HG & Computers

[BillDowns]

This is to pick up and continue an additive topic from House rules on the use of Computers with High Guard.

My original comment was that I liked the way LBB2 offered modifiers to combat based on what programs were running in the computer. I do not like the HG just has a modifier based on computer size; I feel it abstracts computers too much.

What I was suggessting is this:
1) every weapon needs some sort of 'Predict' program for aiming.
2) every battery needs its own copy of that Predict purchased, installed, and running during combat.
3) every copy of the appropriate Predict needs to be the same level (or DM).
4) And, of course, price discounts for multiple copies would prevail.

Basic software titles:
Launch-x for Missle batteries, offering a DM of x
Predict/L-x for Lasers, Plasma guns, Fusion guns DM of x
Predict/P-x for Particle Accelerators
Predict/M-x for Meson guns

Prices and exact modifiers and CPU sizes to be determined.

 

[BillDowns]

To also throw in something from another thread - don't remember which or when - add a couple of new software titles:

Escort Control and Escort Tracking.

1 ship in the squadron can run Escort Control which will synchronize all ships running Escort Tracking and enable a common defense net ala Aegis or Honor Harrington. If the Escort Control program goes down for whatever reason, all the Escort Tracking lose effectiveness for at least 1 round and until a new Escort Control can be established.

These would replace the old Track or Multi-Track programs.

 

[mike wightman]

If you're going to be needing all that processing power then you may need to think about fitting one of these.

 

[BillDowns]

Yeah, I had something similar in mind. I would add a bit of overhead. by say, a Networking Client module of size 1 and a Networking Server of size 2, plus add-on storage. As along-time programmer working on everything from IBM mainframes down to Apple II micros, I actually liked the concepts of computers in Traveller, but did not care for all of the implementation.

 

[boomslang]

Originally posted by BillDowns:
Yeah, I had something similar in mind. I would add a bit of overhead. by say, a Networking Client module of size 1 and a Networking Server of size 2, plus add-on storage.

I flirted briefly with an administrator/client model for FleetOps; basically, the host computer on the flagship would have been able to "share" its Comp-N rating with other ships in its squadron, up to various CPU/Storage limits.

The idea was to avoid having to stick a Model/9fib into every last 1000dton escort just to make it competitive in combat...

But specifying how to scale the host CPU overhead required got a bit too math-intensive for all but the most dedicated gearhead (which I am not)... so I shelved it...

I was also looking at a SquadronOps version, intended mostly for fighters, that would have provided a software-dependent mechanism for summing individual fighter weapons and computers into joint large Weapon-N and Comp-N factors... but again, it always started to get too complicated to be quickly playable...

 

[BillDowns]

That really why I started this thread, to discuss computer usage. In HG, the computer is just a device for a DM, but in LBB2, the software that it runs is the source of the DM.

For your Fleet Ops model, I would think a little bit of Aegis with Honor Harrington thrown in would do the trick. The Aegis system concept is that all the ships' sensor data is brokered to all the ships in the net; Harrington does the same sort of thing. Then, the Escort Control program I mentioned earlier simply assigns targets to ships and lets their systems handle it. Base memory requirements on a simple scale, say 2 memory units per 5 ships in the net; the size of the linked ships, or their computers, would really be irrelevant to the memory usage of the Master Escort Control.

Throwing in modern Peer-to-Peer networking concepts, one could add that the ship(s) whose sensors are tracking the target will pass the data directly to the assigned killing ship.

Aegis is supposed to do it a little differently, by doind all the major processing itself and passing firing solutions to the client ships. I think - that's what I gather from the internet and half-remembered discussions in Jane's.

 

[BillDowns]

To toss out an example of where I started, let's take a "light" cruiser with 10 batteries of Laser 5 operating as control for 5 smaller ships, each with 3 batteries of Laser 5.

The light cruiser would need to have these programs running - and a computer large enough - plus whatever else was needed, like maneuver/evade, etc.
10 x Predict-2
Escort Control
---this would require 22 CPU spaces and give 10 +2 shots at defending the battleship behind it against missle attack

The escorts could each run
3 x Predict-1
Escort Link
---this would require 4 CPU spaces and give 3 +1 shots at missle defense.

At least, that was my intention.