Conceptual USP

[robject]

Consider a potential variant on the USP.

SBT-MJF-Mw-123456-123456-123456.

S is hull structure, related to hull size code.
B is bridge-and-crew factor.
T is troops factor.

M, J, and F are maneuver, jump, and fuel ratings.

Mw is the main weapon (spine), probably a two-letter code (Type and Strength).

The first Group of Six are secondaries' ratings.
The second Group of Six are active defense and turret ratings.
The last Group of Six are passive defense ratings.

The ship's TL is recorded and used but is not strictly part of the USP here.

This USP variant has six sections. When a ship receives a standard hit, a d6 is rolled to determine which section was hit, and another die is rolled to determine which component is damaged.

When special hits are inflicted, other rules may apply.

 

[pendragonman]

So armor is in the passive ratings?

Is it correct to assume by hit you mean each hit that penetrates defenses?

Feels close to Starfire, and looks like it should clip along at a good rate.

Seems like this is for BCS. Is there anything needed changing for ACS use?

 

[kilemall]

I care not for the USP in general, if for no other reason then it precludes having bays mixed in with spinal or turreted weapons of the same type. This is better, but not quite what I would tend to express my ships like.

 

[mike wightman]

I quite like it , but I would have a row for secondary batteries (bays) and a row for tertiary batteries (turrets).

[Which is an easy add on to HG2 USP so you are no longer limited to different weapons for spinals, bays and turrets.]

 

[robject]

Another challenge would be in representing more weapon and defense types than high guard currently can... Hence the extended groups of digits which, by the way, would threaten to make the USP even less comprehensible than before for poor sods like me.

But here we are. And this is USP notation. I'll probably start another thread on importing MegaTraveller notation to manage the complexity. But that's not this thread.

Weapons I know of include:

M: Missiles, including torpedoes and salvo racks.
B: Slug throwers, including rail guns and ortillery. Big slug throwers that is.
A: Particle accelerators.
G: Meson guns.
L: "Beam" weapons - lasers, plasma and fusion guns, which differ in various ways but perhaps share the attack task and defense modes.
D: Data Casters.
J: Jump Inducers and Jump Dampers.
R: Tractor/Pressors, e.g. Gravitic weapons.
V: Disruptors. TL17.
S: Stasis field weaponry. TL18 I think.

That's ten. Ought to be chunked in helpful acronyms.

NOTE: antimatter is a payload rather than a delivery system, so *might* be classifiable as an effect, much like nuclear warheads are one possible effect of a missile delivery system. In fact antimatter missiles are a TL20 thing.

NOTE FURTHER that these weapons cover a wide expanse of tech level and mission. This gives us natural "short forms" of USP: where the tech does not permit it, omit the entries later on in the group, since they are bound to be zeroes.


Now for defenses:

L: Anti-Beam (includes Sand)
G: Anti-meson (Screens)
N: Anti-nuke (Dampers)
M: Anti-mag (mag scramblers)
R: Anti-Grav (grav scramblers)
X: Anti-Antimatter (proton screens). TL20.

That's six, at least.

Note that Globes would cover several (or most, or all) of these categories. Even in High Guard, they needed their own entry. And so I think we need an entry especially for "force field". Now since we have White Globes as well as Black (plus others), it seems that this could be grouped with the main weapon.

Most entries in the standard milieu will simply omit the globe entry.


Now for passives. All I can think of right now are Configuration, Armor, and Reflec.

STCMJF-Main and Globe-MBAGLDJRVS-MBAGLDJRVS-LGNMRX-CAR

Short form for the 1100 milieu is (I think):

STCMJF-Main-MBAGLD-MBAGLD-LGNMR-CAR

Of course civilian Ships which don't have fancy weapons or defenses are even shorter:

STCMJF-0-MB-MB-L-CAR

 

[robject]

If I rearranged this to play nice with the QSP, it might be:

SCMJFAR-Main and Globe-MBAGLDJRVS-MBAGLDJRVS-LGNMRX-BT

Size code
Config rating
Maneuver
Jump
Fuel
Armor
Reflec
-
Main weapon (and globe if installed)
-
2ry weapons
-
PD (turrets)
-
Defenses
-
Bridge/Crew and Troops

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Shades of High Guard.

