High Guard question

[Maladominus]

Hi all, I have a quick question with High Guard (2nd ed) ship construction. I only have experience designing ships under LBB, but have been trying HG instead...

Question on Power Plants. I'm confused as to how you "get" a Power Plant rating. This is unclear. The ONLY thing that is clear in the LBB5 is that the Power Plant rating must be equal to (or greater than) your Maneuver Drive or Jump Drive number. For example, I am creating a starship with Jump-4 and Maneuver-2. So my Power Plant rating must be at least a 4? OK I understand that. So do I just pick ANY random number that suits my fancy so long as it's at least a 4? Can I just say that my 300-ton starship (with Jump-4 and Maneuver-2) has a Power Plant rating of 4? And will it actually fly?

That's usually how it worked in LBB2, where (for example) if you had a Jump Drive of F, then your PowerPlant has to be at least a PowerPlant F also.

I do see that there is a calculation to come up with the TONNAGE SIZE of the Power Plant (i.e. how much space the powerplant takes up). It's something like X percent of ShipTonnage multiplied by Pn. What is Pn? Is "Pn" the Power Plant rating itself? Or is it just some modifier? Confused.

Thanks for any clarifications.

 

[The Oz]

Pn is the Power Plant rating.

You can pick any size Power Plant you want, as long as it's as big as the larger of your Jump drive or Maneuver drive ratings. The ship will fly.

The thing is, if your ship is fighting under the HG rules, you want to have as high an Agility as possible to dodge incoming fire, and you get a high Agility from having lots of "extra" power to run the Maneuver drive while also powering the weapons, computers, and defenses.

In your example 300 dton ship with a minimum Powerplant of 4, it will generate 12 EPs (energy points) every turn from the Powerplant. 6 of those are needed to run the Maneuver Drive at full effect, leaving the other 6 to power any weapons, computers, etc., you might install. If Agility isn't important to your intended design you could use all 12 EPs for other things, but in HG combat your ship would then have an Agility of 0 and be easy to hit.

You could not install components that used more than 12 EPs without adding more powerplant (and powerplant fuel) to run them.

 

[Maladominus]

Understood now. Thanks a bunch, Oz!

So in this example, I could take the minimum of a Power Plant Pn rating of 4 (which gives me only 12 EPs). If I wanted a bigger power plant for more EPs (for example, Pn rating of 7), then I could do so.... but my setback would be that the Plant would require more tonnage space as well as fuel space and construction cost, correct?

 

[mike wightman]

Yep, that's correct.

 

[robject]

Thread Hijack

I'd like to know how many High Guard games were played with large squadrons on each side.

For example, how many people have played the 154th Battle Rider Squadron against a similarly outfitted Zhodani squadron?

 

[The Oz]

Thread Hijack

I'd like to know how many High Guard games were played with large squadrons on each side.

For example, how many people have played the 154th Battle Rider Squadron against a similarly outfitted Zhodani squadron?

I have (not the 154th, but other squadrons). I used to run TCS campaigns.

 

[robject]

I have (not the 154th, but other squadrons). I used to run TCS campaigns.

I'm interested in Lessons Learned, and any ways that occurred to you where the game may be made less tedious (I assume you used the statistical tables instead of rolling a thousand dice each turn?).

I've been thinking about somehow adding a strategic pre-combat step to the game, where each side may pare down the opposition before we have to start matching up targets and rolling handfuls of dice.

 

[The Oz]

Yes, we used the statistical tables from TCS, and first calculated the number of hits a fleet could deliver, allocated those hits to targets, and then found the number of intercepts (for missiles and beams), then did damage. This is not quite the correct sequence from the HG rules, but it works out the same with less effort. Doing it the "correct" way a fleet commander would have to figure out how many hits he wanted to score and then calculate the number of shots needed to score that many hits. We found that commanders would always go for a mission kill on the biggest possible target, so it was always a matter of what was the biggest target that could be killed with the number of hits available.

We did damage with statistical tables, too. It's possible to make charts that show the number and kind of hits for a certain armor-level target. Not rolling for any damage except meson guns and critical hits sped things up.

When building ships we rated them for how many hits (allowing for the statistical damage distribution) were needed to reduce the spinal mount to factor-9. We already knew that it took 7 Wpn-1 hits to reduce the spinal mount by one factor, and 100 Fuel-1 hits to remove all the fuel. Having these number ready in advance helped to move things along.

And we only bothered to do this with the capital ships; the small fry just didn't matter, except for killing each other.

 

[Bob Weaver]

Small ships in HG combat

And we only bothered to do this with the capital ships; the small fry just didn't matter, except for killing each other.

TheOz,
That's not always the case. A few years ago, I took part in a large HG engagement, with about a dozen units on each size. Most were 40-50Ktn cruisers with spinal PA's & MG's , but each side had a number of smaller escorting ships. After the battle had gone on for a few rounds, one of my opponent's cap ships had taken significant damage but it was still in the fight. So my destroyer division ganged up on it with missile fire. The cruiser's damper had been destroyed, so the DesDiv scored multiple nuke hits, enough to silence it's spinal mount in one salvo. Admitting that the cruiser was already damaged, it was the 'small fry' that actually scored the firepower kill. Also, the DesDiv freed one of my cruisers to engage another enemy cruiser.

And remember also who came out on top when David & Goliath threw down.

