Fleet formations

[tmikesecrist3]

Fleets of ships in any navy be it wet navies or space navies use formations for many reasions. Amonge them being maxmixing the definsave and offinsave power of the fleet or battle group.... but there are many facters that inflince formations..... you want your ships close enough to be able to support each other but far enough apart so that the can monver as freely as posable.. and with out ships which suffer damage being colidded into by there consorts.... what do you think would be the nessary safe seperation between ships that would help aviod clissions and still alowe them to support each outher.... also on that note how hard would it be to tie in the ships of a fleet are battle group togeather in a tactcal data net that would allow the ships to share sincore info and posably even fire control

[Nekira Sudacne]

unfortunately PW ranges don't really allow for a good defensive formation. Point defence systems have a range of only a mile or two, which at speeds means any slight manuvering can cause a crash if you try to interlock the defense range.

[DhAkael]

unfortunately PW ranges don't really allow for a good defensive formation. Point defence systems have a range of only a mile or two, which at speeds means any slight manuvering can cause a crash if you try to interlock the defense range.

Thats why I fudge them and substitute the ranges given in the Aliens Unlimited: Galaxy Guide; they still aren't "true" space-comabt ranges (which even for point defense should be measured in the multiple tens of miles), but are better than what's given in the PW-books texts.

[tmikesecrist3]

I tend to use kitsunas alternet space combat rules that way an interlocked layered defince for a formats is posable

[DhAkael]

Kitsune's stuff is good, but the conversion process is way too much maths for me to deal with (and a whack load of re-writing).
I have my own "on the fly" scaling I do in-game. It's not perfect but it gets the job done for in-game play.

[tmikesecrist3]

true more like what I I do I use her stuff as a rough guid more or less becouse I find that exact ranges are almost never nessary... though there is no reasion why an andvaced star ship would have less range on its main battery then the HMS Dreadnought! and leats not even talk about the missile ranges.....

[DhAkael]

true more like what I I do I use her stuff as a rough guid more or less becouse I find that exact ranges are almost never nessary... though there is no reasion why an andvaced star ship would have less range on its main battery then the HMS Dreadnought! and leats not even talk about the missile ranges.....

Quite.

[glitterboy2098]

Kitsune's stuff is good, but the conversion process is way too much maths for me to deal with (and a whack load of re-writing).
I have my own "on the fly" scaling I do in-game. It's not perfect but it gets the job done for in-game play.

you might find my system much easier to use. it manages to obtain much of the same inertia and acceleration elements as Kitsune's system, but with no need to rewrite anything, and no need for an advanced math degree either. you can handle everything but section 9 (which is optional constant acceleration travel times) with little more than basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.. though a basic or scientific calculator is recommended since the numbers can get fairly large.

it even manages to handle weapons ranges and missile ranges without rewriting.

[KLM]

what do you think would be the nessary safe seperation between ships that would help aviod clissions and still alowe them to support each outher....

WITHIN a gravity well:
If we keep the canon speeds it would be a few km-s - with strict rules in thick codebooks about manouvering. Also, keep in mind, that picket ships (starfighter pairs/flights/squadrons) are best to be spreaded out.

OUTSIDE a gravity well:
FTL comes into play, weapon range and ship speed become secondary factors and interdictors (Aranea for example) play a heavy role
(also as a missile magnet ), using FTL based "jump in, hit hard, hope survive to jump out" attacks.

"also on that note how hard would it be to tie in the ships of a fleet are battle group togeather in a tactcal data net that would allow the ships to share sincore info and posably even fire control"

One word: telemechanics (super psi power).

[MADMANMIKE]

"also on that note how hard would it be to tie in the ships of a fleet are battle group togeather in a tactcal data net that would allow the ships to share sincore info and posably even fire control"

One word: telemechanics (super psi power).

I came up with the Aethernet for that; an internet that works only when in FTL, using a sort of hyperspace for the communications base and phased satellites for the servers..

