Author Topic: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff  (Read 10705 times)

sillybrit

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Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« on: 30 March 2017, 23:43:49 »
Discussions about WarShips, their merits, their flaws, their design and their usage tends to focus on modern designs, but what about the earlier designs, when some technologies have yet to be developed? What about where it all started, with the TAS Dreadnought?

(Some might argue that the warship story starts with the TAS Charger, but as we lack even a hint of stats it's a moot point)

It may be surprising to some, but technically the Dreadnoughts weren't WarShips, but were instead Primitive JumpShips. In fact, per IntOps, every "WarShip" introduced prior to 2460 is actually a Primitive WarShip. In order of introduction date, that would be the following classes: Dreadnought, Dart, Black Lion I, Bonaventure, Vigilant, Cruiser, Lola I, Quixote, Essex I, Defender (FedSuns), Winchester (TauCon), League I (FWL), Monsoon, Aegis, Commonwealth I (LyrCom), Narukami I (DraCom), Du Shi Wang (CapCon), Tracker, Vincent, Riga I, Nightwing, and Farragut.

It's worth mentioning that the HAF Navy numbered over 300 warships, up to and including the Cruiser-class, three decades before anybody else built a warship. Given that we know the Defender is the first non-Terran true warship, it seems likely that the HAF only faced militarized Aquillas and their ilk during the Campaigns of Persuasion. With a navy in the hundreds. Including Dreadnoughts. And those Aquillas were probably armed with viciously sharp slices of mango.  Yeah, the Hegemony were that kind of special.

Hegemony...
Hegemony...

Hegemony, **** yeah!
Coming again to save the ************* day, yeah!
Hegemony, **** yeah!
Freedom is the only way, yeah!

Colonies, your game is through,
'Cause now you have to answer to...
Hegemony, **** yeah!
So lick my **** and suck on my *****!
Hegemony, **** yeah!
What you gonna to do when we come for you now?

It's the dream that we all share,
It's the hope for tomorrow,
**** yeah!
(Official anthem of the HAF Navy during the Campaigns of Persuasion)


So what's the difference between a WarShip and a Primitive JumpShip? After 2300, the answer is not much really. Obviously there will be certain weapons and equipment that aren't yet available, such as KF-capable docking collars, but by 2300 most key components achieve their modern form in game terms, with the exception of armor. The lighter, and potentially longer ranged, compact KF core is the real game changer in technology terms for the Dreadnoughts, but otherwise it's only their size that sets them apart from whatever came before.

I'd like to point out here that the armor section for the Primitive JumpShip construction rules really got messed up. Not only did the primitive armor modifier get left out of the rules, although it appears in the example, but the rules and example mistakenly use the armor formula for modern JUmpShips and not modern WarShips as they should. As written, the erroneous formula presents the ludicrous situation of a Primitive JumpShip being able to have stronger protection than a modern WarShip of the same size and structural strength even when the latter uses Lamellor Ferro-Carbide. This should have been addressed a long time back, but the fix got lost among other updates and was only recently added to the IntOps errata thread. Of course, this being BattleTech there will no doubt be rules lawyers who will argue the point until official errata is published or perhaps even until a new printing of IntOps.

To give an example using a canon design, with all else remaining equal, the Dreadnought-class' armor values when first constructed would actually be two facings of 55 and four of 54, instead of the 85/85/85/80/80/80 shown in HTP:RW.

Having to use DropShuttles instead of DropShips had a big impact on warships when we look at them as a complete weapon system. Instead of allocating 2kt for two collars to gain up to 200kt of DropShip mass (yeah, I know, large DropShip quirk...), giving a 198kt net gain, DropShuttle bays require 11kt to carry 10kt of DropShuttle mass, for a net loss of 1000t. Even if you carried a 5kt DropShip instead of a 5kt DropShuttle, you're still coming out ahead in the mass comparison. Combat DropShuttles can still be useful to extend the defensive perimeter, add extra launch bay doors for ASFs and Small Craft, and provide extra capital ECM, but you're giving up so much more for that capability than you do for equivalent, or superior, DropShips.

So, from 2300 until 2460 (Terrans)/2470 (Terrans in bulk, plus everybody else), you have less armor protection for a given tonnage, and the burden of DropShuttles instead of DropShips, but nothing really differs when true WarShips start being built. It can be assumed that many earlier designs that were still in service were then upgraded, giving us the stats that we see in TRO3057R and later publications. The publication of IntOps means that we really need a major rewrite of many warship designs, but given the relatively poor sales performance of TRO3057R I'm not holding my breath. (Note: I have zero knowledge of any plans that may or may not exist for an update to TRO3057R, so don't take my wording as anything other than my pessimism)

I would argue that after the Primitive JumpShip/WarShip threshold, the biggest paradigm shift for naval combat was the introduction of AMS in 2617. Prior to that date, much less capable point defense was available to the point of making ships all but defenseless against massed nuclear missile attacks. Of course, due to the real world timing of the introduction of rules and designs, AMS is few and far between in canon designs, particularly in the heyday of WarShips during the Star League era. Jellico developed an after the event excuse that the SLDF relied on defense in depth to reduce or prevent nuclear attacks reaching their WarShips, but there is the problem that eventually a bad guy is going to get in shooting range and the SLDF currently lack a canon solution. Perhaps more importantly, what about prior to the Star League or those navies that lack the SLDF's vast resources?

In my opinion, the only limits preventing naval battles from looking like WOPR simulations as they should are game factors. A case of the tail wagging the dog.

Prior to AMS, scenarios that go nuclear tend to be rather short and often result in the destruction of both sides, which is rather unsatisfying. Game rules thus treat nuclear weapons as an optional add-on and this is reflected in canon designs, which typically have few capital missile launchers. Without nukes, scenarios become more drawn out, allow greater use of tactics and have a real chance of having a surviving victor. Real world sensibilities and the obvious and rational aversion to nuclear warfare perhaps also has a role to play here.

