Fleet Production

[robject]

Not-Quite-Related question. What, practically, does one "do" with armor?

In FFW, all units are assumed to be armored, I'm sure. Right? But as far as that goes, it looks like armor levels are taken for granted.

Now, in HG, is that how you guys see designs made and games run? Are ships generally up-armored as much as possible? Do ship designs often sacrifice offensive strength for more armor, or do ships fit the biggest guns possible, then fill in the nooks with as much armor as can be laid on?


A semi-related topic: I see that this FFW discussion is getting to the point where we can merge it with the old High Guard 3 discussion. This may have more dividends than I first expected...

 

[The Oz]

What I've seen in HG design is usually you put in the needed jump drive (if any) and fuel, then fit the biggest gun you can, and fill in the rest of the space with armor, powerplant, etc.

At Jump-3 or less it's usually possible to put in all the armor and weapons you want, at least at TL13+. At lower TLs you have to settle for J-2 if you want maxed-out armor.

This is where battleriders come in: you can have a tender with max jump and a flock of fighting vessels with max armor and weapons.

In terms of what to do in FFW terms with lightly armored ships, I'd have to say that they should not have quite as high a Defense rating as you would think, but not much less since meson guns are the main ship killers, and even lightly armored ships (factor-4 is enough) are protected against quick kills (critical hits) from nuclear missiles. Admittedly, a spinal PAW could have fun against a lightly armored ship, but even there the sheer size of battleships would reduce the bonus damage the weapon would get.

 

[robject]

Another, semi-related question. What is y'all's take on HG combat charts versus the vehicle combat rules from MT (which uses armor penetration values as a weapon stat, separate from damage)?

 

[The Oz]

That's one thing I do kinda dislike about HG (and something I did differently in my own port of HG weapons to CT combat): there's no allowance for the power of different size weapons, except for the -6 given to everything except spinal mounts.

 

[mike wightman]

I dislike the High Guard damage system, which probably stems from a dislike of how USP weapon factors are determined.
I'm actually looking at how High Guard first edition did things differently and wondering if a better version of that could have been made.

 

[The Oz]

I agree, Sigg, and you and I have thrashed out some alternatives/house rules to HG which make things a bit better, but for this discussion I think we should try to stick to strict HG and then later we can play around with any HG-to-FFW conversion system we come up with.

Getting back to calculating the Damage rating for FFW, it sounds to me like it should be based on the number of capital ship hulls, with limits/discounts if those hulls are smaller, and a further discount if those hulls are relatively unprotected (light/no armor, light/no screens, etc.) I'm basing this on the idea that the best defense against meson guns is to have lots of hulls, but the best defense against all other weapons is to have lots of tonnage in each hull with lots of defenses.

Sound about right?

 

[The Oz]

Another thing I've noticed while looking at the FFW counter mix....

The sum of a squadron's Attack and Bombardment rating is =usually= less than or equal to that squadron's Defense rating. I suspect that the exceptions to this tell us something.

No Sword Worlds squadron has an Att+Bomb that is greater then the Defense rating.

The three Vargr CruRons have an Att+Bomb that is 2 greater than their Defense rating (3-3-4).

Three Imperial Colonial BatRons have an Att+Bomb that is 1 greater than the Defense rating (5-4-8).

Two Zhodani Colonial BatRons have an Att+Bomb that is 1 greater than the Defense rating (3-4-6).

12 Zhodani Regular BatRons have Att+Bomb values 2 greater than Defense (6-4-8). Five Zhodani Regular CruRons have Att+Bomb values 2 greater than Defense (5-2-5).

16 Imperial Regular BatRons of four different types have Att+Bomb values greater then their Defense. Exact amounts vary between squadron types; (8-0-4), (4-4-4), (2-2-2), (5-1-3). 14 Imperial Regular CruRons of three different types have Att+Bomb values greater than their Defense, with exact amounts varying by squadron; (5-4-6), (4-4-6), (3-4-6).

My first guess is that squadrons (especially BatRons) with Att+Bomb greater than Defense are battlerider squadrons. I don't yet know what it might mean for CruRons, though.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Hans asked:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Then there's the question of the relative combat power. Are seven 20,000 T battleriders really a match for eight 200,000 T battleships? I sincerely hope not, because if they are, there'd be no sane reason for building battleships.

