Author Topic: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff  (Read 10706 times)

Maingunnery

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #30 on: 08 April 2017, 05:52:48 »
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.
Doctrine could easily have stated that military construction had to be transported by WarShips. A base or station might not be near any colony, and even if it was, would every colony be able to create military grade parts?
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Talen5000

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #31 on: 08 April 2017, 07:02:47 »
Doctrine could easily have stated that military construction had to be transported by WarShips. A base or station might not be near any colony, and even if it was, would every colony be able to create military grade parts?

Doctrine could....but it wouldn't be very good doctrine.

Warships fight. Cargo space makes them less effective and more expensive. Yes...you would need some space for spares, consumables, extra ammunition that for some reason wasn't kept in the magazine...

But can you imagine a Nimitz class carrier carrying 20,000 tons of cargo? Food, fuel and munitions for its own use.

Warships....by necessity....would be designed to carry enough supplies to last for a defined duration of cruise. Anything over that would be extraneous. At the very least, it would cut into the free mass available for other systems, cut down on the amount of internal space available and increase the size of the ship necessitating even more armour be added, with corresponding effects on cost, fuel efficiency and so on.

The best way for modern militaries to transport cargo is with cargo ships and there doesn't seem any reason that would be different for a space based navy.

We know the reasons why....the current rules don't really do a lot to reflect reality and giving these designs huge amounts of cargo space was one way to get them to work.

In "reality"....you'd want the engines and KF drive to be a lot lighter, the ships to be a little smaller, fuel to make up a lot more mass than it does now with drops in engine efficiency as well and armour especially would need to see a huge increase in mass. Given this is a game, you probably want to keep the image of mile long starships but in that case, you are probably looking at an increase in mass of between 10 and  30 times what the current ships mass, most of which would likely be fuel and armour.

But as said....dropping off construction materials would be a job for transports. Warships could escort the transports and I'm sure you could make an excuse for some specialist hollow hull armed transport but those would be exceptional, and useful mainly for specific jobs such as a minelayer.
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Daryk

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #32 on: 08 April 2017, 07:30:40 »
If that NIMITZ class carrier was expected to deploy independently (with no resupply) for more than six months, yes, I could see it taking 20,000 tons of cargo (food, fuel, and munitions).  As it is, the NIMITZ class is pretty close to what sillybrit was describing with constant resupply being an option.

Talen5000

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #33 on: 08 April 2017, 08:31:44 »
If that NIMITZ class carrier was expected to deploy independently (with no resupply) for more than six months, yes, I could see it taking 20,000 tons of cargo (food, fuel, and munitions).  As it is, the NIMITZ class is pretty close to what sillybrit was describing with constant resupply being an option.

Was it built to operate independently for extended periods of time? Under what circumstances would you expect it to operate independently? And during this time would you expect it to call in at various ports and drop off construction supplies?

I suspect the answer is that the Nimitz was designed for the task it was expected to perform and designing a Warship to take on a role as an armed transport is a waste of time money and effort. You end up with a Warship that cannot fight and a cargo ship that can't haul cargo.

This is why you do not see Nimitzs used as cargo ships today.

In the case of a SL carrier, we could suppose a large portion of the cargo mass was reserved for fuel and other munitions. However....space combat isn't aerial combat and fighter range is limited. You don't patrol space with fighters because they don't have the endurance. You patrol with DropShips. So that really nixes much of the excuse for huge amounts of fuel, unless you want to suggest using a Warship as a tanker.

What I am saying is that Warships will be built as WarShips, even in the 31st century and specialist use aside, they won't be built as glorified cargo ships. They'll be built with enough cargo space for their designed endurance and no more.
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Daryk

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #34 on: 08 April 2017, 09:05:10 »
There's the answer then... the [game] designers clearly built the fleet to conduct the Exodus.  That no in-game engineer would be that insane can be ignored due to the same factors that brought us Fasanomics.

As for the NIMITZ class, that's exactly what my second sentence alluded to.  They're absolutely not expected to go for multiple months without resupply.  The space is there to make it happen, though, even without counting the reactor cores as "fuel" tonnage.

Ruger

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #35 on: 08 April 2017, 15:06:53 »
There's the answer then... the [game] designers clearly built the fleet to conduct the Exodus.  That no in-game engineer would be that insane can be ignored due to the same factors that brought us Fasanomics.

As for the NIMITZ class, that's exactly what my second sentence alluded to.  They're absolutely not expected to go for multiple months without resupply.  The space is there to make it happen, though, even without counting the reactor cores as "fuel" tonnage.

