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Ask the Playtesters.

far-trader

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Originally posted by hunter:
Just wanted to let the playtesters know that they are now free to talk about T20 in other forums, and with specific details. Reviews, comments, etc., are all welcomed and encouraged.

Hunter
I thought a new forum topic might get more attention from the playtesters so come in and ask, maybe they'll answer.

Let me start with more of an observation than a specific question. I noticed that while the book is "done" the private playtester's Starships forum is active again. I'm curious what is being discussed, and since you have Hunter's blessings why you're not sharing ;)

Dan
 
Originally posted by far-trader:
Let me start with more of an observation than a specific question. I noticed that while the book is "done" the private playtester's Starships forum is active again. I'm curious what is being discussed, and since you have Hunter's blessings why you're not sharing ;)

Dan[/QB]
The question was regarding the design of the Lab (Type L) ship, which was ommited from the early releases.
 
Something that very well might determine if I switch to d20 Traveller from GURPS (for which I have lots of books...fortunately, the majority of GURPS sourcebooks tends to be useful information instead of rules), is the vehicle and space combat systems. Frankly, GURPS has horrible vehicle rules. I would like to know if T20 will have playable combat rules for both ground/air vehicles and for starships. This is quite important to me, as space combat, while not as action-packed as Star Wars space combats, should still be something that everyone wants to do. In GURPS, it's not only boring, it's not very exciting.

Thanks!
 
Each vehicle has an armor rating and a number of Structrual Integrity Points, just like AC and Lifeblood for characters. You shoot, and if you hit you reduce damage by Armor rating and apply the remainder to the SIP points of the vehicle.

There are several options as to specific locations for vehicle hits. If you want combat to go fast, you just keep the vehicle fighting until it runs out of SIP points, or you can do location hits using location charts if you want to get into detail.

Movement is similar, there is a quick system and a more detailed system for handling turns, acceleration, vehicle commander actions and so forth.

So, depending on your taste, you can vary level of detail for vehicle combat.

You can scale weapons among various sizes of target.
Personal weapons are reduced 5 dice of damage vs vehicles, and 10 dice vs. starships.
Vehicle weapons are reduced 5 dice vs starships but add 5 dice vs personnel.
Starship weapons add 5 dice of damage vs vehicles and 10 dice vs personnel (ignoring body armor too).

I did a lot of vehicle combat in the play test and was pretty happy with it once the level of SIP points was worked out (it was badly broken in the first few drafts, but now it's good).

You do want to avoid getting your unarmored spaceship too close to ground fire. A VRF gauss gun can eventually chew up a small spaceship pretty well, as can cannons and large vehicle lasers. This may play a little differently from Striker and MT, but hey, what's an army for if it can't defend the planet from landing ships.
 
Sounds cool, the more I hear the less I can bear the wait for my pre-order copy. I am a little concerned that personal armor doesn't help against ship size weapons (though I can see why, it makes perfect realistic sense). I'd like a chance (slim to none, rather than none) for a character (not npc) to be just "mostly dead", and just to keep the system consistent. Of course with the scaling factor is there even a slim chance even if you subtract for armor?

Also are planetary defense weapons the same scale as ship weapons?

Thanks for taking the time to answer, any headstart up the learning curve is much appreciated.
 
A single beam laser does 1d6 in space combat. If you fire it an an angry Vargr with a pointed stick, the Vargr will take 11d6, both lifeblood and Stamina (as if the Stamina matters here).

So, since an average character has 11 lifeblood points, and can go to -10 before dying, there is a small chance that he'll survive a laser hit from a starship, if the ship rolls all 1's and 2's (and mostly 1's). It's possible, but not likely.
 
Originally posted by DrSkull:
A single beam laser does 1d6 in space combat. If you fire it an an angry Vargr with a pointed stick, the Vargr will take 11d6, both lifeblood and Stamina (as if the Stamina matters here).
Sounds like would be assailants had better hope that the turrets contain only ONE laser! Assuming that the lasers in turrets follow the sloted weapon rules from CT, and that three lasers in a turret would be gang-fired from the same solution... Mr Vargr could be taking 33d6 from that turret blast! (Thereby reducing our poor stick brandishing fellow to a vargr shaped ash pile and burn shadow on the ground.)
 
Originally posted by Darth Sillyus:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by DrSkull:
A single beam laser does 1d6 in space combat. If you fire it an an angry Vargr with a pointed stick, the Vargr will take 11d6, both lifeblood and Stamina (as if the Stamina matters here).
Sounds like would be assailants had better hope that the turrets contain only ONE laser! Assuming that the lasers in turrets follow the sloted weapon rules from CT, and that three lasers in a turret would be gang-fired from the same solution... Mr Vargr could be taking 33d6 from that turret blast! (Thereby reducing our poor stick brandishing fellow to a vargr shaped ash pile and burn shadow on the ground.)</font>[/QUOTE]Or you could say that the center beam hit, but the other two beams passed by about 6 inches to either side of him. The weapon just isn't designed to be shot at anything as narrow as a human or Vargr. Hivers and K'Kree would just be
toast.gif
(and perhaps ready for some barbeque sauce). :D

Simon Jester
 
Now that I think of it, the triple laser turret would not do 33d6 to the Vargr. Multiple weapons do damage based on USP. So a triple beam laser is USP 3 (IIRC) so it would do 3d6 in space combat or 13d6 against lifeforms. That's still in the "occassionally someone might live through that, but honestly, bring a dustpan" range.
 
Somebody mentioned elsewhere the Striker rules for peppering troops with a ship's Sandcasters (not the way they work in MTU but...). Is this covered in T20? Like is there a damage, and if so how much? Or did it never come up? Thanks in advance for the answers.