Within the game universe, it should be remembered that the Ares Convention didn't exist prior to 2412 and even after that nuclear attacks were still legal on military targets 75000km or more from an inhabited planetary surface. Even with the fear of a legal slap on the wrist or mutual destruction holding back the use of nuclear weapons, there'd always be somebody who'd chose to launch at the first opportunity, or as a last gasp to take an enemy with them, particularly given some of the mutual hatreds between some states in the BattleTech universe.

Conventional thinking is that a large WarShip will defeat an equal mass of smaller WarShips due to how maximum armor protection is calculated. Given that just one or two nuclear hits can be so devastating, in a naval environment that focuses on nuclear warfare there is the argument that multiple smaller ships increase the survivability of at least some of your force. All that would change when AMS is invented, and large WarShips focusing on direct-fire armamaments would become the dominant designs. It's somewhat amusing that in the development of real world blue water navy we went from gun-armed to missile-armed warships as technology advanced, but BattleTech space navies should be doing the opposite.

Without designs being limited by game factors and the real world history of the game's development, I'd suggest that prior to 2617 warships should look more like the Cruiser- or Quixote-classes, with armament focused on massed capital missile batteries, with the addition of swathes of point defense. Small Craft, DropShuttles and, later, DropShips, would be designed to provide even more point defense and fleets would be forced to fly in tight, mutually supporting formations. Some warship designs, perhaps corvettes, could even focus more on point defense than offensive capability, although that would perhaps be a questionable use of a KF core. ASFs, whether primitive or modern, would be more likely to carry Alamos into battle in naval engagements, and that's already hinted at with the fluff for the Alamo in IntOps that states that "...during the Age of War... the Type II and its modern equivalents often served as a weapon of choice in dealing with fleet assets...".

Even with a possible tendency towards smaller warships in this pre-AMS nuclear battlefield, larger warships would perhaps still have a place at the back of a fleet, carrying large numbers of DropShuttles, Small Craft, ASFs, and possibly possessing bigger missile magazines. The smaller warships on the leading edge of a formation would perhaps limit the number of shots per launcher because they probably won't get to empty their magazines anyway, so instead of spending tonnage on deeper magazines, they'd mount more launchers to allow for bigger salvos.

That's enough for a start.

TL;DR - Hegemony are nuts. Oops, math. Poor doggy. Macross spam time with Harrington in command.

Jellico

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #1 on: 31 March 2017, 08:06:49 »
One thing to remember is that the odds of a nuke being fatal are surprisingly poor. I have a spreadsheet somewhere offering 1:10 at 20 hexes or something. I would need to check. With gunnery stuffed retreat is the only practical option. Interestingly wound and retreat applies to everything from a Leopard to a Leviathan.

The lack of AMS is a historical publishing oddity that we really have no excuse for and no opportunity to rectify.

The most likely outcome of a nuke hit is enough damage to slightly annoy a Leopard and a massively stuffed up targeting computer.

I would love to see the results of nuclear combat between three types of ships.
Quixote type missile boats.
TRO2750 type ships that tend to have a solid array of capital missiles.
TRO3057 type ships which were forged under Battlespace and the all mighty conventional weapon.

Especially if retreats are attempted after major damage.

So get playing  :)

Maingunnery

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #2 on: 31 March 2017, 11:43:34 »

Won't such early ships be using primitive small craft for point defense?
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sillybrit

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #3 on: 31 March 2017, 15:20:13 »
One thing to remember is that the odds of a nuke being fatal are surprisingly poor. I have a spreadsheet somewhere offering 1:10 at 20 hexes or something. I would need to check. With gunnery stuffed retreat is the only practical option. Interestingly wound and retreat applies to everything from a Leopard to a Leviathan.

The lack of AMS is a historical publishing oddity that we really have no excuse for and no opportunity to rectify.

The most likely outcome of a nuke hit is enough damage to slightly annoy a Leopard and a massively stuffed up targeting computer.

Given that you're mentioning a range, you're presumably including the base hit chance, and yes, a nuclear missile is no more accurate against a large target than any other capital weapon, with the exception of the Barracuda. With capital weapons being somewhat equal in terms of accuracy during this era, it's the damage that they inflict that's my key point. I was careful (I hope!) to talk in terms of actual hits, and here nuclear missiles are all kinds of special, and not in the nice way for the target.

One of the metagame ways to limit nuclear weapons is that we only get a limited number of "standard" types, and those are typically lower yield than what the platform could actually deliver. But let's stick with the existing types in IntOps for the sake of argument.

It should be remembered that, unlike non-nuclear weapons, any SI damage from a nuclear weapon is not halved, and is instead applied in full. In addition, after the regular damage is applied, there's a chance to inflict a critical hit that inflicts 10x damage direct to SI, bypassing armor. Even if a vessel does survive a hit, it then has to make a Control Roll at +4. Finally, any unit, ie. not just the target, in a hex where a nuclear weapon detonates will suffer EMP effects that reduce targeting.

First, we have the Type IV warhead, or Peacemaker, based upon a Killer Whale chassis. It was typically used for surface bombardment, but as per IntOps it can still be used for anti-shipping attacks. The Peacemaker inflicts 1000 capital points of damage with a regular hit. That'll one-shot kill almost all canon designs, and pre-2460 it's not realistically possible for even the Hegemony, who could build larger ships than anybody else, to field a ship that can survive a hit from a Peacemaker. The Peacemaker will crit on a 8+, so a 41.6% chance to also inflict 10000 capital points directly to the SI. That not only kills the ship, but it kills the next three ships named after it and the shipyard they were built in.

