Cruisers

[Jame]

Now, from what I understand, a Cruiser was originally a sail-using vessel (as were most all ships at one point...) that was expected to "cruise" independently for long periods of time. Then the age of steel and steam (later petrol) came and turned them into ships of the air defense formation.

So, how do cruisers work in the OTU or in YTU? And what are the various kinds of cruiser, besides "light," "heavy," "strike," and "battle?"

Also, would a light cruiser normally carry Marines?

 

[kaladorn]

You forgot (shame on you) "Colonial" (AHL!).

To my mind, a cruiser is a mid-mass military ship whose job is probably to protect larger battlegroups (they can counter other cruisers, beat the crap out of smaller ships, and at least slow up the actions of larger vessels). Also, they allow dispersion of force (important in peacetime where supporting bushfire wars is more the issue than taking on the Wall of Battle).

Do they carry Marines? Yes. I'm of the opinion that the demarcation point for Marines is somewhere around destroyer level. At that point, you can argue for a small marine contingent or you can imagine your own navy line guys doing the boarding party ops and ship security.

On larger ship's, IMTU, Marines provide internal security, boarding troops (mostly for inspections, but sometimes for more hostile boardings), and also do maintenance and crew/maintain 'tertiary' defenses (AAA installations, PDS, etc).

They also give larger ships, who likely have a platoon or more, the ability to project some force into the local ports or downwell target areas. This can be important, given the OOTW (Operations Other Than War) nature of peacetime cruiser deployments.

 

[Jame]

I take no shame for that omission.

Points all well taken, thanks!

 

[jwdh71]

IMTU (nonOTU) cruisers are the ships where specialization comes into play. Smaller ships tend to be generalists, able to do several things with more or less capability, but the cruisers will be designed for their role, from the 10,000 + dton Frontier Patrol Cruisers, which make up the backbone of the frontier fleets, to the Escort Cruisers which are the main line of defense for the battle fleet, to the Scout Cruisers which do the majority of the exploration and surveying, to the Battlecruisers which make up a good portion of the line of battle. This is due to the fact that, in general, specialized ships will do much better at their assigned roles that generalist ships will.

As always, YMMV
John Hamill
jwdh71@yahoo.com

 

[The Oz]

IMTU, a cruiser is the smallest ship that carries a spinal mount and is expected to use it in the line of battle. Cruisers have firepower little short of a capital ship but lesser protection.

Outside of pitched battle, cruisers provide the heavy patrolling and raiding forces. I expect that one or two cruisers are attached to all scout squadrons, for instance, just to give them a little serious firepower if it should be needed. Commerce raiding groups would also have a cruiser or two along, to deal with any heavier-than-expected convoy escorts.

In full-scale battle, cruisers fight each other, pick off the small escorts, and take potshots at the battleships when they aren't looking.

 

[flykiller]

So, how do cruisers work in the OTU or in YTU? And what are the various kinds of cruiser, besides "light," "heavy," "strike," and "battle?"

historically a line-of-battle ship was maximally armored. this made them heavy and slow, and expensive to operate.

a cruiser had guns as big as a battleship, but was lightly armored so it would be faster, more responsive, and much cheaper to operate. thus cruisers were sent out on show-the-flag and fast response missions.

these vessel-design dynamics do not necessarily exist in traveller. other dynamics, however, remain. some that spring readily to mind are piracy suppression, rebellion suppression, and excessive conflict suppression. cruisers, defined as responsive to these situations, would be appropriate.

Also, would a light cruiser normally carry Marines?

depends on its normal mission profile.

 

[Antares Administration]

Originally posted by jwdh71:
IMTU (nonOTU) cruisers are the ships where specialization comes into play. Smaller ships tend to be generalists, able to do several things with more or less capability, but the cruisers will be designed for their role, from the 10,000 + dton Frontier Patrol Cruisers, which make up the backbone of the frontier fleets, to the Escort Cruisers which are the main line of defense for the battle fleet, to the Scout Cruisers which do the majority of the exploration and surveying, to the Battlecruisers which make up a good portion of the line of battle. This is due to the fact that, in general, specialized ships will do much better at their assigned roles that generalist ships will.

