Actual dTon of a Space Viking Nemesis?

[Badenov]

Shrug, I didn’t go total gearhead, just in the ‘looks about right’ for game effect.

My assumption is that the decisions built into CT combat and ships was for specific game effect, and that the ship design rules are effectively a marketplace of game effect tradeoffs. I then went after it to alter some things to my taste without breaking those builds and plug in common ships that still make sense.

One of those is making maneuver matter, with getting closer making beam weapons do more damage, while making a missile run be a thing. Small ships get some upgrades, missile builds include bay weapons, and the damage table is thrown in favor of proportionate tonnage damage and ship/repair drama.

Plus optional power allocation based on 100 second sub turns, so there is player agency in making dramatic decisions.

Missiles aren’t auto hit, using HG to hits for probability, but the damage they do can be altered due to differential vee.

Physics? My table understands suspension of disbelief and genre, so all I have to have is plausible alternate reality that is consistent. Won’t play out hard science but that’s not what I’m going for, more story agency and game.

So as long as your homebrew weapons aren't vastly better than the canonical weapons and breaking the game paradigm, and you didn't break the canonical builds or render them useless/ineffective, I think you're ok.

 

[whartung]

Well, you have a whole warhead's worth of mass, and thrust 13 is so many meters per second, and it's possible to convert to MJ and now you have something the game designer never planned around trumping all the in-game stuff that's really just fiat numbers anyhow,

But see, in TNE at least, they did consider this. And that's a reason why they skipped it completely. It's fraught with problems at the space level, besides taking great care to talk about it at the terrestrial level (i.e. guns vs tanks).

 

[kilemall]

So as long as your homebrew weapons aren't vastly better than the canonical weapons and breaking the game paradigm, and you didn't break the canonical builds or render them useless/ineffective, I think you're ok.

Meson guns still sneak through armor, nukes do big damage and heavy armor if no dampers, only one home brew (railguns, use PA, two surface hits instead of one surface one rad, short range only), etc.

Definitely differences, multi spinals allowed being the big one, and the damages for nukes and spinals can run into thousands of tons, gouging out chunks of big ships and crack smaller ones in two. And yes those annoying small craft can do outsize damage but at horrific cost.

 

[Badenov]

Meson guns still sneak through armor, nukes do big damage and heavy armor if no dampers, only one home brew (railguns, use PA, two surface hits instead of one surface one rad, short range only), etc.

Definitely differences, multi spinals allowed being the big one, and the damages for nukes and spinals can run into thousands of tons, gouging out chunks of big ships and crack smaller ones in two. And yes those annoying small craft can do outsize damage but at horrific cost.

Multi-Spinals: This is one the game I'm in allows also, under limited conditions. No more than 20% of ship's tonnage can be spinal mounts. This puts it squarely in the ballpark of RL spinal mounts, and seems pretty reasonable. Since Bays are limited to 10% (Max 100T per 1000T of ship), Turrets limited to 1% (Max 1T per 100T of ship), 20% seemed reasonable. We don't really do much space combat anymore, though, as it's not really anyone's primary area of interest.

 

[Condottiere]

In theory, you could pack a hull, full of spinals.

My contribution was, you can't, because of recoil.

Logic would indicate, if properly integrated into the hull, you could have more, but fired one per round.

But Mongoose wasn't looking for logic, just a plausible excuse.

Given current hull size conventions, I'd say above a megatonne, you can.

 

[Rupert]

FF&S says only one 'spinal', but it can be two guns mounted butt to butt, so you have one forward and one aft, and you can had multiple 'parallel' mounts, which are the same as spinals except limited to only 80% of hull length. Oh, and a spherical hull can have 'parallel' mounts that face in any direction.

 

[Condottiere]

The most obvious loophole is docking clamps - attaching spinal mounted hulls without a manoeuvre drive, to a primary hull that acts as a tractor.

 

[kilemall]

In theory, you could pack a hull, full of spinals.

My contribution was, you can't, because of recoil.

Logic would indicate, if properly integrated into the hull, you could have more, but fired one per round.

But Mongoose wasn't looking for logic, just a plausible excuse.

Given current hull size conventions, I'd say above a megatonne, you can.

