Spinal Weapons - January Update

[Chas]

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.

It's always tricky putting out explanations for pseudo science and you are generally better off with a general fudge of a statement saying spinals are difficult to control and manipulate and let the reader imagine their own issues, which would be real enough with energy containment, thrust aiming, et al. But I'm pleased this came up because it brings me to my next suggested ruling:

Spinals are difficult to control and aim and spinals benefit from additional mechanisms to assist this. A particle accelerator has a -1 to hit, a meson spinal has a -2 to hit. For every 2x additional tonnage dedicated to a particle accelerator and a meson spinal, you can apply a +1 to hit up to a maximum of +1. This extra tonnage does not require additional gunnery crew or hardpoints. For every 2x multiplier of size, power requirements increase +50%. That is, you can increase the hit bonus of a meson spinal up to +1 but at a cost of 6x the original weight of the weapon.

This way the superdreadnought massive spinal gets an edge without going into silly damage levels or complicated tables or calculations, and also crimps in a little the small rider that gains the bonus against being hit from being a small ship. There are reasons I think we want to keep the current tonnage negatives to hit based on size relative to allowing reasonable sized escorts in the fleet build. It provides an edge again to particles. Meson's will be doing more damage and be the final weapon of choice for the super dreadnought, in between there'll be options to be accurate and light or go with a bang.

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

I think it's generally correct, however I think my statement above still applies. The particles as a minimum should be redone to make the table more intuitive and easier for the players to work through: an early version that can become the medium damage, a small version and a big version with 3 choices at the end should be a viable selection of options (?)

Regards actual damage my suggested multiple from first passes at this is 500x, though I'd suggest a quick play out to check what's going on.

 

[Chas]

Time for a ramble.

As point of comment on balance I think we're okay with the bottom end of the battle rider. If this remains <10K ton there is still a lot of hard points and hull points left behind in the carrier by the rider.

Let's draw this example
- A 10k ton rider has 4000 hull points, probably a bit more due to reinforcement, let's call it 5000 hull points.
- You can build an effective torpedo bomber at 50tons including carrier hanger/clamp weight. For 10K tons that's equivalent of 200 torpedo bombers. If these are throwing plasma torps, each torp is doing 30 pts TL15 (35pts average - 15 armor + 10 AP) then that's 6000 hull pts / salvo from the 200 torpedo bombers. The bombers are going to give the low point defense rider a very hard time.

Which creates what I think is a nice balance. You can go with a bunch of low tonnage riders and likely have an edge in spinal combat, but you'll need to either have the carrier involved, or have an additional screen of fighters, if the enemy has brought their bombers.

As mentioned you'll likely have some space superiority battle cruiser that has a couple of spinal mount riders clamped on which can then huddle next to the mother ship for point defense. But let's see if this is an actual issue as it was always an option. At 10k, that is 100 medium bays, if they're each doing very high yield particle weapons (no need to consider fusions) that is a bit over 32pts x 100, 3200 hull points a turn. Those riders are going to be suffering from an equivalent weight in secondary weaponry. The straight battle cruiser is still viable.

What's the rider doing in terms of damage? Particle E, 4200ton so in a <10k hull. That's at my suggested 500x multiplier, that's 6 x 3.5 x 500 - 30% = 7350. At -1 to hit if the recommendation is put into play. So that's say roughly twice the damage of the bays, less if a medium bay fusion gun is allowed to work at 2DD full power and not damped. At very high yield the particle bay is not that different from 1DD. We need to see how the screen rules play out, I'd recommend staying with only 1 x affect on an attack as current so you'll still be using very high yield long range fusions as your weapon of choice often.

But a 2x better damage scenario for spinals on riders vs bays seem okay? Or does it want to be more? We should remember that actually built into a ship the spinal is doing 4x what bays put out on another ship at the 500x multiplier (very roughly), which I think is enough normally. At 1000x times we really are putting the bays to shame, unless we consider the torpedo bay.

If we look at the torpedo medium bay action that's 100 bays x 6 x 1DD = 600DD +10AP. 18,000pts on a salvo. How many of those actually hit I'd leave for somebody else to work out, but that's really grunty in the current paradigm for all that torpedoes are expensive ammunition. That's 10,000 tons. if we half that down to 5K at 9000 hull points we're not doing anything much different from an equivalent weight of spinal at the 500 multiplier. I'd like to see how the torps play out in actual combat.