For slightly less insanity, there's the Type III, the ever faithful Santa Ana, based upon a White Shark chassis. The Santa Ana inflicts 100 capital points, which is still all kinds of suck for any warship, never mind a DropShip or DropShuttle. Again, it can inflict a crit that bypasses armor and deal 10x the damage for a guaranteed insta-boom, but in this case the crit chance is merely a 9+, or 27.7%.

There technically isn't an anti-shipping nuclear-tipped Barracuda, although the Type II (aka Alamo) warhead would be an obvious choice, ignoring the fact that even a Barracuda could fit a much larger warhead. Assuming that a Type II warhead is used, it'll inflict just 10 capital points of damage, while the crit chance to inflict an extra 10x damage through armor drops to a 10+, so a 16.6% chance.

Using the example of a Leopard, I can see one surviving a Type II if it gets lucky, but once the larger warheads are being used it's not going to happen. Among canon WarShips, even a regular hit from a Type III will one-shot most destroyers and lighter designs, and nothing built in the Star League era or earlier survives a Type IV or a crit from a Type III.

Won't such early ships be using primitive small craft for point defense?

Yes, as I mentioned, Small Craft should be used for point defense. Prior to about 2500 (see IntOps p121 for variations),  all Small Craft will be Primitive Small Craft, but that doesn't really have much impact on a missile goalkeeper.
« Last Edit: 31 March 2017, 16:27:02 by sillybrit »

Talen5000

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #4 on: 01 April 2017, 11:41:54 »
Having to use DropShuttles instead of DropShips had a big impact on warships when we look at them as a complete weapon system. Instead of allocating 2kt for two collars to gain up to 200kt of DropShip mass (yeah, I know, large DropShip quirk...), giving a 198kt net gain, DropShuttle bays require 11kt to carry 10kt of DropShuttle mass, for a net loss of 1000t. Even if you carried a 5kt DropShip instead of a 5kt DropShuttle, you're still coming out ahead in the mass comparison. Combat DropShuttles can still be useful to extend the defensive perimeter, add extra launch bay doors for ASFs and Small Craft, and provide extra capital ECM, but you're giving up so much more for that capability than you do for equivalent, or superior, DropShips.

Maybe...but this seems to rely upon a gross simplification of reality vs the rules. That mass...those extra 198kTons still have to be transported and one of the limiting factors in JumpShip design and KF fields is mass.  The boom extends the field around the DropShip but there doesn't seem to be anything that deals with mass. A KF drive suitable for transporting 500kTons shouldn't really be capable of transporting 700kTons.


So, from 2300 until 2460 (Terrans)/2470 (Terrans in bulk, plus everybody else), you have less armor protection for a given tonnage, and the burden of DropShuttles instead of DropShips, but nothing really differs when true WarShips start being built. It can be assumed that many earlier designs that were still in service were then upgraded, giving us the stats that we see in TRO3057R and later publications. The publication of IntOps means that we really need a major rewrite of many warship designs, but given the relatively poor sales performance of TRO3057R I'm not holding my breath. (Note: I have zero knowledge of any plans that may or may not exist for an update to TRO3057R, so don't take my wording as anything other than my pessimism)

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I would argue that after the Primitive JumpShip/WarShip threshold, the biggest paradigm shift for naval combat was the introduction of AMS in 2617. Prior to that date, much less capable point defense was available to the point of making ships all but defenseless against massed nuclear missile attacks. Of course, due to the real world timing of the introduction of rules and designs, AMS is few and far between in canon designs, particularly in the heyday of WarShips during the Star League era. Jellico developed an after the event excuse that the SLDF relied on defense in depth to reduce or prevent nuclear attacks reaching their WarShips, but there is the problem that eventually a bad guy is going to get in shooting range and the SLDF currently lack a canon solution. Perhaps more importantly, what about prior to the Star League or those navies that lack the SLDF's vast resources?

Well...the problem here arose from treating 2750 too literally. IIRC, warships supposedly did have strong AA and AMS defences. 2750 largely seems to have treated such systems in the same manner as the anti meteor equipment...as in simply not listed them.

In my opinion, the only limits preventing naval battles from looking like WOPR simulations as they should are game factors. A case of the tail wagging the dog.

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Game rules thus treat nuclear weapons as an optional add-on and this is reflected in canon designs, which typically have few capital missile launchers.

In reality, missiles would likely be a good bit more common. Autocannons would be impractical, lasers subject to range limitations while missiles would be able to self correct at range.

So you'd likely see combat open up with long range missile strikes, switching to lasers and then ACs as the range shortens. How many missiles would depend on how cheap they are.


Quote
Without nukes, scenarios become more drawn out, allow greater use of tactics and have a real chance of having a surviving victor. Real world sensibilities and the obvious and rational aversion to nuclear warfare perhaps also has a role to play here.

I'm still undecided as to whether or not the decision to keep rules around was a good idea. It would have been fairly simply to simply handwave them away as not useable due to KF drive interference or some iother technobabble. It would have dealt with most issues wrt nukes.
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sillybrit

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #5 on: 01 April 2017, 13:11:56 »
Maybe...but this seems to rely upon a gross simplification of reality vs the rules. That mass...those extra 198kTons still have to be transported and one of the limiting factors in JumpShip design and KF fields is mass.  The boom extends the field around the DropShip but there doesn't seem to be anything that deals with mass. A KF drive suitable for transporting 500kTons shouldn't really be capable of transporting 700kTons.

What reality? KF drives aren't real and their characteristics are whatever the game developers want them to be, so if the game universe states that KF booms allow the KF field to safely transport additional mass, then that is the "reality". Within that chosen "reality", the different types of core have different characteristics and the rules reflect that.