One of the difficulties in Traveller is, IMHO, the overly broad application of the term "cruiser". Generally speaking, Traveller views a cruiser as any ship reasonably capable of independant operations. Therefore, a cruiser can be a 400 ton patrol "cruiser" or a 50,000 ton heavy cruiser. I like the comparison to the German cruisers of WWII - Graf Spee, Scharnhorst, etc. Although versatile enough to serve as supporting ships for a battle fleet, they were also a resource-efficient way to project force in regions not actively patrolled by a "fleet".

In the Traveller context, a Sector Fleet will probably have Crurons (Cruiser Squadrons) full of 50,000 ton Heavy Cruisers to supplement its Batrons (Battle Squadrons), and 10,000 to 20,000 ton Light and Frontier Cruisers to show the flag and act as tripwires in regions where a major fleet is not justified. At the other extreme, a planetary fleet, like Starfall's, will have a few 400 to 1000 ton ships designed to do the same thing: show the flag and economically project force. They won't be able to stand up to any Heavies or Lights mentioned above, but they will be able to chase a raider, or avenge the actions of an aggressive neighbour.

Paul Nemeth
AA

 

[BMonnery]

Originally posted by Jame:
Now, from what I understand, a Cruiser was originally a sail-using vessel (as were most all ships at one point...) that was expected to "cruise" independently for long periods of time. Then the age of steel and steam (later petrol) came and turned them into ships of the air defense formation.

So, how do cruisers work in the OTU or in YTU? And what are the various kinds of cruiser, besides "light," "heavy," "strike," and "battle?"

Also, would a light cruiser normally carry Marines?

Why does a Battleship require escorts? Historically, Battlefleets were simply collections of Battleships. Given Travellers setup, this is almost certainly the case again.

The role of cruisers in a task force is probably that of the Light Cruisers at Jutland, to scout.

Heavy cruisers are probably much like Armoured Cruisers of WW1, good for colonial service, but a bad thing to include in the battlefleet.

Bryn

 

[kaladorn]

While not suggesting a Cruiser as the *choice* of escort, keep in mind that Battleships DO generally get an escort. In modern day, they usually have a bunch of other ships travelling with them, though perhaps not so large a group as a carrier would have.

If I'm not mistaken, carriers sometimes have Aegis Cruisers deployed in their defence. The CV doesn't have enough firepower to deter *serious* foes (not counting the air group, which sometimes has ops restricted) and needs the extra air def.

I'm sure that a Traveller BB force wants Aegis or equivalent airdef (spacedef) capabilities against fighter strikes and SDBs, etc.

Plus smaller vessels act as advanced warning, scouting, and screening forces for the Wall of Battle or for the heavy carriers.

 

[TheDS]

Ship-type designations are not as simple a matter as they should be. There is a long and complicated history of what things like "cruiser" and "frigate" and "destroyer" mean, and the terms change based not on anything logical, like mission, but on political needs. For instance, a treaty to limit the number of cruisers will perhaps result in a class of ships that SHOULD be called cruisers being labels as destroyers instead. The treaty says you can have only so many cruiser, but nothing about destroyers, so destroyers may wind up being more powerful. Indeed, an AEGIS destroyer is almost identicle to an AEGIS cruiser!

In the modern US navy, frigates are taking on roles that were the realm of destroyers, which are taking on cruiser roles, which are taking on battleship roles (that is, they are going away).

The "modern traditional" role (if anything can be called such) for ships is as follows:

Frigates are the smallest ship which can operate independently, and it is generally used as a screen against enemy ships. Frigates are NOT very fast or capable, but they are generalist ships; they can do anything, just not very well.

