Might want to avoid drawing too many parallels to Star Wars - as I recall, the regular Star Destroyer was a mile long (1600 meters for you metric types), and would have displaced five million or so dtons by Trav standards.
Small ship universe
- Thread starter Old_Dr_Skull
- Start date
Might want to avoid drawing too many parallels to Star Wars - as I recall, the regular Star Destroyer was a mile long (1600 meters for you metric types), and would have displaced five million or so dtons by Trav standards.
Since the official setting material specifically do describe large ships as existing, this is irrelevant. It may be very relevant to your decision to eshew the official setting, but in that setting large ships do exist. If Real World physical laws mean that they can't exist without wonky gravitics/inertial handwavium, the obvious conclusion is that in that case the setting includes wonky gravitics/inertial handwavium.
Mind you, if you want to try to convince TPTB to retcon the existence of large ships, that's perfectly reasonable.
But be that as it may, Small Ship universes with large populations will still suffer all the ills of large ship universes and more besides.
Hans
Historically class is only loosely coupled displacement. Class is strongly coupled to mission and, because mission requires certain capabilities and those capabilities require certain equipment, there is a weak class-to-displacement linkage which many people understandably conflate.
Let your categories overlap each other. it will be more relaistic and it will keep your PCs guessing.
This is sort of like saying you can put a U.S. Army soldier on every block; likewise meaningless. The fleets must be able to move strategically, mass, and maneuver tactically. If we consider what level of force is required where, it may not look so much like a shell, but a web. The nodes may not always be at the systems, or not at the inner gas giant(s), anyway. This not only makes sense to me militarily, but the dispersion in fleets is the FFW was set up, IIRC.
Not at all. A lone soldier is more vulerable than a dreadnaught.
The thing is, most star systems have only one real spot to guard, the mainworld. Granted, some systems have sizable secondary settlements, but not many. A surface navy has to guard a lot more places than a Traveller space navy has to. The old Age of Sail only works up to a point as an analog. Now, if Age of Sail ships had been able to teleport from 3 miles off one harbor to 3 miles off a neighboring harbor, it would have made a much better analog. As it is, it doesn't matter that outer space is vastly bigger than an ocean, because Traveller ships never ever get near the vast majority of all that space.
Hans
If they don't control all the easy refueling spots, the enemy may freely pass through their system. So gas giants must be guarded as well, and there are often 3-4 of them.
My point exactly.
A single dreadnaught is indeed far more powerful than a single soldier, but both are a small part of an immensely larger heirarchy of units with complementary capabilities.
Defense in depth works strategically, especially in an area as large as the Imperium, but in that fight four Suliemans and a Fleet Courier or two in a border system may be far more important that a like number of furballs; the batrons can not likely stop a concentrated attack, but only bleed them. The delay and the attrition they cause will be of tactical not operational or strategic significance; the most important thing they can do is give warning, buy a hour or two, and give a little better than they get. If they are deployed in such a forward system, and they jump out before overwhelmed, they still jump to the next system with less jump fuel than any assets they may meet to mass there.
That said, there are political and psychological reasons for dying in place, with or without giving better than you get; a tactical defeat can be an operational or strategic victory.
True, as long as your forces aren't defeated in detail; eventually both sides will seek the decisive battle in which to break each other's fleets to assume superiority, in my view. Planets are rather a different issue, such as they can, unlike a fortress, hold out forever. With the rules as well, planets can host innumerable meson and missile sites, thus being quite formidable on their own without heavy fleet elements to guard them.
I have always envisioned the use of the Type S in the same way as a picket, as you state.
You did see me say "role" and not "displacement," right?
Like I said, I'm doing this as an alternative to the modern-era progression of "corvette frigate destroyer cruiser (by type) battleship dreadnought."Historically class is only loosely coupled displacement. Class is strongly coupled to mission and, because mission requires certain capabilities and those capabilities require certain equipment, there is a weak class-to-displacement linkage which many people understandably conflate.
Let your categories overlap each other. it will be more relaistic and it will keep your PCs guessing.
Well, yeah, as I posted that I realized it wouldn't be necessarily hard-and-fast. Remember, the Type T from the Starter Set *is* a patrol *cruiser* at 400 tons - and that's what I'd consider a "corvette."
So its role wouldn't necessarily be its size, just how it's accounted for by the number-crunchers*.
*As in an accountant saying, "I don't care if that Type T "goes on long cruises," it's 400 tons and that makes it a corvette!"
Guarding gas giants invites defeat in detail. You might station some SDBs in gas giants to inflict disproportionate losses among enemy ships while they refuel and perhaps even a CruRon (with instructions to jump away if attacked by a sizable enemy force) to force the enemy to bunch up. But you're never going to see a defensive force distributed equally among the mainworld and all other points of interest in the system.
Hans
A Type S? Isn't that the Suleiman scout ship?
You did see me say "role" and not "displacement," right?
Might want to leave dreadnought out of your list, then. "battleship" as distinguished from "dreadnought" is a distinction that only applied for a few years after 1906 (after the launch of HMS Dreadnought and before the last of the "pre-Dreadnought" battleships in the hands of a major Navy was scrapped).
