Turrets. particularly pictues of - a request.
- Thread starter gendo666
- Start date
Do be honest, I've always envisaged the "running from station to station" thing as being on the bridge, running from station to station, not through the whole ship...
As for the interaction between stations, that'd happen regardless of whether there's a gunner in the turret or if they're on the bridge operating it remotely.
And yes, I'm reading the Honor Harrington books now and there's some mention in them of upgrading to more automated systems even there...
I think this is another of those "when Traveller was first written..." subjects - back then, how many turrets on ships and so on were actually automated and how many were manual, compared to now? I could easily see the "gunner" manning a console dedicated to the that turret, but sitting right next to the guy operating the turret on the other side, even in a merchant ship - I can't imagine merchant ships being built to be defenseless, even in peacetime. True the consoles might also double up as the Purser's console and the primary Navigation console, but I'm sure the co-pilot can handle the navigation while fighting and it's not like the Purser's going to be doing the accounts while they're fighting for their cargo at the very least (more likely their lives and their ship).
As for the interaction between stations, that'd happen regardless of whether there's a gunner in the turret or if they're on the bridge operating it remotely.
And yes, I'm reading the Honor Harrington books now and there's some mention in them of upgrading to more automated systems even there...
I think this is another of those "when Traveller was first written..." subjects - back then, how many turrets on ships and so on were actually automated and how many were manual, compared to now? I could easily see the "gunner" manning a console dedicated to the that turret, but sitting right next to the guy operating the turret on the other side, even in a merchant ship - I can't imagine merchant ships being built to be defenseless, even in peacetime. True the consoles might also double up as the Purser's console and the primary Navigation console, but I'm sure the co-pilot can handle the navigation while fighting and it's not like the Purser's going to be doing the accounts while they're fighting for their cargo at the very least (more likely their lives and their ship).
BFalcon said:
The 5" mark 42 gun, intro'd into the USN in 1953 was capable of unmanned AA fire at least. In '78, the mark 45 is completely unmanned for non-sustained fire. It has a three man crew for sustained operations, but all they do is reload it. And that's at TL7, right?
Missile launchers are also unmanned, completely...
EDIT: DFW ninja'd me. Thanks man
Barnest: yes, but whether it was fitted to anything he saw is another matter, is it not?
Just because something is invented earlier, doesn't necessarily mean it was adopted fleet-wide or retrofitted to all ships.
Edit: Just looked it up - it could also be operated by a single operator too (optional) which, knowing the military mind, probably meant it was, if there was a man handy to put in it... Also, only certain classes of ship were fitted with them.
And I did also say that the ships he saw (he was in the Army) might have been old when they were pressed into service...
Just because something is invented earlier, doesn't necessarily mean it was adopted fleet-wide or retrofitted to all ships.
Edit: Just looked it up - it could also be operated by a single operator too (optional) which, knowing the military mind, probably meant it was, if there was a man handy to put in it... Also, only certain classes of ship were fitted with them.
And I did also say that the ships he saw (he was in the Army) might have been old when they were pressed into service...
Rick said:
No, not as back up. Only for sustained fire due to need of reloading magazine.
"The 5-Inch/54-caliber (Mk 45) lightweight gun is a modern U.S. naval artillery gun mount ...
The gun mount features an automatic loader with a capacity of 20 rounds. These can be fired under full automatic control, taking a little over a minute to exhaust those rounds at maximum fire rate. For sustained use, the gun mount would be occupied by a three-man crew (gun captain, panel operator, and ammunition loader) below deck to keep the gun continuously supplied with ammunition."
If it were a laser, it would have no space for a crew...
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
You may see a difference between civilian mounts and military mounts. Civilian ships will often have a crew station near each turret, since civilian ships are more likely to swap turret weaponry and thus cannot anticipate a need for crew or not, and are also much less likely to mount high capacity autoloaders. A civilian ship with more than (for the sake of discussion) two or three ready missile loads at the launching turret is either equipped for a really dangerous area or intends to *make* somewhere a dangerous area. The rest of the missiles, assuming the ship has very many, are either out in the hallway in a speed load rig, or in a locker that is hopefully just down the corridor.
By comparison, a military ship is much more likely to have its entire missile load handy, possibly in a "mini-bay" arrangement as seen in the old SDB. Barring battle damage, the ship can load and fire each missile turret remotely until the ship is dry. The SDB apparently had its load divided between the two mini-bays, needing human intervention to transfer from one side to the other, while the Valor Missile Corvette keeps everything in one big pod with a pair of turrets attached.