Destroyers are specialist ships. They are focused for a particular mission, at the cost of being able to do anything else. An anti-sub DD can't defend well against air attacks, but it's excellent against subs. An anti-air sub sucks when enemy ships come close for a gunnery duel, but they are good at shooting down aircraft and missiles. A DD loaded to the hilt with SSMs will annihilate an enemy surface group, but is a sitting duck against subs and air threats.

Crusiers are intended to be local command ships. (CC means "Command Crusier".) They are generalist ships, so that they can do anything, and since they are bigger than destroyers, they can do that multitude of things almost as well as the destroyer does its one thing. (Destroyers are specialized to give them SOME way to outperform a cruiser.) Crusiers head up small SAGs (Surface Action Groups), or can operate independently. A group of cruisers is good at cheaply denying an area to the enemy. A cruiser should be able to outfight any enemy ship, other than its battlewagons.

Battleships are designed for one primary purpose: to destroy enemy battleships. They are not supposed to go after enemy shipping. They are not supposed to help land troops. They are not supposed to patrol. (But they do these missions pretty well, eh?) When the enemy has warships where you don't want them, you send your battleships to clear them out. The enemy responds by sending his own battleships to stop them.

On the water, things can get really blurry. For instance, in WW2, we were worried about the ability of enemy destroyers to rush the guns and sink battleships. A group of DDs as few as 3 ships COULD have survived long enough against the 5-inchers that they could have caused some serious harm to the BBs. DDs were also good at torpedoing enemy ships, and even BBs feared torpedoes.

Submarines are DD-sized, and capable of sneak attacks. A small group is quite capable of destroying a fleet that is not leary of them.

In space (in the Imperium), you have the opportunity to do what Earth has never done: define things.

Define a cruiser as a ship in the range of 10,000-50,000 Dtons, multi-purpose (has a big gun and lots of little ones), 4G (meaning it's faster than most battleships of 2-3G), and whatever else.

Define a destroyer as being 1000-5000 Dtons, specialized for a single mission.

Define a battleship as 100,000-500,000 Dtons, devoting the majority of its freespace as a single weapon (like a giant PAWS or Meson gun), few secondary weapons, heavy armor, and usually no more than 2G.

This doesn't stop you from making variations either, like you could define a battlecruiser as a ship 50,000-100,000 Dtons, 4G, a heavy gun, moderate armor, and several secondary weapons. There will be plenty of sub-classes of DD, too.

This is along the lines of what I did in my game, and it makes it so much easier to see what's what. I take the "patrol cruiser" as simply being a class name rather than a type-name. (I type it as a frigate.)

 

[snrdg082102]

Hello TheDS,

As much as I like your idea and example of a simple classification system the real world once again collides with the TU.

Unfortunately, nothing is simple or cut and dry when discussing technology, especially that equipment designed for use by the military, or on how that resulting equipment is deployed. In fact the roles of that equipment often change as dictated by events and what the commander of the force requires.

The primary purpose of any military and the equipment designed for use by that military is to destroy the enemies ability to fight. If the battleship does not have another battleship to fight but has other targets, i.e. warships, merchants, or land targets, then that is what the battleship is going to attack and destroy.

The biggest unit in a fleet could conceivably be called a battleship by that fleet's name convension, even though the ship is considered a cruiser by a rival fleet.

In Traveller you have a several branches of Humaniti, two that developed star faring capability independent of Terra. Then we have the Aslan, Hivers, K'Kree, and several other non-Humaniti life forms with star fleets. What Humaniti calls a battleship might be considered a destroyer by one of the other star faring sophonts. Unfortuantely, I don't have any of my books at hand but IIRC either the Hivers or K'Kree require large, by Humaniti's standards, vehicles of any type. A destryor could displace as much as what Humaniti might classify as a destoyer.