Do remember that Yamato (largest non-aircraft carrier warship ever built - though not largest ever designed, the USN had plans for a follow-on to the Iowa-class that would have been bigger (but just as useless)) was not considered a "dreadnought", but rather a "battleship"....
It should also be noted that (at least in the USN), "role" is not a function of size, but, well, of "role" - a "frigate" is ASW, a "destroyer" is ASW+AAW, a cruiser is AAW with command facilities & more range, a battleship is non-existent, etc....
It is one, there is also the serpent, and one could figure a thousand others of the type.
Old_Dr_Skull
SOC-10
Wouldn't it be a better use of defense credits to cram a planet full of deep meson guns than a defense fleet?
If so, then wouldn't an attacker be more prudent to buy a huge number of much smaller and cheaper ships, rather than big battleships, since it would increase the number of targets?
If so, then wouldn't an attacker be more prudent to buy a huge number of much smaller and cheaper ships, rather than big battleships, since it would increase the number of targets?
O
Omnivore
Guest
Creating a small ship ATU can be challenging if you want it to feel 'realistic'. I say ATU because the only way to do OTU as a small ship universe is, in my opinion at least, to place the big ships pretty much entirely off stage.
The first question to answer is why are large ships not built? One fairly simple way to do that is to design the standard hulls using FF&S and multiply the structural volume required by agility rating (minimum 1). Assuming agility rating equivalent to g-rating for warships this makes structural volume dependent on G-rating squared, and rather nicely limits hull sizes for warships while still allowing larger maneuver 1 agility 1 non warships. If that doesn't bring hull sizes down enough, you can reduce the toughness of advanced materials and require a minimum armor value of (10*G-rating*Agility-rating).
The second question to answer is what to do with the military budgets? If you assume the same pop, tech, and tax base of the Imperium you've just multiplied the number of hulls in your navies by a factor of 1000. There are a few ways of doing that, MT's Hard Times is one very good way - reduce population levels, tech levels, and starport qualities. You can also cut the military budget by a factor of 10 or so, explaining it as a combination of 'tail' support requirements and various graft and inefficiencies (10MCr hammers).
A third question that you may want to address as well is the very nature of your interstellar military. The OTU and most of the ATU's I've seen assume a naval model somewhere between WWI and WWII models. However an age of sail or early steam gunboat era model may work better.
Working backwards from present day naval models we have:
In a small ship universe I'd aim for Post ACW (American Civil War) model. One way to get that is to force fighters into the interface (aerospace) layer by using a variant of the one hardpoint per 100Td rule. By allowing more weapons per volume, carrying fighters is no longer a workaround to get more weapons in space.
Another way of putting your military credits to work in space is to change the Jump model. Using something like wormholes or Alderson points gives you a reason to have deep space stations as forward bases for military vessels patrolling the system entrance/exit points.
The first question to answer is why are large ships not built? One fairly simple way to do that is to design the standard hulls using FF&S and multiply the structural volume required by agility rating (minimum 1). Assuming agility rating equivalent to g-rating for warships this makes structural volume dependent on G-rating squared, and rather nicely limits hull sizes for warships while still allowing larger maneuver 1 agility 1 non warships. If that doesn't bring hull sizes down enough, you can reduce the toughness of advanced materials and require a minimum armor value of (10*G-rating*Agility-rating).
The second question to answer is what to do with the military budgets? If you assume the same pop, tech, and tax base of the Imperium you've just multiplied the number of hulls in your navies by a factor of 1000. There are a few ways of doing that, MT's Hard Times is one very good way - reduce population levels, tech levels, and starport qualities. You can also cut the military budget by a factor of 10 or so, explaining it as a combination of 'tail' support requirements and various graft and inefficiencies (10MCr hammers).
A third question that you may want to address as well is the very nature of your interstellar military. The OTU and most of the ATU's I've seen assume a naval model somewhere between WWI and WWII models. However an age of sail or early steam gunboat era model may work better.
Working backwards from present day naval models we have:
- Post WWII - Large aircraft carriers and missile cruisers
- WWII - Aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, etc
- WWI - Battleships, cruisers, destroyers, etc
- Post ACW - basically gunboat diplomacy, steamships largely tied to ports
- Pre ACW - age of sail, armed merchantmen are a significant factor.
In a small ship universe I'd aim for Post ACW (American Civil War) model. One way to get that is to force fighters into the interface (aerospace) layer by using a variant of the one hardpoint per 100Td rule. By allowing more weapons per volume, carrying fighters is no longer a workaround to get more weapons in space.
Another way of putting your military credits to work in space is to change the Jump model. Using something like wormholes or Alderson points gives you a reason to have deep space stations as forward bases for military vessels patrolling the system entrance/exit points.
The best money would be spent on offensive fleets, as they can turn the defense into offense, as well as bring the war to the enemies worlds.
Edit: Here one can see the idea of a mobile defense that offensive fleets can use:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-90/ch10.htm
"A swift and vigorous transition to attack-the flashing sword of vengeance-is the most brilliant point of the defensive."
Carl von Clausewitz, On War, 1832
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The Spartans had no walls.
"Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man"
George S. Patton Jr.
Planetary defenses may have a role, but they can never defeat the enemy without his permission.
BlackBat242
SOC-14 1K
See high-speed rock-throwing as a planetary bombardment weapon.
