CT Only: CT & Starfire

[aramis]

You don't need to take it to absolute zero, just use enough to drop it to below damage to ship and personnel and normal life support can handle it.

Several refineries and other industrial plants have thermal cogeneration plants where waste heat is put to use creating power, this is something my dad installed several times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration

Cogeneration requires that you have significant thermal change regimes. It doesn't work so well in space - vacuum makes radiation the sole means of thermal escape.

Arguing against well and firmly established physics principles, By the way, comes across quite poorly.

 

[whartung]

Just for laughs, I did a quick test regarding communication time in Starfire vs Traveller.

In Traveller, it's Ye Olde Message in a bottle bolted to a starship with a week long jump. Each transit takes a week, and the transit can be up to 6 parsecs aways.

In Starfire, it's light speed communications, with Something to transit a warp point and relay the message. Transit isn't free, but it's "effectively" instantaneous. There's the time to get to the warp point, and some stabilization time when you come out of it. But properly set up, these transits only add a few minutes to message time. All of the SF discussion assume that a light speed network is in place in intervening systems. You can park small ships on each side of the warp point who entire job is to suck messages from the ether, transit and broadcast, and transit back. Or you can set up satellites and fixed relay stations, etc.

I generated up a bunch of star systems and then averaged the distances between warp points within the systems.

The assumption is that if the front is several transits passed Command, the question becomes how long does messaging take?

The average distance between warp points is about 300 Light Minutes. That means, with infrastructure in place, each system your message passes through adds 5 hours to the transit time. Then there's the initial broadcast from the sources location in the system vs the exiting warp point, and the distance from Command to their nearest warp point.

But it's still telling. In Traveller, it's 2 weeks to get a message out and get a reply. Like cheap FedEx, that's basically a "flat rate". "Astronomical oddity, 2 weeks from every where".

I think in Starfire, ship speed is 2,500km/s for each rating. SF ships don't accelerate, they go and stop. A "Speed 1" ship is 2,500km/s. To put that in perspective, at Speed 1, Earth to Jupiter (588Mkm) is a 65 hour trip.

A 1g ship, accel/deceling the entire trip can do that in 136hrs. a 6g ship can only do it in 55 hours, whereas a Starfire speed 6 ship is simply linear, so 65/6, 10.8 hours.

In Traveller, once in system the fleet is really on it own. There's no input from Command that could be reactive to the current state of the system.

In SF, once engaged, the battles take minutes to resolve. In 20 minutes, victor has been established and cleanup operations have started.

If Command is within a few transits of the contested system, they might be able to offer insight that germane to the situation before combat. The Fleet commanders are not completely cut off from Command, but if the enemy is aggressive and launching operations, the window is really small.

The singular distinction that can happen in SF vs Traveller, is that a fleet can have reserves stashed behind a warp point, and ready to enter the contested system. But even then, if the engagement is at all distant from the warp point, those ships may well not be able to affect the battle. The ships are fast, but the battles are faster.

So, anyway, while the communication lags are potentially grossly different between SF and Traveller, operationally, I don't know if it matters that much.

This disregards the operational realities within SF of warp point assaults. I'm simply talking Command locality.

An SF operational pace can be a bit faster, the fleet moving in days rather than weeks. It takes a Speed 1 SF ship 20 hours to make the average 300 Light Minute trip from one warp point to the next. But you can see that if a fleet had to make 5 transits from it's operational center to the front, that's almost a week right there to move the fleet.

But, in the end, both fleets suffer similar problems with each other being cut off from Command.

 

[kilemall]

Ever been round the back of a fridge?

Yes, waste heat radiating out. Not enough to take special precautions to either vent it or reuse it.

 

[kilemall]

Just for laughs, I did a quick test regarding communication time in Starfire vs Traveller.

In Traveller, it's Ye Olde Message in a bottle bolted to a starship with a week long jump. Each transit takes a week, and the transit can be up to 6 parsecs aways.

In Starfire, it's light speed communications, with Something to transit a warp point and relay the message. Transit isn't free, but it's "effectively" instantaneous. There's the time to get to the warp point, and some stabilization time when you come out of it. But properly set up, these transits only add a few minutes to message time. All of the SF discussion assume that a light speed network is in place in intervening systems. You can park small ships on each side of the warp point who entire job is to suck messages from the ether, transit and broadcast, and transit back. Or you can set up satellites and fixed relay stations, etc.

