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Ship building: A plethora of rules.

IMTU, all 30+KL plants have a 15KL Starter/maintenance plant, and the larger "Full ops plant" which is warmstarted by the smaller plant.

BTW, the exact same considerations apply to FF&S designs, albeit with much lower PP fuel.

I don't design separate PP's, I assume 1.5Td, 2Td, and 3Td standard cells are the normative method for designing PP's.
 
Originally posted by Piper:
Combat was abstracted (but it needn't be, as Mayday made provision for HG ships) and a huge variety of weapons and defenses were added.
Small craft design was added with High Guard, too. Book 2 was limited to off-the-shelf small craft.
High Guard with an interesting (range band? semi-map?) combat system? This seems to offset one of the two main disadvantage of HG (the other is pushing everything towards an ultra-huge-ship universe). It's a shame I don't have Mayday and I don't know how to buy it. So any other (home-grown? MT?) non-abstract combat system for HG?
 
Mayday is in the FFE Games reprint, and also turns up on ebay quite a bit.

High Guard with a range band/semi map movement system is close enough to how MT does it IMHO.
 
Originally posted by Employee 2-4601:
This seems to offset one of the two main disadvantage of HG (the other is pushing everything towards an ultra-huge-ship universe).
While "big ships" were possible in HG, and the early tournament structures promoted big ships, HG actually centers best combat-wise at about 10ktons, provided you have no limit of pilots.
 
Originally posted by GypsyComet:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Employee 2-4601:
This seems to offset one of the two main disadvantage of HG (the other is pushing everything towards an ultra-huge-ship universe).
While "big ships" were possible in HG, and the early tournament structures promoted big ships, HG actually centers best combat-wise at about 10ktons, provided you have no limit of pilots. </font>[/QUOTE]10Kdtons is still "big" in the sense that the deciding factor are the bigger ships and not the small craft. Ofcourse, if you link the fighters to a battery...

Oops, I might end up building something interesting out of my HG2...
 
" Ofcourse, if you link the fighters to a battery...

Oops, I might end up building something interesting out of my HG2... "

Might I suggest the installation of a robot brain in your fighters to coordinate the attack?
 
MMm... Hive/Swarm ships. One of my favorite dirty tricks. Remotely controlled, semi-AI robotic fighters, all linked to one massive mainframe. Heh. Nasty.
 
If you need fighters to be effective allow them to "battery up" in squadrons (as noted, IIRC, in TCS), and/or allow them to ignore some of their target's armor rating provided they can get close enough. Since this is a function of the target's anti-fighter armament and sensors, you get a reason to actually have those 1kton escorts, since they can effectively engage enemy fighters while the capital ships concentrate on each other.

While we're at it, let's also make sure we recognize that HG's combat chapter isn't appropriate for PC ships: It's a fleet action simulator. Used for the right things, HG is most excellent. Used out of context, HG becomes universe-twistingly wrong.
 
Originally posted by GypsyComet:
While we're at it, let's also make sure we recognize that HG's combat chapter isn't appropriate for PC ships: It's a fleet action simulator. Used for the right things, HG is most excellent. Used out of context, HG becomes universe-twistingly wrong.
So what shipbuilding and/or combat rules would you use for PC-level ships? LBB2? LBB2 expanded? A new relative-movement system (towards which I'm leaning)?
 
Actually, at the ranges involved, a "coordinated" attack by fighters becomes unlikely due to communications lag. At 1 light second, with instantaneous decisions made by the command vessel, you get ships moving kilometers in the time it takes just to transmit the data and receive a reply. Now, of course, if you put the controller in the midst of the swarm, it just might work....
 
Originally posted by Employee 2-4601:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by GypsyComet:
While we're at it, let's also make sure we recognize that HG's combat chapter isn't appropriate for PC ships: It's a fleet action simulator. Used for the right things, HG is most excellent. Used out of context, HG becomes universe-twistingly wrong.
So what shipbuilding and/or combat rules would you use for PC-level ships? LBB2? LBB2 expanded? A new relative-movement system (towards which I'm leaning)? </font>[/QUOTE]While tweaks to HG similar to Book 2 would be appropriate for design of civie ships, combat damage as represented by HG is simply too granular for PC ships. Note the big difference between Book 2 and HG in drive damage, for starters.
 
To extend the above answer, combat should be treated similarly to ship construction with several levels of complexity based on the nature of the conflict.

At it's simplest, an RPG level movement/combat system should be able to handle questions like "if the pirate takes off an hour after I do and has 3G thrust to my 2G, how many shots will he get at me before I make the Jump horizon?" Complex? Yes, but VERY much an RPG-scale situation, and one that shouldn't bring a game to the 45-minute halt it often does.

You should also be able to determine a large space battle quickly (by something other than fiat, if necessary), but be able to tell the hapless PCs how much of the battleship around them is left when the power to their brig cell fails...

At the same time, whole-day naval affairs should be possible, possibly as single battles or as week-long system-wide invasions. Gamers are a varied bunch, after all.

Of course, part of that variation arises as "what is Traveller?", and that is the toughest part of the design process. Tuning ship design, movement, and combat to a particular ideal is fairly easy. Making it work for everyone is tough.
 
Employee 2-4601:

Me, I use MT's vehicle combat rules (Player's Manual, Ref's Manual and Ref's Companion) rather than the HG, and graft in Mayday movement.

Then Pen vs Armor & DP system scales from PC up to Megaton Battleships.
 
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