I can see their role as a fixing force, which then one brings the strike fleets to bear against the enemy invasion fleet.
Small ship universe
- Thread starter Old_Dr_Skull
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I can see their role as a fixing force, which then one brings the strike fleets to bear against the enemy invasion fleet.
O
Omnivore
Guest
Fixing force role wouldn't seem to work very well since there is no terrain, no stealth (assuming pickets), and 3 dimensions.
Now a mobile defense force; SDB's hiding in oceans, mobile missile launchers, and aerospace interface fighters - all of which could benefit from stealth since there's all that nice hot background and clutter - might well give an invader a hard time. The benefit over fixed defenses is that they are mobile - not just tactically mobile, but strategically mobile.
A few fixed defenses around starports and major cities might be worthwhile though, not so much against invading fleets but to keep raiders away.
The mobile defence force are your fleets, the system defenses, including your SBD's etc., are your fixed defences as they are not easily transportable out-system.
However, the the terminology of a mobile defense, even your fleets can play the role of a fixing force. It would just be easier to designate systems as the fixing force as those would most likely be the target of the enemy incursion.
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Remember how the label cruiser was derived; cruisers were vessels meant to cruise independently regardless of size. A Type-T is a cruiser[1] because it operates independently and not because of it's position on some ill-advised "X tonnage somewhat equates Y class" list.
There are two current active threads in which the number crunching viewpoint has been shown up for the creativity-free, reality-denying trap that it is. Reality is not a spreadsheet and Traveller is much more than accounting and treasure tables in space.
1 - Apart from it's role, the major reason the Type-T is a cruiser is because it was designed in a purely LBB:2 universe.
Sometimes words have more than one meaning.
One of the meanings of 'cruiser' in the Classic Era IS, canonically, based on its size.
"Cruisers are the smallest ships to carry the large spinal weapons needed to cause serious damage to a large armored ship, although most are too lightly armored to stand in the line of battle." [FS:9]
These are the cruisers that are considered part of a star nations combat vessels (Another Classic Era technical term). They are ship large enough to carry spinal weapons but too fragile to be considered battleships.
The definition goes on to say that "They form the cadre of commerce raiding task forces and provide fire support for planetary invasions", so most likely the term is derived from the fact that some of them are designed to be good at cruising. But CV cruisers (Combat Vessel cruisers) are still defined as quoted above. That includes cruiser classes specifically designed to stay with fleets and never go a-roving, totally unsuited for cruising.
Other kinds of cruisers, such as colonial cruisers and frontier cruisers would use a different meaning of the word.
Hans
One of the meanings of 'cruiser' in the Classic Era IS, canonically, based on its size.
"Cruisers are the smallest ships to carry the large spinal weapons needed to cause serious damage to a large armored ship, although most are too lightly armored to stand in the line of battle." [FS:9]
These are the cruisers that are considered part of a star nations combat vessels (Another Classic Era technical term). They are ship large enough to carry spinal weapons but too fragile to be considered battleships.
The definition goes on to say that "They form the cadre of commerce raiding task forces and provide fire support for planetary invasions", so most likely the term is derived from the fact that some of them are designed to be good at cruising. But CV cruisers (Combat Vessel cruisers) are still defined as quoted above. That includes cruiser classes specifically designed to stay with fleets and never go a-roving, totally unsuited for cruising.
Other kinds of cruisers, such as colonial cruisers and frontier cruisers would use a different meaning of the word.
Hans
In a recent post in my blog, I addressed the small vs. large ship question and I thought those of you in the current discussion might find it of interest. Quote follows:
Let's look at a green-purple topic from my own campaign - one known as small vs. large ship Traveller. Understanding the problem requires a little historical discussion. The original "little black book" Traveller and Star Wars were both released in 1977. The Book 2 starship construction rules limited starship hulls to a maximum of 5000 dT (about the size of the battleship USS Arizona. Displacement tons are used to describe Traveller starships; a displacement ton is 14 cubic meters - the approximate volume of 1 metric ton of liquid hydrogen. Ken Pick has a great discussion on translating displacement tons for comparison to current naval vessels in this article at Freelance Traveller.) So, the largest battleships in space were about the size of a WWII battleship.
