David Johnson:
>> In the case of aerospace forces, an Imperial task group of whatever
>> size would have some form of orbital support fire, and perhaps even
>> cover from carrier-based space fighters.
> Not necessarily the case.
Necessarily. If you don't have orbital control, your guys won't ever
get to the ground (at least I haven't been able to think of a way to get
more than a small fraction of an assault force down to a defended planet
while an enemy fleet existed insystem).
> What kind of forces is the Regency going to use to chase that Vampire
> Fleet from behind the Black Curtain back across Corridor, mopping up
> or `cleansing' worlds along the way?
They'll use lots of large nuclear warheads...:-)
>> Anybody who has watched the US Army trying to load one armored
>> battalion onto a train will appreciate just how long it takes
>> to move such forces, even if some equipment is pre-packed or
>> prepositioned.
> How long does it take if I have contragravity? :-)
Probably just as long. Civilians don't have a good appreciation of
just how much STUFF an Army needs to move to function. It's not just
tanks and APCs and howitzers and men. The tanks and APCs and howitzers
amount to only a small part of any military force larger than a company.
> The `1000 ships per sector' and `50-200 ships per numbered [subsector]
> fleet' figures are from the *Rebellion Sourcebook*, a MegaTraveller
> reference. It was these numbers that I used to estimate the Sword
> Worlds naval forces at 42 ships.
This is for the IMPERIUM ONLY! Not for ANYONE else...
>> Plus, of course, the 50-200 ships per subsector is ridiculously low
>> BY TCS STANDARDS.
> We've already established this. Again, what is the rationale for
> accepting `tactical' figures from places like *TCS* over `strategic'
> figures from *RS* and the like?
So let's ask another question: What makes you think *RS* qualifies
as "strategic"? Big picture is NOT the same as "strategic", fyi.
>> Frankly, any single Tigress could beat up the SW
>> Fleet if it is only 40 major combatants...
> Even if it had several 200,000 ton battles? Is this a tech level issue?
Yes. Even if it had 40 1,000,000T battleships. This, like all
military issues, is a TL issue. TL dominates tactics in Trav, it
dominates operations, it dominates strategy. It even dominates
logistics...
If you ignore TL, then EVERYTHING you say about the military situation
in Trav is meaningless drivel...
>> Do yourself a favour, and learn to ignore canonical material when it
>> is clearly pretty stupid. Regina may have had 10 400T SDBs, but if it
>> did, ask yourself "Why?"
> What I'm asking is why you choose to accept *TCS* data over *RS* data?
Because RS is inconsistent with the reality presented in other places.
For instance, the ability to fight an interstellar war WITHOUT resorting
to sterilization of worlds is a function of military strength. With a
small number of ships, it becomes impossible to move large enough units
to the target area. And if you can't take the world, you either leave it
alone (and if it is safe to leave it alone, then there was no point in
coming here in the first place), or you sterilize it.
Yet Trav REPEATEDLY described successful invasions of worlds. Several
in the FFW, more in the Rebellion. WHERE DID THE SHIPS COME FROM?
Supposedly, the total amount of shipping available to the Imperium was
declining steadily during the Rebellion, yet they were coming up with
invasion forces right up to the point when the fighting ground to a halt.
If Dulinor had had 2000 ships at the start of the Rebellion, where did
he get the resources to conquer whole subsectors? Certainly, 2000 ships
weren't it. Unless EVERY one of the 2000 ships could move an entire
division of high-tech troops, which they couldn't (The Tigress is the only
Impy ship ever described that could move a division, though mention of
assault transports was made)...
>> There is no military use for them (any of Neubayern's Flower class
>> escorts (of which there were more than a thousand) could take all ten
>> SDBs at once.
> You're "mixing apples and orange". Why would I choose to have a *TCS*-
> generated aggressor fight a *5FW*-generated defender?
No, I'm describing a SINGLE SHIP. Designed using HG, which was the
system used to design that SDB. You are assuming that a ship designed
under High Guard is somehow different than another ship designed using
High Guard just because the one ship was designed for a TCS game, and
the other was designed as a bit of local color for the Traveller game?
Ridiculous!