I generated up a bunch of star systems and then averaged the distances between warp points within the systems.

The assumption is that if the front is several transits passed Command, the question becomes how long does messaging take?

The average distance between warp points is about 300 Light Minutes. That means, with infrastructure in place, each system your message passes through adds 5 hours to the transit time. Then there's the initial broadcast from the sources location in the system vs the exiting warp point, and the distance from Command to their nearest warp point.

But it's still telling. In Traveller, it's 2 weeks to get a message out and get a reply. Like cheap FedEx, that's basically a "flat rate". "Astronomical oddity, 2 weeks from every where".

I think in Starfire, ship speed is 2,500km/s for each rating. SF ships don't accelerate, they go and stop. A "Speed 1" ship is 2,500km/s. To put that in perspective, at Speed 1, Earth to Jupiter (588Mkm) is a 65 hour trip.

A 1g ship, accel/deceling the entire trip can do that in 136hrs. a 6g ship can only do it in 55 hours, whereas a Starfire speed 6 ship is simply linear, so 65/6, 10.8 hours.

In Traveller, once in system the fleet is really on it own. There's no input from Command that could be reactive to the current state of the system.

In SF, once engaged, the battles take minutes to resolve. In 20 minutes, victor has been established and cleanup operations have started.

If Command is within a few transits of the contested system, they might be able to offer insight that germane to the situation before combat. The Fleet commanders are not completely cut off from Command, but if the enemy is aggressive and launching operations, the window is really small.

The singular distinction that can happen in SF vs Traveller, is that a fleet can have reserves stashed behind a warp point, and ready to enter the contested system. But even then, if the engagement is at all distant from the warp point, those ships may well not be able to affect the battle. The ships are fast, but the battles are faster.

So, anyway, while the communication lags are potentially grossly different between SF and Traveller, operationally, I don't know if it matters that much.

This disregards the operational realities within SF of warp point assaults. I'm simply talking Command locality.

An SF operational pace can be a bit faster, the fleet moving in days rather than weeks. It takes a Speed 1 SF ship 20 hours to make the average 300 Light Minute trip from one warp point to the next. But you can see that if a fleet had to make 5 transits from it's operational center to the front, that's almost a week right there to move the fleet.

But, in the end, both fleets suffer similar problems with each other being cut off from Command.

<Shrug> since the OP is looking to upend Starfire with inertial reaction movement, might as well go whole hog and limit to Traveller jumps.

 

[Otto Harkaman]

Yeah I wasn't trying to over-think the whole thing but after some of the posts here I think I will just have fun playing Starfire for itself for awhile before I try to do some merge with Traveller. I just thought it might be an easy way to conduct space combat without having to deal with all the vague and different version rules available in the Traveller family of games.

 

[whartung]

<Shrug> since the OP is looking to upend Starfire with inertial reaction movement, might as well go whole hog and limit to Traveller jumps.

Oh, I wasn't suggesting that he adopt the whole of SF's system, including warp points. It was just a thought experiment on how different a campaign might be handled given the different realities.

The other big difference besides perhaps pace of the SF campaign, is that pursuit is straightforward in SF (barring the WP assault), because while you have the warp points linking the systems, the systems are a simple graph, thus your choices are limited.

In contrast, when a fleet jumps out of a system in Traveller, you have no idea where it went. You can guess, some targets are more likely than not, but you don't know. From a raiding point of view, this can be really problematic in contrast to SF which can have a hard front line.

 

[aramis]

Starfire, based upon the WP system, also severely limits the ability to outrun news of your actions....

 

[pendragonman]

And let's not ignore the issue of Starfire having no way to go to any particular system directly that isn't connected by warp point.

In fact, it can take going down an entire long "branch" of warp point connections to find a way to get to the next system that is under duress.

While we know in Trav that if the system is within our jump range we can go directly there.

 

[aramis]

And let's not ignore the issue of Starfire having no way to go to any particular system directly that isn't connected by warp point.

In fact, it can take going down an entire long "branch" of warp point connections to find a way to get to the next system that is under duress.

