Five Things About High Guard

[robject]

Five Things I Like About High Guard

1. Batteries Bearing. It very cleverly emulates firing arcs without needing to deal with them, ever.

2. The Right Sizes. The design system handles Traveller ships and smallcraft of all useful sizes.

3. Orthogonal Weapons. Each weapon seems "designed" to "fit a purpose". Each does one thing well that other weapons don't. And those High Guard weapons and their "purposes" have greatly helped to define the Traveller Universe.

4. Riders and Drop Tanks. Integral support of interesting, special-purpose military strategies, such as battle riders and drop tanks, are simple concepts that add fun to the game.

5. Concise. Four pages of digest-sized design tables, plus supporting text, have encouraged Traveller gaming for thirty years, and hasn't been unseated yet.



Five Things I Don't Like About High Guard

1. Piles of Detail. The sheer number of batteries to account for makes battles tedious. Related to this is the concept of the squadron battle, where dozens of highly detailed ships fight dozens of highly detailed ships. Very quickly, these games degenerate into spreadsheet writing contests.

2. Iterative Design. The investment of time in designing a ship is the issue here, although once one is fluent, design can clip along at a decent enough pace. But it's an obstacle for the newbie and people like me who are detail-deficient.

3. Abstract Combat. Combat by the numbers, with one battle line and no strategic or operational consequences, is not fun.

4. Drive Percentages. The HG drive percentages broke compatibility with Book 2, which otherwise would have made a good, simple, adjunct design companion for HG. (Just reversing the Jump Drive with the Maneuver Drive percentages would have gone a long way in maintaining compatibility).

5. Complexity. Though concise, the rules are complex enough that optimized choices exist, but are not apparent -- and in some cases are not even desirable. In one extreme example, winning designs can be built which do not represent any intended game setting. E.G. Eurisko. The USP falls into the category of Complexity, too.

 

[mike wightman]

Ok I'll bite for a bit then hide away again

HG1 tried to use a logrithmatic scale for weapon batteries, but for some reason this was found wanting.

The TCS solution of using % based hits for number of batteries can be easily incorporated into such a logrithmatic scale - going back to the HG1 model of weapon factors may actually fix the problem of buckets of dice.

Adding a manoeuvre element to HG combat is dead easy, so is modifying the line of battle idea to allow squadrons to be presented rather than single ships.

The USP can easily by expanded - just add extra lines so that the stupid weapon restrictions of HG2 go away.

The m-drive/j-drive % switch should have been spotted and fixed, it wasn't.

One other thing I don't like about HG2 is the lack of difference between bay weapons and massed batteries; spinals, bays and turrets should get their own USP lines and bay weapons could then be made a bit more effective than massed turret batteries.

 

[Vladika]

One other thing I don't like about HG2 is the lack of difference between bay weapons and massed batteries; spinals, bays and turrets should get their own USP lines and bay weapons could then be made a bit more effective than massed turret batteries.

Added USP lines for sure.

Am I missing something on massed turrets vs Bays? They are different, Bays being more powerful.

10 missile turrets=max factor 7 where a 50dt bay is factor 9.

10 fusion turrets=max factor 9 where a 50dt bay is factor 9 BUT the turrets take twice the energy (40EP vs 20EP)

10 particle accelerator turrets=max factor 7 at 50EP where a 50dt bay=max factor 5 but at a lower 30EP or a 100dt bay=max factor 9 at a slightly higher 60EP

Lets skip meson as there is no current way to compare.

I like HG1s 10dton bays and there really isn't any difference in 10 laser turrets or a 10fton bay.

(A 100dton sand bay might need a bulldozer to shove the sand out...)

 

[Vladika]

Five Things I Like About High Guard

1. Batteries Bearing. It very cleverly emulates firing arcs without needing to deal with them, ever.

2. The Right Sizes. The design system handles Traveller ships and smallcraft of all useful sizes.

3. Orthogonal Weapons. Each weapon seems "designed" to "fit a purpose". Each does one thing well that other weapons don't. And those High Guard weapons and their "purposes" have greatly helped to define the Traveller Universe.

