2023-08-19
I've been toying around with the idea of running the Classic Traveller Adventure 5 Trillion Credit Squadron for quite a while. It offers a massive campaign setup of various star systems vying for control of the Island Cluster subsectors.
Trillion Credit Squadron (TCS for short) uses Book 5: High Guard as rules to resolve space combat between the large fleets, each player gets to control. So before digging deeper into TCS I started out with a simple test battle between two ships.
I designed the ships myself, using the High Guard rules, because building their own fleets is one mayor aspect for players in TCS.
For this first test battle I didn't spend much time to optimize any specifics of my ships, I just wanted to get something playable. So here is my Javelin Class battle ship:
The Javelins are Tech Level 12, cylindrical shaped 500 ton, armored battle cruisers, capable of jump-3 and 3G acceleration, their main weapon is a 50 ton plasma gun with two additional triple laser turrets and two triple rocket launcher turrets. They need a crew of 20 officers and 40 ratings, and cost about 410 MCr (410 million Credits)
In terms of High Guard statistics, the ships look like this:
BC-5333332-200000-26002-0 MCr410 500t
batteries bearing 21 2 Crew=60
batteries 21 2 TL=12
Passengers=0 Low berths=0 Cargo=90 Fuel=165 EP=1 Agility=0
Let me decode the part about "batteries". Since the number of weapons can amount to hundreds of laser turrets, weapons need to be grouped into batteries. In combat each "bearing" battery gets one attack roll. Which would then be evaluated whether it hits at all, and then penetrates the defenses to actually cause any damage.
So in this example, the Javelin Battle Cruisers have 2 batteries of level 2 beam lasers, 1 battery of a level 6 plasma gun, and 2 batteries of level 2 rocket launchers.
Here goes the test battle of two Javelin Class battle cruisers, the "Javelin" versus the "Sling". Just for funsies, I decided they're not far away from the closest planet:
The battle formation phase is simple, both ships are in their respective "lines". There is no reserve line, and since it's the first round, the enemies are at "long" range.
Initiative is diced for: Sling is the attacker.
In the Pre-Combat Decision phase both ships decide to not break off from battle.
The combat phase starts with Javelin the defender shooting at the attacker. Two racks of missiles are fired, but they all miss.
Now it's the attackers turn. Sling shoots two missiles. Both penetrate Javelin's defensive laser fire and cause damage:
Javelin looses 33 tons of fuel and it's maneuver drive get's reduced by 2.
The Break through and Pursuit steps of the combat round don't apply, so the first round is over.
No changes regarding the battle formation. This time Javelin wins the initiative.
The damage Javalin suffered in the previous round is pretty bad. It's maneuver capabilities are hampered, and it lost a lot of fuel. So in the Pre-Combat Decisions phase Javelin decides to break off from battle by jumping to a neighboring system one parsec away. It'll be a dangerous jump, since the ships are within the 100D limit of the close world (see above).
Sling the defender gets to attack first, shoots more rockets and again scores two hits. On the Javalin the commander shouts frantic commands, to fire yet more rockets while preparing for the jump. But all of them miss ... again!
As the Javelins jump drive spins up to take the ship to safety, the hull rumbles and shakes from the explosions, the chief engineer shouts "our maneuver drive is out, and we lost yet more fuel! We have to surrender!" but it's to late, the jump drive kicks in, burning the very last fuel and takes the badly damaged ship on a miss jump to a random location 21 parsecs away ... time for another Traveller adventure.
Please send any comments or questions to wandererbill@betola.de or @wandererbill@tabletop.social
Copyright: ~lkh • So. Aug. 20 10:53:16 CEST 2023 • License: CC BY-NC 4.0 • Hosted by: SDF-EU Public Access UNIX System - https://sdf-eu.org