>> There is no real civilian use for them (other than to let pirates
>> run amok through the Regina system) - remember that Regina orbits a gas
>> giant, and has a HUGE jump-limit to patrol - thye couldn't patrol it
>> adequately with ten of ANYTHING, much less SDBs that are no match for a
>> well-equipped pirate.
> Let's see what a little creative rationalization can do with this. I
> postulate one or more fuel refining depots in orbit about the gas giant.
> There are strictly controlled traffic corridors between the 100-diameter
> jump point, the fuel depots and Regina itself. 85% percent of incoming
> traffic and 100% of outgoing traffic passes through these corridors. Of
> course, some `unauthorized' traffic might skirt these corridors but I'm
> not worried about protecting them from corsairs anyway.
Let's use a calculator instead. Regina's 100 diameter limit is about
12,000,000Km. One incoming corridor, one outgoing corridor means 24 giga-
meters to patrol with your 10 ships. Which means each ship has at least
2,400,000Km to patrol (assuming the ships are NEVER down for maintenance
and things like that). Weapon range of 300,000Km means you have to run
900,000Km to get within weapon range of a pirate attacking someone as far
from you as he is likely to get. Which means that you take about an hour
and a half to get within firing range of the pirate if you had your hands
on the controls just waiting for this to happen. If the pirate is at all
competent, he can blow up his target in half an hour, and be gone well
beyond your sensor range before you get there. If, on the other hand, he
is stupid enough to be trying to capture the ship, he'll have done that
in an hour, and you'll find yourself with a velocity differential of
about 330Km/s relative to him (he won't be in weapon range, because he'll
have run AWAY from your line of flight for that very purpose). If he's
pulling 4G, and you 6G, you'll catch him in about 4.5 hours, which is
about two hours longer than it'll take him to reach the jump limit if
he's smart. And if he's stupid enough to not jump before you reach him,
then you have to figure out how to beat him up before you overshoot
him (about an hour at your current relative velocities), WITHOUT killing
the innocent civilians on the captured ship. Of course, to complicate
your planning on beating him up, you have to keep in mind that he is
twice as big as you are, and twice as well armed, and your nearest friend
is around 3,000,000Km away still. And if he is smart, then he has a very
good friend running amok through your shippin lanes while you are off
chasing him...:-)
As most of the old TMLers can tell you, I think piracy will never work
in Trav. But the situation you described is about as close to paradise
for a pirate as I can imagine in Trav - lots of traffic in a small area (thus
saving you the trouble of FINDING targets), defenders spread out all over
that traffic lane (thus letting you know where they are so you can avoid
them).
> I came up with this in about 30 seconds. Give me a couple of weeks and
> I'll make those 10 SDBs *invaluable*! (As long as you don't restrict me
> to *5FW* constraints while you use *TCS*.)
I'm not restricting you to ANY constraints. I am using HG to design
pirates, you are using HG to design SDBs (the one in question is the
standard SDB from the Trav game (and Mt, and TNE, in different
incarnations). It has NOTHING to do with FFW. FFW just provided the
background for GDW to describe the SDB. And if you'd like to design a
BETTER SDB (using HG, or any other rules set) feel free. It won't make
a difference, any more than it would make a difference whether the US Navy
used ten PT boats or ten Iowa class BBs to patrol the US coastline. The
problem isn't the capability of the patrol ship, the problem is the
NUMBER of the patrol ships. Keep in mind that your ten ships can only be
TEN places at once...
>> Au contraire, mon vieux...Impy doctrine (which is frankly idiotic)
>> assumes that the battle for the gas giant between the enemy fleet and
>> your SDBs will be the crucial part of the defense of any system.
> Remember MegaTraveller? The Imperium only fights for high population
> worlds. In *5FW*, high pop worlds have *hundreds* of SDBs that are able
> to match the jump-mobile naval squadrons. Furthermore, I believe that
> *JTAS* said that the 10 Regina SDBs deployed in the gas giant's atmosphere
> in order to `harrass' opposing forces. There was even a rule in the
> game for declaring your SDBs `active' or `passive' or some such thing.
If the Imperium only fights for high pop worlds, how did they grab
the Border Worlds from the SW? Only one High Pop world there, so they
shouldn't have touched any of the SW except Sacnoth...
