Duchy navies

[boomslang]

Regarding the TL issue, what if one's duchy subsector has sure high tech worlds, but has say a TL 10 industrial world. Wouldn't your fleet tend to be that TL then? or a majority of the tonnage. or maybe just the hulls and their armor (sigh)

It depends on where you buy/build them. High-pop worlds of necessity have a manufacturing capacity; if not rated Industrial, they also have local environments that permit open-air agriculture and do not pollute them to the extent they lose that ability. An Industrial world is simply one with a lot of people living on it whose atmo is incompatible with large-scale open-air agriculture -- the food they grow, probably in vats and sealed greenhouses mostly, will be primarily consumed locally, and they depend on manufacturing for pretty much everything.

Another consideration for the subsector navy is that it can concentrate on monitors (and perhaps possibly deep sites) to protect its high-pop (and therefore high-manufacturing, Industrial or otherwise) worlds, with starships dedicated mostly to scouting and raiding. One of the most important political signals you can send to a belligerent neighbor is a willingness to defend yourself strongly, but with a lack of 'force projection' capability outside your own territory...

 

[Matt123]

Under strict LBB2, you can build a Jump-4 courier at TL10 and a very nice Jump-5 one at TL11; this always annoys HG2 purists to no end, which is the primary appeal of it.

Grrrr, heretic!

 

[rancke]

Another consideration for the subsector navy is that it can concentrate on monitors (and perhaps possibly deep sites) to protect its high-pop (and therefore high-manufacturing, Industrial or otherwise) worlds, with starships dedicated mostly to scouting and raiding. One of the most important political signals you can send to a belligerent neighbor is a willingness to defend yourself strongly, but with a lack of 'force projection' capability outside your own territory...

The task of the system navies is to defend the individual systems. The IN is supposed to defend against major outside threats. The duchy navies are supposed to "fill in the cracks" between the two levels. As such it's quite possible that a duchy navy won't have any dreadnaughts. It's (IMO) very much less likely that it'd spend much (or any) of its resources on monitors.

But that was the point of my original post. That a referee shouild be able to tailor a duchy to fit almost any purpose. (Almost, not all).


Hans

 

[rancke]

Under strict LBB2, you can build a Jump-4 courier at TL10 and a very nice Jump-5 one at TL11; this always annoys HG2 purists to no end, which is the primary appeal of it.

I'm not an HG purist. I'm quite convinced that HG has simplifications and errors that makes it differ from the "reality"[1] of the setting in various ways (power plant fuel consumption rates, for instance :devil. But I do like my game rules to either reflect the setting accurately or explicitly acknowledge that this or that aspect of "reality" is being ignored for the sake of game play.

[1] I put quotes around the word to acknowledge that it is a fictional reality.​

When it comes to jump drive, we have abundant setting material that makes it clear that jump capacity is tied to tech level. A rule that allows the building of a jump-4 vessel at TL10 or a jump-5 vessel at TL11 is therefore wrong. Provably wrong. Trivially easy to prove wrong. Now, for the sake of game play, there may be reasons to ignore the fact that it is wrong (I don't see that anything is gained that couldn't easily be achieved in ways that didn't contradict the setting, but I suppose it's arguable), but that doesn't alter the fact that it's wrong. Provably wrong. Trivially easy to prove wrong.

And as I said, I generally prefer my rules to not be wrong, though I do accept exceptions (Like the flat galaxy ).


Hans

 

[boomslang]

When it comes to jump drive, we have abundant setting material that makes it clear that jump capacity is tied to tech level.

All of which is published after and contradicts LBB2, which in the case of a Small Ship TU, makes the limitation an entirely optional rule in a purely BT setting...



There are numerous other examples of late rules contradicting earlier ones to the point of incompatibility; for example, HG2 states quite clearly that Jump takes between 150 and 175 hours (a number which I have found works much, much better for mercantile campaigns), not the later, more-widely-embraced 168 ± 10% that MWM himself put forth into canon.

