mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
1EP = enough to move a 100t ship at 1g
1EP = the power input of a beam laser
do you understand the issue?
Idea for Change to Book 2 Designs
- Thread starter daryen
- Start date
1EP = the power input of a beam laser
do you understand the issue?
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
1 beam laser doing damage at 3 light seconds. Not casual.
Sure, which is why you have to decide if you are playing a fleet demolition derby game, or a RPG game. The CT/HG hybrid I have has 100 second tactics/allocation turns- indeed the tactics largely are power allocation.
All power to spinal weapon to fire 200 seconds before the enemy expects and catching them without agility as they do their own power up? That sort of thing, along with a few other different paradigms (critical is disable not destroyed, as range increases less chance to hit and less damage or no pen, missiles are more lethal at higher impact velocity etc).
Agreed. But they tried. And given the scope of HG (it's more the build rules for TCS, than it is a replacement for LBB2), it's not terrible.
More to the point, what actually uses the power plant output, and for how much of the time? The 4-week fuel allocation hides a lot of detail, and the TCS/JTAS#14 power-down rule doesn't provide a lot of clarity.
It is great as its own game, I played it a lot and had fun, though most RPG'ers won't engage with that kind of wargame design anymore.
"The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good."
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
Ok, I brought up EP... With that EP is just a design consideration, in function in Book5 once the agility calculation is done it is done with.
But, it does speak to the size of the plant if you want both powered weapons and agility.
Theoretically one could model that with Book2 in requiring a larger letter code power plant beyond what is required for the drives.
But, it does speak to the size of the plant if you want both powered weapons and agility.
Theoretically one could model that with Book2 in requiring a larger letter code power plant beyond what is required for the drives.
It's sort of in there, in the 1 hardpoint per 100Td limit, and the Double Fire program/ "+1 power plant letter" rule.
Sort of.
That's where I started...
Well, and how the smallcraft in the Traveller Book where rewritten..
Agility was the most important to get the first shot in, though then everyone had it, so as was kind of moot. That said agility isn't a bad concept, I would probably model it more along the lines of max G acceleration of 3 for military ships, and anything over, up to +3, becomes a DM that the pilot can choose to apply for an evade roll, or bonus to the Gunner's roll for lining up a shot.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Actually, if you're paying close attention, you'll see that EP "are a factor" in the weapon constraints for LBB2.81 small craft as well. The problem is, it's an inconsistent "pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain" sort of exercise due to the mish mash of paradigms involved. You have to squint a little, in order to read between the lines, but it IS there.
The Traveller Book was just LBB1-3 (plus some extras) printed in a new form factor.
Well, yes.... I was commenting on my line of thought in response.
Is stressing or emphasizing EP really that worthwhile in a set of mechanics that doesn’t even worry about the mass of the vessel being moved under gravitic drives.
If gravity is “the the curtature of spacetime, caused by the uneven distribution of mass, and causing masses to move along geodesic lines”, then the mass of a ship could be important. Unless, of course, the mechanism of the drive use undiscovered physical phenomena that rely on volume, in which case EP can be a thing again. Magic beans I think someone wrote.
So either way, we just shouldn’t sweat it too much. : ]
If gravity is “the the curtature of spacetime, caused by the uneven distribution of mass, and causing masses to move along geodesic lines”, then the mass of a ship could be important. Unless, of course, the mechanism of the drive use undiscovered physical phenomena that rely on volume, in which case EP can be a thing again. Magic beans I think someone wrote.
So either way, we just shouldn’t sweat it too much. : ]
If you sweat real physics, you should not be doing Traveller anyway, or certainly not the torchship vibe.
As a game mechanic it just depends if you want a decision/player agency element to starship operations. It can be roleplayed out just as well for certain tastes.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
For some reason gravitics and the jump drive are volume based rather than mass based.
