AeroTech 3: Part 1 - Introduction and General Discussion

[Daemion]

This is excellent stuff! I am very happy to see you guys questioning everything. I've been a bit amiss with keeping up on this thread, because this weekend was a bit of a boozy whirlwind due to my birthday and the holiday.

You're one year younger, right?

[ColBosch]

You're one year younger, right?

One more full orbit around the sun.

[Rtifs]

Here are a few outside the box thoughts. 

First, dump the hexes.  They’re a holdover from the 80s, and if the game is being redesigned from the ground up, take the opportunity to select game mechanics fitting modern game design. 

I’m not going to advise on movement other than to say is should play a role in winning.

The main problem with any believable combat system is that even with ranges undefined, we know these ships are engaging at ranges that are far beyond human hand-eye abilities.  So that means that shooting is basically handled by computer.  Ipso facto, crew skill doesn’t determine if a hit occurs.  “Computer skill” would, and the targeting algorithms are all probably old news.  Really, hits should be automatic, particularly from energy weapons.  So the way to distinguish ships when shooting would be to adjust rate of fire based on crew skill.  After all, the captain still needs to tell his fire control team which ships to shoot with which weapons.  Better, more experienced crews would be faster at this and get more shots off than poor crews. 

Another mechanic in miniatures wargaming that is really important is terrain.  In space there is none.  But all space based games from X-wing, to battlespace, to Battlefleet Gothic, seem dull and repetitive when they just come down to who has the longest range.  So inevitably these games add terrain (usually in the form of asteroids) to breakup line of sight.  The result is that in the end, these games just resemble ground combat games. 
But Battlefleet Gothic (despite being clunky in many ways) had a really interesting game mechanic.  When ships took hits, you had to place an explosion marker down on the appropriate side of the ship.  These represented radiation and debris fields.  They impacted the performance of any ship in contact with them or shooting through them.  Each turn players would roll dice to determine how many to remove.  They would remove fields of their choice.  This represented the fields expanding to the point they didn’t matter anymore.  A similar mechanic would be a great alternative to the same tired terrain mechanics we always get stuck with in space games. 

Finally, crews should be important to the operation and success of the ships.  Damage should cause effects that the crew can “repair.”  They shouldn’t be able to restore armor/hull points, but they should be able to negate other effects such as targeting computer damage.  Imagine any Star Trek episode/movie where the ship is smashed and they have to get a few systems operational again to pull off an escape.  There could be a lot of drama around this point.  Again ships shouldn’t be able to “heal” but should be able to mitigate damage in some way.

[Daemion]

So, the attached is just the beginnings of a sample of what it could be like to assign the armor to specific crits instead of just to a bland location.

Granted, if we were to do this right, I would simply armor each NL and NPPC and NAC separately instead of tying them all together like I did here.

I only managed the fore and sides before I ran out of time.

[Maingunnery]

The Union and Texas are likely not the best examples, lets take some of the extremes of each type.

WS: Vincent vs Lev 3
JS: Scout vs Monolith
DS: Avenger vs Castrum
SS: Bat-sat vs M-9

Will post them tomorrow. 

[Maingunnery]

What a nightmare, I tried to make something like the Texas overview, but it wasn't clear enough with 8 designs.

Some thoughts:
1. Should Screen launchers give an ECM & AA bonus?
2. I have added an Keel, which is equal to the KF integrity. Keel is hit after facing armor & IS is gone. If no KF drive is present, it will get a base value of 1.
3. The Lev 3 has way too many armor points, is it a good idea to make Lamellor Ferro-carbide an heavier damage reduction armor? So that we have less points but the same effectiveness?

[Daemion]

Sorry I haven't gotten back to this. I've been busy with work, which means trips out of town and stays at hotels with dubious internet quality and/or access.

Maingunnery: I like the look of the little tables you got there. But, that's just me.

As for your thoughts?
1) I think so.
2) The Keel shouldn't be just the jump drive. For a monitor class, they probably have a solid spine to take damage that should equal any KF Core.
3) An interesting idea: New damage scale class for Lamellor? So, it's 10 times more effective than standard?

[marauder648]

'ere if you folks want to use the art I had commissioned by Plog and Shimmering Sword for this please feel free.

I'm actually doing a little bit of planning and looking at how to use Adobe to make a TRO with the art I got done and re-working the fluff with some head canon ideas and the like to expand on it, its just doodlings on Word at the moment though.

[Maingunnery]

Sorry I haven't gotten back to this. I've been busy with work, which means trips out of town and stays at hotels with dubious internet quality and/or access.

