Trattorian Navy

Not Lego but still Lego.

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Silverdream
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Re: Trattorian Navy

Post by Silverdream » Thu Aug 14, 2014 2:21 pm

Battlegrinder wrote:Out of curiosity, what kind of tactics do you envision the broadside Curie cruisers using to get the most out of their guns? I ask because most of my ships use broadsides, and I had to spend quite a while trying to figure out how they would effectively fight with that kind of weapon layout.
Turning and firing at the front of a massive fleet of ships, Admiral Nelson style.
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Re: Trattorian Navy

Post by ikensall » Thu Aug 14, 2014 2:44 pm

This is more relevant to modern battleships, but it's still applicable:
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Oh, and don't forget the bit where you stand on the quarterdeck with all your medals pinned on you, to make sure that you are a massively obvious target for all the French snipers. If you skip this vital step, you might never get to go down in history by making your last request for your second-in-command to kiss you.

ALso: Nice stuff Colette, I particularly approve of the gigantic swimming pool on the pleasure yacht.

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Re: Trattorian Navy

Post by Battlegrinder » Thu Aug 14, 2014 9:23 pm

ikensall wrote:This is more relevant to modern battleships, but it's still applicable:
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Oh, and don't forget the bit where you stand on the quarterdeck with all your medals pinned on you, to make sure that you are a massively obvious target for all the French snipers. If you skip this vital step, you might never get to go down in history by making your last request for your second-in-command to kiss you.

ALso: Nice stuff Colette, I particularly approve of the gigantic swimming pool on the pleasure yacht.
I'm familiar with the tactical concept of crossing the T. I wasn't thinking it would be as useful in space combat, since the crossed ships can simply go up or down to open up a clear line of fire, while the crossing ships are giving their opponents a much larger target. I'm pretty certain that the 3rd dimension nullifies a lot of conventional naval tactics.

For example, what I did with my ships was to have the guns be able to pivot forward. As the ship advances, it moves in a serpentine pattern and fires each broadside in turn, hitting it's target with a lot of firepower while presenting a minimal profile for return fire.

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Re: Trattorian Navy

Post by Silverdream » Thu Aug 14, 2014 9:32 pm

Yeah, but your ships don't have guns on the bottom. What's to stop someone from just going under them and shooting?
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Re: Trattorian Navy

Post by Battlegrinder » Thu Aug 14, 2014 9:43 pm

Silverdream wrote:Yeah, but your ships don't have guns on the bottom. What's to stop someone from just going under them and shooting?
The cannons have both vertical and horizontal rotation. The ship only needs to roll by a few degrees to bring an opponent underneath it into it's line of fire.
Last edited by Battlegrinder on Thu Aug 14, 2014 9:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Trattorian Navy

Post by Silverdream » Thu Aug 14, 2014 9:48 pm

Battlegrinder wrote: The cannons can have both vertical and horizontal rotation. The ship only needs to roll by a few degrees to bring an opponent underneath it into it's line of fire.
What's to stop the other ship from moving a few degrees?

Better yet, what if it's a fighter or bomber on a strafing or bombing run on the bottom of your ship?
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Re: Trattorian Navy

Post by loafofcheese » Fri Aug 15, 2014 2:27 am

This is why I can't get into microspace, I consider the third dimension too much and end up building boxes of guns.
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Re: Trattorian Navy

Post by Quantumsurfer » Fri Aug 15, 2014 3:33 am

It's an interesting point. I wonder...

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Re: Trattorian Navy

Post by Vami IV » Fri Aug 15, 2014 3:51 am

loafofcheese wrote:This is why I can't get into microspace, I consider the third dimension too much and end up building boxes of guns.
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Re: Trattorian Navy

Post by Maverick » Fri Aug 15, 2014 6:40 am

Vami IV wrote:
loafofcheese wrote:This is why I can't get into microspace, I consider the third dimension too much and end up building boxes of guns.
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We must take their metal boxes!

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Re: Trattorian Navy

Post by cleanupcrew » Fri Aug 15, 2014 6:52 am

loafofcheese wrote:This is why I can't get into microspace, I consider the third dimension too much and end up building boxes of guns.
We all know space is an ocean. Ordinarily I like to err on the side of realism, but height differences in LDD really are that much of a pain in the ass.

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Re: Trattorian Navy

Post by Quantumsurfer » Fri Aug 15, 2014 2:31 pm

Colette wrote: but height differences in LDD really are that much of a pain in the ass.
They can be, especially in larger scale battles as the lag problem of moving a too many part ship becomes compounded.

