Planetary invasions and other things

A thread of 2 messages, 8 July 1991 to 9 July 1991, in the order they were sent.

#2543 Planetary invasions and other things

[unnamed sender] · 8 July 1991

This is in response to several notes on a lot of topics:

First Scott Kellog's sub is a great idea. And I will grant him that
very few starships have sonar. But generally a sonar will not be
needed. A meson armed submarine could be detected by several armored
drones carrying densitometers and a maser, even at 5km depth. Which
incidently is very rare. Most modern subs have problems getting a mile
deep and part of the problem is that there are just not that many places
that are even close to being that deep. Geothermal sites would be picked
up by a Passive IR detector and could be targetted just as a matter of
course with nuclear missiles. If you try to stop them you are found.
If you don't then your crew is probably toast.

Somebody else pointed out that you could get a seismic shock pattern
reading from explosives. The question being what range you need to
be at from the surface(and the meson gun) while you are doing these
tests. Secondly wouldn't you pick up several false readings. There
could be a variety of metallic objects underground.... Lastly a LADAR
scan would be hampered by first the atmospheric conditions and secondly
its narrow beam. The seismic pattern reading can be done but not from
ship but from troops  on surface which would somehow have to be landed.
Once the troops, who are more expendable than ships, locate a meson gun
site for certain then capital ships could move in and knock it out.

Bertil Jonell's Battle for Naasakiira:

Nice set-up. However the Aenoegrr class cruisers had major design
problems. Built using High Guard they did not fit. As I recall after
the Spinal-E was inserted, there was only enough place for a powerplant
and fuel. No space for crew, jump or M-drives or dampers. Same problem
with Oegveng class gunned corvettes. Perhaps the reason your 5000t SDBs
died was because they were the only ones built by rules. I don't believe
that if a ship is impossible by High Guard standards that it would be
possible with MT starship generation system. Still I would like to see a
<10,000 t ship with Spinal Mt (any kind) and a reasonable jump and  maneuver
drives and Dampers and Screens. Most examples I have seen are basically
battle-riders.

As a side note on Battleship vs BattleTender question. I always thought
bringing 8 spinal mts to battle was always superior to bringing 2 or 3 even
if the other side ended up with 30-40% greater tonnage and better
"survivability" through jump drive availability.

#2551 Re: Planetary invasions and other things

Bertil Jonell · 9 July 1991 · reply to #2543

> From: [email removed]
> Subject: (2543) Planetary invasions and other things
>
> Nice set-up. However the Aenoegrr class cruisers had major design
> problems. Built using High Guard they did not fit. As I recall after
> the Spinal-E was inserted, there was only enough place for a powerplant
> and fuel. No space for crew, jump or M-drives or dampers. Same problem
> with Oegveng class gunned corvettes.

  All ships involved were redone for MegaT using some of Rob Deans first
suggestions (It was played around last yule) namely not including the hull CP,
reduced gunners and bridge crew, but using the old agility rules (I even
calculated the agility for the vehicles involved in the same way:).

  The weapons the vehicles were equipped with were designed using Striker
(that's why there are such things as 48MW 16lense-pulse lasers even though the
 concept of lenses is just mentioned in passing in COACC. Spaceship armaments
 are straight from MegaT, except the PCs last invention: They charged the jump
 drive for a jump 1. Then they dumped the energy from the crystals using the
 emergency dump system. That system heats the hydrogene from the fueltanks
 using the energy in the jump crystals and expels it from the ship. They used
 this as the largest blowtorch in Corridor against some of the vargr ground
 forces:)

  On to the Aenoegrr 'cruiser' (I guess strike cruiser sounded more charismatic
than 'meson gun destroyer':) Here's some parts of the design spreadsheet:

TL13		Power		Volume		Mass		Price
Hull 7000t 			94500,00        2100,00 	9400,00
ArmorF43
Config2AF
Total:				94500,00        23805,60        901648,00

PowerPlant:
Fusion13 	31770,00        3530,00	 	10590,00        706000,00
BoosterPlant:
Fusion13	224100,00       24900,00        74700,00        4980000,00
Total:		255870,00       -28430,00       85290,00        5686000,00

Loco:
Jump 2          		2835,00		5670,00 	630000,00
JumpFuel        		14175,00        99,23           283140,00
Manuever 2      31145,40        5662,80 	14157,00        311454,00
Avionics13      0,02    	0,20    	0,10    	15,00
Total:         -31145,42       -22673,00        19926,33        941469,00

  [Hmm, seems like I used the Rob's first anti-grav suggestion too, because
 that don't look like a standard manuever drive..]

Armaments:
SpinalMesonE    175000,00       15000,00        3000,00 	800000,00
30x2FG-12       30000,00        810,00  	150,00  	120000,00
30x3M-13        90,00   	405,00  	60,00   	67500,00
NukeDamper3     7500,00 	270,00  	300,00  	45000,00
MesonSC-3       4252,50 	610,00  	460,00  	55000,00
Total:         -216842,50      -17743,00        3970,00 	1087500,00

  [I used the revised figures for the power consumption of meson screens]

  Fuel was provided for 30 days for the normal plant and 24hrs for the
booster.

> I don't believe
> that if a ship is impossible by High Guard standards that it would be
> possible with MT starship generation system.

  Since HighGuard has jumpfuel equal to 10% of ships volume per jump number and
MegaT uses jumpfuel equal to the jumpnumber plus one times 5% it is quite easy
to do a ship with enough fuel to do 2 jump 6 without refuling. This would
have taken 120% of the ships volume just for fuel in HighGuard, while in MegaT
it just takes 70% of the ship for enough fuel.

  Add to this the booster power plant idea and the practice of not providing
lifesupport for the entire hull etc, and the MegaT designs with have strayed
quite far from their HighGuard forefathers.

> Still I would like to see a
> <10,000 t ship with Spinal Mt (any kind) and a reasonable jump and  maneuver
> drives and Dampers and Screens. Most examples I have seen are basically
> battle-riders.

  I'm posting the full MegaT stats for all the ships and vehicles involved
in the fight (excpet the DE and those pesky SDBs, I think I've posted the DE
sometime before and I still haven't found the SDBs, talk about ship vaporized:)

- - -bertil-
- - --
"I bet there is a clause that says that the insurance is invalid if mutant
 space-mutts drops nukes on you." PC after the Battle of Naasakiira