I think a mobile weapons platform is the right descriptor. Something more than what a Hinde or Apache do on today's current battlefields.
Are grav tanks worth it?
- Thread starter Blue Ghost
- Start date
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
In the TL progression section of LBB4 the term grav tank is used up until TL11. At TL12 and above the term gunship is used.
I think a lot of our perception of what a 'grav tank' should look like and be deployed as is biased by the erroneous use of the grav tank label.
The designers at GDW seem to have fallen into this usage too, but then they never were very good at reading and using their own rules
I think a lot of our perception of what a 'grav tank' should look like and be deployed as is biased by the erroneous use of the grav tank label.
The designers at GDW seem to have fallen into this usage too, but then they never were very good at reading and using their own rules
The Trepida is TL14, and called a Grav Tank, Mike...
It looks like a tank. It can function as a tank. Or as low-speed heavy aerospace fighter....
And the Astrin is an APC. A 500KPH APC, that can make orbit, and deliver a squad of squishies. Or half a squad of hardsuit infantry.
It looks like a tank. It can function as a tank. Or as low-speed heavy aerospace fighter....
And the Astrin is an APC. A 500KPH APC, that can make orbit, and deliver a squad of squishies. Or half a squad of hardsuit infantry.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
As I said - the folks at GDW didn't spend much time reading their own background stuff or using the rules as written.
They called it a grav tank and designed it as one because they were stuck with the 'grav tank' meme rather than applying their own designation of gunship and designing accordingly.
At the risk of sounding a bit like Hans, I wonder what an actual citizen of the 3rd Imperium would call them - according to LBB4 it would be gunship.
It's our 20th century game designers who got 'grav tank' stuck in their head.
A good way to design gunships in game would be to use High Guard and have rules for vehicle scale weapons bolted on.
Which brings me to why can't you use a battlefield meson gun in ship to ship combat?
Bit of a rhetorical question because the answer is the people who wrote the rules didn't notice it would be possible and so didn't write rules to cover it.
They called it a grav tank and designed it as one because they were stuck with the 'grav tank' meme rather than applying their own designation of gunship and designing accordingly.
At the risk of sounding a bit like Hans, I wonder what an actual citizen of the 3rd Imperium would call them - according to LBB4 it would be gunship.
It's our 20th century game designers who got 'grav tank' stuck in their head.
A good way to design gunships in game would be to use High Guard and have rules for vehicle scale weapons bolted on.
Which brings me to why can't you use a battlefield meson gun in ship to ship combat?
Bit of a rhetorical question because the answer is the people who wrote the rules didn't notice it would be possible and so didn't write rules to cover it.
Yup, which is why we have so many broken parts...
In TSR's Dragon Magazine #51 (circa early 80s), which had several good articles, there were a couple of good articles by Paul M. Crabaugh that related to alternative ship uses "New Ideas for Old Ships" and "Masers and Cameras". In one of them, probably the second, they talked about placing anti-personnel weapons in turrets for defeating would-be boarding parties. Masers would apparently fry humanoid nervous systems, while autocannon (machine guns) would 'play merry hell with boarders in vacc suits'. This would be very cool for ships that would land on planets, too. Imagine a 400ton Patrol Cruiser that has a non-lethal weapon in a turret for crowd control (rubber bullets, smoke/teargas grenades, etc). If a planetary police force doesn't have gravtech or even police helicopters (due to tech or cash shortages, especially if it is a smaller settlement), it would make sense to call in on the Patrol Cruisers for crowd control. Poorer/smaller systems couldn't afford SDBs against pirates, but they could afford a few Patrol Cruisers.
Gordon Long
Starship search radar (think large microwave oven) will fry people. Sand casters would be a great anti personnel weapon.
This is one case where the older material seems to have been superseded.... as MT, TNE, T4, and T20 all have grav tanks above TL 12... and Bk4 was written before the OTU was firmly in place. COACC notes that non-gravitic fixed wing is performance effective through TL13, and at TL14+, gravitics are used in tandem with airframes to produce VTOL craft with really tight turn radii
Also, the role of a tank (Armored heavy damage unit) doesn't go away after TL12. It does merge with ground assault fighters... somewhat. Non-gravitic assets likewise have little reason to go away... for certain limited roles. OTU gravitics are frightfully expensive. A gunship implies fast, light armor, and medium damage. And building the designs in MT, TNE, or T4 reinforces that dichotomy. A gunship relies on not being hit; a tank relies on surviving some hits.
