Best vehicle design system for Traveller?

[simonh]

I've got Striker and had a play with the vehicle design system in MegaTraveller back in the day, but it had a lot of issue and pages of errata that made it very unwieldy. From what I remember the vehicles supplement 101 vehicles had many mistakes in it as well, fatally wounding the credibility of the ssytem in my oppinion.

I had a look at the first edition of FF&S for New Era, but never really used it as I gave up on TNE early on. It just didn't feel like Traveller at all to me. That's another topic though.

I also never got into T4, so I have no idea what the vehicle design system was like though I understand it had a version of FF&S as well. Also I think T20 had a system like this too, but not sure.

So looking at the detailed vehicle design systems out there, in the FF&S style, which would you say is the best all round? How do they compare in various attributes:

Useability - sensible defaults, no unecessary steps and calculations, clearly explained and logical ordering of steps, etc.

Flexibility - Capable of designing a wide variety of vehicles, lots of technologies covered, not tied to a particular setting.

Accuracy - Few significant errata, produces sane designs that approximate real vehicles where relevant, and extrapolates reasonably beyond known vehicle types.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Timerover51]

No good design system exists. You choose the best for your purpose from what is there.

 

[Frankymole]

Are there any - either official or unofficial - that cover wet navy ships and small one-man vehicles like motorbikes? Does the T5 thing-maker allow small devices like personal transport?

 

[Reban]

Are there any - either official or unofficial - that cover wet navy ships and small one-man vehicles like motorbikes? Does the T5 thing-maker allow small devices like personal transport?

T5 has VehicleMaker that will design vehicles down to half a dton so yes it will do motorbike and yes there is a special design sequence for wet navy ships (submarines and grav-assisted ships). The upper limit depends on the type of vehicle, a Very Heavy Hovercraft could be 6000+ dTons.

The thing about T5's VehicleMaker is that it outputs a fairly simple set of characteristics called the vehicle extension. It includes the vehicle tonnage, speed, amount of cargo, TL, endurance, the type of environment it operates in and QREBS. There also information on the Armor and weapons carried.

With just that information you use the vehicle, but if you want more detail, you as the designer will have to interpret the design and maybe flesh it out with equipment from the catalog or ThingMaker.

 

[robject]

Does the T5 thing-maker allow small devices like personal transport?

With ThingMaker, you take an existing thing and describe it as far as needed using T5's benchmarks. It's a way of getting an object into the game without forcing you to re-design something that already exists.

For example, I can use ThingMaker to import a pentekontor, motorbike, or iPad into Traveller5.


What it doesn't import well is firearms, since it doesn't have a page for mapping real-world damage to Traveller5 damage. You'd have to use GunMaker for guns (and ArmorMaker for armor). You CAN try to use a kinetic energy formula to determine damage (for example, on page 295), but it is less accurate for small projectiles.