Good Lords of Space, Rob, that is no better than the insane stupid long arcane HG string. Can't we have shorter easier to parse USPs? Please.

 

[robject]

Good Lords of Space, Rob, that is no better than the insane stupid long arcane HG string. Can't we have shorter easier to parse USPs? Please.

I will re-order your assertions and questions to follow my agenda.


The USP is High Guard

In a sense, the USP *is* High Guard. In the USP, High Guard has a compact-yet-powerful and Traveller-centric method for trading and communicating complex ship designs.

So when I describe an alternate USP, yes, I am speaking the language of High Guard.


The USP is Insane and Stupid

The next two I group together, because if anything, the USP is quite sane and eminently smart. As a compact notation, it is easy to communicate to anyone in a glance. You don't need a ship sheet, nor a combat sheet. With a caveat, which I now come to.

BUT: remember that High Guard is a very simple wargame that plays on statistics to "scientifically" prove the combat-worthiness of complicated ship designs. High Guard design is complicated. Combat is easy. The notation serves both purposes excellently, and therefore is by definition both sane and smart.


The USP is Long and Arcane

I agree. The USP has always eluded me. Part of the reason for this is because I did not understand High Guard very well -- combat may be a simple set of task rolls, but it is after all a lot of tables. And yet, once I sat down to try to take those tables apart, I saw that it was largely mechanical and formula-driven.

In turn, understanding High Guard combat strangely helped me understand the USP a little better. The first block has many of the same elements as the QSP. The next block is defenses. The last big block is weapons. The hardest part is learning the order of those weapons and defenses -- I still don't know them after all these years.

As for arcane. I think that's a function of two things:

(1) It's Traveller. How many newbies have you heard complain that the UWP and UPP are arcane? Yep.

(2) It is long. This is the sticking point for you and me. But I only see one way out of it. See the last question below.


Can't We Have A Shorter USP?

MegaTraveller already did this for us, by spelling out each weapon type instead of using a code.

This creates a much longer entry.

However, I suspect there's content to mine. So my next post.

 

[robject]

Toward a Shorter USP

Now we've seen the promise (and curse) of a very long USP, I turn our eyes to MegaTraveller.

As you may know, MT extended the USP with additional weapons. However, the USP was already fixed in size... AND these new weapons were very high TL and not typically found in the OTU.

So they did something clever: they spelled the weapons out and tacked them on after the USP. For example, they'd have entries that looked somewhat like this:

Disruptors  Stasis  AM Missile
    1         1         2
    1         2         4

Basically, at the end of the USP (and often on their own lines) they'd list additional weapons, batteries bearing, and total batteries.

This solves one big problem: the USP wasn't flexible enough to represent all of Traveller. It allowed the USP to stay the same (so CT designs were still valid) while allowing new toys to be added.


A Shorter USP, In Theory

In theory, a short USP would only have those things most likely to show up in most starships. So:

Size
Configuration
Maneuver
Jump
-
Armor
Power Plant
-
Lasers
Missiles
Sandcasters

Kokirrak Battle Cruiser CB-BS46-F63-999          TL 15
               Batteries Bearing    555
               Batteries            999

That's the shortest it could possibly go. And that's ignoring the Computer rating (a serious no-no for High Guard).

Other weapons and defenses would be tacked on according to some scheme. Spell them out, or use an abbreviation, or an alphabetic code (T5's codes for instance).

