Spinal Weapons - January Update

[Nerhesi]

I'm just going by the established guidelines based on what spinals exist in canon material to make sure we can still meet those.

Technically, if we wanted to reduce the TL benefits by a significant amount, wed should Revisit starting weights

But limiting to +/- 3 TL is fine

 

[phavoc]

Starting weights seem ok. I'm just looking to see how we can have regular warships and spinal warships existing equally. Cause, if you think about it, with spinals being the ship-killers they are, then there should be smaller-sized spinals. Everyone would be running around with something sized for their hull. It may not be DD damage, but it would should be superior to any bay attack.

Actually, I kind of miss the idea that smaller ships might have spinals, too. But I can live with them being mostly reserved for capital-class vessels.

 

[Nerhesi]

The problem coming from this though, if you disallow smaller spinals, indirectly, you nerf spinal damage. Larger spinals require larger ships which therefore make them less effective at killing other ships because they're on bigger ships shooting bigger ships now!

 

[phavoc]

Well, I'm decidedly NOT calling to disallow smaller spinals. I'm advocating FOR them. But in essence it's different than having a 50Dton missile bay on a 70ton fighter. The rules just haven't accomodated smaller spinal weapons before. I was reading a story not too long ago and the ship had a 30CM spinal weapon as it's primary weapon, with additional missiles and beam weapons too. It would have been DD or less sized in the Traveller universe.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

If a small ship wants a spinal/main gun, can't it just mount a large bay weapon? And keep the proper spinals for the big ones?

 

[madmike]

I have already done similar with Ships of Clement Sector 9 - System Defence Boats.

I used a 100 tonne Meson bay in this case for the main weapon of the Rattlesnake class Attack Craft, a 300 tonne SDB.

Clement Sector Setting is published by Gypsy Knights Games.

 

[Chas]

Regards spinal size the 3000 ton Meson A is about as small as we want to go. If you start making smaller spinals then you have to drop the relative power, and then woops we're back into the territory large bays are supposed to fit into anyways.

The issue being that small spinal ships will simply be fighters but on a bigger scale. Where we are on spinal size now should e fine in terms of its intended applications, though I do want to build some cruisers at your intended paradigm Nerhesi. Do want to see where the light and medium cruisers begin and end, or should be

 

[Nerhesi]

Regards spinal size the 3000 ton Meson A is about as small as we want to go. If you start making smaller spinals then you have to drop the relative power, and then woops we're back into the territory large bays are supposed to fit into anyways.

The issue being that small spinal ships will simply be fighters but on a bigger scale. Where we are on spinal size now should e fine in terms of its intended applications, though I do want to build some cruisers at your intended paradigm Nerhesi. Do want to see where the light and medium cruisers begin and end, or should be

Please go ahead - with my current scaling, the lightest meson is 6000 tons, and the particle is 3000 tons. I want to see if there are any huge gaps or just minor optimized areas (which we can't avoid and will always exist, e.g. The 40 ton fighter, the 900 ton spacecraft, the 4900 ton missile tender etc etc )

 

[Chas]

Regards spinal size the 3000 ton Meson A is about as small as we want to go. If you start making smaller spinals then you have to drop the relative power, and then woops we're back into the territory large bays are supposed to fit into anyways.

The issue being that small spinal ships will simply be fighters but on a bigger scale. Where we are on spinal size now should e fine in terms of its intended applications, though I do want to build some cruisers at your intended paradigm Nerhesi. Do want to see where the light and medium cruisers begin and end, or should be

Please go ahead - with my current scaling, the lightest meson is 6000 tons, and the particle is 3000 tons. I want to see if there are any huge gaps or just minor optimized areas (which we can't avoid and will always exist, e.g. The 40 ton fighter, the 900 ton spacecraft, the 4900 ton missile tender etc etc )

Need to still consider where meson screens fit into that scaling Nerhesi and how to build them, but perhaps a discussion over on the screen thread.

 

[Chas]

Yo Nerhesi,

As suspected there is an issue with this part of the scaling:

c) <done!> Matthew request: To make sure 75kish cruisers can 2-3 shot each-other. Lets say the 75k cruiser is somehow carrying 36kton spinal (near impossible, possible with Jump 3 and totally crippling your m-drive and so on). So this 6DD TL15 spinal will do, on average 21,000 hull damage, or 11,550 after you consider TL15 armour. A 75k cruiser has 30,000 hull (normal, not reinforced).

