[Proto-Traveller] Book 2-Plus

[robject]

I have long used Book 2 for designing small ships. It's easy, and gets me most of what I need for non-military designs. I house-rule what's lacking, and we do fine.

Weapons are another subject entirely, although I keep the ones in Book 2.

Hull
I don't have "standard hulls", although nothing stops me from using the ones in the book. Construction time for hulls over 1000 tons is 10 months plus 1 month per 100 tons plus 2D months.

Drives
Over the years, I've house-ruled the drive tables, regretting their weirdness at the upper ends, until I did away with the upper limits entirely and rewrote them.

Book 2-Plus is less friendly to larger ships. It penalizes them in two ways: it uses the High Guard formula for powerplant fuel, and it requires a greater overall tonnage for drives. On the other hand, shipes under 1000 tons benefit from requiring less powerplant fuel, and mostly have the same tonnage drives as before.

On the gripping hand, Book 2-Plus is more friendly to "odd" hulls. Because it uses formula, any hull size works with it. The 500t Maru merchant is not at a disadvantage. Here's the formula I use:

Drive Volumes

Jump:      5 + 2.5% * n, min 10 tons
Maneuver: -1 + 1.0% * n, min 1 ton
Power:     1 + 1.5% * n, min 1 ton

Cost

Jump:     MCr1 x (tons-5)
Maneuver: MCr2 x (tons+1)
Power:    MCr1 x tons   [aligned closer to HG]

Rugged Jump Drives. Ruggedized jump drives displace half again their volume (with corresponding price increase), and can safely burn unrefined fuel.

Survey Sensors. These are sensors hinted at in IISS ships, and perhaps the Safari Ship and Lab Ship. They're sensors for scanning a world's surface for particulars such as life, intelligence, chemical compounds, subsurface mapping, etc. MCr 0.5 and an increase to the bridge's size.

Bridge. The bridge can still be 20 tons, but sometimes I prefer to squeeze it a bit. In those cases, I count 2 tons per workstation (only a part of which is the actual station a crewman works on), and one workstation per pilot, astrogator, engineer, gunner, steward, medic, et al. There's also one workstation for the ship's computer. Two more workstations are added if survey sensors are installed.

So a ship with a calculated crew of 5 could have 5 crew workstations + 1 workstation for the computer = 6 workstations x 2 = 12 tons. Or I can add in an 8-ton ready room and beef it back up to a full 20 tons.

Fuel Purifier. 1 ton, MCr 1. Refines 4 tons of fuel per hour.

Mail Vault. 5 tons. For dedicated contracted shipping.

Environmental Tank. KCr100 per ton. Specialized cargo with environmental controls. Can be set to any world physical characteristics, from Size=0 thru A or greater, Atmosphere=0 thru C, and Hydrographics=0 thru A. Also called a Trophy Tank.

Lab. 10 tons, MCr1. Contains tools for one of: research or medic.

Shop. 10 tons, MCr1. Contains tools for skills such as: mechanic, electronics, cybernetics, engineering, etc. If you can fit it inside the shop, you can try to repair it.

Drop Pod. In increments of 35 tons, MCr 2.5 per 35 tons. Droppable, streamlined cargo/fuel/supply pod. Requires 2 grapples per 35 tons (2 tons per grapple): one grapple on the ship, and one on the pod.

 

[robject]

Maru Class

From FASA's ACS-1 book. Redesigned using Book 2-Plus.

Tons Component          MCr    Notes
---- ------------------ -----  -----
 500 Streamlined Hull    55 
  50 Armor                8
  30 Jump-2              25
   4 Maneuver-1          10
  16 Power-2             16
 110 Fuel                 -    2 pc, 1 month ops
   3 Model/3             18
   3 Pulse laser turrets  7.5  #3 triple turrets
   2 Sandcaster turrets   2.5  #2 triple turrets
  20 Lifeboat            14
  36 Crew staterooms      4.5  #9
  28 Pass. staterooms     3.5  #7
   7 Low berths           1.4  #14
   1 Locker               -
 190 Cargo                -
---- ------------------ -----  -----
   0             TOTAL  166
            DISCOUNTED  149

 

[rancke]

Drives
Over the years, I've house-ruled the drive tables, regretting their weirdness at the upper ends, until I did away with the upper limits entirely and rewrote them.

HG's fixed percentage of hull size is so much easier to deal with. It doesn't necessarily have to be the canon HG percentages if something else works better, but I strongly reccomend some fixed percentage. Possibilities for changes include modified numbers for different tech levels to reflect improved efficiencies and linear increase in maneuver drives for increased G factors.

Book 2-Plus is less friendly to larger ships. It penalizes them in two ways: it uses the High Guard formula for powerplant fuel...

I was hoping to persuade TPTB to modify power plant fuel consumptions drastically -- possibly even ignore them. IMO they're belief-shatteringly inefficient.