Remember the design ethic:
Pick 2 of: Fast, High Damage, Tough, long endurance, large payload.
That made logical sense until MGT rule set. Now, with the higher G acceleration available I would build "tanks" using the small craft rules that would dominate the battle field and airframe craft would disappear.
MGT specifically and intentionally ignored canon for almost all purposes. It can hardly be used to prove what is or is not canon for the OTU. And it's design system for vehicles is utter rubbish. The small craft system, however, doesn't run all the way down.
I never mentioned vehicle design system (although, you are totally correct about it) as I was talking about small craft design.
I was merely pointing out that the new version of the official Traveller universe, (MGT), makes much obsolete in the area of combat in atmospheric arena and gets rid of any reason to have airframes. For good or, bad.
When I say gunship, I guess I'm really talking about a WW2 PT sized grav vehicle with lots of weapons' ports. Something that can act partially as an APC/Stryker/Tank/Apache, and do more than those other units. Something like an AC130, but minus the need for speed, and the space taken up by an air frame.
Hmmm... maybe something like a mobile fort?
Hmmm... maybe something like a mobile fort?
Mongoose has repeatedly stated that they have no "Official Traveller Universe"... the "Original Traveller Universe" is what they call that which is congruent to prior editions' settings. They don't write the non-OTU books with the OTU in mind. Unless it has "Third Imperium" trade dress, it's not focused on the OTU. THerefore, lots of things which don't belong in the OTU show up.
MGT ≠ OTU.
Every vehicle has its time.
The primary purpose of an armored vehicle (however it's powered) is to take damage from things that can't hurt it.
Consider a modern IFV, basically designed to take hits from small arms fire and shrapnel, and perhaps an RPG, but certainly not a heavy tank cannon, or a anti-tank missile.
Are there threats that can overpower an armored IFV? Of course there are. But it turns out that those threats tend to be less common, particularly compared to light or heavy machine guns. Thus the IFV is actually an effective vehicle for many battle situations, and their value is partially tied to their "cheap" cost and operating expenses especially compared to an MBT.
For instances of strong resistance or expectation of heavier fire power, something more strongly armored needs to go in, and that's the MBT. Apparently, given all of the technologies and advancements etc., kinetic energy weapons from big guns (i.e. tank shells) are still the most efficient "bang for the buck" mechanism for sending hurt to the enemy, and while such guns could be mounted on a lighter armored chassis, I guess it's not worth the bother. If you're going to send in a big, expensive gun, you may as well protect it as best you can.
The Grav Tank has advantages of armor and deployment speed in an era where it's apparently still cheaper to use smart guns with dumb ammo rather than the other way around.
One thing I think we've learned over the years is simply that you can't take land from the air. You can try and deny land to the enemy from the air, but that's not necessarily the same as taking it. Arguably, if everyone is flying around in Grav Tanks, and troops with Grav Belts and Grav Trucks drinking Grav Tang and eating Grav MREs, controlling the ground may not be that effective. It's not like you can block a road. They can simply jump over such barricades or go around. Terrain is less effective at controlling movement.
But, even given that, people tend to like to camp and set up house and latrines and showers etc., and it also turns out that equipping grav everything is quite expensive. So, perhaps there's something to having men and equipment on the ground after all.
A Grav Tank is going to be a piece of equipment designed for the ground battle. Designed to dig men out of holes, and configured to best defend itself against common, man portable weapons and ideally other tanks. The Grav portion allows them to efficiently, and quickly, deploy to the front, but once there, they're not going to be jinking and diving like bees pouring down hurt on to the little guys. They're going to come up, park, and start reducing buildings and bunkers, and leverage the fact that most of their armor is good 'ol terra firma using berms, and gullies, etc. rather than just floating in the sky like a christmas ornament for all to see and shoot at. They're going to be there with intimate contact with their ground forces who are coming in doing the more detailed work.
Concealment is still their best defense. In the sky, they're sitting ducks. On the future battle field, speed is no longer the keen defense it once was. Light speed weapons basically made speed obsolete as a defense component. It works great against some grunt trying to turn a gun and bring it to bear, but doesn't do much at all to a laser with lock. No more "leading the target", no more travel time, etc. Zap and laser fun time happens.