Originally posted by TheDS:
Ship-type designations are not as simple a matter as they should be. There is a long and complicated history of what things like "cruiser" and "frigate" and "destroyer" mean, and the terms change based not on anything logical, like mission, but on political needs. For instance, a treaty to limit the number of cruisers will perhaps result in a class of ships that SHOULD be called cruisers being labels as destroyers instead. The treaty says you can have only so many cruiser, but nothing about destroyers, so destroyers may wind up being more powerful. Indeed, an AEGIS destroyer is almost identicle to an AEGIS cruiser!

In the modern US navy, frigates are taking on roles that were the realm of destroyers, which are taking on cruiser roles, which are taking on battleship roles (that is, they are going away).

The "modern traditional" role (if anything can be called such) for ships is as follows:

Frigates are the smallest ship which can operate independently, and it is generally used as a screen against enemy ships. Frigates are NOT very fast or capable, but they are generalist ships; they can do anything, just not very well.

Destroyers are specialist ships. They are focused for a particular mission, at the cost of being able to do anything else. An anti-sub DD can't defend well against air attacks, but it's excellent against subs. An anti-air sub sucks when enemy ships come close for a gunnery duel, but they are good at shooting down aircraft and missiles. A DD loaded to the hilt with SSMs will annihilate an enemy surface group, but is a sitting duck against subs and air threats.

Crusiers are intended to be local command ships. (CC means "Command Crusier".) They are generalist ships, so that they can do anything, and since they are bigger than destroyers, they can do that multitude of things almost as well as the destroyer does its one thing. (Destroyers are specialized to give them SOME way to outperform a cruiser.) Crusiers head up small SAGs (Surface Action Groups), or can operate independently. A group of cruisers is good at cheaply denying an area to the enemy. A cruiser should be able to outfight any enemy ship, other than its battlewagons.

Battleships are designed for one primary purpose: to destroy enemy battleships. They are not supposed to go after enemy shipping. They are not supposed to help land troops. They are not supposed to patrol. (But they do these missions pretty well, eh?) When the enemy has warships where you don't want them, you send your battleships to clear them out. The enemy responds by sending his own battleships to stop them.

On the water, things can get really blurry. For instance, in WW2, we were worried about the ability of enemy destroyers to rush the guns and sink battleships. A group of DDs as few as 3 ships COULD have survived long enough against the 5-inchers that they could have caused some serious harm to the BBs. DDs were also good at torpedoing enemy ships, and even BBs feared torpedoes.

Submarines are DD-sized, and capable of sneak attacks. A small group is quite capable of destroying a fleet that is not leary of them.

In space (in the Imperium), you have the opportunity to do what Earth has never done: define things.

Define a cruiser as a ship in the range of 10,000-50,000 Dtons, multi-purpose (has a big gun and lots of little ones), 4G (meaning it's faster than most battleships of 2-3G), and whatever else.

Define a destroyer as being 1000-5000 Dtons, specialized for a single mission.

Define a battleship as 100,000-500,000 Dtons, devoting the majority of its freespace as a single weapon (like a giant PAWS or Meson gun), few secondary weapons, heavy armor, and usually no more than 2G.

This doesn't stop you from making variations either, like you could define a battlecruiser as a ship 50,000-100,000 Dtons, 4G, a heavy gun, moderate armor, and several secondary weapons. There will be plenty of sub-classes of DD, too.

This is along the lines of what I did in my game, and it makes it so much easier to see what's what. I take the "patrol cruiser" as simply being a class name rather than a type-name. (I type it as a frigate.)

 

[Richard Saunders]

Hello.
Er can any ship only carry one spinal mount.
If the above is true it basicaly kills any reason to have ships over 50k tons.
You can pack what every you want into a 50k ton hull, 1 spinal mount 6g maneuver drive, 15 armor, jump whatever.
The only reason to build a bigger ship would be if you wanted a carrier and in T20 fighters are a waste of time for fleets, they are effective against pirates but not against warships.
For anti piracy you realy only need a squadron of fighters not hundreds.
Yes this should restart the big/little ship debate, there is only one way to settle the debate but no one wants to run the war game (and you need to pick the rule set).
Bye until later.