When the second edition of High Guard (Traveller book 5) came out in 1980, it was also the year The Empire Strikes Back was released. The Star Wars Imperial Super Star Destroyer was, in the eyes of science fiction fans everywhere, the premier example of a truly large interstellar warship. Reflecting the effect of the movies, High Guard allowed construction of vessels up to 1 million displacement tons (about 55 times the size of the largest current US carrier, the Nimitz.)
Ever since then, Traveller players and GMs have argued the relative merits of the two systems and small vs. large ship Traveller. Rather than replay years of this discussion here, let's look at the two different universes that result from the choice from a story standpoint.
In a large ship Traveller universe, massive naval vessels, many thousands of times larger than the small tramp freighters usually piloted by PC's, rule the spacelanes. Titanic spinal mount weapons smash the enemies of the Imperium at ranges far beyond possible for the weapons of small combatants (like the player characters' vessel.) A strong central Imperial government is implied by the need for such vessels (which are beyond the all but the richest of individual worlds to build and pay for) and by the ability to enforce the heavy taxation necessary to pay for the number of squadrons of these huge vessels described in Traveller canon. These vast vessels and their escorts patrol known space during peacetime, keeping order and suppressing piracy. To paraphrase Grand Moff Tarkin, "Fear of these vessels will keep the lesser systems in line."
This Imperium sounds lawful, ordered, powerful, and not terribly interesting. The official Traveller canon supports a large ship Imperium, and I think it is no coincidence that the first area of the Imperium mapped and described for campaigns was not a core sector, but rather a distant frontier sector (the Spinward Marches.) The Marches are adjacent to sectors full of chaotic Vargr corsairs, territory-seeking Aslani, and a mysterious psionic government (the Zhodani) with whom the Imperium has fought several border wars. There are also more Ancient sites in the Marches than any similar area in known space. Even with this exciting frontier setting, GDW finally felt it had to destroy the Imperium (MegaTraveller's Rebellion followed by TNE's Virus-mediated near-total destruction of the Imperium) to make Known Space more interesting.
Let's contrast this picture with the small-ship Traveller universe I created for my current campaign. There are no spinal mounts. The maximum size of a warship capable of combat-levels of thrust is 12500 dT (a little larger than the WWII battleship Yamato) with large, slow megafreighters up to 30000 dT (a little smaller than a modern supertanker.) The 12500 dT dreadnought is only 60 times larger than the smaller tramp freighters instead of 5000 times. Planetary fleets can be competitive on a ship-by-ship basis (although the Imperium still has the advantage of numbers) and the required taxation to build a comparable Imperial fleet in terms of numbers to the large-ship Imperium is considerably less with a small-ship fleet. With less taxation comes less control.
This is an Imperium that commands, but does not dominate with an iron fist. Individual worlds may feel freer to tug at their leash, if not rebel openly. Imperial government is smaller and weaker, and individual worlds have more authority. Imperial power is used wisely and with precision - a rapier, not a greatsword. Piracy has room to exist and make life more interesting for the players.
In such a universe, the player characters can matter. Many posters have compared small-ship Traveller to the Age of Sail, where piracy existed, individual small armed merchants could have meaningful engagements with small naval combatants, and prizes could be taken. A romantic era to be sure, but Traveller is space opera and it is supposed to be entertaining to play. Read Master and Commander or another Jack Aubrey novel by Patrick O'Brian (or watch the movie with Russell Crowe), and tell me that you would not enjoy some of that flavor in your science-fiction setting.
That's why I chose small-ship Traveller.
Quote ends. Just my two centicredits worth.
Let's look at a green-purple topic from my own campaign - one known as small vs. large ship Traveller. Understanding the problem requires a little historical discussion. The original "little black book" Traveller and Star Wars were both released in 1977. The Book 2 starship construction rules limited starship hulls to a maximum of 5000 dT (about the size of the battleship USS Arizona. Displacement tons are used to describe Traveller starships; a displacement ton is 14 cubic meters - the approximate volume of 1 metric ton of liquid hydrogen. Ken Pick has a great discussion on translating displacement tons for comparison to current naval vessels in this article at Freelance Traveller.) So, the largest battleships in space were about the size of a WWII battleship.