As to "*hundreds* of SDBs", that is irrelevant to the utility of
the SDBs that Regina supposedly sent to the GG. You have to assume that
the Commander of the Regina System Defenses knew what he was about. So
he obviously expected to accomplish something by deploying ten 400T SDBs
to Regina's GG. But WHAT?
As to "harassing", what harassment could those offer to a battleship?
Or even a Fleet Escort? I think if you drag HG out, you'll find that
any combatant larger than a DE can deal with any possible action by ten
of those generic SDBs without breaking a sweat. In fact, I venture to
suggest that ONE (1) Impy Sylea class fighter could deal with anything
those ten SDBs could do to harass anything...
And "active" meant that your SDBs did something (mostly died), while
"passive" meant they did nothing (and therefore lived, but accomplished
nothing while doing so).
>> Admittedly, this isn't worth a pile of warm spit in terms of Naval
>> Doctrine. I point out, for those who are interested, that in only ONE
>> case in my TCS game did a Fleet jump in to a gas giant, rather than
>> arriving at the 100 diameter limit of the main world.
> What do we have here? The Cult of the Trillion Credit Squadron? :-)
> I'm not trying to argue what *TCS* says. What I want to know is *why* I
> should ignore *5FW* and *RS* in favor of *HG* and *TCS*?
No. We have people who like to do EXPERIMENTS! Try it some time.
Pick out a rules set you like. Design ships. Design a Doctrine for
using the ships. Deploy the ships IAW your Doctrine. Then let some-
one ELSE design ships, and a Doctrine, and let him put his Doctrine and
ships up against YOUR Doctrine and ships. DON'T take GDW's word for
waht works. Or mine. And don't GUESS! Get off your lazy behind and
FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF!
As to the question of strategy and tactics and operations, if your
Doctrine doesn't cover ALL of them, it won't be worthwhile for anything
other than defending a system that YOU are in (you can't give tactical
orders to a froce that is three weeks travel away from you...).
In my TCS game (which was more a strategic game than a tactical game,
and more an operational game than either one), TACTICS didn't actually
mean very much. All the players could do is decribe BROADLY what
tactics their fleets should use (what "the Book"said). The normal
decisions they made were operational and strategic (how should we spend
our money to advance our goals? Where should we deploy ships to? How
many should we deploy there?)
As to why you should ignore FFW and RS, consider:
1) Built into FFW and RS is GDW's picture of "tactics" and "ship
design" and "logistics" and everything else. Which means that
accepting their picture of the Impy Navy requires that you accept
their picture of how a battle is fought. (Remember those SDBs which
are actively defending the GG? Or passively hiding there? Well,
they don't accomplish much UNLESS I go to the Gas giant! FFW assumes
that a Fleet MUST go to the gas giant (and that there is only ONE gas
giant) So the function of those pieces in that game assume a certain
tactics used by all sides. Which is all well and good IFF those tactics
are the BEST tactics possible given the TECHNOLOGY! They aren't. In
three TCS games I've run, I saw only three attacks that used the gas
giants the way GDW said they were used. All three failed. I saw only
ONE attempt to defend at the gas giants the way GDW said they should be
defended. It was the most disastrous defeat for the defending Navy I
have EVER seen.
Note that the three attacks using GGs the way GDW said they were used
were all involving UNDEFENDED gas giants.
2) Neither of those games deals effectively with ANYTHING but the
Impy forces in general, and the non-Impy forces in the Spinward Marches.
This ignores too much of the Trav Universe, and requires that you
assume that the K'Kree, the Hivers, the Solomani, the Aslan, and the
countless Vargr states ALL FIGHT THE SAME WAY! This is incredibly
stupid, UNLESS the "SAME WAY" is the BEST way to fight. I have seen
too much HG combat to believe that "defend the gas giant, fight them
as they come from the GG to the main world, defend the main world" is
the BEST way to do anything. I have also seen too much to believe that
"attack the GG to refuel, move to the main world while beating up their
fleet, attack the main world" is the best way to attack anything...
3) And finally, neither of these sources is "strategic", which is
the only thing you claim for them that TCS isn't also. Both are only
vaguely related to any military factor other than number of
ships/men/tanks, etc. Which any student of the military can tell you
is pretty insignificant compared to other concerns...