Maingunnery: I like the look of the little tables you got there. But, that's just me.

As for your thoughts?
1) I think so.
2) The Keel shouldn't be just the jump drive. For a monitor class, they probably have a solid spine to take damage that should equal any KF Core.
3) An interesting idea: New damage scale class for Lamellor? So, it's 10 times more effective than standard?

1). Please give me feedback for this PD calculation:
PD = (SUM std Point Defense + SUM Screen launchers [15 per screen launcher] + (SUM AMS * 2 [because AMS can fire multiple times])) / 40 [Number of arcs & capital scale]

2). What about giving KF ships a 'free' keel and giving other aerospace units the option to 'pay' for it? However lets give the monitor keel a high minimum weight and points, then monitors won't have more guns but might be tougher. We might want to add an optional cost for converting a stranded/broken WS into a monitor.

3). To expand upon that idea. A maximum amount of points for any Aerospace units (value?), but each armor type has its own scaling? This would really show which ships are more advanced.

[idea weenie]

2). What about giving KF ships a 'free' keel and giving other aerospace units the option to 'pay' for it? However lets give the monitor keel a high minimum weight and points, then monitors won't have more guns but might be tougher. We might want to add an optional cost for converting a stranded/broken WS into a monitor.

3). To expand upon that idea. A maximum amount of points for any Aerospace units (value?), but each armor type has its own scaling? This would really show which ships are more advanced.

1) Not sure about PD calculation.

2) How about instead of the KF core providing bonus structure (since it is a super-cooled rod inside liquid helium IIRC), how about a bonus to cooling?  The cooling system has to cool down the core to liquid helium, which means a frightfully effective cooling system.  If the ship can isolate that from the KF core itself, that would provide bonus cooling systems.  Unfortunately, this cooling system will likely be installed on monitors too, though the price for it would be appropriate for KF equipped vessels, and a price hike for monitors.

3) For armor, how about an armor mass percentage instead?  Using a conventional fighter for example, it might be allowed up to 10% of its mass as armor.  Assuming a 10 ton fighter, that is 16 points from regular armor, 18 pts from ISFF, or 24 pts from Commercial armor (aka insta-whiff when hit).

[Maingunnery]

1) Not sure about PD calculation.

2) How about instead of the KF core providing bonus structure (since it is a super-cooled rod inside liquid helium IIRC), how about a bonus to cooling?  The cooling system has to cool down the core to liquid helium, which means a frightfully effective cooling system.  If the ship can isolate that from the KF core itself, that would provide bonus cooling systems.  Unfortunately, this cooling system will likely be installed on monitors too, though the price for it would be appropriate for KF equipped vessels, and a price hike for monitors.
3) For armor, how about an armor mass percentage instead?  Using a conventional fighter for example, it might be allowed up to 10% of its mass as armor.  Assuming a 10 ton fighter, that is 16 points from regular armor, 18 pts from ISFF, or 24 pts from Commercial armor (aka insta-whiff when hit).

1). Any suggestions?
2). I don't think that excess cooling would be available for other systems.
3). My suggestion is more about making record sheets manageable. Armor mass percentages won't help with that.

[Daemion]

RE - Crew:

With rewatching the Abrams-Trek movies in preparation for Star Trek: Beyond - I've been thinking back on what I know about Star Fleet Battles and Federation Commander, looking at Star Trek: Attack Wing, and putting some thought into how to map out damage and effects on a constitution class vessel.

One of the things I've concluded that a lot of mechanical damage can usually be overridden or bypassed, but you need crew to do the overriding or bypassing.

While a ship could have a high degree of automation, allowing it to perform as well as a ship with a larger crew compliment, unless you have expendable crew like droids, damage is more likely to stick. Whereas, a crew that relies heavily on crew can keep in the fight longer, but its options still shrink the fewer crew members it has left.

And, when it comes to combat, crew is what's most likely to take a value dive in quantity before specific machinery, since individual personnel are so fragile compared to weapons and gear designed to survive a hit or two.

So, an idea occurred to me: How about treating crew as an action limiter instead of heat? You could even throw in other options such as 'bypass damage' to get temporary functionality restored to things that take crit damage. The only exception would be the Crew Value itself.

If we add this, you could have a Crew Value or Crew Points which could be spend on firing one or more weapons, or assigned to damage control, or what-have-you. As the ship takes damage you lose crew points, limiting your options.

If you lose all your crew points, even if you have hull left, your ship is a derelict.

