CT doesn't have a native CT vehicle design system; the Striker Minis Rules serve as the Vehicle Design System, and it's pretty damned crunchy, so, yeah, it's going to be different. Not something one should worry about, tho', provided you've labeled which edition you've used. Which you have.
It's true I wasn't using the speed mods for the vehicles, but I can't imagine anyone uses them in practice as written. -1 per 10m/6s means a 361kph grav tank is going about 600m/6s and would be targeted at -60. No one's hitting it at -60 with anything, which also didn't sound right. If -1 per 10m applies to human-sized targets who are roughly 1/4m^3, proportionally for a 40m^3 grav tank it'd be like -1 per 130-160 meters per turn, or a net of about -4. With good gunners and 3 tries, that's a fair chance of a hit, anyhow. By comparison a WW2-era torpedo bomber is probably like 8-16m^3, so a much harder target, -8-ish by my quick math.
I had not realized they could fire through the planet, that gives over-the-horizon entirely new meaning. You would have to aim by satellite or relay, of course, but it wouldn't be hard.
That’s their superpower, goes through planets and ignores ship armor, detonates internally. Only stopped by meson screens and agility generating a miss.
Its really hard to visualize the high tech Traveller battlefield.
I wasn't using numbers either, just the historical behavior of the ship. There was a reason historically that the big guns didn't tend to get used against torpedo bombers, the need to conserve ammo being part of the reason but the difficulty in hitting the target was definitely the other part. Historically, it took roughly a half-minute to load one of the big guns, and they're intended for carefully aimed fire at distant targets with much more limited maneuverability than torpedo bombers. The 5-inchers historically could put out 8 or 9 rounds per minute so were more effective against smaller and more maneuverable targets.
OODA loop, first used to describe the human element in a dogfight then applied to war making at all levels.
There were several cases where the OODA loops were reliant on a requirement from external authorities to authorize actions or assistance. They almost universally worked out poorly for the people that needed to wait for higher-level approval. TL15 almost certainly tightens those up to a greater degree than TL5 can't compete with, though in this case, the TL5 forces are already disorganized and operating outside any central command structure, shortening their own loops. It was hard to make this clear when telling the story from the Marines' side.OODA loop, first used to describe the human element in a dogfight then applied to war making at all levels.
OODA loop - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
That's part of my difficulty - thinking up all the ways TL5 forces can get one over on TL15 forces, and I leaned into the physical layer because that's where I was most surprised. Part of the problem is TL15 is kind of hard to imagine in a way. The bits of it we can see and react to aren't the bits that really make it devastating. It's the interlinking and networking between units and levels of authority that make a TL15 unit responsive. And the ability to call in mesons from orbit.
The 16-inch mounts could fire at targets over 35km away, the 5-inch mouts could go about 24km, which was why the big guns opened first. And the 5-inch shells would have done very little damage to the tanks, as you observe. I suppose I was locked in the same thinking as the Charge of the Light Brigade rather than allowing the Marines the flexibility and tactical acumen they deserve. My thinking had been, 'We're going to put the boot down on these TL5 numpties and be done by lunchtime,' where they actually ought to be on their A game at all times.
Yeah, the narrative isn't really surprising if they're just yokel forces, but even TL 12 forces should be able to walk all over TL 5 forces, I feel. I think my big concern was my mistaken expectation that TL15 forces should be able to wade through TL 5 forces without much concern for tactics. I think the takeaway here is that TL15 isn't nearly as big an edge as I had expected and felt it should be. Cavemen vs WW2 Marines would be TL0 vs TL5, and I think it would be a greater disparity. (I realize this opens another can of worms.)
And night vision, thermal imaging, and so forth. Night belongs to the marines, at least in this setting. Jumping from a high altitude g-carrier flying in darkness, silent night drop from above on jump belts on a moonless night, they could board the ship and take it over without making themselves targets for the ship's cannon. Some of that depends on how familiar the local military is with Imperial tactics - they could hang lights all over the ship and use searchlights to search the sky for attackers from above, but battleships aren't equipped to shoot straight up with anything that would be a danger to armored troops, so they'd need guns on shore to target such attacks and a star flare when they realized an attack was underway but even then, hitting something that can maneuver in three dimensions, drop suddenly like a rock or fly straight up in addition to their left-right evasion, would be very difficult, and the marines would be shooting out the lights, maybe even shooting at the star flare, as they dropped.
