Conceptual USP

[robject]

BCS by its nature a Navy game ... and thus deals, or should only deal with [Squadrons].

A Squadron ... just needs to know if it is enough to stop the incoming attacks. ... 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.

I do want to do that. In another thread, on the T5 forum.

Your logic is impeccable: a Squadron game will not have ships detailed out like ACS does. It won't even have them detailed out like High Guard. However, it will have to differentiate one squadron from another, and in subtle ways. I have ideas on that score on how to push the complexity around in different ways, but again, PLEASE NOT ON THIS THREAD.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Right.

...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.

See here is what you are missing, I don't think there is a way to save the USP for large scale ship combat. It is great for small ship combat, but that is single ships v. single ships.

Basically I see the USP as a problem for BCS not a solution.

Your loving loyal opposition,
Craig.

 

[CliffBates]

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

What about sand casters and repulsers? Also what is the Main turrent in T5 vs the 1,2,3,4 and Barbettes or dual barbettes? Also what about missiles and slug throwers in T5 (as they are not that clear) are they purely defensive or offensive--as they come in the spinal mount version?

Regarding slug throwers (mass driver) I could see small turret of gauss dual gatling of 5cm slugs/HEAP flack providing close anti-missile and anti-figher/small craft as sandcasters but with a bang regarding small craft. Vs a gauss gun on a larger Barbette---one large 10cm launcher (which could be slug or something like a nuke payload to hit and hurt 100-1000ton Escort ships at mid range but rather ineffective against hi agility ship at a distance. They bay mass drivers would at low tech be early major capital weapons, but at TL 12+ become more useful as ortillery devices. No?

 

[robject]

See here is what you are missing, I don't think there is a way to save the USP for large scale ship combat. It is great for small ship combat, but that is single ships v. single ships.

Basically I see the USP as a problem for BCS not a solution.

Maybe so, but I see one huge opportunity: KOTH.

KOTH was (perhaps still is) a CoreWars server. People wrote combat processes and submitted them to KOTH ("King Of The Hill"), which would "run" them in a virtual core against other processes submitted by others, and publish the results.

Automated King-Of-The-Hill, my good sir. It's a great way to unit test your ship.

As you noted, High Guard combat is mainly, primarily statistical. That means it can be done by a computer -- and a not-very-smart one, at that. For example, this Raspberry Pi sitting next to me at my desk here at home. It can wake up every minute, download the newest submissions from my Pocket Empires space, run them all against each other, and push the results back to a script on Pocket Empires for publishing on a 24-hour-a-day leaderboard.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Uhhhh..

Maybe so, but I see one huge opportunity: KOTH.

KOTH was (perhaps still is) a CoreWars server. People wrote combat processes and submitted them to KOTH ("King Of The Hill"), which would "run" them in a virtual core against other processes submitted by others, and publish the results.

Automated King-Of-The-Hill, my good sir. It's a great way to unit test your ship.

As you noted, High Guard combat is mainly, primarily statistical. That means it can be done by a computer -- and a not-very-smart one, at that. For example, this Raspberry Pi sitting next to me at my desk here at home. It can wake up every minute, download the newest submissions from my Pocket Empires space, run them all against each other, and push the results back to a script on Pocket Empires for publishing on a 24-hour-a-day leaderboard.

Huh? What? Is now confused. Oh, I think I get this...

So I was going to comment on what I think of this, but I think I will save myself writing me a ticket on that one.

I just don't care for playing statistics, so put in me in the rather saw off a finger or two than deal with the arcane stats of HG, which may be a fine statistical tool but makes a crappy (supposed) wargame.

 

[robject]

So I was going to comment on what I think of this, but I think I will save myself writing me a ticket on that one.

I seem to recall you mentioning that you don't do ship combat anyway. And, does it really matter that much to you that people like High Guard and the USP?

 

[Matt123]

I just don't care for playing statistics, so put in me in the rather saw off a finger or two than deal with the arcane stats of HG, which may be a fine statistical tool but makes a crappy (supposed) wargame.

Highly entertaining posts Magnus. Sorry to tell you though that HG is a wargame. It was designed and published by giants of the wargaming and board game community at roughly the same time as they were writing Striker (also a pretty good wargame). RPGs at the time were still new.

