I agree that the missing vehicle combat rules are a hole in original
Traveller.
I also agree with Mike that one can easily extrapolate the rules contained in Books 1-3 to find solutions. While this isn't everyone's cup of tea, there's nothing weird about it, and it would have been expected in the 1970s.
Because extrapolating rules would have been expected per the design of 1970s RPGs, I don't consider it any sort of fatal flaw. Loren Wiseman's editorial in issue #2 of the JTAS goes on at length about how to build a laser pistol per the basic
Traveller rules. Just because every weapon that could ever be isn't listed doesn't mean there's a huge hole in the game. If one looks at at the "playing pieces" of the rules in LBBs 1-3, Wiseman makes clear, you'll be able to make the weapons you want.
I have maintained for a while that using the playing pieces found in LBBs 1-3 a Referee can make any alien or robot he wants without recourse to any new subsystem. By "playing pieces" I mean:
- the UPP Characteristics
- the Combat rules (which cover speed, weapons, attack, and armor)
- the rules of Drugs
- the rules for Psionics
- the rules for creating Animals
Using these rules in different permutations, one can create super-fast aliens, aliens with innate weird powers (that might not be psionics at all), and so on.
Thinking about the string of posts today, I too thought, "Huh. How would I handle a grav tank if the PCs stumbled into conflict with one while trying to get cross-country?" And it did stump me.
But then I remember the Animal Size and Weaponry table from the Animal Creation rules on Book 3. It occurred to me that one could easily use how
that table extrapolates from earlier rules to create a wide variety of strengths and effects greater than the scale of humans and weapons so far presented. In that table armor can be modified beyond Battle Armor, natural weapons are based on the weapons already provided but altered with innate Das to hit; and Wounds from animal attacks (based on size) can be increased with extra D6 damage dice, or even with multipliers (up to x6 the base Damage!)
It seems easy enough to create armored hulls that start at Battle Dress and go up with modifiers (based on the TL of the manufacturing world). Using the table as a model, seems easy enough to create explosive shells or laser cannons that have modifiers to hit against any armor (increasing the odds of penetrating damage), and it seems easy enough to increase the damage as seems appropriate. Moreover, the clever use of unconscious/dead/destroyed damage against animals can be modeled quickly to vehicles: component destroyed/vehicle incapacitated/vehicle explodes.
Personal arms will have a slim chance of doing any vital damage. Another vehicle (or weapon) will need to be brought into place. Damage against individuals will most likely result in death.
Of course, this way of building the rules out from what is already there does
model combat. But that's not what original Traveller was trying to do. LBBs were designed at the scale of adventures in adventurous situations. The Referee needed rules to adjudicate results and to offer the Players information to make informed decisions about the risks and rewards for different actions in dangerous situations. Extrapolating as above does this. Using these rules one will not be able to to sort out the manufacturing cost per item coming out of a TL 11 factory. One will, however, be able to quickly cobble together some tanks and keep the evening's game going.
I'm not trying to sell anyone on this kind of thinking. I'm only pointing out that was there, as part and parcel of the thinking of the play in the 70s for the kind of game Traveller was supposed to be.
Yes, the game would have benefited, perhaps, from more rules. But what I find more interesting is the the basic
Traveller rules offer more than enough "playing piece" to pretty much sort out whatever it is the gang wants to to that night at the table. The limitation on the page count means that the Referee will have to sort things out. But the game itself offers the support needed to do this.