This is not realistic in terms of the weight of what makes a feasible 50 to 75Kt ship, the existing paradigm is close for cruisers.

The ideal balance I think at a first look is about at TL15 and historical balance:
6000 tons of spinal = 10,000 hull point shot. That's 3 shotting the 75k for 6000 tons of spinal (or perhaps a little more 7000-8000 tons depending on how much you want to limit the 50k)

At 4600 tons for the rapid shot Type E the 50k Jump 4 can still fit in approximate 15x 100ton bays and 100 barbettes, the rest in turrets, or thereabouts in a realistic build Maneuver 9. Doing 14,700 hull points on a hit. There's no cutting into armor or performance which makes it effectively a heavy cruiser. So I think we want to be a nudge above that to put the acid on the medium cruiser build. If we get this right, everything else will fall into place.

Essentially it means what I've found is that once you optimize the current ship build you get a little ahead of the curve for the Type E Particle Accelerator from the historical. Push the weight up a bit more and things even out. The current 4200 tons for the straight type E, giving 14,700 hull points is too much, in my humble opinion. It is 2 shotting the 75K with a comfortable build 50k ship which is getting us into the who wins initiative territory. This is particularly important if you are going to be scaling above this damage point. In relative terms your 100k or your 200k ship will be doing the same damage to each other, so you need to be on conservative side here.

 

[phavoc]

Has anyone else looked at the naval cannon paradigm shift as technology increased? I think there are some parallels here. If you look at the early sailing ships, it was all about gun decks and just putting as much firepower as you could into your ship. Then, when steel ships showed up, you had some of the same paradigms come along. If you recall some of the earlier cruisers, you had the main forward and rear guns (early versions had no turrets, just gun wells), then you had a slew of smaller guns built into the sides in casemates and sponsoons. These smaller guns were meant to fight off smaller craft and such, but they weren't very effective. However the ship itself appeared powerful because it was sprouting guns everywhere. In the WW2 era you saw fewer, but more powerful weapons. The advent of aircraft saw ships sprouting AA wherever you could stick a pintle mount and an AA gun.

That's kind of how we are now I think. I think we have too much going on with regards to firepower being stuck onto the size of the ship. I do like the mix of required tonnage per bay, but the hardpoint cost is relatively trivial. It used to be that you could only have a bay per X tons. Maybe to step back from the "stick a gun everywhere" paradigm, large/medium/small bays are built somewhat along the same logical lines.

This would be a complete change to the rules, but I think it might help check the weapons inflation that I'm starting to see:

Large bay - 1 per 5k Dtons, 500 tons, 10 hard points
Medium bay - 1 per 2.5 Dtons, 250 tons 5 hard points
Small bay - 1 per 1k Dtons, 100 tons 3 hard points
Barbette - 1 per 100 tons, 5 tons, 1 hard point
Turret - 1 per 100 tons, 1 ton, 1 hard point

The effect isn't cumulative across bay types. Just per each type. You still have to pay, per installation, tonnage, energy points and hard points.

So lets look at a 10k Dton light cruiser design. It could have a MAXIMUM of 2 large bays, 4 medium bays, and 10 smaller bays. That would require a total of 3,000 tons (1,000 for the 2 large bays, 1,000 for the 4 medium bays, and 1,000 for the 10 smaller bays). It would start out with 100 hard points. This equipment would consume 70 hard points (20 for the 2 large bays, 20 for the 4 medium bays, and 30 for the 10 smaller bays). The remaining 30 hardpoints could take either turrets or barbettes. I would be ok with saying a turret could hold up to 3 single-space weapons, and a barbette could hold 1 medium-space weapon (laser cannon, particle beam cannon, Ion cannon, etc), or 4 smaller-space weapons. That would give players enough flexibility to come up some interesting designs.

Under the existing rules my 10k CL could have 6 large bays and still have 70 hard points to put whatever on. At the smaller craft level the bays (mentioned up thread) would take the place of small-craft spinals. But you'd see, I think, more nuanced designs. Plus this would give you more space to devote to armor and internal systems rather than running around space with lasers tacked on everywhere.

