High Guard, not perfect, but good enough

[T. Foster]

I've finally (15 years later!) come to terms with MT ship design and am ready to declare that I like it better than HG -- a lot more options, more useful detail, and as long as you don't venture to close to the edge of the envelope, not a whole lot more work. Some changes/shortcuts I'm using (expanding on those suggested by Aramis earlier in this thread):

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1. Prefigure the LS package as a single entry, based on 1dton (13.5kl) and 100dton (1350 kl) blocks. </font>
2. Prefigure power plants in blocks of 250 Mw (1 EP) with fuel for 30 days (720 hrs). This gives 'close enough' values for estimation, and if you later feel the need to optimize the PP, it's easier to add or subtract from the 250 Mw baseline than to recalculate a whole PP from the ground up.
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3. Return to HG fuel requirements. J-drive becomes a flat 10%/Jn, fusion PP fuel requirements are divided by 6, giving results close to those in HG (where 1 ton of PP requires 1 ton of fuel to run for 28 days). This isn't necessarily a simplification, more just a matter of personal preference. </font>
4. Write the HG percentage-based formulae for j- and m-drives into the margins of the MT Drive Potential tables. Since you're going to be using a calculator anyway, it's usually quicker to just use the formula than to look numbers up on the table. </font>
5. Learn what to ignore. A lot of the info on the MT tables is only used for vehicles and small craft or extreme-TL (17+) craft, and there's no reason to even look at it when designing standard TL10-16 space-faring vessels. Once you remove all the extraneous stuff, the info load isn't nearly so overwhelming as it appears at first glance. </font>

With these shortcuts (and, probably most importantly, a lot of practice) I now feel the same way about MT ship design as I do MT char-gen and the MT task-system -- if forced to go back to the CT versions, I'd really feel like I was missing something.

 

[daryen]

Since we are doing our wish lists, here is what I would do with HG:
- Remove the 6G limit. If you power it and can fit it, go for it.
- Add a TL limit for G compensation. E.g. TL12-15 can only compensate for 6G. This will effectively cap acceleration, but still keep things a little more open for fighters.
- Add a touch more detail on 'stateroom'. Give some definite sizes and costs for 'sickbay' and things like that.
- Add explicit sensor rules to the computer rules. What can a 5 detect that a 3 or 1bis cannot?

Finally, and most importantly, MAKE MISSLES COST MONEY! I find it utterly amazing that missles are free and there are an infinite number of them in HG.

Other than that missle thing, I still really like HG. (Though the GT design system has grown on me.)

 

[PadawanJack]

Looks to me like the T20 guys seem to favor the HG approach, they've even applied it to regular vehicles, something I've tried to do myself.

I don't know about you MT guys, but in my games, starships and vehicles are usually just set decoration. HG provided just enough detail for when the going got tough.

Like Murph, I even designed small craft and used them as grav armor, as I believe that gravitics will likely blur, if not eliminate, the line between air support and armor.

The game should be about the adventures of the PCs and the GM should not have to spend 2 or more hours of precious design-time on an alien customs frigate that's going to get 2 minutes of 'air time'.

I applaude the T20 team's decision to follow in the footsteps of High Guard, which remains my favorite design system, and look forward to incorporating their vehicle design system into my repertoire of Traveller GM tricks.

 

[T. Foster]

Originally posted by PadawanJack:

I don't know about you MT guys, but in my games, starships and vehicles are usually just set decoration. HG provided just enough detail for when the going got tough.
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The game should be about the adventures of the PCs and the GM should not have to spend 2 or more hours of precious design-time on an alien customs frigate that's going to get 2 minutes of 'air time'.

Although I'm one of the "MT guys" I admit that I wouldn't use its system to design ships that are only going to be used for background color. I'll do full balanced MT designs only for ships that are going to play prominent enough roles in the campaign that it's important to know their exact crew size, pricetag, and cargo capacity. These ships are going to be part of every session, as important as any PC, so its worth it to me to devote a couple hours to the design.

