T5.09 Errata Discussion Thread
- Thread starter DonM
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p.278: 08-09 ARMOR SECTION / Special Armor Variations
p.278: 08-09 ARMOR SECTION / Special Armor Variations
First, I believe there is supposed to be a line break between the end of the paragraph on "Anti-Layers" and the beginning of the paragraph header entitled "[FONT=arial,helvetica]Special Armor Variations".
[/FONT]
Polymer Armor is "Self-Healing" and repairs damage equal to its TL every turn.
Organic Armor is "'Slow' Self-Healing", regenerating damage equal to its TL every day, and also "Regenerating", restoring a layer of destroyed armor after one week.
p.278: 08-09 ARMOR SECTION / Special Armor Variations
First, I believe there is supposed to be a line break between the end of the paragraph on "Anti-Layers" and the beginning of the paragraph header entitled "[FONT=arial,helvetica]Special Armor Variations".
[/FONT]
The statements above are unclear to me. What is the difference between "Self-Healing" and "Regenerating"?
Polymer Armor is "Self-Healing" and repairs damage equal to its TL every turn.
Organic Armor is "'Slow' Self-Healing", regenerating damage equal to its TL every day, and also "Regenerating", restoring a layer of destroyed armor after one week.
Done, I think. Unfortunately, my mother-in-law was just hospitalized for chest pains. Hopefully after Sunday I'll start organizing the actual errata thread, and perhaps process some actual errata.
David Johansen
SOC-12
On page 70, in the graphics below the text, three of the pictures have "1 Ship Share" and the other three have "3 Ship Shares". In the text above, it is unclear what these refer.
After some thought, it seems as though these are what kind of SSs are gained by various classes. But, that could be confusing to any new players (which I hope to be adding within a few weeks).
Perhaps make the pictures a little smaller and add a few lines of text explaining. Or, perhaps just noting which specific professions receive which kind of ship share in the paragraphs under Loaned and Purchased.
Also, in the text it mentions that ship shares can be pooled by characters. However, it seems unlikely this could happen in reality, because Scouts can only combine with Scouts, etc.
I'd like to suggest that ship shares should equate to megacredits rather than dTons. At present there is no real reason to take a basic trader of some sort over an upgunned combat monster of a ship.
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Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Hopefully, telling you that I will put her on my prayer list will not cause problems.
No problems for me. Marc, Rob and I are all active observant Christians, and Traveller has, over the years, provided for interesting discussions about our faiths, and its differences. I have learned to cherish those friendships and the strength it has given me through my quadruple bypass and other family events.
Thank you for your prayers.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Dom, the equipment listing towards the back of the book is a real mess. Have you done anything with that yet? Examples:
One, canteens were around before the Revolutionary War, being made from wood or pottery. The Romans used a pottery water bottle surrounded by cloth or wood for protection from breaking. A glass canteen is a contradiction in terms. The US Civil War canteens were made from tinned iron plate, the two halves soldered together. Soldiers would frequently heat them to break the solder, and then have two lightweight frying pans. Ten credits for the price?
Again, they existed long before that. Would you like a drawing of one from the Colonial Period here?
Hmm, tis a pity that I do not have a picture of the hanger for B-36 Bombers that was at Fort Greeley. Against that, there are plenty of images of the Airship Hangers at Moffet in California. Portable and permanent hangers for aircraft were around prior to World War 1. The ones for the big Handley-Page bombers could handle a wing-span of 100 feet.
It could use a total re-write, not just errata.
One, canteens were around before the Revolutionary War, being made from wood or pottery. The Romans used a pottery water bottle surrounded by cloth or wood for protection from breaking. A glass canteen is a contradiction in terms. The US Civil War canteens were made from tinned iron plate, the two halves soldered together. Soldiers would frequently heat them to break the solder, and then have two lightweight frying pans. Ten credits for the price?
Again, they existed long before that. Would you like a drawing of one from the Colonial Period here?
Hmm, tis a pity that I do not have a picture of the hanger for B-36 Bombers that was at Fort Greeley. Against that, there are plenty of images of the Airship Hangers at Moffet in California. Portable and permanent hangers for aircraft were around prior to World War 1. The ones for the big Handley-Page bombers could handle a wing-span of 100 feet.