I would prefer the in-universe "reality" to have been different. I'd prefer KF drives to have a simple mass capacity based upon their own size, eradicating the difference between compact and standard cores. JumpShips would simply be designs that added the bare minimum systems around the core, thereby maximizing the core's mass capacity that was free for DropShips. Meanwhile, WarShips want to have lots of guns, armor, etc so they'd instead sacrifice much of their external lift capacity. Primitive cores would then simply have lower mass capacities for their size, alongside range limits for the earliest models.

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Well...the problem here arose from treating 2750 too literally. IIRC, warships supposedly did have strong AA and AMS defences. 2750 largely seems to have treated such systems in the same manner as the anti meteor equipment...as in simply not listed them.

The problem with a game system like BattleTech is that if it isn't written down, it didn't happen. There's no such stat blocks or record sheets and fluff isn't rules, so no AA, no AMS.

The real reason the problem has arose is that the original TRO2750 ship stats were created without design rules and arguably without a lot of thought, then when design rules were added later they weren't adjusted. When new ship designs were added to the game, they pretty much kept the same theme with at best token attempts at AA and PD. Similarly, when nuclear weapons were added to the game, existing designs weren't amended to cope, with the metagame avoidance of nuclear weapons used as a balancing factor instead.

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I'm still undecided as to whether or not the decision to keep rules around was a good idea. It would have been fairly simply to simply handwave them away as not useable due to KF drive interference or some iother technobabble. It would have dealt with most issues wrt nukes.

I guess you meant to say "...to keep nukes around..."? To have some sort of technobabble that makes nuclear weapons cause interference with a KF drive might look enticing, but it presents system defenders with a massive advantage. If nuclear weapons just cause problems with jumping, then once defending WarShips are in-system, they get their magazines loaded with Santa Anas and Peacemakers and prepare the victory party. If nuclear weapons cause problems simply being near a KF drive, then you fall back to DropShips/DropShuttles armed with capital missiles.

The question might be asked as to where the nuclear weapons come from. Given that there's an entire system for the system owners to exploit, there's going to be no scarcity of fissile materials if using fission weapons, but there's also laser-trigger fusion as an option. Of course, laser-triggered fusion warheads are going to require really bizarre technobabble to justify why there's interference with KF drives in the first place given that naval autocannons use laser-triggered fusion.

Maingunnery

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #6 on: 01 April 2017, 14:08:09 »

What about having primitive capital missiles be one-shot weapons?

1. This puts a harder limit on their number
2. Does make the current capital launcher more innovative in comparison.
3. Would look more like Real Life launchers.
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sillybrit

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #7 on: 01 April 2017, 15:13:40 »
Possible, but the majority of a capital missile bay's mass is invested in the magazine anyway, so you're not gaining that much. As an extra penalty, the single-shot launcher could be required to count the mass of the missile when calculating any extra fire control mass, but it's still not going to prevent a ship mounting enough missiles to kill an opponent.

Assuming that your third comment is about real world naval weaponry, then that only applies to modern vertical-launch systems (eg Mk 41), not the older launch rail systems (eg Mk 26), so the real world situation would actually be the opposite to what you're intending.

Maingunnery

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #8 on: 01 April 2017, 15:38:13 »
Possible, but the majority of a capital missile bay's mass is invested in the magazine anyway, so you're not gaining that much. As an extra penalty, the single-shot launcher could be required to count the mass of the missile when calculating any extra fire control mass, but it's still not going to prevent a ship mounting enough missiles to kill an opponent.
It would help, but maybe add extra sensitivity to Ship ECM fields?

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Assuming that your third comment is about real world naval weaponry, then that only applies to modern vertical-launch systems (eg Mk 41), not the older launch rail systems (eg Mk 26), so the real world situation would actually be the opposite to what you're intending.
I often compare capital missiles with ICBMs, I don't know of any ICBM with magazines. 
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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #9 on: 01 April 2017, 15:49:05 »
With the caveat of battery power, recharge station, and jump sail;
the performance, range and accuracy of a K-F Drive appears to have at least as much to do with the high-tech software as with a particular physical make/model physical plant (aka drive critical locations, tonnage and shape). In other words the door still seems open to the theory that K-F Drives are not really optimized, nor are they operating at potential peak performance, but are limited more by the designers needing to limit many forces to achieve acceptable safety conditions. Like trying to drink from a fire hose.


Ergo, a 'jump field' might vary according to era and upgrade revision to accommodate mass.
« Last Edit: 01 April 2017, 16:10:36 by Easy »

sillybrit

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #10 on: 01 April 2017, 16:36:12 »
It would help, but maybe add extra sensitivity to Ship ECM fields?

That would also be viable.

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I often compare capital missiles with ICBMs, I don't know of any ICBM with magazines.

Ah, a different beast entirely, with the only reasonable comparison with BattleTech's capital missiles being that both are big, rather than their deployment.

Given the nature of ICBMs and what they're meant to be used for, reloading them can perhaps be viewed as questionable at best. That said, as I recall reloadable train-mounted ICBM launchers were one of the talking points around one of the START treaties. ICBMs come with real world political issues that're just as important as technical issues, if not moreso, and with treaty controls in place to limit the numbers of ICBMs, reloading is going to be mostly about politics, a situation not facing capital missiles.


Talen5000

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #11 on: 01 April 2017, 17:21:24 »
What reality? KF drives aren't real and their characteristics are whatever the game developers want them to be, so if the game universe states that KF booms allow the KF field to safely transport additional mass, then that is the "reality". Within that chosen "reality", the different types of core have different characteristics and the rules reflect that.

Yes, but the game reality is inconsistent. A Potemkin can add 25 Dropships or an extra 2.5 million tons...yet doesn't suffer from endurance issues and a drive that maxes out with a load of 4 millions tons. The boom extends the field around the DropShip, but the issue of extra mass isn't really addressed in the rules.