 

[Chas]

@Nerhesi
To follow up on the last post...

If we take for the TL 15 balance 6000 tons = 3DD received damage at the 1000x multiplier that should be viable.

I'd also make the following suggestions from that.
- We probably don't want the 1DD version which at high tech levels would get small. So let's start the scaling at 2DD.
- Let's have a sliding scale for the mesons so they do get relatively better vs. particles as the tech levels mature.

Reverse engineering the 3DD at 40% gives us an easy start weight of 10000 tons for a meson for TL 11. 6500 tons for 2DD version. And, hey, that's not too far off standard existing at TL 12 = 7150 and 11000 at 2DD and 3DD respectively. BUT, that is not taking into account any screen effect we may want to introduce so let's put this on the back burner for a moment.

Looking at the 2% armor value impact for particles as provided, not the 3% you suggested Nerhesi, we get
4DD = the 10000 point/6000 tons ratio roughly. So again we can start the scaling for the particles at 4DD / 10000 tons at TL 11. half for 2DD at 5000 tons. Looks about right.

That is if Matt wants a straight scaling mechanism. I don't like it for the bottom end. We should keep the historical paradigm of the large gap between the 10K escorts and the light cruisers kicking in around 30-40K. As it stands at 6000 tons/3DD a 50k can probably still get away with being in the line of battle as a spinal carrier only. We do want more powerful weapons above that. If the 100K ship is carrying the 6DD weapon doing 20,000 hull points a hit then the 50K ship has to stay far away.


@ Phavoc
Doubt if we're allowed a rebuild at this stage Phavoc. One of the key points of the design process is supposed to be keeping the feel of the past vessels, which a new game design could drift away from.

This would be a complete change to the rules, but I think it might help check the weapons inflation that I'm starting to see

The weapon creep might be more due to the new relative hull values as to them actually getting more powerful.

 

[phavoc]

But we are already deviating with new weapons, bigger bayss, new ways to calculate weapon maximums. There are deviations all over the place.

It's a complete change to the rules as they completely changed from the previous version. I'm just looking to combat the weapon system inflation that seems to be happening. It's getting a bit silly on the larger capital ships.

 

[Nerhesi]

Ok - need some clarity.

1) Rapid Fire is gone - it is impossible to balance with it because it simply doubles the size of the ship that can be destroyed. So the only way it stays in is if you completely nerf the damage on all spinals because you have to assume rapid fire will be there. You can't really balance if your DPT (damage per turn) can literally become double with nothing more than minor increase. You can in attrition scenarios, but that further devalues big-ships.

2) Spinal Size. You bring up historical balance - lets take a look at that. This is Cannon, MGT1 balance:

Looking at MGT1 examples:
a) TL15 Particle-E, 3200 tons, 520 damage. Rapid Fire. The most powerful and size efficient Particle. You can't get bigger or more powerful no matter how much space you have.
Hitting an Armour 15 target, you would reduce damage by 450 (30 per point). Doing 70 points per hit. 140 damage VS Hull of a TL15 60k Cruiser: 325 (I think - 312 for a TL14).
b) Meson weapon - TL15: Under 10k tons, Rapid Fire, doing 535 per hit. Even with the best defences (6 screens, running on overdrive-order thing), the attacker only needed a 5+ to bypass and do full damage. A rapid fire shot from a ~9000 ton meson would take out 200,000kton fleet carrier or battleship.

Basically, in both cases you have ships 5 or 10 times smaller than the target, taking them out neatly in 1-2 rounds.


So lets take a look at what we have now:

I take it your point is that now, with my proposal they've swung into too far of the opposite direction? Let compare a 6DD Particle then and see what is the damage trade-off?

6DD Spinal, 18,000 tons, 36,000 power, 21,000 damage on average vs 0 armour. 11,550 vs 15 armour. Long range. 18,000 MCr.
257 x TL14 Medium Particle Bays. 11,565 power. 8,196 max damage on average vs 3,341 armour. 1,105 vs 15 armour. Very long range. 20,560 MCr.

