Should maned small combat crafts be deleted from chartered space?

[swordtart]

Usually, in a general war, the standing army gets wiped out, and the conflict ends with a conscripted military.

Pilots are specialists, and have to be linked to smallcraft production.

As such, it depends on just in time logistics, for smallcraft production, birth rate, and, presumably, training completion.

For Traveller, this is usually limited by a given annual military budget, rather than a percentage of suitable candidates from a vast manpower pool

I think the small craft that keeps skills sharp are the ships boats (Possibly armed). The navy hands out one every six terms of service (regardless of branch) so we can assume they make a load of them. Those small craft going into general circulation serve much the same purpose as the detached scout, but at a system level.

I imagine every system has plenty of retired Navy that are the equivalent of "white van man" servicing the outer colonies, shuttling stuff to and from the high port and in the process running sensor checks to keep an eye on the system for a small honorarium.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Pilots of the future do not have to be in wait-mode. You can freeze them and this eliminates many of the ongoing costs they incur. You might defrost occasionally to refresh skills, but there is no indication that skills fade in cryosleep.

You are going to kill your pilots thanks to failed low berth survival rolls...

 

[swordtart]

You are going to kill your pilots thanks to failed low berth survival rolls...

As we have established several times that is not a thing in MGT2 unless you want it to be.

It is a routine (6+) medic check and the Navy can afford decent medics (DM+2 minimum), average equipment (cheap Expert package and portable medi-scanner - DM+2 minimum) and are not going to cheap out on under TL12 berths themselves (DM+1). I am not expecting the Navy to employ fighter pilots with an END 5- so they cannot fail.

The only overhead is the number of staff required to revive the pilots. A competent medic can on average revive every 35 minutes. If they are competent enough to take the -2 for rushing the can do it it 3.5 minutes. I don't envisage people being needed with less than a days notice since this is a surge capability. I anticipate ships requirements being back filled by fleet auxiliaries that are back filled from depots and bases.

If you need them quickly then you can take the -2 for rushing, reduce the time to 3.5 minutes and risk loosing 1 in 36 of them. You could employ slightly more intelligent or competent doctors without risking the loss (and anyone with END 9+ would be fine anyway). If that minor risk was unacceptable you could increase the number of medics taking 35 minutes since any crewman with a DM+1 would do.

If you can afford up to 6 hours per revival the check becomes only 4+. A Basic brained medical droid could do the job and could cost less than KCr5 per. It would be even cheaper to just use dedicated expert packages to grant wholly unskilled people Medic 0. The addition of a portable medical scanner would eliminate the 1 in 36 chance of loss of those pilots without a positive END DM.

In the worst case you could freeze the extra medics along with the pilots and defrost them first. Ensure any frozen pilots were END 9+ or have each one with a personal medi-scanner.

The RH has more advanced low berths that can revive a healthy sleeper with no human intervention at all and guarantee their survival. You can design cluster units that take up less space and cost less than the conventional ones. The additional maintenance overheads on these advanced units is chump change and everyone can be revived simultaneously.

A failed survival roll in the Navy career allows for a chance of muscle wastage due to bad revival from Frozen Watch. Since it only removes one physical stat point it is hardy crippling. You are not ejected from the service and the injury can be bought off in the usual way. The majority of the time the Navy will pay and that failed survival roll is actually a benefit as it probably results in nothing more permanent than a nickname.

Any death from Frozen Watch revival is purely referee fiat or tradition.

 

[Sigtrygg]

So you are willing to stick to MgT rules, therefore robot pilots replace human pilots.

Rules as written no polity would put human pilots into space fighters for fleet vs fleet actions.

 

[Condottiere]

Assuming frozen watch in long term freeze are volunteers, it would be those who don't particularly regard for the present time.

 

[Maxijohndoe]

While I enjoy these discussions I cannot understand why people think that the rules say you must do this...

The rules allow you to build fighters that have a sophont pilot, an android pilot, a robotic fighter, or at the highest Tech Levels AI pilots.

And as the Referee you can bend or break the rules if you want to.

It comes down to what the Referee wants and what is fun for the players.

Arguing realism in a rule system that has FTL travel, psionics and meson weapons?

Now you can argue that economic rationalism means that a robot fighter is cheaper than a sophont piloted fighter but why does a game need to worry about maximum efficiency? After all the economy of the 3I and similar entities makes no sense anyway. Once you get 3D fabricators you have all the materials you will ever need in a single solar system, so why are Travellers plying the spacelanes in junker ships trading stuff?

In fact why are sophonts crewing starships anyway. Apart from the Astrogator robots can run all the other systems.

If you look too closely at any part of Traveller in makes little sense if you apply real-world logic to it. But it is a game. It's like staying that Chess is wrong because the Queen has more mobility than a guy on a horse.

