Starship combat

[rust]

I mean, don't look for a reason to say "nope". Look for a rationalization to say "yep"!

The problem with this approach is that you can only use it if your players
do not mind obvious contradictions between how you handle things and
what they know about science and technology.

And the more they know, the more likely they usually are to point out
such contradictions and to complain about them - or to turn your crea-
tive interpretation of some law of nature against you when you least ex-
pect it.

This is why we have introduced what we call the "Wikipedia Rule": The
referee does not have to be a scientists or engineer, but he should at
least try not to contradict the relevant general Wikipedia articles.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Seems to me the order of combat is a game simulation to control the flow of the dice. Actually all of these things will be happening over the course of the combat turn. We just order them to control the flow of the game.

So sensors detect that a laser is about to be fired on your ship (they detect the power surge into the turret) and order defensive sand to be fired to intercept the laser before it fires.

Occuring during the same turn the gunner times his firing of his own laser to maximize damage against the incoming missiles.

Thirdly, he fires his other Laser at the enemy ship when the firing solution tells him to.

Do these events occur in the same order every 6 minutes? No they do not. But for ease of the game, they are presented in the same order every time.

That's my take anyway.

 

[phavoc]

If you set the ship on a 3 axis rotation, aligning a ship to board is impossible.

How would you keep your thrust in the direction you wanted to go? I would think spinning on so many axis would stop you from doing anything.

Though if the craft trying to board were able to use a grapple to grab onto the other ship, wouldn't they then be able to match the motion/direction of the first ship? Assuming that they had good enough sensors and thrusters to detect and activate as the 1st ship changes it's rotation up? By grappling they at least then are able to match direction and speed, and thrusters would give them the ability to maintain their distance (which wouldn't be much).

[/quote="rust"]The only chance I see, which is used in a couple of science fiction stories, would be a kind of assault shuttle that would actually ram itself into the rotating ship - requiring gravitics technology to dampen the impact and keep the boarding team alive.[/quote]

That would work on big ships, but an assault shuttle ramming someting like a free trader might rip it apart. I could see, maybe, trying to board something say around 500 tons and up, and only if you were penetrating a cargo hold or some other open area. Otherwise I would think the structural damage you did could be catastrophic. Maybe. I dunno.

 

[rust]

Otherwise I would think the structural damage you did could be catastrophic.

I agree, and I would not recommend that method anyway.

However, after a long thread about this problem of boarding a rotating
ship, in which I first insisted that it had to be possible, I finally had to
concede that there are pretty few methods that could make it possible,
and most of them had a rather suicidal touch.

 

[Captain Jonah]

This is called a "deadman's tumble" for a reason

Rikki Tikki. Yep as you say you need some order in the rules.

But it seems more sensible (are you allowed to be sensible in an RPG) to have stuff like evade, ecm, screens etc first becasue they are all detectable and are the sort of things a sensor operator looks out for.

Captain target one just started extensive evading and ecm, probability of hit now very low. Right switch all energy weapons to target 2.....

Plus unless you are at close range you will not detect a laser powering up (EM full) and unless you are the only target it may not be firing at you. Of course if you are surrounded by pirates and you are the only non pirate for 100,000 klicks then you can have a good guess who they will shoot at

 

[rust]

Of course if you are surrounded by pirates and you are the only non pirate for 100,000 klicks then you can have a good guess who they will shoot at

No honour among pirates, they may well start a space battle among them-
selves to decide who will be allowed to take your ship and be nasty to the
female crew members ... :shock:

 

[phavoc]

This is called a "deadman's tumble" for a reason

Rikki Tikki. Yep as you say you need some order in the rules.

But it seems more sensible (are you allowed to be sensible in an RPG) to have stuff like evade, ecm, screens etc first becasue they are all detectable and are the sort of things a sensor operator looks out for.

Captain target one just started extensive evading and ecm, probability of hit now very low. Right switch all energy weapons to target 2.....

