The Operational Rules of Traveller

[sabredog]

Hi,

I think that you may also need to consider how not constraining yourself has also crept into real world events too though. For instance, its my understanding that Lord Nelson's alternate tactics were a big issue in the Battle of Trafalgar. Similarly, the attempted use of submersible vessels by the Colonial forces during the War of Independence as well as the Rebellious South during the US Civil war are also examples of trying to employ alternate tactics to offset a possible disadvantage and attempting to try and gain an advantage over your opponent.

Similarly, the UK's use of tanks during the 1st World War and maybe even the German "Blitzkrieg' tactics used early in WWII, and the Japanese Kamikazi attacks later in WWII may also be cited as examples of combatants trying to introduce new approaches to gain some form of "advantage" over your adversaries.

I'm not convinced that eliminating the potential for the use of any similar such tactics or alternate approaches to trying to gain an advantage in battle would necessarily be a good idea to 'hardwire" into an operational level game.

I'm not saying that maybe some limits might not be useful on what people can do in a game (such as maybe saying that there is an interstellar agreement limiting the use of weapons of mass destruction etc) but I am more or less trying to say something along the lines that "at the start of a battle there is no reason for the speeds of the approaching ships to be limited to no more than the maximum number of hexes that the slowest ship in your fleet can move using one turn's worth of acceleration" as is specified in some games (I believe Brilliant Lances and Battle Rider for example) or that all vessels on each side must be assumed to move en masse more or less together so that all ships are considered to be within the same general range band for a given turn (which seems to be implicit in High Guard).

In general then, if a player wishes to try and keep certain ships further back from the enemy in a battle while moving other of his ships closer to the enemy, I don't see why he shouldn't be allowed to do so. And if a player has some ships near the Sun's 100D limit but on the far side of the Sun from Earth's current location, while the other player has his ships in orbit around Earth, I don't see why we should have to assume that they will battle each other if the one side decides that it doesn't really want to engage the other.

The problem is that as they are at this time, the rules of the game do not really address tactics that could be used in any other way. There are already rules for reserves, rear guards, and rotating ships out of the line - but it is still pretty abstract even on the tactical scale.

On the operational scale it is even more abstract, and pretty much needs to be in order to even keep it manageable.

Yo make a lot of excellent points, though, and I agree with nearly every one. In fact, I have tried almost all of them in some form or another over the decades to try, as a long-time grognardy, micromanaging wargamer, to introduce more crunchy and detailed rules to FFW to allow for all of these things. I've added layered planet and gas giant boxes to my own expanded maps using my TU (which has no Imperium, Solomani, or other - its' that old) as a base. It only tortured players who for the most part were not wargamers and not used ot abstracting strategic operations, or interested in conducting squadron level battles over solar systems with several gas giants, moons, asteroid belts, etc..

I think that's something we are doing here, though: trying to feel our way towards something that keeps it manageable, but also with enough detail that it feels real and allows for some creativity on the part of commanders beyond just trying ot hide in the jump shadows of worlds.

One of my pet peeves is the way the two battle lines are addressed in HG: I know it makes it manageable and 'fair', and it kinda simulates the simultaneity of the combat turn, but this "put one ship (or BatRon) out - opponent matches it" sequence has always felt wrong. What about flipping the markers over and then randomly placing them so some level of surprise can be had as the two fleets 'collide' for the first turn? Then, in subsequent turns, keep the counters face up and as the survivors are freed up the winners of each mini-battle are allowed to pick their next targets?

Just throwing this out for some way to allow some kind of tactical choices when picking your initial line of battle and what you keep in reserves, and keep it semi-foggy without having to use a referee like some game of SeeKrieg or Harpoon.

 

[aramis]

The point mentioned in the BL article about "Open Ended" is that they weren't going to pre-suppose doctrine or even tactics. They said "Here's a ship, here's how lasers and guns work, here's acceleration, here's sensors, and off you go." From this you can develop your own tactics.

Their choice of standard weapon mounts strongly shaped most play from what I've seen; the use of the OTU shaped as much. My experiences are that the surreal elements (incredible fuel efficiency, graviticly focused lasers) were already concessions to a tactical doctrine of long range weapons including something other than missiles.

Which, for what it's worth, is why missiles are so dominant in Starfire 3E... they have the range. They don't in BL, because pseudo-science magic was used to dictate that lasers could be used as mid-long range weapons.

 

[McPerth]

You could do that with Traveller, and you don't even need constant acceleration, but you would have to map the velocity changes appropriately to the scale at hand. For example, the ships accelerating at 1G for X hours may not be enough to manifest a "hexes per turn" difference at the current scale, but that acceleration can carry over to the next turn where they could keep accelerating to get that extra "hex per turn" velocity. Obviously there's book keeping in involved in that case. It also make maneuver more coarse than perhaps one would like.

One of the problems I see in that is thay you must also take into account your deceleration, something easily made if your target is (more or less) fixed, as is a planet, but not so if it is a fleet you intend to intecept to avoid damage to the same planet.

I guess this system will lead mostly to the "one shoot engagements as fleets overpass themselves, like knigts' jousts" I told about in other threads.