When the second edition of High Guard (Traveller book 5) came out in 1980, it was also the year The Empire Strikes Back was released. The Star Wars Imperial Super Star Destroyer was, in the eyes of science fiction fans everywhere, the premier example of a truly large interstellar warship. Reflecting the effect of the movies, High Guard allowed construction of vessels up to 1 million displacement tons (about 55 times the size of the largest current US carrier, the Nimitz.)
Ever since then, Traveller players and GMs have argued the relative merits of the two systems and small vs. large ship Traveller. Rather than replay years of this discussion here, let's look at the two different universes that result from the choice from a story standpoint.
In a large ship Traveller universe, massive naval vessels, many thousands of times larger than the small tramp freighters usually piloted by PC's, rule the spacelanes. Titanic spinal mount weapons smash the enemies of the Imperium at ranges far beyond possible for the weapons of small combatants (like the player characters' vessel.) A strong central Imperial government is implied by the need for such vessels (which are beyond the all but the richest of individual worlds to build and pay for) and by the ability to enforce the heavy taxation necessary to pay for the number of squadrons of these huge vessels described in Traveller canon. These vast vessels and their escorts patrol known space during peacetime, keeping order and suppressing piracy. To paraphrase Grand Moff Tarkin, "Fear of these vessels will keep the lesser systems in line."
This Imperium sounds lawful, ordered, powerful, and not terribly interesting. The official Traveller canon supports a large ship Imperium, and I think it is no coincidence that the first area of the Imperium mapped and described for campaigns was not a core sector, but rather a distant frontier sector (the Spinward Marches.) The Marches are adjacent to sectors full of chaotic Vargr corsairs, territory-seeking Aslani, and a mysterious psionic government (the Zhodani) with whom the Imperium has fought several border wars. There are also more Ancient sites in the Marches than any similar area in known space. Even with this exciting frontier setting, GDW finally felt it had to destroy the Imperium (MegaTraveller's Rebellion followed by TNE's Virus-mediated near-total destruction of the Imperium) to make Known Space more interesting.
Let's contrast this picture with the small-ship Traveller universe I created for my current campaign. There are no spinal mounts. The maximum size of a warship capable of combat-levels of thrust is 12500 dT (a little larger than the WWII battleship Yamato) with large, slow megafreighters up to 30000 dT (a little smaller than a modern supertanker.) The 12500 dT dreadnought is only 60 times larger than the smaller tramp freighters instead of 5000 times. Planetary fleets can be competitive on a ship-by-ship basis (although the Imperium still has the advantage of numbers) and the required taxation to build a comparable Imperial fleet in terms of numbers to the large-ship Imperium is considerably less with a small-ship fleet. With less taxation comes less control.
This is an Imperium that commands, but does not dominate with an iron fist. Individual worlds may feel freer to tug at their leash, if not rebel openly. Imperial government is smaller and weaker, and individual worlds have more authority. Imperial power is used wisely and with precision - a rapier, not a greatsword. Piracy has room to exist and make life more interesting for the players.
In such a universe, the player characters can matter. Many posters have compared small-ship Traveller to the Age of Sail, where piracy existed, individual small armed merchants could have meaningful engagements with small naval combatants, and prizes could be taken. A romantic era to be sure, but Traveller is space opera and it is supposed to be entertaining to play. Read Master and Commander or another Jack Aubrey novel by Patrick O'Brian (or watch the movie with Russell Crowe), and tell me that you would not enjoy some of that flavor in your science-fiction setting.
That's why I chose small-ship Traveller.
Quote ends. Just my two centicredits worth.
