Vent-Rant MegaTraveller what I hate about it.

[McPerth]

So this assumes the weapons fire continually for the entire 15 seconds. Not sure how reasonable that is. ;-)

Well, to fire 40 shoots in 6 seconds it must fire nearly continuously (at least as quickly as a MG), and IIRC the diference among blaser and Plaser is precisely this one: the BLaser fires continuously (as a torch, so to say) while the Plaser in bursts (as a flash, to keep the analogy). That's why the Blaser is more precise and the Plaser more powerful...

BTW, MT combat rounds are 6 seconds long, not 15 (Player's Handbook, p 67). So it's 40 shots in 6 seconds. The ships laser can fire once during the same time period (although I can't remember where that's from; maybe Striker).

It seems you're not the only one making mixups among various games ... I guess my error in this case comes from AHL. In any case, the relative power (ratio among weapons) does not vary.

Well at least that's something. ;-)

My point of view is more from the other side: the play balance side. The side which asks: do you really WANT to have to increase the effect of your ship's armour, or increase its Damage Points so that the potential damage resulting from a 500d6 hit resembles what would have occurred under High Guard, rather than total overkill? Because by increasing armour or Hull Damage points, you also prevent PCs from blasting out the windows in the Annic Nova to effect entry, or other "interesting" effects of weapons aboard in space.

Game balance is nearly irrelevant when you're comparing those different weapons. IMHO that would be as comapring WWII tank and ship guns. Few tanks (if any) could affect a warship, nor whithstand a warship shoot, as the heaviest gun a tank mountes was (IIRC) a 122, roughly equivalent to the 5" guns that were among the smallest the ships used (AA guns excluded).

To compare it with another Traveller version, see that in MgT, to give another example, the conversión factor is 50, so a Blaser that delivers a tiny 1d6 damage for starships, delivers 50d6 against vehicles or personnel

That's the range in atmosphere. Can't remember where that's from, either - maybe Striker again. Guess I'll have to go look it up. ;-)

I guess this range would hardly allow for any interface combat with orbiting ships, that in Traveller are quite canon...

 

[Arsenal]

Re: Cleaned up version of MT

Hi there!

I have been reading here and the Sticky MT Errata thread about sfchbryan's work to produce a cleaned up version of MT. I haven't come across any recent posts about this work. What is the current status? How soon could it be released?

Maybe I'm not asking in the thread?

And thank you scfbryan for your labor.

 

[Timerover51]

I don't think any Navy ever came up with a dual purpose warhead for its bid guns, or even carried different types of warhead.

Just looking through this, and found this.

The U.S. Navy battleships carried both Armor-Piercing Rounds and High-Capacity rounds for their guns. The U.S. 16 inch High-Capacity round weighed 1900 pounds and carried, if I remember correctly, 153 pounds of Explosive D, actually Ammonium Picrate, considerably less sensitive to impact detonation than TNT and almost as powerful.

The Japanese did make anti-aircraft shells for their large battleship guns, loaded with incendiary tubes, and these were used in firing at attacking U.S. aircraft.

The British had both armor-piercing rounds and high-explosive rounds for their battleship guns, with the 15 inch also having a black-powder filled Common Projectile that was almost as good an armor-piercer at Jutland as the armor-piercing round. For that matter, the British also made a 15 inch shrapnel shell in World War One.

The U.S. Navy did an analysis of the shelling of a Japanese steel factory by several U.S. Navy battleships during World War 2, right at the end, and discovered that the fragments of the 16 inch High-Capacity rounds could weight as much as 10 pounds and were quite capable of wrecking machine tools and penetrating a fair number of walls. Ten pounds of shell fragment would easily penetrate the average ship bulkhead.

 

[mike wightman]

Many thanks for finding that, it's never too late to learn new stuff.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Thread necromancy.

As per my recently Blog entry, the only real thing I honestly disliked about Mega Traveller was the lack of adventure support.

The thing that kept making me buy LBBs was the fact that every new LBB has something new in it. And the adventures were like buying new novels, only you could interact with them with your friends. Once you take that away, then you trash the support, and the game falls of its lack of will.

The LBBs annoyed me because it was partially a marketing scheme, BUT, each LBB did provide something new for the players to actually play with. The COTI supp, the 76 Patrons supp, later onces like Merchant Prince, Robots, and even the Alien Modules all had something that you could tinker with. And none of them lathered you and the game in excessive background material, which I guess according to Marc Miller's interview is supposedly what people wanted.

The LBBs provided flavor text for the setting in addition to providing either an adventure or a host of new career paths or whatever. But MT had absolutely nothing of the kind, and no I don't include the journals.

Our group put the game down at that point, and didn't look back. Take that for what it's worth.

 

[SanDragon]

Notice: as of 29 February, MT will no longer be supported by GDW.


This campaign will self-destruct in 3... 2... 1...

 

[Carlobrand]

Notice: as of 29 February, MT will no longer be supported by GDW.


This campaign will self-destruct in 3... 2... 1...

So, next year?

 

[Blue Ghost]

Notice: as of 29 February, MT will no longer be supported by GDW.


This campaign will self-destruct in 3... 2... 1...

I don't understand.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I don't understand.

Two jokes. One is the "Feb 29" (Leap Year day) to make it seem like support for the game will vanish immediately, but is actually describing an "impossible" day which makes it clear it's a joke.

The second is the "next year" because there actually will be a leap day next year.

The underlying joke is that it hasn't been supported in decades anyhow, but that this doesn't matter because it's still perfectly playable if one chooses.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Interesting. Thanks.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I just want to be clear here, I actually liked the new dynamic and rules for MT, but it's like for our group MT was all flash and no bang. Again at the risk of repeating myself, I felt like all of the European like Victorian geopolitics would have been better served with some hard core LBB adventures that highlighted rifts between the Archdukes.

