adzling said:
Bill Sheil said:
Part of the problem you are seeing is that many of the "standard" traveller ship designs still date back to the original (1977) LBB Book 2 design sequences and just don't have armour for that reason.
When theory-crafting you use the published material at hand rather than imaginary "what ifs".
Hence the ships referenced and my note on when Torpedoes become more effective.
There are *very* few published ships in MG2e that have that much armor.
Trawling through all the books I have (PoD, Mercenary Kickstarter, High Guard, Aslan High Guard, Glorious Empire, Aliens of Charted Space 1 & 2 I found precisely one ship with heavy enough armor to require Torpedo attack-
Ships of the Trojan reach has the the Planet Class Heavy Cruiser with armor of 15.
Tigress and Ghalalk are also armor 15.
Which is weird, because one is a dreadnaught – pretty much by doctrine used for two things: battles and impressing or scaring the heck out of potential troublemakers.
The cruiser, on the other hand is designed for more of a ‘multi-task’ role: Patrols, showing the flag, commerce raiding, etc. (or being converted into a lower armored deep exploration cruiser, but that’s another story line).
The ship designs in Highguard and in Traveller in general are a mix of trying to be ‘true’ to ships designed under different rules in c. 1980 and … I don’t know … randomness.
Rambling:
As for doctrine, for some reason someone (MJD) keeps mentioning torpedoes as up-close weapons, when I see them as stand-off. I suppose if you assume ‘immediate’ means no ECM and only point- defense, then both missiles and torpedoes become more effective at medium and shorter range, but I would think doctrine would dictate this:
Stay at Very Long range (outside of spinal reach – depending on whether you allow Primitive and Advanced rules to apply to spinals – not clear) and launch massive volleys to overwhelm defenses… it’s the Vilani way.
But in that instance, for fighting a battle fleet – and ships designed only for battle should have max armor (and ~25% of hull dedicated to spinal) – torpedoes have to be the way to go because of the extra damage. And plasma torpedoes seem to be the obvious choice for both damage and penetration. Nukes don’t buy you much against dampers and advanced (if you have the TL) only buy you less (relatively) cost and less rounds of ECM defense to withstand.
Bill has a very good point of distinguishing the difference between battle fleets and general-purpose vessels. I wonder how budgets would actually be allocated. The Big War might not come within the design life of a battleship, meaning that many might rot or reach their century refit before use, but not having them would be disastrous. Meanwhile, you have other less-than-war duties to perform for the other 99 years…
If fighters really can fire torpedoes from firmpoints to any range, then a wing of plasma-torpedo-firing armored 35-ton gunboats firing plasma torpedoes at Very Long or even Distant range might be the way to go. Especially for a lesser power (Sword Worlders) fighting a technologically superior foe. Suicide runs to ‘immediate’ torpedo range might be effective with enough gunboats (the circada strategy – you can’t kill all of us, so here we come!).
You’d have to play it out and see. That’s where something like TCS comes in. Design and try out scenarios. Then build fleets based on winning designs for various scenarios. And then a rules change shifts the balance, and the designs no longer work – except with Traveller we’re doing a bit of Ground Hogs Day and redoing the old designs whether they still make sense or not. And we wake up and it’s still 1105 forty-plus years later. Okay, need my meds this morning….
