No, why would that be a problem? For those that didn't want to bother with the formula there was a table with typical distances.
Hans
Traveller's direction; history and future
- Thread starter Blue Ghost
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Hans
creativehum
SOC-14 1K
The table didn't exist in Classic Traveller ('77 and '81).
It was added for The Traveller Book. (A terrific addition.)
Part of the problem I had with it when I was a teen first seeing the formulas was not the math itself, but why they were valuable. The text never says, "This will help you determine how much time until a ship reaches safety at a port or to jump out of system. So use this when encounters begin if a race to safety is occurring." Because, other than that, as far as I can tell, the formulas don't add much fun to play.
My teen brain got stuck on this: "So, we have to calculate this when a ship jumps in system.... why? What am I missing?" Because I couldn't see how the pieces fit together at the time.
That was my exact assessment. I got to pre-calc in middle school, and was actually reading algebra books on my own when I was still in grade school, so it wasn't the math that bothered me in the least.
It was the fact that the math didn't add fun to the game. Oh sure, if kinda sorta made you feel like you were playing a game that smarter than it actually was, but it's like when would you use them for any real detail of adventure related play? It was just busy work. And no fun busy work.
Man, I hope I don't sound like I'm dumping on the game, because I have had loads of fun with Traveller, but the travel formulae seemed really extraneous to me.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
I still have no idea as to why you jump with no relative velocity. Is there any explanation for that? I view that as an open invitation to attack. I am also not a fan of continuous 1-G or X-G boost either. If you are not slowing down, travel time is about the same for an hour or two boost and then coast.
I was under the impression that whatever velocity you had when you entered jump, that's the velocity you had when you exited.
May have got it from the Starship Operations Manual...
No one ever bothered with the relative differences in velocities between the systems until I was directed to an article from the Traveller: 2300 forum.
May have got it from the Starship Operations Manual...
No one ever bothered with the relative differences in velocities between the systems until I was directed to an article from the Traveller: 2300 forum.
Frankymole
SOC-12
Just use the travel formula (or any mechanic) when it is essential to the fun of the game: if, for instance, you are in a race against time to get a vaccine to a plague-stricken outpost, or on a mission to intercept an assassin who will strike at a particular ceremony, or something of that like then how long your ships takes to get there is vitally important to success or failure. Or a mail contract for a vital contract. For standard trade or exploration, time may not be so much of the essence.
No worries. Virtually all complex games have sections (either in the game or in one's experience of the game) where you have to wonder if this is actually added value, or false content through complexity (the old, "is this a feature or a bug?" conundrum).
I don't have the big black book in front of me, but I seem to recall that it was more for interplanetary travel; i.e. in system. But, even if that was the case it doesn't strike me as being pertinent unless you were accelerating the entire time, or, more accurately, half the time. At which point you do need to flip the ship around and apply counter or reverse thrust to decelerate as you approach your destination.
But I think this was one of the shortcomings of the expanded CT set in both the BBB and Starter editions. I think most people, like my groups, used "Star Wars" mechanics when it came to spacecraft / starship operations. Your players got in their ship and zoomed to whatever destination.
I think the travel formulas assumed that no other science nor technology (other than the basic thrust of the maneuver drive) were operating. That is you had US Apollo program like flight mechanics as opposed to the Millenium Falcon. Ergo I'm guessing Marc Miller tried to apply NASA space flight technology to a Star Wars like environment.
I think the shortcoming of that is that if, say, a Marava class starship (it's Millenium Falcon like) leaves an Earth like planet to hop over to a moon, then like timerover51 said, you really don't need more than to get a good burst and coast the rest of the way.
I always assumed there would be something like "grav brakes" that would slow your ship down once you got close to a world. It would grab or interact with the planet's gravity field, and act as a kind of drag on the starship, thus requiring the players to hit the accelerator every now and then. Therefore the effect would be akin to flying a plane or driving a car. But that was just my imagination.
Beyond that, if you were travelling to a gas giant for refuelling, and say that gas giant is the distance of our own jovian worlds, then maybe the travel formula might be needed. That is to say, would you really be accelerating at 1g, 2g, 3g or what have you, all the way to the gas giant? And once you reached the planet, how would slow down? I can sort of, kind of, see that. But if we used my imagined grav-brake theory, then well, it's kind of a moot point.
But I think this was one of the shortcomings of the expanded CT set in both the BBB and Starter editions. I think most people, like my groups, used "Star Wars" mechanics when it came to spacecraft / starship operations. Your players got in their ship and zoomed to whatever destination.
