1g Ships and Size:7 worlds...

[atpollard]

And that is one of the major failings of MT.

In that Striker is internal consistent with itself. But not with Traveller as presented before it. In that all the kludges to make it work with Traveller are very wonky.

Careful there ... the case for a ship cannot take off a world with greater than 1G essentially boils down to "because STRIKER says so" [and personal opinions on aerodynamics].

 

[kilemall]

Why are you assuming that atmospheric entry would need to be "hot" with a Traveller maneuver drive?

It's only "hot" if the only way to reduce your velocity vector is through aerobraking/atmospheric drag (to save fuel).

However, if you've got "functionally unlimited delta-v" courtesy of a maneuver drive (that can run continuously for weeks) ... there is no "need" to use aerobraking to convert velocity into kinetic energy hot plasma due to friction.

With gravitics, you can simply VTOL ... from orbit to ground ... meaning that "geosynchronous" can be anywhere from the surface to to beyond the inertial orbit that is geosynchronous at zero thrust. Use your maneuvering power to slow down above the "atmospheric heating" radius until you're essentially "hovering" over the location you want to land at ... and then just dial back on the gravitics so you can SINK down towards the planetary surface in a controlled way using your gravitics.

It the classic case of "stop then land" versus the default of "land then stop" ... except that the "stop to hover" maneuver is happening at a MUCH HIGHER altitude.

If you're using your maneuvering power to "geosynch hover" before slowly descending into the atmosphere, you aren't going to experience much atmospheric heating at all on your way down. You can even control your descent to be subsonic the whole way down, if you want ... as opposed to making a hypersonic atmospheric entry for a pure aerobraking deorbit to ground.

All assuming controlled approaches or enough time for safe maneuvers. I like being prepared for player screwup or demonstrating the value of maintaining streamlining. The latter is a thing as in my home rule damage system 20% of hull damage streamlining drops to partial and partial drops to non.

It’s also very relevant to gas giant skimming.

 

[kilemall]

Not according to the rules as written, which only address Gs in integer increments.

It provides examples, doesn’t outlaw. Good enough, especially since there would be a market for this. Would only mess with hex based maneuver.

 

[Spinward Flow]

All assuming controlled approaches or enough time for safe maneuvers. I like being prepared for player screwup or demonstrating the value of maintaining streamlining.

That's easy.
Streamlining offers greater margins of safety in a variety of approaches rather than forcing a ship to "maneuver through a soda straw" for every surface to orbit transfer. Difference between a "cone of approach vectors" versus a "narrow cylinder of approach vectors" when it comes to making orbital transfers (up or down).

More margin for error/deviation from plan gives you room to maneuver around/abort if not everything goes to plan (such as the aforementioned player screwups).

 

[kilemall]

That's easy.
Streamlining offers greater margins of safety in a variety of approaches rather than forcing a ship to "maneuver through a soda straw" for every surface to orbit transfer. Difference between a "cone of approach vectors" versus a "narrow cylinder of approach vectors" when it comes to making orbital transfers (up or down).

More margin for error/deviation from plan gives you room to maneuver around/abort if not everything goes to plan (such as the aforementioned player screwups).

You don’t have to sell me on the controlled approach, I already have a class of passenger ships called whisperliners, 2G grav only ships, just the thing for slow steady won’t tip over the champagne glass landings (as seen on Netverts).

Not to mention noise abatement considerations.

Skies over starports need to slot in as many ships as possible, slow mo reentry would be a safer way to handle that need.

However, many people are going to have business models that involve getting up/down as fast as possible- small craft supporting the starport down/up that need several trips a shift come to mind, busy important people are another. So there will be hot landings/takeoffs for multi-G small craft at a minimum.

 

[whartung]

How was this addressed and/or handled in Mega Traveller?

