How important is vector movement.

[Enoki]

Honestly, both of these sound like a lot of work. A floating map is easy, but if you have to float every turn, or every other turn, it's just a pain. Zeroing out the relative stuff seems like a load of cognitive overload, but I honestly haven't tried it.

The Maneuver board is intriguing, does each player have their own board? Sounds like it would be better as a local display.

You can do it as separate boards and in a way that's actually easier. The plots would still give you the distance and bearing of targets, and in most rules sets distance is really all you need for firing. It's also easy to pencil in a planet or other bodies onto the board so you can maneuver and see if fire is blocked by them between two ships, and where gravity wells are that could affect a ship's vector.

 

[aramis]

Honestly, both of these sound like a lot of work. A floating map is easy, but if you have to float every turn, or every other turn, it's just a pain. Zeroing out the relative stuff seems like a load of cognitive overload, but I honestly haven't tried it.

Floating every turn is trivial on an actual grid - and isn't a huge issue until there are a dozen+ units on map... tho' missile packs with multi-target can result in a dozen plus in a Bk2+Mayday capital ship fight (since most war ships >800 Td & TL >= A will be carriers)

The Maneuver board is intriguing, does each player have their own board? Sounds like it would be better as a local display.

Maneuver boards are more of a cognitive issue than 3 counter per ship movement problem once you get past 3 ships.

For more cluttered boards, one can get away with 2 counters, with a third only during the ship's activation; one has to keep better track of which have acted .

 

[RogerD]

I learned vector math from Traveller, and I've always thought vector movement to be essential to space combat, but in honesty I haven't actually used it in practice much. I guess I can understand how for dramatic purposes you might omit it.

I do think the Mayday simplification is brilliant and I wish it were carried forward more into the later versions of Traveller.

I like the Maneuvering Board idea - great flavor, though I suspect it might be a little hard to manage in practice.

 

[RogerD]

I was just looking at the Traveller 5 ranges with Mayday rules and I built a little spreadsheet to play with scale.

Using Book 2 parameters - g=10m/s^2 and 1000s turns, if you take a hex size of 10000km, you get Space Ranges 0-4 in the same hex, and ranges 5-9 at 5, 25, 50, 250, 500 hexes.

Interestingly enough, 5 hexes was also the short range limit when using Mayday with High Guard, with a 15 hex absolute limit. The scales were different though (100 minute turns, 1 light second/300000km per hex). If I plug in these parameters, I get ranges 5-9 at 0.1, 0.7, 1.4, 6.9, and 13.9 hexes.

If I chop the time down to 5000s/83.33minutes I get nice neat ranges of 0.2, 1, 2, 10 and 20 hexes at a scale of 250000km/hex. Those long turns don't mesh well with the typical turn lengths from the combat systems, but it could be a useful scale for some purposes pre-combat with a switch to a smaller scale for actual combat?

 

[RogerD]

I was thinking about vector movement more - I'm becoming honestly a bit more ambiguous about it, in that 1D vectors probably do the job nine times out of ten.

That said, I was building a spreadsheet with a bunch of ranges in it and I accidentally came across this scale that I think I like for space combat:
hex size: 10000 miles/16000km.
turn length: 23m 9s 679ms.

This has the nice property that the distance to safe jump distance is 10x the UWP size digit (for normal worlds). Turn length is 21m 8s 598ms, which is reasonably close to the typical 20-minute-ish time used for Traveller space combat. If you wanted a scale that had delta v of 2 per g number and distance change during acceleration of 1 per g number you get a time scale of 29m 54s 68ms, which is still in the ballpark and has some nice properties when you consider scaling up to hours since it is so close to 1/2 an hour. (So 8 turns per watch) To 100 diameters ends up being 10xUWP Size for the distance to safe jump.

Roger

 

[mike wightman]

Is the level of accuracy necessary when using the vector movement fudge of LBB2 and Mayday? Acceleration should only result in half the displacement on the turn it is applied, so the 'vector' plot is already just a rough approximation.

 

[RogerD]

Is the level of accuracy necessary when using the vector movement fudge of LBB2 and Mayday? Acceleration should only result in half the displacement on the turn it is applied, so the 'vector' plot is already just a rough approximation.

It's a game, so accuracy is not really necessary, no - but it's nice to get in the right ballpark at least.

I've been playing with a notion where you would fix the distance problem by having 1g of acceleration produce 2 hexes of vector and 1 hex of distance. You might need a fourth counter to help track that. One way to do it would be to have two future position markers - one for the next turn and one for the turn after. Note that LBB2'77 actually did note this problem and suggested more advanced rules to fix it.

I also thought of the idea that if you had 1g produce 4 hexes of vector and 2 hexes of distance, you could allow a ship to adjust 1 hex per g with no vector change (accelerate and flip all in one turn). One case where this comes in is when the 100D limit is close in (a small planet not in the star's gravity well) and you want to kill your vector before jumping. Could also be useful for matching course for boarding actions and the like. The hex grid might need to be too large with this idea though. Plus it may be too fiddly, to your original point.

