Technically the only difference is the ability to travel under power between two star systems (aka spaceships have jump drives, starships do not).
But I was reading this article on the National Interest (https://news.yahoo.com/why-russias-navy-becoming-smaller-124400621.html) and the design of the Smerch corvette got me thinking about the differences between blue-water naval vessels and shallow water ones, but also how would this translate into Traveller?
By the book rules a ship gets 1 hardpoint per 100 tons. We know this is an artificial line in the sand, but also a necessary one in order to try to bring some sort of norm to the chaos of design rules. However we also know that if there is open space on a hull some enterprising soldier/airman/naval person is going to figure out a way to put more boom on the deck. Look at what PT crews did in the Pacific by mounting cannons, even howitzers, to the forward section of their boats. Or how after the sinking of the Prince of Wales/Repulse (and others) by aircraft navy ships sprouted AA guns wherever they could be mounted. Even the Air force got into the action and some bomber crews modified their plans with more guns/cannon in the nose. Some field modifications got adopted and later became standard options.
The Smerch, like many Russian ships, bristles with armament and visually looks more deadly than their US naval equivalent. All other things aside, without having to worry about the jump field, one would think that there would be many backwater space navies wanting to strap on guns to as many possible places they could to improve the fire capability of their ship. Though I do admit trying to come up with a reasonable design system to reflect this would be challenging.
The game Starfire had the concept of external missile launchers that often doubled the throw-weight of the first salvo (and, similar to the David Weber Honverse missile pod technology, external ordance and missile pods were very vulnerable to AOE nuclear attacks, so they were always used first).
So should spaceships get some sort of advantage over starships? The battle rider and similar sci-fi concepts already give ships the advantage of not having to tote around fuel/jump drives. I'm just idly speculating on this and interested in other opinions and thoughts here.
But I was reading this article on the National Interest (https://news.yahoo.com/why-russias-navy-becoming-smaller-124400621.html) and the design of the Smerch corvette got me thinking about the differences between blue-water naval vessels and shallow water ones, but also how would this translate into Traveller?
By the book rules a ship gets 1 hardpoint per 100 tons. We know this is an artificial line in the sand, but also a necessary one in order to try to bring some sort of norm to the chaos of design rules. However we also know that if there is open space on a hull some enterprising soldier/airman/naval person is going to figure out a way to put more boom on the deck. Look at what PT crews did in the Pacific by mounting cannons, even howitzers, to the forward section of their boats. Or how after the sinking of the Prince of Wales/Repulse (and others) by aircraft navy ships sprouted AA guns wherever they could be mounted. Even the Air force got into the action and some bomber crews modified their plans with more guns/cannon in the nose. Some field modifications got adopted and later became standard options.
The Smerch, like many Russian ships, bristles with armament and visually looks more deadly than their US naval equivalent. All other things aside, without having to worry about the jump field, one would think that there would be many backwater space navies wanting to strap on guns to as many possible places they could to improve the fire capability of their ship. Though I do admit trying to come up with a reasonable design system to reflect this would be challenging.
The game Starfire had the concept of external missile launchers that often doubled the throw-weight of the first salvo (and, similar to the David Weber Honverse missile pod technology, external ordance and missile pods were very vulnerable to AOE nuclear attacks, so they were always used first).
So should spaceships get some sort of advantage over starships? The battle rider and similar sci-fi concepts already give ships the advantage of not having to tote around fuel/jump drives. I'm just idly speculating on this and interested in other opinions and thoughts here.
It's certainly one of the more creative vehicles out there.
