A thought on the batteries question :
The rules want you to have vast controls for the expensive batteries,
when all you really need to control them is a dial marked "power".
Why not take the extra weight, volume and price requirements beyond
those for the most basic controls (whatever you think they are ), and
make them the requirements to recharge the batteries. If you have a
vehicle powered by low-tech, expensive batteries, then they might well
be simple to use, but recharging them would take a very carefully
regulated power supply, with little room for error, etc. That way you
can have ONE recharging unit, with it's own power plant, for all your
vehicles.
On the related point of weapons fire being unable to damage hi -tech
armours, I did a (quick) check on the numbers, and it worked out as 1
point of damage taken per round fired at the armour. I used the figures
for exceptional success, assumed skills giving +2 to hit, so a 7 + on
2d6 was needed for 1pt damage to totally enclosed armour, and ignored
the fact that it didn't matter if you were firing .22 calibre pistol
shots or 6cm calibre high-velocity cpr gun HEAP rounds!
On that basis, all the lo-tech, outclassed police forces need is a few
squads armed with twin machine guns to throw 20 rounds each into any
troublemakers - their armour is unharmed, but they've been knocked out
by the noise. If you want to be mean, then twin pulse lasers, mass
- - -drivers, or an autocannon (rate of fire at tech 5 is listed at 1500
rounds for a 4cm bore, I *think* that's rounds per minute! ). Policing
your spaceport is now no problem, just put in a few walls between your
buildings and the ships, place some High velocity Autocannon at
strategic points, and tell people they can't come into YOUR spaceport
until they remove THEIR TL-15 battledress. A cr 17,500 autocannon is a
fair swap for cr 60,000 TL-14 combat armour.
Unfortunately, the rules seem unclear on a few points :
CPR Laser guidance is available for all cpr guns, so all rounds can be
specified as hitting a single target. Very useful against people in
battledress, but does that mean you can only blast their general area or
hit one person? What about targeting 2 people? And can you do the same
thing with Mass Driver guns and laser weaponry?
It might help if the rules allowed for armour to be at least damaged
upon receiving a hit from a 10cm bore high-explosive shell from a high
velocity cpr gun, at point -blank range. As it stands, a character
wearing tech 14 battledress might take up to 4 points of damage from
this, on a perfect hit. This seems a little unreasonable, as I would
have thought they would need to someone to scrape them off the inside of
their (undamaged!) armour at that point. Maybe treating all totally
enclosed armour in the same way as vehicles would solve the problem -
the old Traveller book 4, Mercenary, mentioned using HE rounds to knock
out tanks by killing the crew from concussion - It's going to complicate
the rules, but there isn't much difference between a set of battledress
and a tank as it is.
Simon Anderson, [email removed]