Scaling Down Power Projection: An issue.

[siefertma2]

Hey all:

As we all know, BITS's Power Projection, while the best Traveller space combat game , is more suited toward fleet combat and small escort skirmishes. It was not designed with RPG action in mind. However, many Traveller gamers seek to modify the rules to suit their campaigns. Today I comtemplated just what one would have to do to make PP more RPG-friendly. I think I may have hit a snag.

One fo the primary issues that makes PP alone unsutiable of RPG use is the damage scale: On DP equals 500 dtons of displacement. The obvious answer is to alter the scale, say DP equals 10 dt of displacement. Thus your favorite 100 dt scout now has 10 DP. Easy, right?

Well, the thing that throws a monkey wrench into the equation is the time scale of each turn: 1 turn equals 50 minutes. During that turn it is assumed that an attacking ship is firing on and off during the entire 50 minutes. With that much time you can see how it would be single "attack" from even a lightly armed ship could do a lot of damage.

Of course, you can scale down the time scale as well, but this creates the need to alter the distance scale: 1 inch eauals .25 light seconds. It would also alter the thrust scale the engine puts out: 1 movemnt point equals 1 G of acceleration. Changing one thing, it seems, would alter everything else.

Is this really an issue, or am I just over-anyalizing things?

 

[Spinward Scout]

Hey Mark,

Did you ever try out a game called Vector? If I remember right, they had a freebie handout for it at GenCon 2000 or 2001. (I can't find mine, of course) But from the looks of it, it was a really great system. Try a Google search for it. That might give you a good system to try.

Later,

Scout

 

[mike wightman]

I suggested a while ago that PP could be scaled down to a PC ship scale, to make it more like LBB2 or Mayday. In doing so a laser turret becomes a PP light laser battery, while a triple turret becomes a PP + laser battery - all for damage purposes.
The number of damage boxes a ship has is increased much as you suggest, althugh I had a different formula.
As you say, the time and distance scale needs to be adjusted as well. The simple answer is to adopt the time/distance scale of LBB2, or Mayday, or Brilliant Lances... etc. - or use your own.
Somewhere recently someone did the math and suggested 5 minute turns with 750km "moves".

 

[kaladorn]

Dameon, are you thinking of Attack Vector?

<I think me and Mert suggested 5 minutes/750km... well, the base game was 750km, that only made sense at roughly 5 mins and Mert classified it as 273 seconds with his ubermath skills>

PP inherits from FT. FT has long been bandied about on the GZG test list as something that one would like to scale to individual ships for RPG use. Another major problem is that the D6 based mechanics used in FT (and presumably PP) make it hard to factor in player skill levels as DMs.

No easy fix.

 

[Spinward Scout]

That might be it. It's been a while. All I remember is it looked neat, reminded me of Traveller, and folded up nicely to go in my back pocket.

Scout

 

[siefertma2]

Originally posted by kaladorn:
Dameon, are you thinking of Attack Vector?

I think he is, I own a copy and I've played it a few times at conventions. Largely because despite what the author claims, the rules are not simple. Especially those insane rules for plotting out projectile weapons fire.