I can imagine a secret plot for a secret starship design that would unbalance two powers at odds with one another and vying for the throne, and it's the players' job to after those secret plans. Or perhaps it's a new white / globe defense mechanism, or maybe a "deflector shield" kind of thing that hugs the body of a ship.

At the time I didn't dislike Mega Traveller, and our group wound up making up adventures, but they were more or less without the political intrigue of MT. In other words it was business as usual. I'm sorry there wasn't more MT story material put on the market, but I also think the background material, for a game aimed at pre-teens and teens, may have been a bit much or just over the heads of groups not up on history to anchor themselves for the setting.

I guess I wish I'd ran more MT sessions back in the day.

 

[SanDragon]

Also, Wiki has GDW going defunct on 29 Feb, 1996, a leap year.

 

[aramis]

most MT GM's I know didn't run the rebellion era, instead running classic era (1100-1115) using the MT rules.

Further, the rebellion itself is practically immaterial to play in the Marches, and the Marches are the included sector.

 

[Blue Ghost]

most MT GM's I know didn't run the rebellion era, instead running classic era (1100-1115) using the MT rules.

Further, the rebellion itself is practically immaterial to play in the Marches, and the Marches are the included sector.

Which is what we wound up doing.

I guess my beef with MT was that it died out, and in hindsight it died out due to lack of support in terms of adventures published to help nursemaid Referees and Players alike into the Rebellion era.

I actually thought the Rebellion concept was interesting, but even as a college age player I couldn't wrap my brain around what I now see as a late Victorian pre-WW1 European geopolitical scheme. I think MT could have really taken off had there been something like an LBB that had something to give Referees and players a plot to work with.

I guess in the end, if any of my groups were angry with MT, then it was the fact that MT didn't prosper like it could have. I mean the whole concept of the Imperium at odds with itself seems like a winner, but the concept just wasn't brought forth fully. Oh well. Maybe MT can see a rebirth at some point.

 

[GypsyComet]

I ran a Rebellion game in Daibei, starting with trying to stay ahead of the Solomani advance and spending much of the time in what became occupied but low attention territory. The PCs operated under Solomani noses for months in game, as I depicted the area diving down the Hard Times curve almost immediately due to the Solomani bleeding it dry to support the front a few parsecs away.

One of my peeves about the MT period from GDW and DGP was that quite a lot of the support wasn't actually about the Rebellion. It took Knightfall to convey that much of the Imperium was really a war zone, and to explore what that meant. Flaming Eye then expanded on that, but by then MT was winding down.
No, instead we got DGP's bi-monthly love letter to the Imperium that was. Their implementation of the war(s) came across as spotty and begrudging. Projects about the actual war would get announced and advertised, then vanish into development hell. And all the while, DGPs four troublemakers are touring the Imperium of a decade prior, oblivious to what was coming.
Ultimately, this was why so many blame GDW for killing the Imperium with Virus. The mistaken impression that the Imperium hadn't been dead since the launch of MT was all on DGPs ongoing love letter. But Survival Margin and TNE weren't the date of decease; they were instead the announcement that probate of the Will was concluded, so we could all move on...

Mechanically, I agree with some prior posts. The starship construction and combat rules were disconnected from each other, and the construction process made assumptions that ended up altering ships so much that CT couldn't be replicated.

 

[mike wightman]

The Rebellion was too much meta-game and far too little PC scale action.

While the authors are waxing lyrical about the grand strategy of the factions involved, they lost sight of the main focus of the majority of Traveller games - the PCs are a group of characters who have left their previous life to become adventurers.

Like we brought up a while ago a better introductory adventure set in 1116 would have involved Lt Windrush at the PC scale of things - instead we get a pretty crap nail mission to recover a TL16 part from an IN depot and it is set in 1120.

I liked the Hard Times era, there was plenty for a group of PCs to do, including some pretty heroic actions if my games were typical of what others were doing.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Yeah, that's better phrased than my lengthy reply. And it's a shame because at that point things were pretty cool all around.

I think a few years into my membership here someone posted a link to the interview with one of the DGP authors (or they may have posted the interview itself), and he said something like cranking out all the books ate up nearly all of his time. I wonder how and why that impacted MT.

 

[jec10]

We loved Hard Times, and had some great adventures in Diaspora.

But I agree with the rules disconnects and the absence of useful adventures until it was almost too late.

The starship combat rules being a trainwreck was a major additional downside for adventurers who liked to mix it up with hostile ships.

The meta problems, I still believe, ultimately came down to DGP not being wargamers or really from the same stock as GDW types. They loved their TD campaign, but it was streets away from the geopolitical and battlefield shenanigans the OTU was meant to be going through.

 

[whartung]

I guess my beef with MT was that it died out, and in hindsight it died out due to lack of support in terms of adventures published to help nursemaid Referees and Players alike into the Rebellion era.

Is that what happened? Or was it simply that what they did publish was just too "meta" (vs "get the plans from the abandoned space station, and, oh, don't open the door to the lab -- just saying" adventures).

I don't know, but I can't really say that it died out, rather they usurped it with the House system and TNE. There was the transitionary module "Survival Margin" that acted as a bridge between the two, right? But how long was it between SM came out and the previous module came out? Meanwhile, Challenge was still going strong and had consistent Traveller content.

I just don't recall there being some long lull.

 

[McPerth]

I think a few years into my membership here someone posted a link to the interview with one of the DGP authors (or they may have posted the interview itself), and he said something like cranking out all the books ate up nearly all of his time. I wonder how and why that impacted MT.

I guess you mean this thread