Spinal Weapons - January Update

[Nerhesi]

Lets check performance now:

TL15 Particle-E (The best one): 3200 tons, 6DD (x1000) damage. Rapid Fire of course.

On average, damage is 3.5 X 6 X 1000 = 21000 hull damage per shot. 42000 hull damage per round (every other round). That is ~ 17,000 ton ship, without any armour.
Taking into account max OTU armour (15), You can then approximately "1-round kill" a TL15, 15 armour, 11,000 tonner, with the 3200 ton spinal. That is almost a 4:1 ratio. You will have no targetting penalties hitting the 11,000 tonner as it is above the 10k ton threshold.

Your weapon, will take up 60 hardpoints, which means this beast has to be mounted on a 6,000 ton ship. (which is fine given that more than half is taken up by the weapon).

60 hardpoints, is 60x8D medium particle bays - 6000 tons (wow, its the same weight! ). So that 480D particle damage. The spinal will 21000 per round to an unarmoured target, while the bays will do 1,680 per round to unarmoured target. They will also take 2700 power for the bays, vs ~3900 for the spinal.

I think we're pretty damn good now. Spinals do A LOT more damage, but in a single hit that has a lot harder time hitting smaller targets. Spinals are less affected by armour compared to bays. Spinals use more power, and can't get the nifty same TL advancements weapons may, but have their own table. Spinals can rapid fire which makes the monsters. Spinals now have a place in the naval combat world...

Right guys? Chas? Psi? Anyotherdilbertbutthisguy?

 

[Chas]

Right! To work... eerk!

Firstly let's get the facts straight (while hoping there's no typo's :lol: )

I've done a spreadsheet that shows the actual weight and bang for your buck per TL, with the TL modifications included. The actual weight includes power plant weight, and crew stateroom tonnage for both the spinal and powerplant add on. The actual weight to implement is critical at the turret level, where the current rules of 2 gunners per turret means you have to have 5 tons / turret in your final build which is huge crimp for cruisers without the 1st Ed barrage rules. Here, for the new Jan model spinals, even the big power boost is not that significant relatively. The % decrease for armor on damage for particles is very significant. Losing 30% of your damage at TL15 impacts and 24% at TL12 is also major.

I've done two tables for TL15 and 12. As noted the column "Weight" is the actual weight to implement the weapon.

I can't see the rationale for the particle spinal breakdowns. There's no good time to implement Particle-A. And once Particle E comes along there's little point in doing anything else except B if you're really really limited for space. I'd like to suggest it would be a lot simpler, and save the players a lot of unnecessary work, if this was just simplified to an early TL version, a small version and a big version.

Meson's will need the screen ruling clarified to properly qualify as commented on.

I'll get this up for now and then come back to the implications in the next post.

 

[Chas]

As these designs stand there are still issues that deserve being addressed:
- We have an elephant in the room with the Meson A at TL15 - this is so small and powerful why would anybody mount anything else but multiple of this? Are we limiting ships to 1 spinal each? If not then the big spinals should have more bang for their weight relatively rather than less as in this case. And if we limiting spinals to one/ship, it's not going to be a big push to get multiples of these Meson As onto a larger chassis by other methods. You can, just with crimpling, squeeze this onto a 5K rider build. And no problem at 6K. To go into a hanger or docking clamp rider or otherwise.
- We are still going to have <10K riders packing the most powerful particle spinal or a 4DD Meson. For the 75Kton fight, a heavy cruiser will be facing 3 of these on a ton/ton basis. With the heavy cruiser -4 to hit on its spinal weapon while the riders don't have the negative to hit. Fine to have riders having an edge with numbers, but at least let cruisers hit their opponents on an even footing. Average damage for Particle E is 14,700/hit, which is on your considered paradigm Matt of 2-3 shotting a 75K with its 30,000 hull points. Three of these against a cruiser with only its bay and turret weapons to fight back with is a massacre. Capital ships will be at a major disadvantage vs. riders and the spinal design as is could pretty much remove the cruiser from the fleet build. If the cruiser spinal can hit equally, there will be a paradigm point when its bays can destroy 1 of the other spinal riders in one turn and that weight of cruiser then becomes able to stand in the line of battle.