For background/spear-carrier ships I'll use one of the following methods, depending on how much time I have available/want to spend:
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1. Do a HG design: MT and HG are compatible enough that most designs will come out within 15% or so, close enough for anything that's not a prominent/PC vessel. (time: ~30 min)</font>
2. Guesstimate: I can pretty much tell what values do and don't make sense. If all I need are a hull size, m- and j-drive ratings, and weapon load, I can pretty much make up something not-too-unreasonable on the spot. (time: ~5min) </font>
3. Use a Canned Design: Grab stats out of a book. The ship is only going to get 5 minutes of stage time, so who cares what system it was designed under or even if it's really legal. As long as it was originally published for some version of Traveller, it'll do in a pinch. (time: ~1min) </font>

Of course, given enough free time there's nothing to stop me designing MT spear-carrier-type ships just for fun and/or pratcice, but the above is what happens when I realize I need something NOW and don't have stats for it.

 

[StrikerFan]

Originally posted by PadawanJack:

Looks to me like the T20 guys seem to favor the HG approach, they've even applied it to regular vehicles, something I've tried to do myself.

I don't know about you MT guys, but in my games, starships and vehicles are usually just set decoration. HG provided just enough detail for when the going got tough.

Like Murph, I even designed small craft and used them as grav armor, as I believe that gravitics will likely blur, if not eliminate, the line between air support and armor.

The game should be about the adventures of the PCs and the GM should not have to spend 2 or more hours of precious design-time on an alien customs frigate that's going to get 2 minutes of 'air time'.

I applaude the T20 team's decision to follow in the footsteps of High Guard, which remains my favorite design system, and look forward to incorporating their vehicle design system into my repertoire of Traveller GM tricks.

Generally, I had a large stack of stock designs (designed by me or by others) to use in a situation. In a situation where the encountered ship/craft/vehicle was just background color, they were described as being `a XXX-class ship, looks like they replaced the laser turret with a second missile turret', and I went on. After all, as long as the players didn't attack it, the NPCs weren't planning on attacking them, so details didn't matter.
For those cases where the details DID matter, though, MT has more of those than HG does. Which is nice, when you want the ability to make minor customizations to the ship.
Besides, I have a couple different MT spreadsheets to use when I want to design a ship, so coming up with one is a matter of a few minutes work, not hours. It takes longer to do the descriptive write-up than to design the ship.

As to T20, what it does or doesn't do, I have no interest in it.

StrikerFan

 

[MarkJ]

For me the biggest problem with both HG and MT was the cost of Power Plants. Because the cost was based on size (mass) it meant higher tech power plants were both smaller and significantly cheaper. For example a TL 15 scout is 12Mcr (9.6 after discount) cheaper than a TL 9 scout. This works out as 22.71% cheaper than the scout in T20 lite. This also means it costs less to maintain.

This is particularly important for small Free Traders such as Type A and A2, a 22% reduction in operating costs is the difference between success and failure.

Now as far as I am concerned this is counter-intuitive, older designs of vessels should be cheaper to buy and maintain than newer designs.
So I am going to charge by the EP production rather than mass.

What are other peoples thoughts?

 

[T. Foster]

Originally posted by MarkJ:
For me the biggest problem with both HG and MT was the cost of Power Plants. Because the cost was based on size (mass) it meant higher tech power plants were both smaller and significantly cheaper. For example a TL 15 scout is 12Mcr (9.6 after discount) cheaper than a TL 9 scout. This works out as 22.71% cheaper than the scout in T20 lite. This also means it costs less to maintain.

This is particularly important for small Free Traders such as Type A and A2, a 22% reduction in operating costs is the difference between success and failure.

Now as far as I am concerned this is counter-intuitive, older designs of vessels should be cheaper to buy and maintain than newer designs.
So I am going to charge by the EP production rather than mass.

What are other peoples thoughts?

Try factoring in the exchange rates for items purchased from lower-TL worlds. While a huge inefficient TL9 PP will (and should) cost more than a small efficient TL15 one when both are built on the same world, when using CrImp (i.e. TL15 Credits) to purchase a TL9 PP from a TL9 world the favorable exchange rate should more-or-less even things out (the Exchange Rate Table, btw, isn't in HG or the MT rulebooks but can be found in various other sources: JTAS #3(4?), TCS, Striker (IIRC), and the TNE rulebook -- I think it may also be in Hard Times).