Ok Chas - so I'm not understanding.. are you saying with my current proposal, the Spinals are still way too powerful then? Because the ratios (except for cost) seem pretty good. We're at just above 3-to-1 damage/size ratio when compared to medium bays, for almost 3x power requirements. Just need a sort of 1-2 liner on what your concern is

 

[Chas]

The problem is what actually fits in the new ships. In the new ships it's not just the spinals that have changed, it's everything that goes in them to allow which kind of spinals to work with what ship size.

What we want following historical Traveller breakdowns is a light cruiser that is that, a light cruiser, it sacrifices protection and firepower to get a weak spinal into it at Jump 4 TL15 30-40K. The medium cruiser at 50k is not supposed to have the full suite of weaponry, nor should it be able to take on a 75K on an equal level or make the 75K redundant, which if the spinal is too powerful/weight is what happens, the 50k should not be able to 2 shot a 75K. At 75k you have full heavy cruiser, with a balanced weapon system at the 3 shot paradigm. At 100k you have either serious secondary weaponry, or a bigger spinal or whatever to scale up again.

As I'm looking at the different ship builds if we get this balance right, then everything else falls into place. You can safely scale upwards to have big spinals for the superdreadnought, the riders work, the relative effectiveness across TL will be easy to manage. TL14 Jump 3 will win because it's jump 3 vs. jump 4, and so forth.

I think the balance point is something around > or = to 6,0000 tons for 10,000 hull points damage. It might be a bit higher, 7000. I wouldn't want to see it lower as the medium cruiser gets too good.

 

[Nerhesi]

The problem is what actually fits in the new ships. In the new ships it's not just the spinals that have changed, it's everything that goes in them to allow which kind of spinals to work with what ship size.

EDIT: Removed my response as I understand your position now. You're arguing from a position where you are indicating that historically, there is a change somehow. I am arguing that actually, there was no change (MGT1 ships actually could easily carry the best spinals AND all the best weaponry). See next point.

What we want following historical Traveller breakdowns is a light cruiser that is that, a light cruiser, it sacrifices protection and firepower to get a weak spinal into it at Jump 4 TL15 30-40K. The medium cruiser at 50k is not supposed to have the full suite of weaponry, nor should it be able to take on a 75K on an equal level or make the 75K redundant, which if the spinal is too powerful/weight is what happens, the 50k should not be able to 2 shot a 75K. At 75k you have full heavy cruiser, with a balanced weapon system at the 3 shot paradigm. At 100k you have either serious secondary weaponry, or a bigger spinal or whatever to scale up again.

This is our disconnect. A 50k ship can 2 shot a 75k ship. Infact a 10k ship could easily 2-3 shot a 50-75k cruiser.

There was never a sacrifice of other weaponry/equipment to carry a Spinal. Perhaps there was in the non-MGT versions? MGT1 has no sacrifice at all to carry a spinal - infact, it was downright expected.

Canon designs pretty much carried the BEST spinal that TL could afford them. The only things that didn't carry spinals were support ships and carriers
In fact, MGT1 Arges-Class Gunboat are 3000dton battle-riders. Carried in groups of 4 by a 35,000 dton battle-tender. They could easily one-shot something 10 times their weight. A player design could easily one-shot TWENTY (20) times their weight.

Keep in mind that a 20,000 tonner 2-3 shotting a 75k ship is fine - at least according to Matt and established traveller Cannon.

I think the balance point is something around > or = to 6,0000 tons for 10,000 hull points damage. It might be a bit higher, 7000. I wouldn't want to see it lower as the medium cruiser gets too good.

Now you've confused me again The ratio you give above is nearly Identical to what I've proposed 10,000 hull damage (3DD) from a 7,000 ton weapon. My ratio of a TL15 Particle weapon is nearly identical - in fact, the Spinal would be slightly heavier (9000 ton TL15 Particle sniper, that does 3DD)

So, we have two points:
a) Do ships need to sacrifice other weaponry/equipment to mount a spinal:
- not by canon it seems, no. (At least MGT1)
- Based on my ratios given for proposed MGT2 - they are at least paying a lot to do the damage they used to (in terms of size and cost).

b) The ratio you provided is nearly identical to mine. I believe your concern is that these weapons can be mounted on too small of a ship - because we agree on the same size-to-damage ratio of spinals. You just dont want them mounted on such small ships potentially. Correct?

