The Compleat LBB2 Ship Design

[AnotherDilbert]

In a meta-game sense, yes -- the rules are the rules, and that was an almost explicitly intended outcome, especially in first edition.

[EDIT: More precisely, the refined/unrefined fuel mechanic (along with Jump Cassettes and the Generate Program) was intended to keep Free Traders on established trade routes rather than striking out into the wilderness.]

As far as I know Free Traders and Subbies are explicitly intended for backwaters (generally w/o refined fuel), not the major trade routes. Yet they are not good at it...

I have mostly ignored that little problem.

Perhaps I'm looking at it with about 1981 Imperial campaign prejudice, rather than 1977 LBB1-3 in a void.

 

[infojunky]

Through talking with you guys, I've finally realized that LBB2 ship design is officially larger than its official section in Book 2 or The Traveller Book.

Yes the possibility of what can do either the rules is much larger than Book2 and/or Book5. Consider the number of Officially licensed products in CT.

This bout of insanity came on when we were talking about the Gazelle. I brought up the Xboat, the Scout, the ANNIC NOVA, and the Gazelle, to which it was argued that they are permitted under one set of rules or another -- '77 and onwards.

So now I want to bring in some of those disparate elements, published usually in JTAS, that expand LBB2 ship design, and get them into the LBB re-dos if possible.

Please note all of the ships that are presented in just the CT range of CT CDs.

 

[Grav_Moped]

1981 ..., rather than 1977 LBB1-3 in a void

That's pretty much it. The changes from HG and the (developing) OTU were patched (sort of) into LBB2'81, without explanation and with excessive effort to maintain backward compatibility.

 

[mike wightman]

I think there may be more to be mined in HG79 - thanks to Another Dilbert I can post this without taking ages to type it by hand.
HG79 has this to say, and I would argue that it should be copy and pasted into any version of LBB:2 and LBB:5 Traveller ship design:

The following items are suggested uses for interior space aboard a starship. The actual masses and costs for such areas are left to the referee when actually designing such a ship. Many of these items are subsumed in the costs and tonnages of 4 ton staterooms. In most cases, such areas are required only when drawing up deck plans. Food Service Areas, including mess hall, galley, ward room. Scientific Areas, including laboratories and storerooms. Electronics Areas, including commo suites, avionics areas, electronics counter-measures installations, gunnery simulation trainers, computer operations areas and parts storage. Vehicle Decks, including garaging, maintenance bays, launching areas and parts storage. Recycling Stations. Medical Areas, including isolation wards, surgeries, pharmacies, and examination rooms. Recreational Facilities, including theatres, crafts shops, libraries, and pool rooms. Agricultural Areas, including fresh food gardens, hydroponics areas, and algae tanks. Troop Barracks, including squad areas, training rooms, armories, brigs, ammunition magazines, vacc suit storage, capsule launch areas and briefing rooms.

Tally up how many 4 t staterooms you have and then use that to designate the above areas. I can see how many of these can be subsumed by the crew section stateroom requirement, the question becomes what if you want them as a standalone facility? or what if you want extra facilities?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I would be happy with, say, half-priced staterooms for extra space, since the basic life-support is already paid for.

Something like:
Extra common Areas, 1 Dt, MCr 0.05?

Perhaps twice the price to include machinery or equipment, like workshops or labs?

It's all house-rules, of course.

 

[whartung]

I think there may be more to be mined in HG79

Why isn't HG79 decanonized? They went to great effort to destalinize it, to the point of practically giving away HG80.

 

[mike wightman]

No idea. I think what they were trying to do with weapon factors was the right way to do it, it just needed a bit more thinking though. There are a few things in 79 that should have been ported over and yet were not (magazines for missiles rather than the infinite ammo capacity of 80, drop tank capacitors being TL12 and MCr0.5, maneuver drive as a fusion rocket).