So later rules revisions "prove" nothing; they may "clarify" or "extend" -- and certainly the trend in the OTU has been to embrace them -- but there are a lot of things in LBB2 that define Traveller in ways that were, and thus still are, "official," yet have become deprecated by convention.

Trust me, when you are building a TL11, LBB2 Duchy Navy, wild ponis are not going to drag you away from your 400-dton, J-5 Fleet Couriers -- they are too blasted useful for C-cubed-I, and fit entirely within the old rules. (In fact, the drives used are actually TL10; you need TL11 only for the Comp Model/5, because computers are TL-limited since the earliest editions of Trav.)

 

[rancke]

All of which is published after and contradicts LBB2, which in the case of a Small Ship TU, makes the limitation an entirely optional rule in a purely BT setting...

Rules are merely reflections of the setting, and all setting details are optional. But two mutually contradictory options cannot both be true in the same universe. Either one can build a jump-4 ship at TL10 or one can't. In your TU, evidently one can. In the OTU, one can't. It really doesn't get any simpler than that.

So later rules revisions "prove" nothing; they may "clarify" or "extend" -- and certainly the trend in the OTU has been to embrace them -- but there are a lot of things in LBB2 that define Traveller in ways that were, and thus still are, "official," yet have become deprecated by convention.

Rules don't prove anything, true, since rules are inevitably simplifications of "reality". Setting details, OTOH, do establish the setting. The detail that jump capacity is linked to tech level establishes that in the OTU, you can't build a jump-4 capable ship at TL10. Which means that the rule in LBB2 that allows this is flawed in connection with the OTU. It really doesn't get much simpler than that.

Trust me, when you are building a TL11, LBB2 Duchy Navy, wild ponis are not going to drag you away from your 400-dton, J-5 Fleet Couriers -- they are too blasted useful for C-cubed-I, and fit entirely within the old rules. (In fact, the drives used are actually TL10; you need TL11 only for the Comp Model/5, because computers are TL-limited since the earliest editions of Trav.)

Trust me, I'm most unlikely to do any such thing. Unless I somehow wind up playing in your TU, in which case I'd naturally embrace the setting details you've chosen for it. But unless that happens, I'm really not very interested in the rules as they apply to your TU. I'm primarily interested in my own TU which, in the interest of being able to have access to the greatest possible amount of compatible material, I strive to keep as close to the OTU as I can.

Bottom line, I don't care if the Book 2 rules work for small ship universes or your universe or universes that exclude anything published after The Kinunir. They don't work for my TU, which I don't expect anyone else to give a hoot about, but they don't work for the OTU either, which I do expect people who engage me in discussion about the OTU to care about.


Hans

 

[Matt123]

Whilst I agree with the thrust of Hans arguement, I haven't pcked up book 2 for decades because of what I percieved back then as inconsistencies, I'm not sure I would go so far as to exclude bk 2 designs from the OTU. (in regards to Jump vs TL).

MTU uses HG2 exclusively. A small ships universe may use bk2 exclusively and abstract larger vessels. The OTU tho' IMHO includes bk2 & HG2 designs, rightly or wrongly (& I believe wrongly, but...). For example I doubt Don would "clarify" this officially & I'm not sure I would support the clarification anyway.

I also agree with Hans on the lack of need for major capital ships outside of the main Imperial Fleets. Planets & Sub-Sector navies may aquire them, but more for prestige than real need. OTOH to protect the sub-sector from having its economy destroyed "on the cheap", they will have a need for 20,000tn plus Cruisers to chase down light raiders (pirates or enemy) and monitors of various sizes for main world defence. In the event of major attack, the planetary defence systems will absorb the shock and delay/pin the attacker until Imperial Navy assets arrive arrive a couple of months later.

Mind you thats the "flexible reserve" defence in action, vs the "crust" defence where Imperial Navy assets are spread around the frontiers. There on the spot when they are needed, but likely not in enough strength to make a differance when facing a concentrated attack.

Current Imperial doctrine in the CT OTU is the flexible defence, since after the 4th or 5th FW (I forget which).