Ship Combat First, and Design Follows

[robject]

Something Don is consistently (but not frequently) harping on, is that ship design actually takes a back seat to ship combat. In other words, Traveller must first decide how combat runs, and only after that works (and is fun to play, etc) should Traveller define the limits of ships via a design process.

Mayday. So if you're playing Free Trader Beowulf against a lone Corsair, you're basically playing Mayday or Starter Traveller, right? Or perhaps you're playing something that allows movement like both of those. Is stealth possible? Jamming? Running?

Operational. Next, if you're playing a sub hunt -or- operational type game, your rules work differently, because you have several specialized ships on both sides, each doing various things. Stealth can still play a part. Your conditions for victory may be more varied than in the Mayday scenario.

Squadron. Once you're at the level of High Guard or Battle Rider, you've got increasingly abstract spaces -- lines of battle instead of individual unit placement. But also you've got less distinct attacks: critical hits become important. Theoretically, strategy becomes important, since once you've won a battle, your squadron still needs repair and refit, and if you can't make it to a port you've traded losses with the enemy.

 

[aramis]

TINSIS, rob, TINSIS. There is no stealth in space

 

[Dagrill]

TINSIS, rob, TINSIS. There is no stealth in space

So how do SDB's work? How does the 5FW game have active and passive SDB's?

My feeling is every space game needs some sort of stealth/cloaking

regards

David

 

[shield]

From memory, passive SDBs are assumed to be hiding (asteroid belts, depths of gas giants, far cometary orbits, underwater). I don't think passive SDBs can fire back. You can attack passive SDBs but at a -DM. I assume this is actually finding lone SDBs in their hiding places and destroying them one by one.

Active SDBs are out in space where they can attack and be attacked. - no stealth involved

 

[robject]

The facts of reality aside, a game first defines what is possible. Then, it makes sure the game is fun and the mechanics don't get in the way, then the author knows what the important decision points are, and therefore can build a design system to fit.

 

[rancke]

The facts of reality aside, a game first defines what is possible. Then, it makes sure the game is fun and the mechanics don't get in the way, then the author knows what the important decision points are, and therefore can build a design system to fit.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the HG rules or the Book 2 rules^*. I can easily imagine a setting where people can build small J2 ships and slightly larger J1 ships at TL 9. Indeed, I can see some fascinating settlement patterns and travel/communication issues arising from that. And I can see a setting where navies are very chary of building naval ships any bigger than absolutely necessary because a single tender (with 8 cruiser-sized battleriders) would be a match for a whole squadron of big beefy battleships.

The only problem I have with Book 2 and HG rules^* is that the Third Imperium setting is not such a setting.

^* Except the power plant fuel consumption rates, of course. ​

Hans

 

[aramis]

So how do SDB's work? How does the 5FW game have active and passive SDB's?

In space, they're just another 600td warship with heavy armor. And gpod in-atmosphere sensors.

feeling is every space game needs some sort of stealth/cloaking

they never got that. they hide by using terrain, not cloaking devices.

 

[atpollard]

TINSIS, rob, TINSIS. There is no stealth in space

There is no reactionless drive (sorry, Dean Drive).
There is no FTL Travel (Alcubierre Drive destroying the destination upon arrival).
There is no artificial gravity and inertia compensation (like grav plates).

So why single out Stealth for special treatment?

Free from the constraints of thermodynamics and conservation of momentum*, Stealth in space becomes anywhere from 'less impossible' to 'trivially simple'.

* (which may or may not apply in Classic Traveller ... depending on the year and book in front of you at the moment).

they never got that. they hide by using terrain, not cloaking devices.

The detection and tracking rules in CT suggest that ALL ships have stealth to some extent (at least beyond 2 light seconds).

DETECTION

Commercial or privately owned ships can detect other ships up to one-half light-second (1,500 mm) away.
Military or scout ships can detect other ships up to two light-seconds (6,000 mm) away.

Tracking: Once detected, a vessel can be tracked by another ship up to three light-seconds (9,000 mm) away.

 

[atpollard]

The facts of reality aside, a game first defines what is possible. Then, it makes sure the game is fun and the mechanics don't get in the way, then the author knows what the important decision points are, and therefore can build a design system to fit.

So what does this mean for something like Traveller where the rules already exist in multiple versions (CT, MT, TNE, T4, Gurps, T20, MgT and T5) and different forms within each version (Striker, LBB2, HighGuard, TCS, etc.)?

I don't necessarily disagree with the idea, I just don't see where this could lead.

 

[robject]

So what does this mean for something like Traveller where the rules already exist in multiple versions and different forms within each version?

Even if there were only one version of Traveller, it means wargame mechanics are always different than RPG mechanics, because the goals are different.

A wargame has to decide what's most important, what's doable, and what gets in the way.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

So what does this mean for something like Traveller where the rules already exist in multiple versions (CT, MT, TNE, T4, Gurps, T20, MgT and T5) and different forms within each version (Striker, LBB2, HighGuard, TCS, etc.)?

I don't necessarily disagree with the idea, I just don't see where this could lead.

This can also lead to differences in rules vs story. My example to point out is the last major battle of The Solomani Rim War. Elements of the Invasion of Terra have been written in various books involving regiments and armies of troops being transported to Terra. From a story standpoint it sounds like lots and lots and lots of troops.

As a wargame, the elements involved are detailed in the Invasion: Earth game. The space battles there are fairly simple as the counters represent an SDB wing vs a single cruiser or transport or at worse a BatRon.

But if you tried to model that only using CT Book 2, you could not match the story simply because hulls are limited to 5000 tons and the invasion force had to be Jump capable. Swarms of non-jump 300 dTon SDBs vs 5000 dTon "cruisers" and "transports". How many would it take to transport said armies?

