Group Design Challenge: WarShip Arms Race

[Alsadius]

Yes, sorry.  The intent was Walkurie, as in Valkyrie.  Though the LC hasnt yet abandoned its Greek Lyre for the Steiner fist, the Germanic elements are still strong.

And the idea of a disproportionately genetically African, Middle Eastern, and Polynesian Navy, using German Ranks and Ship Naming Conventions, amuses me.

Oh, for sure - the Earth-nationalist elements of space empires were always a bit incongruous, because they're all so mixed. I'm running with it, because that's the setting, but I'm also trying to give as many random exceptions to the rule as I can without getting ham-fisted.

For example, that was why the admirals in the Terran coup had the names they did. I was chatting with Kiviar about names for characters of unspecified importance(I was looking for the new ruling house, but he didn't know that yet), trying to avoid any of the ones that already have a nation attached. He came up with Andre Mtume, and I liked the name, but I figured an African name attached to a coup leader might be a bit too on-the-nose. So I made him the loyalist instead, but then I needed a new coup leader. Avoiding a nationality that has a lot of RL coups attached, and also avoiding all the existing Battletech nationalities, I was basically left with natives from the Americas or Oceania. Some Wiki crawling later, Echohawk was the first name that sounded sufficiently cool to run with it.

People will keep their names and their cultures when they go abroad, barring a cataclysm like the one that created the Clans. Assimilation happens over time, but with the expensive travel of a BT universe, you'd expect it to be slower and more localized, and of course on Earth proper it'd be even more local. So there'll be a Draconis or FedSuns "national consciousness", but there'll also be a lot of variation, and some race/culture/name combinations that would be incongruous enough in 2018(never mind the 80s when this setting was created). For example, I almost made the coup leader's name Lee, to capitalize on the ambiguity of it being common in both Korean and English(or even Lee-Lee, though that started getting a bit silly), but the ambiguity would fall apart when I picked a first name. Maybe I should have just gone with something even more unexpected like Mohammed Lee, but I like what I came up with.

[Smegish]

Yeah, I have to remember to branch out into non-japanese names for characters... maybe use some of the silly ones from the 12th Man.

**Before anyone asks, the 12th Man is a collection of parody albums by a man called Billy Birmingham, taking the mickey out of the australian TV cricket commentary team, who were more or less the same bunch of men for his 20-25 year career, with quite distinctive voices**

[marcussmythe]

Whats the over/under on the second half of the turn? 

Were coming up on a month for this one, IIRC, and thats probably not ideal.

What can we do to help get turnover back down?

[Lagrange]

What can we do to help get turnover back down?

I'd like to help as well, if I can.

[marcussmythe]

Addendum to above:

I will post my turn as soon as physically possible after the end of hte prior turn.  Ive actually got my next 2 planned, and I'm just going to throw them out as written as soon as turn posts, unless something that happens in the turn DEMANDS I change what I'm doing.

Also.. maybe offload some writing?  Obviously when its hot NPC on NPC action, its all you, but sometimes posting just the raw results and letting the player (winner or loser, maybe we take turns?) write the story of why it happened that way, within posted general guidelines.

[Smegish]

Draconis Combine Admiralty

2400 Doctrine Update

Fighters: Both Ours and Theirs

From what evidence has been shown, both at Rasalhague and Kentares, that fighters can be a serious threat, but only when armed with external ordinance that cripple their mobility. After firing their one anti-ship missile they are more or less harmless unless the target WarShips armour has been breached, and reloading such ordinance takes far too long to happen in a single engagement.

Because of this, and the fact that with the Walkurie-class and Kentares IV-class Carriers that can be found on our borders we are unlikely to have superiority in numbers, the Draconis Combine Admiralty Fighter Corps (or DCAF) shall be primarily used defensively to protect the fleet from enemy fighter strikes.

The two allowed exceptions to this are:
1) Known Lyran or FedRat fleet strength lacks significant fighter complement or
2) Opponent is the Terran Hegemony, who has no such carrier in its navy.