 

[AndrewW]

Are we limiting ships to 1 spinal each?

No.

 

[Nerhesi]

Now is fire-linking spinals going to work like normal fire-linking, +1 per D? or in this case +1,000 per DD? lol - I think just adding the dice together is simpler.

Need clarity on this. Nothing talks about linking spinals, but thus far - I dont think any traveller version has every had ships with multiple spinals. At the very least, some blurb that multiple spinals are just really just "multiple tubes of 1 bigger spinal" fired with the same roll (since, well.. they are basically aimed via the entire ship)

 

[Chas]

Are we limiting ships to 1 spinal each?

No.

That will have other implications. Are we going to allow ships to fire their spinals at multiple different targets? In opposite directions? Back flips in mid battle don't seem logical. :lol:

And if we do limit the way spinals fire, well, that is only going to tip the balance towards riders more. Riders will greatly benefit from multiple shots at one target, cruisers will blast a rider apart with one shot, and then need to re-aim to hit the next one.

 

[Nerhesi]

Anything other than "multiple spinals are just multiple barrels of one bigger spinal" just gets silly.
My bigger concern is the same as Chas'.. what does a multi-barrel spinal mean for the game?

 

[Chas]

The other issue here is how big battles are wanting to be played out. As it is there is going to be an enormous amount of very very expensive space dust very quickly and likely at quite long range relatively if this paradigm is maintained. The battle could be effectively over before other elements such as missiles or fighters even got into play. The 2-3 shot paradigm to 75K is sort of okay in a straight heavy cruiser vs heavy cruiser battle, it isn't when the other person is bringing three spinals to your one to the fight. If you want to keep the current build sizes (and we don't really want to go any heavier) I would suggest to
- drop the spinal damage by something around a half at 500pts multiplier. So the cruiser can soak up damage and have the opportunity to do things with its turrets and get lucky with a shot or two of its spinal. In this case at 5-6 shots to kill the heavy cruiser it has some chance to fight back. It'll still one shot kill the riders while they cripple the cruiser. Still want to work through the math a bit and/or build and play it out. I'd like to see how the extra range band of particles work out - again if these are too effective, your meson armed ship is going to vapourized before it gets into the fight at the 1000 multiplier.
Another reason I personally prefer the bang to be a bit lower, with the 1000 multiplier, a single win or lose of initiative could be likely to determine the fight which is not something you'd generally want to see. This should play out a bit.

To be clear here I mean I prefer 500x rather than 1000x without consideration of multi spinal barreled monstrocities

 

[Nerhesi]

I think this is what the lore/canon supports Chas - like with 2-3 hits to take out the 75k cruiser. My concern primarily now is:

Is this taking into account rapid fire? Should that be factored in? Who cares if you can't fire except every other turn if in that one turn you're achieved your objective? (yes of course the logical counter argument is drawn out engagements with more targets or much larger/tougher targets).

Which brings us to the second point, if we start "allowing" multiple spinals (something that is brand new to traveller), then I definitely share Chas's concern. It is one thing to say your 75k cruiser can be 2-shot, it is another saying that your 500k Tigress dreadnought can be 2-shot (and yes, but things significantly smaller). So once again - less and less logical need for big ships - in fact they become a "Bad/Sup-optimal Choice (tm)"

 

[Chas]

I think this is what the lore/canon supports Chas - like with 2-3 hits to take out the 75k cruiser.

Tweaking the damage ratio a bit behind the scenes to make the system a bit more playable nobody's going to get up in arms about, or likely even notice that much I reckon.

Conversely this multiple spinal mounts is heading off in the wrong direction. People have clear ideas about what Traveller is and isn't, and Traveller isn't fleet ships with gatling gun arrangements of spinal weapons. Take my own example, I bought the Mongoose 1st Edition books simply because 20 years after the fact I felt the urge to see how the designs I had done from the very first High Guard scrubbed up in what I had hoped were properly balanced rules. People still want to buy Traveller because it's Traveller, they don't want a different or new product, and I suspect multiple spinal mounts / ship is going in that direction. It's just not people's now well set preconceptions of the game. Nor will it mesh with older ship builds that people have worked with over the years.

