OTU Only: Gypsy Queen Class Fast Merchant, LBB2, 199Td, J26GP7

[AnotherDilbert]

If I remembered correctly, then the LBB2 PP need only power each item one at a time, ...

This says that the ship as assumed to accelerate steadily for the entire turn:

LBB2'81, p28:
_ _ In a player's movement phase, he or she will indicate the acceleration (new vector) desired and note any gravitational influence vector called for. They are all added to the ship's present vector. The ship then moves in the direction of its new vector, for the length of the vector. This vector then remains on the playing surface for reference during the next applicable movement phase.
_ _ Ships are restricted in the amount of acceleration which they may add to their current vector in one movement phase. Generally, a ship cannot accelerate more than 100 mm times its maneuver drive rating in Gs. Thus, a standard design type A free trader is capable of 1-G acceleration, and cannot add more than a 100 mm vector per turn. This does not count acceleration due to gravitational influence, and does not restrict repeated acceleration in succeeding turns. While a free trader can only accelerate 100 mm per turn, after 10 turns of continuous acceleration, it would have accumulated a vector 1 meter long.

There is no stopping acceleration to shoot in LBB2, the phases is just for player convenience.
And the computer rules are weird by todays standards, but reflects how mainframes were used in the 70s.

 

[atpollard]

This says that the ship as assumed to accelerate steadily for the entire turn:


There is no stopping acceleration to shoot in LBB2, the phases is just for player convenience.
And the computer rules are weird by todays standards, but reflects how mainframes were used in the 70s.

True, but how a PP interacts with a MD is 100% technobabble handwavium. The "weird" (no argument) computer rules, in contrast, are the driving force behind STARSHIP COMBAT. So it is not unreasonable to ask if the COMPUTER/COMBAT rules that affect everything else in Starship Combat also impact PP power allocation during combat.

Does HG not have a ship firing back that LBB2 would have destroyed and unable to fire back?
The combat abstraction paradigms seem dramatically incompatible for drawing HG assumptions (far more abstract) to apply to LBB2 (far more granular and detailed).

Consecutive LBB2 vs concurrent LBB5 seems as reasonable as PP-A generates 5 EP instead of 2 EP given the data on the combat systems.
Ultimately, the only CORRECT answer is LBB2 has no EP calculations. HG created the problem by insisting the two ship design systems SHOULD be used together.

Enter MegaTraveller to "fix" the problem ...

 

[Spinward Flow]

Or are you still maintaining that a power plant V in a 600 Dt hull produces 40 EP, i.e. has a potential of 6⅔

Why are you asking a deliberately knowing Catch-22 question that you actually don't want the honest answer to?
And even if I did give you an honest answer to the question, you would Catch-22 deny the legitimacy of any answer I gave you and the processes used to achieve it (like you've done repeatedly and continue to do so).

And here's the thing: it's a three-decade-old set of rules that's been superceded a few times and is now under different ownership -- the window for getting formal acknowledgement of errata is pretty much closed.

Meaning ... that even if additional errors are found (now), RAW Fundamentalists will deny that the errors are actually errors ... because Thou Shalt Not Find Faults In The Most Holy RAW ... especially if those faults, flaws and errors were there "all along, from the beginning" and are only NOW being recognized, pointed out and explained for peer review.

What I've said is that RAW has an error in it.

That is an opinion.

It may be an opinion, but it's also provable.
I've provided the proof ... three times over.
You've just simply denied any proof of error can exist as both impossible and totally unacceptable under any circumstances.

It's a bit like looking in a textbook with a misprint in it.
The misprint is ... 2+2=5

Decades later, someone comes along and says, "That's wrong, because 2+2=4. The textbook has an error in it."
And the Textbook Fundamentalists rise up and reject the argument, because for THEM ... 2+2=5 ... because that's what they were taught (by the book) and therefore it's what they've (always) believed, because the book "said so" ... and it is what they will continue to believe until they die.

It's provably wrong (just do the math), but to the Textbook Fundamentalists that proof doesn't matter ... and even worse, will NEVER be accepted as legitimate under ANY circumstances, whatsoever.
All that matters is what is written/printed in THE BOOK ... even if (and especially if) the book is provably wrong.

Never mind that there are OTHER documented and acknowledged errors in THE BOOK ... THIS bit CANNOT be in error too!
And so you wind up with people who will swear, up and down, that 2+2=5 ... because of RAW Fundamentalism.

"A closed mind is a terrible thing to celebrate."

And yet ... people do ...
Even worse, they think they're being "virtuous" in keeping their minds closed ... and they cannot (and will not!) be convinced otherwise.

were LBB2 phases not consecutive (a ship destroyed in one phase did not get to fire in a later phase) while LBB5 phases abstracted to concurrent (a ship could both be destroyed and fire in the same combat turn).