Also because the threat of fighters is almost entirely limited to external ordinance, future planned upgrades to captial WarShips like Atago will emphasise anti-missile defences, and leave the role of anti-fighter duty to its escorting fighters and the Tate-class escort frigate.

Fleet Deployment

The bulk of the DCA fleet is currently deployed in squadrons of three vessels, comprised of one Atago-class Cruiser, one Minekaze-class Destroyer and one Tate-class escort frigate. Or at least it shall be once the last 3 Tates are built in the coming years. While this does limit the area that can be covered by the fleet at any one time, it does prevent unnecessary ship losses due to accident or enemy ambush.

The remaining Fubuki-class Destroyers and recently returned Kutai-class corvettes are both too thinly armoured to face our Davion or Steiner neighbours and survive long, and so are limited to deployments either on the Hegemony front, performing anti-pirate duty inside the combine or bringing unaffiliated colonies under the Coordinators protection.

[Alsadius]

Whats the over/under on the second half of the turn? 

Were coming up on a month for this one, IIRC, and thats probably not ideal.

What can we do to help get turnover back down?

It's definitely not ideal. Two weeks a turn is probably a necessity, but four weeks is much too long. The big roadblocks here were my vacation and the fact that a couple of the battles this turn have really stumped me. The writing is quick enough once I have all the parameters straight(usually 1-2 hours for a big battle, and more like 15 minutes for the shorter fluff pieces), but getting all the moving parts straight is harder. Every time I've tried to set aside writing time in the last few days, I've just wound up staring at a white screen trying to turn the die rolls for one particular battle into a plausible outcome. It's actually getting harder when it's based on canon at this point - if the dice or the setup differ from canon, figuring out how to adapt it so that it's in-game reasonable while keeping the spirit of the canonical battle is sometimes a challenge. I cracked that particular one last night, and I think I can write it up at lunch today, but it's slowed me down for sure.

As for an ETA, it'll be up this weekend. It's a long weekend for us, so that might be Monday, but it'll be done by then if I have to pull an all-nighter to do it. I'm also going to try to plot out most of the next turn right away, even if I don't start writing it up until turns are posted, so that I have an extra week or two to think everything over. Hopefully the extra mulling will prevent similar delays to this most recent battle.

[marcussmythe]

I've just wound up staring at a white screen trying to turn the die rolls for one particular battle into a plausible outcome. It's actually getting harder when it's based on canon at this point - if the dice or the setup differ from canon, figuring out how to adapt it so that it's in-game reasonable while keeping the spirit of the canonical battle is sometimes a challenge. I cracked that particular one last night, and I think I can write it up at lunch today, but it's slowed me down for sure.

Well, advice is after the fact, as you have resolved it... but it seems to me a case of 'either canon controls or dice controls' - we cant have both.  If the battle is on canon rails, then thats fine - dont roll dice.  If its not, roll dice and allow chips to fall where they may.

I think, personally, when we had a coup in the Terran Hegemony, we probably put a bullet in 'canon', for good or ill, and having the ST frustrated by a struggle to enforce canon in defiance of his resolution mechanism is a waste of good ST energy.

One thought on dice rolls, however - you revealed your rolling D10s.  That's going to create crazy outcomes forever, because its flat.  Have you considered rolling 2d6, or 3, for your outcomes?  (Im a fan of 3, I like that curve).

My rationale is that on a nice 3d6 curve, theres going to be a strong draw back to a 'typical' outcome.  This is going to create a little less wild variablity, and increases the value of intel provided to the players - if its a D10, outcomes are going to be all over the place, and its very hard to tell if this is 'my plan sucks' or 'he rolled a 10 and I rolled a 1'.  If its 3D6, any fight you see is more likely to have had middling rolls, of the sort that are more likely to be repeated - and thus better decision making.

Just a thought.

[Alsadius]

What I've done up until now is that canon controls what fights happen, and dice control the outcome. I may go to a purely random system in future as we drift farther from canon, however. I've liked the ability to draw on canon to come up with fights that I know won't be biased, and that players can relate to. But if it needs to change, it'll change.