Gentlemen,

I believe you are comparing apples to oranges here...to me, WarShips, or any (especially military) spaceships in the BTech universe should not be compared to modern vessels, at least not as far as having ease of access to resupply and the like...instead, they should be compared to old Age of Sail vessels...nowadays, most ships can be reached in little time, and have easy access to communications with the homeland...this is not like in BTech, unless one has access to a HPG (and even then, communication can sometimes take a while)...instead, each ship is a world onto its own, out of contact or easy access to resupply for weeks to months at a time...the closest analogy in today's vessels would be nuclear submarines, which can be expected to spend long periods (up to months at a time) out of communication, underwater, and isolated...now granted, back in the Age of Sail, all food was natural, and they didn't have things like food concentrates and the like, but still...

Has anyone tried to scale up the mass of ship vs. supplies for a warship from the Age of Sail to one for the BTech universe? For instance, on James Cook's first voyage of discovery, his ship, the HMS Endeavour, was a 366 ton Bark, and was crewed by just under 100 people, and provisioned for 18 months (he had to reprovision several times during his journey)...those provisions consisted of the following (per Wikipedia, which replicates what I recall from my Seafarers Time-Life series book on the Explorers, and is quoting from a source quoting original Royal Navy records): "Provisions loaded at the outset of the voyage included 6,000 pieces of pork and 4,000 of beef, nine tons of bread, five tons of flour, three tons of sauerkraut, one ton of raisins and sundry quantities of cheese, salt, peas, oil, sugar and oatmeal. Alcohol supplies consisted of 250 barrels of beer, 44 barrels of brandy and 17 barrels of rum."

In BTech, even though jumps are not long at all, time between jumps can range from days to weeks, meaning that long voyages are going to take several weeks to months, unless command circuits are created...and those use considerable resources...

Ruger
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Talen5000

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #36 on: 08 April 2017, 15:50:58 »
Gentlemen,

I believe you are comparing apples to oranges here...to me, WarShips, or any (especially military) spaceships in the BTech universe should not be compared to modern vessels, at least not as far as having ease of access to resupply and the like...instead, they should be compared to old Age of Sail vessels...nowadays, most ships can be reached in little time, and have easy access to communications with the homeland...this is not like in BTech, unless one has access to a HPG (and even then, communication can sometimes take a while)...instead, each ship is a world onto its own, out of contact or easy access to resupply for weeks to months at a time...the closest analogy in today's vessels would be nuclear submarines, which can be expected to spend long periods (up to months at a time) out of communication, underwater, and isolated...now granted, back in the Age of Sail, all food was natural, and they didn't have things like food concentrates and the like, but still...

Has anyone tried to scale up the mass of ship vs. supplies for a warship from the Age of Sail to one for the BTech universe? For instance, on James Cook's first voyage of discovery, his ship, the HMS Endeavour, was a 366 ton Bark, and was crewed by just under 100 people, and provisioned for 18 months (he had to reprovision several times during his journey)...those provisions consisted of the following (per Wikipedia, which replicates what I recall from my Seafarers Time-Life series book on the Explorers, and is quoting from a source quoting original Royal Navy records): "Provisions loaded at the outset of the voyage included 6,000 pieces of pork and 4,000 of beef, nine tons of bread, five tons of flour, three tons of sauerkraut, one ton of raisins and sundry quantities of cheese, salt, peas, oil, sugar and oatmeal. Alcohol supplies consisted of 250 barrels of beer, 44 barrels of brandy and 17 barrels of rum."

In BTech, even though jumps are not long at all, time between jumps can range from days to weeks, meaning that long voyages are going to take several weeks to months, unless command circuits are created...and those use considerable resources...

Ruger

About 1 kg of food and perhaps 2kg of drinking water per day per person is the usual amount....complicated by recycling efforts and the use of hydroponics.

A McKenna with 800 crew could expect to go through 2.4 tons of food and water per day, a bit more for air....say 5 tons in all so a years voyage would require about 2000 tons.

The discussion is also considering the time frame of primitive warships when there were actual fleets and resupply bases.

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Maingunnery

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #37 on: 08 April 2017, 16:05:15 »
The discussion is also considering the time frame of primitive warships when there were actual fleets and resupply bases.
Ships are often designed to meet the harshest requirements. So lets imagine a worst-case mission: traveling from Terra to deploy listening-posts in the Periphery. That is not a mission that one want to use a slow transport for, even if it is escorted by Warships, but canon ships would be able to do this mission.