 

[mike wightman]

You could overclock the drives and you had streamlined and airframe ship hulls that could fly. But the design system is very broken - top speed in a vacuum for a constant thrust 1g ship... lol

 

[Spinward Flow]

So there will be hot landings/takeoffs for multi-G small craft at a minimum.

Broadly speaking, something similar to General Aviation, Jumbo Jet Commercial all the way up to Military Aircraft needing to share airport space and aerial approaches like we have right now out in the real world. Sure, the military planes will tend to take off and land at military bases, but in the event of a mishap/mayday situation, they might need to divert to a civilian airport to make an emergency (crash) landing where the fire trucks are nearby.

Point being that a downport facility is going to need to be able to handle "pretty much everything that can land" (and LBB S9 has a 20k ton Light Cruiser that is streamlined and can therefore "land" on terrestrial surface or in water).

In terms of flight patterns, I would expect a downport to have multiple landing zones, each with their own approach vector paths, probably segregated by acceleration rates needed in order to make a final approach before touchdown/lift off.

 

[Jame]

I can answer that question using only a single word.
You ready?
You watching?

Okay, here I go ...

DIFFERENTLY.

The way that a CTOL plane takes off is not the same as the way a VTOL helicopter takes off ... or a starship lifts off ... or a rocket launches skyward.

Sure, there may be common principles in engineering and the "physics problem" involved is relatively similar ... but the methods and processes used to "solve that problem" are not UTTERLY IDENTICAL, nor are they interchangeable, between the different varieties of craft.



Stop trying to conflate THIS ...

... with THIS ...

You're right, the starship doesn't work like a jet. It's higher tech and has more options available.

That's why I said earlier that the (Classic, and explicitly stated in GURPS) Traveller Manuever drive should be understood to have a device that, while not *being* an air/raft, should be taken to work in the same way *as( an air/raft to negate, at least partially, the gravity of a planet of any gravity level, even of a gas giant*.
Even if it only negates the local gravity enough to allow a 1G maneuver drive to land on, take off from and maneuver in.

*: yes, the ship still has to deal with the local atmosphere conditions such as the storms of a GG, but it still has a way to use its 1G engine to go visit the planet and then leave again - so long as it's got a skillful pilot!

 

[AnotherDilbert]

You could overclock the drives and you had streamlined and airframe ship hulls that could fly.

Yes, they could fly, like rockets balanced on their m-drives, according to SSOM. You could easily overclock the drive by 40%, so you could land with a 1 G drive (temporarily giving 1.4 G) on a 1.3 G world. Overclocking, like a lot of silliness, comes from SSOM.

Airframes generated lift, according to the errata, but not the basic rules, so few common ships used it. The trusty Subbie was Streamlined, wings and all, so "drops like a rock"...

So, most small ships, and even smallcraft, flew around like rockets with overclocked drives, even those illustrated with wings. I said SSOM is silly...


You could of course house rule away the worst silliness, I certainly did... Yes, my TU worked the way I wanted, because I house ruled it. It wasn't difficult at all to say.

But the design system is very broken - top speed in a vacuum for a constant thrust 1g ship... lol

When used as a vehicle in close proximity to a world, it had a vacuum top speed, just like a grav vehicle.

In space the usual distance formulae were used, with much higher velocities.

 

[Condottiere]

The clue might be in fuel consumption.

If the drive consumes fuel for propulsion, it's a rocket.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

You're right, the starship doesn't work like a jet. It's higher tech and has more options available.

That's why I said earlier that the (Classic, and explicitly stated in GURPS) Traveller Manuever drive should be understood to have a device that, while not *being* an air/raft, should be taken to work in the same way *as( an air/raft to negate, at least partially, the gravity of a planet of any gravity level, even of a gas giant*.
Even if it only negates the local gravity enough to allow a 1G maneuver drive to land on, take off from and maneuver in.

Your TU of course works just like you want it, but RAW does not work that way, either CT or GT.

CT ships has no extra anti-gravity or contragravity system.
GT ships could have optional contragravity systems, but did generally not have them.