You could replace crew with automation points, but those would have to be assigned to specific systems. (This is kind of a BT thing for weapons bays, but things like Repair Drones might be out of character for the setting.)

Then, you could play around with highlight automated attack craft, or well crewed patrol craft, or have anything somewhere in between.

[Maingunnery]

Structure damage right?

[Daemion]

I'm thinking yes, and this is where compartmentalized locations with their own armor points will come in more handy.

[beachhead1985]

I'd consider adding some zeros to the tonnage of the warships, ect to make the stats kinda-make sense. spread the extra weight around to armour, engines, IS, ect

[cornmoggler]

+1 to that. Warship tonnage in BT had always been crazy low anyway

[Maingunnery]

I'd consider adding some zeros to the tonnage of the warships, ect to make the stats kinda-make sense. spread the extra weight around to armour, engines, IS, ect

Just redistributing some % from the KF drive would really help bring the armor and fuel into more realistic range.

[idea weenie]

I'd consider adding some zeros to the tonnage of the warships, ect to make the stats kinda-make sense. spread the extra weight around to armour, engines, IS, ect

Or just reduce the Length/Width/Height.  If the existing lengths in meters were changed to feet, that would be a 27-fold increase in density.  As a comparison, try the Union Dropship (~80 meter diameter sphere):
Diameter: 80 meters
Radius: 40 meters
Volume: ~800,000 cubic meters
Mass: 3500 tons
Density: .44% that of water

~.3 meters per foot
Diameter: 80 feet -> 24 meters
Radius: 12 meters
Volume: 21,700 cubic meters
Density: 16% the density of water

Just change the units of length, and the masses make more sense.


But I also want to change the following:
1) Tonnage for acceleration structure (used when a ship accelerates, effectively the upper limit of engines it can mount).  Ships can mount more in case they expect damage to reduce the rating.
2) Tonnage for armor support (used to distribute damage across an entire armor facing instead of just relying on the sheet of armor to hold in place).  This is used to generate most of the Threshold for a warship.
3) No limits on tonnage that can be put into internal structure, armor support structure, or armor itself.  Of course, each ton put into structure or armor is another ton less for weapons, ammo, engines, crew, cargo, etc.


For vessel tonnages, how about allowing larger space stations?  Turn those SI:1 platforms into actual battle stations that are capable of standing toe to toe with a warship (except that the Warship often just stays out of range since the station can't maneuver).  The necessary structure to support armor will be expensive tonnage-wise, but a space station can just be built bigger and bigger.  The fun part is these will eventually get larger engines put on them and turned into monitors.

[beachhead1985]

Or just reduce the Length/Width/Height.  If the existing lengths in meters were changed to feet, that would be a 27-fold increase in density.  As a comparison, try the Union Dropship (~80 meter diameter sphere):

I think your math is solid, but as a practical matter; I already have my doubts that Dropships, especially are actually big enough as it is to do their job. The union is a good example; it's gotta be *tight* in their with 12 mechs and two fighters. Never mind the infantry carriers.

[ColBosch]

In general, infantry carriers in BattleTech are wonky, from the humble APC on up to huge DropShips. We should probably leave those alone, lest we introduce cascading changes that tear the universe asunder.

[Daryk]

Having crammed 120+ people into a Manatee, I think the physical dimensions on at least the smaller DropShips are about right.  I also sketched out a Goblin chassis, and could possibly find room for 50 (small) infantry troopers inside the hull (assuming everything else is either in the turret or under the floor).  My point is it can be done, but not easily.

[idea weenie]

Caution Math!    }:)

I think your math is solid, but as a practical matter; I already have my doubts that Dropships, especially are actually big enough as it is to do their job. The union is a good example; it's gotta be *tight* in their with 12 mechs and two fighters. Never mind the infantry carriers.

A Union is almost a football field in length, width, and height, but let's see what I have to work with.  I'll also use the 3600 tons mass from sarna, instead of the 3500 tons.

12 Mech bays and 2 fighter bays: 2100 tons
Engine: 19.5% * 3600 = 702 tons
Fuel: 216 tons
Weapons: 168 tons (not counting ammo)
Other stuff: ~475 tons (cargo, internal structure, fuel pumps, bridge, ammunition, escape pods, armor, crew quarters, etc)


So let's go with some volume estimates:
Assume each Mech is 12 meters tall, 6 meters wide, and 4 meters 'deep', plus a 3 meter padding around each mech to allow for Mech bay access, that is a volume of 18x12x10 or 2,160 cubic meters per Mech.  Assuming the same per fighter, and you get a total of 30,240 cubic meters for 2100 tons of equipment, or about 7% the density of water (this is not counting the tonnage used for internal structure).  To give you an idea of what I mean, put 2 Mechs in neighboring Mech bays, and move a gantry so that it connects the closest point of each Mech.  You and a friend could lie down on that gantry, each with your feet touching one of the Mechs, raise your arms to each other, and you still wouldn't touch your fingers (assuming you are <=2 meters tall).