This link has a list of GDW wargames, I counted Frank Chadwick as credited for 24 wargames titles up to 1980 when HG2 and Striker were published. MM gets a few non Traveller wargame credits as well.
http://www.worldlibrary.org/article/whebn0001082338/game designers

I think your real argument is that wargaming doesn't appeal to all role-players.

 

[kilemall]

Highly entertaining posts Magnus. Sorry to tell you though that HG is a wargame. It was designed and published by giants of the wargaming and board game community at roughly the same time as they were writing Striker (also a pretty good wargame). RPGs at the time were still new.

This link has a list of GDW wargames, I counted Frank Chadwick as credited for 24 wargames titles up to 1980 when HG2 and Striker were published. MM gets a few non Traveller wargame credits as well.
http://www.worldlibrary.org/article/whebn0001082338/game designers

I think your real argument is that wargaming doesn't appeal to all role-players.

I look at HG as primarily a means to fight individual ships in an Imperium format, so players can play admiral.

 

[aramis]

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.

I tend to agree.

The USP values themselves aren't a big issue - a single string with fixed format, however, is REALLY a major problem. It's inherently inflexible. And, to be reasonably inclusive of the advances in MT and T20, it becomes either a 2-dimensional layout, not a single string, or it becomes WAY too long, and thus not memorable.

Even HG1E was problematically long. The world profile is memorable - but it's about as long as is easily memorized. The UPP of CT is great - as a shorthand - but most players I know still want it numerical on a sheet.

T5 has, for me, crossed the line into "more complexity than I want to use evr again." I'll stick with MT, houseruled to use MGT2 ship design, and replacing the Damage 3 with Damage=CT dice.

EdTA: The long string USPs died a well earned death decades ago. The "Tradition" of them ceased in about 1998... and they've not been used in rules since 1987. They were a concession to both the difficulties of publication and the limited means of sharing them otherwise. Concessions of a pen-and-paper era, and slow-slow printers.

Another system uses long ship strings as well - Starfire. It's not gaining many new fans, either.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

More responses.

I seem to recall you mentioning that you don't do ship combat anyway. And, does it really matter that much to you that people like High Guard and the USP?

No, I don't like it and HG is one of those reasons, the USP being a major part of it. I liked making ships even if it was mostly math. It was translating that ship into a USP that the problems start for me. The two line only combat format is the nail in the coffin.

I would probably enjoy it a lot more if the USP were shorter and easier to parse without a cheat sheet and there was more movement. Mostly an easier method of detailing and describing ships.

And yes, it does matter when everyone cites it like a holy scripture yeah, it matters. It means heretics such as myself are more likely to run into conflict over space combat in Traveller.

Highly entertaining posts Magnus. Sorry to tell you though that HG is a wargame. It was designed and published by giants of the wargaming and board game community at roughly the same time as they were writing Striker (also a pretty good wargame). RPGs at the time were still new.

This link has a list of GDW wargames, I counted Frank Chadwick as credited for 24 wargames titles up to 1980 when HG2 and Striker were published. MM gets a few non Traveller wargame credits as well.
http://www.worldlibrary.org/article/whebn0001082338/game designers

I think your real argument is that wargaming doesn't appeal to all role-players.

You have your definition of wargame and I have mine. And of course since I am writing this mine is obviously the correct one.

I know I am showing my age and all, but yes I remember the 1970s and those memories made my definition what it is today. Also, I see wargames as a teaching tool, a sandbox exercise as it were and HG doesn't seem to teach me much militarily except for working the maths.

And as to your last, no as a primarily a role player I have to say that isn't true, I dig wargames a lot, but I like all day wargames and Rob likes short skirmishes.

I look at HG as primarily a means to fight individual ships in an Imperium format, so players can play admiral.

But Admirals don't fight individual ships, Captains do that, Admirals fight units, squadrons, flotillas and fleets, but not a single ship. They have people for that so they can do their job of concentrating on the big picture.

And back to the USP, honestly Rob the biggest problem I have with HG is the USP, it needs to be shorter and easier to parse. Though the MT block method is pretty cool it still requires you to know what goes where. So, in the interests of trying to contribute something besides my harping I say go with the MT breakout box idea. At least some of that is comprehensible at a glance which can go a long way to making folks like me want to mess with something like a HG type game. More easily read data is the key, I need to as a rookie be able to understand at least some of what I have on my ship.

 

[Matt123]

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

...give me paragraphs.

I cannot claim this is beautiful language, but this is one output auto-generated from CT Shipbuilder. The format is essentially book 2. I stopped developing it because there wasn't much interest, but it won't take much to finish if it was considered useful. It is available in the designs menu under "Show". To post here required a little mucking about with the formatting after cut and pasting.

Feedback welcome.


CL-00017 Gionetti CL-M2559J3-160909-960J7-0 MCr 22,492.67 30,000.00 tons
batteries bearing_____________7 1 53 1J _______________ Crew=258
batteries_______________________8 1 53 1L _______________ TL=15
Passengers=0 Low=0 Cargo=42.5 Fuel=17,700.0 EP=2,700.0 Agility=5 Security=30 Marines=20
Emergency_agility=5 Def_mod=4 Architects_fees=MCr224.93 Discounted_cost=MCr17,994.13


The Cruiser-Light Gionetti is the first unit in its class
(0 actually built). It is a 30,000 ton military design with a
construction tech level of 15 and a cost of MCr22, including
design fees. Construction time is 180 weeks. Subsequent ships
of the class will cost MCr17 and take 144 weeks to complete.

The 30,000 ton hull is of the Cone configuration; it is
streamlined and capable of atmospheric work (hull cost,
including 10% surcharge for Cone configuration: MCr3,300.0).
The ship carries armor factor-1. Fuel scoops are present (MCr30.0).

A bridge (600.0 tons; MCr150.0) and a computer model 9fib
(26.0 tons; MCr200.0; 12 energy points).

The ship is jump-5 (1,800 tons; MCr7), maneuver-5 (4,200 tons;
MCr2), and power plant-9 (2,700 tons; MCr8). The power plant
provides 2,700 energy points.

Fuel tankage provides 17,700 tons of fuel. 15,000 tons enables
a 5 parsec jump range and a further 2,700 tons giving endurance
4 weeks (36 weeks powered down). There is a fuel purification
plant (26.6 tons; MCr0.27).

The ship is armed; One meson spinal of factor J (1,000 ton;
MCr 400; 900 energy points). One repulsor battery of factor 9
(100 ton; MCr 10; 10 energy points). Eight sand caster batteries
of factor 6 (24 tons; MCr 16). Five laser batteries of factor 9
(50 tons; MCr 150; 150 energy points). 20 missile batteries of
factor 7 (200 tons; MCr 450). Three energy batteries of factor 6
(12 tons; MCr 24; 24 energy points).

The ship carries a factor-9 nuclear damper (20.0 tons; MCr 50.0;
90.0 energy points)

The crew numbers 278 (Command: 2+13, Engineers: 1+86, Service:
1+59, Flight: 1+10, Gunners: 1+52, Marines: 1+19, Security:
1+29, Medics: 1+1) including 30 security troops and 20 marines.

No passengers. All sophonts are accomodated in 9 staterooms and
269 half-staterooms (cabins) (574.0 tons; MCr71.8).

A cargo hold of 42.5 tons is provided.

Ship's vehicles include; Five 50 ton Cutters, occupying a 325.0
ton hanger.

The ship has an agility of 5 and an emergency agility of 5.

 

[CliffBates]

I tend to agree.

The USP values themselves aren't a big issue - a single string with fixed format, however, is REALLY a major problem. It's inherently inflexible. And, to be reasonably inclusive of the advances in MT and T20, it becomes either a 2-dimensional layout, not a single string, or it becomes WAY too long, and thus not memorable.

Even HG1E was problematically long. The world profile is memorable - but it's about as long as is easily memorized. The UPP of CT is great - as a shorthand - but most players I know still want it numerical on a sheet.

T5 has, for me, crossed the line into "more complexity than I want to use evr again." I'll stick with MT, houseruled to use MGT2 ship design, and replacing the Damage 3 with Damage=CT dice.

EdTA: The long string USPs died a well earned death decades ago. The "Tradition" of them ceased in about 1998... and they've not been used in rules since 1987. They were a concession to both the difficulties of publication and the limited means of sharing them otherwise. Concessions of a pen-and-paper era, and slow-slow printers.

Another system uses long ship strings as well - Starfire. It's not gaining many new fans, either.

But the USP is a great short hand system for combat operations to see what are the capacities of a given ship and how it should be used.

The MT and the current thick descriptions system often gives too much information that is good to understand the ship and useful for role playing as necessary background info. But if you wanted to do battle with many ships it was a huge mess. Hence why the TNE game systems of Brilliant Lances and Battle Rider looked interesting (but I like BITS Power Projection more--but again I have found this only in the last two months and crash courses myself on them).

It is interesting that Power Projection system from BITS, to me looks much cleaner than other games. It looks very much Mayday for HG, and because of this it still uses the Logic of the USP and gives it graphic representation. This helps alot. What the USP did was more like an equation system that offered a quick presentation of a ships' abilities.

Now if you did add the gunners needed to increase the number of batteries any rearrangement of the batteries format of any giving ship so that it could go from hunting larger ship to wacking a whole lots of small craft or <300ton crafts. Just a thought.

 

[mike wightman]

Here in the UK a wargame uses scale models and a modelled battlefield.

Moving cardboard counters around a map is a boardgame, not a wargame

 

[robject]

Here in the UK a wargame uses scale models and a modelled battlefield.

Moving cardboard counters around a map is a boardgame, not a wargame

I think that's the reality on this side of the pond as well.

 

[kilemall]

But Admirals don't fight individual ships, Captains do that, Admirals fight units, squadrons, flotillas and fleets, but not a single ship. They have people for that so they can do their job of concentrating on the big picture.

Exactly.

These ships are highly abstract and don't particularly fight even to the level of naval miniatures, it's just really a per unit version of Imperium with the underlying weapon system interactions exposed over and above beam missile and shield.

 

[kilemall]

Here in the UK a wargame uses scale models and a modelled battlefield.

Moving cardboard counters around a map is a boardgame, not a wargame

Terminology differences.

Here a wargame could be either, but the scale model versions are known as miniature wargaming or minis, while it is perfectly accurate to say something like most of GDW's 'boardgame' line were wargames.

 

[aramis]

I think that's the reality on this side of the pond as well.

Nope. well, not if it's something done by Days of Wonder, Fantasy Flight, or Games Workshop, and you're in Alaska or Oregon.

Most of the people I see use the wargamer label for themselves do NOT play minis games other than wet-naval ones, or identify minis-gamer as a separate thing. They do tend to play large counter-and-hexmap games. I used to be one of that crowd, but having kids made wargames taking 8 hours a bit hard to arrange.

The wargames I see mentioned generally are...
Hex-and-counter EG: imperium
Area and counter EG: Pax Brittanica, A House Divided
Pen and paper only, EG: High Guard

Some do include
hex and minis, EG: Sky Galleons, Ironclads and Ether Flyers, Heavy Gear
Historical minis EG: DBM/DBA, Johnny Reb, Harpoon*

* note that Harpoon as written is counters on tabletop...no map. At least in the edition I've got.

 

[robject]

Nope. well, not if it's something done by Days of Wonder, Fantasy Flight, or Games Workshop, and you're in Alaska or Oregon.

What can I say? I'm insulated. All I see is miniatures at my local big box gaming store. I suppose that's because it has a larger profit margin. Or perhaps it's all Warhammer and Star Wars. I can't tell.

 

[aramis]

What can I say? I'm insulated. All I see is miniatures at my local big box gaming store. I suppose that's because it has a larger profit margin. Or perhaps it's all Warhammer and Star Wars. I can't tell.

I've seldom seen a big-box game store. There's one in Portland, but hey, when I'm there, I'm 2 hours away from Portland (assuming I miss Portland's rush-hour gridlock).

 

[robject]

I've seldom seen a big-box game store.

Madness Games and Comics. It's gigantic, and amazing. A mecca for expensive gaming and Magic the Gathering. Weekly there's some promotion going on, and several dozen tables are filled with people playing the same thing. It's like Camazotz from A Wrinkle in Time... all those kids, bouncing the same type of ball to the same unseen rhythm... spoooky.

At least they have the corpus of in-print Traveller material. GURPS, Mongoose. Deneb Sector is even there. They even had a copy of Traveller5, but it's gone (I assume it was bought). And they have a bit of TNE too.