 
 


The problem with a game system like BattleTech is that if it isn't written down, it didn't happen. There's no such stat blocks or record sheets and fluff isn't rules, so no AA, no AMS.

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I guess you meant to say "...to keep nukes around..."?

No....to get rid of them. A "quantum nucleonic field" which stabilises unstable elements within a certain radius of the KF drive or something. Or make them incompatible with hypertravel.

If you want to keep it simple, effective Counter Missile systems that could be fired by the AR10.
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Maingunnery

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #12 on: 01 April 2017, 17:28:34 »
No....to get rid of them. A "quantum nucleonic field" which stabilises unstable elements within a certain radius of the KF drive or something. Or make them incompatible with hypertravel.
Won't even work as excuse, with mature fusion technology they don't need unstable elements for fusion bombs.
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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #13 on: 01 April 2017, 21:16:22 »
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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #14 on: 01 April 2017, 23:31:37 »
Yes, but the game reality is inconsistent. A Potemkin can add 25 Dropships or an extra 2.5 million tons...yet doesn't suffer from endurance issues and a drive that maxes out with a load of 4 millions tons. The boom extends the field around the DropShip, but the issue of extra mass isn't really addressed in the rules.

The problem isn't moving the mass, it's moving it safely. Remember those 5 billion ton ice asteroids being transported by the Ryan Ice Cartel, something that goes back to the earliest days of the game? Each of the 16 ships in the fleet that shepherded the asteroid was effectively transporting over three thousand times its own mass in ice (>300Mt each). Of course, the ice was rather mangled upon arrival, but even back then in the game it was apparent that mass wasn't the limitation for KF drives.

So, it's jumping safely that's the challenge, so that ships and people arrive in the same shape they started. A KF drive obviously can jump the JumpShip/WarShip in a controlled and safe manner, and by using a KF boom and collar that control can be extended to cover a docked DropShip. The only mass involved here is that the boom/collar combo can only extend that control for another 100kt, or less if using quirks (prior rules had it 60kt per collar, with two collars able to transport up to 100kt).

Quote
If you want to keep it simple, effective Counter Missile systems that could be fired by the AR10.

Anti-missile missiles have been floated before and are something I really wish were in the game to add more variety (along with EW missiles, one-use "fighter" drones, sensor probes, etc), but limiting them to AR10s wouldn't help much, because they don't arrive on the scene until 2530. That'd only shift the goalposts by 87 years, which still leaves over 200 years of nuclear suckdom.

If an AMM could be fired from any launcher, then that that would be more useful. Perhaps multiple missiles per shot so that there's a chance against massed incoming salvos, with a Barracuda launcher firing 2 AMMs, a White Shark firing 3 and a Killer Whale firing 4; in other words, the same number as their damage capacity. Require the AMMs to hit their target, instead of auto-hitting like other PD to add a little balance, but make them one-shot kills and only allow them to be fired from launchers that were not used to launch offensive missiles. It wouldn't be perfect, and a decision would still have to be made for their effect on non-missile targets like fighters, but it's be better than relying on MGs and Small Lasers until AMS comes along. The pre-AMS design model I suggested of massed missile bays plus heavy PD to handle the leakers would still hold, just with the added need for more magazine space to hold the AMMs.

But that's adding new tech to the game. What about not adding any new hardware and instead working with what we already have? Are we doomed to having to handwave the in-universe situation and keep nuclear weapons rare because of the demands of game playability?

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #15 on: 02 April 2017, 04:25:02 »
One possible solution would be to exclude PD weapons from the fire control tonnage rules.  That way, even older ships could mount sufficiently large point defense arrays without incurring ridiculous tonnage penalties for fire control computers.  You'd probably have to exclude multi-purpose weapons (like MGs and Small Lasers) mounted this way from offensive use, but that's a small price to pay I think.

sillybrit

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #16 on: 03 April 2017, 23:33:31 »
Another reasonable idea, although again involving a change to the game. Given the large cargo capacity of most HAF/SLDF WarShips, they wouldn't need to worry too much about fire control tonnage though, especially those with lighter capital armament.

That does segue into another issue: the accepted wisdom explaining the cargo capacity of the SLDF's WarShips is that they used it to support the Army. That's a questionable use of a WarShip's mass, but that's a subject for a different time. So, if the SLDF Navy was acting as combat taxis, what's the excuse for the HAF?

After the Campaigns of Persuasion, the HAF was mostly a defensive force, with large-scale offensive operations to invade and take foreign systems being the exception rather than the norm that we see with the other Great Houses. The taking of Kentares is one such operation that springs to mind - any others?

So, Terran forces mostly operated in home territory, and, given the size of the Hegemony, the HAF's WarShips were probably no more than one jump away from a naval base. Returning to base for resupply ignores the possibility of fleet auxiliaries delivering supplies and spares, which could even be done by effectively civilian designs - something that we severely lack during the pre-KF boom era.

On the face of it, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of need to justify HAF WarShips having such large cargo capacities. Is there a reasonable explanation? Is it a case of the HAF designs copying the SLDF designs, because the latter just happened to be added to the game first?

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #17 on: 04 April 2017, 10:01:27 »
I wounder if there was a change in armor of missiles.  If near miss with capital and sub capital weapons could put missiles out of action you could build flak walls.  Also the next set of lost lost targeting algorithms:)

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #18 on: 04 April 2017, 11:39:58 »
On the face of it, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of need to justify HAF WarShips having such large cargo capacities. Is there a reasonable explanation? Is it a case of the HAF designs copying the SLDF designs, because the latter just happened to be added to the game first?
I have a possible idea.

