Why are warships built without armored bulkheads, EM hardening, and backup power?

[Sigtrygg]

US Naval Aviators on average go through 70 hours of flight training before being assigned to a squadron, and fly an average of 10 - 30 hours a month when not on deployment. That seems to Me to be about Skill Level/1 or 2

Where did you get your numbers?

Mu research says 200 hours minimum with 250 for fast jet pilots.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[MasterGwydion]

@MasterGwydion
@AnotherDilbert

The Imperium views two opponents as existential threats: the Zhodani and Solomani. While the Aslan could be a serious problem, they have more of a beef [pun used intentionally] with Sollies and their racist nonsense.
The Vargr are a limited threat... their operations are limited by the charismatic control of their leaders. Kill the flagship and the squadron will dissipate.
We have an open war going on 'now' with ships designed for that conflict. Why not use that conflict and those ships instead of custom-designed Tigress killers? Fleets don't engage with the optimum assets, they engage with the assets they have.
And if the author of the simulation wishes to submit the flaws of High Guard 2 Updated to Mongoose for revision, what better way to get their attention than to chalk it out with their designs in their scenarios?

The flaws are less about HG (with the exception of needing to buff the spinals to be better than the large bays) and more about how the rules have moved away from the published ship designs being effective. I don't mind an evolving combat system. (It has been 40 years after all). My only point is that if the combat system evolves, then the ship designs need to evolve with them.

You change the rules in NASCAR or F1 and the old designs are no longer the best way to do things.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Where did you get your numbers?

Mu research says 200 hours minimum with 250 for fast jet pilots.

Quick google search.

How many hours of flight training do US Navy pilots get before being assigned to the first plane? - Bing

Mit der intelligenten Bing-Suche können Sie die gewünschten Informationen schneller und einfacher finden und dabei Punkte sammeln.

www.bing.com

 

[Terry Mixon]

And don’t forget, as high automation ships, the Hornets get a +2 to all shipboard die rolls, including gunnery. I don’t know if that was baked in to the earlier discussion. If you don’t use that optional rule, they aren’t as effective.

 

[J. L. Brown]

Launch missile swarm in pairs of different speeds, that will impact in the same round to minimise PD.
Missiles halves for every full five rounds, except Long Range missiles.

Launch Nukes round 1, arrives round 11 (quartered)
Launch Nukes round 2, arrives round 12 (quartered)
Launch Nukes round 3, arrives round 13 (quartered)
Launch Advan round 4, arrives round 11 (halved)
Launch Advan round 5, arrives round 12 (halved)
Launch Advan round 6, arrives round 13 (halved)

Round 11-13: 27000/4 = 6750 nukes and 27000/2 = 13500 advanced will arrive. PD swats 800×2×6D ≈ 33600 missiles, i.e. all of them by a wide margin.

Tigresses jumps out or surrenders?

I assumed the Tigresses were smart, and did not divide their missiles up over all of the available Hornets. Instead a Tigress realizes that 25 bays firing on a single target would overwhelm & destroy the target, Point Defenses not withstanding. Putting all the missiles into fewer salvos also protects them from EW, since only ONE EW action can be performed on a salvo per turn.

Of course PD/2 software allows all of the Hornets to defend each other, as long as they are all (easily done) within 'Short' range of each other.

hink it is a flaw in the rules that you can upgrade a bay to be longer range than the same weapon type's spinal mount version, but ymmv.

No 'Upgrade' is necessary to find an existing, canonical 'Large Bay' with greater range than the 'Spinal Mount' equivalent: look at Particle Beams. The Large Bay has 'Distant' range, while the Spinal only has 'Very Long'.

I would think that the fighters would time their launch to arrive with the first waves of the Tigresses'. Also, if the Tigresses are going to be swarmed by the very long range shots of the Hornets, they aren't going to go pellmell into range, so stay at Distant and dropping missiles as long as they can.