It is certainly much easier to fire each weapon type once rather than have to go to a bucket of dice or use statistical resolution as is done in HG80. Particle accelerators with a factor less than A also needed re-evaluation. And the black globe was much more similar to the Langston Field.

 

[Grav_Moped]

No idea. I think what they were trying to do with weapon factors was the right way to do it, it just needed a bit more thinking though. There are a few things in 79 that should have been ported over and yet were not (magazines for missiles rather than the infinite ammo capacity of 80, drop tank capacitors being TL12 and MCr0.5, maneuver drive as a fusion rocket).

It is certainly much easier to fire each weapon type once rather than have to go to a bucket of dice or use statistical resolution as is done in HG80. Particle accelerators with a factor less than A also needed re-evaluation. And the black globe was much more similar to the Langston Field.

Not sure "maneuver drive as fusion rocket" needed to be retained. It's fun in a spaceship combat context, but rather messy in an RPG context.

The CT progression of maneuver drives was weird, and for backwards-compatiblity reasons (they didn't want to invalidate 4 years of product with LBB2'81) didn't quite go far enough.

LBB2'77: Implicitly a reaction drive of some sort. Ships and small craft used parallel fuel consumption rules (which were nonsensically de-coupled from tonnage). The ship fuel consumption rate was hidden by the mandatory minimums. Only the maneuver drive used power plant output; energy weapons were either handwaved or assumed to use far less energy than the maneuver drive.

HG'79: Explicitly a fusion reaction drive, but far larger and drawing power from the power plant on an equal basis with all other high-draw systems (weapons, computers, shields). Fuel consumption was flat-rate, four weeks, and (committed) maneuver fuel consumption was essentially nil.

HG'80: Explicitly NOT a fusion reaction drive. Maneuver drive size stayed the same as in '79, as did the maneuver fuel consumption (effectively nil).

LBB2'81: Same as '77 but power plant now also supports the Jump Drive, and fuel consumption is the 4 weeks from HG'80 instead of "one flight" (technically 288 turns of maneuver) from '77.

A more consistent fix would have been to integrated the "not a rocket" concept from '80, along with its big maneuver drive and lower fuel requirements.

 

[mike wightman]

Not quite - HG80 does not explicitly state the m-drive is not a fusion it doesn't go into any detail about what it is. All it does is convert energy to abstract movement called agility. LBB:2 81 likewise does not actually state that m-drives are now magical reactionless handwavium drives.
It is also telling that in a couple of interviews Dave Nilsen and Frank Chadwick said the HEPlaR drive of TNE was deliberate for two reasons, fuel would become an important factor and a return to the original reaction drive concept of CT.

 

[aramis]

Not quite - HG80 does not explicitly state the m-drive is not a fusion it doesn't go into any detail about what it is. All it does is convert energy to abstract movement called agility. LBB:2 81 likewise does not actually state that m-drives are now magical reactionless handwavium drives.
It is also telling that in a couple of interviews Dave Nilsen and Frank Chadwick said the HEPlaR drive of TNE was deliberate for two reasons, fuel would become an important factor and a return to the original reaction drive concept of CT.

for those of us who started with CT81 or Maday later printings, and using B5-80, there was no indication of the MD being the fusion torch implied in B2-77 and explicit in B5-79. The only Traveller line game that I had that implied or stated fusion toches was Triplanetary - which didn't need the OTU (and recent editions aren't).

Frank and Dave ignoring the built up canon was a large portion of the disdain for TNE.
Likewise, Frank and David seem to have entirely missed the memo that Traveller is space opera, not hard sci fi...

 

[kilemall]

I wonder to what extent their old acquaintance Chung’s Atomic Rockets site put a burr under their saddle to ‘fix’ the maneuver game.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Not quite - HG80 does not explicitly state the m-drive is not a fusion it doesn't go into any detail about what it is. All it does is convert energy to abstract movement called agility. LBB:2 81 likewise does not actually state that m-drives are now magical reactionless handwavium drives.