[tmikesecrist3]

anther thought is it is a lot easyer to hide even in empty space then most people think.... if you read any of the honor harrington novels you would realize this... all you need to do is shut down your drove system or even just put it in stand boy (not as good becouse a stand by drive can be dectected if you get close enught with eather a ship or probe). and com on emcon..... The way most ships are decticted is by radeating signels and calling attion to it self... if you just shut and long every thing down you can and make like a hole in space.. even if some one bonces radar off you they might well think your eather a rock in space or a hulk of a space craft at most

[glitterboy2098]

actually it's a lot easier to detect stuff in space than scifi writers like to portray.

space is big, empty, and has a background temp of 3 kelvin. any space craft that isn't an actual dead hulk is going to be radiation heat (heat generated by its power plant, its computers, its drive, its crew metabolism)... making it a very bright spot against that empty background. basic IR/thermal cameras can pick it out easy. even 3 galaxies ships that aren't using reaction based drives. (anti-matter powerplants would generate massive amounts of waste heat)

and you can automate sky searching. we already do in real life. the efforts to find asteroids are largely an automated process for examle, done with IR cameras on telescopes. for asteroid finding the time consuming part is sorting what is seen from existing asteroids, but that's just because their budgets don't allow for enough telescopes and repeat sweeps to pinpoint orbits right away.

so unless a starship is in an orbit that doesn't go anywhere, it'll be picked out as a ship for sure. and by that i mean "orbiting the star on the plane of the ecliptic, in a multi-year orbit, in a zone with lots of other objects orbiting roughly the same way.

scifi writers tend to ignore that, because either they don't understand it, or they decided the reality that there aint no stealth in space isn't as dramatic. in the case of the honorverse example you gave, it's mostly the latter. Weber knows it shouldn't work that way, he even admits it in "echoes of honor", when Honor uses a fleets fusion reaction thrusters to set up an ambush. the issue is just ignored unless dramatically convenient.

[flatline]

This seems relevant:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... h_In_Space

--flatline

[DhAkael]

actually it's a lot easier to detect stuff in space than scifi writers like to portray.

space is big, empty, and has a background temp of 3 kelvin. any space craft that isn't an actual dead hulk is going to be radiation heat (heat generated by its power plant, its computers, its drive, its crew metabolism)... making it a very bright spot against that empty background. basic IR/thermal cameras can pick it out easy. even 3 galaxies ships that aren't using reaction based drives. (anti-matter powerplants would generate massive amounts of waste heat)

and you can automate sky searching. we already do in real life. the efforts to find asteroids are largely an automated process for examle, done with IR cameras on telescopes. for asteroid finding the time consuming part is sorting what is seen from existing asteroids, but that's just because their budgets don't allow for enough telescopes and repeat sweeps to pinpoint orbits right away.

so unless a starship is in an orbit that doesn't go anywhere, it'll be picked out as a ship for sure. and by that i mean "orbiting the star on the plane of the ecliptic, in a multi-year orbit, in a zone with lots of other objects orbiting roughly the same way.

scifi writers tend to ignore that, because either they don't understand it, or they decided the reality that there aint no stealth in space isn't as dramatic. in the case of the honorverse example you gave, it's mostly the latter. Weber knows it shouldn't work that way, he even admits it in "echoes of honor", when Honor uses a fleets fusion reaction thrusters to set up an ambush. the issue is just ignored unless dramatically convenient.

I'll have to agree; thus handwavium is a MUST if one wants to do the whole Run Silent, Run deep tactic in space battles.
So the final question is; does the individual GM want to play hard-sci slide-rule rules, or Space-Opera rulze?
GM's choice. Just make sure whatever "fizziks" or physics used are consistant in the campaign.

[flatline]

If you have some sort of a jump or fold drive that is sufficiently accurate, then you don't need stealth. Just appear whereever you wanted to be. Even better if you can engage is quickly enough to jump in guns blazing and jump back out before reinforcements can arrive.