Basically in your game you can have:

Sophont piloted fighters
Sophont piloted fighters as the controller for a swarm of drone fighters
A Star Wars set up of a sophont pilot and a robot backseater
Remotely instructed robotic fighters
Independent robotically piloted fighters
AI controlled fighters

Choose the one that suits your game.

 

[swordtart]

So you are willing to stick to MgT rules, therefore robot pilots replace human pilots.

That doesn't follow at all. MGT2 does not specify that robot pilots are the norm.

Rules as written no polity would put human pilots into space fighters for fleet vs fleet actions.

Can you cite where it says in RAW that no polity puts human (or other sophont) into space fighters for fleet vs fleet actions?

 

[StellarVenture]

The biggest thing against robot fighter pilots is that the 3I doesn't trust robots with guns. Controlled drones maybe but then you run the risk of electronic warfare disabling the drones.

So, zhodani who have no issue with war bots having guns might have robot fighter pilots but the 3I has a distrust of robots in such a position even if it is efficient.

 

[Vormaerin]

That doesn't follow at all. MGT2 does not specify that robot pilots are the norm.

Can you cite where it says in RAW that no polity puts human (or other sophont) into space fighters for fleet vs fleet actions?

It doesn't specify that every person in existence has expert programs or that "in character" they know all these stat modifiers to ensure various outcomes.

The point, I think, was that arguing that game fluff "We use live pilots" in one instance is legit, while arguing that the fluff "Low berths are unreliable" is wrong in another instance because of specific assumptions about the rules.

The game mechanics can be used to show that the fluff of unsafe low berths is not true. (Which is good, because it's a stupid idea carried from a particular novel series applied to a completely different situation in the game world). You can also show that game mechanics make human pilots a bad choice, contrary to the fluff.

It's just cherry picking.

 

[Elder_Basilisk]

Small craft operating from space stations or motherships make excellent scouts, they serve useful roles in deterring pirates because a significant part of pirate success is not being spotted until it is too late, and they are perfectly capable of intimidating merchant vessels and other civilian craft that are not complying with space traffic control. These are roles where you want a human involved in the decisions, because they require discretion and judgement rather than just the ability to make the equipment do stuff.

This is pretty insightful. A lot of this conversation has focused on high tech level fleet actions. I haven't gamed that out very much, but I'm under the impression that optimizers seem to think fighters don't make sense in that area anyway.

On the other hand, a lot of charted space is not high TL. Even the imperium only averages TL 12 pre 5th frontier war (and it's probably a lot smaller and lower avg tech level after the hard times). So there are going to be a lot of areas where the TL doesn't support robot/autonomous fighters--and those are also the areas where fighters might well be relevant to fleet actions. (Again, I haven't wargamed it myself but some convincing threads seemed to indicate that A. Missile (and particularly nuclear missile) armed fighters are relevant to fleet actions but only until B. Nuclear dampers and good point defense options take away those teeth). So it seems like that fighters are most relevant to fleet actions in the areas and at the TLs that robots are least likely to be a practical option.

But even at higher TLs, it's important to on consider roles that fighters have outside of fleet actions. (And if the low TL carrier fleets/high TL battleship fleets model is accurate those roles will increasingly account for the existence of fighters at higher TLs.)

Scouting, patrol, and interdiction are ideal roles for fighters. A system like Noctocol with two gas giants and a main world would be very difficult to sweep for pirates with a single patrol corvette or even a pair of them, but a couple squadrons of fighters (using the mustang ultralight patrol fighter from Billy Bob's used ships as an example) at about 3 MCr each could field 50 fighters for the cost of a single patrol frigate and that would do a much better job of keeping the system safe for commerce and performing cargo inspections etc. Likewise interdiction operations keeping smugglers from supplying terrorists on a system like Tarkine would be much better handled by fighters/other small craft than by starships. And those missions seem like they would require judgement and discretion that at a minimum would inflate the cost of automous or robot piloted fighters.

 

[swordtart]

It doesn't specify that every person in existence has expert programs or that "in character" they know all these stat modifiers to ensure various outcomes.

The point, I think, was that arguing that game fluff "We use live pilots" in one instance is legit, while arguing that the fluff "Low berths are unreliable" is wrong in another instance because of specific assumptions about the rules.

The game mechanics can be used to show that the fluff of unsafe low berths is not true. (Which is good, because it's a stupid idea carried from a particular novel series applied to a completely different situation in the game world). You can also show that game mechanics make human pilots a bad choice, contrary to the fluff.

It's just cherry picking.

I have quoted the game mechanics that show that unsafe low berths is no longer true. I haven't seen any game mechanics that make human pilots a bad choice. I have heard people saying that fighters are pointless in general, but in that case putting a human in them or a robot in them is a waste of resources (and the fighter).