There is nothing abstract about it:

LBB5'80, p17:
MOVEMENT
Starships move through ordinary space using maneuver drives as described in Book 2, page 1 under Interplanetary Travel. Power for the maneuver drives is provided by the starship's power plant, which must have a rating equal to or exceeding the drive number of the maneuver drive.

LBB2'81, p4:
Interplanetary Travel: Worlds orbiting the same star are accessible by interplanetary travel, on ships operated by local entrepreneurs, or with a variety of small craft. But, interplanetary travel takes long periods of time; since most stellar systems have only one major world, interplanetary travel is infrequent.
lnterplanetary travel takes time. The travel formulae and diagram on page 10 show a typical interplanetary journey, and equations which can determine time required (if distance and acceleration are known), acceleration required (if distance and time are known), and distance travelled (if time and acceleration are known). All of the formulae use the MKS (meters, kilograms, seconds) unit system, and assume that the ship is undertaking a journey from rest, that it accelerates continuously to midpoint of the trip, and then decelerates to rest again.

Standard simplified newtonian movement with constant acceleration for weeks (without using any fuel).

Agility is just a measure of how much power is available to power the M-drive while also using weapons and screens. If you have M-4 & PP-4, but use half the available power for weapons, you have Agility-2. Agility-2 is just 2 G acceleration.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

LBB2'77 did not assume fusion rockets, or fusion power plants (no mention of fusion at all):

LBB2'77, p5:
1. Fuel. Starship fuel costs CR 500 per ton (refined) or CB 100 per ton (unrefined), at most starports. Fuel consumption is based on formulae related to the size of the starship power plant and the jump drive.
A power plant, to provide power for one trip (internal power, maneuver drive power, and other necessities) requires fuel in accordance with the formula: 10Pn.
Pn is the power plant size rating, determined from the maximum drive potential table by cross-referencing power plant letter and hull size. The formula indicates amount of fuel in tons, and all such fuel is consumed in the process of a normal trip. A fully fuelled power plant will enable a starship an effectively unlimited number of accelerations (at least 288) if necessary to use the maneuver drive during the trip (as when miniatures combat is used to resolve a ship to ship encounter).

The M-drive requires no special fuel allotment, but is powered by the power plant.

Combine that with:


So, you can accelerate for over a week at a constant 1 G, without using any noticeable fuel...
I would call that a magical "reaction-less" drive...

 

[mike wightman]

I was referring to the movement during the combat system, movement during normal LBB:2 operations is governed by LBB:2 rules as you say, which means the power plant is doing whatever it does in LBB:2 81. Nowhere does agility 2 equate to 2g of maneuver as you state.

 

[mike wightman]

Look at the rules for smallcraft in LBB:2 (I don't have them electronically and can't be bothered to type them out) 10kg of fuel is being used per g per 10 minutes.

As you yourself have quoted:

A fully fueled power plant will enable a starship an effectively unlimited number of accelerations (at least 288)

288 "accelerations" which equates to 48 hours of continuous "acceleration" - one acceleration being the combat scale.
The movement rules in the combat chapter continually mention thrust.

At the time that was enough for me to picture some sort of fusion rocket.
Then when HG 79 describes it as such...

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I was referring to the movement during the combat system, movement during normal LBB:2 operations is governed by LBB:2 rules as you say, which means the power plant is doing whatever it does in LBB:2 81. Nowhere does agility 2 equate to 2g of maneuver as you state.

It's rather obviously implied:

LBB5'80, p17:
Power for the maneuver drives is provided by the starship's power plant, which must have a rating equal to or exceeding the drive number of the maneuver drive.

LBB5'80, p28:
Energy points are used for four purposes: powering weapons, shields, for maneuver drives (for agility), and for computers.
...
Agility: Energy points remaining after weapons, screens, and computers have been installed may be applied toward the ship's agility rating. Divide the remaining energy points by 0.01M; the result is the number of agility points the ship has. Drop all fractional points. Agility is the ability of a ship to make violent maneuvers and take evasive action while engaging hostile targets. A ship's agility rating may never exceed its maneuver drive rating.

