Broken or Unbalanced Weapon Stats

[Stan Shinn]

Hi folks, I was wondering if any veteran players of Classic Traveller had any feedback on weapon stats (in particular, range and damage stats for weapons) which you feel like are broken or unbalanced. I seem to recall a thread way back when where someone had made some tweaks to the standard Traveller weapon stats, but for the life of me I can't find it.

Here are the default range and damage stats for Classic Traveller (as listed in The Traveller Book):

Are all those good stats in your experience? Anything you've tweaked or house ruled?

If you've played rules as written and never found any issues, that feedback is helpful too!

Thanks in advance for any feedback

 

[Blue Ghost]

The chief complaint I had, which MT solved, was the DM matrix for armor and terrain. A bullet proof vest offered no more protection than a combat environmental suit from book 4. And anyone who's fired any kind of weapon knows that a shot gun is useless beyond a certain range, but still does full damage if it hits at long range Stuff like that.

I also found it odd that you couldn't interchange laser rifles and laser carbine power packs. And why a laser pistol had to use a carbine power pack (I conjured a ten or twelve shot battery that could fit in your coat pocket).

I hope some of this helped.

 

[Stan Shinn]

Thanks! Very insightful

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Take two groups of riflemen at 200 m range (Long). They fire at each other with Autorifles using skill 1 and DEX 7.

DM -1[Cloth] +1[range] +1[skill] +0[DEX] = +1

With full auto we can attack the target twice and two adjacent targets at DM -3.

The two attacks on the target is with the +1 DM, so hit at 7+ resulting in 1.17 hits.

The two adjacent attacks are at DM +1 + -3 = -2. Hit at 10+ resulting in 0.33 hits.

So, each shooter achieves 1.5 hits, and each target receives 1.5 hits of 3D damage each. The first hit is applied to one characteristic in whole. A 3D (av. 10.5) hit against a 2D (av. 7.0) characteristic. Almost everyone is knocked out or even killed in the first round.

A regular firefight leaves everyone incapacitated after 15 s. I call that unreasonable...

(I may be wrong, I stopped using the basic combat system rather quickly.)

 

[Stan Shinn]

Interesting. What rules do you use for combat now now that you've dropped the basic combat system?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

A basic version of Striker. No need for tables. No multiple rolls for autofire.

A weapon is simply described by a single line, easily written on the char sheet.

For damage I use a version of the Ars Magica system, does not modify characteristics directly, but has increasing penalties for increasing damage.

Simple and fast.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Weapons are fine. I remember armor being where problems occured. Maybe Traveller fixed itself over the printings/editions.

 

[infojunky]

I haven't used the basic combat rules in years. Right now I am using a fusion of AHL and Snapshot (and some bits borrowed from striker). Mostly it looks a lot like plain AHL, from Snapshot I took the Action Points which when divided by 6 with fractions dropped is the number of different actions a character can take in a AHL turn. From Striker it's mostly the fragmentation and explosions rules. Note I use the the methodology presented in a jTas Adventure for vehicular damage using the AHL combat system.

 

[Axe]

There is some errata to the official table the Weapon and Range Matrix is taken from. The errata to the official table is not a big deal (Dagger at Short Range is -1 (not +2), Foil vs Combat is -6 (not -8), Body Pistol Wound Inflicted is 2D (not 3D), and a footnote for Ablat armor: "Each time that laser fire hits Ablat armor, it decreases the Ablat's DM by 1"

 

[Blue Ghost]

Action points help ground the abstract basic Traveller mechanic. I've had a few players who don't l/ike them, and prefer the two-action thing per combat round. I'm not fan of AHL, and prefer its close cousin Snapshot.

 

[Hyphen]

The Judge Guild referee screen gave more differentiation between weapon damage.

For example:
Dagger 2D - 3
Foil 1D + 4

Claws 1D + 3
Teeth 2D - 3

Body Pistol 3D - 8
SMG 3D - 3

etc.

It just seemed to be better than all weapons dealing the same damage.