Heck, I am not even sure if pure transport jumpships were even used by the HAF Navy.
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Talen5000

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #38 on: 08 April 2017, 16:55:02 »
Ships are often designed to meet the harshest requirements. So lets imagine a worst-case mission: traveling from Terra to deploy listening-posts in the Periphery. That is not a mission that one want to use a slow transport for, even if it is escorted by Warships, but canon ships would be able to do this mission.

Heck, I am not even sure if pure transport jumpships were even used by the HAF Navy.

Maybe not. You'd probably use a DropShip instead.
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Maingunnery

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #39 on: 08 April 2017, 17:13:06 »
Maybe not. You'd probably use a DropShip instead.
Did you mean DropShuttle?
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sillybrit

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #40 on: 08 April 2017, 19:17:41 »
Ships are often designed to meet the harshest requirements. So lets imagine a worst-case mission: traveling from Terra to deploy listening-posts in the Periphery. That is not a mission that one want to use a slow transport for, even if it is escorted by Warships, but canon ships would be able to do this mission.

Heck, I am not even sure if pure transport jumpships were even used by the HAF Navy.

What need would the HAF have for a listening post in the Periphery? The Hegemony's border extends around 105LY from Terra at most, not the 500 to 600LY to the Periohery. I feel that you're worrying about problems that the HAF didn't need to solve.

But on the subject of deploying listening posts, even an Aquila would be more than adequate. You jump into the target system way outside any possible detection range, and you might as well deploy the listening post where you arrived, because the signal delay isn't going to matter considering that getting the data back home is going to take weeks or months anyway. If for some reason you need to deploy close, then that is what the DropShuttle is for.

Talen5000

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #41 on: 09 April 2017, 01:26:13 »
What need would the HAF have for a listening post in the Periphery? The Hegemony's border extends around 105LY from Terra at most, not the 500 to 600LY to the Periohery. I feel that you're worrying about problems that the HAF didn't need to solve.

But on the subject of deploying listening posts, even an Aquila would be more than adequate. You jump into the target system way outside any possible detection range, and you might as well deploy the listening post where you arrived, because the signal delay isn't going to matter considering that getting the data back home is going to take weeks or months anyway. If for some reason you need to deploy close, then that is what the DropShuttle is for.

Agreed.

The point I was making was that...beyond specialist designs such as a specific call for an armed armoured cargo ship or courier...a Warship would be designed for the role for which it was intended.

It would as a result be designed to carry enough supplies to allow it to operate for its specified period of opetations. As we are talking about a time when there were fleets, we can also suppose that there was such a thing as fleet support vessels and that tankers were available to refuel the ship....supply vessels to resupply food and munitions...fleet bases for the ship to attend...

And probably a maximum 3-6 month period of duty before a replacement crew took over to address health issues. Grav Decks can only do so much especially at the small size and effect most Warships carried.

You could likely argue most WarShips stayed out for five months, performing their duties, before rotating back to their homeport to switching crew and get refitted fir the new patrol. Six or seven months worth of supplies would allow for that with a substantial emergency reserve.

Carriers would also need substantial amounts of room for fuel. For the same period, the average fighter would require 5 tons of fuel per sortie. How often would fighters launch or be used? Difficult to say....a lot of what modern fighters do would be best done with DropShips as ASFs don't have the fuel or endurance for the same roles. So no long range patrols.

ASFs might be good candidates for a defensive screen for their mothership. They should be well capable of shooting down missiles launched by SDS systems. And most early vessels seem to have included them in their design.

WarShips....even early WarShips....certainly need better defensive options available.

But.....as far as cargo goes, Warships wouldn't be involved. Its counterproductive and there are already JumpShips available

As far as missile defence is concerned...there is no single satisfactory answer. Early Warships are unforgiveably lacking in AMS systems....largely because the first stats produced were done without rules and left out what should have been standard on all vessels...anti-fighter and anti-missile systems and none were added when the ships were finally redone with rules.

The best answer available is that ASFs were included to act as a screen for their mothership and were intended to act as the ships AASF and AM weaponry. You could been argue naval lasers could be set into a low power rapid fire mode for anti ASF and anti Missile work, or that Naval ACs might have access to a canister shot for the same targets. But even those answers would require new rules or new tech and a few ASFs might not be that effective...although early Warships would not be acting alone.