The fighters add another 1500 missiles. Assume they mix missile types for time-on-target, to an added 3000 missiles per round. With extended flight times this is reduced considerably, with EW it is reduced by (roll, +1 skill, +2 High Automation, +2 EW/2 program, +2 Advanced Sensors, +4 Countermeasures Suite (no idea why this is not +6, against a target of '10' = effect 8) eight missiles per turn per salvo.

If the Imperials want to remain at 'Distant' and fling missiles, the Hornets will simply accelerate away -- the advanced missiles close at 15 -9 = 6G (21 rounds to reach targets; 21 x8 per round = loss of 168 missiles per salvo for EW, halved, quartered, eighthed, and sixteenthed for flight time). Nuclear-tipped missiles close at 10 -6 = 4G; so they certainly will not arrive together with the advanced missiles & will be in flight for longer than 21 rounds.

54600 Missiles in a salvo /16 for flight time = 3413 missiles impacting. Those are easily dealt with by the PD; repeat until the missiles are exhausted. Staying at 'Distant' is a losing tactic.

This nicely illustrates a point: Go all out for missiles, or don't bother.

The 66000 Dt spinal replaced with 190 large bays would increase the throw weight to ~28000 missiles per round.
Replace the fighters with another 50 large bays for a total of 34000 missiles per round.
Five missile-Tigresses would launch 170000 missiles per round, easily overwhelming the Hornets PD capacity.

Time on Target makes this 540000 missiles /16 = 33750 missiles vs 800x 2x 6D = 33600 defeated on average, leaving 150 missiles to do damage. 5D average of 17.5 -15 = 2.5 damage x150 = 375 damage, enough to maybe put one Hornet (528 Hull) out of the fight.

- Remember that ships jumping into system DO NOT arrive together. Even with highly tuned drives and the best computers and software available operated by the most well trained and intuitive astrogators in each fleet, a full fleet WILL arrive over the course of hours on up to a full day. MWM displayed this in Agent of the Imperium so that's how we should wargame this out.

Battle Riders like the Hornet certainly DO arrive together.

- Do not assume that every system operator is a skill level 4 master of their craft. Most systems on military vehicles are operated by 22 year old spacehands with, at most, skill level 2 in their assigned job task. They are supervised by skill level 3 and 4 experts but supervised is a long way from operated.

So far my assumptions are the Imperial vessels are all skill 2, while crew aboard the Hornets are skill 1.

Why not use that conflict and those ships instead of custom-designed Tigress killers?

The Hornet is not an optimized Tigress-killer; it is simply an exercise in 'how well can a player designed ship do in combat'. The group of Tigri chosen in this scenario was a fast-and-easy comparison with a 'canonical' Imperial ship, and the number was chosen to be equal to the number of credits spent. By all means, give us canonical Aslan BatRon or a comparable Hiver or K'kree or Vargr force -- Imperial ships were chosen because they are the ones which are most-published.

The Imperium views two opponents as existential threats: the Zhodani and Solomani.

And, as is much of the material which is published as canon, that analysis is nonsense. The Aslan can never be anything other than aggressively expansionist, the K'kree have a fanatical cultural mandate to kill 'everything which eats meat' (or, to the particularly militant 'anything which is capable of eating meat'), and the Hivers can never be trusted -- and they may have already set our extinction in motion. Using other humans as an 'existential threat' is silly scape-goating around how scary the 'heretic' is -- so similar, yet all the more viscerally revolting because of it.

 

[Terry Mixon]

The Hornet is not an optimized Tigress-killer; it is simply an exercise in 'how well can a player designed ship do in combat'. The group of Tigri chosen in this scenario was a fast-and-easy comparison with a 'canonical' Imperial ship, and the number was chosen to be equal to the number of credits spent. By all means, give us canonical Aslan BatRon or a comparable Hiver or K'kree or Vargr force -- Imperial ships were chosen because they are the ones which are most-published.

And the combat power they have doesn’t include the transport that doesn’t get involved in the fight at all. They would make a good system defense force too. Better than the existing system defense boats. These really are multi-role.

