Author Topic: C-Bills, LF Batteries, Docking Collars, and Slipways - Musings (TLDR)  (Read 10430 times)

idea weenie

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One fun idea would be for the Draconis Combine to build a few shipyards able to handle Warships that are up to 430,000 tons in mass.

The reasoning is that (IIRC) the Draconis Combine has the largest fleet of Monolith Jumpships (25 out of 50), so they would have more yards capable of handling hulls that size, as well as trained technicians and engineers that know how a yard that size would work.

Ruger

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I think rebuilding the older vessels to ‘what they would look like if built under current construction rules and game rulings’, while remaining true to the designs before use (McKenna gets maximim NPPC in 4 gun bays, massive cargo, and beefed up (but still light) PDS and anti-fighrter armament, Texas is brought to you by NACs and brawls, etc) could be good fun.

I personally favor up arming some ships (mostly SLDF, such as the Texas, Congress, and most especially the Sovetskii Soyuz) that seem underarmed to their classifications in comparison to their counterparts...especially with naval gauss rifles that weren't around during the ships' original appearances in TRO 2750...

Ruger
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Jellico

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That warships are manageable by ASF in lowish numbers is an argument I've heard people make, but I'm not sure I've ever come across it in the books (there are a couple instances where a "lucky" pilot kamikazes into a warship, crippling it).  Could you point me to some references please?

And just to be clear, I'm looking for clear statements, not anecdotes.

Waiting for a bus and can't really formulate a cohesive argument atm.

Clear statements probably don't exist. However there are a few drivers.

First this is Star Wars/romanticized Pacific WW2 in space. The plucky bomber always wins.

Then these are million ton ships being taken out by ten thousand tons of ASF.

But more telling is the low number of ASF carried by ships of all kinds. In being carried by a McKenna it is implied that 50 ASF are meant to be devastating. In reality most cruisers could survive that.
In reality the numbers probably come back to providing an op force for Mechs in a gaming environment.
And that brings us to another point. The system can't handle large numbers of anything. Even combined into squadrons 60 ASF is still 10 units. We all know how Tech games slow down at anything bigger than company size. So there is a huge incentive not to have larger forces because they become unplayable.


marcussmythe

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So we need better rules for fighter groups?

Minemech

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One fun idea would be for the Draconis Combine to build a few shipyards able to handle Warships that are up to 430,000 tons in mass.

The reasoning is that (IIRC) the Draconis Combine has the largest fleet of Monolith Jumpships (25 out of 50), so they would have more yards capable of handling hulls that size, as well as trained technicians and engineers that know how a yard that size would work.
The DCA is interesting. Their Kyushu, like the Fox, seems to have been built as a transport. Its weaponry is odd, but could have been explained in a well designed battlegroup. The completion of the Yamato makes me think that the 2nd generation would have been a heavier offensive fleet. The Yamato may have been a generation 1.5 ship.

Alsadius

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And that brings us to another point. The system can't handle large numbers of anything. Even combined into squadrons 60 ASF is still 10 units. We all know how Tech games slow down at anything bigger than company size. So there is a huge incentive not to have larger forces because they become unplayable.

So if we're going to change anything, the most obvious thing that ought to change is the WarShip size cap. This would obviously require a total re-write of everything(and thus isn't actually an option for BT), but if every ship was scaled down by a factor of 5-10, a lot of things begin to make more sense. You can't just throw a few full wings of fighters in for the mass of a single turret any more. That amount of mass devoted to small craft would actually make your ship start to feel like a serious, dedicated carrier. You can still make functional ships come out of the formulas by changing the armor cap(which is ludicrously low), and structure/engine/KF weight, so that the resulting ships are usable. Maybe capital weapon weight as well - they're quite heavy for what they do.

marcussmythe

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If 60 plucky bombers are, and -must for the universe to work- be a threat to a McKenna, the naval architect who filled the gorram thing with NPPCs instead of fighter bays should be taken out and shot.  Just tear those pages out of the books and replace with dropships, or at most small capships, carrying 120 (or however many) fighters.

But dont forget to keep an eye on how many doors you have to throw the fighters out of.  Doors are a strange kind of lostech.

-throws up hands at BT Naval, and wanders off to play Full Thrust/Starmada-

Vition2

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Waiting for a bus and can't really formulate a cohesive argument atm.

