The impracticality of capital ships

[foxroe]

I've always found the concept of enormous space-faring capital ships to be odd. I mean they're a pretty cool sci-fi trope; how can you not like giant interstellar space fortresses bristling with massive weapons that put the entire world's nuclear arsenal to shame?

But seriously, they seem way too impractical in use. Firstly, even in null-gravity, the science and engineering involved to overcome the material stresses and strains in constructing large ships has to be well off of Traveller's TL scale (unless of course one considers hollowed out space rocks). Secondly, the energies involved in moving, operating, and weaponizing such a platform have to be impossibly sun-like. And thirdly, the return on investment has to be worthless given the crap-shoot that such a thing would survive any major engagement.

IMO, ignoring Book5, the small starships from Book 2 are much more "realistic". It seems to me that an armada of 3000-ton warships would be far more practical (and probably cheaper) than a squadron of 100kton dreadnoughts.

Watchya think?

[Vile Traveller]

Small Ship Universe all the way!

I've always taken Andy Slack's White Dwarf article on LBB2 fleets as my guide in this matter.

EDIT: That's A Fleeting Encounter in White Dwarf #49.

[geoffrey]

How big are "small" and "large" Traveller ships? How do they compare in size to that Imperial cruiser (supposed to be a mile long) that wowed us all in the first minute of Star Wars back in 1977?

[Vile Traveller]

LBB2 goes up to 5,000 dtons, which means 70,000 cubic metres. That's not a lot, say a conical hull 30m across the base and 300m long, a little shorter than the average modern-day aircraft carrier, and less than a fifth of the size of a star destroyer. That's the limit of the "small ship universe", with most ships being considerably smaller in the 200-600 dton range. In small ship Traveller, the missile-armed fighter is the capital ship killer (especially if carrying nukes), and the fighter carrier the big hitter of the fleet. There are no spinal mounts or bay weapons, which are really the equivalent of battleship main guns. A small, modified trader has a good chance of escaping an encounter with the military, even if it can't go toe-toe.

[foxroe]

..and Book 5, [i[High Guard[/i], goes into detail on how to create ships up to 1,000,000 tons, but the combat system is different (and a bit more detailed) and doesn't work well with the "small" ships. In the basic ship combat rules, life is simple - roll 2d6 + modifiers >= 8 to hit, roll on one damage table (again, 2d6). In [i[High Guard[/i], space combat is more like a wargame. The rules are bit more complicated: it's also a 2d6 roll to hit, but the target number changes based on how many weapons are firing (or how big it is), what defenses the target is using, and what type of weapon is being fired. Then there are different damage charts to roll on, the roll is modified (and so on)... blech. Don't get me wrong; in my younger days I greatly enjoyed mega-ship fleet actions in Traveller, but nowadays I prefer simplicity in my rule sets.

IMO, the basic Traveller "small" ship rules are more than adequate for the use of starships in a sci-fi RPG setting. If one wanted to introduce a larger ship into the "small" system, one could just mash a bunch of identical 5,000 ton ships together and call it a day.

Hey, wait a second... are you trolling us geoffrey? Have you seriously never played Traveller?

[geoffrey]

I played Traveller a couple of times in the early 1980s, and I can hardly remember the first thing about it!

[foxroe]

Dec 18, 2017 13:16:26 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

I played Traveller a couple of times in the early 1980s, and I can hardly remember the first thing about it!

It's a great game (the "classic" original version), full of old-school sensibilities a la OD&D. Everything is pretty much a 1 or 2 d6 roll, the referee is the final arbiter and is encouraged to make rulings on the fly, etc.

You can still purchase it directly from Marc Miller here:

www.farfuture.net/FFE-CDROMs.html ("The Golden Age")

[EdOWar]

We played quite a bit of classic Traveller back in the day. Rolling up characters and designing cool ships were practically mini-games in their own right. Still have my LBBs somewhere.

However, we never did much with space battles. From a purely gaming perspective, capital ships were impractical because the players would never get ahold of one, and likely never interact with one.

From a "realism" perspective though, whether a capital ship is practical to build entirely depends on your tech level, the size of your economy and the nature of the threats you face.

[foxroe]

Dec 19, 2017 12:16:40 GMT -6 EdOWar said:

From a purely gaming perspective, capital ships were impractical because the players would never get ahold of one, and likely never interact with one.

From a "realism" perspective though, whether a capital ship is practical to build entirely depends on your tech level, the size of your economy and the nature of the threats you face.

Valid point. I could maybe see the players obtaining such a large vessel as an end-game objective/reward (similar to strongholds and land in OD&D), but it would be just a big hand-wave at that point.

[Finarvyn]

Dec 18, 2017 13:16:26 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

I played Traveller a couple of times in the early 1980s, and I can hardly remember the first thing about it!

I get what you are saying here. I played Traveller when it first came out (late 1970's?) using the little black books and haven't done much with it since. I love the concept of the game and occasionally dust off my rulebooks to read, but that's not at all the same as at-the-table game experience and I just don't remember a lot about how the game plays anymore. Not enough to really add to a conversation such as this one, at least.

[bravewolf]

Instead of viewing capital ships as a possible (if implausible) PC endgame, what about
1. Capital ship as an adventure setting...a deep space megadungeon
2. Capital ship as a setting for faction play in relatively close quarters
3. See number 2 above, but the PCs are on a capital ship-cum-rogue state on the fringe of the Imperium
4. Like number 1 above, run like a Braunstein or Arneson scenario with different players running separate salvage, policing, & other teams, each of which has goals that might conflict or achieve synergy with the others?

Any of these scenarios would make capital ships practical from a gaming perspective.

[foxroe]

Those are great ideas, bravewolf, especially the first one. I can see running an entire campaign with the players' group marooned on an enormous, derelict vessel of the ancients - discovering new technologies, interacting with other groups that have also been stranded (i.e. pirates, established "colonies", etc.), beset by failed "experiments"... the possibilities are endless, and there would be no need for the crufty High Guard system. Its very Metamorphosis Alpha.

[bravewolf]

Good point, foxroe: I totally spaced mentioning that one could do this stuff without Highguard.

[Vile Traveller]

"D&D" on a giant spaceship (Metamorphosis Alpha!) is certainly a fun campaign. The problem is not so much with individual giant ships, but with the fact that they exist, and that there are more of them. I kind of scales up the whole game to a point which PCs will have trouble affecting unless they get into politics, which no group of mine has ever shown an interest in.