STRIKER TO MEGATRAVELLER
As all the old-timers and most of the new people probably know, sections of
the original Traveller miniatures rule set "Striker" were lifted and incor-
porated wholesale into MegaTraveller. Unfortunately, as we also all know,
the MegaTraveller rules were not very well proofread, and we are left with
a number of omissions and systematic errors resulting from the transfer,
both small and large. Probably the single most important, from a military
technology sense, was the total loss of tactical missile rules, a subject
which I intend to cover in a conversion article in the near future (while I'm
still in the mood). However, for the benefit of the morbidly curious, I
have covered a few of the missing bits below. Before I get to that, however,
I have a question: Why? What good did it do to put all of that stuff in
MegaTraveller? As a wargamer, I liked the Striker concept: a set of integrated
rules and design systems to allow simulation of military action across the
range of Imperial technology. As a role-player, much of the material included
in MT is superfluous: The mercenary campaign is nowhere near as appealling to
me as the merchant campaign, and the way to deal with tanks is the same as
the way to deal with 50000ton cruisers--don't get involved. I don't have
many players that are seriously interested in the differences between a
TL5 and a TL7 16cm howitzer. Also, as far as I can tell, the only good thing
about the TL17+ equipment in the book is that you can point to it when a
player says "Why can't I" to show him what tech level would be required to do
what he wants. Enough philosophy. The material is there--let's deal with it.
POINT DEFENSE
One of the Striker artifacts left in the MT rules is the Point Defense
targetting system.
Basically, a point defense weapon could do one of three things: Shoot at
targets (like anything else), shoot at direct fire weapons like missiles,
as long as they were visible for long enough to track (the PD weapon had to
be able to see the last 150m of the trajectory, and you could support other
vehicles as well as your own), and shoot at incoming indirect fire. A tech
9 PD system gets 4 dice against indirect fire, plus two dice for each tech
level higher, so that TL10 gets 6, TLll gets 8 and so on. These dice are
modified by individual DMs of plus or minus the difference in tech levels.
Zero is the minimum. Thus, if your TL14 artillery fired at my TL9 PD system,
I'd roll 4 dice (at -5 each, meaning that only 6s would knock down a
projectile.) If my TL9 artillery fired back, your TL14 PD system would roll
14 dice (+5 each) for an average of 119 projectiles destroyed. Multiple
rocket launchers, which shoot everything at once, have an advantage against
PD systems due to overload--divide the hits by two. So, in the example given
above, you would knock down an average of 60 rockets, rather than 119.
Nothing to it...but they didn't bother putting it in MT, even though they left
in the PD fire control systems.
My additional recommendation would be to allow weapons with PD fire control
to fire at moving targets with no movement penalty, since they are designed
to destroy fast moving targets. I'd also limit the number of indirect fire
rounds that can be destroyed to the rate of fire of the weapon, which puts
a premium on things like rapid pulse plasma guns. A third recommendation
would be to not permit anti-indirect fire with a PD projectile gun. You still
might want PD fire control for a projectile weapon because of recommendation
one, however.
ROCKET LAUNCHERS
Left out of MT were the Striker rocket rules.
>From Striker:
<suggested MT translations and modifications below>
Design Sequence 4: Multiple Rocket Launchers
Multiple rocket launchers (MRLs) are available at tech level 6+;
they are constructed using the CPR gun design system, using the
same characteristics as mortars with the following exceptions.
A. Launcher: A single launcher consists of a number of launch
tubes, plus fire control and carriage.
1. Crew: A launcher's crew is the normal crew for that size
weapon, times the number of tubes in the launcher, divided by 10
(but never less than 2). All crew except the gunner are required
only for reloading; if the weapon is to be used only once, the
rest of the crew may be dispensed with.
2. Weight: Each tube has a weight multiple of 0.01
3. Volume: The volume of a tube is its weight times 25.
4. Price: Each tube has a price multiplier of 0.5 <0.05???>
5. Indirect Fire Range: There are three types of rockets:
short range, medium range and long range. Their ranges are
determined on the CPR gun tale, using the mortar, howitzer, and
gun columns, respectively. Range is modified by the tech level
of the rocket or the fire control, whichever is lower. At tech
level 6, count up two rows. At tech level 7, count up one row.
Count down one row for each tech level over 8.
6. The rate of fire of a launcher is equal to the number of
tubes.
B. Ammunition: Rockets are designed in the same way as CPR
rounds. They are identical to mortar rounds with the following
exceptions.