We don't want to throw out the decades of material that's already extant. The Imperial navel fleet squadrons and designs that are part of every edition and pretty much everybody's Traveller universe. It's kinda the objective of what we're about right?

Going back to the balance point: we do want the superdreadnoughts to have a place, and destroying them should be attritional and a major major scene with multiple game elements coming into play. At 1000x multiplier I think we're losing that. It'll be easy to gang up on.

 

[Nerhesi]

Agreed with Chas here. I am against multi-barrel, rapid firing, 1-2 rounding a Plankwell, Kokirak, or Tigress. Thats a little silly.

I'm all for attrition battles as well. The faster a combat is, the less logical it is to even think up and create larger ships. Your universe naval combat system starts heading down the lines of massively armed drones and the such. Traveller ship combat has always featured ships of the line and the like

 

[Chas]

universe naval combat system starts heading down the lines of massively armed drones and the such.

Aye. Ain't that the truth. The human cost of these sort of engagements would be untenable.

 

[Chas]

It is really easy to justify the notion that double barreled spinals are out, people's preconceptions are about how difficult spinals are to aim and a couple spinals would make this nightmare, and then just like you can't put 2 hadron colliders side by side, there's all the stuff around the spinal to make them work means you can't just pack them like staws.

And by stating this sure there will be builds where, yes Andrew :lol: , you can clamp on a rider, but that's a little different as the riders have their own issues. It does mean though regardless there will be some space superiority builds with effectively multiple spinals, and yes, please do drop the multipler down.

I've been crunching through some builds and actually it's all looking very interesting and play effective once the spinal/screen combo is put to bed. Riders are vulnerable to the torpedo bomber, there's different ways to build the torpedo bomber, and there's multiple ways to build fighters to fight the bombers or attack riders themselves.

As I see it currently there'll be a couple of key fleet elements. One will be the space superiority battleship with the combo spinals, a big spinal on the ship and others in attached riders (the riders will stay close to the mother ship for PD typically). And what does make a strong return is what was termed in previous editions, the assault carrier. A battleship sized fighter carrier with a small spinal to keep the opposition honest, along with a swarm of torpedo bombers that can get in and get out against a spinal rider heavy opposition.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Hi guys,

I will be getting into this properly a little later this week (and next), but a quickie I can lump in now...

We will have a note in High Guard saying that while multi-barrel spinals are possible, they do not appear in 3I (because structural integrity or somesuch). So, we leave them open for the universes that want them, but 3I remains as it is.

Oh, and one more thing - if you chaps can come to a close consensus over the next day or two on what changes are needed to Damage/Power/Tonnage (and possibly cost), you will be saving me a massive headache. You know, a headache divided is a headache shared and all that

Ack, one more thing. I would be quite happy with the spinal riders _if_ carrying (and firing!) the spinal is all they can do - this will leave them vulnerable to other (smaller) fleet elements. Even better if the energy requirements meant they were likely to be firing less often than the big ships, but that may be pushing it too far.

 

[Chas]

Challenge accepted. Or rather I hope I have the time to help the team do a proper job, heh.

A couple of quick recommendations to start:
I think we need to increase the meson range to very long. We can't have one spinal shooting a range band less than the other. If that happens then you get ships able to back off till their lucky strike hits - the ship coming through the extra range band has to evade, the cards are all in the hands of the shooters
I think a rule that will simplify matters a lot is to state that a spinal weapon has to be built into a ship at least twice it's weight. This is pretty close to where they are at now in terms of a proper ship build for a rider and will nip in the bud any shenanigans - like battleships heaving up into range and then dropping 5 maneuver 1, armourless spinals off their docking clamps and vaporizing whatever is in front of it in the same turn. The standard riders are still a handful enough in themselves as a fleet element as I'll look to demonstrate, while still vulnerable to smaller ships.

 

[Nerhesi]

We'll get it on Mattias

Ok so gents, assuming multi-barrel is out of the equation for 3I (balance purposes).

How are our power to damage to tonnage ratios now? Chas?

