Small Warships

[Condottiere]

You may want that metre in armour to protect yourself from our current anti tank guided missiles.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I think the long running issue here is that high guard is a ship combat game bolted on to an RPG. The combat systens dont mesh well because of this. Pure naval combat is something that deserves an entirely different set of rules and concepts.

I think this is always been true almost from the LBBs. There has always been a ship to ship game tucked into the RPG just begging to be brought out on it's own.

I would say it's exactly because the system is part of an RPG, the system is much more detailed than most, and we can worry about the less than perfect details.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

As for the original topic, I find the whole idea of lowering the expected size of warships can be done, but it has to be across the board. You can't have reduced small ships but still have these moon sized dreads at the same time. Either ships grew or they didn't. Just my opinion of course. :mrgreen:

I do not see any contradiction between large and small warships. BatRons are concentrated power, but we also need diffuse power to patrol space. Even a single star system is vast.

 

[phavoc]

Why do say it's the logical consequence? You totally gloss over that if you revamp the defensive model you have to do more than just pick one area. That has been a perennial problem. By looking at one thing you miss looking at the entire system.

To go with your example, a grav tank should have armor that is stronger than a free trader. It's by design and function. Merchants need hulls strong enough to be in space. Standing up to weapons fire is secondary. A tank must withstand fire to survive on the battlefield. Which means a destroyer needs to withstand destroyer class weapons, a cruiser must be able to withstand other r cruiser weaponry, and a dreadnought needs to withstand other dreadnoughts and battleship weaponry.

A pulse laser might not be strong enough to damage a dreadnought, which is reasonable. A cruisers weapon should be able to damage a dreadnought, but very slowly. That is entirely reasonable and scales in a logical manner. But having a tiny ship wirh the same capability armor wise as something 100,000x it's size is just plain ludicrous. Armor requires mass, and even "thinly" armored ships with collapsed mattwr will still have a great deal of mass - collapsed matter is certainly not mass less.

 

[-Daniel-]

As for the original topic, I find the whole idea of lowering the expected size of warships can be done, but it has to be across the board. You can't have reduced small ships but still have these moon sized dreads at the same time. Either ships grew or they didn't. Just my opinion of course. :mrgreen:

I do not see any contradiction between large and small warships. BatRons are concentrated power, but we also need diffuse power to patrol space. Even a single star system is vast.

I am not talking a contradiction between large and small. I am talking about the relationship between then categories. I am going to have a cruiser that is only 50k tons but the very next "size up" is my Battleships at 1 million tons. Traveller has allowed the top end to continue to grow and expand. I think if we want to bring down the size of the destroyer or cruiser then we need to bring them all down in size relative to each other. Why? Because if I have a Battle ship at 1 million tons then the cruisers would also increase to still play their role etc. But like I said before, this is my opinion. :mrgreen:

 

[PsiTraveller]

Awesome ship design. I will be sending you a message about it. I have a design I want to show you.

Free Traders may not just be merchants anymore. The problem with thinking that they need little to no armour means that a pirate can now threaten them with destruction from a distance unless they drop cargo. Hull points cost 10 000 Credits each (since Spare Parts cost 100 000 Credits per ton and repair 10 points of damage per ton). In the Pirates of Drinax game my players have looked at space combat from a merchant point of view and being able to inflict damage is very costly. Attacking a trading ship will financially ruin small operations.

A Far Trader has 2 points of armour. So a Pulse Laser triple turret at Long Range does 2D+4 + Effect of Attack Roll damage. That is 11 points on average plus the Effect. Subtract the 2 points of armour and the Far Trader takes 90 000 Credits worth of damage from a single hit, most likely over 100 000 points on a good attack roll. Two hits will cost the ship more than the mortgage payment. The problem is that to bump the trading armour up to 12 points of Crystal iron will take 30 Tons of space, half the cargo space of the ship. This would cost 6 Million Credits per ship.

So the answer is to pay each system to build some really scary fast escort ships that can kick the crap out of any pirate sized ship that comes along. These ships move around in system and watch the approaches to and from the Jump Points.

Having 15 points of armour makes a ship immune to most weapons except a salvo of missiles that make it through. Beam weapons in turrets will likely not do much damage per round. Then a ship is looking at trying for radiation hits or salvos of missiles to do any damage.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Why? Because if I have a Battle ship at 1 million tons then the cruisers would also increase to still play their role etc. But like I said before, this is my opinion. :mrgreen:

The relative sizes have to fall out of the system and he local meta. Some ship sizes might not be very efficient, so a navy might not want a continuous spectrum of ship sizes, they might just want a few sizes, e.g. battleship, screen, patrol.