Very early 'WarShips' had to use dropshuttle bays, these would take up a lot of tonnage.
Later those ships could be refitted to use collars, freeing up a lot of space, likely converted to cargo (easiest).
Suddenly the crews experienced the convenience of having lots of space/cargo, and began using it (like moving into a bigger home).
Leading to admirals insisting that they need the cargo space.
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sillybrit

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #19 on: 04 April 2017, 13:07:24 »
Even with exchanging docking collars for DropShuttle bays, it still leaves HAF designs with high cargo fractions, plus it doesn't explain HAF destroyers and corvettes which lacked DropShips/DropShuttles.

Maingunnery

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #20 on: 04 April 2017, 14:19:27 »
Even with exchanging docking collars for DropShuttle bays, it still leaves HAF designs with high cargo fractions, plus it doesn't explain HAF destroyers and corvettes which lacked DropShips/DropShuttles.
It doesn't have to be 1 on 1 exchange, the bays could have been removed and no collars added. But even such an exchange has a limit of 30,000 tons (6x5000 tons).
Q: During such an refit what other systems would/could have been removed/replaced to could end up freeing up tonnage?
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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #21 on: 07 April 2017, 01:00:23 »
It doesn't have to be 1 on 1 exchange, the bays could have been removed and no collars added. But even such an exchange has a limit of 30,000 tons (6x5000 tons).
Q: During such an refit what other systems would/could have been removed/replaced to could end up freeing up tonnage?

Well, 27kt (3 11kt bays vs 6 1kt collars), but you highlighted the main point that unless there's a drastic change in the number of carried craft, there's not going to be a significant mass change.

As for what else can be removed if the high cargo fractions weren't achieved purely by the DS bay/collar swap, then realistically the only option is armament. Changing the engine or SI it not reasonable, nor do ships possess enough armor to make a change there worthwhile. Similarly, everything else other than weaponry is relatively chump change compared to the mass needed to produced a worthwhile adjustment in the cargo fraction.

You then have to ask just why the weaponry would be removed. An argument could be made for those that ended up in SLDF service that the designs we see in the TROs and FRs are after they'd had their armament reduced to make more space for more Army supplies during the SLDF's Navy-as-taxis phase prior to Admiral Peterson's reforms in the late 27th century.

For those classes retired before the HAF became the SLDF, the Dart had a secondary role as a transport, so its cargo fraction could be excused anyway, but for the rest...? We then have the problem of the Aegis, where we have its pre-SLDF format, although it must actually represent a partial refit because we see it with collars and not the DropShuttle bays it would have had in 2372. Numerically, the Aegis was one of the biggest classes in the HAF, and therefore formed a major part of the Navy's combat strength, thus reducing its weaponry would be counter-intuitive.

From an in-game POV, there doesn't seem to be much hope for a reasonable rationale for the HAF's cargo habits. From a real world perspective, knowing the history of when the different WarShip designs entered the game, it wouldn't be unreasonable that they were mostly designed to look like the pre-existing TRO2750 originals.

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #22 on: 07 April 2017, 07:11:28 »
If an AMM could be fired from any launcher, then that that would be more useful. Perhaps multiple missiles per shot so that there's a chance against massed incoming salvos, with a Barracuda launcher firing 2 AMMs, a White Shark firing 3 and a Killer Whale firing 4; in other words, the same number as their damage capacity. Require the AMMs to hit their target, instead of auto-hitting like other PD to add a little balance, but make them one-shot kills and only allow them to be fired from launchers that were not used to launch offensive missiles. It wouldn't be perfect, and a decision would still have to be made for their effect on non-missile targets like fighters, but it's be better than relying on MGs and Small Lasers until AMS comes along. The pre-AMS design model I suggested of massed missile bays plus heavy PD to handle the leakers would still hold, just with the added need for more magazine space to hold the AMMs.

But that's adding new tech to the game. What about not adding any new hardware and instead working with what we already have? Are we doomed to having to handwave the in-universe situation and keep nuclear weapons rare because of the demands of game playability?
AMM's sound like a good idea. I have no issues envisioning a multi-stage design. One where the 2nd stage splits into two(or three, or four depending on missile type) separate missiles. Looking at it though, the problem could be damage. The damage is capital scale. How much damage do you need to deal to destroy a capital missile? Do you need to do as much damage as a PPC in one go? And yeah, if you can use them against missiles, methinks they'd be convenient against fighters, shuttlecraft and dropships too.
Heck for that matter, why not just make a separate weapon type for the AMM launcher? Can it be small enough to be mounted on an ASF or Battlemech?

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #23 on: 07 April 2017, 11:29:18 »
Well, 27kt (3 11kt bays vs 6 1kt collars), but you highlighted the main point that unless there's a drastic change in the number of carried craft, there's not going to be a significant mass change.

As for what else can be removed if the high cargo fractions weren't achieved purely by the DS bay/collar swap, then realistically the only option is armament. Changing the engine or SI it not reasonable, nor do ships possess enough armor to make a change there worthwhile. Similarly, everything else other than weaponry is relatively chump change compared to the mass needed to produced a worthwhile adjustment in the cargo fraction.

You then have to ask just why the weaponry would be removed. An argument could be made for those that ended up in SLDF service that the designs we see in the TROs and FRs are after they'd had their armament reduced to make more space for more Army supplies during the SLDF's Navy-as-taxis phase prior to Admiral Peterson's reforms in the late 27th century.

For those classes retired before the HAF became the SLDF, the Dart had a secondary role as a transport, so its cargo fraction could be excused anyway, but for the rest...? We then have the problem of the Aegis, where we have its pre-SLDF format, although it must actually represent a partial refit because we see it with collars and not the DropShuttle bays it would have had in 2372. Numerically, the Aegis was one of the biggest classes in the HAF, and therefore formed a major part of the Navy's combat strength, thus reducing its weaponry would be counter-intuitive.

