A better subsidized merchant

[spank]

There is a formula there, if you want to sus it out.
The discount is 0.05*(1200-Hull), Making the cost Hull * (0.1-(0.0005*(1200-Hull)))
The only outlier is the 100 ton hull, because I didn't want the cost to be a decimal, (5.5 MCr)
But you could easily make a table for 100 - 1100 tons, something like:

Hull		Cost in MCr
100		5
150		8
200		10
250		14
300		17
400		24
500		33
600		42
700		53
800		64
900		77
1000		90
1100		105
1200		120

that give you a nice, smooth ramp to the cost until you are at 1200 which is full price. Compared with MGT 1E which is nice, but the cost is a little erratic.

However both are better than CT, MGT 1E does follow the same cost structure as CT, but it seems to interpolate the intermediate steps.

Or you could just use a formula, like HG, MT, TNE, T4, etc. did.

 

[spank]

That's true, but the lookup tables are still quite useful. I'd rather have both the formula and the tables, not either the tables, (LBB 2) or the formula (HG), and I'd like them to be compatible. That's one reason I'd advocate for an expanded selection of standard hulls, and an expanded drive performance table. Add a TL multiplier for drive size and cost, with 12 as the baseline, and you'd have the simplicity of the tables and the complexity of High Guard.

LBB2 (77 and 81) are products of a particular era ... when pocket calculators were rare and expensive, so it "made sense" to present information in more of a table of presets that you pick off a menu. It minimized the amount of calculation that would need to be done by the Players/Referees, keeping things in the realm of KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID (KISS) arithmetic that didn't require much in the way of computational power.

Nowadays, with the Internet of (hackable) Things (IoT), even kitchen appliances have compute power and want to be tethered to home networks.

Point being that as easy access to pocket calculators became widespread, shifting away from a lookup table (limited set answers) to a more formulaic basis (compute your own answers) became a much more reasonable proposition ... not to mention "fun" to do if you've got a Casio Credit Card Calculator in your pocket to do all the number crunching you might want (if there's enough light, of course).

If you're working from a lookup table of a VERY LIMITED collection of preset options to choose from, only a subset of those choices are going to be "viable" in an advantageous way, leaving the rest behind as "junk" that is nice to have for completeness but is otherwise quite useless (because, why use worse options?).



Nowadays, we think nothing of having calculators in almost all of our electronic devices (watches, phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, etc.) capable of doing most basic arithmetic (plus the occasional bit of algebra and trigonometry) calculating.



The simple fact of the matter is that the Drive Performance lookup table of LBB2 was the product of an era in which easy access to computational power could not be assumed ... so a lookup table made sense. It was, however, rapidly overtaken by advancements in personal computing technology (cheap credit card calculators being a good starting point) which made a more formulaic approach (as used in LBB5.80) a better paradigm capable of a wider range of possibilities that could be better "tailored" into a broader set of potential use cases.

 

[spank]

I have always considered it very odd that cargo and fuel space were not modular. That way if you had a J-3 ship and you only needed to J-2 to a destination you could take more cargo.

You could do that by swapping im modules on a modular cutter, but it thinks that's a later design.
Or you could run drop tanks, and change the size depending on whether you are going J-1, J-2 or J-3.
You could make a 200 ton trader from two 100 ton hulls, one with the drives, bridge, and crew quarters, and another with cargo, fuel and passengers. That would approximate a modular cutter.

 

[spank]

But I think you can find a compromise position where you can make smaller craft on general viable in the same way, not just certain special cases. There is no reason there shouldn't be, for example, a 300 ton hull that fills the niche between a Free Trader and a Subsidized Merchant. Either by combining 200 ton and 100 ton hulls or by providing a standard 300 ton hull at a discounted price.
A 200 yon Hull will accommodate a size B jump drive, slap a 100 ton hull on top of it and you've got room for a size B plant and M drive. Meaning you B/B/B with what should be performance of 1/1/1. It's sub optimal with 10 tons leftover in the second hull's drive section, but the cost is 10 MCr for the two hulls vs 30 for a custom hull.

 

[Grav_Moped]

There is no reason there shouldn't be, for example, a 300 ton hull that fills the niche between a Free Trader and a Subsidized Merchant. Either by combining 200 ton and 100 ton hulls or by providing a standard 300 ton hull at a discounted price.