I don't think there is any great danger of ship sizes spiralling out of control, there is little reason to build main combatants much larger than 100000 dT. Megaton ships are, just as usual, just a monument to the builders folly (except orbital forts).

Or perhaps? Now you gave me an idea...

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Having 15 points of armour makes a ship immune to most weapons except a salvo of missiles that make it through. Beam weapons in turrets will likely not do much damage per round. Then a ship is looking at trying for radiation hits or salvos of missiles to do any damage.

Quite. Having armour is a losing game for freighters, the pirates will just get bigger guns, e.g. "tachyon" barbettes.

Carrying a small fighter or two might scare off the pirate, since the pirates are as vulnerable to the economic effects of damage as the freighters.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Why do say it's the logical consequence? You totally gloss over that if you revamp the defensive model you have to do more than just pick one area.

If a grav tank or fighter can have 0,1 m armour, then a medium ship can have 1 m armour, and a megaton DN can have 10 m armour and hence be immune to puny weapons.

And, yes, if we start fiddling with armour, we have to build a completely different system, probably more like TNE.

That will clearly not happen in MgT.

 

[Condottiere]

Anything can be termed a warship, some are partially or mostly converted and/or adapted to perform that role, and some are built from the keel up.

Ye pirate ship seems to average at four hundred tonnes, and you can get the equivalent of a coast guard cutter to chase them down.

Numbers depend on how much ground you have to cover, and size on what threats they face.

 

[wbnc]

Anything can be termed a warship, some are partially or mostly converted and/or adapted to perform that role, and some are built from the keel up.

Ye pirate ship seems to average at four hundred tonnes, and you can get the equivalent of a coast guard cutter to chase them down.

Numbers depend on how much ground you have to cover, and size on what threats they face.

A small frigate or corvette can handle anything but another purpose-built warship without a lot of trouble. And they are a lot easier and cheaper to build. an interstellar power would have dozens of these classes per cruiser if they had to patrol large areas, and secure trade routes.since they no not need to stand up to the fire from the bigger ships to do their job they can get away with being fairly thin skinned. a few Mcr here and there in a design adds up when you are building hundreds of units to deploy against the odd pirate vessel or armed commercial vessel.

Since most criminal types would bug out the second they saw a patrol ship, the average vessel would usually not even come under fire outside of wartime conditions. Smart pirates and smugglers know that they can only spend their ill gotten gains if they aren't a floating meat-cicle in space, or shot full of holes. the odds of both conditions go up drastically when you shoot at a warship.

Since the odds are that such ships would never need the armor....on paper anyway.....armoring a patrol boat, or corvette to max armor when it will most likely never need to resist that sort of firepower would set the bean counters howling. On the spreadsheets, the overall cost savings would far exceed the cost of losing the occasional vessel... The poor soul on one of those "unfortunate, but unavoidable losses" would seriously disagree.

 

[Condottiere]

Sockblocking can be an effective, if temporary, solution.

The threat remains, but is currently emasculated.

 

[PsiTraveller]

WBNC: If a ship is armoured enough to not take damage it saves money over the long term. Each point of damage costs 10 000 Credits to repair. So if a ship has enough protection, even if it costs a couple of million credits to get, will pay for itself in savings on repairs prevented. Lower armour allows more damage, more repairs and more Critical Hits, which increases the cost of repairs.

So that could be an argument for the high armour level. Of course all armour takes a lot of damage when on the receiving end of a missile salvo multiplying 3 or 4 Dice of damage by X number of missiles. But 12 points of damage prevented on a TL 12 ship is 120 000 Credits of armour saved per attack. So the bean counters have to take that into account.
(Which is how a Naval designer would argue the point I think)

 

[wbnc]

WBNC: If a ship is armoured enough to not take damage it saves money over the long term. Each point of damage costs 10 000 Credits to repair. So if a ship has enough protection, even if it costs a couple of million credits to get, will pay for itself in savings on repairs prevented. Lower armour allows more damage, more repairs and more Critical Hits, which increases the cost of repairs.