There's effectively no reaction time to a laser once it decides to fire. A vehicle at 600mph moves 2.5 inches in the time it takes for a laser pulse to reach the target when it's fired from 10 KILOmeters away. So, put the [+] on the shiny moving thing, and push the button. And lasers in traveller, specifically TNE, are a hot knife through butter. Not particularly explosive, but great at cutting through wires and conduits and limbs and other sensitive, important bits -- enough for a mission kill. And few things are more exciting than when stuff Goes Wrong at 600mph.
On the ground, you have aerosols and smoke, big trees, large piles of dirt, and rubble to frustrate things like lasers. So you resort to simply blowing big holes in things with plasmas guns and HE and other tried and true brute force methods, methods that armor happens to be a reasonable defense against.
So, I don't see the skies filled with jinking and diving gunships per se. They will have their place, but there's no real reason to armor them up like a grav tank, and they won't be able to provide the REAL close in support that grunts on the ground really need when it gets heavy and mano-a-mano.
Finally, of course, if someone is bringing meson guns to the party, that tends to spoil most everyones fun. Meson ortillery is just awful.
The primary purpose of an armored vehicle (however it's powered) is to take damage from things that can't hurt it.
Consider a modern IFV, basically designed to take hits from small arms fire and shrapnel, and perhaps an RPG, but certainly not a heavy tank cannon, or a anti-tank missile.
Are there threats that can overpower an armored IFV? Of course there are. But it turns out that those threats tend to be less common, particularly compared to light or heavy machine guns. Thus the IFV is actually an effective vehicle for many battle situations, and their value is partially tied to their "cheap" cost and operating expenses especially compared to an MBT.
For instances of strong resistance or expectation of heavier fire power, something more strongly armored needs to go in, and that's the MBT. Apparently, given all of the technologies and advancements etc., kinetic energy weapons from big guns (i.e. tank shells) are still the most efficient "bang for the buck" mechanism for sending hurt to the enemy, and while such guns could be mounted on a lighter armored chassis, I guess it's not worth the bother. If you're going to send in a big, expensive gun, you may as well protect it as best you can.
The Grav Tank has advantages of armor and deployment speed in an era where it's apparently still cheaper to use smart guns with dumb ammo rather than the other way around.
One thing I think we've learned over the years is simply that you can't take land from the air. You can try and deny land to the enemy from the air, but that's not necessarily the same as taking it. Arguably, if everyone is flying around in Grav Tanks, and troops with Grav Belts and Grav Trucks drinking Grav Tang and eating Grav MREs, controlling the ground may not be that effective. It's not like you can block a road. They can simply jump over such barricades or go around. Terrain is less effective at controlling movement.
But, even given that, people tend to like to camp and set up house and latrines and showers etc., and it also turns out that equipping grav everything is quite expensive. So, perhaps there's something to having men and equipment on the ground after all.
A Grav Tank is going to be a piece of equipment designed for the ground battle. Designed to dig men out of holes, and configured to best defend itself against common, man portable weapons and ideally other tanks. The Grav portion allows them to efficiently, and quickly, deploy to the front, but once there, they're not going to be jinking and diving like bees pouring down hurt on to the little guys. They're going to come up, park, and start reducing buildings and bunkers, and leverage the fact that most of their armor is good 'ol terra firma using berms, and gullies, etc. rather than just floating in the sky like a christmas ornament for all to see and shoot at. They're going to be there with intimate contact with their ground forces who are coming in doing the more detailed work.
Concealment is still their best defense. In the sky, they're sitting ducks. On the future battle field, speed is no longer the keen defense it once was. Light speed weapons basically made speed obsolete as a defense component. It works great against some grunt trying to turn a gun and bring it to bear, but doesn't do much at all to a laser with lock. No more "leading the target", no more travel time, etc. Zap and laser fun time happens.
There's effectively no reaction time to a laser once it decides to fire. A vehicle at 600mph moves 2.5 inches in the time it takes for a laser pulse to reach the target when it's fired from 10 KILOmeters away. So, put the [+] on the shiny moving thing, and push the button. And lasers in traveller, specifically TNE, are a hot knife through butter. Not particularly explosive, but great at cutting through wires and conduits and limbs and other sensitive, important bits -- enough for a mission kill. And few things are more exciting than when stuff Goes Wrong at 600mph.