Dan
 
Greetings all,

Been a long time lurker here, but now that we can ask the playtesters I've got plenty of questions. :D

Being mostly a ship design 'gearhead' I was quite pleased to hear that T20 would be using a modifyed High Guard system. When the Seeker preview was released, I was happy to see that it was practicaly a direct 'port' from HG. It seems we can easily take any old HG ship we made back in the 'good ol' days' and easily convert over to T20. Excellent!
I am still a bit confused on how a few things work in the new system however.

In ship combat do weapons do SI damage only or is there a chart that indicates what has been hit (like in HG). Also do different weapons do diff dammage, Such as lasers do suface hits, PAWs do surface and radiation...etc...

Another question is do multiple weapons just do more damage (forex: 3 lasers =3d6) or do they improve the chance to hit (say +1 per laser), or can you choose?

Also do capital ship weapons do more damage than turret lasers or is it a direct USP = die of damage. IIRC High Guard delt with this by reducing the damage chart roll by 6 for all USP greater than 9. This resulted in more criticals with capital weapons.

As you can see I do have a lot of questions.
Perhaps I'm just getting excited? :D
 
Originally posted by cmdrx:

In ship combat do weapons do SI damage only or is there a chart that indicates what has been hit (like in HG). Also do different weapons do diff dammage, Such as lasers do suface hits, PAWs do surface and radiation...etc...
Ship damage is accounted in SI, but the internal damage table from HG is also used. If the damage from the weapon hit penetrates armor (does SI damage), you also roll on the internal damage table.

Originally posted by cmdrx:

Another question is do multiple weapons just do more damage (forex: 3 lasers =3d6) or do they improve the chance to hit (say +1 per laser), or can you choose?

Also do capital ship weapons do more damage than turret lasers or is it a direct USP = die of damage. IIRC High Guard delt with this by reducing the damage chart roll by 6 for all USP greater than 9. This resulted in more criticals with capital weapons.
Starship weapons do 1d per USP factor, where USP is calculated from the HG ship design system. Each weapon uses a differnt type of die for damage. Yes, the PAW, Meson guns and Nuclear tipped missles also do radiation damage (roll on the rad table). So you can build the ship with 3 lasers and have 3 to hit rolls or one with +3 damage.

I know the Spinal mount weapons top out at 16d, but I'd have to recheck the rules to see if they allow for more internal damage rolls.

The advanced vehicle combat system would let you run HG battles on a hexmap with zero conversion effort.
 
Thanks for the reply. I'm begining to get an idea how ship designs and combat work in T20. The fact that it is generaly High Guard makes me giddy with anticipation for the final release. :D

Just one more thing vexes me. Do drives (both jump and manuever) now require EP? In the T20 Lite draft the ship write-ups indicate this, but the preview of the Seeker does not. In HG all that was required was that the PP number was equal to the drive number. If drives now draw EP, that could cause some old HG ships to loose agility or worse, become broken because now they dont have EP for their weapons.
 
Originally posted by cmdrx:

Just one more thing vexes me. Do drives (both jump and manuever) now require EP? In the T20 Lite draft the ship write-ups indicate this, but the preview of the Seeker does not. In HG all that was required was that the PP number was equal to the drive number. If drives now draw EP, that could cause some old HG ships to loose agility or worse, become broken because now they dont have EP for their weapons.
Yes. Both Jump and Maneuver drives require power. You only have to have a power plant large enough to supply one at a time.

This explains the HG requirement of Power Plant begin greater than Jump/Manuever, and allows for some additional rules for shifting power between weapons, agility and drives all based upon EP.

However, your concern is true, HG designed ships won't have enough power, and may require sacrificing either weapons fire or agility to power the engines. Engines require 0.5EP * Dn * 0.02 * Hull size in Tons (Applies to both Jump and Maneuver Drives). And since T20 doesn't require building powerplant to an even percentage of hull size, they can be sized exactly for EP requirements.

My solution would be to ignore the problem. The HG power plant supplies enough power to power the engines, plus the EP left over for agility and weapons. Which is what High Guard assumes.
 
Hey all
I'd just like to know: is this area also intended for secondary playtesters? I DO know that there are rather few, mainly consisting of Hunter's family/friends. Whether I'm acknowledged or not (don't care much either) I am too.

If Hunter sees this an forgot me, just remember 'Gambling is DEFINITELY my favorite skill' and 'Johan Sebastian'.
 
I know Hunter posted that the Playtest boards were going to be opened for everyone to read but I'm wondering when that is going to happen. Maybe it can be done just for those who have pre-ordered their copy of T20?

Thanks
 
Hello, another question about ship designs in T20.

Looking on the T20 Lite draft, it seems as if turrets no longer take up space (dt). Is that an error or is it that the turret is simply a placeholder and the actual weapon system takes up space? Forex: lasers 1dt, Fusion guns 2dt, etc...
 
Asking the playtesters...

What exactly is a vl? Is it a kilolitre or some abstract volume unit for vehicles. How many vl to the displacement ton?

And how are SI points figured it looks geometic/logorythmic instead of arithmetic. The 1000vl Jeep in the T20 Lite gets 50 SI, the G Carrier (10,000vl) 75, the the 100dt Scout (?vl) has 100 SI while the 200dt Trader gets 115.
Is it a different scale for Ships than it is for vehicles?

Thanks in advance,
 
The SI (damage points) use the same scale for vehicles as for starships. But, starship weapons add 5 dice when attacking vehicles and vehicles weapons subtract 5 dice when attacking ships. So the weapons do the scaling, not the damage points.

There is a little chart to determine SI values based on hull volume. I'm sure there is a formula underlying it, but don't know off hand what it is.

I believe that a VL is equal to 1/1000 of a Displacement ton. So a 6000vl vehicle is equal to 6 d-tons.
 
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