Turrets. particularly pictues of - a request.

[gendo666]

I found upon looking in the rule books that there aren't any really good images of turrets.
(or if there are I haven't found them)

I've found this in the High Guard book

and I've seen off-set small images which place the chars in comfy locations

as well as "battle stations" from Megatraveller which either have a for of "missile command" trac-ball control or that's a dome screened radar display.

And then you have the top mounted turrets.
I haven't seen any.
Well at least the pictorial portrayal of them. They show up with having a seat in blueprints.

Is there any sort of graphic that actually gives a good look at these?
And I don't mean just a dome. - The full Gunners chair, the works. I'm guessing that on a capital ship missiles have a feed from a main magazine or something.
I'm guessing a single missile in a turret is rack fed with a total of 12 available per tube/launcher. (whether in combination with other weapons or not)
The old GW game stated : The 100 ton scout has a pilot that doubles as navigator, engineer, and gunner. Additional crew members may be hired to fill those slots.
What the heck?
I'm guessing you can shoot form the cockpit but at a minus or something?
and a gunner increases your chance to hit?

 

[barnest2]

I've always had my gunners seated on the bridge, or on capital ships in a specialised weapons tracking room normally just aft of the bridge, made up from the fire control tonnage.
The turrets themselves are much like you see on modern naval vessels, so...

Twin missile rack, fed from a magazine in the hull. Fed automatically I should say.

Twin beam laser turret. It even has power cables :twisted:

The whole scout pilot doing everything... he can shoot from the cockpit, but because he is doing everything else as well, he gets a negative modifier. I would say a gunner can shoot from there, but because he is just doing gunnery work, he gets no negative modifiers. It also frees up the pilot to do all the other stuff.

 

[BFalcon]

The only advantage I can think of with seated turrets would be either to safeguard against battle damage from knocking out the turret by damaging data cabling (either the gunner's seat is intended for the primary controller or for an emergency manual-control gunner) or because the designer considers the gunner to be "expendable" in the event that the turret is killed.

Personally, I consider manual gunner positions to be pretty much obsolete except, possibly, as a manual override system and even there it's pretty redundant.

I would, instead, consider having the gunnery section in one room (in the heart of a warship or behind the bridge of a civilian ship) so that gunners can easily use battle-chatter without interrupting the main circuit. In a larger ship, I'd split that into sections - most likely on job-related tasks (ie ship defense, medium and large offensive weaponry) to minimise cross-talk. In a warship, I'd also have a secondary gunnery section elsewhere in the ship, most likely close to the secondary bridge, in case of a lucky hit taking down the primary.

 

[DFW]

I'm guessing you can shoot form the cockpit but at a minus or something?
and a gunner increases your chance to hit?

There is no minus to NOT having the gunner in the turret. IMTU gunners in turrets ended ~TL5. I've never seen a goo external pic of a turret unless it was someones (not Trav published) own artwork.

 

[BFalcon]

Agreed - the only time you should be penalised is when someone is trying to handle two jobs at once (like trying to operate the turret and plot an escape route, not hit the asteroids while flying and trying to trace a fault in the power system to allow the jump drive to come back online, for example).

Of course, ship designers may, as I said before, build in a manual station in case of the fire control systems going down, but I'd consider that a psychological hangover by the designer or the admiralty than any real practical use.

 

[DFW]

Agreed - the only time you should be penalised is when someone is trying to handle two jobs at once (like trying to operate the turret and plot an escape route, not hit the asteroids while flying and trying to trace a fault in the power system to allow the jump drive to come back online, for example).

Of course, ship designers may, as I said before, build in a manual station in case of the fire control systems going down, but I'd consider that a psychological hangover by the designer or the admiralty than any real practical use.

Yes, exactly. If you are so badly damaged that your internal wiring (including backup circuits), are destroyed, you are dead anyway.

 

[hdan]

I imagine that all turrets have local control stations as a backup for their remote bridge-operated controls. I also imagine that most merchant ships won't have dedicated ficon stations (or even extra stations that can be reconfigured for ficon) on their bridges like war ships do, and that gunners might need to operate the turrets from their local control stations if no consoles can be freed up on the bridge.

Of course if your navigator isn't actively navigating, there's no reason you can't reconfigure his station over to a weapons station....

For military ships, I agree that it's crazy to think that gunners would actually go to the turrets. They would have stations on the bridge or maybe in a gunner's "pit" so that they could easily communicate with each other during the battle.

 

[Merxiless]

Not to tread on toes here, but Make it up, it's your game, none of this exists.

I base all of my stuff on what I saw in the navy, but my truth is going to be relatively to a lot different to any / every other traveller referee.

When people asked Jordan Weisman what was the deal on the Battletech Marauder, how did it feed ammo to what was a semi large caliber gun from the ammo mag through the rotating axle of the gun mount to the gun. I.e. it SHOULD have had an ammo feed tray like on a 25mm chain gun or similar.

