One thing the ship combat tables don't take into account is the relative TL of the FC and missiles VS. the target. Put bluntly, TTL 15 missiles should be a terrifying thing to a TTL 12 Naval power like the Sword Worlds imho.
Thunderchilde,
But the combat tables do take tech level into account; the combat tables in
HG2 that is(1).
Even assuming the computers aboard the ships in question are "maxed out" by tech level; i.e. a warship, that TL F missiles gets a +3 DM on it's To-Hit roll against a TL C target. Even nastier, the same target recieves a -3 DM when it tries to use sand, energy weapons, or dampers against that same missile. In a game that uses 2D6, a -/+3 DM is substantial.
When you remember that most players will be flying a vessel whose computer is "maxed out" to it's jump rating; i.e. a civilian ship, the "DM gulf" becomes absolutely huge. A single 10dTon fighter operated by Podunk-III can prang the player's
Leviathan-class merchantman at ease.
Keeping the above in mind, the answer as to why
Traveller didn't directly tackle detailed tech level effects, missile guidance, weapon perfromance envelopes, and other issues is a simple one:
Speed Of Play. GDW was creating a roleplaying game that had to cover everything from pistols to psionics and not a
Harpoon-like wargame with roleplaying aspects.
Even my players, most of whom were wargamers first, would not have stood still for an uber-detailed,
Seekrieg-ish, "bucket o' dice", "42 rivets on that airlock hatch", drowning in details, monstrosity. They wanted to play GDW's
Traveller and not AH's
Trobruk.
Because we were wargamers, I was able to ginger things up by using
Mayday's vector movement,
HG2's combat rules, and
SS3's missile designs. What I didn't do is bog the game down and -
most importantly - bog my preparations down by overly detailing what were minor details.
There's a principle in economics called "The Pareto Effect". Boiled down it states that, on any given task, you spend 20% of your time handling 80% of the work and 80% of your time handling the remaining 20% of the work. When gaming, or preparing for a game, you need to decide just what that remaining 20% should consist of because that's what you'll be spending most of time tackling.
For some folks that remaining 20% will involve designing special missiles for the players to shoot and for others it will involve designing special animals for the players to shoot. The beauty of
Traveller's is that the you can pick and choose where you want your emphasis to lay. You aren't stuck using a lavishly detailed ship combat system because nothing else is available, just you aren't stuck preparing a lavishly detailed planetary ecology for each planetfall because nothing else is available.
Regards,
Bill
1 - I'm assuming that, because you're discussing tech level effects in starship combat, you must be talking about
HG2. That's because tech levels are not part of either starship construction or combat in
LLB2.
I never had SS3 either as far as I can recall.