Do the same thing again using HG, the space battle goes more in line with the story as you COULD build ships of up to 1M dTons.

On the planetary surface side, there is of course using CT Book 1 vs Book 4 vs Striker.

 

[Ulsyus]

A wargame has to decide what's most important, what's doable, and what gets in the way.

A historical wargame should model the most likely historical outcome, not what actually happened, but still enable what did happen to occur should the dice go that way. This should apply for all periods: Biblical through to Ultramodern.

That's why SF is so difficult to do well: what would be the most likely historical outcome of a squadron of SDBs versus s CruRon historically?

 

[Carlobrand]

A historical wargame should model the most likely historical outcome, not what actually happened, but still enable what did happen to occur should the dice go that way. This should apply for all periods: Biblical through to Ultramodern.

That's why SF is so difficult to do well: what would be the most likely historical outcome of a squadron of SDBs versus s CruRon historically?

Which gets into the debate over verisimilitude versus fun. You can plunk down an isolated sci fi wargame and make it do whatever you want, walk away from it afterward and not care a whit whether any of it was realistic or true to any setting. You sit down to something involving Star Trek, you come in with preconceptions that the game maker needs to consider if he doesn't want the market to consign his product to the trash-heap.

In the case of the Traveller setting, that's always been difficult. Trav sells itself as being a lot more hard science than Star Trek or most of those other franchises have even tried to be, but then the need to sell - to satisfy markets that demand certain styles of play - often leads it to compromise. Which gets back to Aramis and TINSIS: stealth in space is a bit - well, a whole lot - anathematic to the hard science view of things, but there's a market for subs in space, so MegaTrav leans that way (to our utter horror).

Also gets to Trav's core wargame problem: its "history" and its wargames have always been in conflict with each other. It's like trying to recreate the Battle of Marathon by putting the Greeks at the Little Big Horn and giving Winchesters and an infinite supply of bullets to all the Lakota.

 

[rancke]

In the case of the Traveller setting, that's always been difficult. Trav sells itself as being a lot more hard science than Star Trek or most of those other franchises have even tried to be, but then the need to sell - to satisfy markets that demand certain styles of play - often leads it to compromise. Which gets back to Aramis and TINSIS: stealth in space is a bit - well, a whole lot - anathematic to the hard science view of things, but there's a market for subs in space, so MegaTrav leans that way (to our utter horror).

There's a very early reference to a ship's stealth field in one of the first JTAS amber zones.

In my opinion this is one place where the original writers made a mistake in going with realism instead of game goodness. Stealth fields are just what the TU needs to make pirates and smugglers viable and give PC-crewed free traders ways to counter pirates and customs inspectors.


Hans

 

[Timerover51]

A historical wargame should model the most likely historical outcome, not what actually happened, but still enable what did happen to occur should the dice go that way. This should apply for all periods: Biblical through to Ultramodern.

There are considerable limits on that too, however, as sometimes the historical result is nearly impossible to model with set of rules without plugging in all sorts of special rules for that specific battle. A couple of cases in point, The Battle of the Komandorski Islands in World War 2, where by just about every set of naval game rules, the USS Salt Lake City goes down every time, generally with the USS Richmond being sunk as well, and the US destroyers running away early to survive. Actual result, USS Salt Lake City moderately damaged along with one destroyer. Another instance, The Battle of Midway in World War 2, which is impossible for the US to get the same outcome unless you force the Japanese player to spread his forces all over the map as was done historically. The final action of the Bismarck is another one, as the Bismarck failed to hit either the King George V or the Rodney. The Battle of Jutland is very hard to game, as duplicating the visibility within having the players in two different rooms and three maps so as to limit what the British and German player sees. I am focusing on naval games, as they are closer to space combat. Land battles can get even weirder.

That's why SF is so difficult to do well: what would be the most likely historical outcome of a squadron of SDBs versus s CruRon historically?

You also have the problem of adapting basically a role-playing game into a large-scale war-game. The game mechanics of the two are not going to mess well.

 

[wbyrd]

In my experience the more complex rules become the more the more ways there are for them to get in the way. The balance is hard to reach...a stable framework that leaves room for the players and GMs to exercise a bit of imagination, without requiring a rules book that cases back damage when carried in your pack seems to be elusive.

 

[Ulsyus]

There's a very early reference to a ship's stealth field in one of the first JTAS amber zones.

In my opinion this is one place where the original writers made a mistake in going with realism instead of game goodness. Stealth fields are just what the TU needs to make pirates and smugglers viable and give PC-crewed free traders ways to counter pirates and customs inspectors.

Hans

Though I don't recall it being written anywhere, could an early version of a Black Globe, that doesn't go everything that force field does, be the sort of thing they could be referring too? I know here I'm grasping at canonical straws to explain something that may have been a throwaway line by a writer who wasn't thinking about what was actually included in the game, nor discussed it with the rest of the GDW team.

There are considerable limits on that too, however, as sometimes the historical result is nearly impossible to model with set of rules without plugging in all sorts of special rules for that specific battle. ... I am focusing on naval games, as they are closer to space combat. Land battles can get even weirder.

You're right, though one land battle case I can use is my Early Visigothic army when it's up against the Romans or something like them. My bands or tribesmen levies are enthusiastic and there are plenty of them, but they just get cut to pieces by Legionaries once decisively engaged. The nobles, the heavy cav, are swift and nasty, but can't take the Roman foot on from the front. But if I can recreate the actions from the battle of Adrianople then it's Romans on toast. Against several guys with Roman armies, some have manoeuvred to prevent me from the big outflanking march, at which point I'm behind the eight-ball. Those that couldn't then faced HC lancers to the rear with hordes or screaming tribesmen to the fore, and the writing is on the wall at that point.