4. Riders and Drop Tanks. Integral support of interesting, special-purpose military strategies, such as battle riders and drop tanks, are simple concepts that add fun to the game.

5. Concise. Four pages of digest-sized design tables, plus supporting text, have encouraged Traveller gaming for thirty years, and hasn't been unseated yet.

Agreed in full!

Five Things I Don't Like About High Guard

1. Piles of Detail. The sheer number of batteries to account for makes battles tedious. Related to this is the concept of the squadron battle, where dozens of highly detailed ships fight dozens of highly detailed ships. Very quickly, these games degenerate into spreadsheet writing contests.

TCS statistical combat comes in handy.

2. Iterative Design. The investment of time in designing a ship is the issue here, although once one is fluent, design can clip along at a decent enough pace. But it's an obstacle for the newbie and people like me who are detail-deficient.

There are some good shortcuts. (tonnaged based systems verses percentage systems) also this works for both volume and energy using systems.

(BTW, when did YOU become "detail-deficient"?)

3. Abstract Combat. Combat by the numbers, with one battle line and no strategic or operational consequences, is not fun.

Can be made better by more range bands. Another, that I highly advocate for, is working escorts into the line REALLY screening other ships. Allow bay and turret weapons on those escorts to be used against the incoming fires on the ships they are screening.

Also having fighter squadron to mass their weapons and use a larger computer on an AWACs type ship or craft for attack (but not defense).

Strategic or operational consequences do exist for campaign games. They could for one off games too if Pyrrhic victories were somehow penalized.

4. Drive Percentages. The HG drive percentages broke compatibility with Book 2, which otherwise would have made a good, simple, adjunct design companion for HG. (Just reversing the Jump Drive with the Maneuver Drive percentages would have gone a long way in maintaining compatibility).

Easily fixed by reversing the two percentages.

5. Complexity. Though concise, the rules are complex enough that optimized choices exist, but are not apparent -- and in some cases are not even desirable. In one extreme example, winning designs can be built which do not represent any intended game setting. E.G. Eurisko. The USP falls into the category of Complexity, too.

I like the "not so obvious" as it creates room for varying ship and, fleet mixes. Otherwise all we'd have is a boring slug fest. Eurisko pointed out some serious flaws.

Most, if not all problems, could and should have been resolved. Instead we have gone through how many contradictory rules versions that STILL don't work?

 

[Supplement Four]

3. Abstract Combat. Combat by the numbers, with one battle line and no strategic or operational consequences, is not fun.

Like anything abstract in rpgs, it's up to the Ref to make it fun. He does this through his description.

Combat in AD&D is abstract. Roll a d20, add mods, try to hit AC or higher. But, in the hands of a skilled Dungeon Master, this mechanic becomes something like, "Sweat falls off your brow. Your heartbeat is pounding in your temples. With all your might you swing, bringing the edge of your weapon down onto the opening you see in the orc's guard. The thing snorts and sidesteps quickly, not quickly enough to avoid your sword skimming fur and skin out the thing's side, right above the waist. Roll your damage."

With Book 5 Capital Ship combat, it can be the same thing. The Ref should describe how the squadrons are making their attack runs. A quick impression of the Captain on the bridge of one of the ships, "Fire missle banks one and five!" Describing how lasers cut through the night to explode against the hull of a vessel.

Thing of the High Guard Combat Line the same way you do Range Bands when using CT Personal Combat. It's a measuring device--a mechanic to help out the Ref.

But, the life of the game should come from the pictures the Ref draws inside the player's head.

 

[rancke]

Like anything abstract in rpgs, it's up to the Ref to make it fun. He does this through his description.

Relying on a referee to compensate for a deficient rule is bad rules writing. It doesn't redeem the rule; it remains deficient. Admittedly sometimes there's just no practical way for rules to cover a subject adequately, forcing the use of abstractions, but that doesn't make them adequate.

