Revising the science of Traveller

[TheDS]

The problem lies in that if you have a reality-based drive (aka a reaction drive) then you do not have the Traveller universe as represented in all but one of its game incarnations. Indeed, even in that one, they kinds took it on faith that nothing major would change, without actually doing the math, or perhaps just hoping no one with a calculator would notice.

Traveller requires Thruster plates for the bulk of the Imperium. Backwater worlds may use rockets, but Imperial vessels don't.

 

[TheEngineer]

Hi TheDS !

Traveller requires Thruster plates for the bulk of the Imperium.

Err, why ?
IMHO only, if we dont get away from the neccessity of longer in-system trips. So lets just kill the 100D limit...

Regards,

Mert

 

[aramis]

That 100D limit (which IMO, should be a 0.001 G limit instead) provides a prevention factor for ships-as-WMD.

If we keep gravitics, then T-Plates should work the same way...

A similar issue came up with 2300's stutterwarps, and how to bleed the (potentially massive) vector differences; the net effect was to dump the vector by using a reduced speed stutterwarp to have you shed energy into the target and/or the source world and/or star... in essence using them as reaction mass.

Why can't T-plate be explained as using the system as it's reaction mass, via gravitic theory?
EG: 2 GN thrust on a ship is profound, 2 GN on a planet is barely detectable. Preserves the newtonian laws, but uses Unobtanium as the means of acceleration of the reaction mass.

Now, to be honest, TNE made travel times 1 jump per month, rather than 2. I could accept that, if the trade rules made it possile to actually operate at a profit at such a schedule without going overboard on detail; it's pretty tight in even bulk designs.

 

[TheEngineer]

WMD ?

 

[mike wightman]

If there is no 100D limit you could load a ship with nuclear bombs, bioweapons, etc., and jump it straight to the target planet surface.

 

[TheEngineer]

Hmmmm.
The 100D limit protects against those things ?
I hardly could believe that. It gives some delay, but thats all.

But anyway...
Had anybody done some calcs how far we could get from planetside with some more realistic drives in an acceptable frame of time (i.e. roughly the time we need in Classic Traveller) ?

 

[aramis]

WMD: Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The 100D limit prevents jjumping a ship in to the center of town; all jump exit terminii are 100D out... and precipitation is "Violent" if the target point was inside the limit, and occurs at the 100D limit.

This means that
a) you can't jump to the surface.
b) all jumps will have some n-space travel time, even if departure is from the surface
c) TL13+ systems can repulsor an incoming ship with any reasonable velocity, and smack it off course
d) meson fire from deep mesons has time to be used...

It doesn't prevent, but does make it far harder to, use a ship as a WMD for kinetic kill and/or delivery.

Mind you, a fleet jumping in with a fairly good vector will be on the planet's atmosphere in a few minutes... but unless they're KKing, they will NOT be there long. And if they are Kinetic Killing, it's a small to medium sized asteroid... or with one deep meson Z hit, a hundred thousand bb's.

Yes. Using HEPlaR, while the drives are unrealistically efficient, low end HEPlaR is comprable to high-end realsitic drives in shipboard performance (at huge internal volume mass losses, but that's another point for another day). 1 G-hour is 60x60x10 vector accumulations and thats 36km/s on Earth, 14Mm diam, thant 1.4Gm distance to 100D. 1 G-hour puts that to 648 and change minutes, or 10h, 48m and change.
1/2 G-hour doubles that.
2 GH halves it
3 divides by 3.

Well, actually, in real world terms, it's actually 9.8m/s not 10, but, close enough for gaming.

 

[aramis]

Oh, and te TNE travel time issue: had more to do with jump masking, which adds another layer, and the effects of failed rolls.

formula for burn and coast:
D= (A (Tb^2)) + (A Tb Tc)
T = ((D-(A (Tb^2)))/(A Tb) )+ (2 Tb)

D = distance, in m
A = Accelleration of burn
Tb = Time of Burn, in seconds
Tc = Time of coasting, again in seconds.

