You have never used inertial compensator's in Traveller?
AG and IC in CT Core Rules
- Thread starter HG_B
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You have never used inertial compensator's in Traveller?
I usually play 2300AD which, I guess, is a little more low-tech. That's one of the things I like about it. Less handwavium going on there. You can only pull so many G's before the gamemaster decides that you just wrecked a perfectly good Tourbillon roton because you were cocky...
I think internial compensators or dampeners are little too Trekkie for my taste.
Sorry, my bad. I thought you played Traveller.
Oh, SNAP.
Although, be fair: LBB123 never explicitly made any statement about shipboard artificial gravity or inertial damping... indeed, neither did High Guard. That all got left to the Referees (who, on the whole, seem to have gravitated towards CG for cinematic purposes if nothing else), or failing that, the OTU supplements and adventures, which all (afaict) assume CG. MT and everything that followed might be different, I wouldn't know.
Actually, with the interplanetary travel rules (see travel formulas & acceleration ratings of drives) you have to have inertial compensation or the characters die. Pretty simple.
Well, *something's* certainly required under those circumstances, but my point is that they weren't never explicit about the method, and one could take a harder-sci-fi approach to the problem if they wanted their TU to be that way. There's plenty of solutions for long periods of high-G posited throughout science fiction; Mote and Forever War come to mind. Of course it's more convenient and less restrictive to just say *poink* you've got MagicGravity and Inertia-Go-Away installed in your ship's deck plates, which is why that eventually catches on.
There are no other solutions that could work with the human body. So, it wouldn't be a "harder-sci-fi" approach but, a fantasy approach...
I thought Haldeman's approach, while icky, made good sense. Pournelle and Niven's solution wouldn't help much for 4-6 Gs, admittedly, and indeed resulted in death for a very very old man, but I thought it rang truer than pure handwavium CG.
More fantastic than magical intertial damping? Aight.
But, goes against RAW regarding ship design, so is out as far saying that is was left up to the ref.
Within the rules set anti-grav is a given. So, not magical at all. As I stated, inertial comp has been part of Trav since CT 1st Ed.
I hope that playing 2300AD doesn't make me a pariah from now on...
I knew that Traveller had artificial gravity and hoped that you knew about the method.
I assume that when you have vertical artificial gravity in the floor or something that you can install it in the walls as well. Coupled to the speedometre of the ship it would get you inertial compensation. Might make the bulkheads... well... bulky though.
So maybe the compensation is only in some of the spaces aboard?
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
There seems to be a bit of talking past each other here, IF i'm not also misreading 
The core rules of CT, LBB1-3, and quite possibly LBB-4-7, do not specifically mention Artificial Gravity (AG) and one could well imagine more than one treatment of this. Possibly AG is included in the build costs and such. Possibly ships use spin modules. Possibly ships are under zero-g (there are zero-g rules in LBB-1) when not accelerating. Possibly ships are designed with decks perpendicular to thrust and make use of routine maneuver at 1G to simulate gravity. Or quite possibly all of the above are used in different designs. The rules, originally, simply didn't say or limit it.
Now there is the travel times and routine operations method of thrusting full out for half the trip and then flipping and thrusting full out to stop. At more than 1G this is an issue for long trips. That might imply there is some Inertial Compensation (IC) in place but does not rule out other ways around it as well. And IC is also not specifically mentioned in the core CT rules. Maybe there is IC included in the design process. Or maybe one should not make extended high G thrust without consequences. Perhaps such high G long thrust trips require the personnel to be in low berths for most of the trip to avoid the issue.
There are no single right or wrong answers here in the rules as written. There weren't meant to be imo. The ref and players were left to go their own ways if the issue arose.
One thing though that the rules do seem pretty solid on in early CT, ships do not have Contra-Grav (CG) in the sense of negation of most of the natural gravity of a world. Check the rules of movement and subtracting from the vector for local gravity of worlds and gas giants. If CG were part of ship design then that rule wouldn't make sense.