The out-of-universe reason is that it was easier to tweak the hull prices for a few ships than to rewrite either the cargo rules or the entire ship design rules.

The in-game reason is that the standard discounted hulls are the most common variants at each tonnage step, and as such they've not only gotten the most efficiency wrung out of the design and construction, but also there's a substantial market in good (or refurbished) used hulls of those types. Mind you, this doesn't really make for an exact fit -- in a universe where cargo pays Cr1000 per jump (not per parsec), the most common 400Td freighter will be J1/1G so the standard hull should be -- but isn't -- optimized for that set of drives, not for J2/2G with room for a little more power plant too.

As I've said a few times, I see the values on the Drive Tables in LBB2 as point cases of the formulae that describe the characteristics of those drives (it gets weird for the TL-15 drives but you could do multi-point interpolation to figure out what drives in between them would be, if you really needed to do that). Drives of intermediate sizes should be possible, but are probably uncommon and would present challenges in getting spare parts.

An alien civilization might have a drive chart that goes in 200Td increments starting at 100Td (100, 300, 500...) and have "Standard drives" sized to suit those hull sizes.

 

[Rupert]

The simple fact of the matter is that the Drive Performance lookup table of LBB2 was the product of an era in which easy access to computational power could not be assumed ... so a lookup table made sense. It was, however, rapidly overtaken by advancements in personal computing technology (cheap credit card calculators being a good starting point) which made a more formulaic approach (as used in LBB5.80) a better paradigm capable of a wider range of possibilities that could be better "tailored" into a broader set of potential use cases.

But there's no reason the tables couldn't have been simply a presentation of the formulas, as they were in MegaTraveller.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

It's not supposed to be a smooth linear progression.
The TL advantage is built into the table.
Small ships are inefficient, big ships are more efficient, but also using higher tech drives, hence higher tech ships are more efficient.

We can build J-2 ships using TL-9 drives, but percentage of the ship that is payload goes up with TL, and the cost per Dt payload goes down to be half at TL 15 of what is was at TL-9:

We can build a J-4 ship using TL-10 drives, but it's much more efficient at TL-12 and again at TL-14, and at TL-15 it's vastly better:


Small ships are deliberately discriminated with fixed bridges, PP fuel, and crews.
Standard hulls and crew relief claws back some advantage, to make the Scout and Free Trader somewhat usable.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

T5 uses a linear progression for drive potential, using both a table and formula. Simple and clean.
And then adds LBB5 tech limitations and tech stages based on that to make it a soggy complicated mess...

LBB2 and LBB5 are rather simple and have hidden depths...

 

[spank]

If you are going to tweak the prices for 4 hulls, you might as well go ahead and tweak them for 8 or 10. The 300 ton example would make the most efficient use of a C/C/C drive combo, giving 2/2/2. And a 500 ton example would be the same for a E/E/E.
While the drives on the table in LBB 2 are point cases they follow a clear progression in size, and their performance follows a clear formula, Perf= (drive size *100 / Hull) * 2 So a 300 ton hull with a size 3 {code C} drive will give (3*100/300) *2. You can calculate drive size as (tons-5)/5 for J-drive and (tons+1)/2 and (tons-1)/3 Knowing this you can make any number of custom sized drives to fit your custom hulls. If you want a perf 3 drive for a 150 ton hull you need drive size = to Perf*Hull/200 or 4*150/200 = size 3.
Knowing that you could make a table like this:

Which I think would be better than the existing table, because it's more compact and cuts out all the "-" results
Not every result is optimal, but it gives you what you need to choose the drive that give the performance you want.
Interestingly the size S,U & X drives don't appear here....

Edit:
S and X appear at 1100,
U doesn't show up until 1900

The out-of-universe reason is that it was easier to tweak the hull prices for a few ships than to rewrite either the cargo rules or the entire ship design rules.

The in-game reason is that the standard discounted hulls are the most common variants at each tonnage step, and as such they've not only gotten the most efficiency wrung out of the design and construction, but also there's a substantial market in good (or refurbished) used hulls of those types. Mind you, this doesn't really make for an exact fit -- in a universe where cargo pays Cr1000 per jump (not per parsec), the most common 400Td freighter will be J1/1G so the standard hull should be -- but isn't -- optimized for that set of drives, not for J2/2G with room for a little more power plant too.

