Fire, Fusion, and Steel 3

[robject]

This is a call to the technical design community.

FFS, FFS2, GURPS, and doubtless other detailed ship design systems exist for Traveller.

Yes, Traveller is primarily a role-playing game. Yes, that means that the core rules are RP oriented, and therefore are detailed to the RP level but not much further. RP rules tend not to be overly technical -- within some margin.

Traveller5 ship design is somewhere around the size of MegaTraveller's ship design system. Yes, there are fewer design "axes" (no megawatts for instance) and so at its basic level -- for example, designing a simple trader -- ship design approaches Book 2 speeds. That was one design goal. But the RP scope is larger than MT's, and able to represent any ship in the Traveller universe, up to the point where fantastic tech finally renders vehicles strange. That was another design goal.

Fire, Fusion, and Steel 3

Detailed design (FFS) was not a design goal. But a number of collaborators of T5, including Andrew Boulton and Scott Martin, were great supporters of detailed design. As a result, I think T5 ship design has plenty of hooks from which to hang a detailed design system. This hypothetical system has been called Fire, Fusion, and Steel 3.

Goals. The goal of FFS3 is to provide a playground for technical designers who wish to go deeper into the technology of Traveller, which includes power, mass, stress, radiation (of all energy types), and surface area as design constraints, in a way which could serve the RP community. My goal for such a system would be to use physics (and pseudo-physics where necessary) to create tools for building the components that T5 presents out of the box -- and to act as a factory for generating hypothetically new or hybrid components (I think that could be fun and useful). This includes all hulls (including pod hulls), landing gear, wings, fins, gravitics systems, armor design, drives, power systems, surface emplacement design, sensors, weapons, defenses, life support systems, computers (yes, how to build a custom Model/x computer) and control console design, air/cargo locks, smallcraft docking systems, fuel processing systems, living spaces (including barracks), labs and lab equipment, environmental cargo spaces, and some things I've forgotten.

Easier Targets. I think these tools would potentially be easier targets than those produced by earlier systems, because technological stage effects are factored out into the RP rules already. Thus the formulas would not generally need to take TL into account, except where common sense dictates different equipment for different TL ranges. Note that in some cases, such as sensors, different equipment is already posited for different TL ranges. Sensor design may thus focus on different subtleties in FFS3 than in FFS2.

Collaborative. Because we all have lives and a stack of things in our inboxes, and because I know physics is not my preferred activity, I open this up to ideas, algorithms, processes, and formulas from anyone and any Traveller rules systems.

If your interest lies here, let me know.

I expect this to be a freely available Spreadsheet and PDF, attached to COTI. There are other possibilities, but I'll start modestly -- the project itself is ambitious enough not to complicate matters further.

 

[mike wightman]

Initial thoughts.
You will never equal FF&S unless you have all the parameters of FF&S, you can produce simplifications from the crunchy book of goodness (eg take a look at how GT ISW abstracted hull surface area to a hardpoints rule) but to rival its depth you need to consider:
HULL:
hull material thickness
hull surface area
hull volume
hull configuration (which modifies some of the above)
POWER
abstract it to EPs if you want but you must have some sort of power allocation or book keeping system to make sure every system on your ship works, or you have to trade off on something.
For 'realism' energy has to be linked to movement.

 

[robject]

Mike, that's what I'm talking about. Hence armor "creation", for example. And FFS2 used megawatts and megajoules, so that's what we'd be using here ... although for the moment I'm using T5's EPs. It's easy to convert from EP to MW, but hard to use straight MW and then decide to change the energy consumption values on everything.

"Every software problem is solved by another layer of indirection, except for the proliferation of layers of indirection."


POWER INTRODUCTION

In ACS there are two power schemes for starships: Centralized and Distributed. There are benefits and drawbacks to both systems: consult the T5 Core Rules for details. FFS3 design adds a Hybrid power scheme.

For distributed power, minor systems, including weapons, sensors, and defenses, operate independently under their own power. This is the standard configuration for ACS.

For centralized power, all systems depend on the central power plant. Weapons and defenses generally compete with the drives for power, while 1% of the central power plant's energy is divided up among all other power-using elements of the ship. All energy use is tracked, and usage penalties between drives and weapons are noted.

FFS3 uses Centralized power by default; however, one or more F+ power plants may be installed to decouple selected systems from the power plant. This is the Hybrid power configuration.


