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.

Bearing in mind that this is completely off-the-cuff and I haven't 
worked through any possible design and/or rule ramifications (ie: it 
is worth exactly what you paid for it...), I would say that in the 
GZG-verse setting:

1) There needs to be some sort of physical connection between tug and 
tugged. The FTL drive field can be extended around coupled ships, but 
not separate ones (and there are no tractor beams!).

2) In realspace movement, only the tug's drives may be used until the 
rider separates.

Jon (GZG)

>
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