Kokirrak Battle Cruiser CB-BS57-H73-999       TL 17
               Batteries Bearing    555
               Batteries            999
               
               Meson Spine D
               
               Disintegrator
                     3
                     6
                     
               Particle Accelerators
                     8
                     16

               Salvo Racks
                     7
                     14

Or a fuller example:

Kokirrak Battle Cruiser CB-BS68-L82-999   BCr 100    100k tons
               Batteries Bearing    555              Crew=250
               Batteries            999              TL 20
                                              
               PA Spine H
               
               Disint  Inducer  PA   Salvo  Stasis  Tractor   
        Bear      3       4     8      7      2       16
        Batt      6       8     16     14     4       32
        
        Screen  Meson  Nuke  Proton  White
        Rating    3     4      2       1
        
Pax=  Low=  Cargo=  Fuel=  Troops=

That's really not too bad.

 

[atpollard]

I am going to wish you luck, because I like rules experimentation.

However, I believe that Electrons are cheap, paragraphs are nice and the English language is a beautiful thing. I choose to cast a dissenting minority vote against Universal Planetary Profiles, Universal Ship Profiles and pages of 'efficient' hexadecimal notation. I raise my voice, instead, in support of things like the beautiful standardized ship descriptions that appear in LBB2 and The Traveller Book and would greatly prefer fewer ships and worlds presented on a page of virtual text (in this PDF world), if that is the price for granting ANYONE the ability to pick up (metaphorically speaking) that virtual page to read and comprehend the data, appreciating the beauty of the design, without the need to for handy reference tables or extensive memorization.

So good luck, but give me paragraphs.
Thank you.

 

[robject]

I believe that Electrons are cheap, paragraphs are nice and the English language is a beautiful thing.

It comes down to purpose, plain and simple.

For Traveller as an RPG, it is critical and essential that starship descriptions are of the form:


The Beowulf Free Trader is an elementary merchant spacefaring vessel. It mounts the Lesler-Khalan 417 Jump drive, a Zahinyo-12 Maneuver drive, and a late-model Droynex power plant, for a performance of Jump-1 and 1G of acceleration. Fuel tankage of 22 tons powers up to one jump and one month of normal operations. The ship has two hardpoints, both empty. It has ten staterooms and ten low berths. There is one vehicle: an air/raft in a cramped bay. It can carry up to 80 tons of cargo. It is streamlined, and has equipment for refueling and refining from water, ice, or gas giant.

The Beowulf requires a crew of one: pilot/astrogator. If turrets are added, gunners are also required to operate them. If high passengers are booked, a steward is also required. If on a regularly subsidized route, a freightmaster is recommended. Otherwise the ship can carry up to nine middle passengers, or up to eight high passengers.



For Traveller as a wargame, laconic is key.

In short, both have their place.

 

[pendragonman]

Toward a Shorter USP

Now we've seen the promise (and curse) of a very long USP, I turn our eyes to MegaTraveller.

As you may know, MT extended the USP with additional weapons. However, the USP was already fixed in size... AND these new weapons were very high TL and not typically found in the OTU.

So they did something clever: they spelled the weapons out and tacked them on after the USP. For example, they'd have entries that looked somewhat like this:

Disruptors  Stasis  AM Missile
    1         1         2
    1         2         4

Basically, at the end of the USP (and often on their own lines) they'd list additional weapons, batteries bearing, and total batteries.

This solves one big problem: the USP wasn't flexible enough to represent all of Traveller. It allowed the USP to stay the same (so CT designs were still valid) while allowing new toys to be added.


A Shorter USP, In Theory

In theory, a short USP would only have those things most likely to show up in most starships. So:

Size
Configuration
Maneuver
Jump
-
Armor
Power Plant
-
Lasers
Missiles
Sandcasters

Kokirrak Battle Cruiser CB-BS46-F63-999          TL 15
               Batteries Bearing    555
               Batteries            999

That's the shortest it could possibly go. And that's ignoring the Computer rating (a serious no-no for High Guard).

Other weapons and defenses would be tacked on according to some scheme. Spell them out, or use an abbreviation, or an alphabetic code (T5's codes for instance).