Gray Pennell
SOC-12
Another way to understand cruisers is that they are a modification to the battleship They often trade armor and/or armaments for improved speed and/or range. There are typically light, medium and heavy cruisers. A light cruiser is gives trades armaments and armor for speed and range. They are perfect for raiding force. Medium cruisers put on more armor and work as cmd/control or escort duty. Heavy Cruisers put on the big guns but not the armor of a battleship. These can stand toe to toe in a fight for a short period of time. It was a cruiser fleet that held slot of Guadalcanal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruiser
I am a big fan of the cruiser they are great ships!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruiser
I am a big fan of the cruiser they are great ships!
It can be misleading to try to compare terrestrial examples of war with what might be faced in space-based warfare. On Earth, a fortification is a big, expensive, man-made immobile structure that is most easily beaten by bypassing it and either starving it into submission or simply leaving a force to stop any sallies and ignoring it while you go on with the business of invading and crushing the enemy's mobile forces and support base. You can buy a lot of mobile forces for the cost of a fixed fortification at the worm's-eye level.
The equation plays differently in space combat. In that setting, the ships are little - expensive - mobile man-made fortifications, carrying the environment and the supplies the crews need to survive and needing to be resupplied periodically. On the other hand, a self-sufficient planet provides the environment and supplies pretty much free just by being a self-sufficient planet. A fortified planet gets the benefit of all that free stuff - there's no cutting the fortifications from their sources of supply unless you can manage to land troops, which is another game entirely - and its weapons protect exactly the factories and farms and other things you're trying to conquer.
Yes, you can overwhelm it - the mobile opponent always has the advantage of being able to concentrate force where needed - but the job of a fort is not to defeat all comers; it's to slow you down and make you spend time and resources while he assembles his response elsewhere.
Bypassing a planet is feasible, but at some point you're going to end up having to face some planet's defenses somewhere if you don't want to end up fighting the same fight five years down the line. The more valuable the planet, the stronger the defenses. The cost of weapons and guidance alone is a lot less than the cost of weapons, guidance and a ship to put it all in, so he can field quite a bit of firepower for a reasonable price. If we confine it to small ships - the focus of the thread - you can plant hundreds of missile launchers for the cost of a single 400t SDB.
That doesn't mean Fortress Regina is impregnable. It DOES mean that an effort to conquer a world - as opposed to blockading a world and hoping your fleet can defeat his while you've diverted resources for the blockade - is going to take an impressively large force, and you can expect the effort to be rather expensive. Scorched-earth warfare begins to look attractive: it's easier to destroy than take when all you need to do to destroy is divert a few asteroids and keep him from diverting them in turn. On the other hand, that kind of thing can evolve into a situation where two competing empires cease to be able to make effective war on each other because they're separated by deep bands of stars with battered, dead worlds that no one in his right mind would colonize.
Any population at or near surface can be defeated by a few dozen large freighters with cargo of 0.5x3m steel or tungsten rods... It may be political suicide for whomever orders it, but it can and will disrupt life sufficiently to make the local world not need blockading for several months.
A fleet with nukes can just saturation bombard any world they don't ideologically need to not destroy. Orbital detonations of a few to clear the orbital eyes, and then pattern detonations in the atmosphere (if any) to EMP the surface folk, then pinpoint hits on all major population centers.
The only reason they don't is ideologies which say "no killing civilians."
A fleet with nukes can just saturation bombard any world they don't ideologically need to not destroy. Orbital detonations of a few to clear the orbital eyes, and then pattern detonations in the atmosphere (if any) to EMP the surface folk, then pinpoint hits on all major population centers.
The only reason they don't is ideologies which say "no killing civilians."
Gray Pennell
SOC-12
The imperuim is a vast space even with Jump 6 it takes weeks and months to move around so space is the key. The attacker pursues the defender fleet till they can destroy it. The worlds dont often put up a defense because of the orbital bombardment issue even though the attacker wouldnt due it unless it was last resort. You want worlds intack. The Jewel Systems in the 5th FW are the exception to the rule. The Imperuim picked them to blunt the Zho attack. The devastation of the worlds must be high.
According to Striker, Imperial member worlds keep 70% of their defense budgets and pay the other 30% to the Imperium. Of the part they keep, 60% or more goes to the system navy. Most of that presumably goes to SDBs, monitors, and other system-bound defenses (How much goes to jump-capable ships is uclear). Of the part that goes to the system army, some (again not specified) goes to deep meson sites.