While we know in Trav that if the system is within our jump range we can go directly there.

Actually, the drives DO work in deep space. One of the official scenarios involves a 6 month 10%C (speed 6 in that edition) battlefleet N-space travel...

 

[Putraack]

Yeah I wasn't trying to over-think the whole thing but after some of the posts here I think I will just have fun playing Starfire for itself for awhile before I try to do some merge with Traveller. I just thought it might be an easy way to conduct space combat without having to deal with all the vague and different version rules available in the Traveller family of games.

I'm with you, if I ever restart Pirates of Drinax.

 

[McPerth]

Personally, I don't see any way to adapt Starfire system to Traveller, be it for combat or any other use.

They are two enterily different universes, with different physics. Ship movement (both STL and FTL) are too different, as are many other matters.

And I don't believe there can be a conversion of SF hull to Traveller dtons. In SF, a scout (the smaller ship class) is 12 hulls, while the largest ships are (IIRC, I don't have it Handy) 160 hulls (so, just about 13 times the Scout ships). Off course, this scales cannot be converted to Traveller unless you asume the hulls in SF are a logaritmical expression, but then larger ships' holds (or magazines) should be able to carry more stuff tan smaller ships' ones.

Likewise, in SF a carrier that can carrry 60 fighters is a very large one, while in Traveller it would be a very small one...

While Empires share some problems in both games when used strategically (mostly the difficulties of Command Control due to communication lag), IMHO, Starfire excels whele traveller most fails (or at least I've seen no Traveller related game that covers it): operational in-system actions.

You can park small ships on each side of the warp point who entire job is to suck messages from the ether, transit and broadcast, and transit back. Or you can set up satellites and fixed relay stations, etc.

BSs with CC modules make those functions in SF. They have their special Courier Drones to communicate through WP and they have extended in system communications range.

I think in Starfire, ship speed is 2,500km/s for each rating. SF ships don't accelerate, they go and stop. A "Speed 1" ship is 2,500km/s. To put that in perspective, at Speed 1, Earth to Jupiter (588Mkm) is a 65 hour trip.

I'm afraid your numbers are wrong here. Speed 6 is described in SF as 0.1C (so 30000 km/sec), so, speed 1 would be 1/6 of this, so 5000 km/sec.

Of course, that does not void your point...

 

[pendragonman]

Actually, the drives DO work in deep space. One of the official scenarios involves a 6 month 10%C (speed 6 in that edition) battlefleet N-space travel...

10% C. So 30 years or so to go 1 parsec, or jump 1

 

[aramis]

Personally, I don't see any way to adapt Starfire system to Traveller, be it for combat or any other use.

They are two enterily different universes, with different physics. Ship movement (both STL and FTL) are too different, as are many other matters.

Integrating the two isn't actually that hard. Traveller tasks for +1 mods on starfire rolls or ratings. Note that 1 space of military system needs 2 crewmen... a Q is thus room for 50 people.

If one takes the approach of "Traveller as a ruleset for playing the Starfire Universe," it's readily doable.

You just cannot fit the OTU into the Starfire official universes (note - 1st-4th eds use one setting, the current is developing a new one, since Webber still has some rights on the original setting).

 

[aramis]

10% C. So 30 years or so to go 1 parsec, or jump 1

It's possible to (with J drives and tuners) get to 15% C (Speed 9). 21 years. But that also has attrition.

Note that maintenance costs are able to be stocked, and it is possible to get 20+ years support into a flotilla.

Also note, the scenario involves a mere 6 Light-month gap...

 

[pendragonman]

It's possible to (with J drives and tuners) get to 15% C (Speed 9). 21 years. But that also has attrition.

Note that maintenance costs are able to be stocked, and it is possible to get 20+ years support into a flotilla.

Also note, the scenario involves a mere 6 Light-month gap...

My point was that reaction time and directional flexibility are on the side of Trav except in the case of a direct warp point connection, or only a few warp points connection between start and finish systems.

 

[whartung]

Personally, I don't see any way to adapt Starfire system to Traveller, be it for combat or any other use.

I think if you simply bolted Jump drives on to Starfire ships, adopted the Tactical Game wholesale and called it a day, it's quite doable. Add a new "Jump Fuel" system along with the jump drives to suck up hull space if you want.