The core rules of CT, LBB1-3, and quite possibly LBB-4-7, do not specifically mention Artificial Gravity (AG) and one could well imagine more than one treatment of this. Possibly AG is included in the build costs and such. Possibly ships use spin modules. Possibly ships are under zero-g (there are zero-g rules in LBB-1) when not accelerating. Possibly ships are designed with decks perpendicular to thrust and make use of routine maneuver at 1G to simulate gravity. Or quite possibly all of the above are used in different designs. The rules, originally, simply didn't say or limit it.
Now there is the travel times and routine operations method of thrusting full out for half the trip and then flipping and thrusting full out to stop. At more than 1G this is an issue for long trips. That might imply there is some Inertial Compensation (IC) in place but does not rule out other ways around it as well. And IC is also not specifically mentioned in the core CT rules. Maybe there is IC included in the design process. Or maybe one should not make extended high G thrust without consequences. Perhaps such high G long thrust trips require the personnel to be in low berths for most of the trip to avoid the issue.
There are no single right or wrong answers here in the rules as written. There weren't meant to be imo. The ref and players were left to go their own ways if the issue arose.
One thing though that the rules do seem pretty solid on in early CT, ships do not have Contra-Grav (CG) in the sense of negation of most of the natural gravity of a world. Check the rules of movement and subtracting from the vector for local gravity of worlds and gas giants. If CG were part of ship design then that rule wouldn't make sense.
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Actually, without artificial grav, the ships designs listed aren't possible. People would die during interplanetary travel as described in the rules. Pretty simple.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
How so? I've made my case, what's yours? Sure the rules suggest you can travel at 4Gs for weeks, but does that mean you should? Or that you shouldn't take precautions if you do? IC is not the only solution. As I noted. Though it is a popular one most assumed as a given.
And as for AG, also NOT in the rules. Not even implied as I recall. In fact the fact that there are rules for zero-g actions more implies there is no AG. And again it is a popular assumption that AG is there.
Of course I could well be forgetting a specific mention of AG and IC in the core rules. Or it could be mentioned in some supplement or adventure as a later clarification.
Read the thread. If you still doubt it. Ask Marc... Want to be $ on it?
BTW, you can't do 4Gs for even HOURS.
6G for more than a few minutes is lethal. Therefore, the 6G travel times in days for manned vessels MUST have some form of artificial gravity. The lack of it would be lethal. Even 2G for 24+hours is progressively lethal.
While I will certainly agree that the OTU assumes contragrav all over the place, and that the OTU deck plans all require some sort of inertial compensation, I still don't think that it's really clear from the basic ruleset. It is not spelled out.
The ship designs in book 2 don't have any statements whatever about CG or inertia damping. Deckplans came later.
Now, people would die if they went at 4-6G for interplanetary distances. Nothing says that you have to do that.
Some of the ships listed in LBB2 can accelerate between 3-6Gs indefinitely. Nothing says they have to, or should.
The ship designs in book 2 don't have any statements whatever about CG or inertia damping. Deckplans came later.
Now, people would die if they went at 4-6G for interplanetary distances. Nothing says that you have to do that.
Some of the ships listed in LBB2 can accelerate between 3-6Gs indefinitely. Nothing says they have to, or should.
So it's left to the gamesmaster; or the writer of the storyline to come up with some way of traveling through space without killing the PC's. It's not that they can, they HAVE TO. I don't know about the crowd you play with; but the people I play with will not let you get away with such a glaring gap in your background. Same as here really
The question is: which method do you prefer. A hard science one that means you have a slower method of travel; or something more far fetched which doesn't get in the way of the story arch but has a faint smell of handwavium.
Bk2 also fails to mention the lethality of extended high-G (2+G) flights. It also fails to mention that one shouldn't spend days under more than 1.5G.
Therefore, the implication is that some form of rendering gravity a non-issue must be present. And, given the antigravity tech in Bk3's tech listing, it's the least damaging assumption. (The other options are physically invasive and unpleasant...)
Therefore, the implication is that some form of rendering gravity a non-issue must be present. And, given the antigravity tech in Bk3's tech listing, it's the least damaging assumption. (The other options are physically invasive and unpleasant...)
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
The rules don't mention it but the very first adventure does