MHE (my humble explanastion or my headcanon exposition take your pick)
gravitc devices produce fields that affect everything within that field
grav plates - mimic the effect of falling towards the plate
inertial compensators - apply a force to counteract acceleration 9yet don't interfere with the grav plates)
null-grav modules - decouple from spacetime curvature and redirect the motion
m-drive - reduces the inertial mass of the ship so that ion drivescan produce 1-6g
gravitics are also how waste heat is managed
the jump drive is a tangential discovery that may or may not be unlocked by a sufficiently advanced culture
MHE (my humble explanastion or my headcanon exposition take your pick)
gravitc devices produce fields that affect everything within that field
grav plates - mimic the effect of falling towards the plate
inertial compensators - apply a force to counteract acceleration 9yet don't interfere with the grav plates)
null-grav modules - decouple from spacetime curvature and redirect the motion
m-drive - reduces the inertial mass of the ship so that ion drivescan produce 1-6g
gravitics are also how waste heat is managed
the jump drive is a tangential discovery that may or may not be unlocked by a sufficiently advanced culture
IMTU (Solis) I call the M-Drive a Super VASIMR connected with a Clarke type inertial suppressor. I call jump a wormhole, and have mused on saying jump fuel is metastable exotic matter, negative mass protium used to tunnel through. Really a quick hand wave and done, I loathe changing rules if I don't have to, changing the explanations is fine though.
If I remember right, LBB2'81 rebuilt '77's small craft using LBB5'80, and used EPs without saying that's what they did. Should be easy to check, and when I have time I'll probably do that.
LBB2 maneuver doesn't scale down cleanly below 200 rating-tons (Size A drives), and its fuel requirements literally don't scale at all.
I mean, they should. But they don't. In '77, the workaround was to allocate fuel for shorter durations, but '81 closed off that option.
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Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
It's excessively easy to check. Just look at the tonnage, maneuver Gs and fuel tankage.
- Ship's Boat = 30 tons @ 6G = 1.8 EP = 1.8 tons of fuel
- Pinnace = 40 tons @ 5G = 2 EP = 2 tons of fuel
- Cutter = 50 tons @ 4G = 2 EP = 2 tons of fuel
Sure they do.
- A drive = 200 / small craft tonnage = Maneuver G
- 200 / 30 = 6.6667 = 6G for 30 ton Ship's Boat
- 200 / 40 = 5 = 5G for 40 ton Pinnace
- 200 / 50 = 4 = 4G for 50 ton Cutter
- B drive = 400 / small craft tonnage = Maneuver G
- 400 / 60 = 6.6667 = 6G for 60 ton small craft
- 400 / 80 = 5 = 5G for 80 ton small craft
- 400 / 100 = 4 = 4G for 100 ton big craft
Taking things to the next level, I not only use the (200*letter/tons) formula to determine Maneuver G capability, but also use EP to determine Agility after accounting for computer and energy weapons (and so on). So a Power Plant-A which produces code: 1 @ 200 tons would obviously yield 2 EP (for example) and require 2 tons of fuel per 28 days in a small craft ... because in a small craft the power plant does not need to be capable of "overdrive for jump" output (so 1 ton of fuel per EP of output works just fine, which is the LBB5 formula).
This is why a 20 ton fighter with Maneuver-A (code: 6) and Power Plant-B (code: L) generates 4 EP and has 6G maneuver.
If that fighter has a model/4 computer (2 EP) and is armed with a Pulse Laser (1 EP), that means there is only 1 EP remaining for maneuver agility.
1 EP * 100 / 20 tons = 5
So this 20 ton fighter has Agility=5, 6G maneuver, computer model/4 and is armed with a single pulse laser ... but also has an Emergency Agility of 6 ... when using LBB2 standard drives.
- 1 EP * 100 / 16 tons = 6
- 1 EP * 100 / 20 tons = 5
- 1 EP * 100 / 25 tons = 4
- 1 EP * 100 / 33 tons = 3
- 1 EP * 100 / 50 tons = 2
- 1 EP * 100 / 100 tons = 1
The part where it fails to scale cleanly is, as noted, below 200 rating-tons (i.e.: launch/lifeboat, fighter, slow boat).
If you bundle the power plant and maneuver drive, at Pn=Gs, the mathematical part of the problem goes away (it's 20 ratings points per Td of "Drives" and the cost already scales cleanly). Conceptually, it fits with the '77 rules where the maneuver drive is a thrust-producing accessory to the power plant, if you don't think too hard about it. For '81 rules, you actively have to not think about it...
If I had my notes handy, I could work out the point below which the combination would put out less than 1EP. It'd be above 100 G-Tons, though.