And I don't believe there can be a conversion of SF hull to Traveller dtons. In SF, a scout (the smaller ship class) is 12 hulls, while the largest ships are (IIRC, I don't have it Handy) 160 hulls (so, just about 13 times the Scout ships). Off course, this scales cannot be converted to Traveller unless you asume the hulls in SF are a logaritmical expression, but then larger ships' holds (or magazines) should be able to carry more stuff tan smaller ships' ones.

Likewise, in SF a carrier that can carrry 60 fighters is a very large one, while in Traveller it would be a very small one…

Obvious ship design dictates doctrine. The SF ships wouldn't necessarily "feel" like Traveller ships in combat. But they'd still haul the mail and blow each other up appropriately. But to your point, ships just scale differently. A "Free Trader" needs only be big enough to haul a 1J drive, a 1G drive, 2 weapons, perhaps a few S and A, and a "big enough hold".

SSAALMHHJdJfQI

2 Shields, 2 Armor, a Laser, a Missile, 2 Holds, 1 Quarters (i.e. staterooms), 1 Drive, 1 Jump Drive and 1 space for Jump Fuel. Tune that ship until "the economy" mostly works, and you're done (since this is the only ship around which the game economy is actually based and balanced).

IMHO, the Traveller "feel", canonically, is most tied to the J-Drive than anything else. The other thing is Meson guns, or specifically, deep meson sites in planets. Though we never see them documented in actual use. You could potentially add a meson gun for the ships. One per ship, does 10pts (or 20 or whatever "OUCH!" you want to make it) damage, ignores armor and shields, add a meson screen system to add a saving throw defense. Get a lot of battle ships looking like "...MsMsMg(IIII)x6". In the fight to the end.

You could add a Sand Caster system if you really want to. But Point Defense handles that pretty well already. Not so good at shotgunning primitive cultures when getting chased off a planet, but…oh well.

Other than that, tactical combat is tactical combat -- ships blow up, etc. Heck, with HG, Traveller considers tactical combat abstractly.

So, the point being, SF tactical combat and drives don't really affect Canon as history. The Warp Points would have more impact, so, you know, Don't Do That™.

While Empires share some problems in both games when used strategically (mostly the difficulties of Command Control due to communication lag), IMHO, Starfire excels whele traveller most fails (or at least I've seen no Traveller related game that covers it): operational in-system actions.

SF details operational procedures more than Traveller. FFW is the best representation that we have, with a bit of TCS (and maybe Invasion: Earth -- I've never really looked at it).

The only real addition necessary operationally is documenting fueling operations for SF ships with Jump drives. Something still well undefined in Traveller.

I'm afraid your numbers are wrong here. Speed 6 is described in SF as 0.1C (so 30000 km/sec), so, speed 1 would be 1/6 of this, so 5000 km/sec.

Of course, that does not void your point...

Yea, could be. I reverse engineered the numbers from memory of Galactic SF (is that the latest from SFDS?? I think that's what it's called).

In GSF, a tactical turn is 30s, a Strategic hex is 2880 tactical hexes, and a Strategic hex is 12 Light Minutes. So, 1 LM = 240 tactical hexes. 1 LM = 18Mkm. 18Mkm/240 = 75Kkm per tactical hex. Speed 1 = 1 TH / 30s. 75,000 / 30 = 2500.

I think that GSF (or perhaps a previous edition) changed the tactical time scale to 30s. Or maybe they just changed the tactical map scale. But I'm not sure.

But, as you mention, the actual speed is essentially trivia and not really germane to the overall discussion. If the ships are too fast, slow them down until the feel right. But the whole "accelerating, decelerating" stuff -- in play, as in "real life", it just "is" and taken for granted. I don't think it will be missed. Doesn't affect freighters delivering their cargo.

It mostly affects ships having to actually engage each other in deep space. SF makes maneuver relevant much more so than Traveller does. In Traveller ships will fight only where ships need to stop. Otherwise, they just run past each other. But in the end, pirates will still outrun freighters, so…not really that important big picture.