On the ground, you have aerosols and smoke, big trees, large piles of dirt, and rubble to frustrate things like lasers. So you resort to simply blowing big holes in things with plasmas guns and HE and other tried and true brute force methods, methods that armor happens to be a reasonable defense against.
So, I don't see the skies filled with jinking and diving gunships per se. They will have their place, but there's no real reason to armor them up like a grav tank, and they won't be able to provide the REAL close in support that grunts on the ground really need when it gets heavy and mano-a-mano.
Finally, of course, if someone is bringing meson guns to the party, that tends to spoil most everyones fun. Meson ortillery is just awful.
It is said that the engine is much a weapon of the tank as the cannon. Grav tanks, while still fulfilling the roles originally devised: breakthrough and exploitation, also have better mobility as well as a better protected system reducing mobility kills. In as much if a grav tank could not survive, I think it would highly doubtful that BD inf would survive.
Hey Whartung, long time no see. You know, I've read all about meson guns, but have never experienced them in a game session. I always pictured them as real expensive toys that were difficult to haul from one place to another, and only deployed to really needy sections. But, that's just me.
I guess my real question is are grav-tanks an anachronism? If you had some kind of ground action going on, would it not make more sense to have maybe a patrol cruiser just hovering above the troops laying down fire via its turrets? But, I suppose you answered that already.
Oh well
BG:
The striker battlefield meson isn't that big...
just over 1 Td. Adding crew, at 2m³ each, brings it to 27m³... right at 2 Td. It has a 100m destruction sphere....
With a Meson gun, if you can hit it, you can eradicate it... But you can't leave the infrastructure there...
The striker battlefield meson isn't that big...
Striker Bk 3 p.39 said:
just over 1 Td. Adding crew, at 2m³ each, brings it to 27m³... right at 2 Td. It has a 100m destruction sphere....
Striker Bk 2 said:
Striker Bk 2 said:
With a Meson gun, if you can hit it, you can eradicate it... But you can't leave the infrastructure there...
Last edited:
This is one of the issues I had with Meson guns, the whole concept of tech levels delegated by the Imperium, and just some of the wonkiness of the Traveller milieu when it came to hardware.
I remember reading about Meson guns and think them akin to personal disintegrators on the battlefield, except they weren't man portable. I mean, if you can mount one as an artillery piece, then why even bother with X, Y or Z guns on APCs? Why bother with any of the small arms at all?
So, in retrospect, I probably tuned them out, and none of the groups I was with ever dabbled with them much, possibly for similar reasons. Ergo, my concept of a mobile GS that would fill the gap between armor and heavy artillery. That is I think I came up with a concept that was outmoded in the first place as per Whartung's observations.
But now I'm just rambling
I remember reading about Meson guns and think them akin to personal disintegrators on the battlefield, except they weren't man portable. I mean, if you can mount one as an artillery piece, then why even bother with X, Y or Z guns on APCs? Why bother with any of the small arms at all?
So, in retrospect, I probably tuned them out, and none of the groups I was with ever dabbled with them much, possibly for similar reasons. Ergo, my concept of a mobile GS that would fill the gap between armor and heavy artillery. That is I think I came up with a concept that was outmoded in the first place as per Whartung's observations.
But now I'm just rambling
The problem with Meson Guns is hitting. A laser, you just have to intersect the cross-sectional area with the beam. A fusion gun, a little more leading (it's probably about mach 1-2).
A meson gun, you have to actually put the sphere on the target. Also, unlike a disintegrator, you get dust and/or muck, not nothing. You have to have range within the beam diameter.
Now, I honestly think that 10 striker cm/USP (100m/USP) is BADLY broken... it's way too big. 1cm/USP (10m/USP) is far more reasonable (and means a ship can survive a hit or two), and IMTU, that's exactly what I did... which also means 1/1000th the total disruption. But to do that with 250MW Input Energy? Seems a bit much even then.
A meson gun, you have to actually put the sphere on the target. Also, unlike a disintegrator, you get dust and/or muck, not nothing. You have to have range within the beam diameter.
Now, I honestly think that 10 striker cm/USP (100m/USP) is BADLY broken... it's way too big. 1cm/USP (10m/USP) is far more reasonable (and means a ship can survive a hit or two), and IMTU, that's exactly what I did... which also means 1/1000th the total disruption. But to do that with 250MW Input Energy? Seems a bit much even then.