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Maingunnery

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #42 on: 09 April 2017, 04:06:53 »
As we are talking about a time when there were fleets, we can also suppose that there was such a thing as fleet support vessels and that tankers were available to refuel the ship....supply vessels to resupply food and munitions...fleet bases for the ship to attend...
Which fleet support vessels? And which tankers? That the WarShips seem to have been designed with the ability to operate independently for a long time should say enough.


What need would the HAF have for a listening post in the Periphery? The Hegemony's border extends around 105LY from Terra at most, not the 500 to 600LY to the Periohery. I feel that you're worrying about problems that the HAF didn't need to solve.
We are talking about a Terran faction, of course they are going to try and surround their rivals/enemies with hidden bases.

Quote
But on the subject of deploying listening posts, even an Aquila would be more than adequate. You jump into the target system way outside any possible detection range, and you might as well deploy the listening post where you arrived, because the signal delay isn't going to matter considering that getting the data back home is going to take weeks or months anyway. If for some reason you need to deploy close, then that is what the DropShuttle is for.
Taking an Aquila into hostile territory sounds like a suicide mission to me, it can't even fight off pirates.
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Daryk

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #43 on: 09 April 2017, 05:23:37 »
Anti-Aerospace Capital Laser Targeting Mode is on page 99 of StratOps, and so is Bracketing Fire Mode (which applies to more than just lasers).  So the necessary rules aren't entirely new...

sillybrit

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #44 on: 09 April 2017, 14:38:58 »
Which fleet support vessels? And which tankers? That the WarShips seem to have been designed with the ability to operate independently for a long time should say enough.

As just one example of fleet auxiliaries, the HAF lost 34 troop transports and cargo vessels at the jump point ambush at Syrma. We know nothing else about them other than they were not counted among the warships, which escaped unscathed.

Don't mistake the lack of game designs for a lack of ships in-universe. The Aquilla fluff tells us that there were similar designs, but what are they? For that matter, what did the various House militaries use for naval warfare before they built their first true WarShips? Quite simply, aerospace products don't sell well, and filling out niche slots in the historical aerospace environment gets even less attention than more modern designs that could still be used in the current era. The House navies don't even get a well-rounded complement of home-built designs, instead using Terran cast-offs, to cut down on the number of designs that are published.

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We are talking about a Terran faction, of course they are going to try and surround their rivals/enemies with hidden bases.

There is no "of course" about it, particularly in the pre-HPG era. The delay in getting data back to the Hegemony will make it of zero use except in the most longest terms strategically and such data can potentially be found by other intelligence assets, from agents on the ground through to the HAF's various surveillance ships.

Also, you're suggesting setting up listening posts in the Periphery to monitor the Hegemony's neighbors? The data delay just stretched into years, maybe even centuries, assuming that any transmissions are readable at light year distances.

Quote
Taking an Aquila into hostile territory sounds like a suicide mission to me, it can't even fight off pirates.

But how will the pirates or hostiles find an Aquilla, or any JumpShip/WarShip, that's trying to avoid being located? Everywhere beyond the KF limit is a jump point and the volume of space that can be scanned even by Large NCSS is negligible in comparison.

Then there's the option of hiding in plain sight. The Aquilla is one of the most common sights across the space lanes in its time, allowing the possibility of simply pretending to be just another merchant delivering your construction supplies.

Talen5000

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #45 on: 09 April 2017, 16:08:57 »
Anti-Aerospace Capital Laser Targeting Mode is on page 99 of StratOps, and so is Bracketing Fire Mode (which applies to more than just lasers).  So the necessary rules aren't entirely new...

And there is also using Aerospace Fighters as an Anti Missile platform.

But again...anti fighter and anti missile systems really should be an integral part of every WarShip design, even in the days of primitive warship designs. Without them, they are extremely vulnerable to nukes and SDS systems so there should be some defence.

Put another way....todays nuclear arsenal would make a decent SDS system but the TH developed lasers, space stations and drones instead. Why? Even if you argue the Ares Conventions, nukes would still have been stationed beyond the legal limit and the Conventions don't come into effect before 2412.
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marauder648

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #46 on: 22 April 2017, 04:58:48 »
Every ship should have had an AMS on it in reality.  Its not like designers would go "Hmmm...anti-shipping missiles were a HUGE threat in WW3, and they did a lot of damage.  And these new WarShips mount missiles...." And then proceed to bean themselves in the head with a ballpine hammer until all common sense is removed. "So yeah we know missiles are a threat, that they are built now.  LETS COMPLETELY IGNORE THEM!"   A ship designer who forgoes an AMS now on a warship (phalanx, RAM etc) would be viewed as bonkers and probably drinking lead based paint. 