Regarding dice, d10s are handy for generating at work(my workplace blocks a lot of die-roller sites, so I just use www.random.org which generates numbers in a range. 1-1,000,000 means it's 6d10 and I can just read them off from left to right). I also think wider probability curves are more appropriate for Battletech, given how wacky a lot of the fights tend to be. This is not a setting known for moderation in any form, after all.

[marcussmythe]

... well, you arent wrong. ^-^

[Jester Motley]

I'm, so far, enjoying the wild unpredictability of 1d10, but smoothing the curve might be better in the long run.  random.org has a dice roller on it, that only does 1d6 but can do a number of them at once.  Alternatively, you could do a range of 1-6 and run it a few times.  A bit more work, obviously.  There's also mekhq which has a die roller built into the GM tools drop down.  And I've found the map to be very useful too.  And since mekhq runs on java locally, it might be doable at your work?

Just some suggestions if you want to go the curve route.  And it is the BT way.

Finally, if you want a dice generator you can run locally, I've written quite a few in my day, as its part of my basic "do I know this programming language well enough to function" test.  I'll be happy to mod one up to your tastes.

[Lagrange]

Marcus mentioned that Smallcraft can carry bombs via the Internal Bomb Bay quirk (SO, page 195).   However, the limitation of 6 bombs/turn presumably creates a limitation of at most a Barracuda (since it takes up 6 hardpoints)?  That seems like a relatively severe restriction given that Barracudas don't work particularly well against very heavily armored opponents.

[marcussmythe]

Marcus mentioned that Smallcraft can carry bombs via the Internal Bomb Bay quirk (SO, page 195).   However, the limitation of 6 bombs/turn presumably creates a limitation of at most a Barracuda (since it takes up 6 hardpoints)?  That seems like a relatively severe restriction given that Barracudas don't work particularly well against very heavily armored opponents.

Given that capital missiles hang from beneath fighters only by handwavium - its not possible RAW - a 200 ton 'small craft' bomber with say 100 tons of capital missiles internal (without impacting agility because they are a part of its worked mass) with perhaps another 100-200 externally, seems very doable.

What you will quickly find (as I did with Walkurie) that the problem is not the fighters.  The problem is you are lobbing a significant fraction of your ships base mass in a single salvo.. Walkurie in theory needs ~35KT Cargo Space to carry the missiles to arm its fighters for a single strike.  Thats a bit over 2% of the total mass of the warship!

[truetanker]

Barracudas do 2 Capital ( 200 Standard ) damage each. So any fighter or Small craft is instantly destroyed, while our smaller class, currently 5K, dropships will be severely hurt. Once we get to Medium and heavier class droppers, this may hurt but not destroy them. Our noncombat jumpers are equal to medium class in their endurance.

Space Bombers are just that a single 'Cudda launcher under slung, and/or Bomb Bay. Able to deploy without losing speed and such. Now Fighters would lose this as their more liken to thoroughbred horses, not work mules aka Bomb Mules. Slower and more heavily armored to carry out the task.

Mine carry a single Arrow launched missile internally, or 5 tons of bombs / mines.

TT

[Lagrange]

Given that capital missiles hang from beneath fighters only by handwavium - its not possible RAW - a 200 ton 'small craft' bomber with say 100 tons of capital missiles internal (without impacting agility because they are a part of its worked mass) with perhaps another 100-200 externally, seems very doable.

Cramming 300-400 tons worth of loaded ship+missiles into a 200 ton bay seems counterintuitive to me.

Barracudas do 2 Capital ( 200 Standard ) damage each.

We've discussed conceiving of capital damage as x100 standard instead of x10 standard, but has that actually been adopted?

[marcussmythe]

Cramming 300-400 tons worth of loaded ship+missiles into a 200 ton bay seems counterintuitive to me.
We've discussed conceiving of capital damage as x100 standard instead of x10 standard, but has that actually been adopted?

Well, per prior conversations, the armaments are not carried in the bay with the fighter/bomber - IE a fighter bay carries the fighter, but anything thats going to hang off the bottom has to be cargo/magazine, not free in the craft bay. 