Plus unless you are at close range you will not detect a laser powering up (EM full) and unless you are the only target it may not be firing at you. Of course if you are surrounded by pirates and you are the only non pirate for 100,000 klicks then you can have a good guess who they will shoot at

This is where having multiple weapons comes in handy, although the rules don't reflect it. Since you know a ship is, at best, going to be in a "cone" of space, your fire control system would automatically program your weapons to fire at different areas of the cone to ensure at least something hit. It would make combat much slower, but also pretty much give you a high liklihood of slowly causing damage to your opponent. So death by a thousand cuts is still death. Plus, who knows, maybe you'll get a lucky hit and take out their power plant or maneuver drive.

 

[dayriff]

I mean, don't look for a reason to say "nope". Look for a rationalization to say "yep"!

The problem with this approach is that you can only use it if your players
do not mind obvious contradictions between how you handle things and
what they know about science and technology.

I think, like me, they see Traveller as closer to science fantasy than science fiction. If I wanted to do hardish science fiction, I'd play Eclipse Phase or Transhuman Space. Traveller is for doing Heinlen, Asimov, Norton, and Anderson. Just my personal take.

This is why we have introduced what we call the "Wikipedia Rule": The
referee does not have to be a scientists or engineer, but he should at
least try not to contradict the relevant general Wikipedia articles.

Well not to argue too much, but I find the notion of energy weapons doing their damage instantaneously to be somewhat contradictory to my understanding of science and basic wikipedia articles. Lasers, even pulse systems, deliver energy over time. To speak from some very slight personal experience, I can run a depaint laser over an aircraft and just strip off the top coat of paint. Leave it on in one spot, and you burn right through the aluminum skin.

It actually does make a lot of sense to me that how much damage you can do with an energy weapon in Traveller is dependent on how long you can keep the beam on target. The difference between a half second and five seconds could be the difference between a charred paint job and a hole in your armor.

At your suggestion, I looked up lasers on wikipedia. When it talks about pulse lasers, it's talking pulses in the miliseconds to femtoseconds. Not, like, one pulse a minute or something. That matches my limited laser experience.

 

[rust]

Well not to argue too much, but I find the notion of energy weapons doing their damage instantaneously to be somewhat contradictory to my understanding of science and basic wikipedia articles. Lasers, even pulse systems, deliver energy over time.

Of course, although the problem in space combat is to keep the laser on
target for any amount of time, because there is the time lag between the
gunner's information about the precise location of the enemy ship and
the real current position of that ship.

Therefore it makes sense to assume that the laser will not stay on target
for any amount of time, and will have to transmit as much energy as pos-
sible during the short moment that it actually hits the enemy ship.

 

[DFW]

How would you keep your thrust in the direction you wanted to go? I would think spinning on so many axis would stop you from doing anything.

Though if the craft trying to board were able to use a grapple to grab onto the other ship, wouldn't they then be able to match the motion/direction of the first ship? Assuming that they had good enough sensors and thrusters to detect and activate as the 1st ship changes it's rotation up? By grappling they at least then are able to match direction and speed, and thrusters would give them the ability to maintain their distance (which wouldn't be much).

Well, if you are about to be boarded you soon won't be going where you want to anyway. And, no, you can't match a 3 axis spin even if you throw a grapple on. Take a wood block and model it. Not possible for a 2nd ship to match.

 

[dayriff]

Therefore it makes sense to assume that the laser will not stay on target
for any amount of time, and will have to transmit as much energy as pos-
sible during the short moment that it actually hits the enemy ship.

That's certainly the reasonable sounding, but I think there's room for a lot of interpretation for what "any amount of time" and "short time" really mean in practice.

It could easily be that you need to keep on target for five seconds or so to have a real impact and that a gunner gets to have five or six tries at this over the course of a combat round, condensed as one roll.

 

[rust]

By the way (but promise not to tell my players): According to the core
rules a densitometer uses gravity to locate objects, which is not neces-
sarily restricted by the speed of light (the jury is still out on that), and it
has a range of 10,000 kilometers ... :wink:

 

[DFW]

By the way (but promise not to tell my players): According to the core
rules a densitometer uses gravity to locate objects, which is not neces-
sarily restricted by the speed of light (the jury is still out on that), and it
has a range of 10,000 kilometers ... :wink:

If gravity is from a "dent" in the fabric of space, it may well be much FTL.