So that could be an argument for the high armour level. Of course all armour takes a lot of damage when on the receiving end of a missile salvo multiplying 3 or 4 Dice of damage by X number of missiles. But 12 points of damage prevented on a TL 12 ship is 120 000 Credits of armour saved per attack. So the bean counters have to take that into account.
(Which is how a Naval designer would argue the point I think)

on a ship by ship basis that works.Bean counters are prone to look at short term savings and risk a few acceptable risks in the long term. On purchases of two hundred units saving a few Mcr per ship adds up. And on paper, the savings exceeds potential infrequent repair costs.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

A small frigate or corvette can handle anything but another purpose-built warship without a lot of trouble.

Take a 1000 dT freighter. Bolt on 10 fixed mounts with triple missile racks. Go hunt for an unarmoured patrol ship without proper missile defences. Fire a double salvo (60 missiles). Roll for attack on the defenceless "warship". Paint a trophy star on your freighter.

Building defenceless "warships" would be like building a current "warship" without missile or air defences and only armed with machineguns, since that should be enough to scare away the average Somali pirate.

 

[wbnc]

A small frigate or corvette can handle anything but another purpose-built warship without a lot of trouble.

Take a 1000 dT freighter. Bolt on 10 fixed mounts with triple missile racks. Go hunt for an unarmoured patrol ship without proper missile defences. Fire a double salvo (60 missiles). Roll for attack on the defenceless "warship". Paint a trophy star on your freighter.

Building defenceless "warships" would be like building a current "warship" without missile or air defences and only armed with machineguns, since that should be enough to scare away the average Somali pirate.

I did not say defenseless. I said built with less than maximum armor.

A ship designed for a specific role, and a specific type of engagement doesn't have o be proof to all threats, jus the ones its mission will be likely to encounter. If Somali pirates took a freighter and fitted a few ZSU-23-2 gun mounts, or rocket launchers the typical patrol vessel would be seriously threatened. It's 25-35 mm guns, would be unable to quickly sink a large ship, and its armor is nonexistant.

however that's not what they are likely to encounter. they are designed to combat lightly armed lightly armored vessels with no real offensive punch. In traveller Terms, that would be modified trading vessels and the odd corsair.

If someone did pimp out a heavy freighter as a patrol ship killer they'd send in a destroyer, or a squadron of frigates. Not build a new line of corvettes and frigates designed to counter that threat.Unless of course, that became a common threat to patrol vessels at which point they would alter designs to meet a new threat level.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Max armour is not very expensive, for the ship in the OP it is less than 10% of the total cost. It is also a great defence against most threats a small ship will encounter. Not the first thing to skimp on.

No warship (I design) is only built to police civilians. Small warships should also be able to scout for and screen bigger ships in wartime. And then they will face real warships.

Bolting a few missile racks to a civilian ship is not a strange idea, most pirates will be able to come up with that. Even corsairs have to worry about that...

 

[Condottiere]

Tincans were meant to be expendable; now, they're capital ships.

In theory, the crew is the most valuable component on the ship, and the part that theoretically you should most try to save.

 

[wbnc]

Max armour is not very expensive, for the ship in the OP it is less than 10% of the total cost. It is also a great defence against most threats a small ship will encounter. Not the first thing to skimp on.

No warship (I design) is only built to police civilians. Small warships should also be able to scout for and screen bigger ships in wartime. And then they will face real warships.

Bolting a few missile racks to a civilian ship is not a strange idea, most pirates will be able to come up with that. Even corsairs have to worry about that...

That works for your setting then. but the question was why would anyone skimp on armor. If you add in the beancounter/oversight committee votes to a process then you have an answer.

Building ships beyond what their expected role/threat level is going to be would result in exchanges like.

Will this ship be assigned to a fleet maneuver group?

No, it's for intersystem patrol...

Then why, build it to fleet requirements. Ths system and materials could be put to use on fleet vessels.thats would save 100 Million on just the initial order of vessels alone.....I see here it carries equipment for scouting as we as patrol...will it be used as a scout? I thought we appropriated money for new scoutcraft last session...Oh, why does this intersystem patrol craft carry (insert weapons system) are pirates using armored warships Now?

Occasionally...

so we're spending billions over the program because they MIGHT run into a heavily armed and armored pirate vessel?

Building ships for same mechanics is great, building them to optimum stats works in a wargaming scenario. but it doesn't happen when people start looking to shave 1% here or 0.5% there...and that's how warships get designed when they are purchased by governments. Well at least governments that have to consider tax rates, budget limits, and pesky oversight committees.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Will this ship be assigned to a fleet maneuver group?

No, it's for intersystem patrol...

That is where we differ; I certainly would.

I don't think most navies can afford "warships" that cannot fight. Policing civilians in peacetime is just a bonus.