As a system defense force, they would be a huge surprise to an attacking force. They enemy couldn’t run as they need to take the system. Say, Regina for example during the opening of the FFW.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The 66000 Dt spinal replaced with 190 large bays would increase the throw weight to ~28000 missiles per round.
Replace the fighters with another 50 large bays for a total of 34000 missiles per round.
Five missile-Tigresses would launch 170000 missiles per round, easily overwhelming the Hornets PD capacity.

Time on Target makes this 540000 missiles /16 = 33750 missiles vs 800x 2x 6D = 33600 defeated on average, leaving 150 missiles to do damage. 5D average of 17.5 -15 = 2.5 damage x150 = 375 damage, enough to maybe put one Hornet (528 Hull) out of the fight.

?
A time-on-target attack would be 170 000 Nukes, quartered to 42 500, and 170 000 Advanced, halved to 85 000.

The Hornets' PD would kill about ~33 500 nukes, leaving 9 000 nukes and 85 000 Advanced to impact.
9 000 nukes is about (35-15) × 9 000 = 180 000 damage.
85 000 Adv is about (17.5-15) × 85 000 = 212 500 Damage.
Call it an average of about 400 000 Damage, killing one Tigress or 900 Hornets with the right concentration.

So, all Hornets killed in a single round.

To survive such an attack, the Hornets would need something like four times as much PD, requiring mixing in dedicated PD riders, reducing the offensive punch.


A few missiles are easily swatted, a lot of missiles are a deadly threat...

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The Imperium views two opponents as existential threats: the Zhodani and Solomani. While the Aslan could be a serious problem, they have more of a beef [pun used intentionally] with Sollies and their racist nonsense.

No external threat has been a real problem for the Imperium.

The only existential threat to the Imperium is the Imperium, see the barracks emperors and the Shattered Imperium.

 

[J. L. Brown]

?
A time-on-target attack would be 170 000 Nukes, quartered to 42 500, and 170 000 Advanced, halved to 85 000.

The Hornets' PD would kill about ~33 500 nukes, leaving 9 000 nukes and 85 000 Advanced to impact.
9 000 nukes is about (35-15) × 9 000 = 180 000 damage.
85 000 Adv is about (17.5-15) × 85 000 = 212 500 Damage.
Call it an average of about 400 000 Damage, killing one Tigress or 900 Hornets with the right concentration.

So, all Hornets killed in a single round.

To survive such an attack, the Hornets would need something like four times as much PD, requiring mixing in dedicated PD riders, reducing the offensive punch.


A few missiles are easily swatted, a lot of missiles are a deadly threat...

Nope, that assumes that the missiles can close at their full G rating, and the Hornets are standing still. The Hornets are 9G, and moving away from the waves of missiles -- so the missiles only manage to close at (at BEST) 6G. 6G closing speed from 'Distant' is (HG p37) 21 turns, with the number of missiles still tracking cut in half every five rounds of flight time. This is 0.5^4 = only one in sixteen makes it to resolving point defense & impact. The thrust 10 missiles can only close at 1G, which is undefined but might take a hundred rounds or more.

'Long Range' missiles, aside from being another example of spectacularly bad rule writing, are irrelevant. 3D damage means no significant damage gets through the armor of the Hornets 1/216 do 3 points of damage, 3/216 do 2 points of damage, 9/216 do 1 point of damage. If you want to claim 'All Hornets killed', then one sixteenth of the missiles which survive attenuation in flight, minus point defense of 33500 missiles, divided by 800 different targets, divided by all 216 possible 3D6 die rolls... it ain't pretty.

Even if 170000 missiles arrive (and they will not), after PD you have 171 missiles going after each Hornet. Each of 800 Hornets has to withstand attack; 800 /216 x13 hits per group of 216 = 49 Hornets are damaged. About 4 take 3 x171 = 513 (a decisive kill, but not 'vaporized'); 12 take 2 x171 = 342 (65% of their hits, probably crippled), and the rest take 1 x171 = 171 (almost a third of their hits, seriously hurt). There are only 444000 missiles aboard the entire Imperial contingent, so this tactic can only be done twice.

