The Warmonger-Class Battle Tender

[J. L. Brown]

I thought spinal mounts were limited to 50% tonnage of the vessel? AM I wrong?

That is, unfortunately, correct.

 

[Terry Mixon]

I thought spinal mounts were limited to 50% tonnage of the vessel? AM I wrong?

Drat. I just finished writing it up. Back to the drawing board.

If I make the meson cannon smallest, I can get the ship down to 12,000 tons.

 

[J. L. Brown]

Drat. I just finished writing it up. Back to the drawing board.

If I make it smallest, I can get the ship down to 12,000 tons.

I figure combat vessels are all about the 'teeth' -- ie, every available hardpoint will mount a weapon system. Large and Medium Bays are a wash, though; so your options for filling up hardpoints with leftover tonnage are, (per 100 dTons):
1} 2 hardpoints = 2x Small Bays;
2} 5 hardpoints = 5x Point Defense Batteries;
3} 20 hardpoints = 20x Barbettes; or
4} 100 hardpoints = 100x Turrets.

Whatever you mount needs Power, and usually Gunners -- Point Defense batteries are automated, though.

 

[Terry Mixon]

I figure combat vessels are all about the 'teeth' -- ie, every available hardpoint will mount a weapon system. Large and Medium Bays are a wash, though; so your options for filling up hardpoints with leftover tonnage are, (per 100 dTons):
1} 2 hardpoints = 2x Small Bays;
2} 5 hardpoints = 5x Point Defense Batteries;
3} 20 hardpoints = 20x Barbettes; or
4} 100 hardpoints = 100x Turrets.

Whatever you mount needs Power, and usually Gunners -- Point Defense batteries are automated, though.

I added 60 point defense and 20 points of bonded superdense.

 

[Nelphine]

Ok, my attempt at the smallest ship with a large bay:

Blaster, TL15, 700/700 tons, Total Cost: 564.925Mcr

Captain + 2 Pilots + 3 Engineers + 1 Mechanic + 6 Gunners + 2 Sensor Operators + 1 Medic + 1 Officer
Crew required on parent ship: 0.4 Mechanics + 0.7 Admin

Sphere - 280 Hull Points, 140 base power, 38.5Mcr
Bonded Superdense Armour 15, 75.6 tons, 37.8Mcr
Radiation Shielding, 17.5Mcr
M-9 Drive, 63 tons, 630 power, 126Mcr
Power Plant (Fusion 15) 900, 45 tons, 90Mcr
Fuel: Operations, 2 weeks, 4.5 tons

Bridge w/ Holographic Controls: 20 tons, 4.375Mcr
Advanced Sensors, 5 tons, 6 power, 5.3Mcr
Enhanced Signal Processing, 2 tons, 2 power, 8Mcr
Core/70, 80Mcr
-Maneuvre/0, Intellect, Library
-Battle Network/1, 5 bandwidth, 5Mcr
-Evade/3, 25 bandwidth, 3Mcr
-Fire Control/5, 25 bandwidth, 10Mcr
-Point Defense/2, 15 bandwidth, 12Mcr
-Anti-Hijack/3, 15 bandwidth, 10Mcr (not normally run if point defense running)

Large Particle Beam Bay (Reduced Size x2), 400 tons, 80 power, 75Mcr
Particle Beam Barbette (Accurate, High Yield), 5 tons, 15 power, 12Mcr
Point Defense Laser Battery (Type III, Reduced Size), 18 tons, 30 power, 22mcr

Medical Bay, 4 tons, 1 power, 2Mcr
Workshop, 3 tons (half size, only permits one crew to get the bonus), 0.45Mcr
3 Single Stateroom (Captain, Officer, Medic), 12 tons, 1.5Mcr
7 Double Staterooms (Rest of Crew), 28 tons, 3.5Mcr
Common Areas, 10 tons, 1Mcr
Cargo Space, 4.9 tons

 

[J. L. Brown]

Ok, my attempt at the smallest ship with a large bay:

Blaster, TL15, 700/700 tons

Captain + 2 Pilots + 3 Engineers + 1 Mechanic + 6 Gunners + 2 Sensor Operators + 1 Medic + 1 Officer
Crew required on parent ship: 0.4 Mechanics + 0.7 Admin