 

[TheEngineer]

Hi !

WMD, guess I heard that in the news quite often, but somehow it disappeared...

My basic strive regarding revision would be to keep physics of energy somehow correct.
E.g. I would consider the amount of energy produced by a ship in a certain time and calculate what velocities and distances could be reached here.
So, in a Universe with revised technology those kinetic kill starships might be vanished anyway...I hope

The actual technology to convert powerplant output into thrust would be something different.

Actually I was thinking about changing the jump distance to a value, which could be reached with HEPlar (or something comparable) in a suitable amount of time.
I admit to neglegt the stategical value of the jump limit but maybe that would be a compromise.

Mert

 

[aramis]

Actually, the biggest thing about those KK Ships is that, somehow, Jump Drives must cancel out the relative stellar motion... otherwise, the vector there can be days or longer to cancel. Many will be hours, but few will be less than double digits for 1G tramps.

 

[TheDS]

Hi Mert!

T1 gave us the 2-week trade routes and the economic model we are used to. It also gave us the way wars are fought - even today, High Guard / TCS is the prefered way to resolve combat, despite other products which were intended to replace it.

T2, T4, and T20 retain the same basic formula, with varying degrees of minor change.

T3 attempted to force realism into the game, and wound up doing too good of a job. No ship is capable of accelerating for more than 100 G-hours. You will run out of fuel in a heartbeat in combat, since your warship tends to have only about 30 G-hours of fuel in order to allow it to fight effectively. A ship has to get to the jump point, jump, then get to the target world, and may need to do a lot of evasion on the way in to avoid enemy ships. Not a lot of fuel available to do all those things.

Getting to or from a gas giant becomes a huge waste of time. Why spend a week or two to get all the way out there when you can just spend a little more money to buy fuel on the planet? Time is money. For warships, it's even worse.

Say you are smart and jump your warships in on a carrier, kind of like as battle riders, but these ships will avoid the primary problem of riders: they will have J1 drives. When they get into trouble, they jump out to the system gas giant to refuel and meet up with the carrier. The defenders won't be able to get out there in time to intercept them, making it a viable strategy. But you never hear about this strategy in Traveller, because with unlimited fuel drives (Thruster plates) it is NOT a viable strategy.

Thruster plates (limitless fuel) also turn the battle back into the war of maneuver that it is supposed to be. Instead of being forced to make a strike and run if it fails, you can stick around and fire from long range, wearing the opponents down, and leaving only when you run out of ammo or the crew gets tired or you take too much damage.

HEPlaR should be relegated to mid-tech launch systems, or planetary drives for ships that use fusion rockets as their primary propulsive means.

 

[TheEngineer]

Somehow I hardly heard of any fleet strategy in Traveller

DS, so do you think another maneuver drive technology would make the TU significantly different or more or less believable as it is now ?

 

[aramis]

Part of the problem is HG, which lacks the maneuver element.

Mayday and Bk 2 have strong maneuver elements, but they are often overshadowed by the "Two Ship Conundrum" coupled to excessive ranges.

MT has limited (and unrealistic) Maneuver elements, with similar caveats to Mayday.

TNE uses a strongly maneuver based ship combat.

I've never done T4 ship combats; I can't speak to it.

T20 uses a maneuver based combat system, with somewhat less overshadowing by weapon ranges, btu again, maneuver is secondary once in range.

The Two Ship Conundrum: when combat is two ships, the line which runs between them is the only real maneuver line; all else either brings you towards or away from the opponent.

The Meeting Conundrum: When you encounter another ship, either you both are near a target point, or one is specifically meeting the other; otherwise, combat is usually a single pass, and not a commercially viable strategy. It's not like air nor naval combats, where the fluidic environment and relatively low speeds allow meeting at full speeds, and then slowing to maneuver. So, forcing combat is a matter of early detection AND higher thrust. This connundrum is not well reflected in traveller rules, and is seldom added by Refs due to the complexities thereof.

