>Lewis Taylor Goss
>On the issue of what vessels to place in the line of battle initially,
>I would deploy a limited number of capital ships plus a substantial
>number of escort and fighter craft, holding my main force of capital
>ships and cruisers in the ready reserve. If the enemy responds with
>his capital ships, the escorts and fighters will cause such damage as
>they can, while my capital ships remain undamaged. Therefore, when I
>at a later time do comit my capital ships to my line of battle, they
>will have the advantage over the enemy's vessels. On the other hand,
>if the enemy refuses to place his main force in the line of battle, I
>will commit a limited number of heavy ships plus a much larger number
>of smaller fry to attempt to break through the enemy's line of battle
>and attack his ready reserve, thus accomplishing the same goal.
You seem to assume that your light stuff can pound his heavies, but that
his can't pound yours. Isn't there an internal contradiction here? If
your fighters and escorts can pound his battleships that much, don't you
think his escorts and fighters will do a similiar job on your own
heavies when they are committed? You also place too strong an emphasis
on specific roles. You ignore the detail that an enemy ship can fire
PAST your ships into your reserve. Unless it is out of weapon range of
the main battle. But that leaves it almost two hours travel from the
battle. Which is plenty long enough for your "battle line" to get
pounded into scrap while the "reserves" move up to assist. Keep in mind
that the concept of "reserves" evolved to deal with limited intelligence
on the battlefield. Since any of your ships can detect any enemy ships
on the battlefield, the need for reserves to counter enemy surprises
goes toward zero. And enemy weaknesses can be exploited real well by
shifting front-line forces laterally (as was amply demonstrated in
WW1). In fact, there is seldom any good reason to keep any functional
warship out of combat in HG/MT - all it does is give the enemy local
superiority over the forces you DID commit, without giving you any real
advantage later. Notice that Games Theory works wonderfully well for
analysing a HG/MT battle, since it assumes that any unit can hit any
other unit in the battle...
Paul Dale:
>As for the dog fight idea, I might expect the smaller ships to go into
>that mode while the larger ones attempted to stay out of range of the
>enemy's big ships.
What is the point of staying out of range of the enemy's big ships, when
by definition that means that his big ships are out of range of your big
ships? If neither side is willing to risk their big ships in combat,
you might as well save money and never build them in the first place.
"I can't risk *that* ship! It's my best one!" --- far too many
wargamers for my taste.
>I'd put my vote on fleet combats being very short and very bloody.
Unlikely. When a solar system takes days to weeks to cross, and ship
velocities may be thousands of Km/s different, fights will frequently
last weeks. Read Poul Anderson's stories set in the Terran Empire or
Polesotechnic League for a good look at battles throughout a solar
system. And his ships could pull dozens to hundreds of G's. Traveller
ships can make six, at best...
>Given the lethality of MT ship combat (which is probably
>under-estimated anyway), I cannot see ships enguaging head to head.
>That would be a sure fire mutual kill. Which isn't often good for
>either side. I'd expect real combat to be more of the form, detect
>them on passive sensors and blow them away as fast as possible hoping
>that they don't see you in the process. The only time you'd turn
>active sensors on would be when you detected the enemy using them or
>when you needed them for point defense purposes.
I wouldn't expect to see active sensors at all. Why bother? MT makes
passive sensors better than active in every way. It overlooks or
ignores the deficiencies of passive acquisition, and generally makes
active sensors a waste of time and money.
And now for MY view of "formation". There are two types of ships worth
having in any combat "formation": big, agile fighters, and small, agile
spinal-mount riders. Or big, agile fighters and big, agile battleships,
if meson weapons aren't available. "Formations": go where you will,
and stomp anyone who gets in front of you. If you find yourself heading
toward a local concentrationof enemy forces, call on all your brother
and sister ships to help pound them. Fighters should ALWAYS accompany
battleships/riders, since they can, if properly designed, avoid most
damage while still dishing out a lot. The battleship/riders are going
to be used to get crits, while the fighters peel the enemy like a grape.
You should not get locked into the idea that the fight is going to be
two small clumps of ships fighting "over near that planet". The battle
may very well consist of hundreds of small groups spread throughout the
solar system, all trying to get enough local superiority to gain a
little here or there. And holding your fleet in one big clump that is
too tough to attack mostly means it is in the wrong place, since the
enemy doesn't HAVE to come to you - he can refuel and go on to the next
solar system (remember that there is seldom only ONE refueling spot in a
system).
>Given this formation was being used, what would the chances be of
>building a huge meson screen and a huge nuke damper to protect the
>entire fleet?
Well, using High Guard, which I have in hand (MT uses essentially
the same power requirements), a meson screen that will encompass a
sphere 5000Km in diameter would require on the close order of 2E19 MW.
Which translates to a fusion plant 1200Km or so in diameter. I doubt
you can do much with that idea.
Nuclear Dampers, on the other hand, have a constant power
requirement. Maybe having one generator on each of two different ships
as far apart in your formation as possible would allow one set of
dampers to protect any ship between the two vessels. Food for
thought...
---Steve