Sure, you can choose to divide the missiles up into more salvos; that increases the effect of EW, but also increases the number of impact rolls. If you want to make 17 separate attack rolls, greatly increasing the chance of scoring enough damage on impact to get through Armor, then there need to be many more missiles.

The alternative is to use 'Advanced' missiles which do more damage, but suffer attenuation for long flights. We have already seen that is not terribly impressive.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Turn nine, the Hornets are in 'Medium' range of the fighters, and Fusion Barbettes are doing ( avg of 7 +2.5 Fire Control +1 Skill +2 High Automation +1 'Accurate' -2 Evasion/2 -0 Medium range = effect 6.5 ), easily hitting for (17.5+6.5) = 24 -15 = 9x3 = 27 damage. Each Hornet has 2x fusion barbettes.

Actually, they have _3_ fusion barbettes and 2 point defense type III-L.

 

[Vormaerin]

And this is why these kinds of tests don't prove anything within the fiction. We don't know why they are here, what they are trying to accomplish, etc. Why are the Tigresses here by themselves? How is the Hornet's mothership being defended? Who is attacking? Who is defending? What are they attacking/defending?

Do these orphan Tigresses have a reason to stay and fight? What is the Hornets' plan for if the other three Tigresses in the Batron show up after a delay in Jump? What if the Tigresses send their 1500 fighters off to strike the objective while the main ships evade? Who is closing on whom? The Hornets can't do anything to the Tigresses without charging face first into a massive missile wave. The Tigresses can't bring their main firepower to bear without running through a gap where they are outranged.

And then you have strategic considerations. 5 Tigresses could be hitting/defending five different targets and just leaving the one that the Hornet's nest was at. One Tigress has a jump drive malfunction and the other 4 are still able to deploy. Mothership's jump drive fails, whole nest is stranded.

Who is building these automated TL 15 ships that the Tigresses have to fight against? Because the Hivers are the only other TL 15 opponent, IIRC?

 

[J. L. Brown]

Who is building these automated TL 15 ships that the Tigresses have to fight against? Because the Hivers are the only other TL 15 opponent, IIRC?

Any OpFor. Since the Hornet is small, and seems viable, any TL-15 Class B starport could defend itself with these . If you think a Batron of 5 Tigresses regret what happens when they meet up with ONE Tender-load of Hornets, imagine their horror at jumping into the depot where they are constructed & face all the hordes of 'not enough Tenders to carry them all away'.

It is unfortunate that the Hornet was built at TL-15; but the design can probably be viable at TL-13 as well -- and many polities could churn them out at will.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Nope, that assumes that the missiles can close at their full G rating, and the Hornets are standing still. The Hornets are 9G, and moving away from the waves of missiles -- so the missiles only manage to close at (at BEST) 6G. 6G closing speed from 'Distant' is (HG p37) 21 turns, with the number of missiles still tracking cut in half every five rounds of flight time. This is 0.5^4 = only one in sixteen makes it to resolving point defense & impact. The thrust 10 missiles can only close at 1G, which is undefined but might take a hundred rounds or more.

MgT2 does not track relative motion of missile salvoes. If launched at Distant range they will arrive after 7 or 10 rounds respectively.

'Long Range' missiles, aside from being another example of spectacularly bad rule writing, are irrelevant.

Agreed, so I didn't use them. I used Nuclear Missiles, called Nukes, and Advanced Missiles, called Advanced or Adv.

Even if 170000 missiles arrive (and they will not), after PD you have 171 missiles ...

I launched 2 × 170 000 missiles launched in different rounds so that they arrive in the same round. 170 000 nukes and 170 000 advanced. 170 000 / 4 = 42 500 nukes and 170 000 / 2 = 85 000 advanced reach the target and can attack.

