True, and yet in TTB pages 111-113, the G-Carrier and ATVs are told to be armed, and the AFV. Al laredescribed there, but no rules as how to use them in combat are given.
What are the Unplayable Things in Classic Traveller for You?
- Thread starter creativehum
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True, and yet in TTB pages 111-113, the G-Carrier and ATVs are told to be armed, and the AFV. Al laredescribed there, but no rules as how to use them in combat are given.
Exactly. Why provide armed and armored G-Carriers and AFVs with no rules whatsoever about using them in combat?
This indeed worsens in Book 4, as you get all the cool heavy anti-armor/bunker-busting energy guns yet no concrete rules for blowing up tanks or busting bunkers.
Three possibilities come to mind:
1. The "do it yourself" mindset of early RPGs. Wargaming experience and expertise was assumed by the initial RPG writers and publishers. (Later products were more clearly intended for non-wargamers.)
2. Armed vehicles in LBBs 1-3 were scenery. (This violates the dramatic principle of Chekov's Gun, though.)
2. Book 4 in particular was a bridge between the LBBs and Striker. (Here, I don't recall the release timeframe for Book 4 and Striker. I have even less information about the development timeframe of each.)
I'd think that was a big part of the "reasoning" behind the "missing" rules. While I can understand it, I don't necessarily agree with it. We did use Panzerblitz with Traveller once.
Maybe. We got stats for driving them, just not for using their guns?
Release dates of 1979 for LBB:4 and 1981 for Striker so maybe not a bridge.
I suspect the didn't feel any pressing need to release PC-level vehicle combat rules. It was the 1970s, RPGs were different. What people expected from RPGs was different.
Initially, they had all of 3 books and 148 pages in which to cram a lot of stuff. I'm sure a lot got left out. I'm sure a lot got left out of subsequent products too.
Look at the starship rules. It's 1977, they write LBB:2 with a certain "paradigm" in mind, paste it up, the presses start rolling, a week later they all see Star Wars, and it's "Wow, Traveller needs to do that!". The ideas that will become HG1 and HG2 probably start getting kicked around right then.
It's 1979 and the very first issue of JTAS features a ship their own rules can't build! Why? Because like any good wargamer you should be able to deconstruct and otherwise tweak the rules to make what you want. They double down one year and three issues later with the Gazelle, a broken design you can't make with either LLB:2 or LBB:5. While JTAS #4 and HG2 both came out in 1980, the Gazelle doesn't have a USP and presents a LBB:2 style ship card complete with the computer programs carried.
LBB:4 gave us vehicle-sized guns in '79 and the ATV DA give us some basic vehicle operation and combat rules in '80 while [Striker's more detailed rules wouldn't come out until 1981. Why? Again because you were supposed to be able to makes the rules fit your needs.
I believe they didn't write or release rules in the manner we in 2016 feel is "right" or "logical" because they were doing what was "right" or "logical" in the late 70s/early 80s.
Having some basic Gun v Armor tables would have likely been more than enough to settle most vehicular fights, especially since a bulk of the time it was man v vehicle, rather than Tank on Tank.
Arguably, none of the weapons in 1-3 could have any decisive effect on an AFV. But that was certainly not the case in Book 4.
The likely best extrapolation from there would have been AHL, as that introduce the Hit/Pen/Dmg system that was more readily scalable than the base edicts of the LBB.
But after book 4, there was certainly reason to wonder if an FGMP would penetrate a starship, an AFV, an ATV, an air raft, a locked door, etc. Similarly with a HEAP RAM Grenade.
Didn't need "Car Wars", just what kind of things the weapons could punch holes in to, and how deep.
Arguably, none of the weapons in 1-3 could have any decisive effect on an AFV. But that was certainly not the case in Book 4.
The likely best extrapolation from there would have been AHL, as that introduce the Hit/Pen/Dmg system that was more readily scalable than the base edicts of the LBB.
But after book 4, there was certainly reason to wonder if an FGMP would penetrate a starship, an AFV, an ATV, an air raft, a locked door, etc. Similarly with a HEAP RAM Grenade.
Didn't need "Car Wars", just what kind of things the weapons could punch holes in to, and how deep.
I quite agree.
While I can 'sort of, somewhat, kind of" understand why such rules "waited" until MT, I most certainly don't like the fact that such rules "waited" until MT.
Still, the lack of such rules didn't leave CT unplayable for me.
David Johansen
SOC-12
Oddly enough, I always felt Car Wars was a fairly good vehicle plug in for Traveller, being on 2d6 and all. You had to use two scales, one for vehicles and another for characters. I was more interested in creating Car Wars characters with Traveller than using vehicles in Traveller at the time so there wasn't much conversion work to do. Car Wars had three wounds, Traveller had three stats that absorbed wounds so that set the value of one die in Car Wars to two dice in Traveller.
