CT Only: Starship combat
- Thread starter nats
- Start date
No, far better to play TCS if you want to do that sort of thing. I did do a re-balance of High Guard to work better with small ships at one point, though.
I'll Bite, how did you rebalance it?
Do you convert Traveller Ships?
Or if you use FT ships straight how do you deal with Character skill?
While not the person asked...
I once ran a campaign using FT ships...
Rather than jump being a flat 50%, I used the drive + fuel percentages.
So J1 = 12%
J2 = 23%
J3 = 34%
J4 = 45%
J5 = 56%
I used 1 Mass as 10 Td, which makes a fighter of mass 1 a 10Td Bk2 style fighter.
Worked fine.
My apologies, I totally missed this question.
Understanding that this was a SSU...
I used at 1Mass = 20 dtons conversion, granted some automatic armor due to materials, and went more off of % than actual Mass. I'd have to drag my notes out but there was a semi-elaborate process. If I do it again I'd want to simplify it even more.
My goal was that I wanted a simple starship combat simulator and one that would allow fleet actions, but that also worked with ACS. It worked out pretty well and everyone was pretty happy with it.
D.
Recently I have been pondering the opposite, Adapting Traveller to FT. Which is largely Beating on FMA Until it looks Traveller-ish and then taking the results through to FT, Kinda.
Note, FMA was a attempt to write a RPG based on the StarGrunt 2 rules set.
Though the brief glimpse of what both you and Aramis have done give me some ideas as well.
One of the issues I have been chewing on is the Crew life Support, which burried in the Hull slice in FT and explicit in Traveller.
But since this is still in the scribbled notes phase it will work it self out....
FMA is what?
"Full Metal Anorak" or Stargrunt II (I think, it might be Dirtside II, it's been awhile).
D.
Yeah, and with the ability to port SG2 to DS2 to FT it is a highly attractive idea. I did some similar experiments. When it comes to life support there is a pretty explicit ratio of Mass to Crew buried in the Fleet Books, space set aside for troops/passengers could easily be considered to also account for extra machinery needed for extra bodies.
D.
SG II is the infantry rules. Intended for 25mm
DS II is armor and platoons. intended for micro-armor.
Yes, and FMA was placeholder name of the Attempt to write a RPG based on those rules. In a lot of ways in flavor and operation it looks like the Cortex system used by the Firefly RPG. It's development was largely limited to the Constellation of GZGL mailing list in the late 90s. And to be honest the skill list looked a lot like CT....
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
That's what I call polar graph paper above
Now this sounds interesting...
anymore details?
I have looked at Mongoose Victory at Sea...
Fletcher Pratt's Naval Wargame is the original and still very workable. You could easily adapt the idea to Traveller ship combat (Hum... Maybe I should... :rant: ).
You can still buy copies printed back in the 70's.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12569/fletcher-pratts-naval-war-game
Late edit: In fact, I will. It'll take me about a week maybe two...
And a pretty explicit mass to tonnage ratio, too.
Anyway, it's in More Thrust, page 15.
The CS requirements for various elements are summarised below:
Class 5 vehicle (less crew) 20 CS
Class 4 vehicle “ “ 16 CS
Class 3 vehicle “ “ 12 CS
Class 2 vehicle “ “ 8 CS
Class 1 vehicle “ “ 4 CS
One man (normal accommodation) 4 CS
One man in Cryosleep 1 CS
Looks very "borrowed from Traveller" to me...Class 5 vehicle (less crew) 20 CS
Class 4 vehicle “ “ 16 CS
Class 3 vehicle “ “ 12 CS
Class 2 vehicle “ “ 8 CS
Class 1 vehicle “ “ 4 CS
One man (normal accommodation) 4 CS
One man in Cryosleep 1 CS
And 1 MASS is a drop launcher for 10 cargo spaces of stuff and people.
Not a great fit with the Fleet Book 1 numbers... where 1 Mass is 100 Metric Tons Displacement (presumably of Water, but not specified.) Max MASS is about 200, so 200x100= 20,000 tons displacement. Iif it's water displacement, it's about 1428 Traveller Td. If it's actual mass, it's about 2,000 Traveller Td for the "Battleship". If it's hydrogen displacement, it's still smaller than Sup9 ships of similar role.
Crew factors are 1 per 20 hull spaces per FB1. And crew factors are up to 20 people... (FB1 p 7)... so, realistically, 1 crewman per mass of ship.
Fighters are 1.5 mass - if we use 1 Mass = 10 Td (and 100 Tonnes metric), we get a perfect fit for ramparts and Bk2 fighters... But passenger and cargo space should be 10 per mass, not 1 per mass...
I really wish Jon would write 3rd edition of them all already and intertie them more sensibly...
>Snort!< Yep, Jon has never hidden what his source inspiration is. GZG's games are a fork of Traveller.
I wouldn't expect that anytime soon, there are a couple of groups working on the Full Thrust side, with the Emerald Coast Skunkworks being the most active as of late.
Straybow
SOC-14 1K
Back in the day we only had the original 3 book boxed set. We modified LBB2 combat for shorter rounds (couldn't see only being able to fire once per 10 min), steeper fall-off for hit chance over range.
We changed sandcaster to missile defense. We were thinking there was no way ejecting a bucket of reflective particles could be dense enough to have any significant effect on a laser that can do damage from 100k klicks out. Sling a bucket of abrasive gravel into the path of small rocket/missile could at least damage sensors and controls, if not penetrate and destroy internals.
We changed sandcaster to missile defense. We were thinking there was no way ejecting a bucket of reflective particles could be dense enough to have any significant effect on a laser that can do damage from 100k klicks out. Sling a bucket of abrasive gravel into the path of small rocket/missile could at least damage sensors and controls, if not penetrate and destroy internals.
I think last year Jon said he was actively working on SGIII.
He posted on his "corporate" website that he was working on SG III and a new edition of FT.
Last I checked, the current rules were still free PDFs from his site.
If I were to use FT for Traveller, I'd use 1 MASS = 10Td, and 10 CSP per mass, rather than FB1's 1 mass=1CSP. I'd also use DS II and SG II... but then I'd have something really different than the OTU.
Cool, I have to admit I wasn't paying close attention as of late. Partly to the degradation of the Mailing lists, partly to my concentration of just the Miniatures and their use with Traveller rules.
Today while perusing the Power Projection rules set I came across their Planetary template. The simplified rules look like a great source for some near planet combats.
Have y'all ever considered writing Smallcraft/COACC rules?
