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Okay It Came up in a game, if you have a ship with FTL Tug capability, which
means Lets say a 60 Mass ship can move say 100 Mass extra in a Jump.? When U
drop out of FTL, and start moving in the system and not
unhook/untug/or whatever you do to disengage your rider, do U:
??? A: Move the whole unit, now at thrust of the Tug??? B: Do U need to
recalculate the thrust based off new total Mass???? C: Use the engines off the
rider to supplement the Tug engines, but only to Tug Max speed?
DOC AGREN??? Just a Lurker on the Digest
In Memory of Russ Manduca 7/22/67-1/8/08
Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have
hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else
thereafter. ~ Ernest Hemmingway
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 05:13:56PM -0400, Doc wrote:
> Okay It Came up in a game, if you have a ship with FTL Tug capability,
There is no maximum speed...
Depends on your PSB in the setting, but I'd tend to say:
- any group of ships joined together can manoeuvre at the lowest max
thrust of the ships in the group (because they're putting no special strain on
the connectors);
- ships joined to a specialist tug can add their thrust to the assembly;
just calculate thrust*mass for all ships, add it together, and divide by the
total mass.
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 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. Â What conditions would need to occur to make
such ships more viable than the fleet book ships? Â Interested in people's
opinions. Â BTW we are currently running another FT campaign, this one has two
sides with 9 players and so far has a feeling of the Cold War got hot. It's
all about killing the other sides population centres.  Thanks  John
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not sure this is covered in the rules, Matt. It could be a
campaign-level decision, depending on how the participants decide jump
drives and maneuver drives work in practice.
* It could be that a "limbered" battle rider moves only at the speed of the
tug ("the dockin' clamps willna take the strain, Cap'n").
* It may be that the clamps won't stand the strain of normal-space
movement _at all._
* Or something less restrictive may apply.
* Another option would be to say that the tug & riders must not change from
the vector and velocity in which they dropped out of jump space, which might
be limited to, say, 4, until the riders undock. This would posit a situation
in which the rider can dock to the moving tug at a fairly low speed and
predictable, steady course (seems reasonable given
extrapolation from current 20th/21st Century technology), but the clamps
cannot take much in the way of lateral or acceleration stress.
Just a couple of suggestions to consider.
Best, Ken
> --- On Tue, 3/31/09, Doc <docagren@aol.com> wrote:
From: Doc <docagren@aol.com>
Subject: [GZG] (FT) Tugs
To: gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu
Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2009, 5:13 PM
Okay It Came up in a game, if you have a ship with FTL Tug capability, which
means Lets say a 60 Mass ship can move say 100 Mass extra in a Jump. When U
drop out of FTL, and start moving in the system and not
unhook/untug/or whatever you do to disengage your rider, do U:
   A: Move the whole unit, now at thrust of the Tug
   B: Do U need to recalculate the thrust based off new total Mass?
   C: Use the engines off the rider to supplement the Tug engines, but only
to Tug Max speed?
On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 4:19 PM, John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz>
wrote:
> Hi
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
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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From: Roger Burton West
> There is no maximum speed...
   I know that, and was badly worded
Depends on your PSB in the setting, but I'd tend to say:
> - any group of ships joined together can manoeuvre at the lowest max
  That a better way of saying what we went with or orginal answer C: Use the
engines off the rider to supplement the Tug engines, but only to Tug Max
speed?
From: John Tailby
> The topic about tugs caused me to ask the question about whether people
> What conditions would need to occur to make such ships more viable than
  Well, I can say we do use non FTL Battleriders, but as yet Iâve never
jump anything more than a Mass 10 ship in as 1... and they havenât been as
effective as I hoped. But I wonder about Jumping some of my system defense
boats into battle... of course that would weaken my system defense most likely
why I never done it... Â Â The other thing we use FTL Tugs for is Commercial
Use, now I will
admit many of the FT players were/are Battletech players so we do look a
Jumpship and Dropships as way to move Cargo. Jump into a Jump Point, release
your carried dropships and pick up next load. Â Â The other role that Tugs
serve is as Recovery vessels for Damaged warships, and it was in that role
that my orginal question came from.
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 4:19 PM, John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz>
wrote:
> Hi
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) sez:
> 2) In realspace movement, only the tug's drives may be used until the
Ok, but thrust based on combined mass of tender and tendee? (Sorry, having a
spot of bother with the 'tug' term.) This would be complicated to derive, but
seems appropriate.
The_Beast
> Jon (GZG) sez:
Yep, combined mass.
Jon (GZG)
> The_Beast
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"tug" could be a mass 25 ship with 10 mass of FTL 10 mass of drives and 5 hull
that carries 5 15 mass combat frigates.
Rather than a tug that tows 1 big ship.
Question is, does a mass 75 cruiser with no FTL drive have the combat power of
a mass 100 ship with FTL? Could be a good fight.
________________________________
From: Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com>
To: gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu
Sent: Friday, 3 April, 2009 2:25:00 AM
Subject: Re: [GZG] (FT) Tugs
> Jon (GZG) sez:
Yep, combined mass.
Jon (GZG)
> The_Beast
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 12:54 PM, John Tailby <john_tailby@xtra.co.nz>
wrote:
> A "tug" could be a mass 25 ship with 10 mass of FTL 10 mass of drives
Given the description 'mass 75 cruiser', we are talking FleetBook rules which
equips the mass 100 ship with a mass 10 FTL drive. The
> John Tailby wrote:
> Question is, does a mass 75 cruiser with no FTL drive have the combat
If you use the CPV hull cost but treat FTL drives - including the tug
drive
- as "non-combat systems", the points cost for non-FTL combat ships +
the smallest, slowest FTL tug capable of towing them come out pretty close to
the equivalent FTL-capable combat ships.
Regards,