SDB, FFW, & HG

[Hal]

Hello Folks,
At TML, I outlined some deductions I've made regarding System Defense Boats, the boardgame called FIFTH FRONTIERS, and High Guard. I'm going to reproduce that email's logic here and see if anyone can point out any logic flaws that I've perhaps commited due to lack of experience with HG or a lack of awareness in some form or another...

Fifth Frontier War (The boardgame) lists some worlds as having SDB fleets capable of doing battle against Ships. Not only are they capable of doing battle - but they are capable of actually Destroying ships within a BatRon or CruRon.

Analyzing High Guard, I've noted something of interest. If you have a weapon with a USP value of less than A (ie a 9 or less), the weapon system is incapable of securing an internal hit or critical hit against any ship with an Armor rating of 4 or more. Since it takes a critical hit to achieve a destruction of a ship with a result of "Ship vaporized" or securing a mission kill with crew hits, powerplant hits, and/or manuever/jump hits - only those weapons that can secure these kinds of hits are likely to be represented by the SDB value of any given world in the FFW boardgame.

Logic check: When rolling on surface hits damage table, any USP value of 9 or less adds a +6 penalty to the die roll. Since the only way you can secure an internal hit is on a roll of a 5 through 3 on 2d6 or a 2 (critical hit itself!) - any die roll modifier greater than +3 will cause such an attack to fail to secure an internal/critical hit. Nuclear missiles that get past the nuclear Dampner subtract 6 on the surface damage chart - making it possible to secure an internal hit. However - if a Ship has an armor rating of 4+, even nuclear missiles are unable to secure that all important Internal hit/Critical hit.

Meson guns also have this issue any meson gun weapon attack is modified by a +6 penalty.

Conclusion? It takes a spinal mounted weapon to secure any kind of a kill in High Guard. This being the case - all SDB factors represented in Fifth Frontier War must be those ships with the capability to inflict hits against ships by means of a spinal mount.

Have I made any logic errors here?

 

[flykiller]

Have I made any logic errors here?

no. everyone who analyzes HG2 comes to similar or identical conclusions.

well, maybe you have made one error. HG2 is meant to provide a light semi-wargaming environment for RPG's like, say, traveller. if you treat it as a serious wargame it immediately breaks down. trying to use it to understand other games makes the problem worse.

traveller is not an organized system. it was thrown together ad-hoc, and the pieces frequently don't fit.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Hal,

I have a couple of questions.

What's the +6 Meson penalty. And if so, what penalty? I don't remember that one. Can you give me a page and location on-page?

Also, I must be making some seriously inaccurate interpretations of the HG2 rules. You mention that no weapon of less than Factor A can secure a crit vs. a ship with Armor Factor 4+.

I thought it was slightly more complicated than that. Given Weapon Factors equal to or less than the target vessel's Size Code, and where Weapon Factor is less than A, then a Surface Crit or Radiation Crit is impossible. The +6 Damage Roll DM for Weapon Factors of 9 or less make it impossible to roll a 2 unless nuke missiles are loaded. Armor of any Factor only adds to the impossibility of scoring a crit.

However, when the Weapon Factor exceeds the Size Code of the target vessel, then there a hit inflicts once extra automatic crit (of the appropriate type) per point that Weapon Factor exceeds Size Code, minus one automatic crit per two points of armor. Armor 4 only removes 2 automatic crits, and a Factor 9 Triple Laser Turret Battery firing on a Size code 6 vessel w/4 points of armor still scores 2 automatic crits. Admittedly, Size Code A is for a 1000 dTon vessel, so room to use this little bit of overwhelming firepower disappears pretty quickly.

Now, given that the only weapons of greater than Weapon Factor 9 are spinal mounts, then they are the only weapon to which the Damage Modifier #2 does not apply. Large spinal mounts will have Weapon Factors that exceed many ship's size codes. Not only do they get automatic crits in these cases, but they get additional rolls on the damage tables, too, one extra roll per point by which their Weapon Factor exceeds 9 (not affected by Armor or Size).

This pretty much means non-nuke-missile batteries are nice against ships under 1000 dTons, but are pretty much worthless against anything else.