Sphere - 280 Hull Points, 140 base power
Bonded Superdense Armour 15, 75.6 tons
M-9 Drive, 63 tons, 630 power
Power Plant (Fusion 15) 900, 45 tons
Fuel: Operations, 2 weeks, 4.5 tons

Bridge w/ Holographic Controls: 20 tons
Computer + Software (not relevant to tonnage)
Advanced Sensors, 5 tons, 6 power
Enhanced Signal Processing, 2 tons, 2 power

Large Particle Beam Bay (Reduced Size x2), 400 tons, 80 power
Particle Beam Barbette (Accurate, High Yield), 5 tons, 15 power
Point Defense Laser Battery (Type III, Reduced Size), 18 tons, 30 power

Medical Bay, 4 tons, 1 power
Workshop, 3 tons
3 Single Stateroom (Captain, Officer, Medic), 12 tons
7 Double Staterooms (Rest of Crew), 28 tons
Common Areas, 10 tons
Cargo Space, 4.9 tons

I trimmed my 5000 dTon 'Large Bay' design down to 1500 dTons; and could probably get it lower, but I am satisfied with where it is right now.

There was a thread 'Are Traveller ships too big?', where I laid out some initial thoughts on how-to-build-a-Navy, and maybe I need to re-examine what those thoughts mean in relation to various BR designs. For example 'Light Armor' is probably about Armor Factor 12; maybe a little higher. There is no armor (at a reasonable TL) which is sufficient to ignore Small Bays, though; and the official reading of 'Screens' makes them essentially worthless; etc.

I'm not sure the Hadrian makes much sense, overall -- the not-minimal, not-maximal spinal weapon is difficult to justify.

 

[Terry Mixon]

I trimmed my 5000 dTon 'Large Bay' design down to 1500 dTons; and could probably get it lower, but I am satisfied with where it is right now.

There was a thread 'Are Traveller ships too big?', where I laid out some initial thoughts on how-to-build-a-Navy, and maybe I need to re-examine what those thoughts mean in relation to various BR designs. For example 'Light Armor' is probably about Armor Factor 12; maybe a little higher. There is no armor (at a reasonable TL) which is sufficient to ignore Small Bays, though; and the official reading of 'Screens' makes them essentially worthless; etc.

I'm not sure the Hadrian makes much sense, overall -- the not-minimal, not-maximal spinal weapon is difficult to justify.

What about the Crossbow design I posted here? Curious about your thoughts.

 

[collins355]

Now for someone to actually fight it out between a Warmonger and its brood versus the equivalent credits of jump-capable ships of a similar TL!

 

[Nelphine]

That means I need a price for the blaster.. I'll edit that in later.. (ideally i wanted countermeasure suite, and an emergency power plant. Hard to justify an extra 100 tons for that though, even if it would get a second point defense battery.)

 

[J. L. Brown]

What about the Crossbow design I posted here? Curious about your thoughts.

I cannot see it. For some reason my archive manager insists there is nothing there.

Now for someone to actually fight it out between a Warmonger and its brood versus the equivalent credits of jump-capable ships of a similar TL!

There are a couple important things to keep in mind:
1} Tenders & their broods do not fight in isolation. A fleet may reasonably be expected to include a few 'regular' ships as well.
2} Tenders can carry more if they jump to less than their full range; a fight between a Tender which just made J-4 is very different against that same Tender loaded up for a fight at J-1.

 

[J. L. Brown]

I'll reload it here.

It is a perfectly acceptable design, although my 15k dTon rider design does a few things differently. The one thing that I think is questionable is your use of 'Very Accurate' and 'High Yield' on the Spinal Weapon -- I believe the Spinal Mounts Improvements table on HGU 2022 p35 is the only allowed improvement on Spinal Weapons.

Fusion Barbette armed fighters are going to give you fits.

 

[Terry Mixon]

It is a perfectly acceptable design, although my 15k dTon rider design does a few things differently. The one thing that I think is questionable is your use of 'Very Accurate' and 'High Yield' on the Spinal Weapon -- I believe the Spinal Mounts Improvements table on HGU 2022 p35 is the only allowed improvement on Spinal Weapons.

