CT Only: Drive Hits Book5 into Book2 terms

[infojunky]

Ok, one of my my issues has been with how to address damage to Book5 system drives in the Book2 combat damage terms. There was Kinda a quick and dirty answer to this question in the Ship section of the K'kree Aliens book of a blanket 5 hits per performance number for all hull sizes.

Now liking at the rough shape of Book2 drive table and the results from K'kree the thoughts occurs what id we scaled the hits to the size of the ship, or

(ShipVolume)/200 = Hits per Drive Number.

With this we could also adjust the Quality of the drive by varying the the numbers of hits that said drive deviates from the standard equation.

 

[aramis]

Ok, one of my my issues has been with how to address damage to Book5 system drives in the Book2 combat damage terms. There was Kinda a quick and dirty answer to this question in the Ship section of the K'kree Aliens book of a blanket 5 hits per performance number for all hull sizes.

If you examine the B2-81 tables, the correct ratio is almost obvious...
JD is 1 per 5 Td > 5Td.
MD is 1 per 2 Td, round up
PP is 1 per 3 tons, round normal
Note: this is also where Hunter and MJD originally went in the T20 playtest, as it's so obvious to the statistically minded.

 

[infojunky]

If you examine the B2-81 tables, the correct ratio is almost obvious...
JD is 1 per 5 Td > 5Td.
MD is 1 per 2 Td, round up
PP is 1 per 3 tons, round normal
Note: this is also where Hunter and MJD originally went in the T20 playtest, as it's so obvious to the statistically minded.

Honestly one does preclude the other. As I was looking for the ration that drives where reduced in performance by hits.

Though one must note that Book5's volume progression is different from Book2s. And I was looking for a solution that stemmed from Book5.

 

[infojunky]

Note the volume of Book5 drives are greater than their equivalent Book2 drives.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Note the volume of Book5 drives are greater than their equivalent Book2 drives.

Not the maneuver drive.

 

[infojunky]

Not the maneuver drive.

Well kinda if you ignore the power requirement...

 

[Grav_Moped]

Well kinda if you ignore the power requirement...

Maneuver drive hits don't affect the available power from the power plant.

 

[kilemall]

Note the volume of Book5 drives are greater than their equivalent Book2 drives.

One of the reasons I maintain they are different designs, LBB5 ones being souped up turbo versions that use less fuel in the smaller ships.

 

[infojunky]

Maneuver drive hits don't affect the available power from the power plant.

This is kinda a moot arguement.

In that I was just showing a system for assigning hits...

Right now I am building ships and their related combat cards.

 

[Grav_Moped]

This is kinda a moot arguement.

In that I was just showing a system for assigning hits...

Right now I am building ships and their related combat cards.

And that was kind of where I was going with that. LBB2 maneuver drives (as drives) present smaller targets than LBB5 maneuver drives. If you want to bundle them in with part of the power plant to make them "bigger" targets (and presumably reduce the exposure of power plants at the same time) that's a game balance decision.

We may just be talking past each other though.

 

[aramis]

Fundamentally, Book 5 and Book 2 work damage on incompatible principles...
Bk 5 is each step of damage is 1 rating gone, no matter the size of the ship. Essentially, criticals only.
Bk 2 is a pure attrition model; for ships over 200, each hit is less than one rating step...

For example a 400 ton J4 P4 M2 is going to have, under Bk 2, the following damage track

PP	H	4 ☐	3 ☐	3 ☐	2 ☐	2 ☐	1 ☐	1 ☐	0 ☐	☠
JD	H	4 ☐	3 ☐	3 ☐	2 ☐	2 ☐	1 ☐	1 ☐	0 ☐	☠
MD	D	2 ☐	1 ☐	1 ☐	0 ☐	☠

But a 100 Td PP4 JD4 M2

PP	B	4 ☐	2 ☐	☠
JD	B	4 ☐	2 ☐	☠
MD	A	2 ☐	☠

But both those and the 100000Td J4 P4 M2 have the same damage track under HG, regardless of which drive set (Bk2 or Bk5) they come from.

PP	4 ☐	3 ☐	2 ☐	1 ☐	☠
JD	4 ☐	3 ☐	2 ☐	1 ☐	☠
MD	2 ☐	1 ☐	☠

Size affects how hard it is to get those rating drops.

