Traveller, The Rise of Empire: A Naval Design, Procurement and Command Quest

Caturix is a very bad girl, but yes, it's a 6kDton ship and heavily armed one. Would be pretty survivable even without the RadProtection, probably.
Problem is we're not allowed to use her weapons unless we want to tear up the treaty.

IMO, Caturix is best where she is, defending Home. If she does get engaged, we can justify tearing up the treaty, and her weaknesses aren't as severe.
 
Problem is we're not allowed to use her weapons unless we want to tear up the treaty.

IMO, Caturix is best where she is, defending Home. If she does get engaged, we can justify tearing up the treaty, and her weaknesses aren't as severe.
Ehh - the cornerstone of that sort of treaty is "we won't if you don't". It's just that IRL weapon-banning treaties usually only get signed/ratified after the weapon is no longer useful.

The enemy are hardly going to agree to disable the weapons their ships are built around in favour of signing up for an HSWS slugging match in paper-armoured hulls, and if using particle beams (or, for that matter, contact nukes) would be militarily useful, I think reciprocity permits it.

Unless of course they have screens/shields and we're just too civilised and low-tech to notice.
 
@Maxin_inc and I did brainstorm together a 300-ton system defense boat/parasite craft that's 1/3 LMDC and is basically a mini spinal weapon.

Well, the primary idea of "skirmisher frigate" is that it could shoot the torpedoes from the Extreme range, while the LMDC's range is Medium. Torpedoes basically outrange every other weapons, with the downside that they take time to reach the target and could be shot or EWARed away. But as a harassing weapon they are good.
Rat King is forgetting we also had a 350-ton version capable of carrying torpedoes or missiles as well as an LMDC
 
I disagree on the design decision to have the minefields centered around a monitor instead of a station. Its a rather large increase in costs for something that will be stationary nearly all the time anyway. I've given my own try at creating a design for a 3000t buffered planetoid that should be around 200 MCr. cheaper than the monitor, though it'll be about 100 MCr. more expensive than the MDS for its increased survivability. It also possesses far more direct combat capability on the station itself versus the monitor being nearly entirely reliant on the minefield.
[X] Plan Rocky Islands
-[X] We should propose offering more land on Home.
-[X] Other - write in
--[X] 3x 3000t defensive stations designed for survivability and to command minefields built into a buffered planetoid to be deployed in Deep Hope and to establish northern fortified bases.
-[X] Write-in: In addition to the patrol carrier, send the MAT alongside any spare escorting ships we can spare to Omarov.
-[X] Write-in: establish best practices for new military construction, such as hardening systems which draw power and are combat-critical.
 
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I disagree on the design decision to have the minefields centered around a monitor instead of a station. Its a rather large increase in costs for something that will be stationary nearly all the time anyway. I've given my own try at creating a design for a 3000t buffered planetoid that should be around 200 MCr. cheaper than the monitor, though it'll be about 100 MCr. more expensive than the MDS for its increased survivability. It also possesses far more direct combat capability on the station itself versus the monitor being nearly entirely reliant on the minefield.
[X] Plan Rocky Islands
-[X] We should propose offering more land on Home.
-[X] Other - write in
--[X] 3x 3000t defensive stations designed for survivability and to command minefields built into a buffered planetoid
-[X] Write-in: In addition to the patrol carrier, send the MAT alongside any spare escorting ships we can spare to Omarov.
-[X] Write-in: establish best practices for new military construction, such as hardening systems which draw power and are combat-critical.
While we discussed this elsewhere, I'd reiterate that the choice of a monitor (or a "self-propelled station" as I was calling it previously) is because I want to avoid the maluses that come from being stationary. At a superficial level, this means that a ship shooting at a stationary target hits about 40 percentage points more often; if you include the effects of software and the pilot taking Evasive Action, it's 60 percentage points more often. If our ship gets hit 10% of the time, it'd get hit 70% of the time if it were stationary, and so forth. This math is ofc rough because 2d6 is nonlinear, but it averages out to about this.