 

[Falkayn]

Originally posted by Lionel Deffries:
Hello.
Er can any ship only carry one spinal mount.
If the above is true it basicaly kills any reason to have ships over 50k tons.

Lionel, ignoring the fighter debate, what it tells me is that their either should be bigger spinal mounts available (Death Star anyone?) or an allowance for more than one (but perhaps limited to fire at the same target).

Battle tenders are the other ships that go above 50,000-tons, mainly carrying multiple 50,000-ton battle riders.

Now, in terms of big/small ships I have a 400,000-ton carrier design that has a dirty big spinal mount, and lots of fighters, and a decent marine complement! Check out the State Colour class carrier. I think the squadron rules (10 fighters attack as one) and the reasonably robust fighters I've designed allow this to be a nasty opponent* for a comparable battleship force.

* especially given the probable use of such a 'ship of the line'.

 

[The Oz]

Originally posted by Falkayn:
Lionel, ignoring the fighter debate, what it tells me is that their either should be bigger spinal mounts available (Death Star anyone?) or an allowance for more than one (but perhaps limited to fire at the same target).

I'm not sure there's a need for bigger spinal mounts (at least not bigger spinal meson guns) or more spinal meson guns on one ship, unless they =could= be used on more than one target.

Right now, from the probabilities, a medium or heavy meson gun (factor-J or bigger) will almost certainly kill or cripple any enemy ship it can hit and whose defenses it then penetrates. Since heavy meson guns tend to hit and penetrate about 50% of the time (against defenses of the same TL) at close range I'm not sure that adding more meson gun firepower =per ship= will increase the carnage that much; it's already pretty bad. Battles between meson gun-armed fleets are mutual slaughters.

Now, adding more particle accelerator firepower per ship might be a useful thing. As they stand right now, even the heaviest PAW is pretty useless against a heavily armored big ship. The size and armor prevent most of the extra hits and extra criticals, so your factor-T PAW just gets a couple rolls of the dice, which are then modified by the armor into Weapon-1/Fuel-1 hits. Not much return on your 3000 dton investment.

But I suspect that this is an intended dynamic on the part of the game designers: if you want to kill big, well-armored ships, you need meson guns; nothing else will do the job quickly.

One excellent use for spinal PAWs is killing escorts, which tend to be smaller and lightly armored, both of which make them prime targets for PAWs and easy kills.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Er can any ship only carry one spinal mount.

I think TNE & T4 allow more than 1, but there are restrictions.

 

[Rupert Boleyn]

Originally posted by The Oz:

Right now, from the probabilities, a medium or heavy meson gun (factor-J or bigger) will almost certainly kill or cripple any enemy ship it can hit and whose defenses it then penetrates. Since heavy meson guns tend to hit and penetrate about 50% of the time (against defenses of the same TL) at close range I'm not sure that adding more meson gun firepower =per ship= will increase the carnage that much; it's already pretty bad. Battles between meson gun-armed fleets are mutual slaughters.

Now, adding more particle accelerator firepower per ship might be a useful thing. As they stand right now, even the heaviest PAW is pretty useless against a heavily armored big ship. The size and armor prevent most of the extra hits and extra criticals, so your factor-T PAW just gets a couple rolls of the dice, which are then modified by the armor into Weapon-1/Fuel-1 hits. Not much return on your 3000 dton investment.

But I suspect that this is an intended dynamic on the part of the game designers: if you want to kill big, well-armored ships, you need meson guns; nothing else will do the job quickly.

One excellent use for spinal PAWs is killing escorts, which tend to be smaller and lightly armored, both of which make them prime targets for PAWs and easy kills.

You've just noticed the HG2 paper-rock-sissors effect (well, two thirds of it): meson gunned vessels kill big PAWS armed ships, but you need the PAWS armed ships to swat 'missile boats' (a 1000-1999 DTon vessel with a nuclear missile bay and little else) because meson guns aren't accurate enough to fend off swarms. The missile boats are really good at killing meson gun carriers, so you have the classic circle.