One edition, TNE, posited two big changes to this model, so if that set of assumptions floats your boat, TNE is the place to look for inspiration. The assumption changes involved a drastic drop in automation due to a distrust of computers, and a bit of a reality check on both laser focusing and missile endurance. The result is that turrets are never smaller than 3 dtons, are generally big drop-in "cans", and that missiles are MUCH larger and primarily nuke-pumped x-ray laser munitions. Lasers also got a lot larger, with the Laser Cans having only one large lens and needing grav-tech focusing to get anything close to the lethal ranges seen in CT/MT (and MGT). Many of the standard Cans have a workstation in them, for both operations and maintenance. Missile Cans are basically pre-loaded, as re-loading a half-ton missile is not a fast operation. Sand Cans were both launcher and manipulator, as TNE ships retain control of their sand clouds through either magnetic or gravitic manipulation (think the asteroid ring defense of Star Blazers). The difference for a military ship was that it would have Bridge workstations grouped together and purposed as a Fire Control, separate from the turrets and the Bridge. TNE could do this because, like MT, it did not have a black-box "Bridge" but instead used "Workstations" and "Bridge Workstations" that you either attached to a department or clustered into a bridge or fire control.
By comparison, a military ship is much more likely to have its entire missile load handy, possibly in a "mini-bay" arrangement as seen in the old SDB. Barring battle damage, the ship can load and fire each missile turret remotely until the ship is dry. The SDB apparently had its load divided between the two mini-bays, needing human intervention to transfer from one side to the other, while the Valor Missile Corvette keeps everything in one big pod with a pair of turrets attached.
One edition, TNE, posited two big changes to this model, so if that set of assumptions floats your boat, TNE is the place to look for inspiration. The assumption changes involved a drastic drop in automation due to a distrust of computers, and a bit of a reality check on both laser focusing and missile endurance. The result is that turrets are never smaller than 3 dtons, are generally big drop-in "cans", and that missiles are MUCH larger and primarily nuke-pumped x-ray laser munitions. Lasers also got a lot larger, with the Laser Cans having only one large lens and needing grav-tech focusing to get anything close to the lethal ranges seen in CT/MT (and MGT). Many of the standard Cans have a workstation in them, for both operations and maintenance. Missile Cans are basically pre-loaded, as re-loading a half-ton missile is not a fast operation. Sand Cans were both launcher and manipulator, as TNE ships retain control of their sand clouds through either magnetic or gravitic manipulation (think the asteroid ring defense of Star Blazers). The difference for a military ship was that it would have Bridge workstations grouped together and purposed as a Fire Control, separate from the turrets and the Bridge. TNE could do this because, like MT, it did not have a black-box "Bridge" but instead used "Workstations" and "Bridge Workstations" that you either attached to a department or clustered into a bridge or fire control.
Used to be (original Trav rules if I mis-remember myself) that the gunner was there also to perform combat actions. If the turret went down, the gunner may be able to perform some activity to bring it back online. And, for missile turrets, the gunner was there to reload the turret. Lol.
I think that having one gunner per turret makes no sense unless you actually put that gunner in a turret. For small ships, the gunner will be manning a weapons station and directing the fire of the ship towards its target. The idea of 'eyeballing' the target is silly in space combat. Star Wars is NOT a good concept for space fighting (except with the larger capital ships).
I think that having one gunner per turret makes no sense unless you actually put that gunner in a turret. For small ships, the gunner will be manning a weapons station and directing the fire of the ship towards its target. The idea of 'eyeballing' the target is silly in space combat. Star Wars is NOT a good concept for space fighting (except with the larger capital ships).
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
phavoc said:
Star Wars has a particular dichotomy of good sensor ranges combined with very short weapon ranges. This may be due to the presence of shields rendering all but really close fire either inaccurate, too weak, or both. Weapons with real range have to be really BIG. Not an entirely irrational combination, all things considered.
well except if you take Gunnery in High Guard.DFW said:
(page 17)
Where you get the impression that it's better (targeting -wise) to be in one.
(although you can stat your own "Gut instinct" modifiers)
G.U.R.P.S. Traveller Starships book talks about cramming cargo into a turret at the loss of functionality.
and also this - which could mean consoles in the bridge or anywhere else.. but again seems like someone sitting at those seats in the blueprints.
Again they continue and talk about the idea of leaving a Battery unmanned and used remotely even then making sure to have a human backup.
The DO stress that FIXED or HULL-MOUNTED weaponry IS fired form the bridge.
( page 46)
Their word on Turrets in the main book being pretty much the same and again talk about the "roomy built-in crew station (seat and console) with computer terminal and a Heads-Up Display/Weapon Aiming Computer (HUDWAC)."
If these turrets were ONLY used in emergency situations, why would they be built with such comfort in mind?
Megatraveller page 39 also seems to have the "weapons station" as a sealed discrete part of the ship.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
DFW said:
I note that SW space battles always seem to occur *somewhere*. No deep space fights. If SW gravitics act like ether drives, treating "the ether" of gravity as both a lift and drag medium, the fighters movements start to make more sense. Space itself thus appears to act with aerodynamic drag on a fighter, and fighters zooming around in a fleet battle act more like a bunch of biplanes zipping around a huge multi-zeppelin fight. SW capital ships rarely appear to use much in the way of real thrust, so they are basically stationary or very slow relative to the fighters.
Traveller *could* choose to work that way, since Thrusters/M-Drives are already both "magic" and largely undefined in their gritty specifics.