It was basically a matter of "fairness doctrine" in gameplay.

In LBB2, the paradigm was that the side with initiative could "go first" and potentially achieve a first strike advantage (crippling the adversary before they could adequately respond). It was somewhat akin to the WWI aerial duel idea of "attacking out of the sun" such that whoever fired first usually had a significant advantage ... and with the element of surprise could potentially "win with the first shots" rather than devolving into a dogfight/melee scrap.

So in LBB2, it was a "take turns" (me/you) but one side "did all their things" before the other side could "get their go" which created something of an asymmetry of advantage for whoever won initiative and got to be the attacker.



LBB5 worked on more of an "even playing field" where exchanges of fire were concurrent (or parallel, if you prefer) rather than sequential, in terms of process. Both sides got their opportunities to shoot ... and the damage results of all of that shooting were held in abeyance until all participants had been given an opportunity to shoot (and THEN the damage took effect for both sides at the same time). As a result, the "first strike advantage" of winning initiative was effectively dropped from the combat paradigm in order to equalize the chances to win for both sides of an exchange.

My surmise is that this was done largely for Fleet On Fleet reasons, in order to give "both sides an equal chance" in an exchange of fire. In a Trillion Credit Squadron type of context, building an enormous fleet and bringing it to the gaming table ... only to have it half destroyed before you can do anything with it because you lost the roll for initiative wouldn't feel very satisfying to (most) competitive gamers. You "did everything right, but were betrayed by a single dice roll" is not a very satisfying gameplay experience ... and is actually very likely to turn people off from the game (they leave and never come back).

The downside is that the "first attacker advantage" is something that is KNOWN and widely sought after in many fields of REAL combat (element of surprise, ambush, etc.) ... but it doesn't "feel fair" to gamers who want to have "equal opportunities to win" structured in ways that victory is decided by Player Choices rather than by dice rolls (or worse, a SINGLE dice roll for initiative). When a SINGLE dice roll is the first decisive step on a cascade to failure, rout and ruin ... that Feels Bad Man™. It may be REALISTIC ... but it doesn't "feel good" to be on the receiving end of it as a gamer.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Meaning ... that even if additional errors are found (now), RAW Fundamentalists will deny that the errors are actually errors

No. It's not that they aren't errors. It's that what's in the books, and in official errata, are by definition "the rules as written". Anything other than that -- regardless of its correctness or validity -- is not, and therefore falls into the category of "house rules".

Once again, I agree with the idea that a particular letter-size drive should have the same effect (in rating x tons) regardless of what hull it's in. (Also, likewise for fuel requirements but that's a separate issue.) It's still a house rule because nobody's going to bother to add it to an official errata listing after all these years.

 

[mike wightman]

Almost twenty years ago I posted on these very forums about updating the drive potential table, we (those of us that discussed my proposed table) even came to a consensus of sorts about an underlying progression and fixing some of the "mistakes" that progression throws up.

It was a good nature discussion about house rules, and it is always interesting when new people come along and think they have discovered something we have certainly known about for almost twenty years. And that is just the timescale for these boards.

I have a hand drawn drive potential table that "fixes things" dating back to the early 1980s, but none of it ever became official errata, it was all homebrew house rule since there was no way to discuss things with the folks at GDW...

Is the drive potential table a look up table or is it the product of an underlying formula?
It is a look up table.
Is the drive potential table fit for purpose?
Yes.
Are there some peculiarities?
Depends on the paradigm you wish to bring to the table.

The folks at GDW were happy enough with it to use it in three different versions of the rules and several print runs where errata could have been applied.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

True, but how a PP interacts with a MD is 100% technobabble handwavium.

Power plants and how power is handled is the most straight-forward part of Traveller spacecraft.
Power plant use fuel to produce power, 250 MW per PPn per 100 Dt.

M-drives use that power to produce thrust (by pure magical technobabble):
PP-1 worth of power produces 1 G thrust, i.e. 250 MW produces 100 DtG worth of thrust.

Does HG not have a ship firing back that LBB2 would have destroyed and unable to fire back?

Yes, everything is simultaneous in LBB5, both ships fire and then damage is inflicted.

The combat abstraction paradigms seem dramatically incompatible for drawing HG assumptions (far more abstract) to apply to LBB2 (far more granular and detailed).

They describe the same reality in different ways.

In both systems the ships accelerate and fires multiple times continuously throughout the turn. The phases and turn sequence is just an abstraction, well, two different abstractions.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Why are you asking a deliberately knowing Catch-22 question that you actually don't want the honest answer to?
And even if I did give you an honest answer to the question, you would Catch-22 deny the legitimacy of any answer I gave you and the processes used to achieve it (like you've done repeatedly and continue to do so).