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Re: Trattorian Navy

Post by cleanupcrew » Fri Aug 15, 2014 5:50 pm

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The Merchant-class serves well as a cheap hauler of material for small Trattorian businesses and startups, but it lacks efficiency and economy-of-scale as the firm grows bigger.

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The Laissez-faire-class, more massive than some military dreadnoughts, can transport entire ship and station components whole or pack innumerable smaller containers. On the downside, it remains affordable only to the largest contributors to the Trattorian trade industry's Herfindahl–Hirschman Index.

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The Ricardo-class freighter (an ironic name given Trattoria's mercantilist trade policy) is the most common hauler in Trattoria's spacelanes and in the single trade route connecting the nation to the rest of Nehellenium. Affordable to medium-sized firms and capable of carrying 64 cargo containers, the Ricardo achieves much greater efficiency than comparable models in other star nations. Most of the time, Ricardo freighters are crewed by soldiers (as part of a military convoy) or robots, although a low-level corporate worker may be assigned to the demeaning task if the ship is carrying sensitive cargo.

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Two cranes on rails can assist in the loading and unloading of containers, although the majority of the work is usually done by dockarms at space stations or ports. Each ring of containers can spin independently to simulate a range of g-forces as necessary.

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The Ricardo packs engines more powerful than the ones found on most Trattorian military ships, capable of shipping the infamous RARcom-Denmark route in only a week (compared to the average of a month and a half).

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Re: Trattorian Navy

Post by Silent-sigfig » Fri Aug 15, 2014 6:44 pm

The Ricardo is sweet, but why do robots need windows?
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Re: Trattorian Navy

Post by Battlegrinder » Fri Aug 15, 2014 7:32 pm

Silverdream wrote:
Battlegrinder wrote: The cannons can have both vertical and horizontal rotation. The ship only needs to roll by a few degrees to bring an opponent underneath it into it's line of fire.
What's to stop the other ship from moving a few degrees?

Better yet, what if it's a fighter or bomber on a strafing or bombing run on the bottom of your ship?

The first question you need to answer when planning out an attack targeting a Frangerian ship’s ventral hull is “how do you get there?” As it turns out, the usual answer is “in pieces.” Consider the scenarios my two demo ships, Purple (playing the attacker) and Black (playing the defender).

For most approaches (fig 1), it’s basically impossible to maneuver below an enemy ship. As you can see in figure 2, the purple has to move a significant distance in order to get out of the Black ship’s cone of fire, while the black ship needs to only tilt slightly to bring purple back into its sights. This same principle applies if purple is already under black. Purple will almost always end up spending more energy maneuvering to get clear of black’s cone of fire then black will spend rolling or tilting to retarget purple.

The once exception to the above rule would be at point blank range, where the maneuvering distance-to-rotational distance ratio evens out a little (though the ratio does still favor black slightly, since rotating costs less energy then moving the whole ship), as illustrated in figures 3 and 4. Even so, purple still has a problem, since even if the ship it’s under is having a harder time hitting it, purple can still be targeted by one of black’s sister ships (fig 5). Good fleet tactics make it much harder to exploit the weakness of any one ship, since it will be supported and protected by the rest of the fleet. I’d also point out that if purple does get into point blank range (big if), it’ll already have taken a fair amount of damage on the run in, and will much more vulnerable to incoming attacks from black compared to how vulnerable black will be to any strikes from purple.

A final point would be that many ships can’t elevate their main guns high enough to fire on a ship directly above them, forcing them to engage from a certain minimum distance. In all probability, that distance will be within the range where the maneuver-to-rotation ratio favors the defender.

And this only discussing naval gunnery. If we bring missiles into it, things get even worse for purple, since black can easily launch missiles targeting purple without even having to maneuver (in the case of Frangerian cruisers, purple is extra screwed, since on those ships the launch bays for Fenris and Ragnorak missiles are built into the ventral hull. Bye-bye purple).

Regarding fighters/bombers, I’d suggest we discuss that at a later date, since a discussion of point defense and fighter screens and how they interact with fleetwide ship-to-ship action could take up an entire thread on its own. For my ships, most of them have sufficient point defense weapons to keep smaller ships at bay, and coupled with a fighter screen from friendly carriers, can block all but the most determined fighter assaults (and for those, we have missiles. Lots and lots of missiles)


Figure 1
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Figure 2
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Figure 3
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Figure 4
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Figure 5
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