As such, Walkure's strikes are limited by her cargo, you dont get a 'free one' out of the bays, and a hypothetical 200 ton Small Craft Bomber would similarly have to be supplied out of 'Cargo' (One can argue that the bomb bay/cargo of such a craft could be holding a ready to fire, canisterized missile or two ready to go.. since its internal storage, rather than external)

The 100:1 conversion has been bruted about, but not formally adopted.  I think its probably safe to assume that Barracudas do -more- than 20 damage to fighters, and -less- than 2 damage to capital ships, and not think about it too much beyond that.

[Lagrange]

Well, per prior conversations, the armaments are not carried in the bay with the fighter/bomber - IE a fighter bay carries the fighter, but anything thats going to hang off the bottom has to be cargo/magazine, not free in the craft bay. 

A fighter drags missiles out of cargo as it launches?  That seems unintuitive to me.  Maybe if we just think of it as mass accounting...

As such, Walkure's strikes are limited by her cargo, you dont get a 'free one' out of the bays, and a hypothetical 200 ton Small Craft Bomber would similarly have to be supplied out of 'Cargo' (One can argue that the bomb bay/cargo of such a craft could be holding a ready to fire, canisterized missile or two ready to go.. since its internal storage, rather than external)

If cargo is on an accounting basis that would make sense. 

If we can strap an extra 200 tons of missiles onto an existing smallcraft that would obviously be very handy since it would largely obsolete ASF as an anti-warship weapon---for twice the price and 33% more transport tonnage, you can deliver twice as many capital missiles with a higher acceleration & much greater strategic fuel speed.

[marcussmythe]

Well, the Small craft would be a better bomber - more range, more payload.  But its not going to show well if it gets bounced by a heavy ASF loaded for bear - more agile, and far more anti-fighter mojo than an ASF.

Now, to get a good intercept and pk, the ASF would have to be big, well armed, reasonably agile, and long ranged.  Such an ASF would itself be solid against other ASFs, but probably not optimized for the dogfighting role.

So, in short:
Small Craft:  Backfire, B-52, B-1.  Alternately, Torpedo Bombers.
Heavy Fighters/Fleet Defense Fighters:  Name your favourite big brawny twin engine fighter.  I like F-14, but I blame boyhood and Kenny Loggins.  Alternately, big radial US Carrier Planes circa WW2
Dogfighters/Cheap Superiority:  Mig 21, F-16.  Alternately, Mitsubishi’a Most Famous Aircraft.

Now of course, space in 2400 is not the North Atlantic GUIK in the early 80s, but its a reasonable starting point.

RE:  Counterintuitive - think ‘Magazine Space’, not ‘Cargo’.  For Very Good Reasons, naval aircraft dont hang around with the weapons hanging off of them, or right next to them on deck.

[truetanker]

So, in short:
Small Craft:  Backfire, B-52, B-1.  Alternately, Torpedo Bombers.
Heavy Fighters/Fleet Defense Fighters:  Name your favourite big brawny twin engine fighter.  I like F-14, but I blame boyhood and Kenny Loggins.  Alternately, big radial US Carrier Planes circa WW2
Dogfighters/Cheap Superiority:  Mig 21, F-16.  Alternately, Mitsubishi’a Most Famous Aircraft.

So: a Tigress SC, a Chippewa and a Zero?  ;)

TT

[marcussmythe]

So: a Tigress SC, a Chippewa and a Zero?  ;)

TT

Amusingly, the Shuu ASF I designed about a zillion pages ago was intended to fill the heavy fighter role - before someone pointed out that it should have been 90 rather than 85 tons.  :(

As for the Chippewa - let us not speak of that slow, fragile, eggshell with sledgehammer.  It is terrible.  I spent a campaign flying Lyran ASF.  I fell in love with the LCF-R20 based on a bajillion matches against other players...  and my loathing for the CHP knows no bounds.