As I've said a few times, I see the values on the Drive Tables in LBB2 as point cases of the formulae that describe the characteristics of those drives (it gets weird for the TL-15 drives but you could do multi-point interpolation to figure out what drives in between them would be, if you really needed to do that). Drives of intermediate sizes should be possible, but are probably uncommon and would present challenges in getting spare parts.

An alien civilization might have a drive chart that goes in 200Td increments starting at 100Td (100, 300, 500...) and have "Standard drives" sized to suit those hull sizes.

 

[spank]

It should say "You can calculate drive size as (tons-5)/5 for J-drive,(tons+1)/2 for M-drive and (tons-1)/3 for P-Plant"

If you are going to tweak the prices for 4 hulls, you might as well go ahead and tweak them for 8 or 10. The 300 ton example would make the most efficient use of a C/C/C drive combo, giving 2/2/2. And a 500 ton example would be the same for a E/E/E.
While the drives on the table in LBB 2 are point cases they follow a clear progression in size, and their performance follows a clear formula, Perf= (drive size *100 / Hull) * 2 So a 300 ton hull with a size 3 {code C} drive will give (3*100/300) *2. You can calculate drive size as (tons-5)/5 for J-drive and (tons+1)/2 for M-drive and (tons-1)/3 for P-Plant. Knowing this you can make any number of custom sized drives to fit your custom hulls. If you want a perf 3 drive for a 150 ton hull you need drive size = to Perf*Hull/200 or 4*150/200 = size 3.
Knowing that you could make a table like this:
View attachment 6053
Which I think would be better than the existing table, because it's more compact and cuts out all the "-" results
Not every result is optimal, but it gives you what you need to choose the drive that give the performance you want.
Interestingly the size S,U & X drives don't appear here....

Edit:
S and X appear at 1100,
U doesn't show up until 1900

 

[AnotherDilbert]

While the drives on the table in LBB 2 are point cases they follow a clear progression in size, and their performance follows a clear formula, Perf= (drive size *100 / Hull) * 2

Except when it doesn't...

See J-drives in a 2000 Dt hull, or X, Y, and Z drives...

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Which I think would be better than the existing table, because it's more compact and cuts out all the "-" results

All the "-" have a meaning, those drives are not allowed in those hulls.

 

[mike wightman]

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	J	K	L	M	N	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
100	2	4	6
200	1	2	3	4	5	6
300		1	2	3	4	5	6
400			1	2	3	4	5	6
500				1	2	3	4	5	6
600					1	2	3	4	5	6
700						1	2	3	4	5	6
800							1	2	3	4	5	6
900								1	2	3	4	5	6
1000									1	2	3	4	5	6
2000															1	2	3	4	5	6
3000																	1	2	3	4	5	6
4000																			1	2	3	4	5	6
5000																					1	2	3	4

 

[mike wightman]

It wouldn't let me add the intro sentence
"I wonder why there have been so few homebrew drive tables over the years?"

 

[spank]

All the "-" have a meaning, those drives are not allowed in those hulls.

But it is wasteful space wise.
The "-" take up 2/3 of the table.
The two tables: give the same info, but the first one filters out the dross.
The first table is potentially 1/4 the size of the second, if arranged with the same font and spacing.

Except when it doesn't...

See J-drives in a 2000 Dt hull, or X, Y, and Z drives...

Again, the table should sticks to the formula.

 

[Spinward Flow]

As I've said a few times, I see the values on the Drive Tables in LBB2 as point cases of the formulae that describe the characteristics of those drives (it gets weird for the TL-15 drives but you could do multi-point interpolation to figure out what drives in between them would be, if you really needed to do that).

While the drives on the table in LBB 2 are point cases they follow a clear progression in size, and their performance follows a clear formula

Been there, done that.
Even have the house rules (posted) to prove it.

But there's no reason the tables couldn't have been simply a presentation of the formulas

Be careful who you say that to ... we've got some RAW Fanatics™ who post in these forums ...

But it is wasteful space wise.

That's because the "wasteful" LBB2 table was integrated into the combat damage system of LBB2.
Every time a drive took 1 hit, you reduced the drive performance by 1 letter.
So having that larger "wasteful" table made damaged drive performance lookup a MUCH easier task.

You could tell, at a glance, how "quickly" drive performance would go down as damage hits were absorbed by drive letters in different hulls. This made the lookup table multi-purpose ... intended for use in the design sequence AND for (easy) use in the battle damage tally use case(s).