POWER GENERATION

T5 ship design is implicitly backed by Energy Points: a Type A power plant produces 100 EP, a Type B produces 200 EP, and so on up to a Type Z which produces 2400 EP. Any plant is slightly more efficient than smaller sized plants, but once you're at F or so the difference is negligible.

The smallest power plant size appears to be 4 tons. Marc never signed off on a 3 ton version, for example (not including technological stage effects).

Example: a T5 "Type A" power plant displaces 4 tons and produces 100 EP. If a High Guard "Type A equivalent" puts out 2 HG EP (I can't remember!) then 1 HG EP = 50 T5 EP.

Assuming 1 HG EP = 250 MW, then 1 T5 EP = 5 MW.

Other power sources have different power densities, of course.

FusionPlus

If I recall, the smallest F+ unit is 17 liters, outputs 10 Kj per second. Say it costs Cr1260 (= MCr1 per ton). Waste heat storage/handling equipment is sold separately and is likely to be bulky. It may prove helpful to in-system craft, but I don't know at this stage. Waste heat handling is a very real problem and these power plants put out a lot of energy.

Waste Heat Storage and Handling

Part of the cost of power generation is the handling of waste heat. There are some old school ways of dealing with this (big-ass radiator fins) but I think a better solution is disposable fractal ceramic coils for storing the heat. Ultimately a discussion about heat storage will merge with the creation of hulls and armor: in other words, the materials table for armor is likely to also have a heat-storage index.

I can see a mini "heat management" maker... with descriptors such as (basic, standard, improved, advanced, disposable), modifiers such as (surface, linear, fractal), armor materials, mediums such as (lithic, conductive, supercooled) and devices such as (radiators, fins, grids, coils).

POWER USE in WEAPONS

Using HG as a model, we know that a laser turret sucks down 1 EP when used. In T5, that's 50 EP... but is likely a factor of the type and number of guns installed. So for instance, if a quad laser turret (4 guns) uses approximately 50 EP, then that would be 12 EP per gun, but is probably more involved than that.

However, "distributed power" ship designs would also require a little Fusion+ (and a capacitance-storage of some sort) to allow independent operation of a turret. (And some designs can even come with a gravitic drive, but that's another matter). So a self-contained power system needs to be designed which can run the emplacement for a few hours. This allows small ships to bear large weapon systems.

In centralized systems, weapon systems directly work off the main power plant.

Beam laser emplacement costs (with integral power supply) probably typically interpolate like this:
7-9 tons: MCr 4.5 + (vol-6)/20.
10-50 tons: MCr 4.5 + vol/50.
60 tons and up: MCr 5.5 + (vol-50)/10.


POWER USE in DRIVES

Power use in drives has always been rather straightforward, and it's Book-2-straightforward in T5: a Drive A uses a Power Plant A (and thus 100 EP), a Drive B uses a Power Plant B (200 EP), and so on up to Drive Z using Power Z (2400 EP). Thus standard starships can use maneuver or jump, but not both at the same time - although jump capacitors might possibly be able to hold a charge for a turn (this is probably part of the design adjustment in ACS between distributed and centralized power).

POWER USE in OTHER SHIP SYSTEMS

Assuming distributed power, it is reasonable that there is one or more small Fusion+ power plants installed in the ship to power the computer, life support, lifters, and so on. In non-distributed models this is not present, and these systems must charge their batteries off of the main power plant.

Note that in non-distributed systems, power plants might well devote 1% of their power to non-drive, non-weapons systems; if so, then the total drain on the power plant to non-drive systems would typically be (perhaps) no more than 1 EP per 100 tons of ship. Since 1 T5 EP is likely to be 5 megawatts, this is not unreasonable. In fact, since a starship is not the size of a city, it is likely that non-drive systems consume significantly less than 1% of the power plant's generation capability.

At any rate, detailed design would itemize power use and enforce a limit based on the powerplant, or require sufficient auxiliary power generation for distributed systems. I would expect that the sum power use by non-drive, non-weapons systems on a 100t starship is typically at most 10 KWh.

 

[Reban]

I do love FF&S and FF&S2, its what lured me into Traveller in the first place. I spent years reading the books, planning out the vehicles I wanted to design, and then a few minutes after starting I'd get bored because I'd have to keep tweaking parts to make everything fit.

I love the Makers including the ship design in T5 because its much more of a process that moves forward with each step.