From an in-game POV, there doesn't seem to be much hope for a reasonable rationale for the HAF's cargo habits. From a real world perspective, knowing the history of when the different WarShip designs entered the game, it wouldn't be unreasonable that they were mostly designed to look like the pre-existing TRO2750 originals.
We can made the older weapons more massive, such as massive one-shot Peacemaker silos or Naval Lasers that rely on chemicals and recycles them (x5 weight increase or more). Everything combined would even strongly reduce the cargo space of a theoretical Athena (original) warship.
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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #24 on: 07 April 2017, 17:13:52 »
We can made the older weapons more massive, such as massive one-shot Peacemaker silos or Naval Lasers that rely on chemicals and recycles them (x5 weight increase or more). Everything combined would even strongly reduce the cargo space of a theoretical Athena (original) warship.

Another good idea and something that sadly gets avoided within the BT game. We get a few instances of prototype weapons, but once they're developed then that's it, with no improvements for hundreds of years, unless an entirely new weapon is derived from the first, but then that often gets some flaws to counter the gains.

Of course, this approach is not without problems. For example, there's the 240kt Bonaventure that has just a couple of NL35s for its capital armament, and even making them 10 times heavier would still leave the ship with over 41kt of cargo, or a 17.2% fraction. Then there's the 140kt Vigilant, armed with 5 NAC10 and 3 WS, but only 13.5kt cargo, which is still a very healthy 9.7% fraction but greatly limits the mass increase that could be applied to the NACs and missile launchers.

I wounder if there was a change in armor of missiles.  If near miss with capital and sub capital weapons could put missiles out of action you could build flak walls.  Also the next set of lost lost targeting algorithms:)

There is already rules for using offensive armament as point-defense, including capital weapons, although it typically is a bad idea, because you can't then use any other weapons in that arc to shoot at the opponent.


I've been thinking more about an old idea for point defense, which would do away with the current system. Just like there's capital and standard weapons, should there not be capital and standard point-defense? Standard point defense would work as it does now, except that it'd go back to the Total War rule of not being able to affect capital missiles, and instead only be capable of defeating SRMs, LRMs, etc. Capital point-defense can be used against standard scale missiles, but just like capital weapons are less effective vs fighters, capital PD wouldn't be as effective vs SRMs, etc.

To avoid the silly situation we have now where pre-AMS you might have ships with multiple bays with dozens of PD weapons each, you instead have capital PD bays  massing 100s or 1000s of tons, thus on the same mass scale as capital weapons. These capital PD bays would represent banks of linked weapons, their built-in targeting systems and perhaps built-in power and cooling arrays, with each PD bay counted as one capital weapon for fire control purposes. Gunnery crew can be an arbitrary amount to monitor the systems, 5 or 6 or whatever per bay. Different sized bays would offer different levels of protection and the protection provided by a capital PD bay and its range could also vary based on the technology and type. For example, AMS-era bays will be better than similar sized pre-AMS bays, while bays equipped with PD missiles could have a longer reach than gun-based ones.

The actual protection provided is something I'm still tinkering with from time to time when I can be motivated. In addition to the bay size issue, I want to get away from the current system that makes properly equipped AMS-era ships laugh at capital missiles, even with nukes on the field, while pre-AMS designs should be fleeing in terror, because if they're targeted by more than a few nukes it's probably a death sentence. Instead, I'd want even the best AMS-equipped PD bays to have a chance of letting through a leaker, particularly when saturated, while early PD bays are less effective but still have at least some chance against massed salvos.

Maingunnery

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #25 on: 07 April 2017, 17:38:11 »

We can shave another few k-ton away by having dedicated wings of PD Small Craft on-board.

But I think that we must also think about the Mission Profile. The early human expansion era likely means that early WarShips would be used in different ways, I can imagine higher fuel use, longer missions, more spare parts, etc.
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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #26 on: 07 April 2017, 18:12:53 »
Except that the HAF weren't doing any expanding and were always a jump or two from base.

Changing the rules to make the earlier WarShips less fuel efficient and requiring more spare parts is again a reasonable idea, but again fails to explain the designs as they exist now within the rules we actually have.

It's also worth noting that thanks to CamOps we finally have some hard rules regarding the spares that're required. CamOps obviously post-dates all these designs and thus they can't be blamed for not taking into account these latest rules, but we now have them so why not include them in the discussion.

Using a Black Lion II as an example, it needs 2.5% of its mass as supplies for a 6-month voyage without any resupply or other external support. Those supplies would include life support consumables, fuel, ammo and spare parts for the WarShip, its Small Craft and ASFs. Most of the supply mass is ammo, which is why I chose the Black Lion II as an example, because it's NACboat and thus will require a lot more supplies than an energyboat. When the CamOps rules were last discussed, it was commented that the ammo usage was way too high, and a more realistic value might result in an even lower cargo fraction requirement. YMMV.


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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #27 on: 07 April 2017, 18:36:50 »

I imagine that the HAF would patrol outside of their borders (secret or not).
Also the cargo space can be used for transporting and dropping off construction materials&crews for building military bases/stations/platforms.

As for spare parts, I can imagine that early technology (normal systems and weapons) had a bad reputation, leading to excessive storage of spares. 
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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #28 on: 07 April 2017, 22:31:46 »
Let's assume that early ships required 10x the spares as later WarShips: an early Black Lion II would still only require about 2.9% of its mass for all its supplies for a 6 month voyage without resupply.

As for dropping off construction materials: a) that's a job for transports and not WarShips; b) the Hegemony expanded to encompass existing colonies, which were generally the most developed due to being the closest to Terra and thus the first settled, so there'd be plenty of local resources.