One of the key additional elements of the 100D limit is that ships attacking a planet want to drop in on the limit, then burn in; it minimizes response and vector matching times, often putting them within 10 diameters: Orbital space!

 

[Jame]

Originally posted by Jame:
Recently I went over the MegaTraveller tech tree, and aside from the computers and a couple things I can't put to words, that's what I'd use. The tech level tree is good, but the only thing is, TL 5 should be 1880, TL 6 should be 1930 and TL 7 should be 1955. (I think I've said this before but I'll say it until someone listens to me.)

YO! RESPOND!

 

[aramis]

In my case, what respoinse need be made?

I pretty much agree.

 

[Jame]

Did it ever occur to you that I like hearing that you agree with me?

Now, that said, the other thing is computers, that I can think of.

 

[TheDS]

Originally posted by TheEngineer:
Somehow I hardly heard of any fleet strategy in Traveller

DS, so do you think another maneuver drive technology would make the TU significantly different or more or less believable as it is now ?

It all depends on what we're talking about.

Ion-drive-equipped ships will fight in a very different manner than gravity-polarizer-equipped ships (a la Larry Niven) and they will fight very differently than tunnelling-drive-equipped ships.

If one replaces HEPlaR in TNE with Thruster Plates, or even fusion rockets, the nature of battle chances. With a rocket, you've really only got the option of burn and drift, and pray you don't get hit and lose any fuel, cuz if you do, you won't have enough to stop. With unlimited fuel, you have the option to make a high-speed dash or move in slowly and back down if you want. You have the option to try and maintain your distance, and if you have standoff weapons, being able to hold your distance is very powerful.

Before they did a lot of tweaking with the combat rules, I came up with a ship that used a fusion rocket and a really big laser. That ship could stay out of firing range of enemy lasers, stay plenty far away from the power of most meson guns and many particle accelerators as well. At a range of 4 light seconds, and with 4G drives, this ship could thrust all day and avoid enemy fire until the enemy ships ran out of manuever fuel.

Optionally, the ship could jump in at a gas giant, refuel, and move to the main world, and be under acceleration the whole time, whereas a limited-endurance ship would have to coast most of the way, giving the defenders weeks of preperatory time.

Limited endurance is just not useful.

I wouldn't want to fight with Ion drives either: no dodging.

 

[TheEngineer]

Hi !

I totally agree regarding those impacts

Local combat tactics are surely affected in the way you presented.
What I still would like to see is a kind of detailed "storytelling" battle description, using the same basic setting but different maneuvering rules.

"It all depends on what we're talking about"

What I actually intended was to show my impression, that the TU would not change in a global way if I cut off maneuver drive performance a bit (ok, a large bit) in order to make it another bit more (pseudo)-realistic.
The "traveller" is still able to travel, the merchants can do their job and navies can proceed in killing each other, just by using different ways to do so.
Surely the actual "configuration" of a solar system is more important here, as distances are more important.
But it perhaps would be interesting to make exploration of a solar system itself more difficult as the traveling to another system.

Just a thought.

Regards,

Mert

 

[Uncle Bob]

That is how High Guard (CT book 5) combat worked. The side with greater maneuverability got to choose the range of engagement (near or far).

Playing Trillion Credit Squadron you needed the highest maneuver you could get, 6 G at TL15, or you were toast.

One advantage of the old maneuver drive was that it has the advantages of thruster plates without the implausability or HepLar's willfull disreguard of mass ratios.

Everything old is new again.

 

[aramis]

Originally posted by Jame:
Did it ever occur to you that I like hearing that you agree with me?

Now, that said, the other thing is computers, that I can think of.

But they don't allow audio-file attatchments...

I've always assumed that te CT/MT computers for ships were some form of DocSmith/soviet style mini-vacum-tube things.

Much more EMP resistance, and less down time when EMP'd.

Plus some serious faraday shielding. and some other goodies thrown on...

Hence, a small TL12 laptop can do the same job as a TL7 Model 1, in 2k instead of 14, and about 200-300 degrees cooler, too... but one good flare and the lap top is toast. The computer might not be.