T5 technical accuracy questions

[Almuric]

How realistic is T5 in terms of real-world vehicle and weapon design? I am not asking for *detail* (I understand it abstracts some things like ammo) but rather whether it simply produces credible results or fails to do so.

As a test of basic realism, if you use VEHICLE MAKER:

- Can you get a TL7 car that does 100 mph/160 kph max speed, goes for 2-4 hours, holds 4-5 people and masses 1,500-2,000 kg or empty?

- can you get a TL7 motorcycle that does about the same speed as the car, carries a person, and masses in the 100-200 kg (without rider) range?

Previous versions of Traveller have sometimes struggled to produce normal vehicles. I'd say these are fairly simple tests.

- Can you get a TL7 tracked tank that does 40-50 mph/60-80 kph, has a 12 cm gun that can damage a similar vehicle, has front armor sufficient to stop a 10cm gun or anti-tank rocket, crew 3-4, goes 3-5 hours, and masses 50-60,000 kg?

If it can build a modern tracked tank that masses correctly and has real capabilities, it should be okay with future grav vehicles. Can it do so?

- Can you get a TL7 jet fighter, that does 1,250 mph/2,000 kph, masses about 10,000 kg, goes for an hour or two, carries 1-2 crew, is armed with an autocannon, and can fire 4-8 missiles with a 10-30 km range, and has radar with comparable range?

- Is an air/raft with 4 people of reasonable volume and mass - that is, about the size of a jeep, rather than the size of a bus? (A jeep is about 5-10 cubic meters. I'm quite happy with it taking several times that space, as is traditional, to stow in a starship; hangars are bulky!)

As a test of basic realism, if you use GUN MAKER:

- Will it design a TL7 semi-auto pistol massing about 1 kg with performance roughly comparable to a modern automatic pistol?
- will it design a TL7 assault rifle massing about 4 kg capable of semi and full auto fire with performance roughly equal to an modern assault rifle?
- will it build a TL7 heavy machine gun at about 50 kg capable of sustained rate of fire and damage higher than the rifle?
- can you get body armor at TL7-8 that can resist this damage for 10 kg or so?

These are kind of deal-breakers for me with regard to the system. I don't care about whether it is super detailed or not - abstraction is fine. I'm also not that interested in wet navy ships, though if it does that, I'm cool. But I don't want the same problems with broken ground vehicle design rules that plagued post-STRIKER Traveller systems and the T4 version of Fire Fusion, and Steel 2, since they tend to lead to broken rules in other respects (like air/rafts that are the size of busses and so on).

But If its MAKER systems can't handle even handle default 1970s-1990s technology accurately, I'd be worried about using them for anything else!

 

[navanod]

In short...more or less. The system is more abstract than the level of detail you're looking for specifically, but running some tests with the scenarios you've described above, the majority of those designs are possible, but do take some tinkering.

For instance, the system doesn't deal with mass or gun calibers at all. More than likely, the output of the various makers will take some fine tuning to fit your game.

To see for yourself, the three major makers (gun, vehicle, and armor) have already been automated and set up on the web here; I'd suggest just stopping by and playing with them a bit to get an idea of how things work. If you're coming at them from a Fusion, Fire, and Steel angle, you may be shocked/disappointed. It does take some getting used to, but the more I use it, the more I like it.

Essentially, you select the base type (rifle, pistol, cannon, autocannon, etc), then add modifiers - heavy, light, advanced, experimental, etc. These maker programs make the process fairly easy. Weapon damage comes out as a type followed by a number, i.e. "Burn-5", which equates to 5d of burn damage. The basic armor value is listed as AV, and the mechanics are fairly straightforward - if the damage rolled is greater than the listed AV, the shot penetrates. Vehicle speed is listed as a number; speed 3 is 20-30 kph, speed 4 is 30-50 kph, speed 5 is 50-100 kph, and speed 6 is 100-300 kph. It's fairly abstract, but so far has produced very playable results for my group at least.

By way of example, I'm using T5 rules to run a conversion game of Rifts (partly because I wanted to try out T5, and my group wanted to play Rifts). Upon first examination, I assumed it was probably going to be a nightmare (as any conversion of Rifts usually is), but I have to say, I'm very happy with the way things are going. I spent about 4 hours tonight converting most of the weapons, armor, and vehicles over to T5 stats using the programs above, which make it about the most painless conversion I've done yet.

We've played 3 sessions so far, mostly just basic combat so everyone else can get a feel for the way it works, but everyone seems to be understanding it and they haven't revolted yet. Combat is slow to begin with, but once you start getting the mods and difficulties down, it picks up. The makers above give you a good idea of the capabilities of the system, though...I'd suggest checking them out.

 

[Murdoc]

By way of example, I'm using T5 rules to run a conversion game of Rifts

o:

Upon first examination, I assumed it was probably going to be a nightmare (as any conversion of Rifts usually is), but I have to say, I'm very happy with the way things are going. I spent about 4 hours tonight converting most of the weapons, armor, and vehicles over to T5 stats using the programs above, which make it about the most painless conversion I've done yet.