It could use a total re-write, not just errata.
Keep in mind: the T5 list is the "standard version" tech level; initial appearances should be 3 TL lower.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
The following from page 497, Traveller 5.0.9:
Tech Level 4 is defined at 1900. From Tech Level 0 to Tech Level 4, you have 7 Tech Level steps. In reality, Tech Level 4 is Tech Level 9, given all of those steps.
Besides which, Hangers are defined as Tech Level 8, subtract 3 gives me Tech Level 5. Permanent aircraft hangers were "one-of-a-kind, and often dangerous and unreliable" in 1930?
The same comment holds true for the canteen and safe/strongbox. You cannot have it both ways. Either the Tech Level is wrong in the book, or you have rare or prototype canteens, hangers, and safes/strongboxes.
As for the Tech Level chart, I have not even begun to comment on that yet.
And there is this one on page 635. And Sonar does not appear to exist at any Tech Level. Do a search for it and see what you do not find.
Decimal steps seem a perfectly reasonable way of reflecting capability changes without having a paradigm shift.
Most hangers of the 1930s where wood construction overlaid with canvas, wood a or corrugated iron. The risks they faced where fire, that they might suffer damage from high winds or might collapse under the weight of snow.
Compare that to a TL8 hanger today with fire detection and suppression, climate control and some have computer controlled doors linked to meteorological sensors. Construction is usually steel and concrete. Management systems ensure that loads from rain or snowfall do not have catestrophic consequences for the structure.
Am I in mortal danger if I step into a TL5 hanger? No. Are there more obvious risks than in a TL8 hanger? Yes. Is a TL8 hanger a more advanced piece of construction than a TL5 hanger? Yes.
I can understand that an Early or Prototype strongbox is large, heavy, perhaps handmade, at the very least they are examples of a class of object at an early or more primitive stage of development compared to what most Travellers will be familiar with.
Okay this is a good point, one I am going to address in the Errata discussion when I get round to ThingMaker.
There is no Sonar, but ground radar is said to function underwater. Ground penetrating radar used in river archaeology doesn't really work unless its dragged onthe river bed or the water is very shallow.
The game mechanic for ground radar is suitable for representing sonar, but the accompanying text under ground radar needs to be altered to read something like "a sound based version of ground radar called sonar may be used underwater".
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Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Have you seen the photos of the airships hangers at either Moffet Naval Air Station in California or at Lakehurst, New Jersey? For that matter, have you seen any photos of the hangers used by the Zeppelins in World War 1? Also, have you ever seen photos of the hangers used at US Commercial airports in the 1930s? They were not "wood construction overlaid with canvas".
Aside from the super-controlled hanger environment needed for the Stealth aircraft, you are not going to have a whole lot of different between hangers from the 1930s and hangers today. Have you visited an airbase or large airport lately? Although if you are in Ireland, scratch the airbase. Civilian construction rules and building codes change very slowly if at all.
I take it that you define anything that is handmade as Early or Prototype. How do you handle ships, where they are either custom-built or built in very small numbers to the same design? For that matter, how do you deal with cars such as the Lamborghini, which are basically hand built? As for aircraft, Boeing might build 50 to 60 passengers jets a year. Does that qualify as mass-production? The US built a total of 21 B-2 Stealth Bombers. That is not mass-production, and every one of them was hand-built. No assembly line.
Do you understand that to increase sonar range, you go to lower frequencies? Lower frequencies mean much larger sonar transducers. The bow-mounted low frequency transducers used now take up the entire bow of a submarine, and may be 30 or more feet in diameter at the bow of an ASW ship. I understand that no Traveller design sequence plugs the size of a radar antenna into the equation for size. I have worked with deep-sea sidescan sonars which can also give some bottom penetration depending on the bottom material, but they use high frequencies that severely limit range. If you want a basic course and overview of sonar systems, I would suggest Norman Friedman's US Naval Weapon Systems as probably the best unclassified source. He worked with the unclassified US Navy technical and training manuals for that. The same with his book on Naval Radar. Data on World War 2 radar can be found on the Internet at Hyperwar and in the US Army Signal Corps histories from World War 2. Jane's Weapon systems and Air Defense Systems are also good sources for current systems. However, for radar, if you want long-range and high resolution, you go to very large antenna arrays. To get an idea of how large they are, check on the US Safeguard system radar at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeguard_Program. You are talking about antennas the size of the Great Pyramid.