Besides, the main purpose of rules is to help less-than-good referees to run games. The really good ones hardly need rules, the average ones need them, and the bad ones REALLY need them.


Hans

 

[Supplement Four]

Relying on a referee to compensate for a deficient rule is bad rules writing.

Sure. But, I don't think the High Guard Combat Line is a deficient rule, the same as the abstract CT Personal Combat Attack (it's abstract, too, just like the AD&D d20 attack throw).

It doesn't redeem the rule; it remains deficient. Admittedly sometimes there's just no practical way for rules to cover a subject adequately, forcing the use of abstractions, but that doesn't make them adequate.

Many, many games use abstract throws. It goes all the way back to board war games (or even games like Risk or Axis & Allies), where a dice throw is used to represent a lot of stuff happening in the round.

In AD&D, the single d20 attack throw represents all types of attacks, feints, jabs, and thrusts the attacker makes with his weapon over a minute of melee combat.

Old style WWII board games usually saw a unit reprsenting a tank squadron using a single dice throw to attack another unit (the unit representing an enemy tank squadron), and having the enemy unit destroyed or weakened if the attack was successful. The single attack throw could have represented something like 3 hours of tank combat across a range.

In High Guard Combat, abstract dice throws are used per weapon bank...it's the same type of thing.

When you add in "roleplaying" to your combat, you invite vivid Ref descriptions to capture the spirit of the tale.

 

[aramis]

anything under 1ktd is pretty well useless in hg, and not handled well.

 

[rancke]

Sure. But, I don't think the High Guard Combat Line is a deficient rule, the same as the abstract CT Personal Combat Attack (it's abstract, too, just like the AD&D d20 attack throw).

But that's a different argument. That's saying "The missing bits don't matter, the rule works fine without them" not "The referee is supposed to provide the missing bits". The first kind of argument I have no problem with. I may disagree, but that's just a matter of personal preference.


Hans

 

[McPerth]

Five Things I Like About High Guard

1. Batteries Bearing. It very cleverly emulates firing arcs without needing to deal with them, ever.

2. The Right Sizes. The design system handles Traveller ships and smallcraft of all useful sizes.

3. Orthogonal Weapons. Each weapon seems "designed" to "fit a purpose". Each does one thing well that other weapons don't. And those High Guard weapons and their "purposes" have greatly helped to define the Traveller Universe.

4. Riders and Drop Tanks. Integral support of interesting, special-purpose military strategies, such as battle riders and drop tanks, are simple concepts that add fun to the game.

5. Concise. Four pages of digest-sized design tables, plus supporting text, have encouraged Traveller gaming for thirty years, and hasn't been unseated yet.

Agreed. Only discrepancy is point 1, as it makes the ship seeming to only face enemies in one firing arc, if large enough for it to be affected by batteries bearing rule.

Five Things I Don't Like About High Guard

1. Piles of Detail. The sheer number of batteries to account for makes battles tedious. Related to this is the concept of the squadron battle, where dozens of highly detailed ships fight dozens of highly detailed ships. Very quickly, these games degenerate into spreadsheet writing contests.

2. Iterative Design. The investment of time in designing a ship is the issue here, although once one is fluent, design can clip along at a decent enough pace. But it's an obstacle for the newbie and people like me who are detail-deficient.

3. Abstract Combat. Combat by the numbers, with one battle line and no strategic or operational consequences, is not fun.

4. Drive Percentages. The HG drive percentages broke compatibility with Book 2, which otherwise would have made a good, simple, adjunct design companion for HG. (Just reversing the Jump Drive with the Maneuver Drive percentages would have gone a long way in maintaining compatibility).

5. Complexity. Though concise, the rules are complex enough that optimized choices exist, but are not apparent -- and in some cases are not even desirable. In one extreme example, winning designs can be built which do not represent any intended game setting. E.G. Eurisko. The USP falls into the category of Complexity, too.