Be that as it may, Imperial member worlds apparently fund defenses more than twice the cost of the Imperial forces.
There are no special rules for the Jewell systems in FFW. All systems with the same population and technology are equally tough to defeat. Game mechanics being what they are that may mean much or little. However, historically Efate held out against a year-long siege with no reports of major devastation. Admittedly, it's unclear how the forces brough to bear against Jewell by the Zhodani compare to the forces they brought to bear against Efate, but I don't see any reason to suppose that any of the worlds besieged by the Zhodani suffered much in the way of orbital devastation (orbital bombardment, yes, but tactical, not extinction-level strategic bombardment).
Hans
You are right. But if you'd reposted my entire point...
... You'd have seen me say That It Is A ReAlItY DeNyIng NumBer CrunCher who FALLS into that reality-denying trap and SAYS "I don't care if your 400 ton Type T goes on long cruises! It's 400 tons and that means that I, the Accountant Who Is More Important In My Office Than You Out In Space, SAY it's a corvette because of its size!"
So, Sir Whipsnade, you're repeating me!
Please pardon my ferocity, though. We're having an argument even though we're essentially agreed - the disagreement is in the description, not in the details.
... You'd have seen me say That It Is A ReAlItY DeNyIng NumBer CrunCher who FALLS into that reality-denying trap and SAYS "I don't care if your 400 ton Type T goes on long cruises! It's 400 tons and that means that I, the Accountant Who Is More Important In My Office Than You Out In Space, SAY it's a corvette because of its size!"
So, Sir Whipsnade, you're repeating me!
Please pardon my ferocity, though. We're having an argument even though we're essentially agreed - the disagreement is in the description, not in the details.
I think I like your displacement limit - 12500 dtons for warships and 30000 for commercial ships*. It seems more structurally plausible than 1 million ton ships (I hear that a lot of fans of Star Wars dislike having superweapons every book and I would apply that to ships as well).
A thought however: many governments would, when able to construct 30000 ton ships (and I would say that they should be able to do so by TL 11 or 12) would willingly use the hulls for colony missions, even if it's the "get the riffraff out" ones.
*So long as they're not war's hips and commercial's hips. That's completely different.
Why?
We on this planet have had nukes for 67 years. We and the (former) Sovs and China and Britain and France, India and Pakistan, North Korea, maybe Israel. Been a lot of fighting over the years, no nuclear devastation after those first two uses 67 years ago. You use a weapon when it serves your tactical or strategic interests. You don't when it doesn't.
There's no reason to assume the Zho would resort to indiscriminate orbital bombardment, not unless there was something in canon suggesting the Zho were pursuing such scorched earth policies. The game describes the Zho trying some grand strategic trick to isolate a section of the March by naval maneuvering and use of ground troops to compel the Imperials to yield those worlds. In essence, the Zho hoped to put the Imperials in the position of having to make a pragmatic decision to surrender isolated and occupied worlds rather than undertake the considerable expense of moving more ships in from elsewhere to continue the war - the Marches, for all we love it, are after all a rather small and unimportant disputed region compared to Imperial and Zhodani space as a whole.
So, why would the Zho devastate worlds they hoped to capture, especially when the likely result would be to inflame Imperial opinion and encourage the Imps to prosecute the war more vigorously? This was the FIFTH such war - if they failed, they could always come back and try again later.
This is contrasted with the situation in the interior of the Imperium after the Imperial collapse, where the various factions fought to a standstill, no longer had reasonable expectation of defeating their opposites by naval engagement, but nonetheless remained vigorously and rather unpragmatically committed to prosecuting the war at all costs. THAT conflict devolved - gradually - into a total war model because the war itself had devolved into a contest of wills, an impassioned effort to right wrongs, get even, and defeat the murderous usurper and the other traitors (or conversely, to defeat - or at least avoid being defeated by - the murderously insane lunatic currently holding the Iridium throne).