The Engine at 702 tons will have dense metal parts and empty chambers for the reaction to occur.  I'll average this as 1/4 the density of water, so the engine takes up 2808 cubic meters.

1 kilogram of Liquid hydrogen is 14.128 liters in volume from here.  So 216 tons of it is just over 3 million liters in volume, or 3052 cubic meters.  This will be slightly larger due to the fuel storage and pumps, but most metal pumps are more dense than liquid hydrogen.

Weapons have fewer empty parts, so they are 1/2 the density of water, or 336 cubic meters.

So 3186 tons have been allocated at a total volume of 36,436 cubic meters. The 80 meter diameter Union has ~800,000 cubic meters to play with, so it still has 95% of its volume available to fill with the remaining 475 tons of stuff.

The 80 foot wide Union is too small, as it only has ~21,700 cubic meters, meaning I have to free up ~15,000 cubic meters.  The best way for me to shrink that would be to reduce the dimensions used for the Mechs.  Reducing the volume around each Mech to 2 meters would drop the needed volume from 30,240 to 17,920 (saving me 12,320 cubic meters).  Dropping that to 1.5 meters around each Mech reduces the volume needed for the Mech and ASF bays to 13,230 cubic meters, for a final total of 19426 cubic meters, leaving 2,274 cubic meters for the remaining 475 tons of stuff.

Another location I could drop volume is the engine.  If that was changed to half the density of water, it would only take up 1404 cubic meters, and the freed up space would be used for walkways around it.


From the sarna page, the side-view cross section of the Union is 460 pixels tall (bottom of engine to top of dome), and at the Mech belt the effective room is 460 pixels wide (I am measuring to the narrower of the floor or ceiling distances, since the Mech likely stretches from the floor to the ceiling).  The lower Mech bay measures 65 pixels to the top of the Mech Cubicles, and another 20 pixels to the ceiling.

So, I need a ratio of pixels to meters.  Assuming 78 meters for height, that translates to ~5.9 pixels per meter.  The mech bay is a cylinder 78 meters wide and assuming only the mech cubicles it is 11 meters tall, for a volume of 52,562 cubic meters.

However, there is that central elevator.  I'll assume it is the square elevator seen in the color diagram, and get a volume used for that.  The elevator is 120 pixels or 20.35 meters wide, and takes up all 11 meters of height.  So the elevator takes up 4556 cubic meters, leaving ~48,000 cubic meters available for the Mechs, or ~4,000 cubic meters per.  This is almost twice my original estimate of 3 meters of room per Mech needing 2160 cubic meters per Mech.

I'm also assuming that all the Mechs are stored in the Lower 'Mech Bay.  If they are stored half and half, this doubles the volume for each Mech to 8000.  If not, that means the upper bay could just be for the ASF bays.

[Daryk]

Another thing to include in your estimates for volume required for the 'mechs is moving them around inside the ship.  A huge amount of space can be soaked up by connecting areas between the 'mech cubicles large enough to pass a 'mech.  I'm still working on the Scout, but a Union is on my to do list for deck plans eventually, and I expect the 'mech bays will eat up most of the ship's volume.

[idea weenie]

Another thing to include in your estimates for volume required for the 'mechs is moving them around inside the ship.  A huge amount of space can be soaked up by connecting areas between the 'mech cubicles large enough to pass a 'mech.  I'm still working on the Scout, but a Union is on my to do list for deck plans eventually, and I expect the 'mech bays will eat up most of the ship's volume.

The Mech Bays should eat up most of the volume, since they mass 1800 tons and the Union masses 3600 tons.

The central elevator could be used to help with that.  You need to swap mechs A and B?  Move Mech A to the elevator, and put it in the cargo temporarily.  Move mech B to the elevator, move Mech B to Mech A's space.  Move Mech A to the elevator, and into Mech B's space.  I'd expect the transit time to be used shuffling around the Mechs to determine who is in the first bays, the second Bays, aso.  Leaving the planet the Dropship crew just stuffs Mechs into whatever bays will hold them, and any rearranging is done in transit.

Heck, the elevator is 20 meters wide, you could fit 3 Mechs on it to help move them around.  If their weight exceeds the elevator's limit, reduce the thrust to .1G and then move the Mechs around.