 

[phavoc]

Challenge accepted. Or rather I hope I have the time to help the team do a proper job, heh.

A couple of quick recommendations to start:
I think we need to increase the meson range to very long. We can't have one spinal shooting a range band less than the other. If that happens then you get ships able to back off till their lucky strike hits - the ship coming through the extra range band has to evade, the cards are all in the hands of the shooters
I think a rule that will simplify matters a lot is to state that a spinal weapon has to be built into a ship at least twice it's weight. This is pretty close to where they are at now in terms of a proper ship build for a rider and will nip in the bud any shenanigans - like battleships heaving up into range and then dropping 5 maneuver 1, armourless spinals off their docking clamps and vaporizing whatever is in front of it in the same turn. The standard riders are still a handful enough in themselves as a fleet element as I'll look to demonstrate, while still vulnerable to smaller ships.

For range-based damage, how about a table that you would consult/roll against for your damage dice if you get a hit? So at VL range the damage might be 3DD for a meson gun, 4DD for a particle accelerator, and 1 DD for a railgun. Drop the range band by one and the damage becomes 4DD for a meson gun, 4DD for a particle accelerator, and 2 DD for a railgun. This gives you the chance to do damage at any range (reflecting the awesome power of a spinal mount), but also gives players incentives to try and stay at their optimum range - assuming they are only concerned with their spinal weapon.

I also think you are on the right track with setting minimum tonnage for a spinal mount. At first I thought that you should have "classes" of spinal, so no cruiser could mount a battleship-class spinal. But Traveller allows for a wide range of tonnages for ship classifications, so going with a set minimum tonnage allows more consistency while still maintaining standards. Maybe the minimum hull tonnage needs to be 2X, or 3X, or maybe even 4X. Not that the actual tonnage of the weapon changes, but by upping the tonnage I think you'd take more realism into the design picture. Nobody would normally build multi-billion credit sledgehammers mounted in eggshells - at least we should make the assumption. Definitely want to allow for flexibility for wargamers to make the equivalent of WW1 Battlecruisers (it's your death toll if you wanna fight real battleships), but at least with the multiplier rule you make them commit some decent tonnage to housing and bringing that spinal to the battle.

It still allows for battle riders, but now you shouldn't be seeing super min/max designs. A 20,000 ton battlerider is still quite deadly, perhaps even more so than that 5,000 ton one that was JUST the right size to bring a spinal mount into play.

 

[Nerhesi]

Ok so:

a) I like the "Spinal weapon can only be a fitted to a ship equal to twice it's size or greater"
b) I dont think we should change Meson to Very Long because I would like there to be a reason to still have particle. They're almost the same tech level - if Meson was equal, there would be no reason to even contemplate building similar level technology Particle. Now screens will not do well enough to stop Meson.... but despite all that. I think you have a point. The distance from very long to long is significant, (25) that would allow the particle spinal a lot more turns of firing, even if the target is not actively seeking to keep it's distance. But are we sure Meson screens as they stand.. hmm yeah I think the math stands up to make it a viable deterrent. Ok - so I agree, lets keep them both either Long or Very Long.

So agreed on both your points Chas. I'd keep damage the same over all distances.

With that in mind, are we find with the current weights and TL modifications? They seem fine with the above two modifications.

 

[Condottiere]

The easiest way is to incorporate recoil, which would require a certain hull strength in order to retain structural integrity.

Too large, and the ship starts getting shook to pieces.

One example would an eighteen inch naval gun on a twenty thousand tonne light cruiser hull.

 

[phavoc]

The easiest way is to incorporate recoil, which would require a certain hull strength in order to retain structural integrity.

Too large, and the ship starts getting shook to pieces.

One example would an eighteen inch naval gun on a twenty thousand tonne light cruiser hull.

There should be no recoil (or very little) from an energy-weapon. Railguns might be a little different, but it's really more a question of the mass of the projectile compared to the mass of the ship. Since you are suspending the round in a magnetic field the amount of energy transference to the launching vessel should be relatively small (I think). It's not like firing a bullet where you have an actual explosive energy recoil to do something with.