So, if you have M-4 & PP-4, and devote all power to the M-drive, you get Agility-4. If you divert more power to the M-drive, you still only get Agility-4. If you send less power to the M-drive you get proportionally less Agility.

Example: A 1000 Dt ship with M-4 and PP-4 produces 40 EP. Say 18 EP is used by weapons, so 22 EP remains to power the M-drive. Agility = 22 EP / (0.01×1000) = 22 / 10 = 2.2, rounded down to 2. Half power, half acceleration.

Agility is currently available acceleration, depending on how much power is sent to the M-drive.
M rating is max acceleration, dependant on sending enough power to the M-drive.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Look at the rules for smallcraft in LBB:2 (I don't have them electronically and can't be bothered to type them out) 10kg of fuel is being used per g per 10 minutes.

Agreed, small craft uses completely different rules (perhaps reaction drives), but ships can accelerate for weeks at constant accel, without any noticeable fuel consumption.

The 288 "accelerations" is a direct reference to the combat system, but in regular travel there is no limitation or fuel consumption.
The combat system says:

LBB2'77, p26:
There is no restriction on the number of accelerations which may be made by a fuelled ship, ...

Doesn't sound like a reaction drive to me...

 

[mike wightman]

It's rather obviously implied:


So, if you have M-4 & PP-4, and devote all power to the M-drive, you get Agility-4. If you divert more power to the M-drive, you still only get Agility-4. If you send less power to the M-drive you get proportionally less Agility.

Example: A 1000 Dt ship with M-4 and PP-4 produces 40 EP. Say 18 EP is used by weapons, so 22 EP remains to power the M-drive. Agility = 22 EP / (0.01×1000) = 22 / 10 = 2.2, rounded down to 2. Half power, half acceleration.

Agility is currently available acceleration, depending on how much power is sent to the M-drive.
M rating is max acceleration, dependant on sending enough power to the M-drive.

So you are saying obvious implications are ok if you think they are obvious, but not so when others see obvious implications such as the 77 m-drive being a rocket of some sort?

By the way I agree with you that agility and maneuver g are effectively equivalent, which is why one of the first things I do for a HG warship is stick in a pp 6 and then guestimate the likely EP requirements of other systems and then increase pp size.

 

[mike wightman]

Agreed, small craft uses completely different rules (perhaps reaction drives), but ships can accelerate for weeks at constant accel, without any noticeable fuel consumption.

The 288 "accelerations" is a direct reference to the combat system, but in regular travel there is no limitation or fuel consumption.
The combat system says:

Doesn't sound like a reaction drive to me...

To again quote your own worlds "It's rather obviously implied".
The "at least 288" is the giveaway. It is assumed that you maneuver to jump distance and jump, or for insystem travel you would have to calculate if your fuel would last long enough. Look at the final couple of sentences in the Travelling between Worlds on page 1 to which the 288 accelerations is a follow up.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

So you are saying obvious implications are ok if you think they are obvious, but not so when others see obvious implications such as the 77 m-drive being a rocket of some sort?

Agreed, "common sense" is problematic, as it is generally not agreed upon.

For Agility I see it as obvious, especially as:

LBB5'80, p28:
Agility is the ability of a ship to make violent maneuvers and take evasive action while engaging hostile targets.

If that isn't acceleration while using weapons, I have no idea what it could mean.

For LBB2 M-drives, I fail to see that drives that does not use any reaction-mass are obviously reaction drives.

By the way I agree with you that agility and maneuver g are effectively equivalent, which is why one of the first things I do for a HG warship is stick in a pp 6 and then guestimate the likely EP requirements of other systems and then increase pp size.

I just have my spreadsheet allocate as much as needed. I never allocate a PP, it's automatic.