 

[McPerth]

Integrating the two isn't actually that hard. Traveller tasks for +1 mods on starfire rolls or ratings. Note that 1 space of military system needs 2 crewmen... a Q is thus room for 50 people.

If one takes the approach of "Traveller as a ruleset for playing the Starfire Universe," it's readily doable.

You just cannot fit the OTU into the Starfire official universes (note - 1st-4th eds use one setting, the current is developing a new one, since Webber still has some rights on the original setting).

If you mean playing Traveller as RPG in a SF setting, of course you can. You need to alter ship design somewhat, but Traveller is a free setting RPG that can be adapted to any environ or setting.

If you mean (as I understood the OP meant) to play Traveller combatwith SF rules, then I stand in what I said.

I think if you simply bolted Jump drives on to Starfire ships, adopted the Tactical Game wholesale and called it a day, it's quite doable. Add a new "Jump Fuel" system along with the jump drives to suck up hull space if you want.

I'm afraid you'll need quite more tan this...

Obvious ship design dictates doctrine. The SF ships wouldn't necessarily "feel" like Traveller ships in combat. But they'd still haul the mail and blow each other up appropriately. But to your point, ships just scale differently. A "Free Trader" needs only be big enough to haul a 1J drive, a 1G drive, 2 weapons, perhaps a few S and A, and a "big enough hold".

SSAALMHHJdJfQI

2 Shields, 2 Armor, a Laser, a Missile, 2 Holds, 1 Quarters (i.e. staterooms), 1 Drive, 1 Jump Drive and 1 space for Jump Fuel. Tune that ship until "the economy" mostly works, and you're done (since this is the only ship around which the game economy is actually based and balanced).

OK, I'll bite...

Based on SF 3^rd edition (the one I have), see that this ship would need (at least) 16 hulls (1 each for armor, shileds, holds and drives, 4 for the laser, 3 for the missiles and unkown about the J). it lacks a magazine for the misile, so it is useless, and it lacks life support (but changing the Q for a Qs will fix it). So its not so small ship as the free trader, and it has very few of it dedicated to cargo (holds)...

One of the things I agree with former posts is that, assuming the conversion can be done, the SF weapons would be full batteries (probably bays or many turrets) in HG, so the Free Trader will have none.

IMHO, the Traveller "feel", canonically, is most tied to the J-Drive than anything else. The other thing is Meson guns, or specifically, deep meson sites in planets. Though we never see them documented in actual use. You could potentially add a meson gun for the ships. One per ship, does 10pts (or 20 or whatever "OUCH!" you want to make it) damage, ignores armor and shields, add a meson screen system to add a saving throw defense. Get a lot of battle ships looking like "...MsMsMg(IIII)x6". In the fight to the end.

You could add a Sand Caster system if you really want to. But Point Defense handles that pretty well already. Not so good at shotgunning primitive cultures when getting chased off a planet, but…oh well.

Other than that, tactical combat is tactical combat -- ships blow up, etc. Heck, with HG, Traveller considers tactical combat abstractly.

So, the point being, SF tactical combat and drives don't really affect Canon as history. The Warp Points would have more impact, so, you know, Don't Do That™.

Traveller (I guess you're talking about HG, as you include the mesons here) is also based on that ships may not usually make more than one jump before having to refuel, and in that there are immense ship size differences, something that are not true in SF...

SF details operational procedures more than Traveller. FFW is the best representation that we have, with a bit of TCS (and maybe Invasion: Earth -- I've never really looked at it).

The only real addition necessary operationally is documenting fueling operations for SF ships with Jump drives. Something still well undefined in Traveller.

All the games you talk about are good examples of the lack of in system operational rules I told about...

In FFW (and TCS campaign), in a week you ship may jump, fight, refuel (if it wins the battle), bomb a planet and land troops, that will be able to fight for a whole turn...

To show what this represents, let's imagine we play the Solomani War with FFW rules (so that we can use our Sol system as an example).

Imperial Fleet starts day 0 in Barnard Star and jumps to Terra. It arrives to Terra and fights the Solomani Fleet (and SDBs) there (regardless if they are in Earth or in Pluto). They win, so they can refuel (the closer plade for that is Júpiter, about 4-6 AUs depending on relative positions), then it goes to Earth where it bombs the SOlomani defenders, and lands the troops it's carrying, that will fight exactly the same as will next week. And all of this in a single week...