Even if that no longer works in T20, having the odd PAWS in your fleet (whether as an extra vessel or as part of a multi-tube mspinal mount) is good because it 'keeps them honest' - if you know your opponent uses nothing but meson guns you can get away with little to no armour, but if one in five (or so) of his ships carries a PAWS you need armour as well as meson screens.

 

[Rupert Boleyn]

Originally posted by Andrew Boulton:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Er can any ship only carry one spinal mount.

I think TNE & T4 allow more than 1, but there are restrictions. </font>[/QUOTE]They do, and there are - they become paralell mounts, and are limited to 80% of the vessel's overall length, rather than 100% for a spinal mount.

 

[Richard Saunders]

Originally posted by The Oz:
Right now, from the probabilities, a medium or heavy meson gun (factor-J or bigger) will almost certainly kill or cripple any enemy ship it can hit and whose defenses it then penetrates. Since heavy meson guns tend to hit and penetrate about 50% of the time (against defenses of the same TL) at close range I'm not sure that adding more meson gun firepower =per ship= will increase the carnage that much; it's already pretty bad. Battles between meson gun-armed fleets are mutual slaughters.

Now, adding more particle accelerator firepower per ship might be a useful thing. As they stand right now, even the heaviest PAW is pretty useless against a heavily armored big ship. The size and armor prevent most of the extra hits and extra criticals, so your factor-T PAW just gets a couple rolls of the dice, which are then modified by the armor into Weapon-1/Fuel-1 hits. Not much return on your 3000 dton investment.

But I suspect that this is an intended dynamic on the part of the game designers: if you want to kill big, well-armored ships, you need meson guns; nothing else will do the job quickly.

One excellent use for spinal PAWs is killing escorts, which tend to be smaller and lightly armored, both of which make them prime targets for PAWs and easy kills. [/QB]

Hello.
Yes the smart money would be on one Spinal mount PAWS and lotts of Meson bays.
The paws has a longer range than the Meson guns and you can put a lot of meson bays on the same ship, yes shorter range for the bays but you get more shots with a higher chance of a critical and total destruction of the enemy ship in one hit.
On the idea of mulipull spinal mounts, they would all need to fire at the same time and at the same target (they are spinal mounts so they are the centre line of the ship).
Thought ----- If maneuver drive is a reaction drive why dosnt a ship loose some of its acceleration when it needs to turn the ship to fire the spinal mount (the only time a ship wouldn't loose some of its acel would be in a closing high speed pass (head on).
If you are using a weapon that requires the entire ship to be aimed you would think that you couldn't dodge duck or weave much (it would make targeting tricky and if it's not random for you it's not random for the enemy either).
I'm assumming a critical hit with a meson gun ignores the meson screen just like a critical hit from any other weapon ignores armor, this would mean that 1 in 4 hits are potential criticals and a AC(meson) of 15 isn't that high with no gunner 1 in 16 with a trained gunner probably back to 1 in 8 auto kills.

Elswhere in a thread (cant remember which) someone said mesons are a steam that degrades as the beam goes along with the most mesons degrading at the point of aim (most damage) if this is true then you cant bury meson guns under the crust of a planet for space defence unless you want the planet to glow in the dark.
Capitan of attacking fleet - Gunner target one of those radioactive spots under the surface and fire.
The first time a meson gun fires while ships are near they will spot the residual radiation from the firing.
Just a few thoughts feel free to yell argue or pick on me.
Bye.
Socks.

 

[TheDS]

To Tom Rux:

When I read a design sequence, I assume it is for the "norm". In this case, it is for Imperial humans, pre-rebellion. Caveats can be added for K'Kree, who need extensive life support for their own ships, or for robotic ships with hardly any crew, or for dolphins or whatever. WE humans are the standard against whichwecompare everything else, and this will be true even if we come across a "superior" species. That'sjust how we are, and it's how we understand things;wecompare them to ourselves, because that's a common frame of reference.