Basically, if it's a war for limited objectives - resources and such - then people will tend to restrain themselves. If it becomes intensely personal - a crusade or jihad, a war to right wrongs and "get" the bad guy - or if people start thinking of it as a war for their very survival, then people get really, really nasty and bystanders tend to suffer rather badly.
The logistics of that would make an interesting and fun writeup. Emergency low berths, stacked to the roof. If you get 50% payload capacity, then a 30kt ship could (potentially, theoretically) move 15k x 4 = 60,000 people at a time. There's a pop 4 world right there. How do the tradeoffs in cost and capacity work out? What sort of time and organization do we need to get those people stowed and un-stowed? How many medical personnel do we need? Etc.
And how many trips (total, spread out across multiple ships) do we need to move, say, a billion people off of a world, 60 thousand at a time? (A bit more than 16,000 trips, right?) If we have 1,000 ships available, then that's 160 trips... assume one month per trip (might be a tad fast?) then that's 160 months, or less than 15 years with those ships making dedicated runs... expensive! Still might be worth it if a world is in dire straits, and opens up a number of adventure opportunities.
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Even a battleship or two falling from orbit is a major event - massive devastation on a localized scale, and significant chance of raising a lot of fallout. The fall of the Twin WTC Towers (430m tall) in NYC was detectable on seismographs for many miles, and fallout spread for a several mile radius... and that's just falling their own height. Now, have it hit at 1000kph+ as a unitary or near-unitary mass.
Those towers were roughly 50x50x430m, or 76KTd. Cruiser sized. And fell in a collapse, not a unitary mass each.
A pitched orbital battle might drop a dozen such from high orbit.
The Lost Fleet series (6 books or so) uses orbital bombardments as a major plot element in a 100+ year war that 'justifies' such on several levels - starting with destroying manufacturing abilities and evolving to eliminating combatants...
While I wouldn't rank them in my top ten lists as far as stories go, the books do focus a lot on starship combat - especially fleet actions - both strategically and tactically and in a setting that lacks FTL sensor or comms. In fact, it puts lots of emphasis on light speed delays.
Edit: The author is John Henry and penned under Jack Cambell, IIRC.
While I wouldn't rank them in my top ten lists as far as stories go, the books do focus a lot on starship combat - especially fleet actions - both strategically and tactically and in a setting that lacks FTL sensor or comms. In fact, it puts lots of emphasis on light speed delays.
Edit: The author is John Henry and penned under Jack Cambell, IIRC.
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Oh, I don't doubt that. Factor 40 starting armor and built up from there, they might break up a bit but they'd still make a nice big hole wherever they hit. And I'm sure, on a remarkably earth-like world with 6 billion people, there's a fair chance some of those masses hit towns or even cities, to the great misfortune of the folk in the immediate vicinity. However - and with all due respect to the unfortunate dead and those who will mourn them - there's a wee bit of difference between losing a few blocks of city and a few tens of thousands of unlucky souls in a dozen or so impacts scattered across the face of the planet and "high" devastation on a world of 6 billion. It's like trying to compare WW-II London to WW-II Hiroshima.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
True, though I don't see the odds of that being all that high. At least not immediately following or during the battle, unless the captain of the ship so disabled is still able to vector it out of orbit in a suicide plunge. The dead ships will probably stay in orbit for some time and might be as likely or more so* to simply leave orbit.
* first rule of safe nav, never plot your vector to intersect something you don't want to hit, most ships will be maintaining a vector such that if they loose all power they won't be in immediate danger of crashing into another ship, a moon, a world, or a star, I'd always be plotting a significant escape velocity while in orbit in case something went wrong, it's not like Traveller ships need to conserve energy by relying a simple gravitational orbit
Probably a lot slimmer than you'd think, for Earth anyway. Despite several billions of people we're packed into a remarkable dense few pockets of very small area and more spread out over a still small area of the rest. Most of our world is water. And most of the land is mostly uninhabited.
A bigger problem, should a ship, ships, or whatever hit a landmass will be the high potential for massive fires and the resultant smoke and ash lowering the overall temperature, depressing crops and food, making life harder for the survivors. It might be a blessing if a mega-city were hit instead to reduce the population significantly so there would be fewer to support on the reduced resources.
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