Starships - Are We Bringing Enough Guns?

[Condottiere]

Engineering for starwarships tends to be primarily the jump drive, and affiliated fuel tanks, so for the Imperium Navy's standard four parsec range, that's half the volume.

Balance would be around ten percent for the primary armament.

 

[Rupert]

An important thing to remember with energy weapons - you should count the power supply 'slice' required to power them into their percentage. The same applies to screens that require power.

 

[Condottiere]

You can cheat with batteries, if you calculate that the engagements won't last long.

Sort of the equivalent of magazines.

 

[Rupert]

You can cheat with batteries, if you calculate that the engagements won't last long.

Sort of the equivalent of magazines.

You still need to count those in the 'weapon' slice, though.

Also, if I'm correct it's only workable at TL14 (batteries from Striker give about 1.4 turns of power at TL14 for the same displacement as a powerplant of the same output) and very slightly at TL15 (1.17 turns). It's also very expensive.

 

[Condottiere]

Well, it depends on the edition.

And, you can recharge while you're bravely running away.

 

[mike wightman]

What is lacking is a way to add vehicle scale weapons from LBB:4 and Striker to ship construction.

Hardpoints may limit ship scale weapons, but why not add rapid pulse plasma A guns all the way up to rapid pulse fusion Y guns for point defence in space combat and for ground side fire support?

 

[Rupert]

What is lacking is a way to add vehicle scale weapons from LBB:4 and Striker to ship construction.

Hardpoints may limit ship scale weapons, but why not add rapid pulse plasma A guns all the way up to rapid pulse fusion Y guns for point defence in space combat and for ground side fire support?

For point defence in space combat the argument would be that they lack range. For use on the ground, B4 didn't have any rules for spaceships, HG was about major ships having it out in deep space, and Striker could've had such rules, but presumably Frank thought them a poor use of word count - not really on topic, and if someone wanted to add a small gun to a space ship they could whip up some rules easily enough - at the time of publication (1981) people doing that was the norm, after all.

 

[kilemall]

You still need to count those in the 'weapon' slice, though.

Also, if I'm correct it's only workable at TL14 (batteries from Striker give about 1.4 turns of power at TL14 for the same displacement as a powerplant of the same output) and very slightly at TL15 (1.17 turns). It's also very expensive.

Depends on how far you push the capacitor ‘cheat’. How long can they retain power before they bleed off and how much risk are they given the inherent full charge destroy ship feature. That’s 36EP per dton at TL9, properly speaking for a full turn.

By Striker terms that is 36 EP x 250MW x 1000 seconds (CT turns, HG is longer). The result is 9 terawatt-seconds. Can’t beat that energy density.

My fix is to treat them as an exploding pariah choice. Obviously lasts at full charge for jump reliably, but that’s a short time.

I imagine them as metallic hydrogen that advanced gravitics allows pressure systems to form. They stay stable until they retain power for too long, where they heat up, expand and eventually explode.

So they aren’t usable long enough to get to capacitor bleed off or replace power plants, only shortly before use than discharge before whoops.

 

[kilemall]

What is lacking is a way to add vehicle scale weapons from LBB:4 and Striker to ship construction.

Hardpoints may limit ship scale weapons, but why not add rapid pulse plasma A guns all the way up to rapid pulse fusion Y guns for point defence in space combat and for ground side fire support?

I’d rule that striker weapons count against hardpoints. Same thing, interrupting that critical near outer hull layer. Maybe at half rates, so you can mount 2 separate weapons for one hardpoint.

 

[kilemall]

For point defence in space combat the argument would be that they lack range. For use on the ground, B4 didn't have any rules for spaceships, HG was about major ships having it out in deep space, and Striker could've had such rules, but presumably Frank thought them a poor use of word count - not really on topic, and if someone wanted to add a small gun to a space ship they could whip up some rules easily enough - at the time of publication (1981) people doing that was the norm, after all.

There is a bit in Striker in the environment effects section about the weapons in vacuum. They get quite a boost particularly lasers.

If you boost the lasers up to 250MW, you get starship ranges that correspond to CT. So they were IMO deliberately dovetailing the two but didn’t go all the way like later versions.

Like I said, I went all out on my CT/HG synthesis rules and one iteration was pure Striker starship.

 

[Rupert]

Depends on how far you push the capacitor ‘cheat’. How long can they retain power before they bleed off and how much risk are they given the inherent full charge destroy ship feature. That’s 36EP per dton at TL9, properly speaking for a full turn.