What Catch-22? You said:

Incorrect.
...
A 600 ton hull with Maneuver-T (code: 6) and Power Plant-V (also code: 6) can be done.
Power Plant-V would be generating EP=40
After "paying for" Agility=6 (36 EP) out of the EP budget, you would have 4 EP remaining to split between computer and weapons (on a 600 ton hull).

You either consider that to be RAW or not? If it's your house rule, just say so, there's nothing illegitimate about that.

Meaning ... that even if additional errors are found (now), RAW Fundamentalists will deny that the errors are actually errors ... because Thou Shalt Not Find Faults In The Most Holy RAW ... especially if those faults, flaws and errors were there "all along, from the beginning" and are only NOW being recognized, pointed out and explained for peer review.

So, you still don't get RAW, Rules as Written.
It is simply what is written in the books.

It may be an opinion, but it's also provable.
I've provided the proof ... three times over.

Your house rule still isn't proof of anything, it's just your house rule, with no bearing on RAW whatsoever.
Repeating it louder, while calling people names, doesn't change that in the slightest.

You've just simply denied any proof of error can exist as both impossible and totally unacceptable under any circumstances.

You can easily prove it: Just point to the written rule, like this:

The letter marked in blue is clearly a '1', that is written, that is RAW.
If you think it should be something else, it's a house rule, and there's nothing wrong with that, it's just not RAW.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Is the drive potential table a look up table or is it the product of an underlying formula?

Yes.

It is a look up table that is the product of an underlying formula, with one minor tweak (a value that, for consistency with the table, should not have been rounded up by about 0.1 points) and a big block of ham-fisted adjustments for four out of the 24 drive sizes at the top end.

It should be possible to interpolate intermediate values within that block for intermediate-sized hulls and drives, if desired -- which could be conceptualized as an underlying formula even if it's more correctly described as a function.

Does that supercede what's on the table, or allow for filling in gaps in the table? It depends on whether you see the rules as dictating the game universe, or as a written description of that universe by non-omniscient authors.

The bottom line here is that one can point to rules as written and say, "it's like that because the rules say so, or because they don't specifically prohibit it." Anything beyond that requires justification -- for example, "if you interpolate between these chart values, or extrapolate from them, you get this" -- and is subject to dispute. Mind you, in some cases the justification makes more sense than the rules as written and reasonable players and referees will agree, but the burden of persuasion is on the person suggesting the variant interpretation.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

"if you interpolate between these chart values, or extrapolate from them, you get this" -- and is subject to dispute.

It's your house rule, and beyond dispute in YTU.

Mind you, in some cases the justification makes more sense than the rules as written and reasonable players and referees will agree, but the burden of persuasion is on the person suggesting the variant interpretation.

Some will like the house rule, some won't. You will never get everyone to agree...
It will not change RAW, of course, but why would you care?

 

[mike wightman]

Yes.

It is a look up table that is the product of an underlying formula, with one minor tweak

Then it isn't following a formula.

(a value that, for consistency with the table, should not have been rounded up by about 0.1 points) and a big block of ham-fisted adjustments for four out of the 24 drive sizes at the top end.

So it isn't a formula based table, as a formula would not require all these modifications.
As I said we had these discussions nearly twenty years ago, there is almost a formula, but not quite.

It should be possible to interpolate intermediate values within that block for intermediate-sized hulls and drives, if desired -- which could be conceptualized as an underlying formula even if it's more correctly described as a function.

The rules say you just treat any intermediate hull as the next hull size. The original discussion started as an attempt to fill in intermediate values, which is why it is a house rule.

Does that supercede what's on the table, or allow for filling in gaps in the table? It depends on whether you see the rules as dictating the game universe, or as a written description of that universe by non-omniscient authors.

The authors wrote the rules to work in a certain way, if you want to interpolate, extrapolate, invent a psudoformula/funtion call it what you will then it is a house rule.
As things stand you can not write a formula to produce exactly the same results as the table, likely because the authors didn't use a formula to make it up. We can get close, but not reproduce exactly.

The bottom line here is that one can point to rules as written and say, "it's like that because the rules say so, or because they don't specifically prohibit it." Anything beyond that requires justification -- for example, "if you interpolate between these chart values, or extrapolate from them, you get this" -- and is subject to dispute. Mind you, in some cases the justification makes more sense than the rules as written and reasonable players and referees will agree, but the burden of persuasion is on the person suggesting the variant interpretation.

Anyone can invent any house rule at any time. If it is consistent and works at your table then great - the expanded drive potential table we thrashed out twenty years ago was one such effort.
I doubt anyone ever published a design based on it.