Space battle above, was Re: Land Battles on, Basilisk

On Thu, 14 Nov 1996, Tom Granvold wrote:

> > On Wed, 13 Nov 1996, Tom Granvold wrote:
> > 
> > >	   While I tend to like space combat over ground, I did find
another
> > > possibly interesting fictional source.  I just finished reading
the first
> > > Honor Harrington novel, _On Basilisk Station_.  The final space
battle
> > > wouldn't make an interesting scenerio.  A frigate chasing a Q ship
the
> > > size of a dreadnought!
> 
> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
> 
> > ...no, a light cruiser chasing a Q-ship, in what is mainly a missile
duel 
> > with lots and lots of ECM. The Grav Lance and Energy Torps (...why
do 
> > they remind me of Starfire's Plasma Guns?) could be interesting in
FT, 
> > though...
> 
>     Opps, yes Harrington's ship is a cruiser not a frigate.  But it
still
> seems a unbalanced fight to me.  Her ship, the Fearless, had two
forward
> missile tubes to the Q ship's six.  Also, she had far fewer missiles.
> They both have point defense against the missiles in addition to
> anti-missile missiles.

Ah, but the Manty equipment was far, far superior to the PN units. 
Someone on the net has an FT variant where most equipment is graded, and

you compare the grade of opposing things - eg, missile ECM vs 
point-defence targetting - to modify the success chances.

> The Fearless only won because Honor Harrington
> lured the Q ship into the Grav Lance range (very short range) and hit
> the Q ship by surprise.  The Q ship could have easily destroyed the
> Fearless by firing on it from medium range. The only other advantage
> the Fearless had is that its technology was somewhat better that that
> of the Q ship.

First of all, a missile in the HH universe is far less powerful than a
FT 
missile. Even a destroyer usually survives the first few missile hits
(at 
least from laser warheads)... On the other hand, a ship can have lots of

them, leading to long missile engagements (which FT currently isn't very

good at modelling :( )

Second, although the captain of the Q-ship made a fatal blunder in
closing
the range, his ship had taken a severe pounding. In FT terms it had
taken
at least one, and quite probably two, treshold rolls, judging from the 
terms a DN-sized Q-ship would need to suffer about 7 points of damage to
take those two rolls!)

Third, the Manties' tech superiority was considerable in the Basilisk
incident. It grew during the next five or so years - at the outbreak of
the war, the PN admiralty considered Manty ships to be equal to about
130%
of their own hull mass in PN capital units - but the Basilisk incident
was 
the first substantial proof of it.

Finally, in FT the Fearless would have been in the rear arc of the 
Q-ship, so it couldn't have been shot at ;)

In FT, the difference in damage points would be 11 for the RMNS Fearless

to somewhere between 15 and 20 (ie, DN- to SD- sized Q-ship) for the PNS

ship; not too great a difference.

In the HH universe, ship size grown much, much faster from class to
class
than in FT. The Fearless was a light cruiser massing a mere 90.000 tons,
while an average heavy cruiser massed 300.000 tons and a
superdreadnought
masses about 8.000.000 tons. The Q-ship massed about 10.000.000 tons,
but
it didn't use very much of that space for weapons - it operated as a
merchant ship, and had huge store-rooms. In FT I would model this as a 
huge commercial super-ship packed with (lower-grade) weapons rather than
a 
Q-ship.

Having said all this: You shouldn't have to be lucky to win this battle
- 
you need a dumb opponent...

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson

"Father, what is wrong?"
"My shoes are too tight. But it does not matter, because
 I have forgotten how to dance."
- Londo Mollari