Agility - thoughts

[Carlobrand]

Accepting that CT book 5:

• is a lot of fun as a game but is not a very good simulation and appears to have taken some liberties in the interest of fun and simplicity,
• gives us incredibly armored battleships that nonetheless dance with the same agility as a similarly sized unarmored tanker,
• gives us trope lasers that can't actually do what they do without assuming the creation of incredibly powerful gravitics that seem to draw no power and aren't reflected elsewhere in the technological landscape - unless this is what's delivering proton-proton reactions in our power plants, and our power plants are a lot bigger,
• gives us missiles with incredible missile-size propulsion systems that allow them to cross vast distances quickly, and yet they can't do the kind of damage that the required velocities would imply - and those remarkable propulsion systems aren't reflected elsewhere in the technological landscape either, certainly not at the tech level at which they appear,
• and gives us reserve rules whose basis has been challenging for the community to come to consensus on,

it may be that this is one of those issues that will also be difficult for the community to come to consensus on.

 

[kilemall]

Accepting that CT book 5:

• is a lot of fun as a game but is not a very good simulation and appears to have taken some liberties in the interest of fun and simplicity,
• gives us incredibly armored battleships that nonetheless dance with the same agility as a similarly sized unarmored tanker,
• gives us trope lasers that can't actually do what they do without assuming the creation of incredibly powerful gravitics that seem to draw no power and aren't reflected elsewhere in the technological landscape - unless this is what's delivering proton-proton reactions in our power plants, and our power plants are a lot bigger,
• gives us missiles with incredible missile-size propulsion systems that allow them to cross vast distances quickly, and yet they can't do the kind of damage that the required velocities would imply - and those remarkable propulsion systems aren't reflected elsewhere in the technological landscape either, certainly not at the tech level at which they appear,
• and gives us reserve rules whose basis has been challenging for the community to come to consensus on,

it may be that this is one of those issues that will also be difficult for the community to come to consensus on.

I don’t need consensus. I am content to read shared notions and systems, offer what I have, use what I want and ignore the rest.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Accepting that CT book 5:

• is a lot of fun as a game but is not a very good simulation and appears to have taken some liberties in the interest of fun and simplicity,

aka, it's a game...

All Traveller editions are highly simplified, even TNE with FF&S.

 

[Marcatlas]

Accepting that CT book 5:

• is a lot of fun as a game but is not a very good simulation and appears to have taken some liberties in the interest of fun and simplicity,
• gives us incredibly armored battleships that nonetheless dance with the same agility as a similarly sized unarmored tanker,

The problem there is not defining adequately how M Drives function. Are they gravity based or thrust based? If thrust based you have to look at more of an MT agility rule

 

[Tobias]

Accepting that CT book 5:

• is a lot of fun as a game but is not a very good simulation and appears to have taken some liberties in the interest of fun and simplicity,

Is it a lot of fun as a game?
IME, it is not really. You roll a lot of dice for little effect, as the outcome is either pre-determined by what you bring to the battle or one or two (out of hundreds) die rolls.
In that sense, it arguably succeeds much better as a simulation, because that's how naval battles often work.

• gives us incredibly armored battleships that nonetheless dance with the same agility as a similarly sized unarmored tanker,

I feel comfortable in guaranteeing to you that, say, Yamato was more agile in every relevant sense of the word than an equivalent-displacement oil tanker is.

 

[infojunky]

My ship turns on a dime ... like Star Wars.
Not like the Hindenburg ... like Reality.

Heh, for game play I agree....

That and lots of Terrain on the board.

 

[mike wightman]

HG is not a good game. It is an ok design system with an absolutely awful combat resolution system.

Maneuver abstracted to the absurd.

Ridiculous numbers of dice to be rolled.

 

[Spinward Flow]

It is an ok design system with an absolutely awful combat resolution system.

LBB5.80 is a decent design system with an overly simplified yet still complicated combat resolution system.
Fixed that for you.

It's still better than trying to plot vector thrust movements on wargaming tables that need a minimum of 5 meters in length AND width to be usable for LBB2.81 combat scales.