 

[Chas]

Sorry, what I meant by historical is what was built and presented as the way fleet elements were supposed to work in the fluff and general strategic material in the books - NOT how the ships actually worked by the rules as written which often had huge incongruities. Where the blurb would state, this is a light cruiser for x role, this is a heavy cruiser that is intended to do y, this is a frontier cruiser etc etc. What we have here now is a chance to make the designs actually function as intended, so that canon fleet material saying there are so many batrons here, and so many cruisrons there, makes game sense.

Which is where I'm coming at with the at the 1000x multiplier saying we want about the weight and hitting power I've suggested. And then reverse engineer the scaling from that. So heavy cruisers are heavy cruisers, light are light, and battleships are battleships at the historical tonnages.

I did my work looking at the existing spinal rule designs and haven't fully worked through your matrix.

Your paradigm is a little over at 9000 tons / 10,000 hull points I think and the scale up and down from that will want some consideration.
At 9000 tons to 3 shot a 75k ship, the so called heavy cruiser is close to a shell at Jump 4 Maneuver 9 (which I'm going to take as Imperial Navy standard), with a spinal and nothing else in the way of bays which isn't such a realistic build.
Your scaling wouldn't be wrong if you wanted more slug out fighting and only put the 2DD spinal in there, but then you're moving away from the 3 shot paradigm.
The 9000 ton build in relation to 75K is more where you want the medium cruiser to be at 50K. Choosing between having a reasonable spinal and nothing else, or have a weaker spinal but more secondary stuff.

So it's a question of taste and just how things are wanted to work at this stage. If Matt decides how he wants this to balance out and how he wants the Imperial Navy to look then the current rules are robust enough that everything else can easily match the stated preference.

 

[Nerhesi]

Chas - you're killing me here.

a) Your first paragraph seems to indicate that you basically dont want basically destroyers, 2-3 shotting heavy cruisers with a spinal, because that is not what the fluff said.
b) Your second paragraph takes issue with the fact that the Spinal is too big and doesn't leave much space for other weapons on certain capital craft.

Therefore: Those statements would seem to contradictory - Spinals do too much damage, and spinals are too big. So perhaps...

The only thing I'm gathering from what you're saying, is you believe spinals should be smaller, but also do less damage. Correct?

Lets keep the answer simple so we can make sure we're not talking past each other. I'm trying to understand your point but haven't been able to thus far.

 

[Chas]

Let me put up some example builds to show what I'm talking about. Hold that thought for a moment.

Here's the existing rule Spinal Type E that's doing 14700 hull points a shot, rapid fire, in a 50k hull.
A 50K is historically supposed to be a medium cruiser, that does not have a place in the line of battle. This ship below is most definitely NOT a medium cruiser. It is effectively a battleship in everyway. It has full armor, speed, secondary weaponry, bells and whistles with tonnage to spare dealing huge amounts of damage with its spinal such that it will 3 shot a 100k hull. (!!! this is the rules as is now)

This is what I mean by getting the balance right across the cruiser builds. The majority of the historical material relates to the Imperial Navy, and using that as a benchmark, this 50K ship isn't what we want.

What we want I'd suggest for consideration by everybody is something like this with a 7000 ton spinal dealing 3DD for 10,000 hull points:
Boom - all the bay weapons have been removed and sacrifices still have to be made elsewhere.

 

[Chas]

If we put this same 7000 ton spinal that is doing 3DD so it will 3 shot a 75 K ship, into a 75 K ship, we have something that looks like a heavy cruiser. And easily scaled from here. The 100K can have the bigger bang, or more secondary stuff including reinforced hull etc. The 50K can have a weaker spinal or no secondary stuff.

Questions? I think you see what I'm getting at here. It is a question of taste as to how fast battles want to be when you choose your spinal shot damage paradigm, and then it becomes a question of taste on how you see the spread of ships and their armament working. However if we go with the past historical concepts (not the rules!) this is about where I think we would want to be for continuity and play-ability. A personal opinion, I'm sure Matt and the rest of you have your own ideas of what is 'proper' Traveller, heh.

If we do sit around here though as mentioned:
We want the bottom spinal to be 2DD
and I'd also suggest
A sliding scale for the mesons making them better over TL.