What system do you use to design starships?

[aramis]

Most Traveller referees and players probably only need very, very coarse ship details in most cases. How far can ship X go, and how quickly? How many crew does it need, how many passengers and how much cargo can it carry? If it's a fighting ship, how do its offenses and defenses compare to other fighting ships?

World design flows from game utility, starting with the most useful information to the players: Is there a system in this hex? What kind of starport? We don't worry about orbital mechanics or albedos or specific atmospheric content until much, much later -- and most often, never.

Why not ship design?

HG 2 hits the sweet design spot for many - enough detail for RP purposes, but simple enough to use to design a ship during a smoke break.

This is one reason to not use realistic armor shells - figuring the armor shell on an FF&S design can be 5 minutes all by itself; with a spreadsheet, even simple FF&S designs are 10+ minutes.

It's also a good argument for fuel-less thrusters and continuous speed drives (as opposed to either full newtonian due to the calculus and bookkeeping or Traveller's usually chosen newtonian movement with reactionless drives)....

The failing of HG 2E was not the design system - the detail level is actually only one step higher than Bk2†...

The failing was that the combat system didn't scale down at all well. It works best at the 10,000-100,000 ton scale vessels. Fine for wargaming, but lame for anything in the "adventure class ships" scale.

The MT version did not fix this issue; if anything, it made it worse, despite allowing more character skill effects. It did include personal/vehicle combat scaled data, tho', so one could do ship combat without ever invoking the HG combat system.

T20's HG stats work on "adventure class ships" scales was the big hangup for the T20 ship combat system; I think it works pretty well at doing so. (It has other issues, but it does make the HG stats work on an RPG-ship-combat scale AND on a capital ship scale.)

The level of detail needed in play is roughly comparable to the HG design results. Building it in stages to that point is doable under HG, but not under later editions.

Building ships by narrative alone is not a good fit for those who want simulationist game mechanics - and Traveller runs towards simulationism, in many places... but the gamist need for playability finds different balance points for different player styles... and HG 2E is a good balance on the design side, even as it sucks on the play side for anything but small fleet actions.

———————​

† Complexity is easiest measured by constraining dimensions of the design system...

Book 2 has two constraint axes.. Price and Tonnage.
HG 2 has 3: Price, Tonnage and Power.
MT is 4 - Price, Volume, Mass, and Power
FF&S is 5 axes - Price, Mass, Volume, Power, Surface Area​

All of these can be constrained as well by an extra 2 factors, crew and fuel, btu those can be reduced to increases in system mass, volume and power needs.

 

[robject]

It would be interesting to look at these various ship design systems to see what are the common core elements shared by all of them. Strip it down to the very basics, and then from that foundation build back up.

In a sense, this is what each new version of Traveller does. Mongoose and T5 did exactly that -- both are new systems, informed from the old systems. T5 in particular drew from at least the GDW Traveller rules AND third-party publishers as well, picking out the interesting bits and sewing them together into a consistent whole. Mongoose did less of that, but took CT and drafts of T5 and rebuilt design as they wanted it.

 

[mike wightman]

Note that MgT 2e has moved away from trying to emulate the letter drive system of CT LBB2 and has gone with a purely High Guard ship design system.

 

[Condottiere]

That's because they're mostly incompatible.

Doesn't mean that you can't create modular engineering from a more flexible system, it's that commercial and interstellar entities would have to impose standards.

 

[aramis]

That's because they're mostly incompatible.

Doesn't mean that you can't create modular engineering from a more flexible system, it's that commercial and interstellar entities would have to impose standards.

Unless it's been changed in the last 3 months, it uses the formulae extracted from Bk2.

 

[robject]

Doesn't mean that you can't create modular engineering from a more flexible system...

That's exactly that MgT2e could do with their ship design system, if they choose to do that sort of supplement in the future.

 

[robject]

Unless it's been changed in the last 3 months...

...and changes do happen and have happened. But I think this part hasn't.

 

[barfoo]

Using Intercept for Traveller designs

I use the Intercept design system for Traveller designs (no surprise there)
https://vectormovement.wordpress.com/downloads/

 

[Grav_Moped]

...
And as long as I'm spewing baloney:

Classic Traveller "should have" followed this advice when it created High Guard: conforming the drive percentages to Book 2's pseudo-formula and (at the same time) gently nudging Book 2 into formula at the high end drives.