Now try to do all of this with your ship by using Traveller rules...

In Invasión Earth! things are little less generic, and ships may be in orbit or in deep space (refusing battle), while SDBs can also be landed or hiding in the sea...

Yea, could be. I reverse engineered the numbers from memory of Galactic SF (is that the latest from SFDS?? I think that's what it's called).

In GSF, a tactical turn is 30s, a Strategic hex is 2880 tactical hexes, and a Strategic hex is 12 Light Minutes. So, 1 LM = 240 tactical hexes. 1 LM = 18Mkm. 18Mkm/240 = 75Kkm per tactical hex. Speed 1 = 1 TH / 30s. 75,000 / 30 = 2500.

I think that GSF (or perhaps a previous edition) changed the tactical time scale to 30s. Or maybe they just changed the tactical map scale. But I'm not sure.

But, as you mention, the actual speed is essentially trivia and not really germane to the overall discussion. If the ships are too fast, slow them down until the feel right. But the whole "accelerating, decelerating" stuff -- in play, as in "real life", it just "is" and taken for granted. I don't think it will be missed. Doesn't affect freighters delivering their cargo.

It mostly affects ships having to actually engage each other in deep space. SF makes maneuver relevant much more so than Traveller does. In Traveller ships will fight only where ships need to stop. Otherwise, they just run past each other. But in the end, pirates will still outrun freighters, so…not really that important big picture.

Well, as said, I only know about 3^rd Edition SF (incluiding Imperial Starfire). On it speed 6 was defined as 0.1 C, and speed 12 (only for the Courier Drones) was defined as 0.2C.

For what you say (and what I've read about its evolution), it seems the more similar thing among both games is rules changes (some times to make them incompatible) from one version to another :devil:...

 

[aramis]

Well, as said, I only know about 1^st Edition SF (incluiding Imperial Starfire). On it speed 6 was defined as 0.1 C, and speed 12 (only for the Courier Drones) was defined as 0.2C.

Imperial SF is part of 3rd edition, not first.

1st edition was all 5x8 booklets: Starfire, Starfire II: Strikefighter, and Starfire III: Empires. Key identifiers: half points of damage. New Carrier Rule, Corsairs over Lyonesse, Ion Engine Drive Room, and a bunch of minor add ons were in Nexus Magazine.

2e was boxed set including strikefighter and starfire, plus New Empires, Gorm-Khanate War. Later issues of Nexus supported 2E.

3e was black box, still labeled Starfire, made the switch to d10's. Imperial Starfire was the campaign rules for it. Stars At War, Crusade, Akelda Dawn.

4th ed was Galactic Starfire. Coding rules changed.Only vaguely compatible with early editions.

 

[McPerth]

Then it was 3^rd Edition, ty for the clarification. I'll fix my post.

 

[whartung]

Based on SF 3^rd edition (the one I have), see that this ship would need (at least) 16 hulls (1 each for armor, shileds, holds and drives, 4 for the laser, 3 for the missiles and unkown about the J). it lacks a magazine for the misile, so it is useless, and it lacks life support (but changing the Q for a Qs will fix it). So its not so small ship as the free trader, and it has very few of it dedicated to cargo (holds)…

It is if you say "200 dTon = 16 Hull spaces". That's the beauty of this stuff -- you can make it up and change it as you like! You can also say that a missile has an implicit load of 3/6/9/100000 missiles, a Magazine just Adds More.

One of the things I agree with former posts is that, assuming the conversion can be done, the SF weapons would be full batteries (probably bays or many turrets) in HG, so the Free Trader will have none.

Batteries? What are batteries. SF doesn't have batteries. We're not making "Canonical Traveller Ships", we're making SF ships to fly around in a Traveller universe. Our only "burden" of compatibility is to make a Free Trader economically viable. Every thing else is up for grabs. There's no "balance" to be maintained anywhere else. The Free Trader doesn't even have to be 200 dTons, rather it needs 75 dTons free space of cargo (since that's the money maker).

The star port doesn't care how big your ship is, nobody else cares how big the ship is (within reason, naturally). The Captain cares how much stuff he can carry, how much fuel he needs to buy each trip, how many crew he needs, and annual maintenance. THOSE are important, but other than that, not much else matters.