We've played 3 sessions so far, mostly just basic combat so everyone else can get a feel for the way it works, but everyone seems to be understanding it and they haven't revolted yet.

Congratulations sir, my hat is off to you. That is truly a hearty test of T5's capabilities! May I ask how you handled (assuming you did) Gitter Boy armor? I tried it with ArmorMaker as a test and decided I couldn't do it. That was a while ago though, so maybe I was being too picky, or just didn't understand the rules well enough yet.

 

[navanod]

Well, the one thing I learned in the process is that the numbers for things in Rifts are pure, 100% SWAGs (silly, wild a** guesses), so trying to be slavish to the numbers in that system is a futile exercise. I started off at the bottom end of the scale designing the simplest laser pistols and laser rifles, then built the armor they would be most likely to face. My first pass through a couple of weeks ago produced some usable results, but the weapons and armor definitely needed some fine tuning. If the armor is too thin/weak, you get a lot of 1-shot-1-kill combats; conversely, if the armor is too thick, nobody ever gets hit.

So, I started off with the C-18 laser pistol (2d4 MDC) and the light "Plastic Man" armor (35 MDC). The most basic laser pistol the maker produces gives a damage of Burn-2, Pen-2. So, the armor AV has to lie somewhere between 2 and 12 (2d) so the attacker has a chance to at least cause some damage; otherwise, no one would ever use that pistol. For the armor, I ended up using ModLtAS-11 (AV=4). While that may seem low, Plastic Man is about the crappiest armor in Rifts. Even a joe-shmoe a basic 1d pistol has a shot at penetrating the armor, but the wearer still has more benefit than not wearing it at all.

From there, I just started scaling things up, making sure that each weapon could damage an armor it was likely to face, and that each armor had a fair chance of stopping a weapon it would face. As I did so, there were some natural cutoff points that I figured made sense, so that became a part of the process as well. Forex, using a C-18 against SAMAS power armor is pretty much pointless...with 250 MDC, it's going to take an average of 50 hits to penetrate the armor, which is IMO negligible. So, I decided the absolute minimum AV for SAMAS was 12 (which was later upped to 18, making it immune to all 3d damage weapons. That covers the vast majority of standard 'civilian' weapons.)

The unpowered armor and small arms worked out pretty well...most 'environmental suits' wound up with between AV=4 and AV=11, with the Heavy Dead Boy coming in at AV=14. Most weapons ended up with between 2d and 5d damage. Still fairly deadly, but hey, this is Rifts, so it should be.

The robot vehicles and power armor were somewhat of a challenge, but I started off essentially the same way...if two SAMAS are shooting at each other, how long should it take them to kill each other? The railguns the SAMAS carry do Bullet-7 damage so roughly half of the time the armor will take the damage.

The big 'bot armors, especially the Glitterboy, are still getting tweaked, but the GB currently sits with an AV=56, which means it can withstand an average damage roll from up to 16d (which coincidentally is about the damage on the railgun from an Enforcer). The Boom Gun, noted as one of the most powerful weapons in the game, does Bullet-20, Blast-3, and Bang-4 (I added the blast/bang by GM fiat to preserve the game feel, as well as noting the GB cannot fire while moving due to recoil).

So-
Glitterboy (AV=56), Bullet-20, Blast-3, Bang-4.
vs
Enforcer (AV=36), Bullet-15

generally ends up with the Enforcer getting beat to snot in short order, while only having a fairly short time to get a good hit on the GB. The GB is also bulletproof to anything less than 9d, which means even some of the smaller railguns can't touch it. Conventional AT-cannons have to be Advanced and Very Heavy to have any decent chance to cause damage, and a conventional track tank has to have AV=121 or better to guarantee survival. You pretty much have to get into Oversized and Titan-sized weapons to knock them down.

It certainly makes them a terror on the battlefield. :devil: Which is as it should be; the back story of Rifts makes it pretty clear that a relatively small group of 12 Glitterboys wiped out a town and military force of 36,000 while suffering 1 loss and several serious casualties.

 

[Reban]

In short...more or less. The system is more abstract than the level of detail you're looking for specifically

Yep I'd agree with this. Broadly you are making vehicles, weapons and armor that represent a class or subset of such things.

You can design a family car or a modern MBT and the design will tell you in broad strokes what its capabilities are. That way they are ready to use in your game but if you're like me you'll want to sit back and have a think about what the bare figures actually mean. Once you've thought about that you have the potential to go into uber detail using ThingMaker and the Equipment chapter to trick out and furnish your vehicle weapon or armor.