In this case the 1000x multiplier isn't so out of order. But at 1000x we have 14700 hull points for the type E. Which is smashing the cruiser and this can double shoot.

Need to kick this total balance around a bit...

 

[Nerhesi]

Yeah I think I'm fine with the current x1000. The damage does need to embarrass that of bays, if only because it is countered by more effective dodging, size requirements, the ability to engage only one target, and targeting penalties vs smaller ships.

I'm not so sure about this scaling bonus to-hit on spinals. I think we should keep them as generally inaccurate weapons without delving into options that would make them more accurate. After all, there is a higher-end cap for the damage based on the 3I paradigm (only 1 spinal) - so we will never run into a tigress-1-shotting spinal

 

[phavoc]

Yeah I think I'm fine with the current x1000. The damage does need to embarrass that of bays, if only because it is countered by more effective dodging, size requirements, the ability to engage only one target, and targeting penalties vs smaller ships.

I'm not so sure about this scaling bonus to-hit on spinals. I think we should keep them as generally inaccurate weapons without delving into options that would make them more accurate. After all, there is a higher-end cap for the damage based on the 3I paradigm (only 1 spinal) - so we will never run into a tigress-1-shotting spinal

I agree with you on the concept of the awesome power of the spinal weapon. After all you are building an entire ship around it, so it's damage capabilities should be just as awesomesauce.

And you are right about trying to find the balance between damage and accuracy. Assuming there is a hit, the damage should be great, but if it's TOO easy to hit, then you won't have long battles. I don't know if anyone has gone into looking at the underlying factors of combat, in general. Do you want it to be short and devastating, drawn out, or somewhere in between? We can draw upon historical combat between similarly-sized naval combatants for examples. Smaller ships, with their smaller weaponry, tended to take damage at a higher rate not because of the gun calibers, but because the smaller ships had less armor for their size than compared to larger ships. So two destroyers slugging it out tended to do more damage to each other than say two battleships would have, comparitively speaking.

So if we take that into the spinal weapon discussion, we get into the ideals of say battlecruisers around the time of Jutland. And the British discovered before everyone conceptually putting battleship-class weapons on a ship was a bad idea if you expected to have that ship return from battle. They simply could not take the punishment that a true battleship could. So that was considered a failed experiment. We should probably look at roughly the same equivalent for the Traveller universe. Even a couple of cruisers beating up on a single battleship should be at a significant disadvantage because the battleship is armed and armored to fight other battleships, whereas the cruisers aren't. If we follow through on this logic then someone building a swarm of smaller battleriders to just carry spinals would be less attractive. I think the suggestion on making a minimum tonnage helps a little in that department.

But, since these are constructions rules and you don't HAVE TO apply real-world logic. Then it becomes simply a spreadsheet game, cramming as much as you can into a hull before you run out of hardpoints and energy.

This is where the "official" designs could really help set standards by which other ships are judged (and it would still allow players the opportunity to build and play whatever designs they choose). And, if Matt is reading this, you have an excellent opportunity here for a new supplement, a Naval Architect's Guide that discusses the mix and match of weapons, energy vs. missiles, etc. It could help to codify Imperial, Zhodani, Aslan, and other minor races naval designs and would help to show the "right" way to build a capital ship.

 

[Nerhesi]

So right now, spinals (x1000) do a lot of damage, but have significant penalties to hit "smaller capital ships".

MGT2 current HG rules:
Under 100 tons = impossible
101-5000 = -8
501-10000 = -4
10,001+ = no penalty.

MGT1 rules were:
Penalty to hit any target = -6 (Your target number to hit with a spinal was a 14+)

Ok so do we want spinals to be as easy to hit with as bay weapons? I would think not. Perhaps a blanket modifier of -4 on all spinal attacks then? This at least forces the capital ship to commit fire-control software to the spinal to offset slightly. It would also demonstrate the difference between having a fully articulated bay-weapon vs literally aiming your ship at something.

 

[phavoc]

So right now, spinals (x1000) do a lot of damage, but have significant penalties to hit "smaller capital ships".

MGT2 current HG rules:
Under 100 tons = impossible
101-5000 = -8
501-10000 = -4
10,001+ = no penalty.