Oh well, the big problems I had other than the absence of vehicle combat were the overly fiddly weapon skills, the limited variety of non-military characters, thank goodness for supplement 4, the absence of a reasonable pay scale for adventures. How much should a patron pay out? Who knows right? All the little UPP codes. Sorry, Marc, never liked them.
I've been thinking about how to do vehicles with books 1-3. I suggest a listing each weapon system with an appropriate modifier. Body Pistol -7, Auto Pistol -6, Revolver -5, Carbine -5, Rifle -4, Auto Rifle -4, Laser Carbine -3, Laser Rifle -2, Snub Pistol HE -5, Snub Pistol HEAP -4, Gaus Pistol -4, Gaus Rifle -3, Plasma -1, Fusion 0, Ram Grenade HEAP -1, ARL HEAP 0, Broad Sword -5, Sword -6, Cutlass -7, Foil -8, Blade -8, Dagger -9, Spear -6, Halberd -5, Cudgel -8, Bite -9, Claws -10, Horns -8, Thrasher -7.
Light Vehicles +3, Heavy Vehicles -3, Armored Vehicles -3, Slow Vehicles +2, Fast Vehicles -2, Flying Vehicles -2.
Damage is applied to a single durability characteristic which is set at Tonnage x 100. So, a one dTon vehicle is destroyed by 100 damage. Overall, I think it's better to think of performance degredation as a percentage of speed, range, and cargo being destroyed uniformly but one could imagine a simple table: 1 Passengers, 2-3 Cargo, 4 Fuel, 5 Propulsion, 6 Weapons or Propulsion if no weapons. In this case the individual system would degrade by 5% for every 1% of total durability. Sure it should be 6% but 5% is easier and not every vehicle has weapons.
Oh well, the big problems I had other than the absence of vehicle combat were the overly fiddly weapon skills, the limited variety of non-military characters, thank goodness for supplement 4, the absence of a reasonable pay scale for adventures. How much should a patron pay out? Who knows right? All the little UPP codes. Sorry, Marc, never liked them.
I've been thinking about how to do vehicles with books 1-3. I suggest a listing each weapon system with an appropriate modifier. Body Pistol -7, Auto Pistol -6, Revolver -5, Carbine -5, Rifle -4, Auto Rifle -4, Laser Carbine -3, Laser Rifle -2, Snub Pistol HE -5, Snub Pistol HEAP -4, Gaus Pistol -4, Gaus Rifle -3, Plasma -1, Fusion 0, Ram Grenade HEAP -1, ARL HEAP 0, Broad Sword -5, Sword -6, Cutlass -7, Foil -8, Blade -8, Dagger -9, Spear -6, Halberd -5, Cudgel -8, Bite -9, Claws -10, Horns -8, Thrasher -7.
Light Vehicles +3, Heavy Vehicles -3, Armored Vehicles -3, Slow Vehicles +2, Fast Vehicles -2, Flying Vehicles -2.
Damage is applied to a single durability characteristic which is set at Tonnage x 100. So, a one dTon vehicle is destroyed by 100 damage. Overall, I think it's better to think of performance degredation as a percentage of speed, range, and cargo being destroyed uniformly but one could imagine a simple table: 1 Passengers, 2-3 Cargo, 4 Fuel, 5 Propulsion, 6 Weapons or Propulsion if no weapons. In this case the individual system would degrade by 5% for every 1% of total durability. Sure it should be 6% but 5% is easier and not every vehicle has weapons.
That's something I never considered but it does seem like a good fit for the reasons you list.
Wargamers.
Wargamers again.
S:4 was nice, but the 4 expanded chargen systems made it as "obsolete" as LBB:1 sadly. Players want all those skills.
I've never thought of that. It wasn't a problem for me, but I'm weird. I can definitely understand how a system or some guidance would be helpful.
The mid-70s, hexadecimal notation, and DIY computers. It was a Seventies thing, trust me.
There's some thing called "Joe's CT Vehicles" or some such on the web. You might find it interesting.
CT characters can take (on average) 6-15 d6's of damage; Joe Normal is 6d6.
CW characters can take 3 hits... with the buffest able to take 9 or so (bodybuilding and martial arts skills).
Which makes the conversion rate 1 CW DP=2d6 Traveller damage... which means the FGMP-15 does a wondrous 8 DP... or 2d6+1 DP, if you convert it to dice.
Yeah, CW as a plug in to traveller works well enough - enough that you, me, and dozens of others came up with the same concept over the years, and the same conversions. It's particularly apropos to do so - the skill levels including 0 as a step between unskilled and a positive modifier, the use of unusual scales for combat, namely 1:100 and 1:180, but noting that many players played CW at 1:120... and as you note, a 2d6 baseline.