Therefore, when we go ahead and DECLARE that a 10,000 ton ship is a cruiser, that's all there is to it. A Hiver can say all he wants about his ships in his empire. WE will call his ship a Cruiser. We MIGHT make special allowances for K'kree or anything else that disrupts convention so drastically, but they will have small robotic craft which will be MORE powerful ton-for-ton than ours, or they may make a slave race take care of things for them. That's who's in the engineering spaces, I imagine.

But a standard is just that; a standard. WE apply it to everything, or it's not a standard.

Regarding the Spinal Mount issue AND the space combat issue:

I just today found my Ref Manual and perused through it and reminded myself why I hate the MT way of doing things. There's some good ideas, but I hate the generalities of the system. I would imagine CT-based solutions are the same morass of "what's this do" and handwaving.

In MT, you have a selection of spinal mounts pregenerated to choose from. Really, there's no reason a big enough ship COULDN'T mount several of them, but as a T-gun is the best you can get at TL15, there's little point in building something bigger than whatever is needed for that gun. Something around 25,000-75,000 tons iirc. Anything bigger is just an easier target and carries a ton of little weapons that can't really do anything to a big ship.

However, in TNE, you are able to get a better level of detail on your ship. One thing mentioned was that you have a length attribute. Wht wasn't really mentioned, though, was that the length of a spinal mount plays an important role in how far the gun shoots AND in the amount of damage it can impart. It makes sense to build a megaton ship, which has a needle config, and makes the ship 900m long. That weapon will be capable of hitting targets so far away that nothng can respond to it. Additionally, it will batter down just about any defense.

The only response is to either build equally gigantic ships, mirroring the battleship anti-escalation treaties before each World War, or to make lots of little things that can get close enough to hurt it without being seen or shot.

In MT, a gigantic missile salvo is worthless against a big ship. In TNE, it's devestating. In MT, PAWS and Meson guns can be mounted into bays, in TNE, they're really not effective. most targets are going to have a basic meson screen and sme armor to protect against them. So you HAVE to make large spinal mounts.

In the original TNE rules, you could make a giant laser that would render giant PAWS and mesons unnecessary. A big laser goes right through armor and sand like it's not there, and can fire at very high rates, giving really good bonuses to hit. The answer was to impose a limit on laser power, basically religating them to turrets.

But anyway, the design and operation of your ship will depend on the rules you use. The two systems are not compatible. I personally prefer the TNE system, because it lets me make whatever I want, using a fairly consistent rules system, instead of relying on some one else's handwaves. For instance, I have found it's generally a good idea to use a meson gun as your spinal mount and a PAWS as a parallel mount. The PAWS can be beefed up to fire very rapidly with little increase in size, and it fires at extreme range. The meson gun needs all the length it can get to have a decent range. The downside is that the PAWS needs length to do more damage, while the Meson gun doesn't suffer that problem. So you pop on them with the PAWS at long range, and anything that survives gets popped with the meson gun at short range. You keep smaller ships near to defend against missiles and fighters.

 

[The Oz]

Originally posted by Lionel Deffries:
Elswhere in a thread (cant remember which) someone said mesons are a steam that degrades as the beam goes along with the most mesons degrading at the point of aim (most damage) if this is true then you cant bury meson guns under the crust of a planet for space defence unless you want the planet to glow in the dark.
Capitan of attacking fleet - Gunner target one of those radioactive spots under the surface and fire.
The first time a meson gun fires while ships are near they will spot the residual radiation from the firing.
Just a few thoughts feel free to yell argue or pick on me.
Bye.
Socks.

That bit about the mesons decaying all the way to the target was someone else's misinterpretation of something I said about the decay of the mesons =at the target=. I agree with Savage that there cannot be a "trail of decaying mesons" all the way from the gun to the target, because as you point out, that would make deep meson gun sites impossible, and we know from canon that they are possible.