Clear statements probably don't exist. However there are a few drivers.
Please make a cohesive argument, because your follow-on statements don't work out.
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First this is Star Wars/romanticized Pacific WW2 in space. The plucky bomber always wins.
Nope, 85+% of the warships destroyed in the setting are taken out by other warships, 10+% are taken out by sneak attacks.  The rare few are taken out by a nuke carrying fighter or a lucky kamikaze.  And while I'll admit that nuke carrying fighters should be common practice against warships, warships should also be carrying bevies of anti-missile and anti-aerospace weapons to counter them - so the issue is a wash.
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Then these are million ton ships being taken out by ten thousand tons of ASF.
A reasonable combat, multiple billion c-bills on both sides - and c-bills are our most reasonable way of determining the resources needed to build the opposing forces, not tonnage.
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But more telling is the low number of ASF carried by ships of all kinds. In being carried by a McKenna it is implied that 50 ASF are meant to be devastating. In reality most cruisers could survive that.
No idea where you are getting this from, it's not implied in either TRO2750 nor TRO3057.  You may be associating the massive success of the McKenna due to the "change in doctrine" that larger fighter complements may have - but this isn't stated anywhere, nor implied in its success.

Minemech

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 The fighter taking out warship thing does happen, look at the Falklands War, and some successful uses of Exocets.

Daryk

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Drakensis is doing a fine job of describing fleet actions where nuke-carrying ASFs are the primary threat to warships in his "Davion and Davion (Deceased)" thread down in Fan Fiction.

Charistoph

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The fighter taking out warship thing does happen, look at the Falklands War, and some successful uses of Exocets.

Heck, in universe, one fighter took out an entire Invasion!
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Minemech

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 The death of ilKhan Leo Showers was indeed a seminal moment in the Clan invasion.

Korzon77

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The question isn't: can fighters occassionally golden BB a warhship, is "can they do so reliably enough to be the dominant form of space-based power projection?"

And note, there are some problems with fighters.  For one thing, even a 3/5 warship, if it's trying to evade or just hold the distance, can make things difficult for fighters in terms of fuel and lifesupport. A warship running away and firing with NL's in AA mode can do a fair amount of damage. Even if you're trying to defend a planet, this produces a stuation where teh fighters have to come out against the enemy.  OTH, the fleeing enemy is in the positoin where recovering its fighter strike is even more difficult, and in setting, as opposed to on the game table, abandoning all your highly trained (and expensive) pilots is a bad idea for many reasons.


OTH, when attacking a world, fighters are much more useful--the defenders can't (we presume) run away, and so you can time your strike to maximize fuel benefits.

marcussmythe

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Well, the flip of all of this is that if a typical successor state, pop ~1T, imposed a soul crushing tax raise of 1 c-bill per person, that can justify any navy it amuses our storytelling soul to define...

Col Toda

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The LF battery is always worth it . Not for the extra range but the bug out potential for jump ships . Thus jump ships are less vulnerable as they can jump back to the previous secured sysyem . The other aspects of warship or jump ship level of desired systems are too interrelated with ERA and  rules of engagement yours as well as the enemies to venture a hard opinion on . The maintainace of a proper Naval Academy for the training of a Navy is likely a far bigger expense than any of the hardware and maintainace issues though .
« Last Edit: 24 April 2018, 08:01:57 by Col Toda »

Minemech

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The question isn't: can fighters occassionally golden BB a warhship, is "can they do so reliably enough to be the dominant form of space-based power projection?"

And note, there are some problems with fighters.  For one thing, even a 3/5 warship, if it's trying to evade or just hold the distance, can make things difficult for fighters in terms of fuel and lifesupport. A warship running away and firing with NL's in AA mode can do a fair amount of damage. Even if you're trying to defend a planet, this produces a stuation where teh fighters have to come out against the enemy.  OTH, the fleeing enemy is in the positoin where recovering its fighter strike is even more difficult, and in setting, as opposed to on the game table, abandoning all your highly trained (and expensive) pilots is a bad idea for many reasons.


OTH, when attacking a world, fighters are much more useful--the defenders can't (we presume) run away, and so you can time your strike to maximize fuel benefits.
No one disagrees with you on that, we were disagreeing with setting depictions, whilst also noting examples where fighters really did do such things. If they worked that way commonly in aerotech, no one would field warships. Some ships are more vulnerable to fighters than others and pay a price for it. Sometimes players wrongly prioritize their actions and pay a price for it. I played the Free Worlds League on the ground game, at a time when bad prioritization could be deeply unforgiving.

I am Belch II

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I still dont like how a Potemkin would be 3 times more expensive then a McKenna battleship.
Walking the fine line between sarcasm and being a smart-ass

SCC

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I still dont like how a Potemkin would be 3 times more expensive then a McKenna battleship.
Pretty sure it's the K-F Drive, Potemkin's have 25 collars that up the cost of the drive.

