Battle Cruisers in Mayday

[mike wightman]

This may have been done before, but here is my version of the Kinunir in Mayday terms.

Battle Cruiser, 1200 ton starship, 4G, Model 7, 2 particle accelerators, 2 lasers, 2 missile launchers, 1 pinnace. Programs: all, including jump 3 and jump 4.

 

[soloprobe]

I have found that ships desinged with HIGH GUARD work very well, with book 2 and thus with Mayday. Your Battle Cruiser is under armed......

 

[mike wightman]

The weaponry above is for game balance.

In Mayday four hits in one turn kill any ship.

The ship above also has twice the acceleration of any ship in Mayday.

Here are the ships listed in Mayday, with the battle cruiser added to the end for comparison:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">SHIP TYPE tons weaponry carried craft drive performance
scout 100 1xL, 1xM 1xLB 2G, J2
courier 100 1xL, 1xS 1xLB 2G, J2
escort 100 2xL 2G, J2
free trader 200 1xL, 1xM 1xSB 1G, J1
yacht 200 1xL, 1xS 1xSB 1G, J1
transport 400 1xLB 1G, 11
armed merchant 400 1xL, 1xS 1xLB 1G, J1
destroyer 400 2xl, 1xM, 1xS 1xSB 2G, J2
corsair 400 2xL, 1xM 1xP 2G, J2
colonial cruiser 800 4xl, 1xM 2xF, 1xLB 2G, J2
battle cruiser 1200 2xP, 2xl, 2xM 1xP 4G, J4</pre>[/QUOTE]A lot depends on how you rate PAWs for Mayday combat. I would have them use the Attack Table as a laser, but with a DM of -1 (less accurate). A successful hit causes two hits. This is based on the High Guard combat tables.

A variant of the battle cruiser could replace the Kinunir's APC and three air/rafts with two fighters...

 

[SgtHulka]

Sigg, I like this. However, I agree with soloprobe it's undergunned. Remember in a "standard" Mayday encounter it will be taking on an equal tonnage in enemies, so it should be able to fight 12 enemy Scouts to a standstill.

The instant-kill rule works both ways, and you don't want a Kinunir destroyed in one turn by concentrated fire. This can only be prevented by defensive measures. Even though it has 4G, in practical terms it should be moving at 1G with M3 active, providing a -3 DM to incoming fire. Additionally, one of its turrets should launch sand, giving it -6 total to laser fire if it doesn't maneuver. That should keep it from taking four laser hits in a single turn.

Which leaves missiles. Sand and M3 will give it a -4 for missiles to hit, but a missile will still hit on an 8+. Considering it could be taking a lot of missile fire, that's not a great defense.

Which is why I think it needs more lasers. Six at least, for the primary purpose of anti-missile fire. Remember that if it doesn't use its shift DM modifier, it can continue firing on a new target after destroying a target, so it can destroy multiple missiles with anti-missile fire.

Since the number of missile launchers is irrelevant in Mayday, I'd keep its 6 missile launchers. I'd also keep its 8 dual turrets. But instead of giving them each beam lasers, I'd give them one beam laser and one sandcaster. That gives it 8 lasers and 8 sandcasters. Again, more than one sandcaster is irrelevant in Mayday, so this is a way to keep the ship "official" in regards to traveller but maintain some play balance for Mayday. And then I'd keep your Particle Accelerators.

I like your Particle Accelerator rule, but I'd add that they're uneffected by Sand, and that one of the hits is +3 on the damage table (radiation damage).

I'm not sure about the Model/7, since it doesn't exist in Mayday.

My version would be:

Battle Cruiser, 1200 ton starship, 4G, Model 7, 2 particle accelerators, 8 lasers, 8 sandcasters, 6 missile launchers, 1 pinnace. Programs: all, including jump 3 and jump 4.

Special Rule: A particle accelerator is treated as a laser with a -1 Attack Table DM. However, it is uneffected by sand and scores two rolls on the Damage Table with each hit, the second roll receiving a +3 DM.

 

[Hyphen]

Dear Folks -

Would have thought that a PA would be affected by sand (since it fires particles).

A meson gun, OTOH....