Normally, this isn't a decisive issue, but the LMDC is a new threat and one which causes serious issues. A LMDC-armed warship could take shots at the station; normally we'd be able to reduce the damage to very infrequent through the combination of evasion piloting checks, Evade/1 software, and not having that -4 modifier. However, if we cannot evade or take advantage of the Evade/1 software package, and have that -4 modifier, shots from Distant range can start to connect. That forces us to try and scare off a warship that's hovering 300,000 km away from our station. Right now, our approach to that is to fire enough torpedoes that one of them will get past the target's evasion and point defence. However, at 300,000 km away (so around 250,000 km from the edge of our minefield), it'll take so long for the torpedoes to arrive that the target can jump out before they arrive. Yes, that means they use up fuel, but it also weakens the minefield; if they have a refuelling tanker outside the system that we don't know about, then they can just keep repeatedly jumping in, taking a shot with a LMDC, and then leaving, and in doing so weaken our defences until there's either nothing left or a resupply mission arrives. @Rat King mentioned a 300 ton non-jump-capable LMDC boat, and I suspect you could make a 2-jump variant of that on around 500-800 tons. It'd be very embarassing to lose a station to death by a thousand cuts from that.

The cost of the drive itself is not as significant as you make it out to be. On the most aggressively scaled-down design I showed, the drive and its required powerplant is only about 80 MCr. I think 80 MCr is worth it when the potential method of defeating an immobile, isolated station has already been brought up.

Edit: Correction, I just checked the barrage table.

An increase in 6 points turns what would normally be 10% damage into 150% damage.
 
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I think that it's probably a good idea to have enough engine on the stations to random walk our way out of some hits from LMDCs and other long-range weapons.

I support getting Caturix un-mothballed, too, though I'll note that it's hull is not rad-hardened and that could make it quite fragile.

[X] Plan: Caturix, MAT and garrison commanders
-[X] Aslan: Land on Home for Aslan clans that promise to provide technical experts for our industries.
-[X] North: Send MAT and other available reinforcements to Omarov
-[X] Garrisons: garrison commanders are to make their systems safe Vs attack by forces similar to a large fleet of these stealth ships or by a fleet of similar capacity to the best seen allied or enemy fleet from a near peer. If this is not possible then they must ask for what they think they need.
-[X] Yard priorities: Prepare the Caturix monitor for battle in the north if analysts believe it will perform well; convert or build new spotting ships; meet reasonable requests from garrison commanders; refit other ships as possible with better sensors if that helps; CFA-D if we have space and budget.
 
What are the proportions of CFA-Ds to B and C models? Could the currently-under-construction pair of Bs be completed as Ds instead?

Can't remember exactly what the gun-type CFAs are armed with, I know there were two types.
 
What are the proportions of CFA-Ds to B and C models? Could the currently-under-construction pair of Bs be completed as Ds instead?

Can't remember exactly what the gun-type CFAs are armed with, I know there were two types.
There are four CFA types:
A - pure missile boat
B - pure torpedo boat
C - 3 x LMDC, 35 missile tubes
D - 2 x LMDC, 12 torpedo tubes




Also the vote is tied 3 ways between moon, moonlet and rocky!
 
I am going to cheat.

@Traveller76, @Tallhart, @Pinniped, @0t4n1z3r019, my original plan was made under the (mistaken) assumptions that:
  1. Omarov's beloved LMDCs could be placed in a capital ship turret (we need to get the TL10 non-prototype version to do so);
  2. Command bridges are highly useful (they give a +1 to naval tactics checks while being heavier, which it turns out are just rolling for initiative to see who goes first if both sides detect each other simultaneously and to coordinate multiple formations of fighters and the like acting together, and nothing that'd be useful for our isolated defence stations);
  3. We have access to dispersed sensor arrays.
All of the above require a 5,000 ton hull and are what led to me picking a 5,000 ton hull initially. That's now much less important, and by making the hull smaller, we free up yardspace and ~halve the cost of the defensive installation. We're now in a three-way tie between the original 5,000 ton plan and two new plans that opt for something smaller. Would any of you be interested in switching plans in light of my mistakes?
 
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I've added a second version of my proposed design that downgrades the two missile bays to small ones for the capability to have a M-1 drive if that is valid as a station. Both designs do have a bunch of spare tonnage that's automatically been turned into cargo space as well for any extra costs or additions the QM would like to add to them that I've not accounted for.
 
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