I’m doing 1000s turns so not a factor.

 

[bookwyrm]

Is there a point at which more spinals become redundant on the same ship? Or is more better than less as long as it can be paid for?

Are they all being fired at the same time at the same target, same time at multiple targets, or one at a time at any target it can get a bearing on?

 

[whartung]

Well, the premise of the spinal is that its structural. The closes thing we have to a spinal today is probably the 30MM gun that they built the A-10 around.

That's why "it doesn't make sense" to have more than one spinal mount. The idea of "one pointing front, and one pointing rear" works, again structurally. It's a single construct in the ship frame. I don't know the origin story of the spinal, I don't know if Star Blazers came first or not, it's an early spinal example "in the wild".

But its fair to suggest "one tube good, two tube better" for parallel ones. But, from an engineering perspective, that's pretty rare in the world. Not a lot of bicycles with redundant tubes. I don't even know if two tubes are stronger than one. i.e is a 2" tube stronger than 2, 1" tubes. I have no idea. I'm assuming it is, or the strength of two is not worth extra weight (I assume 2 1" tubes weigh more than one 2" tube).

And for combat, wouldn't a 2" tube project more energy than two, 1" tubes? The 2" tube has twice the area as 2 1" tubes. So, don't bring two tubes. Bring a bigger tube.

And that's where it breaks down with ships like the monster dreadnaughts. The tubes stop scaling.

TNE doesn't have that problem. You can make a BFT 2000 for a huge ship if you like.

 

[bookwyrm]

Well, the premise of the spinal is that its structural.

Ahhh! This is what was in the back of my mind for my post .

I felt that having two spinals wouldn't be good structurally when firing, three to five firing at the same time is ok (I think), but kind of gets crazy for higher numbers of spinals.

 

[Badenov]

Well, the premise of the spinal is that its structural. The closes thing we have to a spinal today is probably the 30MM gun that they built the A-10 around.

That's why "it doesn't make sense" to have more than one spinal mount. The idea of "one pointing front, and one pointing rear" works, again structurally. It's a single construct in the ship frame. I don't know the origin story of the spinal, I don't know if Star Blazers came first or not, it's an early spinal example "in the wild".

But its fair to suggest "one tube good, two tube better" for parallel ones. But, from an engineering perspective, that's pretty rare in the world. Not a lot of bicycles with redundant tubes. I don't even know if two tubes are stronger than one. i.e is a 2" tube stronger than 2, 1" tubes. I have no idea. I'm assuming it is, or the strength of two is not worth extra weight (I assume 2 1" tubes weigh more than one 2" tube).

And for combat, wouldn't a 2" tube project more energy than two, 1" tubes? The 2" tube has twice the area as 2 1" tubes. So, don't bring two tubes. Bring a bigger tube.

And that's where it breaks down with ships like the monster dreadnaughts. The tubes stop scaling.

TNE doesn't have that problem. You can make a BFT 2000 for a huge ship if you like.

Well, double-barreled shotguns are the classic side-by-side format for double weapons where you sometimes fire both barrels at once. There are hunting rifles that do over-under, but are generally not used both at once. The A-10 was the RL application of the spinal mount I was referring to, but the GAU plus the ammo adds up to something like 20% of the mass of the plane, which is where my group came up with the 20% figure for maximum spinal volume. I'm no Mech E to analyze structural strength of firing side by side, but I feel like Spinal Mount beam weapons, like Meson and Particle Beam should be fine since they're beam weapons with no recoil.

 

[Condottiere]

There is the Death Star.

 

[Badenov]

There is the Death Star.

So 'the size of a small moon' in tons would be so much larger than any normal traveller-scale ship that you'd have to house rule everything. The death star laser might simply be several hundred 'spinal mounts' re-imagined as one huge conglomerated weapon.

Deimos, Mars's smallest moon, has a mean radius of 6.2km according to wikipedia and a volume of 1033km^3, which is 1033x10^9 m^3. Using 13.5 m^3 per dTon gives 76.5 x10^9 dTons, using 14 m^3/dTon gives 73.8 x10^9 dTons. In either case, no single spinal mount would make sense, or could be imagined to have the power to blow up a planet. But maybe 11 million Spinal Meson beams all synched and firing together might do that.