Kokirrak Battle Cruiser CB-BS57-H73-999       TL 17
               Batteries Bearing    555
               Batteries            999
               
               Meson Spine D
               
               Disintegrator
                     3
                     6
                     
               Particle Accelerators
                     8
                     16

               Salvo Racks
                     7
                     14

Or a fuller example:

Kokirrak Battle Cruiser CB-BS68-L82-999   BCr 100    100k tons
               Batteries Bearing    555              Crew=250
               Batteries            999              TL 20
                                              
               PA Spine H
               
               Disint  Inducer  PA   Salvo  Stasis  Tractor   
        Bear      3       4     8      7      2       16
        Batt      6       8     16     14     4       32
        
        Screen  Meson  Nuke  Proton  White
        Rating    3     4      2       1
        
Pax=  Low=  Cargo=  Fuel=  Troops=

That's really not too bad.

This shorter USP would certainly fit a small ship 'verse well, and is expandable to the large ship 'verse in a straightforward manner.

Still need an entry for computer model and/or sensor suite TL.

So, I like it as i am a proponent of the small ship 'verse.

Now for a smooth quick combat and damage system that describes the damage in terms of deck plan spaces...

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

On Universal Profiles.

Well, Rob, no I haven't had issues with the UPP or UWP with my rookies. They are both short and once explained not too difficult to use, but then they use them more than a USP.

Now, on to wargames and High Guard. First off. HG is not a wargame. I remember wargames, and I even own a couple (Kingmaker & Imperium). Wargames come in a box, they have a pre-cut map, they have counters and sheets with combat matrices on them.

High Guard has none of these. It does have lots of math for math nerds, but it has little else for the rest of us. As you pointed out it is a great statistical tool, but as a game designed to be played and have non-math fun in not so much. Use math to try and create "perfect fleet", no manuever other than do the math at this line or do the math on that line. Oh and roll some dice so you feel like you have some say as opposed to the math.

A good combat space game needs counters and a map, there should be the chance to manuever the enemy into traps, extend and escape to return later for a nice high speed pass, to be able to hide in the belts or behind worlds.

It should not be two lines and rolls. That is pretty damned boring. If you suck at High Guard design there is no chance to make up for that with tactics.

And honestly either go short or go home. After about 8-10 digits we are way too long for a casual player to devote time to memorizing the required data.

I still think we should be able to fit it on a counter or cull it.

 

[mike wightman]

Hull size-computer-crew/main weapon factor-secondary weapons factor-tertiary weapons factor/armour-screens-point defence/jump-maneuver-power.

5-5-5/C-5-6/7-5-6/4-6-A TL15

 

[JFGarber]

Hull size-computer-crew/main weapon factor-secondary weapons factor-tertiary weapons factor/armour-screens-point defence/jump-maneuver-power.

5-5-5/C-5-6/7-5-6/4-6-A TL15

I can get my head around something this simple. I like that. However, does it give up some of the "flavor" of weapon/defense combinations? For instance, various hull configurations versus meson weapons?

Truth in advertising clause: I have no experience with High Guard--cut my Traveller teeth on MT.

 

[robject]

HG is not a wargame. [no box no map no counters] [no traps no escapes no high speed passes no hiding]

If you want to go that route, then let's talk Battle Rider. There's another thread where I badger on about the need for a Battle Rider for T5. Post to it and resurrect it and let's work on it.

You should see what they put on a counter on BR.

As a parting shot, I'd like to see how you represent your ACS with eight digits. The problem is precisely with weapons and defenses.

The topic here is a Conceptual USP. I'll clarify further by saying it's for High Guard-like games. That should help.

 

[robject]

Truth in advertising clause: I have no experience with High Guard--cut my Traveller teeth on MT.

If you learnt MT, then you already know High Guard. MT simply expanded on it.

