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High Guard and Small Armored Vessels

Take an 800 dT TL 15 ship. Give it USP-9 Nuclear Dampers, USP-9 and 15 ranks of armor. Name it Elly, the Armadillo Ship.

I have three questions:

1) Am I correct in assuming that nothing short of a spinal mount or a lucky nuclear missile volley will have a chance of even hurting this ship?

1a) If not, what did I miss or overlook?

1b) If I'm right, why isn't every smallish warship designed like an Armadillo Ship? Against the Broadswords and Corsairs of the world, Elly would be like a 1860s ironclad blasting wooden-hulled frigates.
 
Is your purpose to simply mangle the rules framework as far as it can go? If so I'd reccomend a buffered planetoid with F-15 hull armour (+6 for the buffered planetoid, for a total AF of 21) and a meson screen, which will basically ignore anything other than a meson gun (including a spinal PAW)

For good measure, why not make it a fighter (skip the meson screen) with a really crappy computer since the only thing that can hit "Elly the fighter" and inflict damage is Meson guns (bays will have trouble with the configuration, and due to HG UPP limittions, anything with a spinal meson gun can't *have* bays) so why bother dodging? (clearly agility is also optional) With a sub-Kton hull you can't actually mount a weapon that will hit a cap ship, so why bother paying for the screens and the computer? You seem to essentially want something that can sit there and not be damaged, and buoilding this as a fighter gives you a really cheap "unkillable rock". Of course if you wanted this to be able to retreat along with you, perhaps building it at ~200 dTons so you can put a jump drive in would be a good idea.

Perhaps a better question would be "What the heck is this for?" If you put this in a line of battle I'd gleefully ignore it until I had eliminated any vessels that were actually a threat, and then point spinal mounts at it.

I could maybe maybe see something like this intended to hold the line while my fleet disengaged, but in Traveller-the-RPG as distinct from HG-the-war-game where the heck could I find crews for these? "I just want some guys to pilot this so that if things really go south you'll sacrifice yourself to cover my retreat." Hmmm... small escorts against the line of battle, now there's a job I'm sure there will be a long line-up for ;)

I realize that I didn't actually address your third question, so I'll take a stab at it: The corsair, patrol cruiser and brioadsword all have roles to fulfill, and those roles are not "sit here and be a damage sponge". Both a broadsword and a corsair would avoid "Elly" like the pimple on a planets butt that they would prefer that she would be, and insert their strike group (or run away with their booty) regardless. The Patrol cruiser would probably send a message like "if you see a merc unit or a corsair running this way can you try to slow them down for me?" as it tried to get a handle on the rampant piracy in the system.

You could make "Ely" attack capable against smaller ships by making her larger, putting big drives in and a large computer, but is one "Ely" class really as useful for customs and patrol duty as 3-4 patrol cruisers? and it's still useless against ships of the line, so perhaps a destroyer instead of a couple of these is a better investment...

(Overanalysis our specialty)

Scott Martin
 
TL-15 Battle Rider. 15,000 tons, armor 15, M/A-6, Comp 9fib, type N Meson, Screen and Damper both 9, Config 1, scoops and purification.

The best part, after you put in the jump and 10% fuel for retreat to meet up with the tender in deep space somewhere, you still have 380 tons for fun stuff like extra weapons or defenses.

Out the door for MCr 13,828 in a quantity buy.

Add in a 500,000 J-4 2G tender, with screens and defenses, plus streamlined for skimming, and squeeze in 11 of these riders with lots of extra room for supplies. MCr 186,484.

For a total shipbuilding investment of MCr1,020,000 you get 33 Type N Mesons shooting from a platform that is not only hard to hit but that can jump out to meet the tenders if things go wrong. Plus, the tenders give you J-4.

Compare that to a fleet of 70,000 ton TL15 J4 cruisers which give you the same weapons, M/A, and screens, with 1/2 the armor, at MCr 46,000 per. You lose 11 meson guns (only 22 total hulls) using the same budget.
 
Why so big? On the typical Battlerider tender you carry 6 30Kton battleriders. On that same tender I carry 30-36 Harpy-IIs.
 
Factor-N is generally more efficient than factor-J. Also, while J1 is nifty to have, J0 is a lot cheaper per spinal mount. Consider this BR:
BR-K106LJ3-F99909-997N9-0 MCr 12,631.750 10.5 KTons
Bat Bear 2 1 11112 Crew: 121
Bat 2 1 11112 TL: 15

Cargo: 9.000 Fuel: 2,100.000 EP: 2,100.000 Agility: 6 Shipboard Security Detail: 10
Fuel Treatment: Fuel Scoops

Architects Fee: MCr 126.318 Cost in Quantity: MCr 10,105.400

There's some slightly silly features here, such as the weird weapons mix (present to soak up weapon-1 hits), but that's High Guard for you.
 
