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VB6 Aurora > Aurora Suggestions
Cockpit component and gunboats
sloanjh:
This idea is spawned from the "agility" discussion in the Ship Design section.
I think a lot of us would love to have beam-armed, survivable fighters that weren't just stand-off missile platforms in Aurora. Here's an idea that might allow something 1/2 way between fighters and ships - I just realized these might be called "gunboats" (since "fighter" is already taken):
Add a 1 HS component called "cockpit" which has the following effects:
No bridge or life-support is required (cockpit includes lifesupport for crew). A ship with a cockpit is called a "gunboat".
A gunboat must be based somewhere (ship or planet); support personnel and material are located at the base.
Crew requirements are greatly reduced - a crew consisting of a single pilot might be possible. Support crew are located where ever the gunboat is based.
Endurance would be GREATLY reduced - 1 day or so max
Not sure about fuel - 1 HS of tankage would probably be overkill, so maybe fuel should also be abstracted into the cockpit HS.
No on-board engineering spaces (spares) required - again, these are at the base.
There might even be a HS bonus for components, (say 25% or maybe even 50%) to represent the fact that they don't need on-board maintenance "space" designed into them. For example, think about the engine room of a gas-turbine powered DD - it's going to be bigger than just the jet engines themselves.
The idea here is that a real-world fighter is basically minimal life support wrapping an engine, fuel tanks, and a weapon. All of the support personnel are located at the base. What this gives you is a MUCH better power-to-weight ratio (which translates into speed and agility), at the cost of MUCH lower endurance.
In gameplay terms, I think this would allow you to build gunboats that are significantly faster than an equivalently armed ship, which I think means they would be a lot nastier (especially if the "agility" ideas were put in). This in turn would give an alternative option for system defense - you wouldn't need to research missile tech to have a long range strategy for planets. Steve could also introduce "gunboat tenders" which would have the crew and maintenance facilities onboard (the other 25% to 50% of the tonnage that was shaved off the gunboat systems).
One thing I like about this is that it doesn't break Steve's "plausibility" rules - the "why can't I put 20 of these super-duper-fighter lasers on a big ship" question is answered (the ship would have to be its own tender). At the same time, the Achilles' heel of gunboats would be maintenance - they would presumably need to spend a LOT of time with their tenders between sorties (perhaps an extra maintenance clock for them that ran at 10x during a sortie and unwound at 10x while at the tender?). BTW, I would allow gunboats to transit detached from their tender, to allow a decent number of gunboats/tender through the WP.
Whaddaya think?
John
SteveAlt:
It might be possible to handle what you are looking for without much change to the code. Essentially what you need is a new small system that combines crew quarters, bridge, fuel and spares plus the ability for ships to carry other ships in an internal bay. This internal bay would have the ability to replace the spares for the new system.
At the moment, the various systems are as follows:
Bridge: 1 HS, Cost 10,
Crew Quarters: 1 HS, Cost 15, allows 250 crew
Engineering: 3 HS, Cost 30, carries 5 spares
Fuel Storage: 1 HS, Cost 10, Storage 50,000 litres
If we scale this down to combine into a single system by reducing everything in size by 80% and including the 1/5th HS bridge space for free we get:
Cockpit 1HS, Cost (10+15+30+10)/5 = 13
Allows 50 crew, carries 1 spare and 10,000 litres of fuel.
In game terms this would probably have to be three separate tiny systems though to avoid having to rewrite chunks of code to support systems with multiple uses.
The missing bridge in this scenario gives me an idea. The size of the bridge should probably depend on the size of the ship. In reality larger ships should have larger bridges so I could add that to ship design and have a HS limit below which you don't need a bridge at all.