>> Faced with defeat by Ihatei?!? What a concept!!! I suppose
>> Regina's ten 400T SDBs might be faced with defeat by Ihatei, if the
>> Ihatei could get in that far, but I find it hard to believe that any
>> _important_ Impy force could be defeated by the Ihatei...
> More Cult dogma? The *Rebellion Sourcebook* clearly indicates that most
> of Glisten subsector as well as portions of District 268 and Trin's Veil
> subsector fell at one point to the *ihatei*. Once again we see that the
> `strategic' viewpoint conflicts with a `tactical' one. How do we choose,
> rationally, between the two? Can we reconcile them at all?
You assume that GDW did more than arbitrarily decide the fate of the
Ihatei and GListen, eh?
You seem unaware that strategy grows out of tactics/logistics/operations
and that tactics grow out of strategy/operations/logistics. If you can move
your army 30 miles in one day, your "strategy" cannot call for the capture of
an enemy position 300 miles from your nearest forces three days from now.
Because if your strategy DOES call for such, then you'll have to change
strategies in three days when your men fail to accomplish the objective you
have set for them. And if your strategy requires that worlds be taken
intact, then they cannot be bombarded with nukes and dinosaur killers.
If the Operational Simulation produces different battle results than
the tactical simulation, then the operational simulation is a bad simulation.
Once your operational simulation produces results consistent with playing
out under a tactical suimulation, then you can proceed to determining
whether the strategic elements decribed in RS are actually relevant to your
operational goals. If they are not, then clearly the strategic elements so
described are not a good model of the reality you purport to describe.
Alternately, you can ASSUME that the strategic concerns described are
correct, and assign operational/tactical concerns consistent with that.
BUT< if you do, then you should be aware that you have then made an
assumption comparable to the French assumption in 1940 that the Germans
could not get through the Ardennes in less than ten days, and certainly
could be stopped at the Meuse River by the forces present along that
frontier.
Ultimately, ALL strategy/operations/tactics are a function of what
ONE man(army)/ship(navy) can accomplish with the weapons available to
him/it. So you have to know what a man/ship can accomplish before you
can make any realistic analysis of what your Army/Navy can accomplish.
And you can't determine what one man/ship can do by looking at
a strategic primer.
> Finally, I've got a question for all you *TCS* cult members. Is there any
> clear way to identify ship types or classes based upon tonnages? In other
> words, is there some breakdown like:
> Battles 100,000+
> Cruisers 40,000 - 100,000
> Destroyers 5000 - 40,000
> Etc.?
Well, for all you RS/FFW Cult members, no, there is not. Labels in Trav
are largely arbitrary, based on the assumption that spaceships in the far
future are similar to modern Naval vessels. They aren't. Not even close.
Which is why so many people who play the game misuse their fighters (which
are NOT analogs of modern fighters, but rather of modern PT boats).
However, that being said, GDW seems to use the following:
Battleship = 200,000T+
Heavy cruiser = 75,000-100,000T
Light Cruiser = 30,000-50,000T
Escort = 5,000-10,000T
Destroyer = 2000-3000T
Destroyer Escort = 100-1000T
Fighter = 100T-.
Note that in my experience, ships as small as 30,000T have been described
as
battleships, and ships as large as 100,000T have been described as light
cruisers,
by the few people who knew that doctrine for use is what made it a given
type,
NOT tonnage.
> What about types/classes themselves? Is there some finer breakdown than
> battles, cruisers, carriers, escorts, etc.? Is there a way to tell a
> frigate from a destroyer, etc. (besides what the designer choose to call
it)?
No. The designer is the only one who knows what the proper label for
something is. The USNavy today has 18 "cruisers" that are smaller than
their destroyers. And once upon a time, a cruiser twice as large as those
destroyers was labelled a "frigate" (back when we were in a nostalgia phase
in the Navy, and wanted to bring to mind the Constitution and such).
You may, of course, assign labels to suit yourself, f you don't like the
designer's. If your labels don't take into account tactical/operational
use for the ships, they will be pretty meaningless, but that's your
privilege...
---Steve
Vanishing down the corridor to XTML immediately, never to appear
here again....