 

[SgtHulka]

You could be right. I'll have to re-check High Guard. I was just going with a very quick read of the High Guard tables...it didn't look like sand effected Particle Accelerators on those tables.

I actually haven't gotten my head around High Guard combat in years, so I'm pretty rusty on it.

EDIT: Taking a harder look at the High Guard tables, Particle Accelerators have the following advantages over lasers:
1) More powerful. Particle Accelerators have a 2 to 1 advantage over lasers for the purpose of calculating USP Code.
2) More damage. Particle Accelerators roll for damage on both the surface hits table and on the radiation hits table.
3) No defenses. There are no means of defending against Particle Accelerators. This includes Sand and Nuclear Dampers.
4) Longer Range. Lasers are -1 at long range. Particle accelerators aren't.

At first glance, it appears that particle accelerators are less accurate than lasers, since a factor 1 particle accelerator needs a 9+ to hit versus a laser's 8+ to hit. This is an illusion, however, since there is no such thing as a factor 1 particle accelerator. A single particle accelerator is factor 2.

So how to change this to Mayday?

1) More Powerful. Just treat particle accelerators as unmodified lasers on the Attack Table to account for a single particle accelerator being factor 2.
2) More damage. Just give particle accelerators two damage rolls. For simplicity's sake, I'd abandon my original idea of +3 on the second roll.
3) and 4) Uneffected by defensive measures and longer range. Particle accelerators would require an entirely new DMs table like the following:

Particle Accelerator Fire DM's on the Attack Table
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Per 2 hexes of range -1
Predict 1 +1
Predict 2 +2
Predict 3 +2
Predict 4 +3
Gunner Interact +1
Select 1 -2
Select 2 -1
Return Fire -1
Maneuver/Evade 1 -1
Maneuver/Evade 2 -2
Maneuver/Evade 3 -3
Auto/Evade -2
Target Program -1
Manual Control -4
Multiple PA's firing +1 per
Barbette -1</pre>[/QUOTE]Or, as a condensed version of the above, the Laser Fire DMs table with the first row change to "Per 2 hexes of range" and both the "Target in sand cloud" and "Attacker in sand cloud" rows removed, and the "Barbette -1" row added.

And while we're at it, we might as well look at fusion guns. Fusion guns use the same attack and damage tables as lasers in High Guard, so they should be easier to convert. Their starting factor is 4, however, and they can't fire at long range. My suggestion would be to have fusion guns use the "M" result on the Attack Table instead of the "L" result, and that it use the Laser Fire DMs on the Attack Table chart, with the single exception that the Per hex of range penalty changes to -2.

Since that all seems incredibly complex, I'd probably swap out the Kinunir's particle accelerators for triple sandcasters and leave the rest of the ship as designed. Such a version would have the following High Guard stats:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">BC-A2447G2-030510-50002-0 MCr1335.13 1250 tons
batteries 2 2 2
Cargo=63 Fuel=587.5 EP=87.5 Agility=1 Marines=35</pre>[/QUOTE]And it has the following Mayday stats:

Battle Cruiser, 1250 ton starship, 4G, Model 7, 16 lasers, 6 sandcasters, 6 missile launchers, 1 pinnace. Programs: all, including jump 3 and jump 4.

That version of the Kinunir is still very vulnerable to proximity-detonation missiles. A couple of Scouts armed with proximity-detonation missiles could kill it.

 

[SgtHulka]

I tried out the above version of the Battlecruiser in a meeting engagement (non-scenario objective) battle against a Corsair, Armed Merchant, Free Trader and two Scouts, each loaded up with 6G6 area detonation homing missiles.

The Kinunir destroyed all the ships without taking any damage.

That said, it had 50 tons on the opposition, and the Armed Merchant was a dog that I should have replaced with something with a missile launcher.

Some observations:

1) The best defense against the Kinunir is a strong offence. The only way to get close to it is to swarm it with missiles, so that its 16 lasers are too busy destroying incoming ordnance to bother with your ship.

2) Laser fire is suicidal. Firing on the Kinunir merely invites 16 lasers in return fire mode.

3) Stay in formation. You have to make sure all your ships are able to launch missiles at the same time to have a chance against the Kinunir. If your ships get strung out they're dead.

