The One-Ship Tender

[robject]

Using T5's ship design rules, I can design a 2400t Jump-4 tender that carries one 850 ton rider. The tender costs around MCr520. Using hull-multiple rules, I can design it as a 24,000t tender, or a 240,000t tender, and so on.

I haven't designed the rider, but it's going to cost more than MCr300.

Say the bundle is a billion credits. Without the jump drive and fuel, the rider is bound to be optimized for battle. Is it worth the extra cost?

 

[flykiller]

in hg2, yes, because armor and maneuver and hull-size-modifier is maximized with regard to combat-relevant structure and minimized with regard to the jump drives and jump fuel tanks. I imagine t5 is similar in this dynamic.

 

[robject]

in hg2, yes, because armor and maneuver and hull-size-modifier is maximized to combat-relevant structure and minimized relevant to the jump drives and jump fuel tanks. I imagine t5 is similar in this dynamic.

It is indeed. The resulting combat vessel has none of that "jump-fat" dragging its performance down.

Also reminds me of the jump shuttle-thing that moves the SDBs around.

Assuming the Imperium has lots of money burning holes in their pockets, it seems that this is a useful design.

 

[flykiller]

Assuming the Imperium has lots of money burning holes in their pockets

when I drew up my fleet (using hg2/tcs) I found the imperium had more money available for construction than it could spend in the yards. I dropped any consideration of budget and just went with yard space availability.

 

[Condottiere]

The obvious tactic is to keep the rider busy, as light forces go after the jump shuttle.

 

[flykiller]

well yes, obviously. how to prosecute that tactic successfully in a dynamic environment is not so straight-forward.

 

[McPerth]

The obvious tactic is to keep the rider busy, as light forces go after the jump shuttle.

Isn't that true in any tender/rider combo strategy?

That's why they use to also carry fighters and be accompained by escorts...

About the idea of single BR tenders, we discussed with AndreaV and others some years ago. If you want, I can look for the threads...

 

[kilemall]

when I drew up my fleet (using hg2/tcs) I found the imperium had more money available for construction than it could spend in the yards. I dropped any consideration of budget and just went with yard space availability.

Optimization would be to use the fast spend rules to build max tons per month, then mothball them.

During war the Imperium pulls them out of storage, spends that extra money for fast tonnage work, and suddenly you have multiples of finished ships in a given time frame at need.

 

[Condottiere]

And put all their trained crews into deep freeze.

 

[whartung]

Say the bundle is a billion credits. Without the jump drive and fuel, the rider is bound to be optimized for battle. Is it worth the extra cost?

And then there's the "if it's worth the cost, then why not use it", why is it not more common, why do most combat vessels not have "drop jump drives" that they jettison in combat so as not to "fly dirty".

if a 1BCr ship with jump drives is not as effective as a 1BCr shuttle/rider combo, why is it not done.

 

[flykiller]

During war the Imperium pulls them out of storage

yeah, but you won't have the crews. a ship with a novice crew is just a turkey at a turkey shoot. and you won't have the repair/maintenance capability standing by.

in any case the shipyard capacity is quite limiting, especially when you factor in yard space for annual maintenance (not to mention repairs).

And put all their trained crews into deep freeze.

then you won't have them up-front. at best you'll have half-trained crews in storage and half-trained crews on deployment.

 

[Condottiere]

In theory, the more volume a ship has, the more margin for damage absorption you have.

 

[flykiller]

In theory, the more volume a ship has, the more margin for damage absorption you have.

if the ruleset implements this, sure. but that's not easy. external vs internal leads inevitably to exterior fuel tanks, aspect considerations, combat effects, timing ... it gets ugly real fast. then there's meson blasts - in effect, each ship needs TWO sets of to-hit/damage tables, one for external hits and one for universal hits.

personally I love it, but selling it as a game is not easy.

 

[Whipsnade]

Is it worth the extra cost?

For the rules we have? Yes, it's worth it.

The problem is, of course, that we don't have all the ship combat rules and systems we need for Traveller. Sensors/ECM is simplistic, logistics don't exist, and, worst of all, we're completely missing the operational level between the tactical and strategic levels.