Having said all that I love the idea of a FF&S3 too.

One thing I notice though Rob is that you're focused on Ship design and its constituent parts. The other versions of FF&S encompass vehicle design and weapons design. None of that in FF&S3?

I'm rubbish at math but good on concept, and always willing to be the idiot something is idiot proofed against, so count me in.

 

[whartung]

Do we need a new one?

FF&S1 was very nice.

FF&S2 was a disaster. I had no patience for it. Super dense, awful printing bugs. I think we were lucky we got margins in that thing.

But, for example armor, the armor system for ships in FF&S1 is pretty generic. Now, the "effects of armor" are system specific, but the armor system is a shell of material with a thickness and costs X, weight Y tons, and costs Z.

Simply, can we just add, say, a Disintegrator design sequence to FF&S 1 and be done with it? Come up with a sequence for skip drives or whatever else new tech we have? FF&S is generic, it's just a bunch of sequences used to build things that can be bolted together and put in to ships.

Also, as always, I must ring the "COMBAT, COMBAT, COMBAT" bell if you're talking about a new ship design system. TNE had FF&S from the beginning, so combat had it in mind, from the simpler version in TNE to BL to the abstractions in BR.

Some folks have complained about building things like a Panther tank, or designing a 30 caliber rifle and how the results differ from real life. I don't know if anyone is able to try and tweak those sequences.

Personally, I hate the idea of a FF&S 3 because of the "Book 5 vs Book 2" problems that come up. "You can't design an air raft like the ones in the book", and things like that. As much as you want the design system to create "real things", I think it's more important to be consistent with itself. And then you have the stock "things" (air rafts, ATVs, Gauss Rifles, Imperial Heavy Tanks, etc.) that were just made up out of whole cloth and can't be duplicated in the system.

How anyone thinks a game system can nuance the differences between a 1911 .45 and a Glock in 45 is beyond me. So, expectations need to be set.

I'm not familiar enough with T5. I've whined for years that there should be an FF&S system first, and an ACS system built from that, with a compatible combat system. But I really don't know why we need a new one, versus bringing FF&S 1 or 2 "up to date" with errata fixes, balance tweaks, and any new sequences for tech introduced in T5.

What I would like, however, is that whatever is done, I would like the math published. Most of the tables are derived from formulas, with some rounding. The tables are nice, especially with an ACS, but the math is better.

 

[SanDragon]

How anyone thinks a game system can nuance the differences between a 1911 .45 and a Glock in 45 is beyond me. So, expectations need to be set.

I almost jumped all over you on this one, until I read it again...

And then re-read it.

And came to agree with you.

So, other than this, I'll agree and move on.

A game should NOT get so far into the weeds as to try to nuance two pistols in .45.

 

[robject]

Do we need a new one?

While Traveller5 does not need one, some people would probably like to see one. If there are people who like this sort of thing, I'm perfectly willing to encourage them to geek out. I'm pegging this as a fan effort, so it's not canon anyway.

 

[aramis]

I almost jumped all over you on this one, until I read it again...

And then re-read it.

And came to agree with you.

So, other than this, I'll agree and move on.

A game should NOT get so far into the weeds as to try to nuance two pistols in .45.

Actually, it's rather simple to nuance the difference: 2 TL difference in material, resulting in less mass and lower maintenance hours.

 

[SanDragon]

Less mass resulting in a higher recoil with the same powder charge.

But, again, nit-picking!

I like the T5 makers, but I wish they were more properly... linear.

Either the tables in the book, or the design sheet, set up in such a way so I'm not paging back and forth.

 

[robject]

One thing I notice though Rob is that you're focused on Ship design and its constituent parts. The other versions of FF&S encompass vehicle design and weapons design. None of that in FF&S3?

With volunteers willing to do the work, anything can go into FFS3. I'd like a detailed version of robot design to be in there, as well.

I'm not likely to be able to write any chapter of FFS3 to the satisfaction of people who love Striker, FFS, FFS2, GURPS technical design, and so on.

 

[kilemall]

I am not familiar with T5 or TNE design/FF&S.

I did pick up the T4 Central Supply Catalog for really cheap, looking for a source of gizmos, and got the whole Milieu:0 trade for empire and vehicle build system instead.

Comparing T4 to MgT and of course back to Striker, I can see the veins of gearheadium ore running through it all, as each edition strove for the right or maybe at least a different balance of gearhead to RP.

