What's a Barbette?

HG pg 48 - my read is its a bigger turret since it uses the Gunner(turrets) skill. Kinda like a big gun on a naval ship versus say an anti-aircraft machine gun mount.
 
SSWarlock said:
And general consensus is a barbette can hold only one weapon.
Ah - interesting thought - my idea of a Barbette being based on CT - where it was just a larger particle accellerator turret.

Looking at MGT HG - this may not be decidely clear. But there are definitely no rules covering multilpe weapons in a single barbette.

Barbettes (as stated) take more tons for larger ordinance, fire systems and mechanisms within the hull - whereas turrets require less internal hull. I use this in deck plans as the tonnage internal (0, 1, 2, or 5 tons) and the rest of the weapon lies outside the hull (explains fixed mount requiring 0 hull tons - its just mounted externally to a hardpoint, with possible exception in some small craft) - with external portion of turret weapon occupying one ton or less (as pop-up turrent just takes an extra ton). Barbettes don't come in a pop-up version (well, at least officially - I think they are 'dramatically' cool for anti-pirate ops).

FYI - having spent some time designing a ship for a tournament - there are a number of terminology inconsistencies and other discrepancies in the tables on pgs 50 and 51. For page 50:

Heavy Missile is used in place of Torpedo.
Heavy Missile (Torpedo) Barbette states MCr 3 (pg 48 states 4).
Large Heavy Missile Bay left off the Large ;)
The Railgun Bay and Large Railgun Bay show damage x4 and x6 but text states autofire 8 and 12?
Meson Flicker bays show 1d6 and 2d6 damage, but text states they do no structural damage (so other internal damage maybe?)
There may be some TLs variances from pg 53...

Haven't done much with capital ships yet - but note Barbette is missing in name (the entries are there) from all but the Paricle Beam Barbette on pg 51 and, obviously, the order is kinda crazy - so other info is suspect (given the quality exhibited on these two tables).

Matthew Sprange has indicated that they will be revisiting HG soon (and a LBB sized version is forthcoming).
 
BP said:
FYI - having spent some time designing a ship for a tournament - there are a number of terminology inconsistencies and other discrepancies in the tables on pgs 50 and 51. For page 50:

Heavy Missile is used in place of Torpedo.
Heavy Missile (Torpedo) Barbette states MCr 3 (pg 48 states 4).
Large Heavy Missile Bay left off the Large ;)
The Railgun Bay and Large Railgun Bay show damage x4 and x6 but text states autofire 8 and 12?
Meson Flicker bays show 1d6 and 2d6 damage, but text states they do no structural damage (so other internal damage maybe?)
There may be some TLs variances from pg 53...

Also Aerofins being 5% of the ship's tonnage and costing MCr0.1 per ton (page 45) and 10% of the ship's tonnage and MCr0.01/ton on the table (page 47).
 
Adrienne Barbette was one of my NPCs during my CT gaming days in the 1980s, named in honor of actress Adrienne Barbeau. She was a top Solomani gunner of Quebecois/Acadian descent.
 
domingojs23 said:
Adrienne Barbette was one of my NPCs during my CT gaming days in the 1980s, named in honor of actress Adrienne Barbeau. She was a top Solomani gunner of Quebecois/Acadian descent.

At risk of sending this thread even more off topic wasn't she the lady with the impressive assets who played Brains girlfriend in Escape from New York?
 
AndrewW said:
Also Aerofins being 5% of the ship's tonnage and costing MCr0.1 per ton (page 45) and 10% of the ship's tonnage and MCr0.01/ton on the table (page 47).
Yeah - and there are more issues with tables not matching text (and less significant, but annoying are missing costs/tonnage in text).

After various designs I have several lists that I'm waiting to consolidate when the thread Mathew Sprange mentioned starts, and I'm sure others have done the same.

My read on some of these - because Torpedo seems to have been adopted for Heavy Missile - is that the tables were not consistently updated to match the text, which was probably written later or at least updated after testing... but, its hard to say, and I'm sure there were several hands involved.

At least for some issues - scouring the examples leads to answers that match official text.

Really looking forward to the next revision of High Guard - both for the corrections and the LBB format!
 
BP said:
SSWarlock said:
And general consensus is a barbette can hold only one weapon.
Ah - interesting thought - my idea of a Barbette being based on CT - where it was just a larger particle accellerator turret.

Looking at MGT HG - this may not be decidely clear. But there are definitely no rules covering multilpe weapons in a single barbette.

Barbettes (as stated) take more tons for larger ordinance, fire systems and mechanisms within the hull - whereas turrets require less internal hull. I use this in deck plans as the tonnage internal (0, 1, 2, or 5 tons) and the rest of the weapon lies outside the hull (explains fixed mount requiring 0 hull tons - its just mounted externally to a hardpoint, with possible exception in some small craft) - with external portion of turret weapon occupying one ton or less (as pop-up turrent just takes an extra ton). Barbettes don't come in a pop-up version (well, at least officially - I think they are 'dramatically' cool for anti-pirate ops).