Traveller (I guess you're talking about HG, as you include the mesons here) is also based on that ships may not usually make more than one jump before having to refuel, and in that there are immense ship size differences, something that are not true in SF…

You have to refuel when you add the brand new "Jump Drive (Jd)" system that requires dedicated "Jump Fuel (Jf)" systems to perform jump. You can make the Jd systems scale with size (like ion drives and drive rooms do), and you can consume as much a percentage of the ship as you like for "Jf".

After that, ships just get built and designed. There's no need or effort to be "compatible" with Traveller ships. Folks can whip up a "Scout Ship" (i.e. a small ship with Jump 2, Speed 2 and laser) or a "Mercenary Cruiser" or a "Battleship", but they don't necessary have to be anything at all like what is in Traveller.

Don't conflate "3 laser turret == 3 L systems in SF" or anything like that. It's unimportant to the game fantasy. You have an "armed merchant" with 75 dTons of space to fill with cargo. That's enough.

All the games you talk about are good examples of the lack of in system operational rules I told about…

Yes they do. Traveller is historically extremely weak on operations. FFW is the best thing we've got to go by, and it's ostensibly a bit too high level.

In FFW (and TCS campaign), in a week you ship may jump, fight, refuel (if it wins the battle), bomb a planet and land troops, that will be able to fight for a whole turn...

To show what this represents, let's imagine we play the Solomani War with FFW rules (so that we can use our Sol system as an example).

Imperial Fleet starts day 0 in Barnard Star and jumps to Terra. It arrives to Terra and fights the Solomani Fleet (and SDBs) there (regardless if they are in Earth or in Pluto). They win, so they can refuel (the closer plade for that is Júpiter, about 4-6 AUs depending on relative positions), then it goes to Earth where it bombs the SOlomani defenders, and lands the troops it's carrying, that will fight exactly the same as will next week. And all of this in a single week…

The fleet arrives, at Jupiter, 100D away. The fleet takes 4 hours to assemble. There was a post that says a coordinated fleet will have it's arrival scattered over a 100 minute window. So 2 hours for the fleet to arrive, 2 hours to assemble and get coffee.

Fleet heads to Jupiter. 3G fleet, 4 hour trip.

Now, how long does it take for the fleet to refuel?

If the fleet can skim, in FFW, the fleet can refuel before combat. If not, it has to refuel the next turn (next week). For the sake of discussion, we'll assume the fleet can skim.

Is there a defending force at Jupiter? If not, things go apace. If there is, the fleet destroys and/or routs the defenders (otherwise the game is, as they say, over). How long does that combat take? If it's High Guard, with 20 minute turns, a 4 hour battle is 12 rounds. In Starfire, 4 hours is an eternity. Either way, the battle will likely be decided within 4 hours (i.e. the defenders will know they can't stop the fleet, so they can either crash themselves upon the rocks, being as costly as they can, or they can withdraw.) Heck, we'll give them 8 hours for combat.

So, now we're at 14 hours time in system for the attacking fleet.

How long does it take for the fleet to refuel? 24 hours? Think they can scoop up and process enough in 24 hours? Is that too little? This is the big unknown. 48 Hours?

We'll call it 48 hours. 62 hours in system, the fleet all fueled, more coffee poured, damage control parties putting their kits away, the fleet heads toward earth.

Average distance, 588Mkm. 3G Drives. Full burn, that's a 78 hour flight.

ETA to Earth: T+140 hours. So if they arrived at Sunday Midnight, it's now 8pm on Friday. And they're at Earth. The fleet then defeats the defending space forces in another 8 hour onslaught, ending at 4am on Saturday.

Thus ends "Turn 1", the first week. "Turn 2", the troops can start landing, for Sunday they rest.

If a defender jumped as soon as they saw the incoming fleet, then reinforcements can begin arriving on "Turn 3".

If the fleet decided to not make the pit stop at Jupiter, it would have arrived directly at Earth, defeated the defending force and started landing operations on Monday in "Turn 1".

Much of this hinges on the refueling step. If it only took 24 hours, the landings may well have started on Saturday.