 

[Grav_Moped]

But maybe 11 million Spinal Meson beams all synched and firing together might do that.

Team 11 Million Spinal Meson Beams, represent!

 

[Condottiere]

Armour penetration of around seven thousand kilometres.

I'm not sure, but I think it was either a hundred thousand tonne laser or fusion gun in Fire Fusion Steel.

 

[kilemall]

Multi-Spinals: This is one the game I'm in allows also, under limited conditions. No more than 20% of ship's tonnage can be spinal mounts. This puts it squarely in the ballpark of RL spinal mounts, and seems pretty reasonable. Since Bays are limited to 10% (Max 100T per 1000T of ship), Turrets limited to 1% (Max 1T per 100T of ship), 20% seemed reasonable. We don't really do much space combat anymore, though, as it's not really anyone's primary area of interest.

I didn’t really think through to 20% per se, the valuation of spinals is already explicit enough in the rules. My point was you have a 100000 ton monster, a 3000 ton spinal is just a dainty little thing that’s more like a surface mount main gun turret. Spend all that money on the hull armor and defenses, need to cash in those scalable advantages and be able to hit like the supership it should be.

30000 ton spinal cruisers and the like are still viable, just not the only game in town.

IMO have to deal with the horrid thing in the rules, the Achilles heel of the surface maneuver drive hits. I do by making it a tonnage hit so 100 ton hits totally wreck ACS drives but barely scrape the paint job of the superships.

 

[kilemall]

Well, the premise of the spinal is that its structural. The closes thing we have to a spinal today is probably the 30MM gun that they built the A-10 around.

That's why "it doesn't make sense" to have more than one spinal mount. The idea of "one pointing front, and one pointing rear" works, again structurally. It's a single construct in the ship frame. I don't know the origin story of the spinal, I don't know if Star Blazers came first or not, it's an early spinal example "in the wild".

But its fair to suggest "one tube good, two tube better" for parallel ones. But, from an engineering perspective, that's pretty rare in the world. Not a lot of bicycles with redundant tubes. I don't even know if two tubes are stronger than one. i.e is a 2" tube stronger than 2, 1" tubes. I have no idea. I'm assuming it is, or the strength of two is not worth extra weight (I assume 2 1" tubes weigh more than one 2" tube).

And for combat, wouldn't a 2" tube project more energy than two, 1" tubes? The 2" tube has twice the area as 2 1" tubes. So, don't bring two tubes. Bring a bigger tube.

And that's where it breaks down with ships like the monster dreadnaughts. The tubes stop scaling.

TNE doesn't have that problem. You can make a BFT 2000 for a huge ship if you like.

Think of battleships, wouldn’t it be odd to have a rule that you can only have one 16 inch gun per ship? Wouldn’t it make sense then to have smaller ships?

I’m thinking more like each spinal is like a gun tube on a battleship and you have multiples so you can be sure to expediently kill your targets in a short time period and engage at longer ranges with higher probabilities.

 

[Rupert]

I didn’t really think through to 20% per se, the valuation of spinals is already explicit enough in the rules. My point was you have a 100000 ton monster, a 3000 ton spinal is just a dainty little thing that’s more like a surface mount main gun turret. Spend all that money on the hull armor and defenses, need to cash in those scalable advantages and be able to hit like the supership it should be.

At 3% of displacement, it's akin to a battleship's main gun mount or two. So not tiny, but not really what you'd expect of a main armament either.

FWIW a 20th century battleships was (very roughly) 40% hull, general machinery, etc., 40-50% armour, ~10% weapons, and ~10% propulsion, with fuel not counted.

 

[Rupert]

Think of battleships, wouldn’t it be odd to have a rule that you can only have one 16 inch gun per ship? Wouldn’t it make sense then to have smaller ships?

I’m thinking more like each spinal is like a gun tube on a battleship and you have multiples so you can be sure to expediently kill your targets in a short time period and engage at longer ranges with higher probabilities.

It depends on the weapons, the defences, and everything. If hitting wasn't a problem and a few massive hits would finish even a battleship, 20th century battleships might've ended up looking more like HMS Benbow, with a single massive gun fore and aft (or just one huge gun forward on a smaller ship).