(I am going to go away and create these systems and try to put them on a ship design)
OK, back now. I have the three small 'gunboat' systems and I have been playing with designs. This design includes just the new systems and one engine
--- Code: ---Kresta class Gunboat 500 tons 34 Crew 69 BP TCS 10 TH 60 EM 0
6000 km/s Armour 1 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/0/0/0/0 Damage Control 0-0 PPV 0
Replacement Parts 1
Sorokin S8 Ion Drive (1) Power 60 Efficiency 0.80 Signature 60 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres Range 108.0 billion km (208 days at full power)
--- End code ---
Unfortunately as soon as you start to add beam weapons (including fire control, reactors and weapons), the whole design is completely blown as you then have a slow ship without enough crew. Missiles would be far easier as they only need a launcher, small fire control and a magazine.
Therefore, to make this concept work I need to find a way to create smaller but still powerful engines and realistic smaller version of weapons and fire control. I also have to do this without changing the way that larger ships are designed.
(going away to think a little more)
I have created a 'gunboat engine', which is only 40% the size of a regular engine but has the same power and uses fuel 10x as fast. I am not convinced this is a good idea because it could be used en masse on larger ships so I need to add some extra restrictions to make that a bad idea (or perhaps I could just restrict the number of these engines allowed on a ship - technobabble required).
For the power reactor, I have added the ability to build 1 HS and 0.5 HS reactors. I have also used a normal basic size 1 fire control system with no multiples for tracking speed or range and a normal 12cm laser as the main armament.
The completed gunboat uses all normal ship design rules and comprises the components listed below. As you can see, the GB mainly uses smaller versions of existing components with with everything scaled down at the same rate, including cost, size and capability. The only real new rule is for the high power, high fuel use engine. Everything uses existing class design rules.
1x GB Fuel Storage (new size system but existing rules)
2x Sorokin GB Drive (new system and new rule for engine power vs fuel))
3x GB Crew Quarters (new size system but existing rules)
4x Composite Armour (existing system and rules
1x 12cm Visible Light Laser (existing system and rules)
1x GB Fire Control (existing system and rules)
1x GB Reactor (new size system but existing rules)
1x GB Engineering Section (new size system but existing rules)
And the final design...
--- Code: ---Kresta class Gunboat 750 tons 108 Crew 159 BP TCS 15 TH 120 EM 0
8000 km/s Armour 1 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/0/0/0/0 Damage Control 0-0 PPV 4
Replacement Parts 1
Sorokin GB1 Ion Drive (2) Power 60 Efficiency 8.00 Signature 60 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres Range 7.2 billion km (10 days at full power)
12cm C2 Visible Light Laser (1) Range 48,000km TS: 8000 km/s Power 4-2 RM 2 ROF 10 4 4 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gunboat Fire Control (1) Max Range: 48,000 km TS: 3200 km/s 79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gunboat Reactor (1) Total Power Output 2 Armour 0 Exp 5%
--- End code ---
Not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for but it does create a small, fast, short- ranged attack craft that follows all of the existing rules except for the engine (which still might be a problem).
One thing I can't do from your original request is have small jump capable ships because I want to keep jump engines to a minimum size of 15 HS. Therefore I need to think about some type of internal bay to carry smaller ships. I'll look at that once I have your comments on the above.
Steve
SteveAlt:
I had an idea about the new engine as soon as I logged out
Instead of making it smaller but retaining the same power, I could make it the same size with 2x or 2.5x more power (and the 10x fuel use plus a high explosion chance) and have a maximum of one per ship because of 'instability problems'. Suddenly it becomes perfectly reasonable to only use it on small, short-ranged ships. I have to go out for a while but I will look at this again when I get back in.
Steve
Erik L:
Have a boat bay.
Or.... Okay, I have a vision in my head of the transport helicopter (the one that is a cockpit with the "empty" mid-section. So basically your jump carrier is a ship that has space to lock 4-6 gunboats to its hull and then jump.
On the otherhand, treat them as LAC's from the Honorverse. Light in-system defense units.
Þórgrímr:
I love the idea of having tenders for them. It would resemble the PT tenders the US used to great extent in the pacific portion of world war 2. So I am all for the tender idea myself.
Personally, I like your concept of the PT Boats so far Steve.
Cheers,
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