So in that continuum of nuanced Traveller systems, how gearhead is TNE to Striker/MT/T4/T5?

Secondly, do any of these systems address power allocation per X round? The centralized power plant at least implies it.

 

[aramis]

I am not familiar with T5 or TNE design/FF&S.

I did pick up the T4 Central Supply Catalog for really cheap, looking for a source of gizmos, and got the whole Milieu:0 trade for empire and vehicle build system instead.

Comparing T4 to MgT and of course back to Striker, I can see the veins of gearheadium ore running through it all, as each edition strove for the right or maybe at least a different balance of gearhead to RP.

So in that continuum of nuanced Traveller systems, how gearhead is TNE to Striker/MT/T4/T5?

Secondly, do any of these systems address power allocation per X round? The centralized power plant at least implies it.

Most Gearheaded	GT using GV
|​	FF&S2 + TNE
|​	FF&S1 + TNE	T5
|​	MT	Striker	MGT draft 3.2
|​	CT+ Bk5 (either)	MGT 1E Core	MGT 2E w/ MHG2e	GT Core	GTIW Core
Least Gearheaded	CT Core

Note that some of the TNE extensions to FF&S didn't make it from TNE supplements into FF&S 2... and FF&S 1 and 2 are both equally valid choices for both TNE and T4... T4 does less with the stats, but still, they're in the designs.

As for power allocation - only MGT Draft 3.0 and 3.2 do so on a per turn basis. There's an article for limited doing so in MT. Ref's are expected to improvise it, but note that it's once per turn in MT.

 

[kilemall]

Most Gearheaded	GT using GV
|​	FF&S2 + TNE
|​	FF&S1 + TNE	T5
|​	MT	Striker	MGT draft 3.2
|​	CT+ Bk5 (either)	MGT 1E Core	MGT 2E w/ MHG2e
Least Gearheaded	CT Core

Note that some of the TNE extensions to FF&S didn't make it from TNE supplements into FF&S 2... and FF&S 1 and 2 are both equally valid choices for both TNE and T4... T4 does less with the stats, but still, they're in the designs.

As for power allocation - only MGT Draft 3.0 and 3.2 do so on a per turn basis. There's an article for limited doing so in MT. Ref's are expected to improvise it, but note that it's once per turn in MT.

Ah very good perfect, along with nice syntax for table building.

I particularly didn't know how close/derivative T4 was to TNE.

Except I don't know what 'using GV' means- Gurps Vehicles, generic system vehicle rules?

In general I like wonky build systems because by the time you get done you KNOW what your tradeoffs where and why every thing is there on the ship/vehicle/weapon and why other things aren't.

One of my computer sayings is 'you don't understand it until you build it, configure it, then teach it'.

So a real payoff for something like the players' default ACS, or a fine bit of toy they get their hands on as a result of a patron or merc contract, or a clever bit of gear they design themselves.

The trouble is that there are not that many hours in a day to design all the vehicles guns and ships one may ever want to that detail when buildings, settings and character/NPC/plot work awaits. So any system should have the shorthand version handy for sketchy background gear or quick 'Ididn'thavetimetogearheadthenewvillain' situations.

 

[kilemall]

And I'll offer my power allocation working scale for the CT:HG:Mayday hybrid-

1000 second turns for map maneuver if nothing else

10 100 second phases, which are for character actions, ship maneuvers between agility/burn, energy allocation decision, weapons charging/firing

10,000 km hexes for fine ranging/sub-100,000 km distances, 100,000 km hexes for 100D/fleet sized maneuver/high-G

1 EP (power generation) = 2 MW constant

1 EP (weapons use, jump charge) = 2 GW


The last one was something I came up with this week trying to figure out the relationship in performance between Striker fusion and reasonable spaceborne fission based on current warship use plus space enviornment considerations. Not sure how badly I want to hew to Striker performance.

That may seem cart before the horse, but in fact you MUST determine your time/distance/RP action-reaction mechanisms/phasing BEFORE settling on vehicle/gear design rules.

 

[kilemall]

Also, heat handling, I'm assuming a good deal of thermogenic conversion subsystems that are effectively 'distributed power' systems for life support.

The idea is that life support is so critical that it's about the last thing to go on a ship before destruction/collapse, so even with computers and power gone, the ambient heat will keep the oxygen coming for awhile afterwards (along with emergency batteries and the like).