Sorry for the reach-back, but I just got here. Hello everyone!

It occurred to me that the drive formula changes between Book 2 and High Guard were simply to impose additional cost (in Td and MCr) for maneuver drives as a balancing mechanism. In the small-ship CT universe, especially in the smaller hulls that PCs would typically use, the power plant fuel requirements from Bk 2 are high enough to somewhat constrain maneuver drive capability. In the large-ship HG universe but using the Bk 2 pseudo-formula there's little reason not to build everything to 6G since the M-drive costs little in Td and the power plant (due to the EP rules for energy weapons) is almost certainly oversized for it.

In both design systems (and central to canon) the high fuel requirements for jump drives are the main constraint on jump capability, assuming a sufficient TL. Shrinking the drives themselves doesn't change this significantly.

From a RPG perspective, specific maneuver capability doesn't matter that much, as long as it's high/low enough relative to specific adversaries to move the story in the desired direction.

 

[kilemall]

For me, both CT-LBB2 and CT-HG2, modified in a few specifics for computers, nature of jump and power systems, damage etc.

LBB2 ships are being built out of tested tried and true ISO-type standardized components, and so are rugged and can be maintained nearly anywhere.

HG2 ships are high end fussy models that are highly customized for higher performance and have specific maintenance needs.

 

[whartung]

For me, both CT-LBB2 and CT-HG2, modified in a few specifics for computers, nature of jump and power systems, damage etc.

LBB2 ships are being built out of tested tried and true ISO-type standardized components, and so are rugged and can be maintained nearly anywhere.

HG2 ships are high end fussy models that are highly customized for higher performance and have specific maintenance needs.

Then perhaps there needs to be a "ruggedization" modifier that can be applied to an HG component to help make it more sailor proof in practice.

 

[flykiller]

sailor proof

heh. my ship's machine shop had a broken anvil. to encourage us.

hg2 is broad and open-ended enough that you can tack on any other rules, such as robustness, that you like. armor rating inherent to tech level, done. full vtol ratings, easy, just build to (say) 2g but it's rated 1gV. etc.

 

[kilemall]

Then perhaps there needs to be a "ruggedization" modifier that can be applied to an HG component to help make it more sailor proof in practice.

Hrrm.

CT letter drives to me is more like standard sized marine diesel boat engines, Alcos and EMDs, common parts and repairable most anywhere, while HG is huge engines like nuclear reactors for warships or the multistory monsters that drive tankers and container ships.

It's more like it takes special facilities for those HG ships (translating to near TL), the letter CT drives were designed X years ago to be a cross-TL standard and had all the kinks worked out over literally 100s of thousands of builds.

Ruggedized? I suppose, much like carrier fighters and rough field Russian jets are for their demanding operational environments, but it should cost, more then the class bonus cost, and still wouldn't deal with the facility issue.

 

[Condottiere]

Mongoose Second does allow ruggedization, as well as de-ruggedization.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Nice.

Hrrm.

CT letter drives to me is more like standard sized marine diesel boat engines, Alcos and EMDs, common parts and repairable most anywhere, while HG is huge engines like nuclear reactors for warships or the multistory monsters that drive tankers and container ships.

It's more like it takes special facilities for those HG ships (translating to near TL), the letter CT drives were designed X years ago to be a cross-TL standard and had all the kinks worked out over literally 100s of thousands of builds.

Ruggedized? I suppose, much like carrier fighters and rough field Russian jets are for their demanding operational environments, but it should cost, more then the class bonus cost, and still wouldn't deal with the facility issue.

That is a nice explanation. Never thought of it that way, but still dislike HG for it formulas and arcane digit strings. I wonder about the analogy since even the carrier and large container ships have some standardization since they are often bought in multiples. But still nice idea.

 

[pendragonman]

That is a nice explanation. Never thought of it that way, but still dislike HG for it formulas and arcane digit strings. I wonder about the analogy since even the carrier and large container ships have some standardization since they are often bought in multiples. But still nice idea.

Mags, carriers and large container ships/supertankers are clearly built with a book 5 ideology than a book 2. Boats that can get by with an Evinrude or a marine version of car engine is what he is getting at.