BTW, in MGT can you detect planet sized objects further than 10k km using the densitometer? Just wondering.

 

[rust]

BTW, in MGT can you detect planet sized objects further than 10k km using the densitometer? Just wondering.

I would consider this as reasonable, but I am not aware of any passage
mentioning it anywhere in the rules.

 

[DFW]

BTW, in MGT can you detect planet sized objects further than 10k km using the densitometer? Just wondering.

I would consider this as reasonable, but I am not aware of any passage
mentioning it anywhere in the rules.

Hmm, maybe I'll work up the math on it.

 

[rust]

I may be mistaken, as it is not my field, but thinking of the way today's
gravimetrics are used in submarine sensors and survey satellites, I guess
that even our current low tech gravimeters would have no problem to de-
tect a planet sized body in a distance of at least 500,000 kilometers, so
in my view this should easily be possible for a densitometer.

 

[rinku]

I'd just like to point out that there is a big difference between dectecting a planet and detecting a mass of a few hundred or thousands of tonnes that is maneuvering (which almost by definition requires mass changes). Other sensors can help identify things like drive thrust signature and such, but then we come back to lightspeed lag. The detection table is really only focussing on detail, anyway - I'm sure the densitometer can give basic information about gross mass and maybe vector at much greater ranges. It's just its "xray" function that drops off.

Not sure what effect a gravitic M-drive might have on a densitometer's detection ability, either. Even if it's being gamed as truly reactionless, there should be some kind of gravitic weirdness.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Not sure what effect a gravitic M-drive might have on a densitometer's detection ability, either. Even if it's being gamed as truly reactionless, there should be some kind of gravitic weirdness.

Even if not the drive, the ship itself is a gravity field of 1G for the crew inside.

The sensor skill says:
The Sensors skill covers the use and interpretation of data from electronic sensor devices, from observation satellites and remote probes to thermal imaging and densitometers. Unless otherwise noted in its description (see page 96) sensor equipment does not require a skill check to use, but interpreting data from those sensors can require a roll.

Page 96 gives no roll needed for using sensors used in space.

Page 143 just describes the sensors and says you get the information listed on page 144 which also involves no rolls and gives you the info you automatically get.

Page 45 high guard a distributed array extends EMS to 150,000km. Ok it takes a 5,000 dton ship but still that’s a nice range to automatically detect gravity fields. Or use the extended array on a smaller fire control ship and feed the target data to the ships around you.

Now thats half a light second and if gravity is a space time wrinkle and hence real time that gives you target detection that is faster than the light speed weapons you are firing

Of course you need a recon drone to go see what the EM target is but once your drone has ID'd it as hostile its missile time.

It takes 94 thrust total to reach Distant range 50,000 - 150,000. A thrust 10 missile with 10 turns endurance can just get there and manoeuvre to hit the target before its dives burn out.

Hey if we can detect gravity at half a light second real time maybe we could use that, a sort of binary comms system maybe. Pulses short and long like morse. Maybe we could remove the comms delay.

Wait this sounds familiar. Have I read a book where this happens, a series of novels perhaps

 

[DFW]

All very good points. For gross detection of a body I'd consider the mass as the determining factor for the distance at which it is detectable.

Earth is ~5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000 metric tons
From MT, 400t Escort masses ~7000 tons.

The Earth is ~853,371,428,571,428,571 times the mass of that star ship.

Minimal detection is up to 10,000 km for that sized ship.

So, 8,533,714,285,714,285,710,000 km. = 57,044,307,315,032 A.U. = 902,028,894 light years = 276,695,980 Parsecs, is the theoretical distance at which you could detect a body as massive as Earth.

Good way to determine if a gas giant is present in that uncharted system.

 

[rust]

So, 8,533,714,285,714,285,710,000 km. = 57,044,307,315,032 A.U. = 902,028,894 light years = 276,695,980 Parsecs, is the theoretical distance at which you could detect a body as massive as Earth.

The real sensor range would probably be a lot smaller because of the
many other celestial objects with gravity fields that would disturb the
measurements, but it should indeed be sufficient to determine the mass
of a distant planetary system and whether something as massive as a
gas giant is there, I think.