He said "Tell 'em it's Magic."

Back in the day, that burned me up. How dare he not explain his game.

Now that I'm pushing 46, I see it. None of ti matters, just play it, and have fun. If it looks cool it does, simply because by the time these things are invented/flown/realized, we will all be long gone, long ago dust, graves crumbled.

Have fun with it now. If your fun consists of drawing turret chairs in 3-d with photoshop, know yourself out. I like doing pictures of planets with photoshop.

 

[BFalcon]

When people asked Jordan Weisman what was the deal on the Battletech Marauder, how did it feed ammo to what was a semi large caliber gun from the ammo mag through the rotating axle of the gun mount to the gun. I.e. it SHOULD have had an ammo feed tray like on a 25mm chain gun or similar.

you mean besides the fact that he was looking at the Macross/Robotech model and wondering what that big cannon could be? :lol:

I hear ya on the "it's your universe" thing though...

 

[GypsyComet]

and I've seen off-set small images which place the chars in comfy locations

What A2 variant is the top bit from?

 

[BFalcon]

Gypsy: Looks like the Type A3 Fast Trader

Edit: scratch that - the cargo bay has been re-extended over that version... a good question, tbh...

 

[gendo666]

and I've seen off-set small images which place the chars in comfy locations

What A2 variant is the top bit from?

It's from blueprints of the Far Trader on page 117 of the core book.

 

[BFalcon]

Ah so it is... I didn't recall the stateroom in the cargo bay on the basic version... my memory's getting worse...

I could have sworn the left "nose" stateroom was bigger too

 

[GypsyComet]

So it is. I have the original run hardcover with the bad plans, and the corrected Pocket edition, with the tiny plans, so I hadn't really gone over the core Mongoose variations extensively.

 

[phavoc]

I wanna know how these 50 Dton and 100 Dton "bays" are supposed to look like on deck plans. In theory (and according to the rules) a turret is simply an external bay, while a bay is totally internal.

Some deckplans show the tonnage of the bay taking up internal space, which, according to the rules, they should be external....

Ah, the joys of awaiting errata to clear this up!

 

[barnest2]

I think bays are part internal part external (sorta weird), except the external stuff counts against the total tonnage.
So a 50 tons bay would be maybe 40 tons internal, 10 tons of turret.
Thats a big turret.(something like 6m by 4m)

 

[DFW]

I think bays are part internal part external (sorta weird), except the external stuff counts against the total tonnage.
So a 50 tons bay would be maybe 40 tons internal, 10 tons of turret.
Thats a big turret.(something like 6m by 4m)

You specify when designing whether there are bays, turret hardpoints, etc. So, all tonnage is accounted for in total ship size at the get go.

 

[gendo666]

The only advantage I can think of with seated turrets would be either to safeguard against battle damage from knocking out the turret by damaging data cabling (either the gunner's seat is intended for the primary controller or for an emergency manual-control gunner) or because the designer considers the gunner to be "expendable" in the event that the turret is killed.

Although the idea of manned turrets sounds a bit "old fashioned" The game is about (most often) the players zipping around space in the equivalent S.S. Minnow, Pt 109 or the African Queen. Unless you are in a capital ship Honor Harrington doesn't sleep here.
Traveller is more like Star Wars with the Imperials on your side. Unlike the Falcon though the turrets are sealed off.
heck here's a an automated one right here.....

Actually Traveller is sort of like "Enterprise" as well.
The core Mongoose rulebook pretty much indicates that someone is in those turrets most of the time.
G.U.R.P.S. states categorically that the gunner is *inside the turret* (unless of course the engineer has filled it up with a still.)

I would say that internal gunnery stations don't specifically exist on either non-military or smaller craft unless installed by the ships owner or cobbled together by the crew.

Gunners (one per turret ) show up in crew requirements on page 113 of the core book.

It also says this about running ships one-handed.

and in combat it says this on 146 which also talks about the use of Automated Positions firing or assisting in firing with existing gunners.

p147 talks about more stuff like pilots assisting gunners and gunners lining up shots.

There is also a note about sensor operators "locking on" to the opposing target and giving giving a +1 DM to initial missile use by the gunner.

I don't care about the magical use of "handwavium" to run control leads etc to the turret
I just want to see a picture of one - on the inside.
In particular the top turret of a scout. (Scouts "could" have a belly turret they just don't)

This actually seems close to what the turret would look like possibly with offset launchers for the missiles and sandcasters.
but it would be nice to see some "official" art.

 

[barnest2]

You specify when designing whether there are bays, turret hardpoints, etc. So, all tonnage is accounted for in total ship size at the get go.

I'm a thickey... But also, I meant on plans

 

[DFW]

The core Mongoose rulebook pretty much indicates that someone is in those turrets most of the time.

Actually doesn't state that anyone is "in" a turret. I searched my PDF's an couldn't find that.