I have also identified where fighters can be used with high survivability and these are not unsurprisingly many of the same uses set out in the game, are the "normal" uses of fighters, screens, counter-fighter and close defence against missiles and the like. They can also be used for patrols and enforcement against other smaller craft and civilian spaceships. Space superiority fighters generally are missile boats and can engage at stand-off ranges. Individually they are of limited use against capital ships, but in large numbers can spam the ECM and Point Defence capability. None of these makes a robot pilot the only possible choice.

It may be cherry picking, but at least I have shown you the tree I got them from.

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on definition and design of the fighter.

Heavy fighters at fifty tonnes weigh in the same as modular cutters and troop transporters.

 

[Vormaerin]

It's more examples of the rules not matching how Charted Space works. I don't think there is a single example anywhere in an adventure or sourcebook of people just having expert programs and bonus giving gear for their skills. Just like there is no example of anyone actually using the deep space/empty hex rules to put useful paths across the rifts. Or the anyone anywhere actually wearing a Personal Energy Shield.

The fiction and the rules do not go together anymore. What should be happening per the rules and what is depicted in the adventures and sourcebooks do not align. High Guard combat rules do not produce the results described in non-rules discussions of how battles go.

But that's ultimately a completely different topic.

 

[tytalan]

The biggest thing against robot fighter pilots is that the 3I doesn't trust robots with guns. Controlled drones maybe but then you run the risk of electronic warfare disabling the drones.

Even robots run this risk because they still have to communicate with the carrier and or command ship

 

[Maxijohndoe]

It's more examples of the rules not matching how Charted Space works. I don't think there is a single example anywhere in an adventure or sourcebook of people just having expert programs and bonus giving gear for their skills. Just like there is no example of anyone actually using the deep space/empty hex rules to put useful paths across the rifts. Or the anyone anywhere actually wearing a Personal Energy Shield.

The fiction and the rules do not go together anymore. What should be happening per the rules and what is depicted in the adventures and sourcebooks do not align. High Guard combat rules do not produce the results described in non-rules discussions of how battles go.

But that's ultimately a completely different topic.

This is what I think is the problem Traveller is now facing.

Classic Traveller was based on the sci fi novels and movies of the 1950s to 1970s. Computers were primative, robots were like the one from Lost in Space, and everything was at a human scale with super high technology being treated like magic and not explained in hard science terms.

I think the original Star Wars movie encapsulates this well. The story is about knights wielding swords with mystical powers, robots are helpers, smugglers in space trucks engage in gun battles (blasters are more like firearms than lasers), with space battles that are literally taken from WW2 dogfights and Dam Busters.

Every part is immediately understandable to the viewer via well-established tropes and stereotypes so you don't have a need for a lot of exposition.

Get to the later movies and suddenly they are trying to explain things. The mystical power is now an organism that lives in the blood. You have combat robots and missiles. Everything is bigger, faster and the more they try to explain things the more glaring the plotholes become.

So in my POV Traveller works best at lower tech levels - 8 to 12 - and at a human scale, with high technology kept to a minimum, and with the setting of things like the 3I or the FFW begin in the background not foreground when it comes to Travellers adventuring.

That that is just my take on things.

 

[Vormaerin]

I don't know that it works best, though that's certainly the easiest to understand. I enjoy running The Culture type games as much as I do The Eclipse. I just think that the rules rightfully contain a lot more material than the backstory of Charted Space can absorb. Charted Space is amazing at what it does, but it does not do everything. Which leads to clashes between the rules and the fiction.

 

[StellarVenture]

Even robots run this risk because they still have to communicate with the carrier and or command ship

Communication and potentially being hacked though is different to drone active control, which has range restrictions too iirc, being cut off. The robot can at least still act out it's primary or last order where the drones would just wait for the next order once cut off. At least from what I understand, I could be wrong but I think that's the big seperation between robot and drone.

 

[MarcusIII]

Yup asking that question should we just pull the trigger and come to the realization that manned small combat crafts really make no sense and should just be deleted from the setting as drones are better cheaper and safer and do the same work as maned crafts.

Not drones but autonomous craft. Yes, they would not exist. A.I. controlled small craft for combat would be the sole small combat craft.

 

[MarcusIII]

t is unlikely that robots would be more expensive.

They are cheaper now (electronics to pilot aircraft)

 

[phavoc]

Small craft will always have a place since you can only have one hull in one place at a time. Some polities will prefer manned fighters while others will not for various reasons. It's really not that big of a deal.

In theory a robotic craft has many advantages over a crewed craft - but those theories may not hold out. While it's much better to sacrifice a robotic unit than a manned one, the optimal model of craft is going to be a human/robotic hybrid that combines the best of both.