Corsair ships

[wbyrd]

historically a lot of ship to ship combats were drawn out affairs. With the exception of lucky hits, or one ship being seriously outgunned the typical results was one captain breaking off before he took crippling damage.

Paul Jones engaged the Sloop Drake, aboard his sloop the ranger, the battle lased an hour and a half by Captain Jones testimony.

a portion of the record of the "Bonhomme Richard" vs the Serapis
John
"In less than an hour afterward the flag of England, which had been nailed to the mast of the Serapis, was struck by Captain Pearson's own hands, "

in this case two well armed frigates with state of the art weapons ( for the day) slugging it out at point blank range took nearly an hour.

The ironclads Monitor and Virginia fought for the better part of a day only doing minor damage to one another.
durig the battle of samar

At 07:35, Roberts turned and headed toward the battle. She charged toward the heavy cruiser Chōkai.


At 08:51, the Japanese landed two hits, the second of which damaged the aft 5 inch gun.

in this battle destroyers and destroyer escorts engaged the main japanese battle fleet including a super battleship...and the battle took over an hour to resolve.


in game using Mongoose rules the several ship to ship battles were fairly quickly resolved. In the three engagements I can remember off the top of my head... the vessels. corsairs, then a second corsair, and a close escort broke off when they started taking structure hits...and most of the damage was delivered by the missiles based on The groups vessel... a fat trader converted to a pirate hunter.

[McPerth]

Originally Posted by wbyrd

in game using Mongoose rules the several ship to ship battles were fairly quickly resolved. In the three engagements I can remember off the top of my head... the vessels. corsairs, then a second corsair, and a close escort broke off when they started taking structure hits...and most of the damage was delivered by the missiles based on The groups vessel... a fat trader converted to a pirate hunter.

MgT Corsair is (IMHO) poorly desined for its mission, as it involves combat more often than not and yet is fully unarmored, while even a free/far trader has some armor (enough, in fact, to neutralize 2/3 of non-nuclear missiles or beam lasers).

In MgT core rules, the only turret weapon really usable against armored hulls is the PB, and having no power needs, I'm quite amazed it's not more used (should I have a Gazelle, the first thing I'd done would be to upgun it to CT/MT standards, with PBs and triple lasers).

[wbyrd]

Corsairs aren't that poorly designed. A corsair is mainly intends to attack commercial shipping. they are not intended to fight warships. They are intended to RUN from warships.

they are better armed than the traders they stalk and fast enough to make a quick exit. They need to be modified from the stock version in the books (since they have empty weapons slots.) but just by filling those slots with a pulse laser and sand caster

total
3 beam lasers (long range sniping, missile/fighter defense)
3 Pulse lasers (close range combat/small craft defense)
3 sand casters (defensive system)

the are better armed than most traders,fast enough to get in and out, and just rugged enough to survive a low intensity fight against non warships.... which is what a Corsair or raider is meant for.

[McPerth]

Originally Posted by wbyrd

Corsairs aren't that poorly designed. A corsair is mainly intends to attack commercial shipping. they are not intended to fight warships. They are intended to RUN from warships.

they are better armed than the traders they stalk and fast enough to make a quick exit. They need to be modified from the stock version in the books (since they have empty weapons slots.) but just by filling those slots with a pulse laser and sand caster

total
3 beam lasers (long range sniping, missile/fighter defense)
3 Pulse lasers (close range combat/small craft defense)
3 sand casters (defensive system)

the are better armed than most traders,fast enough to get in and out, and just rugged enough to survive a low intensity fight against non warships.... which is what a Corsair or raider is meant for.

And which warship are they supposed to outrun? The Gazelle has thrust 4, so the corsair may not outrun it. And with its armor 8 the corsair is unlikely to damage it.

Also, the design wastes one hardpoint capacity (being 400 dtons, it could have 4 turrets instead of 3).

Another example of bad design (or more likely an errata) is that it has computer 2 (rating 10) and has Auto-repair/2 for its repair drones, that needs a rating 20 computer to run (so overloading the computer and being useless). That adds 5 Mcr to the cost over an Auto-repair/1 ad makes the repair drones useless, as the software can not be run by the computer.

And about merchants, free/far traders have armor 4. As long as they have sandcasters, the probability to damage them is low with the weapons given. And even without them, the weaponry you talk about is unlikely to damage them. Unless nukes are used (and if you play 3I they are supposed to be difficult to obtain, due to Imperila Rules of War), only pulse lasers (if using the rules changes in HG) will damage them more often than not, but they are inaccurate.

If nukes are used, a single missile hitting the corsair (being it unarmored) might be quite damaging to the crew (due to being unarmored), while the free trader is more likely to survive it unschratched (with armor 4, only a 9+ will damage one crewmemeber, and never more tan one).

Fat traders, being unarmored, are more vulnerable to them, but the corsair is no better armed that they can be, both having 3 turrets and no armor (the fat trader also wastes one hardpoint capacity). Off course the corsair can this time outrun the trader and flee, but if you ely on this against merchants, that says no good about the design...