FYI - having spent some time designing a ship for a tournament - there are a number of terminology inconsistencies and other discrepancies in the tables on pgs 50 and 51. For page 50:

Heavy Missile is used in place of Torpedo.
Heavy Missile (Torpedo) Barbette states MCr 3 (pg 48 states 4).
Large Heavy Missile Bay left off the Large ;)
The Railgun Bay and Large Railgun Bay show damage x4 and x6 but text states autofire 8 and 12?
Meson Flicker bays show 1d6 and 2d6 damage, but text states they do no structural damage (so other internal damage maybe?)
There may be some TLs variances from pg 53...

Haven't done much with capital ships yet - but note Barbette is missing in name (the entries are there) from all but the Paricle Beam Barbette on pg 51 and, obviously, the order is kinda crazy - so other info is suspect (given the quality exhibited on these two tables).

Matthew Sprange has indicated that they will be revisiting HG soon (and a LBB sized version is forthcoming).

I would love to see MGT do a good clean-up job on the starship rules and construction information.

When you say "a LBB sized version is forthcoming" do you mean they are going to do something along the lines of Trillion Credis Squadron that is just about building ships and no character tables/rules?
 
By LBB I mean digest size. (LBB = Little Black Book = the original Classic Traveller size)

The Main Book or Core comes in a Pocket Rulebook edition already - which in the U.S. at least is 1/2 letter or 5.5 x 8.5 inches (guessing its A5 in the U.K. - but now all printing except Screens is being done in the U.S. ...)

As to TCS - really couldn't say - I've seen nor heard no indication of this in any of the official posts or Planet Mongoose. Personnally, I'd rather see Capital Ship combat fleshed out a bit better first.
 
BP said:
By LBB I mean digest size. (LBB = Little Black Book = the original Classic Traveller size)

The Main Book or Core comes in a Pocket Rulebook edition already - which in the U.S. at least is 1/2 letter or 5.5 x 8.5 inches (guessing its A5 in the U.K. - but now all printing except Screens is being done in the U.S. ...)

As to TCS - really couldn't say - I've seen nor heard no indication of this in any of the official posts or Planet Mongoose. Personnally, I'd rather see Capital Ship combat fleshed out a bit better first.

I totally agree that they need to flesh out the design portion first. When I referred to TCC, I meant that GDW added in new weapons systems and things specifically for capital ships.

I'm not really caring what size they do as long as they do a good job with it the first time. Both in print quality and information quality.
 
Doesn't lend itself well to the Traveller definition, but its military trivia! A win-win!!!

A barbette is a protective circular armour feature around a cannon or heavy artillery gun. The name comes from the French phrase en barbette referring to the practice of firing a field gun over a parapet (defensive wall) rather than through an opening (embrasure). The former gives better angles of fire but less protection. For example, the Confederate defenders at the Second Battle of Fort McAllister were unable to operate their cannons because the en barbette gun emplacements provided poor protection from Union riflemen outside the fort[1].

Before the complete introduction of the fully enclosed armoured gun turrets, a barbette was a fixed armoured enclosure protecting the gun. The barbette could take the form of a ring of armour around the gun mount over which the guns (possibly fitted with a gun shield) fired.

In warships from the age of the dreadnought forward, the barbette is the non-rotating drum beneath the rotating gun turret (properly known as the "gunhouse") and above the armoured deck on a warship. It forms the protection for the upper ends of the hoists that lift shells and their propelling charges (e.g. cordite) from the magazines below.

When applied to military aircraft, a barbette is a position on an aircraft where a gun, or guns, are in a mounting which has a restricted arc of fire when compared to a turret. As such it is frequently used to describe the tail gunner position on bombers such as the B-17 Flying Fortress.

The term "barbette" is often, used with military aircraft of World War II, to refer to remotely aimed and operated gun turret, which itself has no human presence directly within its mechanics-the German Messerschmitt Me 210 and Me 410 Hornisse had twin remote turrets, one per side, for rearwards defense, the Heinkel He 177 had such a turret for its forward dorsal defense.
 
Yeah - I looked that up on Wikipedia last year when someone asked this same question :)

In CT barbette was clearly defined as a bigger turret... I think the 'between a turret and a bay' style definition is what is throwing people - or they don't have High Guard...
 
BP said:
Yeah - I looked that up on Wikipedia last year when someone asked this same question :)

In CT barbette was clearly defined as a bigger turret... I think the 'between a turret and a bay' style definition is what is throwing people - or they don't have High Guard...

Yeah, a larger turret to mount the PAW weapons, or I think as a torpedo launcher as well.

Maybe we should start a thread listing all the improvements we would like to see for capital ships?
 
Barbettes can be mounted on much smaller ships as well.

The HG rules even present the option of mounting a PA Barbette on a small craft (takes 2 energy slots).

Rereading the info on Barbettes in HG, it definitely appears to be a single-slot weapon system (not like a turret), usually 5 tons in size (1 ton for turrets) and mounting Particle Accelerators.

Having Torpedo Barbettes makes sense too.
 
To avoid confusion with slots and bays:

A larger turret, dedicated to a single, more powerful weapon, requiring more tonnage for its components.

That more sums up my impression.

(Ok - that took like 5 edits and still makes a barbette a 'turret' so, hopefully someone else can come up with something more succinct and yet explicitly clear!)
 
I get the distinct impression that someone forgot to make it clear that turrets can only take a single PAW. The way the rules work, it really seems that this is what was intended, and the writers just got mixed up between what they knew in their head from CT and what they wrote down in the book for MGT.
 
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