I think the travel formulas assumed that no other science nor technology (other than the basic thrust of the maneuver drive) were operating. That is you had US Apollo program like flight mechanics as opposed to the Millenium Falcon. Ergo I'm guessing Marc Miller tried to apply NASA space flight technology to a Star Wars like environment.
I think the shortcoming of that is that if, say, a Marava class starship (it's Millenium Falcon like) leaves an Earth like planet to hop over to a moon, then like timerover51 said, you really don't need more than to get a good burst and coast the rest of the way.
I always assumed there would be something like "grav brakes" that would slow your ship down once you got close to a world. It would grab or interact with the planet's gravity field, and act as a kind of drag on the starship, thus requiring the players to hit the accelerator every now and then. Therefore the effect would be akin to flying a plane or driving a car. But that was just my imagination.
Beyond that, if you were travelling to a gas giant for refuelling, and say that gas giant is the distance of our own jovian worlds, then maybe the travel formula might be needed. That is to say, would you really be accelerating at 1g, 2g, 3g or what have you, all the way to the gas giant? And once you reached the planet, how would slow down? I can sort of, kind of, see that. But if we used my imagined grav-brake theory, then well, it's kind of a moot point.
I know of no official explanation.
My own personal take is that it's a simplification for the sake of gamability. What ships actually do in the departure system is accelerate until they have zero relative velocity towards the destination world. Since this would require additional knowledge of the relative velocities between multiple star systems and complicate calculations for no real gain, the rule about achieving zero velocity relative to the departure world is used as a substitute that's good enough for game purposes.
Hans
creativehum
SOC-14 1K
Your first two sentences are correct. The third is not: Traveller '77 was written before Star Wars was released. There was not Star Wars-like environment. The implied setting was very much a 1950-60s Hard SF feel.
The idea that you would have to do basic travel within a system between worlds, to a jump point, or to a jump point to a port was all part of the Hard SF feel. Not only did it make part of space travel mundane (remember, this is an SF space game with shotguns and swords!) it provided windows of opportunity for attacks and such. How the Players decided to deal with these limitations on travel when the Ref hit them with a crisis was part of what the game was supposed to be about.
Well, yes. I see that now. The point Blue Ghost and I are making is that when we picked up the game in our youth and tried to figure it out, that wasn't immediately obvious. The layout of the book suggested This Really Matters. Do This to Travel.
With hindsight, I see how to apply it.
Imagine how SW could have/would have affected Traveller, had they written it one year later. Traveller is in some senses a distillation of science fiction that came before Star Wars.
creativehum
SOC-14 1K
AGREED!!!
It was included in the '81 edition (Book 2, page 10).
creativehum
SOC-14 1K
True! Good catch.
But The Traveller Book also has the "Typical Use for Distance" column on the far right which line up with the various distances. (Safe jump distance from size 1 world; Safe jump distance from size 2 world; Safe jump distance from large gas giant; Typical distance to close neighbor world; Typical distance to close gas giant; and so on.)
This is the column that makes the table an excellent short hand for sorting out how much time a ship will be in transit if calculating out everything isn't an issue.
According to Marc's designers notes article, no, it was not. Star Wars (summer 77) was the impetus to polish off the design, released in fall 77.
creativehum
SOC-14 1K
This is fascinating. Are those note available anywhere? I'd love to read them.
I was going by this quote from Marc, which I read years ago, from an interview I think in 2010:
So, I've gone with that assumption for a while now!
EDIT: Oh, hey. I tracked down that quote to this site.
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salochin999
SOC-13
IMTU I say it makes the nav calcs safer.
(I have a half-finished thing with a long list of misjump DMs that take into account ship sizes, which part of the system is being jumped from / into, ship moving or not etc. The idea is to make it so there is a 100% safe way of jumping which is quite constrained but also much more risky jumps for small ships with very skilled navigators - basically as a way to allow smugglers and blockade runners.)
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I use the accelerate halfway / decelerate halfway for why the m-drive fuel is so high so in an emergency (or to save money) a ship can eke out its fuel by only accelerating for a while and then coasting.
salochin999
SOC-13
I guess they must have although personally I found the accelerate halfway / decelerate halfway idea quite cool.
The designer's commentary is in Dragon magazine. The timing is mentioned in the Imperium Designers' Notes, Dragon 20. Origins (where Traveller was released) was after Star Wars.
Traveller isn't the Star Wars RPG... but Star Wars prompted finishing it, and influenced the completion of Imperium as well.