If you accept High Guard and MT ship combat systems to be accurate in their modelling of space warfare in the OTU, the answer is yes.
Those seven battleriders are capable of killing up to seven Plankwells, Kokirraks, or Tigresses, although half that number would be more probable.
They would probably be all destroyed in return. </font>[/QUOTE]Which is why I don't accept the HG and MT ship combat systems as accurate. If a 20,000 T battlerider (or a 30,000 T cruiser) really was that effective against battleships, no one would build one battleship instead of 10 cruisers/riders. I take the fact that the navies of the TU do build battleships as evidence that bigger ships are better able to survive against smaller.

(As for a fix/explanation, my suggestion would be to say that bigger spinals have longer ranges. Thus a battleship would get a number of free shots against cruisers before they even got into firing range, thus giving the battleship the edge it obviously must have in order to exist at all.)


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Theophilus:
Oh, and the fact that a batron of Riders costs less the a batron of Battleships is the whole point. I can build more spinal armed hulls for less money.

If a BatRon of riders really did cost an order of magnitude less that a BatRon of battleships, then the canonical controversy over the relative efficiency of battleships and battleriders would not exist. People might debate if it was worth while to get, say, 25% more riders for the same money at the risk of losing them all if a battle turned bad. I refuse to believe that anyone would debate whether getting 8 times as many riders as battleships of comparable combat capacity had a serious downside.

Plus look at the text description:
723 three J-3 carries with three Auliaau class riders.

904 One J-4 carrier with six Quiquilat class riders

1093 One J-4 Lurenti carrier with seven Nolokian Riders

Supp 8 (pg16) One 300,000 ton World class Carrier with Five Battleriders

As technology has progressed smaller riders on smaller hulls have become standard.

Was this written by an gamer who missd the implications of the relative cost and benefits or by someone who had experinced a thousand years of combat starship evolution guided by dozens of wars?

I'm all for preserving canon, but only as long as canon makes sense. When it doesn't, I feel not only entitled, but obligated to ignore it.


Hans

 

[robject]

The current guesstimate

1. Attack Factor (beta)

ATT =
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> Spinal weapon FFW Points
HG Factor Meson PAW

A - J (light) 0.2 0.1
K - R (medium) 0.6 0.3
S + (heavy) 1.0 0.5</pre>[/QUOTE]2. Bombardment Factor (beta)

BOM = based on # total missile batteries (logarithmic?)

3. Defense Factor (beta)

DEF =
0.5 point per light cruiser (light "capitol ship"),
plus 1 point per medium cruiser and up,
plus 1 point for a sufficient number of escorts.

Issue: how does Agility figure in?

4. Analysis

Compare ATT + BOM (call it OFF) versus DEF.

OFF < DEF implies traditional BatRons, CruRons, etc.

BatRons with OFF > DEF may imply battle riders.
CruRons with OFF > DEF implies ???

5. Damage Rating (alpha)

DMG = sum up points for capital ship hulls. Something like this:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Hull Volume Armor Value

10kt-40kt light 0.4
10kt-40kt std 0.6
50kt+ light 0.8
50kt+ std 1.0</pre>[/QUOTE]

 

[mike wightman]

For attack factor you could reduce it to :
light
medium
heavy
and allow the optional TL effects rule account for TL differences.

Shouldn't Agilty feature somehow in the defence rating? I know this complicates things again, but it is probably the most effective defence in High Guard - don't get hit.

 

[The Oz]

I think Agility should factor in as a negative: if you don't have full Agility-6 you should lose some of your Defense value.

You could do the same thing for Computers, but I think that belongs in the optional TL effects rule, as Sigg said about the meson guns.

I still don't have a really good idea on how to handle Bombardment, though.

 

[mike wightman]

For agility how about determining the average agility of all the capital ships in the squadron and subtract 1 from defence for every point below 6?

Now bombardment. Scout squadrons probably contain a lot of small ships. That gives the ability to cover a lot of the sky. Additionally they can enter the atmosphere when needed to deliver surgical strikes.
So I see three or four factors at play to determine bombardment rating.
Total number of missile batteries;
number of empty bays given over to bombardment factors;
number of ships;
streamlining.

Squadrons that contain fighters would have high bombardment factors, wouldn't they?

 

[The Oz]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
For agility how about determining the average agility of all the capital ships in the squadron and subtract 1 from defence for every point below 6?

Sounds about right.

Now bombardment. Scout squadrons probably contain a lot of small ships. That gives the ability to cover a lot of the sky. Additionally they can enter the atmosphere when needed to deliver surgical strikes.
So I see three or four factors at play to determine bombardment rating.
Total number of missile batteries;
number of empty bays given over to bombardment factors;
number of ships;
streamlining.