Originally posted by Anthony:
Factor-N is generally more efficient than factor-J. Also, while J1 is nifty to have, J0 is a lot cheaper per spinal mount. Consider this BR:
BR-K106LJ3-F99909-997N9-0 MCr 12,631.750 10.5 KTons
Bat Bear 2 1 11112 Crew: 121
Bat 2 1 11112 TL: 15

Cargo: 9.000 Fuel: 2,100.000 EP: 2,100.000 Agility: 6 Shipboard Security Detail: 10
Fuel Treatment: Fuel Scoops

Architects Fee: MCr 126.318 Cost in Quantity: MCr 10,105.400

There's some slightly silly features here, such as the weird weapons mix (present to soak up weapon-1 hits), but that's High Guard for you.
Actually the number of Spinals you can hit the enemy with is more important than the factor of the mount. (Even nastier in T20 than HG or MT.) I do agree there is no need for any jumpdrive on this type of ship. (But I would rather field 2 Harpy II to one of these and the Harpy II is less than half the size, is half the cost and a typical Tender can carry 30-36 of them for less than the price of a pair of Drednaughts. (Including the cost of the tender.)
 
Originally posted by BetterThanLife:
Actually the number of Spinals you can hit the enemy with is more important than the factor of the mount.
Penetrating armor and screens matters too. Against a target with a factor-9 screen, agility 6, size 2-19,000 dtons, either one hits on 8+ at short range, 10+ at long range.
J: penetrates screen on 9+ (10/36), configuration on 6+ (26/36), total 260/2160. N: penetrates screens on 7+ (21/36), configuration on 4+ (35/37), total 735/2160. That means the factor N weapon hits 2.82 times as often. In addition, a factor J might fail to kill a size-K ship (it does 10 internals), a factor N is grossly unlikely to fail to kill size-E ship (14 internals, 8 criticals). By itself, that's not necessarily enough to push the balance towards the larger weapon, but there's another issue.

You can fit a factor-T particle beam in a modest size ship (using a very similar design, I get 13,000 dtons, 794 ep). Against another size-K ship with factor-F armor, it does 1 free critical per hit. Against a size-E ship it does 6 free criticals. That's a bunch less lethal than either meson gun -- but it hits on a 6+ and doesn't have to penetrate screens or configuration. At long ranges, a meson-J has a total 2% chance of hitting. A meson-N has a total 5.68% chance of hitting. A PA-T has 72% chance. A 13,000 dton ship needs to have a combined firepower*toughness of 6.76x as 5,000 dton ship to win, so we're good if it takes fewer than 5.33 hits to kill a 5,000 dton ship.

A PA-T hit does an average of 14 weapon-1 hits and 1.5 fuel-1 hits per hit, so you better have a lot of expendable weapon categories. Criticals 2, 3, 9, and 11 are mission kills, 4 is a kill unless you have backups, 5 turns you into meat for every other weapon on the board, so I'm pretty sure it takes well under 5.33 hits to get a kill.
 
'pends on what you mean by "lucky missile hit". using HG2 .05 factor 9 nuke missile salvos will detonate against it, so given enough of these the elly will do poorly. as a police SDB or a short-range patrol frigate coming up against limited opposition it should do well.

one very good military role for the elly would be as an SDB in close-in drop boat suppression. difficult to use nukes against it when your own troops are nearby, and if you bring in spinals to suppress it then the capital ships are in range of planetary defenses.

imtu, one reason there wouldn't be many of them is because tech 15 shipyard space is hard to come by. the major yards are busy with capital ship procurements and maintenance and don't have time for specialty frigates.
 
As for the Elly: it can also theoretically be damaged by pulse lasers, though they'd need to roll a 2 on 2d6 and that would just result in a weapon-1 hit, or by meson bays, though meson bays suck so you don't need to worry too much about that.

The traditional Munchkin Missile Boat has armor-15, a factor-9 missile bay, and a few secondary armaments, in a hull in the 1000-1500 dton range. They can be oneshotted by spinal particle beams, other weapons have quite a bit of trouble.
 
