PRELUDE:
I have recently started up a traveller game. No, not MT, but original traveller.
(well, I bought the referee's guide for the ship generation).
Well, that one guide opened up a can o' worms. As a result, I was planning to
tweak the ship combat anyways.
Rob Dean says:
[] I had the opportunity (misfortune?) of having space combat in my weekly
[] Traveller game last Monday night. I was going to sit down immediately after
[] the game and write a lengthy diatribe on the flaws in that system, but sense
[] prevailed. I woke up the next morning and realized that I had done my
[] modifiers backwards, and that the enemy ship with armor-52 (-4 die modifier)
[] was not, in fact, nearly invincible. However, the question of discontinuity
[] between the space and vehicle combat systems remained.
I noticed that as well. They palmed the high-guard system for damage resolution,
but this just makes it worse.
Problem #1: Scale is too big
I know this is the future, but the hex scale is just too immense, as is the
time scale. I prefer a more of a dogfight atmosphere, with short (30 second)
turns and reasonable distances. Besides, look at the ROF of a beam laser -- 30
per minute. At a 20 minute scale there should be so many crossing beams that
each side will get very many hits. Even being somewhat pessimistic, 9+ total to
hit produces about 150-200 beam hits. After one turn, most ships will look
like cheese shreaders.
Another problem is missiles. It takes a M-6 ship 1 turn to travel 6 hexes if
starting from a standstill. Missiles launched said ship when many hexes away
hit THAT SAME TURN. Ppbbtt!
With a 30 second turn (3 personal combat turns), the hexes are 4.5km across
(so we'll fudge it to 5km).
[] was experiencing was that two small ships (1 200 tons, the other 400 tons)
[] could not do any damage to each other except Fuel-1, Weapons-1, and, I
[] think, Maneuver-1 (I'm not sure about that because of the modifier screw
Armor should be used similar to the 2300ad way -- shots that do not
penetrate can cause surface hits. This will most likely damage sensors,
exposed comminications gear, turrets, and perhaps the maneuver drive (giv it half
armor?). Everything else is unaffected. Penetrating hits have the possiblility
of producing surface damage in addition to internal damage.
The result of this is that heavily armored ships without penetrating weapons will
shoot each other blind (and perhaps immobile). Just like shooting a rifle at a
tank. You might clip the headlights, radio stalk and IR systems, but do little
else.
[] up). Using the vehicle combat system, we quickly see that a 250 MW laser
[]has a pretty useful penetration versus an armor-40 hull, and that the
[] 250 damage points done in a typical 'low penetration' hit will pretty well
[] trash any part of the ship that has separate damage points. As I described
This is the major problem I saw. Another that I feel is wrong is the way
hits are calculated. Doubling the size of a component does not double the
damage it can take, in my mind. I have come up with a small formula based on
hull volume and the hull armor weigh modifier to compute the hull hits.
I use a square-root rule (4x volume is 2x effective). At present the formula
is something like SQRT(VOL/4050/WM)*7. VOL is hull volume, WM is armor weight
modifier. "7" is the constant I use for basic hits, assuming crystaliron
I think. Steel ships have less, superdense have more, etc. Assuming
the normal armor, a 100t ship has 7 hull hits until it is "disabled", meaning
no maneuvering allowed. Perhaps at double this it just falls apart.
Now this value may be too low. I presume that with every penetration you get a
free hull hit as well, so this should be upped. Any comments on a good value?
Lasers might do 1 hull hit, energy weapons 2 hull hits, missiles 1d6 hull hits,
nukes 6d6 hull hits, or something like that. In this case, it better be upped.
[] the combat, our heroes fired numerous missiles at the enemy until all turrets
[] were knocked out, and then closed to visual range to deliver the coup de grace
[] to the enemy with their single laser...regrettably the enemy vessel had
[] repaired one laser in a triple turret and fired one shot which nearly destroyed
[] the player's ship's power plant. I'm satisfied with that result, but not
Well, another problem with long turns. But, players will have little chance as well
with short turns.
[] with the method used to generate it. (I know, I have a copy of Bertil's
[] system, but I haven't read it enough to use it yet...). I found that in the
[] heat of the game that it was not worthwhile to worry about sensor rolls, and
[] that the -1 per hex sensor penalty seems too severe given that weapons are
[] supposed to have a 500,000km range. We also used a Mayday set for combat
[] resolution, which took a few minutes to explain about vectors...but not so
[] many minutes that it seemed prohibitive.
I really don't like the "real" movement very much when I'm playing a space-opera
game. I may try to use a variant of the 2300ad system, where ships have a
raw speed for each turn. Actually, I'd like to use some Star Fleet Battles
Ideas as well. With such a system, you actually have to plot your movement
so as to expose your best weapons (or to hide battle damage to the armor.
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In any case, I'm presently beating on the vehicle design system in order to
put some sense into it. I am referencing Striker for much of the information.
For example, I am using the air frame table as a guide to expand the streamlining
options (USL = simple, SL = Transonic, AF = Hypersonic). I am also using
the 2300ad idea on steamling (Transonic streamlining wastes 10% of the chosen
volume, Hypersonic wastes 20%, Supersonic wastes 15%, subsonic wastes 5%).
This will fit in well with the planetoid space-waste.
If anyone has the collected articles or notes of the TDR vehicle system,
could you please mail it to me at burt%pager.ptltd.com? And also, comments
on the above stuff would be great.
-- Burton