I'd add some points here (already told about them several times in other threads):

modified point 3: for an abstract combat system, it takes too many rolls and variables. If you want an abstract system, better a single (or just a few) roll(s) to determine the full effect (as S4 says for WWII tank games).

6. rarity of ship destroying (or damaging beyond repair) makes hulls to easy to recover and repair in strategic games, meaning (unless assumed scuttled) the Pyrrhic victories Vadika talks about very unlikely (as the keeper of the "field" has lots of hulls to recover)

7. no provision for missile magazines nor cost

8. no provision for crew quality (even while the skills of the fleet commander and OC and pilot for every ship madify the rolls, the rest of the crew could as well be raw recruits and it will have no game effect)

 

[Vladika]

The "Pyrrhic victories" I was speaking of were in the context of a one off game.

I freely acknowledge that even a Pyrrhic victory in a campaign CAN be a good win (depending on further consequences) it has it's own built in penalty for poor leadership decisions.

My concern is for the design of ships/fleets being for a specific, and all too artificial, of a one time only battle. Eurisko was my case in point; that fleet was designed solely to win a particular battle with ZERO thoughts for future consequences for the winning fleet, as would need be for a campaign.

I don't now how, but the "winner" maybe shouldn't really win if the fleet is so obviously "wrong". I can't wrap my mind around the idea of a space-faring navy designing for just one unique battle.

 

[robject]

I'll basically agree with Hans' additional gripes, with the caveat that what we're really wanting is a wargame, and High Guard really isn't that -- it's more of a proving ground for fleet design.

 

[McPerth]

I'll basically agree with Hans' additional gripes, with the caveat that what we're really wanting is a wargame, and High Guard really isn't that -- it's more of a proving ground for fleet design.

I agree about this too, but most those ships are not thought for a RPG, but rather for a strategic game/wargame, as they far are too big for being PCs ships (except as background), and any confrontantion with a PC ship with one of such behemoths can be resumed as: can you fly, do you surrund or we begin chargen again?.

And even as background, it's detail is (IMHO) wrong, as to use a large ship as background you need more physical details (akin AHL maps) and less stastical ones.

IMHO, HG combat system tries to make a wargame out of an RPG background/system, as did striker, D&D mass battles, etc...

 

[mike wightman]

Am I missing something on massed turrets vs Bays? They are different, Bays being more powerful.

10 missile turrets=max factor 7 where a 50dt bay is factor 9.

10 fusion turrets=max factor 9 where a 50dt bay is factor 9 BUT the turrets take twice the energy (40EP vs 20EP)

10 particle accelerator turrets=max factor 7 at 50EP where a 50dt bay=max factor 5 but at a lower 30EP or a 100dt bay=max factor 9 at a slightly higher 60EP

Lets skip meson as there is no current way to compare.

I like HG1s 10dton bays and there really isn't any difference in 10 laser turrets or a 10fton bay.

(A 100dton sand bay might need a bulldozer to shove the sand out...)

I acknowledge your points - I just don't think they make bays weapons sufficiently powerful or different from massed turret batteries.

I toyed with a house rule that bay weapons don't suffer the +6 modifier on the damage tables that turret batteries do. This beefs up bays to the damage potential I want in my secondary batteries rather than there being very little damage difference between secondaries an tertiaries.

I like the 10t bays as well, and I would happily put them back into a HG3.

I'd also like to see a laser spinal.

 

[robject]

I agree about this too, but most those ships are not thought for a RPG, but rather for a strategic game/wargame, as they far are too big for being PCs ships (except as background), and any confrontantion with a PC ship with one of such behemoths can be resumed as: can you fly, do you surrund or we begin chargen again?.

And even as background, it's detail is (IMHO) wrong, as to use a large ship as background you need more physical details (akin AHL maps) and less stastical ones.

IMHO, HG combat system tries to make a wargame out of an RPG background/system, as did striker, D&D mass battles, etc...

