Weaponizing Geometry

If you played the earliest iterations of Traveller you soon realized there wasn't a lot different between a warship and a commercial vessel, design wise. Okay sure, the warship didn't need to justify its existence and could use space for drives and weapon turrets a civilian ship would use for cargo.

But what if some naughty people, say I dunno, pirates get hold of a 600 ton merchant. They stick as many turrets as they can onto the vessel and then run up against a 400 ton Patrol cruiser (go Patrol!) The Patrol ship has but four turrets. Surely the brave Patrol men are doomed!

Nope.

The Patrol vessel has state of the art software, for targeting and to avoid being targeted. They can use their lasers to explode the corsairs' missiles. Indeed in short order the Pirates must strike their colors, jettison the turrets and surrender. Software makes the difference, and the military guards its 'ware jealously.

But military ships also need to get to the fight. If a pirate loots a fat merchant ship and jumps before the Patrol can close in that Patrol ship is a waste of credits. Patrol strategists minimize intercept times using hellacious engines and/or having enough patrols running to cover a large area experiencing traffic. Consider a TL 10 planet Prudence (Size 5 or average), with good industry, lots of loot, and a small population, so no huge armies to oppose a raider.

Prudence's government has placed her defense in a small but efficient Navy. Its jump limit is 800,000 kilometers. We all know the jump limit is 100 diameters. Jumping within this limit means roll for misjumsp, roll 1d6 for direction and 1d6*1d6 for distance. Jump within ten diameters and roll 2d6 six times for a new character.

The Patrol has problems. A sphere 800,000 kilometers in radius has 8 trillion square kilometers of area. If a ship can see and hit things out to 2 light seconds, 600,000 km then you would need seven or eight task forces/space fortresses/cyborg space whales etc to cover a planet from all directions. A ship's lasers cover 1.13 trillion square kilometers figuring a circle with a radius of 600,000 km. Assume the star's jump shadow prevents jumps from one quadrant and that is still 6 trillion square kilometers or six task forces. if you go with 400,000 km (maximum acceleration of missiles in MgT 10g4)  it's 10-11 task forces for such a sphere. If you go with 50,000 km (for lasers and energy weapons) then you need about 750 defense points. Yikes.

Mind you, that's if you want to control the jump boundary and be able to burn anything that jumps in. A navy that says drop dead to ships coming in from the jump boundary and concentrates on defending the world has an easy time of it. Four task forces can form a tetrahedron around a planet at a distance of 50,000 kilometers from each other and 30,000 kilometers from the surface. This lets one group engage incoming forces while supported by all the other groups and ground installations.

If you have enough forces to take an icosahedron (d20!) you're really talking coverage. Twenty task forces fifty thousand kilometers apart Eans each force is supported by the firepower of five task forces and you're still only 47,000 kilometers from the planetary surface batteries.

As for ships jumping in towards Prudence, if general approach vectors are established then those volumes will have most of the available ships on patrol and search and rescue ships assigned. Appearing outside those areas could indicate 1) your  ship has had a misjump and may require aid 2) you are trying to sneak about unseen 3) your navigator is an idiot. Such ships will be hailed, forces will be placed on alert, interceptors will be launched in more volatile systems, and S&R ships rerouted.

Running an intercept pattern beyond far orbit requires more ships. Covering a quadrant completely requires about 250 ships or mines or whatever (note that mines are pretty poor at performing search and rescue, they are more for drumming up business.) You don't need to just burn everything at once (though that sort of defense overkill is in use around throne worlds and such). Figure a pirate needs at least two hours to cripple (or intimidate), board, and loot a merchant. You need enough fast ships to perform an intercept, fly within weapon range, and start blasting.

If you keep your forces around your planet then traveling 750,000 kilometers to the jump boundary will take about two hours as well or seven combat rounds. How fast can your guys loot a merchant?

Merchants for their part can expect local forces to crash the party in 7 or so combat rounds. Delaying tactics might be worthwhile. For example shipping gold or other valuable minerals in ingots weighing several hundred kilos, putting misleading labels on containers (or hiding the labels inside the crates), and turning up the gravity and locking the controls could keep unwanted visitors from making off with your whole cargo.

Most crews will not fight for freight, however, hazard pay for repelling pirates based on the value of the cargo retained does work wonders.

Missiles can move 390,000 km in two hours or so. A 6 gee ship can move 780,000 km assuming it drives at zero relative speed to the larceny. That means a 6 gee ship within 1,170,000 km is in the game. That means such a ship- can cover 4.3 trillion square kilometers. A fast reaction force could get away with two task forces on opposite side of the main world.

It's not as simple as that though. What makes up a task force? Are they a credible threat? How many incidents can the Patrol respond to at once? How fast are the pirates? How much of a fight will the merchants put up? Start your world building.

Or roll 2d6 for the number of combat rounds till the Patrol shows up. Obviously the patrol will vary the positions or their task forces, send ships put in odd directions and such hoping to catch someone being naughty. Having information on how these positions vary will be of great interest in certain quarters.

If there are few ships faking an emergency to get a Patrol ship to respond is an option. faking a distress call can result in your ship being seized, loss of master's paper and jail tie for this reason. Thus most ships working as a decoy create a real emergency. Having a pirate aboard your ship to hijack it or sabotage it's engines is one thing. Having some saboteur trash your life support system, kill crew and passengers or start a fire is far harder to deal with. This sort of mission is only done by the most skilled operators or what the pirate chiefs refer to as throw aways.

If the CT rules linking drive types to tech level are used that will determine the size of the ships used in anti-piracy and S&R. In the case of Prudence the local TL 10 shipworms can produce type H drives, limiting the size of 6 gee response ships to 200 tons. S&R ships might be larger and slower, because they need room for S&R gear and transporting evacuees. A backwater planet might have to make do with ship's boats (6 gee acceleration, power for one energy weapon, and room for a Model 2 or 3 computer if you don't want lasers).

Appearing on the wrong approach or well inside the jump limit, if that is possible, can result in being intercepted and boarded, fines, and being forced to pay for the fuel and other expenses of interceptors. Everyone is scared of epic misjumps leaving them stranded but some of the smaller ones can leave you broke or your ship impounded.





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