[Lagrange]

Well, the Small craft would be a better bomber - more range, more payload.  But its not going to show well if it gets bounced by a heavy ASF loaded for bear

I think the question is: Would you counter smallcraft bombers with a 6/9 90 ton ASF or a 6/9 200 ton smallcraft?  The smallcraft can carry twice as many Barracudas, mounts a 70% heavier weapons/armor load, and has significantly more range.   The advantages of the ASF are more maneuverability, 33% lower transport tonnage, and 50% of the price.   It's not clear to me that the ASF is the winner here.

For Very Good Reasons, naval aircraft dont hang around with the weapons hanging off of them, or right next to them on deck.

The labor associated with attaching many kilotons of missiles to a carrier's craft seems likely to take quite a bit of effort.  I could imagine _arming_ the missiles just prior to launch, but physically attaching them seems like it would need to occur well before launch to be ready for use in reasonable timeframes.

[marcussmythe]

Im mentally picturing automated feeds feeding the launch ready fighters, rather than feeding a missile launcher.

Ive always assumed the agility advantage had to be dispositive, else SC displace ASF in one of the ASFs core roles.

[Alsadius]

In no particular order:

1) We discussed armed small craft back on the first couple pages of this thread - I was going to divide up armed SC vs shuttles, but decided against it when the consensus seemed to be that they were kind of crap at fighting. I haven't built my own SC in a very long time, so I don't know if that's true or not, but I ran with it. It might be simpler for them to be support craft and not combat craft, but IDK. Also, I had the thought in my head somehow that SC bays were 500 tons, not 200 - I guess it's like a light tank bay, which fits a 50-ton tank plus facilities into 50 tons of mass. That does make the SC more appealing if combat SC are a thing, for sure.

2) 150 tons for a fighter bay includes the mass of a typical fighter (intentionally left vague), the structural elements of the volume that a fighter fits into and launches from, facilities to allow for refueling and rearming the fighter inside the bay, and the various basic spare parts/tools/etc. necessary to keep a fighter running. The volume is large enough to hold a fighter with a full missile load, without worries of "dragging on the deck", but the weight of those missiles is not counted in the 150 tons.

3) This is probably the best plan:

I think its probably safe to assume that Barracudas do -more- than 20 damage to fighters, and -less- than 2 damage to capital ships, and not think about it too much beyond that.

4) I've thought over the discussions of uncapped SI and fractional thrust. Go for it, just keep the thrust fractions to multiples of 0.1 so we don't go crazy. I've updated the master sheet accordingly. (Note that this means we're retconning 3/5 to be 3/4.5 and 5/8 to be 5/7.5)

5) I have the turn almost written - 2395-98 is basically finished, and I'm going to try writing 2399 in a shorter format like I did for turn 1. I want to see if I can go back to that style a little bit - with the Age of War coming, I can't keep writing 2000 words for every battle and still resolve things in a humane period of time. Just the second half of turn 5 is sitting at over 4400 words, and I'm not even done four years of writing. If necessary, I'll post a bare-bones result for 2399 just to get something up on my promised schedule, but I want to do at least a short battle report. Either way, my next post will have the link to the finished turn 5.

[truetanker]

That's the Master Warship Calculator, not Master Sheet.

You sure that's the one that should be shown?

TT

[Lagrange]

Ive always assumed the agility advantage had to be dispositive, else SC displace ASF in one of the ASFs core roles.

In conventional battletech, the agility advantage is quite important in a battle against ASF, since smallcraft always move before ASF.  This advantage decays in three ways here:

• In advanced rules, ASF merely have a +3 initiative rather than always winning.
• The hypothetical enemy force is a set of smallcraft.  A smallcraft attacking force therefore loses initiative only half the time.
• The hypothetical enemy force is loaded as bombers and hence moving slow.  Unloaded smallcraft would presumably have a significant advantage against loaded smallcraft.

[marcussmythe]

Right, but I here contemplate Small Craft Bombers escorted by long range ASFs (more fuel, two man cockpits).

Barring such escorts, the Small Craft Bombers risk getting bounced outside their anti-ship launch range by defending ASFs.  The same risk also applies of course to any missile ladened attacker.