Cheers,

Bob W

 

[robject]

And therein seems to be the rub. I'm interested in squadron-level and fleet-level combat, and interested in seeing some interplay between units of different sizes and capabilities, but I lack the stamina and determination to spend three hours resolving one battle.

So I'm caught. On one side, I don't find Fifth Frontier War interesting. On the other side, I find High Guard too detailed. That's why I asked Oz for his Lessons: his suggestions are a starting point for speeding things up without shorting the game too much.

Since non-capital ships can contribute to a battle, I feel they need representation. Granted, I don't want the level of detail HG brings, but they may have a part to play.

Finally, when the game is reduced to a Free Trader against a Corsair, I don't need many generalizations or abstractions; complexity is low already, and the battle swift.

The "ideal" situation to me is one where the number of ships and batteries are significantly reduced before combat begins, due to strategic rules played first (as if playing a single round of Diplomacy, for example), with the remaining ships fighting the battle by proxy. Thus the victor can win, fair and square, yet strategy contributed to the win as much as the ships used. In a different venue, with different admirals, maybe things could have gone differently.

 

[The Oz]

What you seem to want (it looks to me) is a ship combat system on the order of AH's classic WAR AT SEA/VICTORY IN THE PACIFIC system, where there is sufficient difference between ship classes to make some ships more important than others, but where the firepower is represented by a single value.

I have done some work on a system that does that, taking the HG stats and converting them to a few values. Here it is (what there is of it).

Ship ratings (divided in half for "crippled" side, except for Hull)
Meson gun: light or heavy (light is A-J meson guns)
Attack Power: spinal PA plus missiles (missiles limited by "batteries bearing")
Secondary Weapons: lasers, energy weapons, non-spinal PA and meson
Hull: tonnage/20,000
Point Defense: Sand, repulsors
Maneuver: Gs
Jump: parsecs
Carried craft: type and number

Ships can be rated for "light" meson defenses, or for "light" other defenses.

"Light" meson defenses (screens or computer of 2- from TL max, or config 6, or Agility 4-) gives +1DM to attacking meson guns.

"Very Light" meson defenses (screens or computer of 4- from TL max, or configs 4,5,8, or Agility 2-; or a combination of any two conditions from "light" meson defenses) gives +2DM to attacking meson guns.

"Light" other defenses (armor 11-, Agility 4-) gives +1DM to enemy AP rolls.
"Very Light" other defenses (armor 4-, Agility 2-, size 9-; or both of the "light" other defenses) gives +2DM to enemy AP rolls.

1 spinal PA factor = 1 AP
10 f-9 equivalent missile batteries = 1 AP

30 f-9 equivalent laser batteries = 1 SW
20 f-9 equivalent energy batteries = 1 SW
10 f-9 equivalent PA/meson batteries = 1 SW

30 sand batteries = 1 PD
2 repulsor battery = 1 PD

Meson gun rule:
Meson guns kill on a 10+ on 2d6 (modified by light or very light meson defenses).
Heavy guns (K-T) have a +2 DM.
2xTL difference is also a DM.
A roll of doubles (that is still a hit) is a cripple instead of a kill.

Attack Power Combat Results Table

Die roll			Odds (Attack Power/(Hull+Point Defense)
	% chance	1 to 3	1 to 2	1 to 1	3 to 2	2 to 1	5 to 1	10 to 1
2+	100		N	N	N	N	N	N	C
3+	0.97		N	N	N	N	N	N	C
4+	0.92		N	N	N	N	N	C	K
5+	0.83		N	N	N	N	N	C	K
6+	0.72		N	N	N	N	C	C	K
7+	0.58		N	N	N	N	C	C	K
8+	0.42		N	N	N	C	C	C	K
9+	0.28		N	N	N	C	C	K	K
10+	0.17		N	N	N	C	C	K	K
11+	0.08		N	N	C	C	K	K	K
12+	0.03		N	C	C	C	K	K	K
13+	0		C	C	C	K	K	K	K

N=no effect
C=Crippled, ship reduced to half on all ratings
K=Kill, ship destroyed.

 

[G. Kashkanun Anderson]

... For example, I am creating a starship with Jump-4 and Maneuver-2. So my Power Plant rating must be at least a 4? OK I understand that. So do I just pick ANY random number that suits my fancy so long as it's at least a 4? Can I just say that my 300-ton starship (with Jump-4 and Maneuver-2) has a Power Plant rating of 4? And will it actually fly?

In your example 300 dton ship with a minimum Powerplant of 4, it will generate 12 EPs (energy points) every turn from the Powerplant. 6 of those are needed to run the Maneuver Drive at full effect, leaving the other 6 to power any weapons, computers, etc., you might install.

Another not-so-minor design consideration in regards to a ship's agility in High Guard is the Maneuver Drive itself: a ship's agility may be no higher than the rating of her Maneuver Drive. This means that your hypothetical 300 dton starship (above) could never have an agility rating higher than 2, no matter how oversized the Power Plant might be.

So she'll "fly," all right -- but unless you up her MDrive a tad she won't make out so much like a P-51 Mustang in a scrap as she would a Brewster Buffalo.

I know for many of us High Guard Grognards this fact is obvious enough to have been hard-coded into our Traveller DNA long ago (and has probably been brought up elsewhere on this board); but considering how basic this HG discussion seems to be, I thought it a good idea to toss it in.