So in that respect, the LBB2 drive performance table was kind of clever ... but that bit of game mechanical "cleverness" was dependent upon the notion of battle damage to drives meaning "-1 letter" rather than meaning "-1 code factor" in terms of loss to battle damage. LBB5.80 threw away the entire concept of "letter drives" in favor of a "code factor" of performance, hence why battle damage in LBB5.80 goes directly to drive performance rather than needing to be "washed through a table" to determine an answer like LBB2 combat does.

Note that the whole extended table of letter options shown in LBB2 made it possible (and almost reasonable!) to have overengineered drives in order to have craft that could "take a few hits" before drive performance would begin to degrade. If you squint hard enough, that's almost akin to the notion of (ablative) armor ... which is notable because LBB2 didn't HAVE armor as a combat relevant feature of design.

 

[spank]

You can still over-engine the ship,
You just use a larger drive and then when the drive gets below it's critical threshold, shown on the table, you reduce the performance.

Been there, done that.
Even have the house rules (posted) to prove it.

Be careful who you say that to ... we've got some RAW Fanatics™ who post in these forums ...

That's because the "wasteful" LBB2 table was integrated into the combat damage system of LBB2.
Every time a drive took 1 hit, you reduced the drive performance by 1 letter.
So having that larger "wasteful" table made damaged drive performance lookup a MUCH easier task.

You could tell, at a glance, how "quickly" drive performance would go down as damage hits were absorbed by drive letters in different hulls. This made the lookup table multi-purpose ... intended for use in the design sequence AND for (easy) use in the battle damage tally use case(s).

So in that respect, the LBB2 drive performance table was kind of clever ... but that bit of game mechanical "cleverness" was dependent upon the notion of battle damage to drives meaning "-1 letter" rather than meaning "-1 code factor" in terms of loss to battle damage. LBB5.80 threw away the entire concept of "letter drives" in favor of a "code factor" of performance, hence why battle damage in LBB5.80 goes directly to drive performance rather than needing to be "washed through a table" to determine an answer like LBB2 combat does.

Note that the whole extended table of letter options shown in LBB2 made it possible (and almost reasonable!) to have overengineered drives in order to have craft that could "take a few hits" before drive performance would begin to degrade. If you squint hard enough, that's almost akin to the notion of (ablative) armor ... which is notable because LBB2 didn't HAVE armor as a combat relevant feature of design.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	J	K	L	M	N	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
100	2	4	6
200	1	2	3	4	5	6
300		1	2	3	4	5	6
400			1	2	3	4	5	6
500				1	2	3	4	5	6
600					1	2	3	4	5	6
700						1	2	3	4	5	6
800							1	2	3	4	5	6
900								1	2	3	4	5	6
1000									1	2	3	4	5	6
2000															1	2	3	4	5	6
3000																	1	2	3	4	5	6

Why so irregular? The Q drive is a third of the strength of a P drive?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

But it is wasteful space wise.

That information is missing from your table.
E.g. for a 400 Dt hull a M drive is required for potential 6, a N drive is also allowed, but a P drive is not allowed.
That is important, e.g. when designing a ship for Double Fire.

The two tables: give the same info, but the first one filters out the dross.

It's not the same information, it's a subset of information in the smaller table.

Again, the table should sticks to the formula.

Should? It doesn't...
It's a manually adjusted table that deliberately does not stick to a simple formula, at least for the biggest drives.
We can turn the Drive Potential Table into a function if we wish:
https://www.travellerrpg.com/thread...-merchant-lbb2-199td-j26gp7.44532/post-677966
I don't really see the point...

If you want a new table, that is as pointed out a house rule. No problem with that, of course.

There is an error in the smaller table for the 100 Dt hull.
An A drive gives potential 2, not 1, whether you want it to or not.
A B drive gives potential 4, not 3, whether you want it to or not.

Why not use the smallest drive that gives the desired performance in the smaller table? E.g. the J drive in a 2000 Dt hull or X drive in a 800 Dt hull?

You could just add a column for "-"? Then it would give the same information as the large table.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

You can still over-engine the ship,

LBB2 disagrees:

LBB2'81, p21:
2. Only the drives and power plants shown on the drive potential table are possible. Drives marked with a dash (-) may not be used with that hull size.

As Mike taught me recently, thanks!