Daryk

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That's definitely it.  If you're building on a budget, collars are your bane.

marcussmythe

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That's definitely it.  If you're building on a budget, collars are your bane.

Designed a navy around that assumption - “What would it look like if you had enough shipyards to absorb all the C-Bills you cared to spend on building a Navy” - IE, what can we get if we give up collars?  Was interesting - heavier fighter carriage and cnsumables as one cant just hang a dropship to fit whatever is needed, but you can afford to build a lot more ships.  Whether this is a good long term plan depends on whether collars also increase ongoing costs for the ship, and what loss rates look like. 

Minemech

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 Sometimes you have to go in debt to save in the long run. There are points of diminishing return, and they vary by naval design and infrastructure.

marcussmythe

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Sometimes you have to go in debt to save in the long run. There are points of diminishing return, and they vary by naval design and infrastructure.

I think it comes down to where your bottlenecks are.  And your other expectations.  What is the anticipated build cost vs. lifespan cost?  Ships that are going to leave the builders yard to go straight into pitched battle are probably built to be cheap (relative to their combat power) and disposable.  The lifespan cost for the ship doesn't matter as much, because you don't expect it to have much of one - just the production cost.

A peacetime navy, or one that expects to pay the cost of the ship many times over in life-cycle costs, can and probably should save life-cycle money where it can by building big, roomy, with space for upgrades and refits, and by maximizing capability to minimize long term costs. 

As an example, the hypothetical no-collar fleet makes sense for massive rushed wartime production, and might well focus on smaller units, or at least the cheapest unit that can do the job.  A peacetime fleet might well focus on automation, and fill itself out with dropcollars and fighter bays that are usually EMPTY in peacetime...

Minemech

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 When you think about it, the Eagle was one of the best designed ships in universe on a long term scale. It has a reasonable acceleration curve, a strong cargo capacity, good point defense by canon standards, and sufficient drop collars to be useful at its mass. Its firepower is quite fierce. Most importantly, it is easily upgraded. Sure it needs a good defensive boost, and sure its guns could use some upgrading, but all in time. Unfortunately, it was not given that time. Generation 1.5 upgrades to it, and other ships could have made them ferocious. I will not provide any fan designs, and there are numerous ways to rework the ship, including further exploitation of its handy cargo capacity. It could also be redesigned to work around generation 2 warships differently.

 By comparison, I would have given the Fox some extra PD, and written it off as a light transport when the generation II warships started to appear. Not a shameful task, but probably not the role envisioned when it was harkening a new age of aerospace dominance, or to at least provide a measure of balance against the clans. Or perhaps the Fox is symptomatic of transport warfare mindset, rather than a more holistic system that combines that with aerospace supremacy.
 
 It is unfair to overjudge the first warships pushed out by any of the houses in centuries, because much of it was a learning curve. The differences between the Fox, Impavido, and the Kyushu do make for interesting conversation. I believe that only the Impavido was actually designed to hunt other warships.

Korzon77

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I think every ship, save "we're pushing this ship out of the slip so it can be blown up in a week" should have at least one, perhaps two collars. You pay a price, but you make it back and more in that you now have a multipurpose vessel.

marcussmythe

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I think every ship, save "we're pushing this ship out of the slip so it can be blown up in a week" should have at least one, perhaps two collars. You pay a price, but you make it back and more in that you now have a multipurpose vessel.

Where is the sweet spot?  If two is good, are four twice as good?

Given that (to all appearances) C-Bills just dont matter unless they suddenly do matter - whatever fits the story - what does the other end look like?  If you need combat power and your bottleneck is slipways (and in story, it almost certainly is!) - do all cap ships start turning into latter-day Potemkins, covered in assault droppers and pocket warships that themselves fling out squadrons of aerofighters?  Or have we turned ‘wall of battle’ hulls into centerpieces that dont so much project power themselves as support a massive swarm of power projection, that so dwarfs what the capital hull itself can throw that your better served to keep it out of the fight so it can survive to support its fighters/dropships in command and control and logistics?

Oh, well.  It is a conundrum.  At best I suppose to take the inconsitencies not as a matter for confusion or frustration, but as an excuse to do kinda whatever sounds cool, as long as it makes a cool story.  Nothing a player is likely to do/design/theorize/propose is likely to be -less- believable than many in universe things that have already come and gone.  A lot I guess turns on whether you want to do things that can play well with the main universe or accept that your taking a left turn into AU land if you do anything significant.