Example: You can build a TL7 tracked Tank which broadly represents the M1 Abrams, Challenger 2 and equivalent MBT. To design a particular one of these you'll have to think about details like what weapons it has and other equipment that it may carry (you can import anything you need from GunMaker, ThingMaker and ACS)

Broadly speaking what you design at a particular TL is a fair representation of an item in that historical period. Tonnage may seem high for vehicles but the Design Box concept is helpful in showing that tonnage is not the total volume inside the hull but the total volume of space that the whole vehicle occupies or dominates with its presence.

 

[Murdoc]

Well, the one thing I learned in the process is that the numbers for things in Rifts are pure, 100% SWAGs (silly, wild a** guesses), so trying to be slavish to the numbers in that system is a futile exercise.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Maybe I just needed to hear it.

Other than that, fantastic! If you feel like sharing, I'd love to see what you finally come up with. It really does show the flexibility of T5. I always tell people that you can do almost anything in Traveller, from Star Trek to Harry Potter. Now the magic in Rifts might be bit trickier, but there is still psionics.

One specific question: What size did you make the GB, oversized or normal?

 

[navanod]

I went with oversized - GB are roughly 10', which is 2x human size and I believe is Oversized. Bigger 'bots, like the Enforcer and Spider-Skull walker, I went with Titan.

As far as a magic system goes, I've just about finished tinkering together a variant using the format of psionics as a base. I'll post a zip file with what I've got done so far later this morning.

Edit: Done, you can find the file with the basic info (excluding magic) here

 

[Murdoc]

Heh, I like the Spider Skull walkers.

Thanks, I look forward to seeing it!

 

[Almuric]

In short...more or less. The system is more abstract than the level of detail you're looking for specifically, but running some tests with the scenarios you've described above, the majority of those designs are possible, but do take some tinkering.

For instance, the system doesn't deal with mass or gun calibers at all. More than likely, the output of the various makers will take some fine tuning to fit your game.

To see for yourself, the three major makers (gun, vehicle, and armor) have already been automated and set up on the web here; I'd suggest just stopping by and playing with them a bit to get an idea of how things work. If you're coming at them from a Fusion, Fire, and Steel angle, you may be shocked/disappointed. It does take some getting used to, but the more I use it, the more I like it.

Essentially, you select the base type (rifle, pistol, cannon, autocannon, etc), then add modifiers - heavy, light, advanced, experimental, etc. These maker programs make the process fairly easy. Weapon damage comes out as a type followed by a number, i.e. "Burn-5", which equates to 5d of burn damage. The basic armor value is listed as AV, and the mechanics are fairly straightforward - if the damage rolled is greater than the listed AV, the shot penetrates. Vehicle speed is listed as a number; speed 3 is 20-30 kph, speed 4 is 30-50 kph, speed 5 is 50-100 kph, and speed 6 is 100-300 kph. It's fairly abstract, but so far has produced very playable results for my group at least.

By way of example, I'm using T5 rules to run a conversion game of Rifts (partly because I wanted to try out T5, and my group wanted to play Rifts). Upon first examination, I assumed it was probably going to be a nightmare (as any conversion of Rifts usually is), but I have to say, I'm very happy with the way things are going. I spent about 4 hours tonight converting most of the weapons, armor, and vehicles over to T5 stats using the programs above, which make it about the most painless conversion I've done yet.

We've played 3 sessions so far, mostly just basic combat so everyone else can get a feel for the way it works, but everyone seems to be understanding it and they haven't revolted yet. Combat is slow to begin with, but once you start getting the mods and difficulties down, it picks up. The makers above give you a good idea of the capabilities of the system, though...I'd suggest checking them out.

Thanks for the link. I'll give it a look-see. The basic task systems in T5 actually looked pretty decent; I was most concerned with the Maker subsystems outside of the starship rules.

 

[robject]

You can design a family car or a modern MBT and the design will tell you in broad strokes what its capabilities are. That way they are ready to use in your game but if you're like me you'll want to sit back and have a think about what the bare figures actually mean. Once you've thought about that you have the potential to go into uber detail using ThingMaker and the Equipment chapter to trick out and furnish your vehicle weapon or armor.

[...]

Broadly speaking what you design at a particular TL is a fair representation of an item in that historical period. Tonnage may seem high for vehicles but the Design Box concept is helpful in showing that tonnage is not the total volume inside the hull but the total volume of space that the whole vehicle occupies or dominates with its presence.

This. In a way they remind me of the level of detail when generating a world UWP. You get the size... in 1,000 mile increments. You get atmosphere... in very loose terms (tainted... whatever you need that to mean). And so on.

The benefit? Consistency between the components of the game, but flexibility to customize.

 

[Licheking]

the one thing VehicleMaker couldn't do was create the 4dt 60KCr AirRaft from the ShipMaker rules. Unless you create as a ground vehicle and even then it comes in at 53.6KCr and is TL9 not TL10 as stated in the rules.

If you make the AirRaft a Flyer then the cost is several hundred KCr.

GunMaker wise it seems fairly close to real world type examples, although you cannot create a musket or blackpowder pistol unless you add in another Stage (V Early) although you could do it with Experimental i suppose.