could be worked to allow a lower output over greater time.

I don't think 2e lists a minimum size for a fusion power plant. NASA has made this which is pretty dinky and while current fusion designs are huge, we can hand wave and make them smaller.

 

[Condottiere]

There a mini fusion reactor attached to those guns.

 

[h1ro]

Yeah but in an age of ultra violent weapons and an uber fast battle zone, those flying suits look like slow easy targets.

Bring the machines...

 

[Condottiere]

Say missile sized.

Even if they have to be refurbished every twenty four hours, more than enough time to power a very long ranged missile.

 

[Condottiere]

Missiles: Medium Endurance


Thrust 15 12 9 6 3

Technological Level 11 10 9 8 7

Default volume percentage 30 24 18 12 6

Default fuel tankage percentage 18.75 15 11.25 7.5 3.75


Notes:
You may be wondering, what good is a three gee missile? Well, going by the spacecraft acceleration table, in thirty minutes it would reach fifty thousand kilometres at three gee constant, which is just short of a kilometre or two of Distant Range.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Missiles and Second Stages

Second stages to extend range aren't aren't an obvious option, and I'm not exactly thrilled on losing half my salvo every five rounds.

So you have spaceships acting as that first stage, and launch and targetting platform, or manned missile buses.

As i understand physics, the speed of the launched missiles would be their acceleration, plus velocity of the launching platform.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Acceleration and Azhanti

So what exactly is the Azhanti High Lightning class cruiser.

Well, it is a cruiser. But so is the ten tonne pleasure variant.

When it was constructed, it was roled as Fleet Intruder, a description I had never encountered before. Nor since.

Presumably, it was meant to be the equivalent of surface raiders, specifically the Deutschland class.

The Deutschlands had great range with (light) capital category primary guns, and were renowned for being to outgun anything that can catch up to them, and outrun anything that can outgun them. That's because the Germans cheated and certainly went beyond their treaty obligations. Speaking of which, treaty obligations also prevented the evolution of the supercruiser during the interwar years, and heavy cruisers were emasculated.

So what exactly were the Azhantis good for? Which is not the same question as for what the Azhantis were designed for. Whatever that was, with the rebooting of the ship design rules, certainly not as commerce raiders.

If you assume that the Azhantis are meant to be Deutschlands, they lack the required punch. They also lack the required acceleration, because with a scale of upto nine for manoeuvre drives, quite a lot can outrun them when arrive in an enemy system with empty tanks, or even half full tanks, since the enemy has the option of pursuit.

Acceleration factor two was a reasonable performance, back in the day when acceleration was capped at six, and you had to displace three times acceleration factor, minus one, in percentage hull volume. Five percent seems reasonable then; five percent gets you factor five acceleration and is within the range of line of battle ships. The ones that you dearly would like to avoid facing in combat.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Fleet Intruder - a class of capital ship (part of the fleet) designed to get behind enemy battle lines (hence the long legs of jump) and raid soft targets, civilian traffic, lightly defended bases that sort of thing.
Note another thing jump 5 fuel tankage allows - jump insystem with enough fuel to jump out again if enemy forces are stronger than expected. The PA spinal is a long range weapon with more than enough capability to make short work of civilian shipping and bases.