The -6 to damage rolls from the nuke-missile bonus only offsets the +6 penalty for Weapon Factors of 9 or less, and so since all missile Weapon Factors are 9 or less, then they are only middling good, and against Armor Factor 1 or better, cannot themselves score a crit.


Now someone can come on stage and tell me where I've gone insane.

 

[Hal]

I'm fast coming to that conclusion myself

But I have to look at a LOT of factors here before I start setting things down in paper. Thanks to certain people, I'm about ready to start the actual work on creating fleets that will hopefully be analogs for the Traveller Universe.
I've looked at FFW and noted that there are some 9 different kinds of BatRons in the game. Some of those BatRons can be rationalized away as being "Variant" BatRons where instead of 8 DN class ships and 8 Escort Class ships (a really POWERFUL BatRon) it might have only 2 DN and 6 Cruisers, plus 8 Escorts.

If you look at MegaTraveller's templates for BatRons and CruRons - it doesn't match the 154th BatRon description with 7 battle Riders and 7 Escort class ships. BatRons in Fighting Ships of the Shattered Imperium list Battle Rider BatRons as having 4 Battle Riders and 4 Escort Class ships (plus assorted auxilary class ships). Since we "know" that 154th contains what it does, and is the MOST POWERFUL BatRon by combat factors in FFW (boardgame), one would have to conclude that the force mix for the other BatRons have to be lesser in nature. As for myself, I'm rather shocked that FFW states that the Imperium has a Jump 2 BatRon!

Hemdian has concluded that the Defense factor for a counter in FFW represents a single Capital ship. If this is true, then the Jump 2 BatRon contains only 3 capital ships in its entire squadron. BatRon 648 therefor must only contain 2 Capital class ships. By inference, if one combines Batrons 648 and 667, one would have a BatRon that is identical to BatRon 642 - as BatRon 642 is DOUBLE the stats of Batron 648.

That seems odd to me because BatRon 648 appears to be a half Batron when compared with BatRon 642. This wouldn't be a BatRon - it would be a detachment...

In any event - I'm starting to go a little crazy with all the analysis I've done thus far. SDB's are important in the scheme of things because they are the Local Planetary navies. The Named fleets in FFW are colonial fleets that happen to be jump capable planetary Navies (or so I believe). All other colonial fleets within the game of FFW are subsector Navies. All other colonial ground forces are either planetary forces or they are subsector forces. And finally - there are WAY more Imperial Units available for war in the Fifth Frontier war than there are of Colonial Navies.

This can be attributed in my eyes to one of two things. Either there ARE more Imperial squadrons than subsector Squadrons - or colonial fleets only tend to operate within their own subsectors of responsibility. They tend to be left behind in a defensive posture while Imperial squadrons are those fleets whose mission description is to defend the Imperium regardless of subsector locations.

 

[mike wightman]

Hi Hal.
I agree with most of your conclusions, but:

Meson guns also have this issue any meson gun weapon attack is modified by a +6 penalty.

this is a new one to me
I've never seen this modifier before in HG.
Yes, a meson gun with a factor of 9 or less will get the +6 mod. But meson spinals of factor A and above roll on the radiation damage table and the interior explosion damage table without a die modifier and so can achieve the ship killing results

 

[Hal]

I should have written clearer

The original intent of my logic was to point out that all weapons NOT of spinal capability were constrained by the +6 penalty. Bay weapons do not go above a 9 USP value. Spinals of course are not limited with the +6, as the rules specifically state that the USP has to be lower than A

My poor wording - sorry about that.

 

[mike wightman]

Ahh, well that's ok then

Another thing from HG.
PAW spinal mounts are not very effective againt big ships with moderate armour (size Q+, AF6) or medium ships with lots of armour (size M-P, AF12-8) or even small ships with maximum armour (size L, AF14+). They can't score auto critical hits or internal damage results

By ships I mean spinal mount carrying vessels

 

[Hal]

Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
Hal,

I have a couple of questions.

What's the +6 Meson penalty. And if so, what penalty? I don't remember that one. Can you give me a page and location on-page?

Also, I must be making some seriously inaccurate interpretations of the HG2 rules. You mention that no weapon of less than Factor A can secure a crit vs. a ship with Armor Factor 4+.