The maintenance cost issue is a little stickier. A possible compromise might be to base annual maintenance costs in some way upon the CP load of the craft (where TL is factored in) rather than just upon its pricetag, but I'd have to look more closely at that to see if it's workable.

All that said, though, I have no real problem with the notion that a state-of-the-art TL15 ship SHOULD operate more efficiently and cost-effectively than a lumering old TL9 dinosaur. In a perfect universe every trader would have a shiny new TL15 ship, but there's not really all that much TL15 shipbuilding capacity in the Imperium, and most of that (at least IMTU) is taken up with big-ticket contracts (military, megacorps, etc), so while the PCs can sit around admiring the specs of the new TL15-model free trader in a glossy promotional catalog, they'll be doing so while stuck in one of those ubiquitous duct-taped-together 'Millenium Falcon' look-alikes that the third-rate (i.e. TL13-) shipyards are free to keep churning out since they can't land the big (TL15) contracts.

 

[vegascat]

MT was ok if you had the time and need, but I still like the basic HG system. I could design a fleet in the time it takes to design a single MT ship. The ships in Fighting Ships of the Shattered Imperium seem like cookie cutter designs. Take a standard package and add weapons.

 

[StrikerFan]

Originally posted by vegascat:
MT was ok if you had the time and need, but I still like the basic HG system. I could design a fleet in the time it takes to design a single MT ship. The ships in Fighting Ships of the Shattered Imperium seem like cookie cutter designs. Take a standard package and add weapons.

FSotSI was a _HORRIBLE_ product. Whoever did most of the designs clearly hadn't looked at the rules at all closely, or thought about things a little. Nor had they listened to the conversations on-going at the time. No speed, no agility, too big for their weapons. As far as I'm concerned, the only design in the book worth the paper it was printed on was the 20-ton fighter.

StrikerFan

 

[savage]

In HG,
- we cut the ship pricing (10% of original costs) to improve trade and make them more accessible,
- improved the engine performance(x2)when enriched fuels were available, and
- we experimented with multiple wpn spinal mounts

I liked MT and TNE but they gave up the simplicity
of HG instead of building on it. The added features are nice but they seemed to require more re-design.

Savage

 

[tim_manley]

yeah, my vote is for Book2 and HG. With slight mods I think they're the best systems. MT added crap for no reason...I started using it then said to hell with it and went back. TNE? I never even bothered to play it (bought the rules, read them, then tossed them).

My favorite was/is still my CT with the house rules I've created.

But, I'm hopeful for T20.....

 

[Hal]

For what it is worth, I rather like the GURPS TRAVELLER design system. I'm not too *fond* of the interpretation for HG weapons converted to GURPS, but that's another issue entirely. The thing about GURPS is that once you build the "Modules" - they can be interchangable with HG's modules. All in all, I LOVE CT's HG ship construction rules for ease of design/playability. I don't like them for purposes of compatability issues with book 2 (ever build ships using both systems for the same task?). What would be fun though? If perhaps someone created a STARFLEET BATTLES damage chart system to be used with *any* of the TRAVELLER systems. Ah, pipe dreams - nice aren't they?

 

[Liam Devlin]

Played a gamer thru CT & MT. Got the gearhead bug in TNE. Well, lemme tell you, the HG is great for snapping out the ships of opposition real qucik (faster than a candybar takes to roll off your tongue). I use it to "snapshot" the ship, between game sessions I flesh it out TNE style. Heresy? I gives a damn!

For what its worth, the MT-FSOTSI was cranked out for detailing those ships the factions were falling back upon as the high tech got clobbered. Lack of finesse, speed it to the press stuff. AND it showed.
For those of the variants mood look up www.Downport.com under Freelance Traveller/ the shipyard. And "Doing it My Way". Handy place to mine ideas & make the HG stuf that didn't work for you work.
My .02 credits worth,