Originally posted by Scott Martin:
Is your purpose to simply mangle the rules framework as far as it can go? If so I'd reccomend a buffered planetoid with F-15 hull armour (+6 for the buffered planetoid, for a total AF of 21) and a meson screen, which will basically ignore anything other than a meson gun (including a spinal PAW)

For good measure, why not make it a fighter (skip the meson screen) with a really crappy computer since the only thing that can hit "Elly the fighter" and inflict damage is Meson guns (bays will have trouble with the configuration, and due to HG UPP limittions, anything with a spinal meson gun can't *have* bays) so why bother dodging? (clearly agility is also optional) With a sub-Kton hull you can't actually mount a weapon that will hit a cap ship, so why bother paying for the screens and the computer? You seem to essentially want something that can sit there and not be damaged, and buoilding this as a fighter gives you a really cheap "unkillable rock". Of course if you wanted this to be able to retreat along with you, perhaps building it at ~200 dTons so you can put a jump drive in would be a good idea.

Perhaps a better question would be "What the heck is this for?" If you put this in a line of battle I'd gleefully ignore it until I had eliminated any vessels that were actually a threat, and then point spinal mounts at it.

I could maybe maybe see something like this intended to hold the line while my fleet disengaged, but in Traveller-the-RPG as distinct from HG-the-war-game where the heck could I find crews for these? "I just want some guys to pilot this so that if things really go south you'll sacrifice yourself to cover my retreat." Hmmm... small escorts against the line of battle, now there's a job I'm sure there will be a long line-up for ;)

I realize that I didn't actually address your third question, so I'll take a stab at it: The corsair, patrol cruiser and brioadsword all have roles to fulfill, and those roles are not "sit here and be a damage sponge". Both a broadsword and a corsair would avoid "Elly" like the pimple on a planets butt that they would prefer that she would be, and insert their strike group (or run away with their booty) regardless. The Patrol cruiser would probably send a message like "if you see a merc unit or a corsair running this way can you try to slow them down for me?" as it tried to get a handle on the rampant piracy in the system.

You could make "Ely" attack capable against smaller ships by making her larger, putting big drives in and a large computer, but is one "Ely" class really as useful for customs and patrol duty as 3-4 patrol cruisers? and it's still useless against ships of the line, so perhaps a destroyer instead of a couple of these is a better investment...

(Overanalysis our specialty)

Scott Martin
Thanks for the commentary, It made me revise my warship conception a bit.

My purpose was not to mangle the rules further, but to check to see if the rules system was really as mangled as I thought it was. ;)

I don't think my ship would be useless, but as you said, a little armored fighter would be just as good for many purposes, or a smaller gunboat (if I was worried about nukes, mobility, or critical hits from USP-8/USP-9 batteries).

My design intention

Yes, I knew that the armadillo boat would be incapable of hurting capships. It would be a light gunboat, capable of killing the broadswords, corsairs, and gazelles of the universe.

Yes, pirates could certainly avoid Elly, but that would entail passing up any convoys she is guarding. Mercenaries might be able to run past her and drop troops on a planet, but they'd get beat up while flying through and would ultimately be dropping troops under fire.

Role of Other Ships

I probably shouldn't have asked my third question so extreme - of course corsairs and broadswords have distinct roll to fill that a ship loaded with armor can't do.

What I meant to say is, a small vessel designed primarily to fight other small vessels (what I presume a gazelle was made to do) should include armor, just like an 1860s gunship should have iron plating.

Where I was trying to go...

At the very least, the usefullness of armor should be factored into the logic of small ship combat. For example - a convoy of subsidized merchants could just carry an armored fighter or two to chase off pirates, rather than hiring a larger, thin-skinned warship.

That does seem to have the annoying side effect of making the whole notion of small ship combat seem slightly absurd...

Originally posted by Anthony:
As for the Elly: it can also theoretically be damaged by pulse lasers, though they'd need to roll a 2 on 2d6 and that would just result in a weapon-1 hit, or by meson bays, though meson bays suck so you don't need to worry too much about that.
Okay, pulse lasers can hurt it... if they're lucky! Really, really lucky...
 
A simple point on the concept of very heavy armor or fighters to protect merchants. You run into a couple of things that are rule system specific. For some rule systems this might work, for others it doesn't. However these ships tend to be very high tech and extremely expensive.

