Classic Traveller Design Challenge: Ships as Characters

[Stan Shinn]

I'm running a Classic Traveller game at a convention this summer and want to keep things simple for the players. I also love how Fate RPG and Cortex Plus/Firefly treat ships as characters in terms of mechanics.

Here's the challenge: using Classic Traveller as a base, design a simple system that treats ships as Characters and has a few simple rules for weapons, damage, and hazards. I have no monetary reward for this challenge but I will be grateful and pleased to see what folks come up with!

Some ramblings to get this started:

Perhaps Strength, Dexterity and Endurance get replaced by Engines, Hull, and Systems.

Attacks and armor could emulate pistols and rifles.

I'd want to simulate the effects of 1) Gravity Tides / Gravity Shear, 2) X-Ray bursts and 3) Asteroid collisions. Damage from these would go to the ship and/or on the characters within the ship and would be considered a type of weapon attacks. Perhaps the damage first is applied as damage to the hull.

'Healing' rules for characters would be replaced by some sort of repair skill check, with ramifications if a skill check goes bad.

Lastly, I would like to emulate a situation like an attack by a 'Space Kraken' on the ship, and I'm thinking it's a standard animal making an attack on the ship as if the ship is a character.

In terms of building a ship, here's an example of something I created for a d20 system for my one sheet game '1974 Style RPG': https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byr-i7lu1I5IMklKZFBqQnpKZG8/view?usp=sharing

Excerpt:

SPACESHIPS

Treat spaceships like a PC or monster stats except HD are not included in dice rolls.

A basic ship hull costs 100,000 Credits (HP 10, AC 10, MV 12, with no attacks) and includes basic features such as propulsion, life support and sensors. Spend an additional 50,000 Credits to gain 10 points to upgrade a ship. Each point spent on armor modifies stats by +1 AC, +10 HP, -1 damage taken and -1 MV. Upgrading MV by +1 takes one point , with MV maxing out at 12. Atmospheric flight capabilities takes one point.

Adding a shuttle bay takes one point. Each weapon system is a separate purchase and costs 10 points. Treat move and damage at ‘space scale’. Each MV point allows a space ship to move one 'space unit' (a hex or square) per day on a space map.

Anyway, love to hear your thoughts and how we can keep the mechanics simple to do something like this

 

[salochin999]

ship attribute ranks
====================

standard
--------
power
manouver
jump
life support
sensors
comms
crew
cargo
passengers
medical
workshop
weapons
armor
boats

exotic
------
fighters
troops
marines
luxury
laboratory
etc

All the attributes default to rank-0.

Standard attributes at rank-0 mean those attibutes exist at a basic level proportional to the size of the ship.

Exotic attributes and jump at rank-0 mean those attibutes don't exist.

Example
Maneuver-0 means the ship has the default maneuver drive
Jump-0 means there is no jump drive

Crew-0 means there is the default crew
Fighters-0 means there are no fighters on the ship

#

each 100 dtons of ship gets one rank to spend

#

engine ranks provide different max Jn and different max G for different ship sizes at different tech levels

max jump number produced from specified drive rank and ship size

max G uses the same table with the columns shifted one to the left so

maneuver-0 counts as rank-1, maneuver-1 as rank-2 etc

TL10 rank-1 rank-2 rank-3
100 2 - -
200 1 2 -
400 - 1 2
800 - - 1

TL11 rank-1 rank-2 rank-3
100 3 - -
200 2 3 -
400 1 2 3
800 - 1 2

TL12 rank-1 rank-2 rank-3
100 4 - -
200 3 4 -
400 2 3 4
800 1 2 3
1600 - 1 2

TL13 rank-1 rank-2 rank-3
100 4 - -
200 4 4 -
400 3 4 4
800 2 3 4
1600 1 2 3
3200 - 1 2

TL14 rank-1 rank-2 rank-3
100 4 - -
200 4 4 -
400 4 4 4
800 3 4 4
1600 2 3 4
3200 1 2 3
6400 - 1 2