I thought it was slightly more complicated than that. Given Weapon Factors equal to or less than the target vessel's Size Code, and where Weapon Factor is less than A, then a Surface Crit or Radiation Crit is impossible. The +6 Damage Roll DM for Weapon Factors of 9 or less make it impossible to roll a 2 unless nuke missiles are loaded. Armor of any Factor only adds to the impossibility of scoring a crit.

However, when the Weapon Factor exceeds the Size Code of the target vessel, then there a hit inflicts once extra automatic crit (of the appropriate type) per point that Weapon Factor exceeds Size Code, minus one automatic crit per two points of armor. Armor 4 only removes 2 automatic crits, and a Factor 9 Triple Laser Turret Battery firing on a Size code 6 vessel w/4 points of armor still scores 2 automatic crits. Admittedly, Size Code A is for a 1000 dTon vessel, so room to use this little bit of overwhelming firepower disappears pretty quickly.

Now, given that the only weapons of greater than Weapon Factor 9 are spinal mounts, then they are the only weapon to which the Damage Modifier #2 does not apply. Large spinal mounts will have Weapon Factors that exceed many ship's size codes. Not only do they get automatic crits in these caes, but they get additional rolls on the damage tables, too, one extra roll per point by which their Weapon Factor exceeds 9 (not affected by Armor or Size).

This pretty much means non-nuke-missile batteries are nice against ships under 1000 dTons, but are pretty much worthless against anything else.

The -6 to damage rolls from the nuke-missile bonus only offsets the +6 penalty for Weapon Factors of 9 or less, and so since all missile Weapon Factors are 9 or less, then they are only middling good, and against Armor Factor 1 or better, cannot themselves score a crit.


Now someone can come on stage and tell me where I've gone insane.

Ok, you're insane

Oh, you meant "honestly tell you?"

But yes, your points are valid. What got me onto this thread of thought was trying to figure out what a SDB factor in the boardgame Fifth Frontier War represents. As such - a SDB combat with a BatRon Squadron can in fact produce BatRon casualties. But if you use the HIGH GUARD rules (which preceeded the production of FFW by 2 years at least) you begin to see where I'm going with this. Meson guns themselves do not have a +6 penalty on the radiation chart - but meson weapons of USP less than 9 do.
Also, either I neglected to mention that I was discussing a target that was of a size at least 1,000 dtons or larger (ie two 1,000 dton SDB's firing at each other) or I failed my writing saving roll (or both!)
Here is a test for you to try though.

Create a 1,000 dton SDB, a 2,000 dton SDB, on up until you find the FIRST SDB that can have a chance (any chance) of inflicting a kill against a Plankwell class Dreadnaught.

See what size the SDB has to be in order to handle an Atlantic class Cruiser.

Lets presume for the sake of argument (and I am pulling numbers out of thin air here!) that each 10 SDB factors has a 16% chance of killing a Plankwell. Does the T meson gun have a 16% chance of killing a Plankwell outright? By inference, it gets one Automatic critical hit. That one crit hit has a 1 in 36 chance of "ship vaporized" result. It has a 4 in 36 chance of a powerplant kill. It has a 3 in 36 chance of a crew kill (so to speak) - neccessitating a breakoff of hostilities. If passengers carried on a ship also count in the crew damage, then this would create results that are consistent with FFW where the loss of a single defense factor will also kill 1 battalioin's worth of troops being carried by that squadron (in fact, it is worse, because if your single squadron has a Defense factor of 6, and the SDB inflicts only 1, the squadron must lose not 1 Defense factor, but THREE - as there are no counters to represent a single Defensive factor loss.

In any event - the only reason why an SDB with a T type Spinal mount gets one automatic critical hit against a Plankwell is because the spinal size is one larger than the Plankwell ship size. If the SDB carried a single type S spinal mount? It would roll against the damage table with a plus modifier added due to armor. A Plankwell Dreadnaught has an armor level of 10. This takes the crit hit or the internal hit or Radiation hit if we're talking about particle accellerators (and a shot at a crit hit) out of reach. Meson guns are the exception to the rule of adding armor to the roll on the damage chart. On the other hand

the plankwell has a level 9 Meson Screen. In order to penetrate with a meson shot against the Plankwell with a type S spinal is if you roll a 5+ after rolling to secure a hit (admittedly easy against a Plankwell dreadnaught).