MGT1 rules were:
Penalty to hit any target = -6 (Your target number to hit with a spinal was a 14+)

Ok so do we want spinals to be as easy to hit with as bay weapons? I would think not. Perhaps a blanket modifier of -4 on all spinal attacks then? This at least forces the capital ship to commit fire-control software to the spinal to offset slightly. It would also demonstrate the difference between having a fully articulated bay-weapon vs literally aiming your ship at something.

I have no issue with the "too small to accurately target" the spinal mount at an opposing ship. You are pointing your entire ship at your target in order to hit it, not exactly a simple effort. And, in theory, smaller (War) ships know they are flies to be swatted from the larger ship, so they will constantly be looking for a hulking behemoth to point their lidless eye at them.

Nobody likes to be on the receiving end of a wave motion gun, not even Desslok.

 

[Nerhesi]

Ok so to try to wrap things up for Matt...

Chas, what are we looking like with the following:

Damage multiplier (x1000) - kept as is.
Weight requirement indicating that a spinal can only be mounted on a ship twice it's size or larger.
Spinal Range for Meson and Particle blasts standardized to Long (instead of one being very long....). I dont think we want to make them both very long because that would leave the spinal railgun either further behind.
Changing Targetting Modifiers to:
Smallcraft (<100 tons): Impossible
Spacecraft (<5000 tons): -8
All other craft: -4 (so that they are still inherently harder to hit with compared to bays, which are fully articulated highly advanced grav blah blah etc)

Are good to go forward with this?

 

[Chas]

Are good to go forward with this?

Not really. There's no particular difference between 500x damage hitting a lot and 1000x damage hitting sometimes. And if we didn't like 500x things need to be looked at further.

Also we're at the stage now where everything needs to be considered as a whole and it would be good to include in the spinals a recommendation on how to manage the screens for the balance of the mesons vs. particles.

For myself I'd like to see something for the super dreadnought spinal. I'd never liked the concept of the weapon you fit in a 10k ship being the same as what went in the 500,000 ton, and would like to see at least a bit more spread in weights. I'd like to redo the spinal weapon matrix a bit.

Going back to the weapon features, I'm fine with capping spinals at long range and I like a minus to hit (number TBC though) as it gives secondary weapon systems a chance to come into play, but and a very big BUT, torpedoes also need to be crimped to match. What we're really seeing here is the torps, which have just been made more PD resistant, are so damage effective it's throwing everything else out of whack and let's return to this in a separate thread. Torps as a minimum should have the long range max with a - 6 to hit at very long, the inference being torps have a lot of bang, and less fuel.

 

[Nerhesi]

OK so lets focus on spinals. Two items left.

Not really. There's no particular difference between 500x damage hitting a lot and 1000x damage hitting sometimes. And if we didn't like 500x things need to be looked at further.

Lets discuss why? There is a particular difference 500x is half as much damage as 1000x - Why do we want to nerf the damage? I believe it is low enough as is.

For myself I'd like to see something for the super dreadnought spinal. I'd never liked the concept of the weapon you fit in a 10k ship being the same as what went in the 500,000 ton, and would like to see at least a bit more spread in weights. I'd like to redo the spinal weapon matrix a bit.

I'm not sure we can.. can we? Matt? Can we redo the spinal matrix completely? Or is just a touch up? If just a touch up perhaps we can add a very large spinal entry?

 

[phavoc]

Why not simply make spinal weapon damage based upon the weapon itself? Don't bother with A/B/C... Start with your basic spinal mount that does 1DD damage, uses 100 hardpoints, requires 1,000 energy and must be installed in a ship that masses at least 10k Dtons. This would be a Railgun-1.

For each 20% increase in size you go from Railgun-1 to Railgun-2. It does 2DD, uses 120 hardpoints, requires 1,200 energy and requires a 12k Dton ship to be installed in. Haven't done a spreadsheet, but the 20% may be too little of an increase. Maybe that needs to be 50%, or even 100%. Then if you can build a super-dreadnought that masses 1,000,000Dtons you could have an appropriately-sized spinal mount inside. It would be crazy massive and do crazy damage, but you'd think a ship that size should be doing that kind of damage. Since lots of other items are calculation based, it's not a stretch to do this.