If they ARE kept at their canon efficiencies (canon inefficiencies ), rules for partial consumption are sorely needed. The rules that have a ship use the same amount of fuel coasting on life support for four weeks and moving at full acceleration with guns blazing all the time for four weeks or spending two weeks in jumpspace, ten days or more on the ground, and four days or less maneuvering in space, are badly broken, and at a level where it can easily matter to the PCs for various reasons.

(That goes for life support too, BTW -- at the canonical costs the difference between paying for 10 days of life support and 14 days of life support can be important to a struggling free trader.)


Hans

 

[robject]

Good points Hans, thanks for reminding me. Because Book 2 doesn't fiddle with energy points, I figure that systems are self-powered with year-long* power supplies, except for the drives.

Yeah, that means weapons still fire even when the powerplant is down. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, but it keeps me from worrying about EPs, and lets me add in barbette, bay, and spine weapons. Orbital defense platforms don't need power plants... well maybe they do for station-keeping.

As for the leaky powerplant, I handwave that that's a side-effect of being able to power the jump drive... which implies that there's an efficient variant which runs for a year* with insystem-only ships.



* Perhaps longer than a year, depending on manufacture, but the yearly overhaul includes refueling or recharging, so one year is 'safe'.

 

[atpollard]

Just a thought that I was fiddling with in a moment of boredom …

Imagine that a ship needs a 60 MCr, 60 dton drive for 2G performance (I pulled those numbers out of thin air, don’t bother to correct them).

So what if the ship could install:

1. a single drive (60 MCr, 60 dton) which grants AGILITY 1 (like the old surplus energy points).

2. twin drives (33 MCr, 30 dton each) which grants AGILITY 2.

3. triple drives (24 MCr, 20 dton each) which grants AGILITY 3.

4. quad drives (19.5 MCr, 15 dton each) which grants AGILITY 4.

5. five drives (16.8 MCr, 12 dton each) which grants AGILITY 5.

6. six drives (15 MCr, 10 dton each) which grants AGILITY 6.

… So multiple drives cost more than a single drive, but allow greater ‘thrust vectoring’ for maneuverability. All that it requires is for drive costs to include a variable and a constant, like 6 MCr plus 0.9 MCr per dTon (the values used in my example).

[Changed Maneuverability to AGILITY]

 

[navywarlord]

Momentary spark in the darkness

How about increased AGILITY?
Multiple engines with thrust vectoring could allow a ship to pivot faster than a single drive on full burn. Maneuver level would stay the same.

I like your ideas - I see a house rule forming

 

[McPerth]

From FASA's ACS-1 book. Redesigned using Book 2-Plus.

Tons Component          MCr    Notes
---- ------------------ -----  -----
 500 Streamlined Hull    55 
  50 Armor                8
 (...)

I guess that's already explained in FASA's ACS-1 book, but I don't have access to it. Could you please explain how does armor work in those rules?

I don't see any armor reference in your first post, yet armor is listed on your ship, so I'd like to know how is it calculated and what effect it has on combat.

 

[robject]

Thanks for keeping me legit, McPerth. I've been trying to think "What Would Book 2 Do?" when it comes to armor. I've already decided that armor exists, but also that armor ties into the combat system, so whatever happens armor has to make sense somehow.

Damage and Armor

Assuming damage is variable, and armor absorbs damage...
Assuming weapons in a turret share a to-hit roll, and damage is summed...
Assuming "basic armor" is free and included with the hull...

Then, forex, a triple turret beam laser can inflict 3 hits beyond "basic armor", and a pulse laser can inflict 6 hits beyond.

Assuming that's 2D + damage rating - armor, then "basic armor" is a 7.

Assume that ships like that are typically TL10 or TL11, then:

Basic Armor = 2 + (TL/2), round down.



Additional Armor

Here's the hard part. Purchasing additional layers has to be (1) painful and (2) effective.

So untested hypothesis:

Additional layers require 5% hull volume, and add AV equal to the base layer.

Thus the Maru has armor value (AV) = 7 + 7 + 7 = 21. It's immune to any one triple turret laser attack, but still vulnerable to multiple turret batteries.



Battery Fire

Because I am lazy, I think that all weapons of a given type on a ship may all fire at the same target if they wish, sharing a single task roll. Damage is summed.

I would have to postulate a communications device that enables multiple ships to link up multiple weapons of a given type to a firing solution against one target. In T5 it's called a CommCaster, and requires a hardpoint, which seems reasonable to me.


Implications

Combat here is deadly. Scoring a battery hit will cause a potentially large number of hits on the damage tables. Not such a bad thing. Fast combat can be good for role playing games.

It might make players more skittish about space combat. It might make them think about tradeoffs. They might look more carefully at sandcasters. If one sand canister can block an entire laser salvo, then that might look like a better deal. And it might make NPC corsairs think twice, as well.

 

[Meteoric Assault]

I would sincerely like to see the Book 2 overhaul... I am not into the all the HG mumbo jumbo....but I do like to make ships and after finding the freelance traveller article and the thread here it would be nice to see a addendum or condensed paper on the expansion of the ideas here.