Not sure if this is errata as such but it’s something which is no longer clear.
So, I get that T5 uses abstract rounds: A round is a unit of action rather than a unit of time. (Not the first game to do that but still pretty neat.) But now it looks like you can have multiple actions per... er, action. ie. If you are doing snapshot fire you can make 3 attacks in a round.
That raises the following questions:
So, I get that T5 uses abstract rounds: A round is a unit of action rather than a unit of time. (Not the first game to do that but still pretty neat.) But now it looks like you can have multiple actions per... er, action. ie. If you are doing snapshot fire you can make 3 attacks in a round.
That raises the following questions:
- Do these all have to be at the same target or can you spread them out?
- Is there a penalty when firing at multiple targets in the same round?
- And, if you can fire 3 times does that mean you can move 3 times as well?
I have more than a passing familiarity with the Airship hangers of the Hoo peninsula, Those were of steel construction clad in corrugated iron and constructed using prefabricated parts made by Vickers Ltd.
You've selectively quoted me. what I said was "Most hangers of the 1930s where wood construction overlaid with canvas, wood a or corrugated iron.". You'll note in the quoted passage on Hangers from p.648 lists both permanent and temporary structures. Have you ever seen the canvas hangers used by the RAF in the Middle East during the 30s, have you ever seen the USN Hangers 2 and 3 at Moffet Airfield? By the way there is a generally accepted differentiation between Hangar and Airship Hanger when dealing with them in an architectural context due to size and purpose.
But these are circular arguments. I'm interested in solutions to problems. However, I don't see a problem with the quoted descriptions in regard to Tech Level.
I feel that was slightly snarky, as yes I have visited the hangers at the Irish Aer Corps Casement Aerodrome. The hangers there have a range of construction dates from the 30s to the 90s. Ninety-three years experience in aircraft hangaring not counting the previous RFC, RAF and RNAS structures on that and other sites.
If you want an education in large hangar type structures where the aim is to create a large open structure suitable to conduct maintainance or construction I suggest you look at a TL3 example; the Covered Slips of the Royal Dockyards of the UK such as Chatham. Slip No. 3 is the earliest still surviving and was constructed of wood and tarred paper.
You take it wrong. I assume that Early or Prototype items are bespoke, requiring ether manual construction or the input of a craftsperson.
Lamborgini's would be TL5-9 construction Cars with the Luxury modifier in VehicleMaker. They would not benefit from any price reductions associated with mass production and would probably be classed as Scarce to Rare for Supply and demand determinations.
Boeing builds up to 700 airliners a year (in what I think of as a TL8 climate controlled hanger environment. See this National Geographic documentary for visuals). I'd class it as mass production not on the basis of numbers but on the basis that each example within each model of aircraft is basically identical and produced using a production line technique utilizing jigs and prefabricated parts to ensure that each example rolling off the production line can be supported by a common maintenance and spares system. There is no requirement for a craftsperson to use trade skills built up over years of apprenticeship to work on any given example of a particular model. A technician with a toolkit and the proper learned skills and knoweledges in Traveller terms can work on any given example of a model in a fleet.
The B-2 could be constructed as a Winged Bomber with the application of a StealthMask from ACS. Final TL would depend either on the required performance if you go the Fillform method or could be set at TL8 or Early TL9
If the adaptation of DeepRadar as a Sonar substitute in the rules doesn't suit due to the volume requirement being too low, can I invite you to submit a Sonar sensor written in the T5 Sensor format found on p.299.
Yes these terms are abstract in the extreme and should be recast.
I use the following houserule:
You can fit up to 200Kg of weapons without needing to install a weapons mount. This represents basic pintle and ring mounts found on most military vehicles or an improvised post mount on a civilian vehicle.