The problems with doing so are that CT armor is deflection (in Bk 1/Mayday, Bk5 - HG and Striker/AHL), while CW is ablative. It's not just a scale issue... I never found a satisfactory (to me) solution to that issue.
Not the game per se, but it makes unplayable (at least without house rules, but I understand the OP question as with RAW in LBB1-3) any hostile encounter in which those vhicles appear.
Two examples:
- in the double adventure stranded/stranded alone, the player(s) are pursued by air-raft equiped people. Can they disable the air-rafts? can they shoot them down?
- while parforming an illegal work in a TLD planet (let's say Efate), the players have a hostile encounter (roll 22 in TTB page 101) resulting in 2d6 soldiers LGAV. Those vehicle equiped soldiers ae likely to be in a G-Carrier. How do the players confront it?
NOTE: I use TTB as equivalent to LBB1-3, even though I'm aware there are some details that difer.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I can't be the only one who thought to adapt the small craft rules for vehicle hits am I?
Are thre rules for small craft agains people? If so, I must have skipped them...
I believe he is referring to the small craft hit table that is nestled next to the starship hit table.
Oh, ok, but most questions remain: how do personnel weapons affect them, even if we know where do they hit?
There's a million situations PCs could get involved in with no rules to cover them... And I think almost every RPG game can find such situations (a few games take care the define the scope of the game such that the GM either resolves a situation by fiat, or it is defined what to roll).
Note that in the 70s, RPGs were just opening the door of going beyond a war game scenario, and even people playing pure war games were starting to try things not covered by the rules, requiring the GM to come up with a way to resolve things.
I agree that missing vehicle combat seems to be a big hole, on the other hand, I played a long Traveller campaign without needing such rules, and it wasn't because non-starship vehicles never came into play. Again, my thought is that WHEN Books 1-3 were published, Marc didn't consider vehicle combat to be part of the focus of the game, and if something occurred, the GM would just make a ruling, maybe roll some dice, and move on.
Now, are there any other huge gaping holes that make the game "unplayable"? I think be have smashed the junk yard vehicle enough...
Frank
Well, it takes (Looking in S7) 100 points of energy weapon or 1000 points of bullets to hole a partition wall... 28.5 dice of energy, or 285 dice of bullets. (CT S page 4). It takes 1000 points of energy weapon to hole a bulkhead (ibid, p.5)
The problem is that this is incompatible with later editions...
But, not so much striker, which puts starships at AV 60+, and weapons must have a penetration not more than 5 below the AV. (Yes, I'm aware errata lowers that to 40, a match to MT.) (Striker, Bk2, p 42)
But even that doesn't tell us how much is needed to inflict a hit on the ship - that's just a hole.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
They are the same as if you are hit by a starship grade laser or missile or sand canister - roll a new character or activate clone insurance.
For things like g-carriers and ATVs that mount machine guns or laser rifle equivalents then you just use the normal combat rules.
For unarmoured vehicles you have to hit the equivalent of mesh armour with personal scale weapons, light armoured vehicles cloth armour, medium armour vehicles battle dress and heavy armored vehicle are immune to personal scale weapons - break out the tac missiles.
On a successful hit roll on the smallcraft damage table.
Alternatively if you really want to go the extra mile, and like rolling damage dice, for each component in the vehicle give it a hit number as if it were an animal and that becomes the damage to reduce its efficiency/destroy the component.
eg an open air raft can lift 4 tons and 4 people (let's say at 100kg each) so that's the equivalent of 44 grav belts. 10kg per grav belt give the grav lifters on the air/raft a mass of 440kg
Nearest animal is 400kg so I have 6d/3d for hits.
I decide that grav modules are delicate so give them 2 hit per die so the damage rating of the drive is 12/6 (more rugged components or components deliberately hardened I may grant more of the d6 value to)
Controls/computer are 25kg (I made this up) for a hit rating of 6/4
So my air/raft card says:
air/raft(mesh) --- drive 12/6---controls 6/4--- crew 1/1/1/1
Bod shoots at the air/raft with his smg, rolls to hit vs mesh armour and gets a hit.
Smallcraft hit table is consulted and the result is drive.
3d are rolled for a total damage of 9, the drive is still ok
Bod shoots again and gets a cabin hit, one of the crew takes the 3d of damage this time.
Given time I could have every vehicle in LBB3 statted like the air/raft above using nothing more than a little imagination and the rules as written. Not quite Striker level of detail but good enough for an encounter between a group and an air/raft.
g-carrier(battledress)---drive 24/12---controls 9/6--- crew 1/1 troops 1/1/1/1/1/1/1/1/1/1/1/1/1/1--- laser rifle mount 6/6
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Tthen why to include those armed vehicles in the game if there are no rules to use them.
And it's ok to think the referee will house rule it, but then this fully comes to the OP question, that is what I was answering.
And not incluiding those rules in LBB4 was even a greater flawl, IMHO...
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