Ah, using the Black Globe/jump drive capacitors. Yeah, the numbers of those have always been wonky, and I don't think they'd stay charged long - if they did they'd be used for everything.

 

[Spinward Flow]

How long can they retain power before they bleed off

The RAW that introduced jump capacitors (LBB5.80, p42) stipulates that during combat the only way to discharge the jump capacitors is to discharge them as a portion of power plant output (so can't stack them "on top of" power plant output levels). There is nothing indicating that jump capacitors "leak power" over time scales (combat turns, hours, days, etc.).

So if you look at it from a different perspective ... jump capacitors contain 36 EP/turns worth of energy storage.

• 36 EP in 1 combat turns
• 1 EP in 36 combat turns

You get the idea.
From a discharge over time perspective, if combat turns are 20 minutes (LBB5.80 update to LBB2.81 combat paradigm) ... then 36 EP/turns is sufficient to output 1 EP for 12 hours from 1 ton of (fully charged at the start) jump capacitor storage.

Compare that to fusion power plant fuel ... where 1.05 tons of fuel can generate 1 EP for 21 days (using CT Beltstrike fuel formula).

12 hours (costing MCr4) versus 21 days (costing MCr0) per ton.
Not hard to figure out where the "higher density power source" is to be found, in terms of tonnage.



As for "slow over time discharge losses" in jump capacitors ... that's something that Referees can toy with to model in their campaigns as they see fit.

 

[kilemall]

The RAW that introduced jump capacitors (LBB5.80, p42) stipulates that during combat the only way to discharge the jump capacitors is to discharge them as a portion of power plant output (so can't stack them "on top of" power plant output levels). There is nothing indicating that jump capacitors "leak power" over time scales (combat turns, hours, days, etc.).

So if you look at it from a different perspective ... jump capacitors contain 36 EP/turns worth of energy storage.

• 36 EP in 1 combat turns
• 1 EP in 36 combat turns

You get the idea.
From a discharge over time perspective, if combat turns are 20 minutes (LBB5.80 update to LBB2.81 combat paradigm) ... then 36 EP/turns is sufficient to output 1 EP for 12 hours from 1 ton of (fully charged at the start) jump capacitor storage.

Compare that to fusion power plant fuel ... where 1.05 tons of fuel can generate 1 EP for 21 days (using CT Beltstrike fuel formula).

12 hours (costing MCr4) versus 21 days (costing MCr0) per ton.
Not hard to figure out where the "higher density power source" is to be found, in terms of tonnage.



As for "slow over time discharge losses" in jump capacitors ... that's something that Referees can toy with to model in their campaigns as they see fit.

Abuse case for that isn’t replacement in general, but say for fighters/small craft, or running a smaller power plant for normal ops that charge a separate bank of capacitors for weapons- or say double shot spinals. Or powering down the power plant for doggo running.

Yes the capacitor rule says it is limited to the power plant capacity. I figure that’s because of the distribution controller and network that comes with the plant being the easiest way to get the discharge done.

But I allow capacitors to be in line between the power plant and the downstream systems so the EPs have to go through them, offloading the extra distribution work.

Alternatively I allow extra distribution capacity of the power plant with rating what the power plant size would be with the desired capacitor surge, than sizing the plant back down while adding 20% of the difference to represent thst extra capacity.

This would create a fusion-electric like the nuclear-electric boats proposed as SSn (little nukes).

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[Grav_Moped]

Not hard to figure out where the "higher density power source" is to be found, in terms of tonnage.

The flip side of that is power delivery capacity. Being able to get 36EP/Td (capacitors, at jump-drive discharge rates) instead of 0.25-0.5EP/Td (power plant plus fuel at TL8/13/15) makes a difference.

Then there's the question of running the power plant on overload, as in supporting LBB5 jump drives*.

---------------
* LBB5 jump drives are proportionately smaller than LBB2 ones because the latter incorporate their own (high-power but inefficient) fusion reactors while the former are just the field generators. This is explicit in '77 (hence the XBoat), and only nominally walked back in '81; size formulae were only retained for backwards compatibility despite the changed canon technobabble.

The game effect is to allow TL to affect Jump Drive tonnage requirements in addition to the effect on maneuver drive tonnage commitments.

 

[Condottiere]

You could reverse polarity, and use the jump drive as power distributor, siphoning off the charge from the capacitors.