You can fit between 200-500Kg of weapons in a Turret mount, Turret mounts represent one-man turrets or weapons emplacements or cupolas on a vehicle that mount light weaponry but take up a ton of volume.
You can fit between 500-1000Kg of weapons in a Vehicle mount. Vehicle mounts represent heavy weapons that require vehicles for mobility. Vehicle mounts represent to a certain extent tank turrets or IFV turrets.
Note how the Tank vehicle type comes with both a vehicle and turret mount for free. Think of that as two tons of volume representing a tank turret mounting a main gun and a co-axial weapon.
You can fit between 1000-100,000Kg of weapons in a Fixed mount.
Fixed mounts represent big weapons mounted on Vehicles and might represent turret mounted weapons, fixed or limited traverse weapons bolted to the hull or erector arms for missiles.
Its not perfect but its a guide to thinking about what the design means. Note that I'm assuming if you have spare mass after installing a weapon in a mount you can fit other weapons in there too. Eg. You have an Autocannon which is 300Kg and therefore requires a Turret mount. There is 200Kg of "leftover mass" so fit a Very Heavy Machinegun which is 32Kg and fit a Heavy AT Missile Launcher which is 13Kg to the side of your turret. That approximates the armament of many IFVs currently on the market.
There's definitely some clarifying required for these options and clearer naming is one item. The ability to use GunMaker weapons on ACS ships and vice versa is aslo something being discussed in a thread here.
Recommend table change
On page 44, the CC table seems needlessly long. The table could eliminate 6 lines by adding a sentence that says
Craftsman, Scholar, Citizen, Scout, Merchant, and Agent all use C1 through C4. This sentence could go in the main text or in the table explanation.
If added to the table, the paragraph that's currently on the right could be moved to the bottom, leaving space for more information in the Entertainer Fame & Talent table. Alternately, it could allow more space to the two top tables, if the Entertainer table is also made shorter.
Please comment on these before (and if) I write it up as an official errata, though.
On page 44, the CC table seems needlessly long. The table could eliminate 6 lines by adding a sentence that says
Craftsman, Scholar, Citizen, Scout, Merchant, and Agent all use C1 through C4. This sentence could go in the main text or in the table explanation.
If added to the table, the paragraph that's currently on the right could be moved to the bottom, leaving space for more information in the Entertainer Fame & Talent table. Alternately, it could allow more space to the two top tables, if the Entertainer table is also made shorter.
Please comment on these before (and if) I write it up as an official errata, though.
p.40 Education
It is clear from the chart that Command College grants 2 skills but it is unclear which skills can be chosen.
V 5.0 had
Command College
Strategy
Leader
Liaison
Fleet Tactics (Navy only)
It is clear from the chart that Command College grants 2 skills but it is unclear which skills can be chosen.
V 5.0 had
Command College
Strategy
Leader
Liaison
Fleet Tactics (Navy only)
Wound Effects during Combat (V2)
Are there details anywhere of the effects of wounds/hits during combat? I see plenty of references to wound severity, diagnosis, and treatment afterward, but I am not seeing what are the effects of taking hits during combat (other than subtracting point from stats).
I.e., if one, two, or three (physical) stats are zeroed, is there an immediate effect (pending treatment later)? When is someone Disabled? Unconscious? Dead?
Am I missing something? Based on earlier versions of Traveller I can take an educated guess, and it may seem obvious to us who have been playing for years, but it seems that this should be clearly stated somewhere in the combat section.
Are there details anywhere of the effects of wounds/hits during combat? I see plenty of references to wound severity, diagnosis, and treatment afterward, but I am not seeing what are the effects of taking hits during combat (other than subtracting point from stats).
I.e., if one, two, or three (physical) stats are zeroed, is there an immediate effect (pending treatment later)? When is someone Disabled? Unconscious? Dead?
Am I missing something? Based on earlier versions of Traveller I can take an educated guess, and it may seem obvious to us who have been playing for years, but it seems that this should be clearly stated somewhere in the combat section.
