Interesting to make the BC's bigger. I would have taken them as comparable
size or slightly smaller perhaps. The Traveller analogy to armor is
screens as much, if not more than hull plating since conventional 3I BatRon
would annihilate with meson weapons from 10 hexes away most of the time.
Armor would probably a concern for if they want to go eyeball to eyeball
than do a gunnery duel. The only way to really "sneak in" is to use black
globes, which would probably be more of a submarine analogy. To avoid
getting victimized capital ships would probably have screens up nearly all
the time except when in the drydock equivalent, where they'd be protected
by the base's planetary scale screens and probably relatively impervious to
that except the biggest of dreadnoughts.
Definitely agree that the BC's "legs" are best expressed as Jump Rating
than Maneuver, which needs to be high to be viable in BR combat (and to
match the specs in Sup 9, unless we're taking it as 3I propaganda rather
than objective truth, perhaps). If it's the latter, I generally go:
BI Dread: . Biggest, baddest, meanest, and most expensive. highest G,
probably lower than fleet standard jump. Big screens and big armor more
than point defense. Not much in the way of auxiliary craft.
BB: highest G, fleet standard jump. Screens, armor, PD lasers balanced.
Sacrifices would be on secondary weaponry since the spinal is the main
threat.
BC: high G, higher than fleet standard jump.
The Coronations still work as contemporary BB at TL11 when the 300k BB-11
from FSOSI is a BI of the day. They probably didn't have a dreadnought
classification at the time BB-11 would have came out. It's like if you're
in 1905 and have the Dreadnought, Satsuma, and Michigans as the standard
and then there are much bigger designs a couple decades later. To the
general public, Yamato and Iowa are still battleships while the naval
enthusiast is obviously going to know the classification has evolved and
the old ships get "demoted."
On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 7:30 AM, <> wrote:
>
>
> Antony--
>
> When I was in college I would sit in my dorm room and design High Guard
> (2d Ed) starships late into the night and filled a three-inch binder with
> hand-written ships.
>
> The way I did my BBs and BCs was pretty straightforward.
>
> 1. Followed Jacky Fisher's original pattern: for each generation of BBs
> there was an "equivalent" generation of BCs with the "same caliber" of
> main armament, but with different drives.
>
> 2. High Guard designs were purely algebraic: you had your fixed systems,
> then you just divided by the factor for the percentage-based systems to
> get total displacement.
>
> My battle fleet had a uniform jump 4, M6 requirement, so all of the BBs
> were J4. The BCs were part of a notional deep projection force with a
> uniform jump 5, M6 requirement. (Yeah, it might not make sense, but it's a
> game, man.)
>
> So if the BB design of that generation was 500K, the BC version was around
> 700K or more. I liked it because it gave results comparable to
> Dreadnought:Invincible, Orion:Lion, Queen Elizabeth:Hood, and gave great
> big ships with really thin skin and not a lot of weapons. So lots of
> tragic tales waiting to be told.
>
> I reasoned that a lot of the BCs would end up being used as fleet tankers,
> pretty much without conversion, because who would say no to an extra meson
> gun?
>
>
> > Then we also get this problem with the 75,000dt TL14 Regal class BC (one
> > of
> > which is incidentally the Alston Highport in my Banners game) its
> > displacement puts it into the Coronation range though from a later
> period.
> >
> > We know the Traveller Universe had a small ship period and a large ship
> > period, was their consideration of a middle sized ship period?
> >
> > In a large ship universe the Regal becomes a reasonable sized cruiser -
> > perhaps a large light cruiser, calling anything a battlecruiser invites
> > the
> > risk of the ship being used as a battleship (just like the BCs in WW1)
> >
> > I too have always pictured BCsas having roughly the same volume as a BB
> > but
> > trading armour for maneuver drive.
> >
> > Antony
> >
> >
>
>
>
size or slightly smaller perhaps. The Traveller analogy to armor is
screens as much, if not more than hull plating since conventional 3I BatRon
would annihilate with meson weapons from 10 hexes away most of the time.
Armor would probably a concern for if they want to go eyeball to eyeball
than do a gunnery duel. The only way to really "sneak in" is to use black
globes, which would probably be more of a submarine analogy. To avoid
getting victimized capital ships would probably have screens up nearly all
the time except when in the drydock equivalent, where they'd be protected
by the base's planetary scale screens and probably relatively impervious to
that except the biggest of dreadnoughts.
Definitely agree that the BC's "legs" are best expressed as Jump Rating
than Maneuver, which needs to be high to be viable in BR combat (and to
match the specs in Sup 9, unless we're taking it as 3I propaganda rather
than objective truth, perhaps). If it's the latter, I generally go:
BI Dread: . Biggest, baddest, meanest, and most expensive. highest G,
probably lower than fleet standard jump. Big screens and big armor more
than point defense. Not much in the way of auxiliary craft.
BB: highest G, fleet standard jump. Screens, armor, PD lasers balanced.
Sacrifices would be on secondary weaponry since the spinal is the main
threat.
BC: high G, higher than fleet standard jump.
The Coronations still work as contemporary BB at TL11 when the 300k BB-11
from FSOSI is a BI of the day. They probably didn't have a dreadnought
classification at the time BB-11 would have came out. It's like if you're
in 1905 and have the Dreadnought, Satsuma, and Michigans as the standard
and then there are much bigger designs a couple decades later. To the
general public, Yamato and Iowa are still battleships while the naval
enthusiast is obviously going to know the classification has evolved and
the old ships get "demoted."
On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 7:30 AM, <> wrote:
>
>
> Antony--
>
> When I was in college I would sit in my dorm room and design High Guard
> (2d Ed) starships late into the night and filled a three-inch binder with
> hand-written ships.
>
> The way I did my BBs and BCs was pretty straightforward.
>
> 1. Followed Jacky Fisher's original pattern: for each generation of BBs
> there was an "equivalent" generation of BCs with the "same caliber" of
> main armament, but with different drives.
>
> 2. High Guard designs were purely algebraic: you had your fixed systems,
> then you just divided by the factor for the percentage-based systems to
> get total displacement.
>
> My battle fleet had a uniform jump 4, M6 requirement, so all of the BBs
> were J4. The BCs were part of a notional deep projection force with a
> uniform jump 5, M6 requirement. (Yeah, it might not make sense, but it's a
> game, man.)
>
> So if the BB design of that generation was 500K, the BC version was around
> 700K or more. I liked it because it gave results comparable to
> Dreadnought:Invincible, Orion:Lion, Queen Elizabeth:Hood, and gave great
> big ships with really thin skin and not a lot of weapons. So lots of
> tragic tales waiting to be told.
>
> I reasoned that a lot of the BCs would end up being used as fleet tankers,
> pretty much without conversion, because who would say no to an extra meson
> gun?
>
>
> > Then we also get this problem with the 75,000dt TL14 Regal class BC (one
> > of
> > which is incidentally the Alston Highport in my Banners game) its
> > displacement puts it into the Coronation range though from a later
> period.
> >
> > We know the Traveller Universe had a small ship period and a large ship
> > period, was their consideration of a middle sized ship period?
> >
> > In a large ship universe the Regal becomes a reasonable sized cruiser -
> > perhaps a large light cruiser, calling anything a battlecruiser invites
> > the
> > risk of the ship being used as a battleship (just like the BCs in WW1)
> >
> > I too have always pictured BCsas having roughly the same volume as a BB
> > but
> > trading armour for maneuver drive.
> >
> > Antony
> >
> >
>
>
>