I think practice for the LCN is going to be (for now) ASFs with ‘cudas escorting ASFa witb ‘whales, proportions based on op4.  The ones carrying barracudas launch on defending fighters then close to dogfight with them, allowing the strike loaded fighters to close and do their job. 

If I get froggy and start building the Walkurie’s children as having huge SC bays (remembering that SC bays can also handle fighters!) the picture gets more complicated.

[Alsadius]

That's the Master Warship Calculator, not Master Sheet.

You sure that's the one that should be shown?

Yes. The master sheet is for tracking fleets and yards, but the master calculator is for the construction of ships. (Note that the only change is to cell B8, so if you have your own version, just update that formula.)

Edit: Shit, I didn't mean to hit post until the turn was done. But I can't delete it now. My bad.

[Lagrange]

1) We discussed armed small craft back on the first couple pages of this thread - I was going to divide up armed SC vs shuttles, but decided against it when the consensus seemed to be that they were kind of crap at fighting. I haven't built my own SC in a very long time, so I don't know if that's true or not, but I ran with it. It might be simpler for them to be support craft and not combat craft, but IDK. Also, I had the thought in my head somehow that SC bays were 500 tons, not 200 - I guess it's like a light tank bay, which fits a 50-ton tank plus facilities into 50 tons of mass. That does make the SC more appealing if combat SC are a thing, for sure.

SC in-game are fairly poor at attacking ASF due to always or mostly losing initiative (varying with ruleset) but fairly good at attacking other SC and particularly good at attacking heavier elements.  Notably, they have weapons bays which gives them a potential to threshold against significantly heavier units than ASF can manage.

2) 150 tons for a fighter bay includes the mass of a typical fighter (intentionally left vague), the structural elements of the volume that a fighter fits into and launches from, facilities to allow for refueling and rearming the fighter inside the bay, and the various basic spare parts/tools/etc. necessary to keep a fighter running. The volume is large enough to hold a fighter with a full missile load, without worries of "dragging on the deck", but the weight of those missiles is not counted in the 150 tons.

Can a smallcraft carry missiles like an ASF as well?

4) I've thought over the discussions of uncapped SI and fractional thrust. Go for it, just keep the thrust fractions to multiples of 0.1 so we don't go crazy. I've updated the master sheet accordingly. (Note that this means we're retconning 3/5 to be 3/4.5 and 5/8 to be 5/7.5)

The spreadsheet allows you to choose a maneuvering drive without a core, but doing so implies that SI is calculated as per a warship (.1%/SI rather than 1%) with prices as per a space station (x5 instead of x2) and SI variable like a warship.  Is this intentional?  I've avoided this in the past in the spirit of core battletech rules, but the rules changes are making me rethink this.  More generally, is the intention to allow maneuvering drives on a space station?  Is the intention to allow SI larger than 1 on a space station?  And if the latter, should the tonnage cost of SI be .1%/SI or 1%/SI?  (If you tell me what is preferred, I can make a spreadsheet that does it.)

[marcussmythe]

I think we discussed and decided that the only things, larger than a Dropship, which had Manuver Drives, also had Jump Cores.

While this may not be realistic (and in fact is likely grossly otherwise), the designs that come back once your slapping a manuver drive and warship armor and SI onto things without the 50% Jump core Tax are simply outlandish.  Think ‘Tyr’ only 6/9, with more guns, and 300 SI (and armor to match). 

[Lagrange]

I think we discussed and decided that the only things, larger than a Dropship, which had Manuver Drives, also had Jump Cores.

While this may not be realistic (and in fact is likely grossly otherwise), the designs that come back once your slapping a manuver drive and warship armor and SI onto things without the 50% Jump core Tax are simply outlandish.  Think ‘Tyr’ only 6/9, with more guns, and 300 SI (and armor to match).

If you want a clean interpolation to space station rules, then you would probably go with 1%/SI making 300 SI nonviable.

If you want to avoid the headaches of the armor implied, then simply allowing maneuvering drives but keeping SI to 1 seems reasonable since you would never make a maneuvering drive with thrust larger than 1.

And, of course, if we want to keep things rules-legal in the base game, then it seems fine to use the Tick.