 

[mike wightman]

Those are the damage values from the 77 edition of CT. When it was revised in 81 all damage dice DMs went the way of the dodo.

 

[Timerover51]

The pattern spread on a shotgun is one inch per yard, convert to metric as needed. Basically that means at 10 yards, your whole pattern is going to be in a circle of 10 inches in diameter, or someone's torso. At 30 yards, your pattern is a circle 30 inches in diameter, so that is your danger zone, with less hits per target, but the likelihood of hitting multiple targets. Once you get past about 50 yards, you are wasting your fire, aside from the fact that the pellets are rapidly loosing velocity. Now, if you are firing slugs, that changes the equation considerably, as the big slow-moving (relative to a rifle) does a lot of damage per hit. A good shotgun with slugs is deadly out to at least 75 yards, and with advanced slugs, more like 125 yards.

As for combat, I use a modified form of the Skirmish Wargaming percentile rules, which resolves everything including wounding with one roll. The Traveller combat system is too cumbersome and also restricted by the use of six-sided dice.

 

[SpaceBadger]

The pattern spread on a shotgun is one inch per yard, convert to metric as needed.

Do you have figures on how that spread would be reduced by use of a choke?

 

[Hyphen]

Those are the damage values from the 77 edition of CT. When it was revised in 81 all damage dice DMs went the way of the dodo.

Pity. That's one level of differentiation I really liked.

 

[nobby-w]

A basic version of Striker. No need for tables. No multiple rolls for autofire.

A weapon is simply described by a single line, easily written on the char sheet.
[ . . . ]

I used Striker quite extensively but the Integration with Traveller RAW make some of the weapons really overpowered¹ Anything with a high penetration is pretty much insta-kill on lightly armoured characters. In other respects it works quite well with some useful features like vehicle damage.

Some of the mods I did to balance Striker include:

• Remove the 'exploding round' rule for most small arms (except actual HE rounds basically)
• Limit the bonus for armour piercing rounds (ACRs, Gauss rifles, lasers etc.) to half the weapon's penetration. Even on an unarmoured character, a gauss rifle's DM maxes out at +3.
• Nerf some of the autofire bonuses and penetrations a bit.
• Re-balance some of the body armour so the spread isn't so large in comparison to a 2D6 roll.

Really, most of those tedious arguments about 'Why can't I have a gauss rifle²' become moot if it's balanced so it's not TPK-on-a-stick overpowered.
_________________
¹ - In one case I saw 36D damage in one attack with a gauss rifle.
² - The most or second most widely manufactured small arm for most of the past millennium by any reasonable interpretation of the 1105-era OTU.

 

[Brandon C]

Really, most of those tedious arguments about 'Why can't I have a gauss rifle²' become moot if it's balanced so it's not TPK-on-a-stick overpowered.

While I liked the gauss rifle, it was really the battlefield sight that was cool.

 

[nobby-w]

While I liked the gauss rifle, it was really the battlefield sight that was cool.

As fluff it's fine - You could argue that a similar sight could be mounted on pretty much any weapon. Really the problem was that both Book 4 and Striker RAW made gauss rifles overpowered to the point of causing problems with game balance. It wasn't an issue with the background material so much as the game mechanics.

 

[kilemall]

As fluff it's fine - You could argue that a similar sight could be mounted on pretty much any weapon. Really the problem was that both Book 4 and Striker RAW made gauss rifles overpowered to the point of causing problems with game balance. It wasn't an issue with the background material so much as the game mechanics.

Gauss Rifles are God's way of saying upgrade to Combat Armor.


And you know, by TL12 you SHOULD be able to shred any lesser tech opponent to bits.

 

[Timerover51]

Do you have figures on how that spread would be reduced by use of a choke?

As that spread is for buckshot, a choke does not help that much, and may make it wider due to damage to the buckshot going through the choke. Use of a choke adds about 5 to 10 yards to the effective range of bird shot. BBs are sort of in-between. I would have to get out my Greener and see if it has any shot patterns for the larger sizes of shot.