Fleet Tactics

[jason taylor]

What are Traveller fleet tactics like?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

What are Traveller fleet tactics like?

They probably run in a vein of logistical determinism. Whoever shows up with the most spinal mounts wins.

You may need things like wide-ranging escorts to prevent stelthed enemies form launching missiles at extreme range.

Except for theoretically possible missile attacks spinal mounts out range all other weapons and armoring against them is hard. If you check Starships you can see that the GTL12, 500,000 dTon Tigress can not be harmed by the GTL 11 spinal particle beam of the original 60,000 dTon Azhanti High Lightning. The 200,000 dTon Kohirrak has to be a lot more careful.

[hal]

Back in the day when GURPS TRAVELLER was just first edition, I created things for use with GT that were based on Classic Traveller's HIGH GUARD. Meson weapons did considerably less damage than they do now in the sense of raw initial damage, but had higher rates of fire. Using the laser hits rules, I was able to emulate two aspects of the HIGH GUARD rules: the higher chance of securing hits at longer ranges with meson spinal mounts, and the fact that anything that did hit inflicted multiple locations of hits the bigger (by letter size and tech level) spinal were. The flip side of my approach made meson screens a better deal for ship like it was in CT.

Email me privately if you want to know how I did it back then. I also created point defense lasers for use with Traveller along with what amounted to a Norden Bomb sight for targeting computers. Last but not least, I used a slightly different approach to turret design than GURPS TRAVELLER used. The modular design philosophy used in GT works as long as you are talking about volume within the ship itself. If you have a core module for the engine room, and add power slices to the modules being added to the ship proper, it is virtually the same as building a core engine module and adding an extra power module. With turrets, that design philosophy fails. The 1500 cubic feet of volume is self contained unto itself. If you put in a weapon system that relies upon a power source, you either add an internal power module to the ship and a weapon module to the turret, or you place a self contained power source plus a weapon to the turret - not a weapon system for the turret and a slice of power that gets added to the main ship engineering module. Every time you add a weapon system into a 3 space turret, what really happens is .8 spaces goes into the turret and .2 spaces gets added to the internal engineering module. My approach was that every 1 space of turret weapon placed in the turret stayed in the turret. Granted, my laser design did marginally less damage that the official GT rules, it was more logical in my eyes.

Let me know if you want help rewiring the meson damage rules.

[jason taylor]

One possibility is to have recon ships call back the bearing, range, course and velocity to the main fleet, thus allowing for indirect fire. Perhaps too missiles can have their range extended by being handed off from one director to another.

One wacky idea is to have one or more ships given extra meson shield modules to protect those behind. That seems a little wacky as I don't know if a shield's coverage is wide enough for that anyway.

[hal]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

One possibility is to have recon ships call back the bearing, range, course and velocity to the main fleet, thus allowing for indirect fire. Perhaps too missiles can have their range extended by being handed off from one director to another.

One wacky idea is to have one or more ships given extra meson shield modules to protect those behind. That seems a little wacky as I don't know if a shield's coverage is wide enough for that anyway.

Or? use Fighter hulls with heavy stealth systems advancing until they reach sensor range of the big boys. They use laser communications with their fleet by means of staging (ie one fighter at the front, one fighter within commo range of the first, the third in range of the second, and the fourth in range of the main fleet. Repeaters basically.

The main fleet launches the missiles on a ballistic trajectory and when the missiles are within range of the main enemy fleet, the fighters near the main enemy fleet take over the missile control.

You could for instance, use 80 fighters just out of sensor range of the enemy fleet, and use picket boats between the fighters and the home fleet (doesn't have to be fighters that act as commo repeaters.

Also? Using the older MAYDAY missile rules - which make far more sense than the GURPS missile rules where the missile must END its movement at its target or automatically miss - any missile whose vector can take it THROUGH its target hits. <shrug>

[Fortitude]

If you use fighters then you can have bombers directly or destroyers. Smaller and faster units will send large units to museum. You will just need carriers and escort ships.
I assumed that light space ships were only slower missiles, point defense baits. Or have I missed something ?

What about "smart" minefields ? (like in honorvers, I know, it's a shame :°) )

[jason taylor]

Wouldn't all of this mean that the prime work is controling no man's space and the wall of battle effectively acts as artillery support for smaller craft actually fighting closer in, until contact reports give a chance for effective damage to the main fleet?

[Fortitude]

It all depends on the flavor you want to give to your game session : if you are a retired Navy enlisted, you will do as in Navy ;-)
If you are a Games Workshop fan, you will have a clash of gigantic units.

Personally I do not believe in large units above the heavy cruiser. Technology moves so fast that it is hazardous to invest months and hundreds of tons of resources in building a war machine that could be destroyed by pressing a big red button.
And I'am a Patrick O'brian fan :-)

[Mike Wightman]

The nature of the fleet tactics used will change as you advance through the TLs.

But here is how I see a typical fleet engagement once the opposing forces have committed to a fleet vs fleet engagement.

First off both sides will launch a wave of fighters and escort class ships, followed by wave after wave of drones and missiles.

There will be an almighty furball in the initial swarm vs swarm, with both sides trying to take out as many missiles, fighters and drones as they possibly can.

The outcome of this now requires the fleet commanders to make a very important decision:
keep capitals at very long range and keep launching missiles/fighters/escorts until you win in the middle
move your capitals into the middle to assist in the furball, but they are now vulnerable to missile strikes
run away

If you actually win the furball in the middle you then can rain more missiles into the enemy fleet while advancing to beam weapon range - their commander must decide:
move to spinal/bay weapon range with capitals and risk those assets
run away

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Fortitude

Technology moves so fast

Not in the typical Traveller universes. There are times that might be true, though even the Interstellar Wars period covers two centuries, plenty long enough to make it worth building a battleship. You might also go for a period of recovery during or after the Long Night. The classic Traveller setting is about 5600 AD.

If you assume technological progress at a rate equivalent to Earth from, say, 1950 to 2000, and project that as a constant for 3000 years, then you wind up with a transhumanist setting (and far before 5600 AD), not Traveller.