For TL you could add in reduced costs, or reduced energy, but I'd be fairly stingy with that because you don't want to encourage too much of that stuff.

 

[Chas]

OK so lets focus on spinals. Two items left.

Not really. There's no particular difference between 500x damage hitting a lot and 1000x damage hitting sometimes. And if we didn't like 500x things need to be looked at further.

Lets discuss why? There is a particular difference 500x is half as much damage as 1000x - Why do we want to nerf the damage? I believe it is low enough as is.

What is the general statistical result of having -4 on the to hit? What % of hits less is this? How does that compare with -2? Somebody should have the actual bell curve at this point? Or what's your general feel for the results from experience Nerhesi?

The issue with the 1000x times is that your cruiser gets blown out of space very quickly if people start hitting often, and we need to keep in mind double shots can occur, and multiple small riders are still viable.

We have ship size:
50,000 tons = 20,000 hull points
75,000 tons = 30,000 hull points
100,000 tons = 40,000 hull points

Now let's look at rough relative weapon effectiveness at 5k tons. Spinals come in a bit lower than in terms of weight but I'll put this in anyways.
Non torp bays = 1DD (if we allow nuclear dampers to nerf fusions) = 1,750 pts
Torp bays = 6DD (ignoring results from PD) = 10,500
Type E Particle = 14700
Type B Meson = 14,000

Now looking at that what do we actually want in broad terms? I'd suggest spinals want to be doing max 10,000 hull points and not more given that double shots and multiple riders are possible. The 75k ton shouldn't be smoked in a single unlucky turn. 3 shotting a 100K ton battle ship is also quite possible in a single turn with 1000x from the equivalent weight of spinals that exist for a 75kt carrier. Sub-optimal.

There are issues as we've discussed. Make weapons too powerful and battles are only about who wins initiative - nobody wants that. And if spinals are too powerful battles are only about who gets the first spinal shots off, no other elements come into play.

As an aside I'd suggest as a first pass the total paradigm mix for major engagements for 5k tons might be something along the lines of
Energy Bays = 2,500 pts (or perhaps higher so there is a 3x multiple between these and the spinal)
Torp Bays = 5,000 pts (does not want to be more than this, current torps are out there!)
Spinals = 10,000 pts. (which could be achieved by a minus on the hit rather than removing the 1000x)

For myself I'd like to see something for the super dreadnought spinal. I'd never liked the concept of the weapon you fit in a 10k ship being the same as what went in the 500,000 ton, and would like to see at least a bit more spread in weights. I'd like to redo the spinal weapon matrix a bit.

I'm not sure we can.. can we? Matt? Can we redo the spinal matrix completely? Or is just a touch up? If just a touch up perhaps we can add a very large spinal entry?

It's needs tidying up in any event. As mentioned the Particle A is superfluous. It doesn't have to be major, but I might put up a tweak if I have time to at least offer an alternative for consideration. The Meson's are generally okay except Meson A is a little light, it's the particles I have more of an issue with.

And why not make it as logical as phavoc's stating besides the fact we'll want to make some modifications for TL so different paradigms are coming in through the ages?

 

[Nerhesi]

That sounds good phavoc. I guess we can propose a model? The formula approach would be a lot better.

Something like:

Meson: TL11 base. 1DD per 10000 tons. 500 power. Ignores armour. Long range.
Particle: TL11 base. 1DD per 5000 tons. 300 power. Damage reduced by 2% per armour point. Long range.
Rapid Fire: TL9 base. 1DD per 5000 tons. 250 power. Damage reduced by 1% per armour point. Medium range.

Max damage is 10DD

TL modification per level (max +4 TL): -10% space per TL.
Rapid fire: +1 TL. Allows second shot but cannot fire in following turn . Increase space and power cost by +10%

Chas , Phavoc - fix it?

The -4 is just experience based btw - combined with the fact that there are larger penalties for smaller targets when combined

 

[Chas]

The -4 is just experience based btw - combined with the fact that there are larger penalties for smaller targets when combined

The current minus to hit on ship size is about right though. Already giving -4 on 10k is enough, at -8 we're effectively saying everything below 10K is invulnerable, which is not really what is needed. I'd prefer to have the damage balance than driving this with the miss paradigm.