Korzon77

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Pretty much, yeah. To be honest, i think that the monitor concept might make a come back if you can figure out a way to make them Drop collar transportable--and honestly, this ia actually a pretty common theme in Sci-fi fiction and gaming. Traveller had the battleriders, and a a bunch of Webers fiction makes use of parasite warships, some of them the size of battleships. (to be fair, some of those series also have motherships the size of the moon).

marcussmythe

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Pretty much, yeah. To be honest, i think that the monitor concept might make a come back if you can figure out a way to make them Drop collar transportable--and honestly, this ia actually a pretty common theme in Sci-fi fiction and gaming. Traveller had the battleriders, and a a bunch of Webers fiction makes use of parasite warships, some of them the size of battleships. (to be fair, some of those series also have motherships the size of the moon).

Functionally, it always seemed to me that PWS -were- the battle riders (and monitors) of the setting.

Minemech

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 To me a Monitor will remain a big gunned, light warship. Deploy them as escorts to transport warships, and key convoys, and let it be.

idea weenie

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Pretty much, yeah. To be honest, i think that the monitor concept might make a come back if you can figure out a way to make them Drop collar transportable--and honestly, this ia actually a pretty common theme in Sci-fi fiction and gaming. Traveller had the battleriders, and a a bunch of Webers fiction makes use of parasite warships, some of them the size of battleships. (to be fair, some of those series also have motherships the size of the moon).

We'd have to figure out how much of the Dropship multiplier is for the KF linkage, and how much is for the multi-atmosphere capability.  That could explain the Behemoth, which is currently a 100kton Dropship with a 2/3 acceleration, but unable to land due to its low thrust.  It is a 'monitor', but one dedicated to cargo and the designers dropped atmospheric capability to make it cheaper.

  To me a Monitor will remain a big gunned, light warship. Deploy them as escorts to transport warships, and key convoys, and let it be.

At that point, a monitor would be a Dropship that cannot land on a planet. 


To me there are three 'classes' of monitor:
1) Jump-capable: essentially a Dropship that can never land.  Advantage: uses Warship engine percentages per thrust point, can be carried on a Docking Collar, no atmospheric capability multiplier.  Disadvantage: limited to Dropship tonnages, uses KF cost multiplier
2) non-Jump-capable, but small: no KF attachment capability, but you can shove it in a much larger ship's cargo bay.  Due to the Monitor being a single hull, the minimum size ship that can carry it is 10* the monitor's mass.  Advantage: no atmospheric or KF capability cost multiplier.  Disadvantage: limited to 250 kton mass, need large Warships to carry it
3) non-Jump-capable, and large: would need a custom style ship to transport it FTL (think like the Citadel station from Mass Effect, but with a KF core and carries cargo in the hollow front).  Advantage: can be much larger, no KF or atmospheric capability.  Disadvantage: once built, it stays; needs a special (non-canon) ship design to move after being built

I have forgotten, can a Warship with a Reinforced Repair Bay perform a KF jump with a vessel in the Bay?  (Assume all other conditions for jumping are met)

Starfox1701

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The argument on cost is some what academic in battletech. If there's one thing the stories have shown time and again is that the houses will build whatever they can and the only real limit will be what there individual industries can turn out and what they think they will have to fight. The economy always takes a back seat.

As far as the Fox class goes she makes way more since if you look at her as if she is a votec project for a bunch of college students instead of a line ship. Her entire construction was both and industrial training course and a way to front the setup cost for building bigger better warships.

Real navies with all that implies I think scare the designers. They put a lot of effort into unit histories and such and imagine the nerd rage if say a battalion or regiment if your favorite house troops or Mercs got vaped before they even made planet fall. Such a thing is a real possibility all the time if full fleets started trucking around the verse.  Of course we have the mith and legends if a real fleet in the SLDF but even then it doesn't really meet general expectations.

I like Jelico's treaties on the SLDF combat doctrine it was very informative.

On the notion of a collarless fleet I don't think its practical outside of a narrow set of specific circumstances. The loss of any combat dropers is denying yourself to great a force multiplayer. On collar cost I'm confused. Standard cores can jump 3 times there own mass and compact cores 6 times there own mass. For a 2.5 million ton warship that works out to the core being able to move somewhere in the neighborhood of 6.5 million tons. Even with max collars and taking all Behemoths you can't push the mass over 4 million tons. In fact no ship maxed on collars will ever get close to exceeding its core's mass jump limit so why do the collars effect the cost of the core? Therescno reason For that and that needs to change pure and simple. If you want to limit the number of collars your players use pick a higher mass ratio like 1 per 100 k instead of 1 per 50k. Don't add some unexplainable cost spike that 90% of players won't bother calculating anyway. I mean most of us will figure the BV but you got to be pretty deep in the weeds in a campaign or writing a source book to actually need the Cbill cost of a custom ship.