--flatline

[tmikesecrist3]

I agree that if a ship is detected. it would be detected by waste heat. but you still have the search a large valuem of space and what your looking for is not vary big.... and you will also have to suspect somethings there to be looking at all... the outher thing that could make things hard is objects often reflect heat or steller bodies as well as light....

The outher thing is there are vary few ways to detect something real time becouse of the ranges in space heat is a form of light and so can not travel faster then light... you could look right at where the ship is hideing and not see it becouse the light has not gotten to where you are yet. and even then with a long enught rage for there to be that type of delay you know where the ship was but that still dont tell you where the ship is

[glitterboy2098]

I agree that if a ship is detected. it would be detected by waste heat. but you still have the search a large valuem of space and what your looking for is not vary big.... and you will also have to suspect somethings there to be looking at all... the outher thing that could make things hard is objects often reflect heat or steller bodies as well as light....

reflected light appears different than radiated light (wavelengths and spectrum differ), and identification is mostly a case of identifying relative motion.
an automated sky survey can scan the entire night sky in a matter of hours. faster if you have multiple telescopes (most nowadays don't).
processing takes relatively little time even today.

The outher thing is there are vary few ways to detect something real time becouse of the ranges in space heat is a form of light and so can not travel faster then light... you could look right at where the ship is hideing and not see it becouse the light has not gotten to where you are yet. and even then with a long enught rage for there to be that type of delay you know where the ship was but that still dont tell you where the ship is

speed of light lag is an issue, but consider this. earth to moon is only 1.3 second delay.
earth to mars is 3 minutes to 21 minutes depending on relative positions.
earth to pluto is only 5 hours, give or take a few minutes.

at the speeds phaseworld ships move at by canon at sublight (and ignoring orbital mechanics issues, for sanity), the ships would take years to go from mars to earth. weeks to go from moon to earth.
if we ignore the canon numbers and go with more realistic numbers, your still looking at months for a mars to earth and days for moon to earth. anything faster and you have to fire up your drives making you a blatantly obvious beacon.

detection is many orders of magnitude faster than the things being detected.
and if the ship being searched for fires up it's drives for an FTL jump, it'll be detected instantly, since by canon ships at FTL can be detected before they arrive.

[flatline]

I agree that if a ship is detected. it would be detected by waste heat. but you still have the search a large valuem of space and what your looking for is not vary big.... and you will also have to suspect somethings there to be looking at all... the outher thing that could make things hard is objects often reflect heat or steller bodies as well as light....

The outher thing is there are vary few ways to detect something real time becouse of the ranges in space heat is a form of light and so can not travel faster then light... you could look right at where the ship is hideing and not see it becouse the light has not gotten to where you are yet. and even then with a long enught rage for there to be that type of delay you know where the ship was but that still dont tell you where the ship is

Follow the link I posted above. An interesting bit of trivia you'll read is that with today's systems, we can do an automated full sky scan in about 4 hours. You'd think they could do it in less time in a space opera setting.

--flatline

[DhAkael]

With Phase World type gravitic FTL, detection isn't that big of a deal, since the gravity waves from the drive can be recognized at much greater ranges then you can shoot. Based on the background for Phase World, fleet operations are going to be a lot of meeting engagements, missile duels, and fighter strikes from carriers.

LOL..and with the absurdly short "knife fighting" ranges of PW weapons, one would NEED long-ranged missiles and fighter squadrons, as the cap-ship main cannons are pathetic range-wise... even seeing an enemy vessel at 10 or 20 light-minutes ahead of time won't mean a wet spit into a hurricane if y'can't hit them. So it all boils down to who can gallop faster and throw the most cannon-weight in the first salvo.