I've been thinking about that, too. My conclusions are that (1) High Guard ship design needs to follow wargame rules, rather than RPG rules, and (2) its wargame rules need tweaking to be fun.

 

[mike wightman]

I'll basically agree with Hans' additional gripes, with the caveat that what we're really wanting is a wargame, and High Guard really isn't that -- it's more of a proving ground for fleet design.

HG2 with a streamlined resolution for number of batteries firing and a better manoeuvring system = instant operational/system scale war-game.

If I were MWM for BCS in T5 I would just take the best bits from HG1 and HG2 and add the missing manoeuvring element.

Move fleet cards around sub sector maps as the strategic element (FFWish), move squadron cards around a system map and resolve the battles when squadrons encounter squadrons at the initial ship level of HG (although I would change the rules about how only 1 ship is present from your battle line at a time so that escorts can actually support the ships they are escorting).

 

[mike wightman]

IMHO, HG combat system tries to make a wargame out of an RPG background/system, as did striker, D&D mass battles, etc...

Well GDW did primarily produce wargames, and some pretty good ones at that.

 

[McPerth]

I've been thinking about that, too. My conclusions are that (1) High Guard ship design needs to follow wargame rules, rather than RPG rules, and (2) its wargame rules need tweaking to be fun.

I would not say HG rules are not usable, they can be fine (with all its problems) for an strategic game as TCS, if you only achieve a system for the referee to manage it right (or an Imperial Starfires like game).

In such a game, diferences are as playing an ASL scenario (where you can sacrify many things to the victory conditions) to playing Red Barricades Campaign (where you must some times sacrify one day's victory in order to save resources for the next day).

In this aspect, I keep thinking the main problema in HG is the enormous number of rolls required to resolve an engagement, reducing it to a number-curnching game with little efect of luck (something perhaps aceptable from the relaism POV, but not so much form the playing POV). IMHO, MgT volleys rules are far superior (but they had nearly 30 years of study of HG and other games to design them...)

 

[McPerth]

I'd add some points here (already told about them several times in other threads):

modified point 3: for an abstract combat system, it takes too many rolls and variables. If you want an abstract system, better a single (or just a few) roll(s) to determine the full effect (as S4 says for WWII tank games).

6. rarity of ship destroying (or damaging beyond repair) makes hulls to easy to recover and repair in strategic games, meaning (unless assumed scuttled) the Pyrrhic victories Vadika talks about very unlikely (as the keeper of the "field" has lots of hulls to recover)

7. no provision for missile magazines nor cost

8. no provision for crew quality (even while the skills of the fleet commander and OC and pilot for every ship madify the rolls, the rest of the crew could as well be raw recruits and it will have no game effect)

Forgot before:

9. sandcasters use: I can accept defensive fire might be aimed to incoming missiles that are on the right way, but it's harder for me to swallow aiming the sandcasters to incoming lasers (or energy weapons) ignoring those that miss and dedicating each sandcster fire to an incoming battery (incoherent with the idea of launching a sand field to affect passing fire).

IMHO they should be treated like a screen, its rate depending on launchers vs ship size and they should also affect outcoming fire (albeit at lower rate).

 

[robject]

(BTW, when did YOU become "detail-deficient"?)

I do not enjoy dense encoding*. So, while I like the UPP and the UWP, I greatly dislike the USP. I think the "seven plus or minus two" rule applies here, somewhere.

I do not enjoy much math or open complexity. I do not enjoy designing a ship in High Guard. I miss things. Striker and Fire, Fusion, and Steel bore me to no end. I can't play 'serious' wargames very well -- I lose easily. These all tend to put complexity out in the open, and differentiate themselves from "light" wargaming.

I took Traveller5's Adventure-Class Ship design system and fit it into a Book-2-sized chapter, so that I could create correct T5 ships without bouncing off all of the non-essential rules. I proposed ways to get this Ease Of Use in the T5 text without removing anything.


* For gaming, anyway.