Operational rules would "answer" a lot of long term mysteries regarding Traveller ship combat.

 

[flykiller]

Operational rules would "answer" a lot of long term mysteries regarding Traveller ship combat.

demonstrated a ship-to-ship combat system here on the board, no takers. ran a pair of fleet combat scenarios beginning to introduce logistics and sensor ranges and tactical maneuver, limited interest then and NO interest since, complete radio silence. and a recent poll indicates that most gamers have little to no ship combat in their games - not hard to see why, no player or referee wants to see a years' worth of role-playing work go down the tubes over a single laser hit. not sure the mystery is worth pursuing.

 

[Whipsnade]

not sure the mystery is worth pursuing.

From a purely RPG viewpoint, over half of the HG2 supplement is worthless. For others, however, Traveller is more than a RPG.

If you want to model a space navy, if you want the IN to "make sense", if you want to make the existence of "fighters" and "riders" to make sense, if you want dozens of other things found in canon to make sense, then you need those "operational level" answers.

 

[flykiller]

For others, however, Traveller is more than a RPG.

yeah, I keep hearing that, and I'm sure there are such ... somewhere ....

 

[aramis]

From a purely RPG viewpoint, over half of the HG2 supplement is worthless. For others, however, Traveller is more than a RPG.

If you want to model a space navy, if you want the IN to "make sense", if you want to make the existence of "fighters" and "riders" to make sense, if you want dozens of other things found in canon to make sense, then you need those "operational level" answers.

T5 gives a reason for battleships - the biggest ship of the victorious side can yank the fleeing forces back for the following week by simply flying over their exit points.

Unfortunately, this also makes commerce by small ships almost impossible.

 

[mike wightman]

Couple of thoughts.

A one rider tender is the cheapest way to bring one rider to battle, but not the cheapest way to bring a squadron of riders to battle.

At the operational level the tender should drop its rider in the outer system and hide.

My preferred tactic would be to build jump 1 battleships that are jumped into a system by tender and then the tender can jump out again to rendezvous with tankers and the like. Or use drop tanks to jump from one hex away and still have the fuel for an emergency jump outsystem if necessary.

 

[whartung]

Well, I'm keenly interested in the operational game. But I think some tactical runs need to be done that can be abstracted out to the operational level. Specifically about fueling, as that's the singular limited operational resource.

In FFW, if you have streamlined ships, you don't have a fuel problem. You can always fuel before combat. Non-streamlined ships can not, they're obligated to endure combat first. I've not played enough FFW to figure out how much of an issue that is.

Tactically, there's the question of the practicality of defending a gas giant, or, worse, defending several gas giants. Even worse, there's the whole question about fueling in an asteroid belt (which I do not really think is viable time wise).

If fueling off of asteroids is a reasonable alternative, then that means fueling off the Oort cloud may be reasonable as well. If that is possible, then the strategic map changes dramatically, as the Oort cloud is indefensible, and Oort fueling removes borders and strategic choke points, allowing deep penetration and raiding fleets -- fleets you can practically do nothing about outside of static defenses.

One could argue that it's not done because there's no evidence that it has been done.

But these are just decisions to set the model.

The other issue is simply economic. But as we saw in Rebellion, combat is not sustainable on any real scale. Not so much because of money, but simply time -- ships take far too long to produce. 2-5 years. The Rebellion fleets exhausted themselves readily to being barely operational with no spares in the pipeline for some time. With a large number of ship yards, you can have new ships rolling out in time, but the delay between builds is substantial. Soon, it's too expensive to move, operations halt, costs mount, and then impasse begins.

So, it may be simply that FFW models the operational game just fine.

I'm also fascinated by the communications and intelligence problems. I'd love to run a game with a player per fleet, and keep the intelligence and reports and orders in "real time". Not sure really how the plotting in FFW really mimics the problem. But I think as a player, being on the front line, dealing with the uncertainty of creaky old intelligence, ancient orders, and less of the big picture while being directed by a central authority with late intelligence and commanders who won't do what they're told.

Just seems like it would be interesting.

And, of course, everyone is aware of my feeling on the tactical game - there simply isn't any. Fleet operations are no more tactical than Risk.