I can only assume that AMS didn't appear on WarShips in the rules when they first came out (or their designs) because when it was written, things like Phalanx and other CIWS were not too widely known outside of folks who studied warships (or used them).

The blow out pannels on the Abrams didn't exist at the time, this is why there's no CASE equivalent built into every single Mech ever designed starting with the Mackie. 

I'd say that the NAC's would probably be able to fire a proximity fused AA shell as well, because no one would completely disregard small craft, its just bonkers and more down to the rules than anything.
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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #47 on: 22 April 2017, 06:20:12 »
I think the way to fix that problem is a rules tweak to separate point defenses from the count that forces the addition of extra fire control.  To prevent abuse of dual purpose weapons, I'd make them count double, but still only in the point defense column.

Taking that idea further, perhaps standard scale weapons should also be a separate category.  It would add a bit of complexity to design, but I think it would be worth it.

sillybrit

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #48 on: 22 April 2017, 12:26:18 »
Taking that idea further, perhaps standard scale weapons should also be a separate category.  It would add a bit of complexity to design, but I think it would be worth it.

The fire control limits were put in place in AT2 to avoid the exploit in Battlespace that allowed WarShips to be equipped with standard bays with huge numbers of weapons, that could even exceed the 70 capital damage limit imposed on capital bays. Due to capital and standard weapons having the same range in Battlespace, other than orbital bombardment there was no reason to use capital weapons, because the mass difference between capital and standard meant that you could pack in much more firepower with standard even with fire control tonnage.

Although capital weapons have greater range than standard weapons in the current rules set, it's not really enough to overcome the mass advantage of standard weapons if they had a separate fire control pool. Given the spread of Clan technology, we'd probably end up with WarShips armed with 100s of cLPLs and some form of AMS, perhaps with a token NPPC or NL bay for orbital bombardment.

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #49 on: 22 April 2017, 13:20:11 »
I think the way to fix that problem is a rules tweak to separate point defenses from the count that forces the addition of extra fire control.  To prevent abuse of dual purpose weapons, I'd make them count double, but still only in the point defense column.

Taking that idea further, perhaps standard scale weapons should also be a separate category.  It would add a bit of complexity to design, but I think it would be worth it.

I honestly like both of these suggestions, but would counter the issue of massively overabundant standard scale weapons by decreasing their range even further, say even the longest ranged ones wouldn't be able to pass short range.  Warships closing to close range would end up meaning mutual destruction.

The biggest problem, imo, about these is the way point defense weapons work, over-saturation is based entirely on heat output and actual levels of ammunition, a warship could be completely immune to 100s of capital missiles, some way to mitigate that would likely be a necessary change/addition.

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #50 on: 22 April 2017, 14:00:28 »
The idea of decreasing standard weapon range is very good in space.  It gets trickier in atmosphere or on the ground, but I think it could work.

Perhaps the way to defang the "huge bays of standard weapons" angle is to impose a different limit on bay size for capital/sub-capital/standard/point defense weapons, and link the fire control tonnage to the number of bays in an arc.

Maingunnery

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #51 on: 22 April 2017, 14:09:19 »

For old ships I would rather see dedicated PD small craft, it would go better with the whole fleet concept.
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vidar

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #52 on: 22 April 2017, 16:58:05 »
I always though that a smiple change to make standard weapons have a large negitive to crital roll.  Or just never get crital rolls.

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Re: Early warships, nukes, HAF, song, stuff
« Reply #53 on: 23 April 2017, 09:57:38 »
The fire control limits were put in place in AT2 to avoid the exploit in Battlespace that allowed WarShips to be equipped with standard bays with huge numbers of weapons, that could even exceed the 70 capital damage limit imposed on capital bays. Due to capital and standard weapons having the same range in Battlespace, other than orbital bombardment there was no reason to use capital weapons, because the mass difference between capital and standard meant that you could pack in much more firepower with standard even with fire control tonnage.

Although capital weapons have greater range than standard weapons in the current rules set, it's not really enough to overcome the mass advantage of standard weapons if they had a separate fire control pool. Given the spread of Clan technology, we'd probably end up with WarShips armed with 100s of cLPLs and some form of AMS, perhaps with a token NPPC or NL bay for orbital bombardment.

Standard weapons should have been limited to no more tjan 5 hexes IMO. The fire control explanation is a clunky workaround.

The solution to the huge standard weapoms bay is to shrink the ranges and make capital ships immune to such weapons, limiting them to anti fighter defence
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