Traveller Theme 1: Proto-Traveller

[Selandia]

The CT (and therefore PT) ship design is an allegoric design system.
In an allegory, each element is a metaphore.
A design is a compromise.
CT stage the crucial compromises for its gaming RPG strategy using metaphores.
The gaming strategy appers to me IMHO: The resulting hardware is crude and optimization is made by clever adventuring, rather than crude adventuring being optimized by clever hardware.

Therefore IMHO, to your point

...

• Mass vs volume: clearly less than workable and arguably broken entirely in CT
• LBB2 standard hulls with wasted Eng space in ship design examples
• 20dT bridge with no specified purpose: less than workable (huge space hog on small ships, included in all the corrected ship designs)
• Cr4000 life support per jump per stateroom, occupied or not (huge, and why can't we shut off unused rooms)
• Other completely arbitrary costs (primarily passenger/cargo rates)
• Per parsec vs per jump passenger and cargo rates

Mass volume confusion: a total scientific aberation, but a way to stage in one stroke the volume issue, the mass/motion and + Jump (sci-fi Physic) issues.

20 dT bridge: force economy of scale into design (you could add type A PoPlant and Man, rather than A- that give J1, M1 to small 100t courrier)

Cr 4000 & arbitrary cost (you can add incremental crew requirements, that waste some of the economy of scale ): insure that free trader shipping economic have revenues that can reach an austere break even point, thus forcing speculative trade or adventuring/patron.

parsec vs jump revenues (1000 cr for freight irrespective of distance) force the issue :
Greater capital investment (J-2/ eng costs) vs reduced rotation rate (J-1 x 2 vs J-2 x 1 = twice the per jump expenditures to deliver a cargo, full monthly expenditure, and half the monthly revenues)
Fuel or Cargo = Increase the number of economic opportunities or increase the revenues of some opportunities?

It is a crude and rude system, with as results: PC choosen, working, key compromizes. Of course that is not perfect, but the object IMHO is not be RPG Plaster Saints, it is to have fun, even if it means too much Sx, Rk-Roll, Drg, ROH & psychedelic rules (were you hear a crow and a fox speak to one another to produce a bottom line lesson about J-2).

have fun

Selandia
(psychedelic rules? may be I should quit donought for breakfast)

 

[ffilz]

Hmm, looks like the wiki page for Proto-Traveller has not caught up with this thread...

http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Proto-traveller

I was just pointed to that after discussing Proto-Traveller with Jeffro and I pointed out that here at least, Proto-Traveller includes The Spinward Marches...

Frank

 

[SpaceBadger]

so, not only is there a minimum drive size of 1 dton, but a maximum size in dtons as well? and no series or parallel gangs? I suppose one could decree that, but it doesn't sit well in me.

I could go along w Bk2 limits on available sizes of Jump Drives, "just because" - after all, we really know very little about Jump Space from what is given in Bk2, there may very well be something that limits the size of a functional Jump Drive, and also prevents operation of multiple Jump Drives working together on the same ship.

My suspenders of disbelief have a little more trouble with the idea that multiple M-Drives or Power Plants cannot be installed. So yeah, there could be some BIG ships around, but you can't Jump them, they're limited to in-system use or even STL interstellar travel (potentially BIG advantage for SDBs over interstellar invaders!).

I'm not all the way through reading this thread, but haven't seen any discussion so far of whether or not gravitic tech such as reactionless thrusters is or is not part of Proto-Traveller. Since the LBBs only featured one gravitic vehicle that I recall - the classic Dirdir air/raft - it would be easy to leave that out and make the M-drives fusion torches or something a little closer to hard SF, if that is the GM's preference (wasn't there something in early books about using drive emissions as a space combat weapon, ala Niven's Kzinti Lesson as presented in "The Warriors"?).

 

[kilemall]

I'm not all the way through reading this thread, but haven't seen any discussion so far of whether or not gravitic tech such as reactionless thrusters is or is not part of Proto-Traveller. Since the LBBs only featured one gravitic vehicle that I recall - the classic Dirdir air/raft - it would be easy to leave that out and make the M-drives fusion torches or something a little closer to hard SF, if that is the GM's preference (wasn't there something in early books about using drive emissions as a space combat weapon, ala Niven's Kzinti Lesson as presented in "The Warriors"?).

I want to say HG first edition had drives as weapons.

 

[mike wightman]

CT77 LBB2 had the fuel burn rate for smallcraft and also, buried away in the text, the rate for ships too.

Kilemall has already mentioned HG79 explicitly mentioning using fusion drives as weapons.

Fast forward to TNE and the authors mention one of the reasons for the use of HEPlaR was a throwback to the original intent of the maneuver drive being a reaction drive.

The physics just doesn't work though.

 

[vegascat]

Traveller Versions

Anyone have a good answer to how many different versions of Traveller have been published?
Who still plays which version?
What is your favorite version?
Boxed set
LLBs by GDW
Megatraveller
Mongoose Traveller
Maybe 3 other versions

 

[vegascat]

Traveller Versions

With 11 different versions published by 7 different publishers over 43 years, the way the rules can be interpreted by game masters of widely varying ages in countries across the globe, who is to say what really is correct?

 

[Cryton]

I'm not sure if anyone has EVER pointed this out (23 pages is a lot of reading) , but in the '77 Rule books, the max size of the ship was capped by tech, as opposed to drive performance

 

[infojunky]

I'm not sure if anyone has EVER pointed this out (23 pages is a lot of reading) , but in the '77 Rule books, the max size of the ship was capped by tech, as opposed to drive performance

It was mentioned early on in the thread.

 

[Ulsyus]

Fast forward to TNE and the authors mention one of the reasons for the use of HEPlaR was a throwback to the original intent of the maneuver drive being a reaction drive.

The physics just doesn't work though.

The ranges in TNE (and BL and BR) would make using the drives a little difficult, though they could be useful in a ship-knife-fight just prior to being boarded if they were still functional at that point