The Lucifer class Destroyer Escort (FASA Adventure Class Ships Volume 1.) is a ship that would fullfill the intention of this question very admirably. It is very good at chasing down and killing Corsairs probably up to 1000 tons in size. (It is 400 tons.) It definitely isn't cheap. (I don't have the HG stats handy, but the T20 stats are here but the T20 version doesn't have the armor that the original had. (Which was like 12 or 13.) With its Fusion guns and missile armament it gives a typical Corsair, Fighter, Broadsword, etc. serious headaches (Especially since it is 6G agility 6). It generally takes a 1000+ ton ship to hit it or damage it.(Usual ship designs make it around a 5000+ ton ship to really damage it.) This type of ship is expensive, and difficult to build at a Tech Level below 15.

The type of ship you are talking about do exist, but they aren't the typical merchant escort or StarMerc ship.

When you talk about fighters, remember two equal fighters, under HG or MT generally can't hit each other. They are generally useless against anything but an unarmed/lightly armed merchant unless you have them in VAST numbers. The Type-T, especially if it is rebuilt under HG at TL-13, or the Firey/Gazelle is generally all you really need to take on Corsairs. They are faster than Corsairs and generally equal or better armed than most Corsairs with better sensors etc. Again though, these are specialized craft. The Broadsword, while it can do this mission, is a more general purpose ship and is more designed to carry a Mercenary Platoon than to escort convoys.

These ships are quite a bit cheaper than your specialized Armored damage magnet.
 
One other point on the Gazelle/Firey, and ships of this nature (Ramada for example). They are designed to keep up with a typical Capital ship, so while they are good at the escort mission they do sacrifice lots of room that could be used for Armor to accomodate the Jump-4 capability.

Some of the reasons for this high Jump number is so they can, keep up with fleet elements, act as couriers, and rapidly transfer from one area that needs convoy protection to another. They are not single purpose ships.

In theory a merchant escort could get by with Jump-2, and in many cases with Jump-1, but you would need more of them in the big picture. And if you need that much armor your Merchants aren't going to survive, in any event.
 
My love for the J-1 is the ability to jump out of a losing battle. In fleet action ship games the ability to jump out, repair, and fight another day is usually noted as a game winning factor.
 
If you are willing to accept Armor-7 and no jump, a very nice 9k ton rider can be designed.

Note that I included the weapons mix to soak up damage.

SP
EX-J106NJ3-749900-452N3-0 MCr 9,624.300 9 KTons
Bat Bear A AAA1A Crew: 153
Bat A AAA1A TL: 15

Cargo: 54.000 Fuel: 1,980.000 EP: 1,980.000 Agility: 6 Shipboard Security Detail: 9
Fuel Treatment: Fuel Scoops and On Board Fuel Purification

Architects Fee: MCr 96.243 Cost in Quantity: MCr 7,699.440
 
Hm. You used batteries of one turret rather than batteries of 10 turrets.

In any case, if you hit an armor-7 ship size-J with a PA-T, it takes, on average:
2.6 manuever-1 hits
11.6 weapon-1 hits
6.86 weapon-2 hits
2.11 weapon-3 hits
1.05 weapon-4 hits
Some computer hits that are typically irrelevant.
6 criticals
 
Originally posted by Garyius2003:
My love for the J-1 is the ability to jump out of a losing battle. In fleet action ship games the ability to jump out, repair, and fight another day is usually noted as a game winning factor.
I feel the same way. Two strengths of dreadnoughts is their ability to (1) take damage, and (2) leave.
 
Originally posted by Garyius2003:
My love for the J-1 is the ability to jump out of a losing battle. In fleet action ship games the ability to jump out, repair, and fight another day is usually noted as a game winning factor.
It's probably more relevant at the TL 11-13 of TCS than at the 14-15 of FFW, though. A hit by a meson spinal generally renders you incapable of jumping. This does affect the ability of a losing fleet to bug out, but you're generally going to retreat without engagement if the fight isn't close, so this only really comes up if you get into an unexpected losing fleet battle.
 
so this only really comes up if you get into an unexpected losing fleet battle.
'pending on the ruleset, when spinal mesons are involved, by the time its clear a loss is impending then it's too late to avoid it.
 
Originally posted by flykiller:
'pending on the ruleset, when spinal mesons are involved, by the time its clear a loss is impending then it's too late to avoid it.
Nah. 'They have more spinal mounts than me. A clear loss is impending'.
 
Originally posted by Anthony:
Nah. 'They have more spinal mounts than me. A clear loss is impending'.
Unless you are playing Meson, Missile, Rock.

Munchkin Missile Boats are precisely designed to tweak "lots of spinal mount" fleets.

In a roleplaying sense MMBs are escorts, so the "lots of casualties problem" isn't as obvious as it is in a High Guard wargame.
 
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