In GURPS Traveller, where reactionless thrusters are common, such technology is available but only necessary in very specialized applications.

Some ships had contragrav installed, as they had undersized (<1 G) main drives, e,g, the Siigiizuni-class Free Trader.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

If the drive consumes fuel for propulsion, it's a rocket.

No Traveller starship m-drive consumes fuel, even the reaction drives in LBB2'77. They consume power from the PP, that consumes fuel to produce power.

 

[Jame]

Your TU of course works just like you want it, but RAW does not work that way, either CT or GT.

CT ships has no extra anti-gravity or contragravity system.
GT ships could have optional contragravity systems, but did generally not have them.

Some ships had contragrav installed, as they had undersized (<1 G) main drives, e,g, the Siigiizuni-class Free Trader.

Where in CT or GT does it say that no ships had contragrav? Be specific and exclude Striker.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Where in CT or GT does it say that no ships had contragrav?

Again, GT ships can have optional contragrav, but most ships don't.

Be specific and exclude Striker.

Why would I exclude part of the rules?

But OK, I can quote LBB2 again:

LBB2'77, p29:
During the movement phase, lay out the vector of the ship to determine where it will move. If the exact midpoint of the vector lies in a gravity band, a gravity vector will be added to the course vector to create a new vector.

Ships are affected by gravity, it's not optional, hence no anti-gravity system.

 

[Jame]

But OK, I can quote LBB2 again:

Ships are affected by gravity, it's not optional, hence no anti-gravity system.

That's the vector system for combat. It isn't a rule for landing on a planet.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

That's the vector system for combat. It isn't a rule for landing on a planet.

It's the movement system for spacecraft.

If they had standard anti-grav, they could just ignore gravity templates, or even add extra thrust from the anti-grav system. They can't.

Striker has a specific rule for planetary movement:

A. Movement: The movement rate of a spaceship is determined in the same way as that for a grav vehicle; the ship's maneuver drive rating is used as its G value. A ship with a G rating equal to or less than the planetary gravity may not take part in combat actions except from orbit.

If you don't like it, just house rule it, what's the big deal?

You could of course house rule away the worst silliness, I certainly did... Yes, my TU worked the way I wanted, because I house ruled it. It wasn't difficult at all to say.

 

[Jame]

It's the movement system for spacecraft.

If they had standard anti-grav, they could just ignore gravity templates, or even add extra thrust from the anti-grav system. They can't.

No, it's the in space movement formula fot ships In Space.
Notice that it doesn't say anything about spacecraft within an atmosphere, and it definitely doesn't say that ships don't have contragrav.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

No, it's the in space movement formula fot ships In Space.

The movement system for spacecraft in LBB2 isn't good enough?
The movement system for spacecraft in Striker isn't good enough?
But you know for sure that spaceships work in a way that is not mentioned in any rule?

You know what I would call that? A house rule...
No problem with that, I use them all the time.

Notice that it doesn't say anything about spacecraft within an atmosphere, and it definitely doesn't say that ships don't have contragrav.

CT doesn't have contragrav at all, so it would be rather superfluous.
It also doesn't specify specifically that ships don't have pink fluffy wings, still I will go out on a limb and assume most ships don't.

 

[infojunky]

Careful there ... the case for a ship cannot take off a world with greater than 1G essentially boils down to "because STRIKER says so" [and personal opinions on aerodynamics].

No the case I am making is based off of something Marc said years ago before Striker.

Also, remember Striker is Frank's take on things Traveller.
But it's integration with previous material is flawed.

Now if you want We could start a thread on what it would take to "fix" Striker into Traveller terms. But honestly it just boils down to tweaking some of the internal assumptions. And some of those "fixes" are already part of MT Which I tend to look at when I hit a snag.I really like where MT was going with the damage system, though my choice is to ditch "Damage" and go with a straight Penetration mechanism. That extends into the Starship scale.