I blame the spreadsheet for giving me the options, then. I'll change that.

 

[Nelphine]

It is a perfectly acceptable design, although my 15k dTon rider design does a few things differently. The one thing that I think is questionable is your use of 'Very Accurate' and 'High Yield' on the Spinal Weapon -- I believe the Spinal Mounts Improvements table on HGU 2022 p35 is the only allowed improvement on Spinal Weapons.

Fusion Barbette armed fighters are going to give you fits.

Pfft, replace the fusion barbette fighters with my blasters. Same tonnage means 10 fusion barbettes or 1 large bay particle beam wirh the speed to keep the range at distant.

 

[J. L. Brown]

Pfft, replace the fusion barbette fighters with my blasters. Same tonnage means 10 fusion barbettes or 1 large bay particle beam wirh the speed to keep the range at distant.

The Blaster is neat; but one hit destroys it. His Crossbow v1.3 had no way to shoot at fighters at all.

 

[collins355]

Would love to see some completed Fleet Combat sheets for these vessels (especially the Hadrian rider). I am a complete failure at filling them out correctly!

 

[Nelphine]

The Blaster is neat; but one hit destroys it. His Crossbow v1.3 had no way to shoot at fighters at all.

Sure, the point is to treat them like fighters. They aren't proper warships. But they have something fighters don't have - range. So they fight en masse but with the goal of staying out of range of the enemy. So if you have a carrier that would normally carry 200 fighters, you replace them with 20 blasters.

 

[Terry Mixon]

@J. L. Brown has convinced me of the need to have EMP protection and armored bulkheads, so I'll be updating the three designs a tad. Also, I kind of like the idea of biospheres to offset people's life support cost.

It's simple to do on the Crossbow and Hadrian (and I might use all that extra space on the latter for a spinal mount because who doesn't need more firepower?

The question is for the Warmonger. I won't add armored bulkheads as it's not a fighting ship, but what about EMP protection and more fusion barbettes? If I change anything with it, the thrust will drop from 2 to 1 as I'm using all the space currently. Does that matter as it isn't running from anything and can't keep up with the other Navy ships? What do y'all think?

 

[J. L. Brown]

Sure, the point is to treat them like fighters. They aren't proper warships. But they have something fighters don't have - range. So they fight en masse but with the goal of staying out of range of the enemy. So if you have a carrier that would normally carry 200 fighters, you replace them with 20 blasters.

Yeah, the 'Distant' range of the Large Particle Beam Bay is really neat; nothing else can match it.

@J. L. Brown has convinced me of the need to have EMP protection and armored bulkheads, so I'll be updating the three designs a tad. Also, I kind of like the idea of biospheres to offset people's life support cost.

It's simple to do on the Crossbow and Hadrian (and I might use all that extra space on the latter for a spinal mount because who doesn't need more firepower?

The question is for the Warmonger. I won't add armored bulkheads as it's not a fighting ship, but what about EMP protection and more fusion barbettes? If I change anything with it, the thrust will drop from 2 to 1 as I'm using all the space currently. Does that matter as it isn't running from anything and can't keep up with the other Navy ships? What do y'all think?

I am a little disappointed in the 'Biosphere' to be honest; it accounts for food, fresh water, air, sewage disposal, and so on -- but 100 points of 'supplies' still takes a dTon, and still lasts the exact same amount of time.

I am also a little wary of the 'monthly maintenance cost' -- it seems like the cost of Armour, Armoured Bulkheads, and (at least some fraction of) Pressure Hull should NOT add. These options are already expensive, and the idea of doing 'upkeep work' on a massive, featureless hunk of sturdy metal is faintly ridiculous.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

That means I need a price for the blaster.. I'll edit that in later.. (ideally i wanted countermeasure suite, and an emergency power plant. Hard to justify an extra 100 tons for that though, even if it would get a second point defense battery.)

You can save some space with an Energy Efficient M-drive and hence smaller PP.

 

[Nelphine]

You can save some space with an Energy Efficient M-drive and hence smaller PP.

M9 is TL15, I can't add advantages