TL15 rank-1 rank-2 rank-3
100 4 - -
200 4 4 -
400 4 4 4
800 4 4 4
1600 3 4 4
3200 2 3 4
6400 1 2 3
12800 - 1 2
25600 - - 1

(the standard ship sizes IMTU are powers of 2 cos reasons but the table would be the same for the standard 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000 dtons easily enough)

#

so with some rules like:
- either use the drive tables for Jn and G
- or hand wavy jump and maneuver ranks
---rank-1 = low Jn/G
---rank-2 = medium Jn/G
---rank-3 = high Jn/G
- passenger-1 requires medical-1
- one crew rank at 400dt, 1600dt, 6400dt etc
---on naval ships a rank of marines can count as a rank of crew and

represents ship's troops/crew rather than ground troops

then the book 2 ships might be specified something like

100dt Type S: jump-1
200dt Free Trader: jump-1, cargo-1
400dt Type R: jump-1, crew-1, cargo-2
600dt Type M: jump-2, crew-1, cargo-1, passengers-1, medical-1
200dt Yacht: jump-1, luxury-1
800dt Broadsword: jump-2, manouver-2, crew-1, weapons-1, boats-1, troops-1

200dt Safari Ship: jump-1, cargo-1(animal containment)
200dt Scout Survey Ship: jump-1, sensors-1
400dt Scout Mother Ship: jump-1, cargo-1, medical-1, workshop-1

#

the actual Jn and G associated with the jump and maneuver ranks can either

be hand wavy as above or matched to the books by specifying the TL of the

ship as well so for example a Book 2 400dt Patrol Cruiser has J3 and 3G in

the book which in the hand wavy way above might be specified as

400dt Patrol Cruiser: jump-2, manouver-2, marines-1, weapons-1

(for a total of 6 ranks instead of the 4 allowed technically breaking these ship design rules)

however using the drive tables and specifying the TL it could be:

TL10 400dt Patrol Cruiser: manouver-2, marines-1, weapons-1
(no jump, 2G)

TL11 400dt Patrol Cruiser: jump-1, manouver-1, marines-1, weapons-1
(J1, 2G)

TL12 400dt Patrol Cruiser: jump-1, manouver-1, marines-1, weapons-1
(J2, 3G)

TL13 400dt Patrol Cruiser: jump-1, marines-1, armor-1, weapons-1
(J3, 3G)
(as the default maneuver-0 improves with TL and now provides 3G)

Similarly with the Broadsword and Type M.

#

some more examples using the drive table

TL13 1600dt Patroller: jump-3, maneuver-2, crew-1, marines-1, medical-1,

sensors-1, armor-2, weapons-4
(J3, 3G)

TL13 1600dt Freighter: jump-3, crew-2, boats-1, cargo-10
(J3, 1G)

etc

#

edit: clarity

 

[Stan Shinn]

Thanks for that write-up, that is an interesting approach I'll have to consider

 

[salochin999]

Thanks for that write-up, that is an interesting approach I'll have to consider

No worries. I'd done most of it ages ago and needed a final push to finish the last bits.

Applying the basic 8+ task system to it a weapons-0 ship might need 8+ to hit at close range while a weapons-2 ship might only need 6+.

 

[robject]

The "critical hit" and/or "location hit" tables in The Traveller Book are what I'd suggest to morph into characteristics. And, since player characters wear armor, ship armor behaves exactly like player armor. It's just at a bigger scale.

Also, taking a page from Mongoose Traveller and Traveller 4 (yes, fourth edition), you could assume a "structure" component to represent the hull's integrity and atmospheric rating.

So we have

Structure (1 - 6)
Power rating (typically 1 thru 6)
Maneuver rating (1 - 6)
Jump rating (0 - 6)

Scale to fit your system. For instance, if characteristics are on a scale from 3 to 18, then perhaps multiply by 3. ... or not.

And we have armor. If your combat system uses damage-soak, then it's an armor rating. If it uses damage-avoidance for armor, then it's handled appropriately.

You might also have a Computer rating, a Fuel rating (quantized in whatever way works best), a Crew rating, a Cargo Hold "rating" (quantized again), etc.