Barbettes and 25 ton bays

[jfwking]

Several earlier versions of traveller rules have had these and I'm trying to convert them for a T20 game.

Laser Barbettes. A heavy turret mounted on a barbette hardpoint, mounts a single very heavy or twin heavy military laser. Number of barbettes to make battery USP is shown below. These are military only weapons, Navy/Licensed starmerc etc only.

..........................USP = # Required
Barbettes - Eps MCr . 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Laser pulse. 6 . 4.5 .. 1 2 4 6 8 - -
Laser Beam. 6 . 6 .... 1 2 3 4 6 8 -
Missile. . . . 0 . 5.5 ... - - - - - - -

All Barbettes displace 2 tons internal, cost and energy cost as above.
Beam and Pulse barbettes have range as per turrets. Missile Barbettes have 5 launchers and hold 15 standard missiles, USP calculated as per normal turrets for missile salvos.

25 Dton Bays. Higher tech bays for use on smaller escort sized warships. Tech 16 level is included for Regency/Darrian. Missile bay is 3 launchers, 24 heavy missile/torpedo in magazine.

Tech Level
25 ton bays Eps MCr 10--11--12--13--14--15--16
Missile ....... 0 .. 8 ---------- 7 -- 7 -- 8 -- 8 -- 9
Repulsor..... 3 .. 4 ------------------------ 2 -- 4
Plasma....... 5 .. 3 ---------- 4 -- 4 -- 5 -- 5 -- 6
Fusion...... 10 .. 5 --------------- 6 -- 6 -- 7 -- 7

Ideas, modifications ?

Do people think the stats are about right?

 

[cmdrx]

Wow! This is scary...

I've been playing around with the (nearly) exact same weapons.

In GT I developed heavy lasers. This is just a big honkin pulse laser, instead of three per turret you could only fit one. I have converted this over to T20.

Heavy Laser:
Mcr2.5, 3EP, damage die d12 (crit. 18 x2) range 45,000km
# USP
1 2
2 3
3 4
5 5
7 6
10 7
TL Mods +1@TL13, +2@TL16

I've been working on the 25dt bays as well, I called them 'Pods' or Mini-Bays.
But for Meson, PAW and Missile. IMTU, Meson Mini-Bays start as TL15 and are realtively weak (USP 1 or 2) and get nastier at higher TL. Then the Meson Barbette is developed at TL16.

Some other X-TEK goodies (weird weapons) are the Quadpulse PD laser system. This is 4 miniture pulse lasers in place of a single standard laser (you can put a total of 12 in a turret). The idea is to have these little guys fire a burst and cycle to the next laser in the cluster (gatling style). IN GT this increased the RoF considerably. Converting this to T20 was interesting.

Other weirdness are Ultra Bays (250dt monstrosities), Heavy Missiles and an atempt to convert the Type-A Disintigrator.

I'm posting much of the conversions on my website.

Your USP charts for the 25dt bays look about right.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Hmm, I did a little work on alternate bay weapons back in the early 80s, the trouble was, they came out a bit too powerful, and yet, they seemed like logical progressions of the technology. Oh well.

I dug out the ancient chart.

Laser & Sandcaster Bays

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">100-dTon Bay
_________TL 7 8 9 A B C D E F EP Cost
Beam Laser B C D E F G H J K 20 25
Pulse Laser A A B B C C D E F 20 13
Sandcaster 9 A A C D E F G H 0 10

50-dTon Bay
_________TL 7 8 9 A B C D E F EP Cost
Beam Laser - - 9 A B C D E F 10 15
Pulse Laser - - 8 8 9 9 A B C 10 8
Sandcaster - 7 8 9 A B C D E 0 6</pre>[/QUOTE]Hmmm . . . I'll have to look this over more extensively. Somewhere, there should be some extended to-hit charts, etc.

I guess, basically, the problem with this is that these bay weapons go over Factor 9. In HGv2, going above Factor 9 seemed to be reserved for spinal mounts, and so I never designed any starships with these, it was just a speculative effort on my part.

The reason I wrote in numbers above Factor 9 was because 10 triple turrets of either lasers or Sandcasters already made it to Factor 9 (and 7, I believe, for Pulse Lasers). Why create Bay Weapons for Lasers and Sandcasters if not to make something more powerful? But maybe that's why the HGv2 designers left them out . . . hah, hah, hah . . . and it goes round and round, and where she stops, nobody knows!

 

[TheDS]

I can't speak for T20 design, but FF&S shows that it is better to make the biggest laser you can, and then if you want to fire it more rapidly, you simply don't charge it up as long. May seem a bit silly, but if some one's got just enough armor, the smaller lasers of a multi-unit turret might not get through, while a single larger laser has a higher penetration and damage, and uses the same amount of energy.

When you're using it to shoot down incoming missiles, then all you do is lower the power output of each shot and then it fires more rapidly.

Say you have 1 turret's worth of space. You could put four 1 Mj lasers or one 4 Mj laser (just pulling how much laser fits in the given space out of my ass). The 1 Mj lasers do say 10 points of damage, while the 4 Mj laser does 20 points (remember we had to square-root the power). The big laser will penetrate more armor than the weak ones and do more damage besides.

When it's time to shoot down lightly armored targets, that big laser CAN fire at only 1 Mj, and can do it 4 times, giving you the same number of shots and the same firepower as four smaller lasers. Versus missiles, you might drop it down even more, so that it's just enough to kill the missile, but is putting out so many shots that your odds of hitting goes way up. If you powered it for 100 shots a round, by cutting the power 1/4, you quadruple the numberof shots, and increase the odds of hitting by 2 ranks.

Of course, the only flaw is if you get a GM who is really strict with the rules, and won't let you train your single laser against 4 targets, even though you've clearly got the firepower to do it.

 

[snrdg082102]

Evening all,

From CT Book 5:High Guard (copyright 1979, 2 ed.) p. 26


</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">10 Ton bays 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Cost
PA 10 12 16 12
PG 40 50 60 18
FG 120 150 25
Repulsor 10 10 8
Missile Rack 15 15 20 20 20 20 20 30 30 8</pre>[/QUOTE]</font>

• PA = Particle Accelerator
  PG = Plasma Gun
  FG = Fusion Gun</font>