[Daryk]

The 'mechs all need to be able to access the drop chutes too, and doing that one (or even three) at a time won't enable you to drop 12 'mechs efficiently in combat.  There must be more space capable of passing a 'mech than just the cubicles and the elevator.

[idea weenie]

The 'mechs all need to be able to access the drop chutes too, and doing that one (or even three) at a time won't enable you to drop 12 'mechs efficiently in combat.  There must be more space capable of passing a 'mech than just the cubicles and the elevator.

A Mech Bay must incorporate the necessary external equipment (plus the packs to let a Mech survive the drop) since Bay doors have a zero mass.  Bays that are not external likely replace the external fittings with equipment to pass the Mech to a Bay that has external access.  Strategic Ops p22 states that 1 Mech can be dropped per Mech Bay Door per turn (not sure if that is a BT or BS turn) (But Techmanual says 2 per turn per door).  We also have rules for the limit on number of bay doors for  Dropship, based on its tonnage.  Tech manual p209 shows that a Union is limited to 8 Bay doors total, even though it carries 12 Mechs and 2 ASF.  So that means you only have to worry about 8 external facing bays for dropping mechs, assuming you want to deploy ASF as cargo through the Mech Bay doors.  The other 4 Mech bays can be mounted flush with 4 of the external facing bays.

If you can drop 2 per turn per bay door, you only need 6 Mech bay doors (1 door for ASF, and 1 door for cargo).  If the Union has 2 levels of Mechs (6 on each), that makes it easier.  Each level has 6 Mech Bays around the edge, alternating them access/no access.  So if one Bay door fails (2 on a 2d6), the Mech has a second choice which one to drop through.  If the Mechs are alternating upper and lower (so you don't have one Mech bays door above another), then you can drop six at a time without worrying about one Mech surprise piggy-backing another.  A few seconds later the other Mechs drop out the door (the odds of a double door failure are 1 in 1296).

The nice part part is that transit space between Mech Bays only has to be wide and tall enough for a Mech.  It can be quite small length-wise, since the destination bay will be empty.

All of that equipment has to be handled within the 50 tons of a Mech Bay (the remaining 100 tons is the space needed by the Mech is it servicing).

[Daryk]

Sarna only gives four doors for the 'mech cubicles, and the cutaway shows a loading ramp.  I'm thinking a loading ramp large enough to accommodate a 'mech is going soak up a fairly large chunk of volume, not to mention the space necessary to connect the ramp to all the cubicles.  Don't get me wrong: I think your approach could be very efficient.  I just don't think that's what TPTB had in mind when they threw numbers a sheet of paper and called it a Union.

[Daemion]

I think your math is solid, but as a practical matter; I already have my doubts that Dropships, especially are actually big enough as it is to do their job. The union is a good example; it's gotta be *tight* in their with 12 mechs and two fighters. Never mind the infantry carriers.

Just looking at a map scale Union, compared to my map scale minis, depending on how much volume you imagine the internals to take up, I see two levels for mechs. The upper ring can hold 8, while the bottom ring near the engines can only take 4. Then there's the question of if you have an inner and outer ring for that second level. The reason I say that is because the layers above the mid-line are most likely for quarters, functioning equipment, and so-on.

In fact, there could be room for the engines in the center, like a column, with thrust directed through tubes like Mech Jump Jets toward exhaust at the major nozzle points.

One of the things I've been looking at is just trying to mentally map out what should be where on a ship. I've been looking at things like Star Trek/Wars vessels, Micro Machines independent space toys, and so on.

Because I want this system to allow me to make analogues of those at the very least.

[worktroll]

For vessel tonnages, how about allowing larger space stations?  Turn those SI:1 platforms into actual battle stations that are capable of standing toe to toe with a warship (except that the Warship often just stays out of range since the station can't maneuver).  The necessary structure to support armor will be expensive tonnage-wise, but a space station can just be built bigger and bigger.  The fun part is these will eventually get larger engines put on them and turned into monitors.

They're called monitors, then.

I suppose one fundamental question is whether one wants to preserve the 'feel' of the existing WarShip/JumpShip/DropShip spectrum, or move to a more generic space battle game.

[Daemion]

I personally think we can do both.

The jumpship/dropship aspect is a part of the BT setting.

Warships have been included in the jumpship aspect, but they don't necessarily have to be.

Secondly, the idea that there could be room for something else is always a plus. When you include unit creation rules, you leave room for people to have fun with hidden empires and fleets and armies that focus on different approaches.