Re: [GZG] (FT) Tugs

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 4:19 PM, John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz>
wrote:
> Hi
>
>
>
> The topic about tugs caused me to ask the question about whether
people use
> separate FTL tenders / transports and non FTL equipped battle riders
or
> assault ships in their games.

Traveller Book 5: High Guard has construction and combat rules that
really favour battle riders.  While it definitely limits their
endurance or agility, the combination of a black globe generator and
ample capacitor banks allows the battlerider to eliminate not only the
jump drives and jump fuel, but also the powerplant and any fuel
tankage (fuel tanks shattered was a common enough damage result that
shutdown the vessel [unless it had non-empty capacitor banks, which
were too distributed to appear on the damage charts]).	The capacitors
are topped up by the tug and incoming weapons fire will supply a
stream of energy to keep the battlerider fighting.  The only downside
being  the instant destruction of the unit if it tried to absorb
energy past its storage capacity.

Full Thrust, not so much.
>
>
>
> What conditions would need to occur to make such ships more viable
than the
> fleet book ships?

The advantages of tugs disappeared with the changeover to the
Fleetbook rules.  Under the old rules, the FTL took the equivalent of
25% of the tonnage, and there were breakpoints in the hull mass
ratings.  A mass 36 cruiser-sized battlerider had the same available
mass for weapons and screens as a mass 54 capital ship, but paid less
for increased thrust.  Under the FB rules, FTL drives are only 10% of
the hull volume, and there are no breakpoints.	The only positive
change is that a thrust 2, fragile hulled tug could dedicate 80% of
its tonnage to its FTL system and haul an extra 7x its mass instead of
only additional mass equal to its own.
>
>
>
> Interested in people's opinions.
>
>
>
How a tug combination moves outside of hyperspace is heavily dependant
on psb.  If all a tug has to do to drag something through hyperspace
is 'extend the field of its Irrelavent Drive', there is no physical
coupling needed (unless the payload can drift relative to the tug,
during the jump).  If the real space drives are reactionless gravitic
manipulators, like Impellers in Honorverse, only the tug can power up
its realspace drive without consequences.  Other gravitics may, or may
not, have deleterious effects.	For all the vessels in a combined
assembly to use their reaction drives to apply thrust require rigid
cradles directing the drive flux in a way that it does not imping on
other parts of the assembly.

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