[tmikesecrist3]

thats another thing I am not clear one... what effect does ECM have... and I am not sure how to handle pd..... I mean roleing to strick each missle could be a lot of roles.... I man cant a TGE Baskerey throw around 100-200 missles a launch? and adds are some would get throew..... so rollyng strick roles would be out.... thought about useing pd as a parry roll just to cut down on the numbers of roles need not sure though andy thoughts

[taalismn]

THat's why you find out what an enemy needs resource-wise in advance. Find whether and where they'd need to stock up/tank up, and know they'll be doing the same for you. You got a gas giant or terrestrial planet in a system, you can bet an enemy's going to head there, to refuel, stock up, or just use the gravity for a convenient anchorage. If you're already at either, the fight's going to come to you. If there are other bodies in the system besides the one you're at, the enemy's likely to head for one of them before or after a battle to affect repairs, gas up, or set up shop so they have a convenient base of operations(maybe several, and as many as they can set up unobserved) against the next time they come at you. And if asteroids in the system start breaking charted orbits, take notice; it's not a good sign, especially if you're defending one of the planetary bodies.

[KLM]

actually it's a lot easier to detect stuff in space than scifi writers like to portray.

space is big, empty, and has a background temp of 3 kelvin. any space craft that isn't an actual dead hulk is going to be radiation heat

Something to watch int that topic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pftna34TbJU

Adios
KLM

[KLM]

With Phase World type gravitic FTL, detection isn't that big of a deal, since the gravity waves from the drive can be recognized at much greater ranges then you can shoot. Based on the background for Phase World, fleet operations are going to be a lot of meeting engagements, missile duels, and fighter strikes from carriers.

But also a lot of "hotdrops" too, when fleet element waiting in ambush "jump on" detected enemy vessels in FTL (short range FTL activation, to arrive within 20-30 kms of target, with lag included.
This also might include attacks DURING FTL.

Not to mention rifts drives - with no official limit of how many ships can pass on rift of a rift-drive.... Well an educated guess would put them for dozens, depending on size.

This is of course when we keep official speeds and weapon/detection ranges, and outside of a gravity well.

ADios
KLM

[flatline]

So if everyone agrees that the official speeds are bunk, how do you guys adjust canon to correct this?

--flatline

[KLM]

Hi there!

So if everyone agrees that the official speeds are bunk, how do you guys adjust canon to correct this?

--flatline

Easiest and dirty solution is to multiply ranges and speeds by 10.

So 1 Mach is going to be about the speed of low Earth Orbit. In this case multiply speed for space-capable PA, but DO NOT multiply their weapon ranges.
(A dinky 2 or 3 million Silverhawk should not outgun a 40+ million starfighter)

Missile range for mini and micro missiles should also stay on canon levels, relegating those weapons to point-defense and close combat roles.

Atmospheric missile range also should not be modified.

Multiply detection and gravitiy well ranges.

- - - -

Also, in addition one could apply rules for shooting over maximum range - with cumulative penalties, say -2 for each +50% range (ie. shooting with a gun with a maximum range of 10 kms, at a taget at 20 kms means -4 to strike.).
This could be used for missiles as they can "drift" - ie travel without using their engines, but in this case ships might outrun them.


This is for a quick solution on a darks, sleepy Friday afternoon.

Adios
KLM

[DhAkael]

*shrug* don't care really.
I tend to toss out the slide-rule so I can focus on FUN (the entire point of the game actually), and just fudge things by figuring out what the *snicker* MACH speed is in KM or miles per hour, then square that bad-boy off as an acceleration rate.
MOST star-ships max out at either 1.1%c or for the more advanced anywhere from 5% to 14%c for max sublight velocity...and yes, I also factor in decceleartion time too.
Beacuse who has time to break out a slide rule or scientific calculator when the rest of the game crew is wanting to get into the action?
A good 70 to 90% of common gamers will lynch the GM or just walk away from the table if GM spends more than 5 minutes doing maths; they are there to GAME, not have a physics lesson.

[flatline]

You mock the slide-rule, but anyone who is practiced with the slide-rule will be able to make the appropriate rough calculations in their head in near real-time without needing to pull out the slide-rule.