The Bare minimum spinal mount that can possibly hit a Plankwell ship and get a mission kill of sorts is a Class C Meson Gun. The to hit roll is a base 5 or more to hit. Because the hull size is S, the C class Meson gun will gain a +2 bonus to hit. This is a roll to hit of a 3 or more now. Now, in order to get past the level 9 Meson Screen on the plankwell - you need to roll a 12 on 2d6. This is only a 1 in 36 chance probability. Lets say you got lucky, and managed to hit the plankwell despite its screen. In order to secure a mission kill, here are the rolls required:

2 -> 2 (results in ship vaporized)
2 -> 9 (results in powerplant disabled)
2 -> 10 (results in crew-1, no more offensive action

3 - results in crew-1 (and possibly BE kill)
5 - same as 3
7 - same as 3

So what are the cumulative odds of either a Kill or Mission Kill? I'm getting a roughly 1% to 2% chance from those figures above.

 

[PBI]

Actually, there is a potential problem, but it has less to do with how weapons work in HG than it does with the basic assumptions ported over from FFW, namely, the meaning of "destroyed".

In most wargames, the term destroyed is a military rather than physical term and often should read "effectively destroyed". Even naval wargames, where there is a higher likelihood of destroyed actually meaning destroyed is higher, often use the convention of effectively destroyed. Take Federation & Empire as an example, where the destroyed category (from the designer's notes) represents ships damaged beyond repair as well as actual destroyed ships. I don't know which convention FFW uses, and the repair rules in FFW don't help, either, as players are allowed to "rebuild" a "destroyed" squadron in a week, and in the absence of designer's notes (assuming the designer(s) even devoted effort towards defining what destroyed means in FFW), both definitions are equally valid.

 

[Hal]

Good Point. That the Imperium can bring back into use - three (if I recall reading that rule correctly) squadrons "destroyed" as a result of replacements and the like would seem to argue in favor of your comments. Then again? Looking at High Guard - where you can get "Crew-1" hits. That would likely play a part in refurbishing squadrons that have been disabled or even damaged beyond usuablility. I will keep that in mind

 

[mike wightman]

There are other results in HG which mission kill a ship.
Assuming the use of spinal meson guns here, then a crew 1 hit on the radiation hits or interior damage table, or a fuel tanks shattered interior hit, or a critical hit from the radiation or internal hits can result in the damage you want.

A factor E gun which penetrates (11+) rolls 6 times on both tables and you are trying for a 2, 3, 5, or 7 on the radiation hits (with 3, 5, and 7 being what you really want for crew 1 hits), and a 2, 3, 4, 5, or 10 on the internal damage (with the 5 causing the fuel tanks shattered result and the 10 causing another crew 1 hit).

A factor J gun penetrates on a 9+ for 10 damage rolls on both tables.

A factor E, G, or J meson gun will fit into a 15-19kt SDB/Monitor, which will cost a lot less than a Tigress (I think you can get 15 to 20 of the SDBs for the cost of 1 Tigress).

 

[daryen]

You want either a J or an N meson gun. If you go with a J, you can use a 10Kdton hull. If you go with an N, you need a 19Kdton hull. (There is a to-hit modifier that kicks in at 20Kdton, so that is why you want to use 19Kdton.)

Either way, you want to use the smallest hull you can manage so that you can maximize the number of meson guns. (You only get one per ship, so maximize the number of ships you have.) I don't remember whether the increased penetration chance is worth having half as many ships.

This does, of course, assume a TL15 ship. With lower TLs, the choices are slightly easier as your gun selection starts to go down very fast. You also end up being consigned to the 19-20Kdton hull as the lower limit, too.

 

[Hal]

I must have too much of the wargame "Imperium" on my brain. To me, Monitors imply dreadnaught sized System Defense boats

Ok Ok! So they're not Dreadnaught sized. If a fleet can build it at its doorstep, all fine and dandy. But if it has to request delivery for a 50,000 Dton craft - that can be a major "Problem"

 

[daryen]

Also, keep in mind that there is another SDB choice available: a max armor buffered planetoid.