If one wants damage per X tons but directly tied to the Bk5 formulae, the hit size is then rating 1 for a 200 ton hull (for that is what Bk2 damage steps are from)... so
PP will be 1 per 8 tons at TL 7, 1 per 6 at TL 9, 1 per 4 at TL D, 1 per 2 at TL F
MD would be 4Td , but given all higher steps are 3%, let's use 3%, or 6 Td per hit
JD again is uneven, so lets again use the higher interval... so 2 Td per hit.
Different numbers, but holds the same conceptual basis... each hit poinnt of damage will do one step, and size again matters...

 

[mike wightman]

K'kree Alien module:

When K'kree ships constructed using this system are involved in space combat from basic Traveller, each hit on a drive reduces the drive number by 0.2 (one-fifth of a point). Drives function at their current number, rounding fractions down; this system is similar to the reduction of alphabetic drive letters by one letter for each hit.

So one weapon -1 hit in HG combat is the equivalent to 5 weapon hits under LBB:2.

 

[kilemall]

Well, this gets to the heart of my CT/HG hybrid.

Damage is by system by ton. Tonnage calculated by converting EPs in the black globe system to 10 tons. A single laser hit does 10 tons of damage.

If the damage exceeds the system itself, the system is destroyed. If it is less then the total system, the damage is stepped down by percentage of tonnage damaged against value of the system.

For instance, let’s say a 100 ton system valued at 6 was hit with 10 tons of damage. It would drop to 5. 50 tons of damage would render a value of 3. 90 tons would still render 1.

That gives you LBB2 style stepped damage across both it and LBB5 designs.

For a simpler not have to calc percentage of tonnage values per system and more random results, roll against percentage of system damaged per turn damage increase. Keep rolling every time it was successful until the step check fails, that is the performance level until damage control is done or more damage accrues.

Performance check is percentage of system divided by ten rounded up, roll at or under to take step loss. So to take our 100 ton example, 10 tons is roll 1-, no chance. 50 tons of damage is 50% so 5- for step failure. 90 tons so 9- check.

Steps are 50% value round down, value 1, system disabled.

 

[Spinward Flow]

One of the reasons I maintain they are different designs, LBB5 ones being souped up turbo versions that use less fuel in the smaller ships.

My current interpretation of the power plant fuel mismatch between LBB2 and LBB5 is that the standard drives are basically sized as being Drive-1 for specific form factors (an A drive is Drive-1 in 200 tons, for example). When you put a drive meant for a "bigger hull" into a "smaller hull" than it was intended for, you get a performance boost (a B drive is Drive-1 in 400 tons, but becomes Drive-2 in 200 tons).

In the case of power plants, those standard drives are "load balanced" for thermal management in the Drive-1 hull form factors ... but if you put them into smaller hulls, there is less thermal management "buffer capacity" because of the smaller hull (less radiative cooling area, etc.). The way to balance out the thermal management load is by expending more fuel so as to provide conductive/convective cooling capacity, relative to how much fuel is needed for the same drive in a larger hull.

In other words, as the ship gets smaller around a power plant, it needs more heat sink capacity which the smaller hull is unable to provide passively ... hence the LBB2 fuel formula.



Note that a similar idea is exemplified in jump fuel costs. A significant (if not an outright majority) fraction of the fuel expended to jump is "spent" on cooling the overclocked fusion reactor systems providing sufficient "spike" power output needed at wastefully low fuel efficiencies.

Use the same paradigm in a slightly different way and you build a backdoor excuse for why LBB2 power plants are "fuel inefficient" compared to LBB5 power plants in the ACS range of 1000 tons or less of hull size.

 

[infojunky]

K'kree Alien module:


So one weapon -1 hit in HG combat is the equivalent to 5 weapon hits under LBB:2.

In that frame yes.

 

[infojunky]

And that was kind of where I was going with that. LBB2 maneuver drives (as drives) present smaller targets than LBB5 maneuver drives. If you want to bundle them in with part of the power plant to make them "bigger" targets (and presumably reduce the exposure of power plants at the same time) that's a game balance decision.

Gotcha.

Consider this for hit location, Engineering is the line item on the chart with a sub roll for what is actually hit.

We may just be talking past each other though.

Yes it looked like that.