Launch Nukes round 1, arrives round 11 (quartered)
Launch Nukes round 2, arrives round 12 (quartered)
Launch Nukes round 3, arrives round 13 (quartered)
Launch Advan round 4, arrives round 11 (halved)
Launch Advan round 5, arrives round 12 (halved)
Launch Advan round 6, arrives round 13 (halved)

A time-on-target attack would be 170 000 Nukes, quartered to 42 500, and 170 000 Advanced, halved to 85 000.

The Hornets' PD would kill about ~33 500 nukes, leaving 9 000 nukes and 85 000 Advanced to impact.
9 000 nukes is about (35-15) × 9 000 = 180 000 damage.
85 000 Adv is about (17.5-15) × 85 000 = 212 500 Damage.
Call it an average of about 400 000 Damage, killing one Tigress or 900 Hornets with the right concentration.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Any OpFor. Since the Hornet is small, and seems viable, any TL-15 Class B starport could defend itself with these . If you think a Batron of 5 Tigresses regret what happens when they meet up with ONE Tender-load of Hornets, imagine their horror at jumping into the depot where they are constructed & face all the hordes of 'not enough Tenders to carry them all away'.

It is unfortunate that the Hornet was built at TL-15; but the design can probably be viable at TL-13 as well -- and many polities could churn them out at will.

I’ll see about making a TL-13 version when I get home to see what changes. I know the thrust will drop to 7 at least.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The flaws are less about HG (with the exception of needing to buff the spinals to be better than the large bays) and more about how the rules have moved away from the published ship designs being effective. I don't mind an evolving combat system. (It has been 40 years after all). My only point is that if the combat system evolves, then the ship designs need to evolve with them.

The big battleships were never combat effective in CT.

They were just designed using WW1-WW2 naval prejudice, without reference to how the combat system worked.

 

[MasterGwydion]

The big battleships were never combat effective in CT.

They were just designed using WW1-WW2 naval prejudice, without reference to how the combat system worked.

It is not just the big battleships. This applies to the ACS as well.

 

[J. L. Brown]

I think your math is a little off; but to be fair I have made a few errors along the way, too. It is a lot to keep up with.

MgT2 does not track relative motion of missile salvoes. If launched at Distant range they will arrive after 7 or 10 rounds respectively.

Another case of the rules being outright ridiculous.

I will concede that 170000 nukes incoming is a problem for a swarm of 800 Hornets; but I will point out that the canon Tigress cohort cannot actually launch that many. If the question is 'Do canon military designs hold up against player-designed ships', it seems the answer is a firm 'No, they do not'. Does 'Stealth' Hull option make Gunnery check to hit the ship harder? What about 'Signal Processing'? Argh.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

It is not just the big battleships. This applies to the ACS as well.

The original LBB2 small ship were never efficient, neither combat nor economically. They were just what happened to be possible to be built with the limited design system in LBB2. They were just about equally bad...

Sure, we could build a better Scout with MgT but too many people want them cramped with four staterooms, just as they were in LBB2, so that's what we get still.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I think your math is a little off; but to be fair I have made a few errors along the way, too. It is a lot to keep up with.

Agreed, it is probably a bit off, I simplified a bit. Not too far off though, I hope.

Another case of the rules being outright ridiculous.

I would call it simplified. How else could we keep track of hundreds of thousands of missiles in thousands of salvoes targeting hundreds of targets potentially moving individually?

LBB2 bogged down quite fast when we had to keep track of each missile and sand cloud individually...

I will concede that 170000 nukes incoming is a problem for a swarm of 800 Hornets; but I will point out that the canon Tigress cohort cannot actually launch that many. If the question is 'Do canon military designs hold up against player-designed ships', it seems the answer is a firm 'No, they do not'.

Agreed, 170 000 missiles was a group of hypothetical battleship vaguely similar to the Tigress.

As ever, we can build better ships ourselves (outside LBB2), that is hardly surprising.