 

[whartung]

The half delta change isn't worth the complexity. It doesn't fundamentally change the overall outcome, and just makes it harder to play.

That said, I don't know if the BL system actually take this into account. It's such a funky little vector system, it just may do so. In BL you accumulate energy (Gs) until you have enough to force a heading change. For acceleration, it doesn't do that. But for turning, it MIGHT. It's just completely different. It's not quite the "turn mode" system of other space games (travel X hexes before you can turn), it's different.

They probably don't account for it. But, it's possible.

For the Mayday style, it's definitely not worth bothering with.

 

[mike wightman]

That's pretty much my point. The displacement error that is compounded with each acceleration is offset by the 20 mins, 10,000km scale of things.

If you want to pin down actual displacement with respect to velocity change it is a lot more difficult than the pseudo-Newtonian vector system - the best system I have seen for this is Attack Vector or Squadron Strike with all the dials set at eleven...

 

[infojunky]

My original supposition is based of reducing complexity. Still haven't seen a strong argument to change my mind. Mind you I talking about a simple system adjunct to a RPG setting rather than a full Mini-Game as presented in Book2.

 

[kilemall]

My original supposition is based of reducing complexity. Still haven't seen a strong argument to change my mind. Mind you I talking about a simple system adjunct to a RPG setting rather than a full Mini-Game as presented in Book2.

My argument is that the game as presented didn’t have enough range/maneuver consequences and tactics. Do that and you have a reason for the vector game.

 

[infojunky]

My argument is that the game as presented didn’t have enough range/maneuver consequences and tactics. Do that and you have a reason for the vector game.

See that is the wall I keep running into.

Looking at other game design, recently Sid Myers Starships is a simple movement system with lots of terrain like complexity. Thus maneuver is a major function of game play. With that one could postulate fairly simply that the engagement zone around a world or some other point would give some reasonable terrain options.

Yes, I realize I am emphasizing game play over simulation is this. But that is the entire point.

 

[kilemall]

See that is the wall I keep running into.

Looking at other game design, recently Sid Myers Starships is a simple movement system with lots of terrain like complexity. Thus maneuver is a major function of game play. With that one could postulate fairly simply that the engagement zone around a world or some other point would give some reasonable terrain options.

Yes, I realize I am emphasizing game play over simulation is this. But that is the entire point.

That’s fine, it’s an entertainment.

I’m approaching this as a full meld of LBB2 and HG, with all the toys, as a maneuver game.

I’ve dropped bits of this in other threads, I’ll mention the two main ones that makes range a thing.

The energy/laser/PA/meson weapons have full power of hitting with their normalized damage at a range of 100000 km.

For every 100000 km in additional range, they drop a value level- so a PA 7 bay is 6 at 200000 km, 5 at 300000 km, etc. Relative damage value drops along with whatever to hit on the lower weapon value.

Suicide range below 100000 km increases battery value by 1 per 10000 km closer. So the PA 7 bay at 90000 km is 8, 9 at 80000 km etc.

Missiles on the other hand increase battery damage levels the faster the relative velocities are. So they can get up to large numbers at long ranges and/or closing, less if firing at short range, and still less if a stern chase hit.

The other big change is to rate penetration on weapon value vs armor value. The weapon must be higher then the armor, so for example the PA 7 bay above can penetrate an armor 6 target at 100000 km but not at 200000 km.

Kind of simplifies the massive die rolling, no? In many cases only the spinals or really fast missile closing speeds will allow penetration.

 

[aramis]

The half delta change isn't worth the complexity. It doesn't fundamentally change the overall outcome, and just makes it harder to play.

That said, I don't know if the BL system actually take this into account. It's such a funky little vector system, it just may do so. In BL you accumulate energy (Gs) until you have enough to force a heading change. For acceleration, it doesn't do that. But for turning, it MIGHT. It's just completely different. It's not quite the "turn mode" system of other space games (travel X hexes before you can turn), it's different.

They probably don't account for it. But, it's possible.

For the Mayday style, it's definitely not worth bothering with.

It's exactly the same kind of turn mode used in the Mauler rules in Star Fleet Battles.... but only for ships using that weapon system.

 

[whartung]

It's exactly the same kind of turn mode used in the Mauler rules in Star Fleet Battles

I don't recall Mauler ships having any different kind of turn mode. I recall them having a much narrower arc of fire. I MAY recall that there was some way for them to fire a bit off axis, but I never encountered that in play. I may be misremembering. Is that what you're talking about?

 

[aramis]

I don't recall Mauler ships having any different kind of turn mode. I recall them having a much narrower arc of fire. I MAY recall that there was some way for them to fire a bit off axis, but I never encountered that in play. I may be misremembering. Is that what you're talking about?

It's clear you didn't use it...
Maulers were required to use directed turn mode from Commander's ed on. at halfway, they shifted to the skewed arc; at full, you turned the ship.
If you dropped before commanders...