4) Speed may be the Kinunar's best friend. When it's moving at high velocity it's much harder to swarm with missiles.

5) The Kinunir has a nice, long range. Its 16th laser is +18 to hit. It can auto-destroy anything ten hexes away (not counting countermeasures like sand or M/E). This is why you have to swarm it with missiles before having a chance of getting in close.

6) Even though the end result of this battle was that the Kinunir dominated, it wasn't as one-sided as it sounds. On the second turn of engagement, when it had to deal with 4 area detonation missiles. It required all 16 lasers to destroy those four missiles. Had I used two more Free Traders instead of the Armed Merchant, and been able to put 6 missiles on its hex instead of 4, its quite likely the Kinunir would have been killed.

7) Due to the danger of getting swarmed with missiles from enemy ships in tight formation (12 scouts putting 12 missiles on the Kinunir's hex, for example), the battle tends to be decided early. If the Kinunir can survive long enough for the enemy to break formation, the Kinunir has won.

8) Due to the shifting fire rule, the Kinunir can kill any one ship. Interestingly, it is seldom advantageous for it to do so...only at long ranges, really. Because usually it is better off not using shifting fire so that it can take out multiple opponents. This is why it's so essential to swarm it with missiles -- it can't use shifting fire if it has at least three missiles in its hex (it has to take out at least two of those missiles in its own Laser Fire Phase, which means it can't use Shifting Fire because with Shifting Fire you can't take out more than one target). By forcing it to avoid using Shifting Fire, you can get close to it and your defensive measures (sand, auto or maneuver/evade) actually have an effect.

I'm very curious as to what Kinunir versus Kinunir battles would look like, or even other basic milspec Traveller ships. I suspect these battles would not result in one-turn kills, since the engagements would begin at much longer ranges, where only the last few lasers in the battery would have a chance to hit.

 

[SgtHulka]

Here's the cheat sheet I created for the Kinunir:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Intruder Kinunir
Model/7
CPU=All
PHASES:
4G Movement 1=Maneuver
-or-
1G&-3 Dfence DMA 3=Maneuver/Evade3
Laser +3AttackDM Laser Fire 1=Target 3=Predict4 1=Gunner Interact
Laser +3or+4AttackDM
Laser +3or+5AttackDM
Laser +3or+6AttackDM
Laser +3or+7AttackDM
Laser +3or+9AttackDM
Laser +3or+10AttackDM
Laser +3or+11AttackDM
Laser +3or+12AttackDM
Laser +3or+13AttackDM
Laser +3or+14AttackDM
Laser +3or+15AttackDM
Laser +3or+16AttackDM
Laser +3or+17AttackDM
Laser +3or+18AttackDM
Laser +3or+19AttackDM
Laser +0or+2AttackDM Return Fire 1=Target 3=Predict4 2=Anti-Missile 1=Return Fire 1=Gunner Interact
Laser +0or+1or+3AttackDM
Laser +0or+2or+4AttackDM
Laser +0or+3or+5AttackDM
Laser +0or+4or+6AttackDM
Laser +2or+5or+7AttackDM
Laser +2or+6or+8AttackDM
Laser +2or+7or+9AttackDM
Laser +2or+8or+10AttackDM
Laser +2or+9or+11AttackDM
Laser +2or+10or+12AttackDM
Laser +2or+11or+13AttackDM
Laser +2or+12or+14AttackDM
Laser +2or+13or+15AttackDM
Laser +2or+14or+16AttackDM
Laser +2or+15or+17AttackDM
Missile 6G6hmg Launch 1=Target 1=Launch
Sand -3laser/-1mssl
Pinnace 5G 00000 00000 00
Black Globe On/Off Computer</pre>[/QUOTE]

 

[SgtHulka]

I owe Sigg an apology. I was going off the High Guard version of the Kinunir, not the Adventure 1 version.

The Adventure 1 version has only two laser turrets! Though I can't figure out where it defines how many lasers are on each turret...and the whole ship only has six turrets.

But yeah, 2 lasers, 2 particle accelerators and 2 missile launchers seems totally reasonable for the funky Adventure 1 version of the ship. But that version is gonna get killed real fast unless you make up a rule for the black globe!