Why do you need 5 meter long AND wide wargaming tables for LBB2.81 combat?
Because ... LBB2.81, p30:

So realistically, your best location to play LBB2.81 vector based combat with "enough room" to handle the proper scaling called for by the RAW was ...

• A BALLROOM FLOOR
• A PARKING LOT

... because "space is big" (blah, blah, blah, you know the rest).

 

[mike wightman]

You can't fix my opinion of HG

The construction system lacks many features of other ship design systems - GT ISW, BL, QSDS.

The combat system for a fleet vs fleet engagement required hundreds of dice rolls per turn or you have to swap to statistical resolution, in which case you may as well have a look up table and a single dice roll. There is no maneuver, no formations, no 3d "flanking".

As for LBB2 - some of us are capable of changing the distance scale, or even swapping to Mayday.
Not that I would use either for resolving ship combat during a roleplaying session.

 

[Spinward Flow]

The construction system lacks many features of other ship design systems - GT ISW, BL, QSDS.

I would point out that all of those alternatives were developed AFTER the publication of LBB5.80 and were thus able to use alternative approaches to problems.

The combat system for a fleet vs fleet engagement required hundreds of dice rolls per turn

Sorry, that's the nature of the beast for Fleet vs Fleet engagements.
When you have "hundreds of batteries" to resolve, you've got lots of dice to roll. That's just the nature of the beast when you're working at that high end scale.

or you have to swap to statistical resolution, in which case you may as well have a look up table and a single dice roll.

Which is basically what Fifth Frontier War did for its Fleet vs Fleet action ...

There is no maneuver, no formations, no 3d "flanking".

All of that is abstracted as a simplification.
It's kind of like being "in transporter range" in Star Trek. You don't need to know the EXACT details of relative positioning in 3D space ... all you care about is "are we in range? (Y/N)" and then proceed accordingly (if no, get closer, if yes, use transporter). You don't need 3D space coordinate systems using absolute values or even numerical range and bearing (210 mark 12 @ 40,000km, sir!) for that stuff. You just ask if you're "in range" and everything reduces down to a bridge officer Yes/No decision point answer.

ACTUAL crew would know those details (and what they all mean), but that's way more "simulation" (not to mention, math and skill training) than can be comfortably expected to be handled by amateur roleplayers sitting around a gaming table who want to have FUN, rather than do WORK.

You CAN have maneuver, formations and flanking going on in LBB5.80 combat resolution, but it requires the Referee to add that additional level of DEPTH to the game scenario being played out.

As for LBB2 - some of us are capable of changing the distance scale, or even swapping to Mayday.
Not that I would use either for resolving ship combat during a roleplaying session.

And there's the rub.
If you aren't using the combat system for tabletop wargaming ... you need to be using it during roleplaying sessions.

And as you cite, LBB2.81 and Mayday aren't all that great for doing ship to ship combat during a roleplaying session.

Just because the tools at hand are "less than ideal" doesn't mean we should discard them. It just means we need to be "clever(er)" in how we use them.

 

[whartung]

Book 5 is great for a TCS strategic level game, FFW is better though. As Mike mentioned, Book5 the battle is won at the design and composition stage. When the fleets meet, the victor is know quite quickly, though the cost may not be.

Book 2 works just fine with 10,000km hexes, as thats the effect of 1G maneuver. The grain of the hex maps doesn't really interfere with that system, since ship facing it not a real concern. It's a game mostly about range. At that scale 5000mm is 50 hexes, which is big for a hex map, but not that big, and it's not a ballroom.

 

[whartung]

If you aren't using the combat system for tabletop wargaming ... you need to be using it during roleplaying sessions.

The TNE range band system handles that pretty well, you barely need a map for it, and it can pretty much be all done through narrative.

 

[Spinward Flow]

The TNE range band system handles that pretty well, you barely need a map for it, and it can pretty much be all done through narrative.

THIS.
Handling through narrative is the ideal, because that's the "starship bridge officer" experience for roleplayers, which is why things like maps can often times be easily abstracted rather than intensively detailed.

ship facing it not a real concern.