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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #29 on: 08 April 2017, 01:42:44 »
The problem isn't moving the mass, it's moving it safely. Remember those 5 billion ton ice asteroids being transported by the Ryan Ice Cartel, something that goes back to the earliest days of the game? Each of the 16 ships in the fleet that shepherded the asteroid was effectively transporting over three thousand times its own mass in ice (>300Mt each). Of course, the ice was rather mangled upon arrival, but even back then in the game it was apparent that mass wasn't the limitation for KF drives.

Thing is....

1....the entire Ryan Ice Cartel aspect is nonsensical.
2....the entire premise is currently agaibst tbe in game rules
3....in other in universe fiction, the simul-jump is unproven theory
4....if it were true, that would open up quite a few loopholes

I'll grant you the Ryan Cartel is part of the game history....but one has to wonder if their business model simply entailed flashy PR and an over priced "lets shift ice from the Oort cloud" model.

As it is....the entire construction sysyem and universe is currently built around KF being mass limited...not volume limited. Indeed....this is explicitly stated in p123 of Strategic Operations.

The compact core can carry about 6 times its mass through hyperspace.

Mass limited...not volume. But this is where the rules don't mesh with "reality".

A Potemkin can carry 4 million tons through hyperspace.  That is approaching the 6 times limit but it also means that you should be able to build a 4 megaton ship without dropcollars using the same core. Not the 1.5 million ton vessel that is a Potemkin, but a 4.2 megaton system.

The reason why Docking Collars don't account for mass is because the KF Core is already large enough to handle it. Each Docking Collar takes up 101 kTons....1000 Tons for the Collar and  (up to) 100kTon for the DropShip that attaches to it. The DropShip concept simply carries the DropShips externally so the mothership can be built more compact. That means less surface area to arnour, less mass to move around so the entire ship becomess smaller, more fuel efficient, cheaper. It also removes a possible launch bottleneck and the need to have large bay doors and weak points in the hull.

So with all respect to Ryan....you have to take your hat off to a corporation that has managed to justify its unnecessarily high prices for so long but what it claims to do doesn't seem possible within the current games rules or even fluff.

Is it a con? A flashy PR drive to justify high prices for a simple trip to the Oort Cloud by implying it uses a secret process to allow JumpShips to coordinate their fields into a bigger more harmonious bubble?

Or can the Ryan Cartel really do what it says it can and which other sources call an unproven theorem?

You'd probably have to create rules for simul-jumps AND a constructive interference effect AND a mechanic or tech to allow separate jump drives to sync in with each other remotely AND a reason why BT doesn't extend this technology into the creation of Jumpgates or why YardShips don't have this tech to keep them safe AND why it is believed simul-jumps are only theoretical....and so on

Doable....but also of only limited relevance here.

Quote
Anti-missile missiles have been floated before and are something I really wish were in the game to add more variety (along with EW missiles, one-use "fighter" drones, sensor probes, etc), but limiting them to AR10s wouldn't help much, because they don't arrive on the scene until 2530. That'd only shift the goalposts by 87 years, which still leaves over 200 years of nuclear suckdom.

If an AMM could be fired from any launcher, then that that would be more useful. Perhaps multiple missiles per shot so that there's a chance against massed incoming salvos, with a Barracuda launcher firing 2 AMMs, a White Shark firing 3 and a Killer Whale firing 4; in other words, the same number as their damage capacity. Require the AMMs to hit their target, instead of auto-hitting like other PD to add a little balance, but make them one-shot kills and only allow them to be fired from launchers that were not used to launch offensive missiles. It wouldn't be perfect, and a decision would still have to be made for their effect on non-missile targets like fighters, but it's be better than relying on MGs and Small Lasers until AMS comes along. The pre-AMS design model I suggested of massed missile bays plus heavy PD to handle the leakers would still hold, just with the added need for more magazine space to hold the AMMs.

But that's adding new tech to the game. What about not adding any new hardware and instead working with what we already have? Are we doomed to having to handwave the in-universe situation and keep nuclear weapons rare because of the demands of game playability?

Yes. Because there is no workable answer.

You could create a nuclear damper effect created by KF cores that would make nuclear weapons damp squibs and so create a reliance on more conventional weapons

The current rules play up the lack of effectiveness of nukes in space and while this is true and nukes lose a lot of power without an atmospheric mass to create a "blast front", a close detonation should see the ship itself used to create the blast front. A contact detonation wouldn't be necessary.

Nukes would make a cheap effective SDS system....but it appears most worlds never used them. It seems doubtful legal reasons would work. Aftet the outbteak of war, such systems should have been the first priority for worlds without them.

But they weren't built and haven't been built. Instead the TH and Clans went with elaborate SDS systems.  Laser and drone heavy rather than missile based as you might expect.

That argues that missile defence technology was/is far more effective than normally given credit for...or more, that missiles were much less effective than might otherwise be expected. That might explain...in part...the move to the current systems. Swamp the defences to ensure some get through...but it isn't entirely satisfactory.

You could add new technology or doctrine. Maybe the TH and SLDF relied upon dedicated missile defence ships to intercept missile swarms...but if so, there is no mention of them.

You can get round the issue with technobabble....with retcons...by adding new technology...several ways.

But if you don't really want to do that, then handweaving it away is the answer.

But once interstellar wars started up....the truth is armies would be a liability. Whoever holds orbit controls the world and if a world doesn't have an SDS system, then even small ships could wipe out armies.

There isn't really...as far as I can tell...an easy way to explain this without adding extra rules of technology or history. The existing WarShips are vulnerable to missiles but such missiles were not common despite being cheap and simple and proven technology.  So why were they not used?
« Last Edit: 08 April 2017, 11:23:53 by Talen5000 »
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