It also alleviates the 'glowing IR beacon in space' issue to where CT detection is a bit less fantasy, and true stealth ships are much more carefully thermogenic to allow for better results while on low power as opposed to a full power down (for much greater expense).

This aspect illustrates some issues I have with what I saw of T4 vehicle building applied to starships.

Makes perfect sense that something like an airplane or gravtank that is small and likely not to last long in combat would have a specialized sensor or power system to knock off.

But for a starship in that much more hostile an environment and that much money per ship, small fixed sensors that can be antenna killed easily seems a bad engineering choice when I think you would have dozens, maybe hundreds of sensors in a mini-VLA.

 

[nobby-w]

The trouble is that there are not that many hours in a day to design all the vehicles guns and ships one may ever want to that detail when buildings, settings and character/NPC/plot work awaits. So any system should have the shorthand version handy for sketchy background gear or quick 'Ididn'thavetimetogearheadthenewvillain' situations.

Once when I had some time on my hands I did a whole bunch of Striker kit - not for big, well-funded factions, but emphasising the sort of second-tier mid tech kit that you might actually expect to find on mercenary gigs.

I started with the assumption that not every NPC is Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark, and therefore most do not have access to an extensive R&D department to make custom hardware. On that basis I made a bunch of second-tier equipment - Transport vehicles, grav sleds, APCs, tac missile systems, mid-tech grav tanks and gunships, self-propelled or towed chassis for B-guns, VRF gauss guns, lasers, artillery of one sort or other and so forth.

Largely this was TL10-12 equipment for MTU (which was a TL12 setting), but would also be suitable for an OTU setting as TL10-12 kit of the sort that might turn up in the hands of a mercenary unit or other mid-tech force. I also did a few families with different variants, and did a bit of work on some more-or-less standard starships.

This was the common, widely-available tech distributed en-masse by various parties who were prone to such things. Therefore there's a lot of this sort of kit in service in backwater locations and a lot floating around the grey market. Unless your villain happens to own a large aerospace company then they can just buy standard kit of the grey market like everyone else.

Sadly, the authors of 101 Vehicles type publications tend to rather neglect this sort of kit, but it is actually the sort of thing that would be relevant to a mercenary game. Realistically, Duke Norris's state-of-the-art TL14 grav tank isn't terribly relevant to actual role playing¹ so it's almost a waste of time publishing it.

¹ Could we have a show of hands on how often you've played in a game where an antagonist came after your party with a squadron of TL14 grav tanks, or even just one? Can we have a show of hands of folks where this has happened more than once?

 

[aramis]

Ah very good perfect, along with nice syntax for table building.

I particularly didn't know how close/derivative T4 was to TNE.

Except I don't know what 'using GV' means- Gurps Vehicles, generic system vehicle rules?

GV or G:V is standard gurps abbreviation for GURPS Vehicles...

I just relaized I left out GT core - added it.

 

[David Johansen]

I'd certainly favor a Fire Fusion and Steel approach over the makers. The makers are neat but they often produce nonsensical results and aren't integrated all that well.

 

[Hyphen]

¹ Could we have a show of hands on how often you've played in a game where an antagonist came after your party with a squadron of TL14 grav tanks, or even just one? Can we have a show of hands of folks where this has happened more than once?

IMTU, where the 5FW started in 1105 just to throw players off, the PCs rescued the remnants of the 4518th from Efate. The party had a Zhodani Z80 come after them during that scenario...

But more than once? Well... not yet...... ;-)

I'd also argue with Wil that the original Striker was still one level more "gearheady" than MT, since what MT did was to create canned/pre-generated versions of Striker kit.

 

[jec10]

I'm intrigued by the prospect of a FF&Sv3. As a pretty prolific user of CT/Striker and TNE/FF&S I think one key innovation would be to have spreadsheets for the new design system from the get-go.

I can whip up a Striker vehicle in a few minutes nowadays with the spreadsheet I use, which actually makes the design system useful for GMs and/or adventurers. But back in the day with pencil and calculator it just wasn't possible to do it in any reasonable timeframe. And FF&S was exponentially worse. Again, today I have a spreadsheet that makes a design a ten minute job at max.

And nobby-w, as a military-oriented Traveller player I've had plenty of use for grav tank designs. Agreed those into exploration-oriented play or trader-oriented play would have less use for them.