Squadrons that contain fighters would have high bombardment factors, wouldn't they?

This looks about right, and I would indeed think that missile-armed fighters would add to a squadron's Bombardment rating.

The only thing that worries me is that BatRons with battleships (100kton and up) should have very high Bombardment ratings according to these factors we've identified, yet it seems like they often have low Bomb ratings, especially Imperial Regular BatRons. Zhodani BatRons have the best average Bomb ratings. This might lead one to think that Imperial battleships don't have extensive missile armaments yet we know they do.

It is a puzzlement.

 

[mike wightman]

Ok, here's a thought. But once again increases the complexity.
If an unstreamlined/partially streamlined ship fires regular ship combat missiles at a planet the missiles burn up on the way down.
Thus they can only have bombardment factors if they allocate emty bays.
Streamlined ships can enter the atmosphere so they can use regular missiles for bombardment purposes.

So squadrons that contain a lot of fighters or other streamlined ships (scout squadrons are effectively jump capable fighters almost ) will have higher bombardment factors, as will those sqadrons that deliberately leave bays "empty". Reduce attack rating by 1 to increase the bombardment factor by 1 - and 1 only.

 

[The Oz]

Maybe, Sigg, just maybe.

It would be nice if we could identify one of the Imperial BatRons as being made up of Tigress-class ships. With all those fighters we'd expect such a BatRon to have a high Bomb factor. The Imperial (4-4-4) and (2-2-2) squadrons might be just such squadrons, actually, if we assumed they only had 4 and 2 ships per squadron, respectively.

But I like the idea that Bombardment strength varies with streamlining. It mostly holds true for Imperial squadrons; the better streamlining tends to have better Bomb ratings. It doesn't hold true for the Zhos, all their BatRons are unstreamlined yet they also have the highest average Bomb ratings in the game. If you're correct, this implies that Zho BatRons have a fair number of fighters integral to the squadrons.

And I wouldn't worry about complexity, not in this evaluation system. This kind of complexity is mostly transparent at the front end, where FFW (or some other game based on FFW) is played. For myself, I don't mind a little complexity in the creation of units as long as I feel that what I'm getting out is a fair and "realistic" evaluation of what went in. After all, we're thinking of creating something that will take a set of USPs from HG, each with over 20 data points, and reducing them down to a FFW counter with only 6 datapoints (type, jump, Attack, Bomb, Defense, streamlining). I would expect such a system to be a little complex.

 

[mike wightman]

It could be that the Zhos have equipped their ships with more bombardment bays at the expense of an attack factor or two.
Plus a lot of the Zho designs (CT Adventures 4, 6, 7; CT Alien Module) carry fighters, where similar Imperial and Solomani designs don't - I'm thinking of the 600-2000t ships here.

 

[The Oz]

That is true of smaller Zho ships. What about bigger ones? The Zho ships in PP:F do not carry fighters that often; the big 560kton DN does, but otherwise fighters are limited to specialized carriers, as in the Imperial model.

Now, in FFW it's true that the Zhos know they are on the offensive and will need more Bombardment capability to deal with all the planetary defenses/ground troops they will encounter. Perhaps they did re-equip their squadrons for the "ground attack" role. OTOH, that Bombardment factor is also used to kill SDBs and you can't use deadfall ordnance on SDBs in space, so.....

I'm starting to think that GDW assigned ratings to the FFW counters just to make things different, without any real analysis of what counters held what ships and should have what capabilities, and I'm really starting to think that we might just have to ignore the counters in FFW when it comes to making up any system to rate HG ships.

 

[mike wightman]

I agree, but at least the analysis has served its purpose.
Whatever system we can come up with will not be able to match the FFW or IE counters exactly, but as long as they are consistent and balanced derivations from the High Guard designs then that will be something of an achievement.

About the PP:F Zho ships, there are no OTU canon sources that I know of for large Zho ships, so the designers of PP:F must have made the choices of what to include in the designs. Perhaps the discussion we are having now will be useful for any future Zho designs?

 

[The Oz]

I don't know about Zhos, but I've done a bunch of Aslan ships and I put fighters on almost all of =them=.

I've done some statistical analysis of spinal meson guns and I'll post that tomorrow when I get it formatted. It's based on the number of extra damage rolls spinal mounts get and their chances to hit and penetrate meson screens. It turns out that those early meson guns aren't worth very much at all, compared to the bigger, higher tech weapons.