mbrinkhues
SOC-14 1K
I had some time at hand and some thoughts on the fleet train, the resupply and maintenance vessels, came up. The result is bunch of random thoughts up for discussion. As a side note, I normally use and accept a "large ship universe" where Azanti's are a mid-sized craft.
Strategic speed
Traveller fleet doctrin calls for a J4 strategic and M4 tactical fleet movement as a minimum. This means a fleet tender must be capabel of at least J4 to be useful, turning 45+ percent of his hull volume over to fuel and Jumpdrives.
This means a fleet tender must be rather large to be useful unless one wants one tender per warship. At the same time, this means light armament without bays or spinal guns
Fleet tankers
Tankers are of limited use since at most they can fuel up one ship of their own size. So they have two possible uses:
1) Filling up non-streamlined/non skimming craft
The Chrysanthemum class is a classical example of this. Small escorts that are used for fleet protection and will ride High Guard while the major units skim and re-fuel. Their small size makes it possible for one tanker to supply a squadron
2) Preparing fuel in advance
In this scenario the tankers hang back and start producing fuel, storing it in fuel bladders that are tethered to the ship. The "tanker" is reduced to a huge refinery and skimmer carrier, surrounded by fuel packs, possible each assigend to a fuel transfer satelite
2a) Two jumps back
A variant of the above scenario has the fleet train and some escorts remain back in a system two parsek away from the combat zone. The fleet refuels and jumps into battle with enough fuel to jump back. Meanwhile the tankers have two weeks to generate the fuel for the fleet. And the enemy will start hunting for them if he can spare some ships. A nice job for Typ T, Midu Argashan or Kinuir
Hull recycling
Since fleet supply ships must be high-jump and most warships are based on flat wide hulls, recycling older hulls and re-building them as supply ships might be an option. Maybe the ships are already designed with that in mind (i.e not relying on the spinal gun for stability), maybe the conversion is a lot of work
An alternate would be to build a supply craft by re-using most of the plans (say a 60-80 percent part commonality).
Repair ships
These ships will specialise in hull sealing and J-Drive repair to enable damaged ships to get back to the next Depot / friendly drydock. Since major repair work on a capital ship is extremly time consuming and requires enormmous scaffolding returning a badly damaged ship to fighting conditions is not possible in the field
The hunted
Hunting down the attackers fleet train is an extremly important job, yet one that is best left to smaller crafts since fleet size is an important part of it. Checking dozends of systems in a short time with enough strength calls for small-mid sized crafts like the Saberwolf (5000dt) or Midu Argashan (3000dt) destroyers operating in squadron strength.
At the same time it means that system patrolls/defence squads even in un-settled systems close (2 Parsek or less) to major systems might be necessary to prevent attackers from gaining a relatively easy and secure base.
Thoughts/comments/How is it IYTU?
Strategic speed
Traveller fleet doctrin calls for a J4 strategic and M4 tactical fleet movement as a minimum. This means a fleet tender must be capabel of at least J4 to be useful, turning 45+ percent of his hull volume over to fuel and Jumpdrives.
This means a fleet tender must be rather large to be useful unless one wants one tender per warship. At the same time, this means light armament without bays or spinal guns
Fleet tankers
Tankers are of limited use since at most they can fuel up one ship of their own size. So they have two possible uses:
1) Filling up non-streamlined/non skimming craft
The Chrysanthemum class is a classical example of this. Small escorts that are used for fleet protection and will ride High Guard while the major units skim and re-fuel. Their small size makes it possible for one tanker to supply a squadron
2) Preparing fuel in advance
In this scenario the tankers hang back and start producing fuel, storing it in fuel bladders that are tethered to the ship. The "tanker" is reduced to a huge refinery and skimmer carrier, surrounded by fuel packs, possible each assigend to a fuel transfer satelite
2a) Two jumps back
A variant of the above scenario has the fleet train and some escorts remain back in a system two parsek away from the combat zone. The fleet refuels and jumps into battle with enough fuel to jump back. Meanwhile the tankers have two weeks to generate the fuel for the fleet. And the enemy will start hunting for them if he can spare some ships. A nice job for Typ T, Midu Argashan or Kinuir
Hull recycling
Since fleet supply ships must be high-jump and most warships are based on flat wide hulls, recycling older hulls and re-building them as supply ships might be an option. Maybe the ships are already designed with that in mind (i.e not relying on the spinal gun for stability), maybe the conversion is a lot of work
An alternate would be to build a supply craft by re-using most of the plans (say a 60-80 percent part commonality).
Repair ships
These ships will specialise in hull sealing and J-Drive repair to enable damaged ships to get back to the next Depot / friendly drydock. Since major repair work on a capital ship is extremly time consuming and requires enormmous scaffolding returning a badly damaged ship to fighting conditions is not possible in the field
The hunted
Hunting down the attackers fleet train is an extremly important job, yet one that is best left to smaller crafts since fleet size is an important part of it. Checking dozends of systems in a short time with enough strength calls for small-mid sized crafts like the Saberwolf (5000dt) or Midu Argashan (3000dt) destroyers operating in squadron strength.
At the same time it means that system patrolls/defence squads even in un-settled systems close (2 Parsek or less) to major systems might be necessary to prevent attackers from gaining a relatively easy and secure base.
Thoughts/comments/How is it IYTU?