 

[whartung]

High Guard is most certainly a war-game. Just because it has limited maneuverability options doesn't make it any less of a war-game.

One of the best ships descriptions out there is the one for Starfire.

SSSAALLIIII

3 Shields, 2 Armor, 2 Lasers, 4 Ion Drive engines. It is concise and very functional, since you normally take damage by crossing off systems from left to right

xxxxALLIIII

Same ship with 4 points of damage.

The downside, is that it doesn't scale. When you have large ships with hundreds of hull spaces, the string gets very long, subject to typos, and illegible. When you start summarizing:

Sx100Ax20…

You start losing functionality, since you can't easily just cross off systems any more.

It's not unusable, it just loses its charm.

In the end, you still need to summarize things on large ships away from the control string, since it's easier to start reducing the summaries, along with the control string. For example if you had 10 Missile Launchers, it's easier to just reduce the summary field:

Missiles: 10

Rather than count up "what's left" on the ship each time.

The USP is not complete in High Guard, you also need the batteries, Agility, Emergency Agility, backup systems, etc. The USP only says you have a Factor 9 Missile, but not how many of them. Some people complain "the USP doesn't allow you to mix weapons, like meson bays and meson spinals", which is nonsense, since you can illustrate the differences when you detail the batteries. So, the USP is just a summary at a glance of the ship, you still need details, even for combat.

A better solution is something that would fit on a 3x5 card. I don't know if I got this from the original LBB, or just did it ourselves, but we always represented characters on 3x5 card. So, a ship load out, even a large ship, should fit just fine on a 3x5 card. It also gives enough room to pencil in damage as you lose batteries and what not.

You can also layout the cards to show your battle line and reserve on the table.

In the Battle Rider game, they had all of the stats on the back of the counter and, save for missile ammo, tracked all of the damage with smaller counters. But this was a different game system. In High Guard, ships basically sit on a rotisserie and get their extremities burned off until you have a maneuverable, jump capable, weaponless ship with a scorched hull. In Battle Rider, ships basically shut down, or just outright died. No henpecking in Battle Rider, killing blows or nothing.

No matter what you use, small ships always need much less space than the larger ships. But what may work for a 200dt Free Trader doesn't necessarily work for a 50Kdt battle cruiser. But by that point, the USP-ish format is pretty agnostic. While a small ship may have a lot of zeroes, both ships take roughly the same amount of space, so that's a feature.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

ACS v BCS

If you want to go that route, then let's talk Battle Rider. There's another thread where I badger on about the need for a Battle Rider for T5. Post to it and resurrect it and let's work on it.

You should see what they put on a counter on BR.

As a parting shot, I'd like to see how you represent your ACS with eight digits. The problem is precisely with weapons and defenses.

The topic here is a Conceptual USP. I'll clarify further by saying it's for High Guard-like games. That should help.

Right Battle Rider, yeah its counters are also too cluttered.

Look, ACS is fine for complexity, it deals with only a couple of ships at a time, whereas BCS by its nature a Navy game and not a mostly civilian game (ACS) and thus deals, or should only deal with Units. Not individual ships and I keep harping on it since it would kill a lot of this cluttered, too damned long digit strings.

A Squadron doesn't need every damned type and number of secondaries enumerated on a card, sheet or counter, it just need to know if it is enough to stop the incoming attacks. Stop concetrating on single ships since only ACS sized vessels will be seen alone. A destroyer, frigate, cruiser, battleship or carrier is surrounded by and serviced from a group of other ships that hang around it like a starlets entourage.

So, to do it right less detail is your friend. Admirals do not concern themselves with individual ships, they work with classes and groups.

Let's try that instead. Unit Profiles, short easy to figure out for the non-math loving rookies.

 

[robject]

Unit Profiles, short easy to figure out for the non-math loving rookies.

...Sure, but that's not on this thread. This thread is specifically about the USP.

Also, that topic is probably best served in the T5 area, since that's what we'll be using it for.