1. Weight: Rockets weight twice as much as listed.
2. Volume: A rocket's volume is equal to its weight in kg
divided by 500. <in kl>
3. Short range rockets have a base price multiplier of 4,
meidum range rockets have a multiplier of 8, long range rockets
have a multiplier of 12.
4. The RAP option is not available for rockets.
C. Remote MRLs: Properly equipped launchers may be fired from a
distance by communicator signal. Both the gunner and the launch-
er must possess communication equipment and must be in communica-
tion. In addition, the launcher must include control equipment,
which costs Cr1000 and weighs 15kg; the gunner must also have
control equipment, which costs Cr1000 and weighs 1kg. A single
gunner may control any number of launchers, but may fire only one
mission at a time. Only one fire control system is necessary per
gunner.
OK. Those are the actual rules as laid out in Striker. To
convert to MegaTraveller, I'm going to key all the price and
weight multiplier to the Mortar table.
Weight: Each tube weighs 1/25 (.04) times the weight of a mortar
of the same diameter.
Cost: Each tube costs .5 times the price of a mortar of the same
size.
Range: Ignore the range shifts. The original table had four
times as many entries, so it only has an effect if you have a
TL12+ system (in which case you would shift down 1, so that a
12cm short range rocket would have a range of 8km rather than
7km).
Cost of Ammunition: Any reasonable warhead should be available,
and the cost would be 4/3 the mortar cost for short range, 8/3
for medium range and 4 times for long range.
DISPOSABLE ROCKET LAUNCHERS, GRENADE LAUNCHERS, AND OTHER INFANTRY
HEAVY WEAPONS
Combat factors for all of these weapons are given in Book 1, but costs and
weights are nowhere to be found. I could type up the list from Striker and
post it, if anyone is interested. I think it would be much more likely that
a character might have access to a rocket launcher than to a 16cm howitzer,
so if one set of data was to be left out, I'd rather see it be the howitzer
set. Better to include both, of course, but I mentioned the proofreading
before...
ARTILLERY SET-UP TIME
Set-up times for artillery in MegaTraveller would agree closely
with Striker if they were in thirty second combat turns instead
of seconds.
MASS DRIVER GUNS
There is a major error in the translation of mass driver guns from Striker into
MegaTraveller. The same calculations are used to figure rate of fire, but in
Striker, it's rate of fire *per second*, and in MT, it's ROF *per minute*. I
think the former is correct, and a multiplier factor of 60 should be noted in
the margin of the book. There is one design in 101 Vehicles using an MD gun.
To be consistent, its ROF should be multiplied by 60.
SMOKE AND ANTI-LASER AEROSOLS
In Striker, dense smoke and anti-laser aerosols degraded laser performance for
laser of TL8-12. TL13+ X-Ray lasers ignore these rules. A unit/vehicle in
dense smoke or aerosol cloud may not be communicated with by laser, may not
be targetted by a laser designator, and gain an armor factor versus laser
weapons as follows:
Dense Smoke 25 vs TL7-8, 20 vs TL9-12
Anti-Laser Aerosol 50 vs TL7-8, 45 vs TL9-12
Prismatic Aerosol 80 vs TL7-12
It's not clear in the original how this was supposed to work in combination
with a vehicles armor. Armor factors are not stricly additive. The annoyingly
technical solution would be to find the weight multipliers for the two armor
values (say 20 for the tank +25 for the smoke, 5.95 and 9.17 respectively),
add them together (15.12) and find the armor value corresponding to that,
rounding excess down (30, in this case). The quick and dirty solution would
be to use the higher of the two.
A canister provides 4 turns (2 minutes in Striker) of coverage to a stationary
object, and 1 turn to a moving object. Those laser sensors that are not
described in the vehicle design system can automatically trigger a canister
if a beam is sensed. Laser sensors detected a beam on an 8+ (2d6) at TL8,
7+ at TL9, and so forth down to 2+ and TL14+.
Since these canisters are small and cheap, and pretty effective against TL12-
lasers, it should be noted that my military vehicle designs at those tech l
levels which rely on laser armament alone are probably less effective than
I had considered when I did them.
RADAR
While I generally like the composite Active EMS system in MT, for certain
applications not requiring great robustness, or requiring low cost, it would
be nice if radar continued to improve beyond TL9. In Striker, Radar tables
for up to TL13 are included, and could be used directly in MT. Also, radars
of intermediate ranges (other than 5*10^n) are included, and would occasionally
be useful.
That's it for right now.
Rob Dean