But you're totally right that the game should not get bogged down by tedious calculations or anything else that doesn't contribute positively to the gaming experience. In fact, I would go so far as to say that one of the most important skills a GM can develop is to be able to read his players to know what level of detail they require to have a good time.

GM-ing for engineering students is a very different experience than GM-ing in high school. Of course, you can always offload the tedious calculations onto the players if it's important to them.

--flatline

[DhAkael]

You mock the slide-rule, but anyone who is practiced with the slide-rule will be able to make the appropriate rough calculations in their head in near real-time without needing to pull out the slide-rule.

But you're totally right that the game should not get bogged down by tedious calculations or anything else that doesn't contribute positively to the gaming experience. In fact, I would go so far as to say that one of the most important skills a GM can develop is to be able to read his players to know what level of detail they require to have a good time.

GM-ing for engineering students is a very different experience than GM-ing in high school. Of course, you can always offload the tedious calculations onto the players if it's important to them.

--flatline

Exactly.
No no no; you see, I mock the slide-rule CULT. Of which (not naming names) there are a few who are zealots that make religeous fanatics look tame.

It is THEY I mock, not the slide-rule, which, to be fair, is a damned nifty peice of analog technology.

[camk4evr]

thats another thing I am not clear one... what effect does ECM have...

It can blind or reduce the effectiveness of active targetting sensors (Ie radar) and interfere with/block comunications (reducing the effectiveness of mass fire as ships/fighters can't easily concentrate their fire on single target).

and I am not sure how to handle pd

I'd recommend treating it as a single parry roll and that for every point of success you shoot down one missile (multiplied by the number of PD batteries) and doubled if you roll a natural 20 in that situation (eg. you've 10 PD batteries and your enemy fired 100 misiles at you if you roll 5 above the attack roll you'll only have to worry about 50 missiles).

So if everyone agrees that the official speeds are bunk, how do you guys adjust canon to correct this?

--flatline

I dunno. I gues I'd find the speed of LEO and just add that to the listed speed for ships and fighters. For ship weapons it depends on the weapon system.

for fighters, PAs, and robots I'd probably leave the ranges alone.

For ships:
-Primaries, like the main guns of the Emancipation class, get their range multiplied by 100
-Torpedos/cruise missiles get their ranges multiplied by 10
-secondaries (anti-ship defensive batteries), get their range multiplied by 10
-all others (including regular long range missiles) remain the same as listed. Maybe (it depends on the blast radius of missiles and the range of fighter launched anti-shipping missiles).
-Dominator weapons are left as is

Oh, and the Macross' main cannon gets its range multiplied by 3

[glitterboy2098]

So if everyone agrees that the official speeds are bunk, how do you guys adjust canon to correct this?

I dunno. I gues I'd find the speed of LEO and just add that to the listed speed for ships and fighters. For ship weapons it depends on the weapon system.

so you'd be adding +33 mach to each?

you realize that still doesn't help you much, since the apollo mission was moving around mach 90+ on the main leg of it's trip to the moon?

the real problem with palladium's space travel rules isn't the speed, it's the fact it's not acceleration based like actual space travel is.

if they'd stuck to abstract units (the way the star wars RPG's did) it wouldn't be so bad, but they gave specific values in miles and Mph, which made it unworkable.

[camk4evr]

So if everyone agrees that the official speeds are bunk, how do you guys adjust canon to correct this?

I dunno. I gues I'd find the speed of LEO and just add that to the listed speed for ships and fighters. For ship weapons it depends on the weapon system.

so you'd be adding +33 mach to each?

you realize that still doesn't help you much, since the apollo mission was moving around mach 90+ on the main leg of it's trip to the moon?

Actually, I did not know that. Thanks. I guess that I'd add, at least 100 Mach then.

the real problem with palladium's space travel rules isn't the speed, it's the fact it's not acceleration based like actual space travel is.

if they'd stuck to abstract units (the way the star wars RPG's did) it wouldn't be so bad, but they gave specific values in miles and Mph, which made it unworkable.

Sort of like Mekton's MA then?