I'm already uncomfortable giving the -4 to hit for small riders. It is a big advantage such that the secondary weapons of the spinal cruiser have to come into play

 

[Nerhesi]

The -4 is just experience based btw - combined with the fact that there are larger penalties for smaller targets when combined

The current minus to hit on ship size is about right though. Already giving -4 on 10k is enough, at -8 we're effectively saying everything below 10K is invulnerable, which is not really what is needed. I'd prefer to have the damage balance than driving this with the miss paradigm.

I'm already uncomfortable giving the -4 to hit for small riders. It is a big advantage such that the secondary weapons of the spinal cruiser have to come into play

Good point. We don't want battle riders using spirals being immune. Ok do we keep targeting penalties as is.

We almost there then, let's get the formulas for the 3 spinal types set

 

[phavoc]

That sounds good phavoc. I guess we can propose a model? The formula approach would be a lot better.

Something like:

Meson: TL11 base. 1DD per 10000 tons. 500 power. Ignores armour. Long range.
Particle: TL11 base. 1DD per 5000 tons. 300 power. Damage reduced by 2% per armour point. Long range.
Rapid Fire: TL9 base. 1DD per 5000 tons. 250 power. Damage reduced by 1% per armour point. Medium range.

Max damage is 10DD

TL modification per level (max +4 TL): -10% space per TL.
Rapid fire: +1 TL. Allows second shot but cannot fire in following turn . Increase space and power cost by +10%

Chas , Phavoc - fix it?

The -4 is just experience based btw - combined with the fact that there are larger penalties for smaller targets when combined

Would we still want to include minimum tonnages for installation here? Though with things being scalar, that wouldn't be as much of an issue.

As a general aside, I would like to see two large combatants be able to slug it out for at least 5-10 turns, even with spinals in the mix. This gets more back to the older naval battle where you had actual battles not somebody blinked and then they died. To me Traveller capital ship combat has always harkened back to the days of the big guns. And if they CAN slug it out, then it's not so much down to the who wins the first initiative wins the battle. 10 turns is long enough that a bad die roll(s) means potential loss. And it's not so long that you'd have to break for lunch before someone lost a ship.

I haven't had the time to sit down and build out some capital ships, to see what they would look like. I think before the rules get finalized we need some various designs. Could a pair of 200,000 Dton battleships last more than a few rounds against each other? Best way to test that is just take the same ship up against the other. That tests the basic hypothesis, and then you can do some mix/match of weaponry (more torps, more defense, etc). But the basic balanced designs would be what you'd start from. And by balanced I mean a reasonably designed ship that's optimized for fighting at various ranges, just like a real-life ship design would be if players weren't trying to min/max shit.

 

[Chas]

I have some designs Phavoc that are floating around but need tweaks. On my phone at the moment but I'll try to get some completed examples up and definitely lets play test this out.

However if you want a slug fest the damage levels will need to be dropping I think we will find.

 

[Nerhesi]

A minimum tonnage is fine sure.

I know your personal preference is for 5-10 rounds of slugging it out, Matt has indicated 2-3 (more than once, and I challenged it too) We also need to make sure they're more powerful than using the same space/hard points to just get bays.

Basically, that means that the damage can't be lower than 1DD per 10000 tons at WORST. In fact mesons would be bad if it wasn't for the fact that they ignore armour

 

[MongooseMatt]

perhaps we can add a very large spinal entry?

That was exactly what I was thinking (inspired, perhaps, from watching A New Hope, Return of the Jedi, and Force Awakens recently)...

Anybody fancy knocking some specs up for a SUPER spinal mount? Perhaps a Meson-E and Particle-F?

 

[MongooseMatt]

As mentioned the Particle A is superfluous.

Particle-A is the budget model, designed for low-tech fleets who want to be able to hit something at further than Medium range - it is not meant to be a competitive choice for fleets who have potential access to everything, but more a weapon of desperation for a world who has only just started to get into the spinal mount race.

Basically, a Start Here weapon, but one quickly replaced by the evolution of technology. Remember, if you are a TL11 world, that way better Meson-A is simply not an option.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Oh, and one more thing...

We already have slugfest fights with bay weaponry. I would see spinal mounts as being used to end/stop slugfests so if you get two big bruisers of warships with spinals facing one another with no supporting elements, it is going to end relatively quickly (if not in destruction then surrender as it becomes obvious who has won).