Take a 5Kdton buffered planetoid, give it max armor (i.e. TL + 9) and as many missle bays as it can hold. Add in a meson screen, but no nuclear damper.

The resulting ship has a big punch, a low cost, and is immune to anything but R+ particle beam spinal mounts and meson spinal mounts that can punch its screen (those J+ mounts mentioned above). Even nuclear missles can't penetrate the armor.

 

[mike wightman]

At Tl 14/15, a buffered planetoid hull (AF6 configuration 9 ) with an AF of 14 +6, for the buffered planetoid, for a total AF of 20 and can not be damaged by anything less than a spinal mount meson gun under the HG rules if you make it 20kt+.
Give it a meson screen, meson spinal, and fill up the USP with missile bays and turrets.

You can aways use a Tender to carry it as a Battle Rider

 

[Hal]

You know - I mentioned the bit that I thought it was odd that the Colonial Fleets don't like the strategy of building Battle Tenders. If you spend a lot of money on your planetary Defense - and you lose Battle Riders in combat, it should be easier to replace them with identical ship classes from the System Defense fleet. The benefit of using System Defense boats for replenishment pools is that you can build the smaller ships faster and cheaper than you can build the larger Capital Ships. It is 40 months to build a Dreadnaught class ship at a shipyard that has built them before. It is only 30 months to build a Light Cruiser sized hull (30,000 dtons).

I guess perhaps it boils down to the fact that in Trillion Credit Squadron - the rules for fleet engagements don't allow for much in the way of inter-system movement. I find it curious too that in TCS, the home team has almost perfect "intelligence" as to where enemy ships are the moment they enter the system. But that's a topic for another day (or thread

)

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Hal:
I'm fast coming to that conclusion myself

But I have to look at a LOT of factors here before I start setting things down in paper. Thanks to certain people, I'm about ready to start the actual work on creating fleets that will hopefully be analogs for the Traveller Universe.
I've looked at FFW

You're looking at FFW, a game I've never even seen the inside of for longer than sixty seconds. I can't tell you how to relate the counters to the HG2 rules.

However, given the difficulty of "canonical" translateability between virtually all of the peripheral game sets and the core game rules, well, I just find that it's far more likely that war-games maker GDW would have tweaked the number of counters in the game and the values on the counters until they had a balanced game, and were using the Traveller background of the 5th FW as a story selling-point. Therefore, I find any attempt to translate the FFW counters into actual OTU Squadron OOBs to be a guessing game.

And yet I am somewhat anxious to see the results of your efforts.


I'd like to note that SDBs may be important to planetary navies, but they are not the only component of a planetary navy.

Further, SDBs range in size from 100-100 according to Supplement 11. While I can see raising them to 2000-5000 tons without raising an eyebrow, much larger and you have great incentive to skip to 20 kdTons, because at that point you can start mounting light spinal weapons, and a much greater incentive to go to the 30-50 kDton range, becuase you can start mounting N and T Meson Spinal Mounts, the real killers.

While IMTU I have ruled that Member World Governments cannot deploy jump capable ships (without per ship waivers from the Sector Duke), that's not canon. A wealthy world like Mora or Rhylanor would be able to build major jump battleships, though they're likely to get far more bang for the buck on 50-100 kdTon battle riders (although, if we go with the T20 design rules as written, the 20 kdTon battle riders would be the way to go, as the Meson Spinal Mount A is extremely dangerous to major vessels, able to completely destroy them on an indecent percentage of their shots (see the previous Fleet thread at T20 Dreadnoughts? What is the point?).

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Hal:
I should have written clearer

The original intent of my logic was to point out that all weapons NOT of spinal capability were constrained by the +6 penalty. Bay weapons do not go above a 9 USP value. Spinals of course are not limited with the +6, as the rules specifically state that the USP has to be lower than A

My poor wording - sorry about that.

Ah, all is made clear.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Hal:


<snip>

In any event - the only reason why an SDB with a T type Spinal mount.

<snip>

<Terminology Nit>
SDBs can't carry spinal mounts, they're too small. Only Battle Riders get that big.
</Terminoloy Nit>

 

[mike wightman]

SDBs carrying spinal mounts are usually referred to as Monitors (there's one in Supplement 9).