[flatline]

Rating ships in terms of G's of acceleration would be far more useful than what we have now.

Now we've been trained by video games to believe that smaller ships are faster than larger ships, but in space, this is often not the case.

--flatline

[Nekira Sudacne]

The point is no speed multiplier is really realistic because in space you don't have a max speed you have Delta-V and the only theoretical cap to ANY ships speed is light.

[flatline]

The point is no speed multiplier is really realistic because in space you don't have a max speed you have Delta-V and the only theoretical cap to ANY ships speed is light.

Well, probably closer to .9c. Much beyond that and you experience too much drag (or damage!) from interstellar hydrogen and other pesky gas molecules that you collide with. It seems like there was another reason that I came across reading somewhere (probably the atomic rockets site), but I can't recall what it was. Maybe it was just diminishing returns caused by relativistic mass and time dilation.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm remembering wrongly.

--flatline

[glitterboy2098]

oddly enough, in one sourcebook the top sublight speed for contragravitics is listed as .6c (seriously, it's in the repression field info).

of course, no mechanism for actually reaching that speed is present.

most reaction drives (drives that use a chemical or nuclear reaction to expell remass and generate thrust) top out at much less than that.

[Nightmask]

oddly enough, in one sourcebook the top sublight speed for contragravitics is listed as .6c (seriously, it's in the repression field info).

of course, no mechanism for actually reaching that speed is present.

most reaction drives (drives that use a chemical or nuclear reaction to expell remass and generate thrust) top out at much less than that.

Hmmmm, only place I remember something like that is from Rifts: Manhunters and their CG technology is way below that of the Three Galaxies, they have to make use of an iron-powered jump-drive like system for making FTL maneuvers (at something like a ton of pure iron to power each jump).

[KLM]

Hi there!

*shrug* don't care really.
I tend to toss out the slide-rule so I can focus on FUN

""The hell of it is, it's exciting," O'Malley went on. "You're doing something extremely difficult. It
requires concentration and practice and a lot of abstract thought. You have to get inside the other
guy's head, but at the same time you think of your mission as destroying an inanimate object.
Doesn't make much sense, does it? So, what you do is, you don't think about that aspect of the
job. Otherwise the job wouldn't get done."" - Tom Clancy, Red Storm Rising

- - -
As for back to topic, West End's Star Wars d6, with its "abstract" "space units" works best in my experience. But copyright issues...

Adios
KLM

[Nekira Sudacne]

The point is no speed multiplier is really realistic because in space you don't have a max speed you have Delta-V and the only theoretical cap to ANY ships speed is light.

Well, probably closer to .9c. Much beyond that and you experience too much drag (or damage!) from interstellar hydrogen and other pesky gas molecules that you collide with. It seems like there was another reason that I came across reading somewhere (probably the atomic rockets site), but I can't recall what it was. Maybe it was just diminishing returns caused by relativistic mass and time dilation.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm remembering wrongly.

--flatline

Oh sure, in practice your more limited by your ship's durability and fuel supply (even non-reaction mass ships run out eventually) well before light, but I did say theoretical for a reason

[camk4evr]

So if everyone agrees that the official speeds are bunk, how do you guys adjust canon to correct this?

--flatline

I dunno. I gues I'd find the speed of LEO and just add that to the listed speed for ships and fighters. For ship weapons it depends on the weapon system.

for fighters, PAs, and robots I'd probably leave the ranges alone.

For ships:
-Primaries, like the main guns of the Emancipation class, get their range multiplied by 100
-Torpedos/cruise missiles get their ranges multiplied by 10
-secondaries (anti-ship defensive batteries), get their range multiplied by 10
-all others (including regular long range missiles) remain the same as listed. Maybe (it depends on the blast radius of missiles and the range of fighter launched anti-shipping missiles).
-Dominator weapons are left as is

Oh, and the Macross' main cannon gets its range multiplied by 3

On second thought I think I'd multiply PD ranges by 10 as well