Unlike Starfleet Battles by FASA, where ship facing can be of paramount importance, due to the increased granularity.

 

[Tobias]

Sorry, that's the nature of the beast for Fleet vs Fleet engagements.
When you have "hundreds of batteries" to resolve, you've got lots of dice to roll. That's just the nature of the beast when you're working at that high end scale.

As Mike said: That's why you don't use such a system at that scale.

HG's problem with scale is not that it is geared towards large fleet actions.

It is that it attempts to be a game in which both 5-ton microfighters and 500,000-ton superdreadnoughts are represented as individual units.

Over my many years of gaming, I've given a lot of thought to how you could make a system with that premise work and have come to the conclusion that you can't. Many of HG's idosyncracies (e.g. the fact that armor protects the two example vessels in the same way) derive from the noble, but futile attempt to achieve that unachievable goal.

All of that is abstracted as a simplification.

That, in my view, is completely fine. A complex movement system is only good as a game mechanic if players can think around it to make interesting tactical choices.

Take the extremely simple system from Imperium, which was largely re-used for HG. The only three factors are whether to change range or not (if you can), how to assign your ships against each other and whether to make suicide attacks.
All three enable tactical choices: Do I benefit more from missile (long range) or beam (short range) fire? [NOTE: That part is turned into a bit of a no-brainer thanks to Imperium's two sides' different design philosophies.] Do I sacrifice some smaller ships and keep a major warship in reserve until I can change the range to be more advantageous? How to weigh the bonus from the suicide attack vs. the risk of being destroyed first?

A complex system enabling tactical choices is rather more difficult to design IMHO.

 

[kilemall]

LBB5.80 is a decent design system with an overly simplified yet still complicated combat resolution system.
Fixed that for you.

It's still better than trying to plot vector thrust movements on wargaming tables that need a minimum of 5 meters in length AND width to be usable for LBB2.81 combat scales.

Why do you need 5 meter long AND wide wargaming tables for LBB2.81 combat?
Because ... LBB2.81, p30:

So realistically, your best location to play LBB2.81 vector based combat with "enough room" to handle the proper scaling called for by the RAW was ...

• A BALLROOM FLOOR
• A PARKING LOT

... because "space is big" (blah, blah, blah, you know the rest).

I simply use graph paper, same for Harpoon games.

 

[kilemall]

It is that it attempts to be a game in which both 5-ton microfighters and 500,000-ton superdreadnoughts are represented as individual units.

A complex system enabling tactical choices is rather more difficult to design IMHO.

I agree that the game does individual ships while superimposing a demolition derby and campaign game in TCS.

I disagree that a tactical game cannot be made of it. Just needs LBB2 maneuver, a reinvention of the damage tables, volume rules to alter the armor crazy small ships, range step down/armor effects, kinetics built into the missiles, power allocation, reserve coverage rules, and we are there.

 

[McPerth]

Just needs LBB2 maneuver, a reinvention of the damage tables, volume rules to alter the armor crazy small ships, range step down/armor effects, kinetics built into the missiles, power allocation, reserve coverage rules, and we are there.

So, a new set of rules...

 

[Tobias]

I agree that the game does individual ships while superimposing a demolition derby and campaign game in TCS.

I disagree that a tactical game cannot be made of it. Just needs LBB2 maneuver, a reinvention of the damage tables, volume rules to alter the armor crazy small ships, range step down/armor effects, kinetics built into the missiles, power allocation, reserve coverage rules, and we are there.

"Just".

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I simply use graph paper, same for Harpoon games.

It's just numbers...

The main thing is that you need to plan ahead, test scenarios.

Here red ship jumps in and accelerates towards blue planet. Green ship accelerates out from the planets to intercept red ship.
The red dot show where the green ship needs to reverse acceleration to intercept red ship.
That point is intuitively non-obvious, at least to me. To intercept you must plan ahead, not just manoeuvre one turn at a time.
Neither a floor or graph paper are very good at that...

 

[whartung]

It's just numbers...

That's a nice chart, how did you do the plot of the ships?