Yesterday, [email removed] said:
>Right, the RULES were different, but the results were largely the same:
>everything still fit on the hull, so Kinunir and Broadsword conversions
>left the ships with the same characteristics. Under TNE, things like
>triple turrets and particle accelerator barbettes are gone, so if your
>ship had them in CT and MT, how do you explain to your players that
>they don't exist in TNE?
As I recall, the Broadsword gained 10% in volume (from 800 to 880
tons) in official print (granted, it was broken), and the Kinunir
was _never_ well converted because several of its systems never had
hard numbers. The one attempt in Challenge to convert the Kinunir
did so by taking the High Guard stats literally. Never mind the
Drop tubes and the AI computer.
As for converted ships keeping their characteristics from CT to MT,
I can give only qualified agreement. The addition of power
requirements for all things resulted in ships nearly always loosing
their high Maneuver engines. Until the concept of variable-load
powerplants was hit upon (at roughly the same time here and on GEnie:
variable load here and "booster plants" there), and the exclusion of
life-support from fuel tankage, MT ships could not measure up to CT
and HG ships.
>Other missing things that carried over from CT to MT but not to TNE are:
>Effectively unlimited ship movement
There are several solutions to this. If you assume that outer
systems are still settled as heavily as Scouts/World Builder's made
them, it's a short hop to using in-system jumps to get around. With a
gas station on every moon, this isn't a real problem.
Second: FF&S _does_ include the Thruster Plate option. No reaction
mass to worry about, lots of range (especially with powerplants using
fuel by the year instead of by the month). Just like old times.
Third: take more time. A Hard Times game I ran brought up the
question of in-system trip times. Even under constant thrust, the
Armored Gig (Gazelle model) that was the group's first spacecraft
took a fair number of days to travel from orbit 5.5 in to orbit 1.
Megatraveller was not nearly as fast-thrusting as you might think.
Fourth: Assume that TNE HEPlaR drives have a gravitically dependant
Stutterwarp equivalent built in (so no third drive, and no more
engineers) that allows much higher speeds in the zone between the
Primary's 100 and 1000 diameter limits. The drive _requires_ some
local gravity to work, so can't be used for star-to-star travel.
This opens up the outer system for a fraction of the hydrogen.
>Crew Sizes (they increased slightly with MT, but doubled with TNE)
The "private/commercial/military" post from yesterday, or the HAIS
post (also yesterday) will handle this nicely.
>How Nuclear Dampeners work
How often do you use these?
Actually, they just got better explained. They did not change
appreciably. Dig out Striker and read the section on Dampers. MT
never bothered to tell us that Dampers required surface exposure,
probably because they assumed that dampers were "matter-transparent"
technology. GDW says no, they require an antenna, so we now mount
them in turret cans. With the hardpoint limit gone, this is a non-issue.
>Anti-Grav devices providing thrust
To nit-pick, the new Contra-grav does provide the equivalent of
thrust by taking care of the craft's weight. MegaT's Anti-grav
had to be purchased above and beyond the craft's mass before it
would work. If you take the Thruster Plate option, your tanks
will still fly on Anti-grav.
>Duplicating CT ship designs was easy in MT: nothing "disappeared".
>This isn't the case with TNE.
I will agree that mixed turrets (not just _multiple_ turrets, but
mixed ones) were annoying to lose
>>Ships in MT (and their creation rules) weren't compatible with High
>>Guard and Trillion Credit Squadron. All of the CT ships had to be
>>completely reworked to fit into MT.
>Not really, see above. Redesigned, yes. