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General Construction time - why so long?

Adding armor to the outside of the hull would increase the ship's displacement and reduce performance.
...
Well, that and the rules say you can't.
Quite, it is explicitly not allowed by RAW. As usual no engineering reason is given, but presumably there should be one.

CT TCS said:
REFITTING SHIPS
...
The degree to which a ship may be changed is limited. Power plant, M-drive, J-drive, and spinal mount weapons may not be increased in tonnage. There may be no additional launch facilities built (althoughthey may be removed). Armor and configuration may not be changed. The number and size of weapons bays may not be changed.


MgT1 TCS said:
Armour and other parts of the ship integral to the hull (such as configuration or reinforced structure) cannot be changed under any refit.
 
Adding armor to the outside of the hull would increase the ship's displacement and reduce performance.

Adding it to the inside would require disassembly and reconstruction of the entire ship.

Well, that and the rules say you can't.

I take the point regarding hull mass (displacement) As to to the inside, yeah; fair point. Not so much a refit as a rebuild.

FF&S, either from TNE or T4.

OK, both rather unwieldy systems. Why is it, I wonder, that successive systems (aside from MgT High Guard version 1) versions of the game have made ship building more and more complex and difficult to work through (possibly rhetorical question!)?

CT Supplement 7: Traders and Gunboats.

Ah, right, thanks. "CT Supp 7" would be the way I would have referenced it, but whatever works for you :)
 
CT TCS said:
REFITTING SHIPS
...
The degree to which a ship may be changed is limited. Power plant, M-drive, J-drive, and spinal mount weapons may not be increased in tonnage. There may be no additional launch facilities built (although they may be removed). Armor and configuration may not be changed. The number and size of weapons bays may not be changed.
Two things:

I vaguely recall that one could carry cargo, deadfall ordnance, or small craft in empty weapons bays (at a significant tonnage penalty for small craft). Was that in HG '77?

Not RAW, but configuration could change if additional structures are added (cargo pods, "stretch" hull plug sections, hull-grade external fuel tanks, and so on). This would change tonnage and performance as well. Construction time would depend on when you start the clock -- building the extra components, or time to install if they were prefabricated. It'd involve house rules more complicated than I want to get into right now, though.
 
I vaguely recall that one could carry cargo, deadfall ordnance, or small craft in empty weapons bays (at a significant tonnage penalty for small craft). Was that in HG '77?
Both editions of CT High Guard.



Not RAW, but configuration could change if additional structures are added (cargo pods, "stretch" hull plug sections, hull-grade external fuel tanks, and so on). This would change tonnage and performance as well.

RAW (TNE) contains this:


The nose of a Gazelle cut off and replaced by a Scout.


T5 and MgT2 supports adding external pods.
 
Both editions of CT High Guard.





RAW (TNE) contains this:


The nose of a Gazelle cut off and replaced by a Scout.


T5 and MgT2 supports adding external pods.

Here we go again. I've had a look at the list of publications for TNE, and can't figure out what "RAW" is. A little help, please?
 
Sorry, RAW as in Rules As Written, as opposed to the house ruled games we all play...

Right, thanks again. Hmm. It appears I'm a leeeeetle out of touch. Is there a current list of abbreviations/reference letters for the multitude of versions, editions, books, etc?
 
I think I first came across Rules As Written in Magic, since role playing games tend to leave a lot of latitude with the Dungeon Master.

By the nature of technological aspects of a game, it has to be applied more strictly, otherwise it would tend to break it.
 
There are a few ways of running the games; for tournament games, I go by SI, or Strict Interpretation (what you're calling RAW), where house rules and non-canon material (and equipment) are ruled out, and where only material and props published by, or with the permission of, the game publishers is permitted; for all other games, my own House Rules, or ROT (Rules of Thumb) come into play; this includes any background material (game history and/or setting), and kit of a reasonable nature (I rule what's reasonable and what's taking the bodily fluids, so to speak), and play the game so as to minimise slowdown due to rules, and speed up play for effect (the so-called "Cinematic playing").
 
I think I first came across Rules As Written in Magic, since role playing games tend to leave a lot of latitude with the Dungeon Master.

By the nature of technological aspects of a game, it has to be applied more strictly, otherwise it would tend to break it.

Any sufficiently advanced collector card game is indistinguishable from Magic.
 
OK, both rather unwieldy systems. Why is it, I wonder, that successive systems (aside from MgT High Guard version 1) versions of the game have made ship building more and more complex and difficult to work through (possibly rhetorical question!)?
Because the designers felt more detail was wanted/necessary.

The incongruities between Bk2 and Bk5 are enough to make most everyone itch, so having everything consolidated was likely desirable from the get go.

Then there was the impact of Striker, with its early approach to "build whatever" as applied to small vehicles would naturally get writ large to apply to starships.

Then you have the "simulation-ist" tendencies of the designers as they apply their wargame modeling expertise to something like an RPG. In the end, it was mostly just Chadwick refining his work over time until you get to TNE. He clearly enjoyed trying to successfully model "the real world" in terms of combat effectiveness in to a system that can, ideally, scale to the fantastical world of Science Fiction. "What should happen if a APFSDS-DU tank round weighing 20kg at traveling 1700 m/s hits a TL-15 Trader parked on the tarmac of a starport?" "What happens if the ship fires it's 150Mj laser back at the tank that shot it?"

"Giving these truths, and projecting these assumptions, we get these outcomes -- in a chart."

Arguably, the systems in TNE are actually very simple in that they follow the model of simply bolting boxes of systems together rather than any actual true integration. There's very little interdependencies. Most of the systems are designed independently and then drag and dropped in place. Notice there are no load balancing rules in FF&S.

TNE starship design is not that much more complicated that high guard. Grab a hull, armor it, grab a power plant, jump drive, and a maneuver drive, then fill the rest of the ship with rooms, fuel, weapons, sensors, electronics and crew.

In HG drives are built based on hull size. Given a hull size, TL, and performance desired (J-X, M-Y), and you get the size/cost of the drive. FF&S is the same thing. Power plants are built based on their output. Put in X MWs and TL, and get out a drive size and cost. Just like HG.

Where FF&S broke down when it came to ship design is that it did not include any weapons. HG included pre-built weapons: turrets, bays, spinals. FF&S did not. The basic book left those out. So, now you have to be not just a ship designer, but a laser physicist.

Brilliant Lances remedied this somewhat with standard turrets using "sockets" and some pre-built spinals.

Designing weapons in FF&S is, honestly, more involved than ship design.

The other problem with ship design is simply you had a gazillion options. "Gee, what size of diesel motor should I use with my Dean Drive given my 177 dTon hull made of cast iron?". If you stick to the basic TLs and basic components (fusion power plants, etc.), then all of that washes away with the noise. Same with the 2000 years of avionics history in the tables.

Now, obviously, FF&S added more things. Surface area for example (which I think was in MT already), abstractly manifest in HG as "100 tons per turret", the more complicated combat because of sensor rules (fire directors et al), etc.

But it was not an order of magnitude in complexity.

What TNE needed is what they published in Brilliant Lances. BL has the FF&S starship design rules. Barring errata, the BL design sequence is the same as FF&S one, it just focused on TL- 9-15 starships of the Imperium rather than all of the other stuff that was bundled with FF&S, and has a weapons list. So it's much more approachable. But it's all FF&S.
 
It was kind of a rhetorical question, but there we go...

The point I was trying to make was that in EVERY version of EVERY GAME, doesn't matter if it's Traveller, Warthog twenty zillion, or whatever, every successive version, hell, even GURPS too, come to think of it, produces a different way of making starships and whatever other high tech kit, that the design team thinks is the best thing since sliced bread, but which, on examination, is more and more and more unwieldy, complex, or just plain confusing to a lot of people who otherwise would be perfectly happy with the new version of said gaming system (can you say Phoenix Command, or maybe Guns Guns Guns version 3?!). Gaaaaaasp pant pant pant... I really need to learn punctuation...

That's what I was saying. Bit of a rant in long form, but there y'go shrug.

Ahem.

Grins a little sheepishly ;)
 
It was kind of a rhetorical question, but there we go...

The point I was trying to make was that in EVERY version of EVERY GAME, doesn't matter if it's Traveller, Warthog twenty zillion, or whatever, every successive version, hell, even GURPS too, come to think of it, produces a different way of making starships and whatever other high tech kit, that the design team thinks is the best thing since sliced bread, but which, on examination, is more and more and more unwieldy, complex, or just plain confusing to a lot of people who otherwise would be perfectly happy with the new version of said gaming system (can you say Phoenix Command, or maybe Guns Guns Guns version 3?!). Gaaaaaasp pant pant pant... I really need to learn punctuation...

. . . ;)

Yep--and how much more playability does all the added detail and complication actually add?
 
Yep--and how much more playability does all the added detail and complication actually add?

Good question, well presented, deserves an answer... and to omit the more profanity-laden typically British Military reply, stuffed if I know ;)

OK, seriously, I haven't a clue; if the game system says a ship has comms, sensors, and such like, fine and dandy; if it then says a percentage of that avionics and comms fit contains fandanglezobby ten thousand communications ropes, again, fine and dandy. Fine, there are meson communications, EM receivers, radar, Ladar, Maser, and a bucket load of other bits, again, fine and dandy. But do we REALLY need to know how much of that has what space individually?

I dunno.

All I really want to know is how many squares on the deckplans I have to allocate to the bridge, crew quarters, engineering spaces, and such like. I'm happy enough with that.

The rest of it? It's called role play for a reason, not rule play; that's for table-top wargames, like Striker.

For my money, it needs to be high speed low drag, and KISS. That's the essentials of good Role Playing.

As usual, this has been IMHO, and YMMV ;)
 
To Redcap:

I too had a bit of a rhetorical question there--but you made a very good point about role-play vs rule-play. I think too many of us tend to go into nerdgasm with "realism" and technical details--and miss the "main point"! (Confession: I tend that way myself too many times . . .)

Look at how many object to the 2-D maps, a perfect example of simplifying things for the sake of roleplaying rather than all the fuss of calculating what systems are nearby and how far exactly. :coffeesip:
 
Even Magic systems require rules so that they don't go overboard.

It's one reason I liked playing a Mage in the World of Darkness, since it leveraged what I recalled from high school science.
 
Yep--and how much more playability does all the added detail and complication actually add?

I prefer design systems that keep track of volume and mass separately, so that relevant performance statistics can be derived more accurately. In particular, using loaded mass rather hull volume to determine acceleration.
 
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