[Dagrill]

Originally Posted by McPerth

MgT Corsair is (IMHO) poorly desined for its mission, as it involves combat more often than not and yet is fully unarmored, while even a free/far trader has some armor (enough, in fact, to neutralize 2/3 of non-nuclear missiles or beam lasers).

In MgT core rules, the only turret weapon really usable against armored hulls is the PB, and having no power needs, I'm quite amazed it's not more used (should I have a Gazelle, the first thing I'd done would be to upgun it to CT/MT standards, with PBs and triple lasers).

I find most Corsair type ships don't really work with rules, the Buccaneer in Book 6 Scoundrel relies on reaction drive & 60 tons of Fuel to give it Thrust 6 for brief periods and is seriously under-gunned. I suspect Particle Beams are Military grade and only used by military ships though & any civilian with them is assumed to be a Pirate, which I guess is the norm in the Trojan Reach.

Regards

David

[McPerth]

Originally Posted by wbyrd

to prevent a serious case of thread drift I am going to have to reply to this somewhere else... Curses on staying on topic..a thousand curses upon it.

Previous posts are copied form the thread Ship combat: long and bloody? to avoid such thread derive

Don't so curse the rules, just start a new thread if you think it deserves it

[Dagrill]

Originally Posted by McPerth

And which warship are they supposed to outrun? The Gazelle has thrust 4, so the corsair may not outrun it. And with its armor 8 the corsair is unlikely to damage it.

Also, the design wastes one hardpoint capacity (being 400 dtons, it could have 4 turrets instead of 3).

Fat traders, being unarmored, are more vulnerable to them, but the corsair is no better armed that they can be, both having 3 turrets and no armor (the fat trader also wastes one hardpoint capacity). Off course the corsair can this time outrun the trader and flee, but if you ely on this against merchants, that says no good about the design...

I meant to add that another way is to see the Core Rulebook Corsair as the factory fresh article and you need to spend additional money to improve the ship. I've been unable to design (at 400 tons) a decent Corsair that combines
Speed, Firepower, Protection & a decent amount of Cargo space, leading to a situation where you need at least 2 ships (or one bigger one).

It does tend to focus the prey as Fat Traders & Free Traders as even the heavy freighter could potentially mount more weapons.

Regards

David

[wbyrd]

A Corsair is not a combat ship it is an opportunistic ambush vessel. So it stands to reason that it is not armed or armored to a point where it can get into slugging matches with equally armed or heavily armored vessels.

If a pirate group can afford to operate a larger vessel, or a pair of vessels then up-gunning the corsair. and having a second cargo vessel follow up to take on cargo is a good answer.

However for solo ships, and cant afford a larger vessel the corsair is acceptable. Pirates on corsairs have to pick their targets, and avoid engaging anything that can/want to put up a fight

If operating alone they have to balance combat ability and tactics against the ability to make off with the cargo they just hijacked. this means they are not going to be able to convert their vessel into a purely combat oriented ship.

extra turrets, armor and a heavy weapon are reasonable upgrades but the ship is never going to be a match for a purely combat oriented vessel. that's not what it's meant to do.

[McPerth]

Originally Posted by wbyrd

A Corsair is not a combat ship it is an opportunistic ambush vessel. So it stands to reason that it is not armed or armored to a point where it can get into slugging matches with equally armed or heavily armored vessels.

If a pirate group can afford to operate a larger vessel, or a pair of vessels then up-gunning the corsair. and having a second cargo vessel follow up to take on cargo is a good answer.

However for solo ships, and cant afford a larger vessel the corsair is acceptable. Pirates on corsairs have to pick their targets, and avoid engaging anything that can/want to put up a fight

If operating alone they have to balance combat ability and tactics against the ability to make off with the cargo they just hijacked. this means they are not going to be able to convert their vessel into a purely combat oriented ship.

extra turrets, armor and a heavy weapon are reasonable upgrades but the ship is never going to be a match for a purely combat oriented vessel. that's not what it's meant to do.

I understand it's not thought to confront true combat ships, but, as it is, it cannot even confront a fat trader in anything like equal terms, and hardly can with a free/fat trader, due to the latter being armored, nor can it outrun military ships (a must for this kind of missions)

[aramis]

Originally Posted by McPerth

I understand it's not thought to confront true combat ships, but, as it is, it cannot even confront a fat trader in anything like equal terms, and hardly can with a free/fat trader, due to the latter being armored, nor can it outrun military ships (a must for this kind of missions)

Standard Fat Trader has 2 turrets.
The Corsair has 3 turrets and more thrust.

This means it gets to set the range, and it also has 50% more firepower than a Fat Trader, of the same size.

It's not a good design - it should have a 4th turret, and maybe a bit of armor - but it's definitely an uphill fight for any of the stock merchants to fend it off.