>I agree. In order to create a large merchant ship I spent 2-3 days poring
>over that information. At the end, I got a useable ship but I find that
>it has quirks in that I made it more powerful than any merchant ship has
>any right to be. Guidelines along "this constitutes a merchant", "this
>constitutes a pirate corsair", "this is a blockade ship", etc would be
>nice.
I have to disagree. I tend to view the Traveller/MT universe as a star-faring
version of the 18th-19th century sailing era. During that time, merchants were
often as heavily armed as warships, although usually a bit bigger than warships
of similar armament due to their cargo holds. Pirate corsairs were simply
warships or merchant ships under new management. I always had a great
disrespect for the 400t Corsair, available to Pirates under the old "Citizens
of the Imperium" book. A distinctive corsair like that would be attacked at
once by any Navy ships in the area. Better to have a free trader with some
decent weapons, and perhaps an upgraded computer. The Vargr corsair is exempt
from the above as, unlike in the Imperium, corsairing is an acceptable way of
life for Vargr. Of course, such a ship entering Imperial space does so at its
own risk!
>I think that grafting on the sensor rules onto High Guard and cleaning up the
>combat system would have been a much better way to go.
I thought that's what they've done. They've also added a set of miniature
movement rules, replacing the High Guard long/short range, which is a good
idea except that it's unrealistic. The best movement system I ever saw was
the "Mayday" game, which had markers for present, past and projected positions
for each ship and missile. This simulated the motion of spacecraft much better.
Try flying backwards or sideways in MegaTraveller! Of course, if you're using
a lot of ships, the simple High Guard system cuts out a lot of work.
"Keyboard? How quaint!" - M. Scott
Adrian Hurt | JANET: [email removed]
UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian | ARPA: [email removed]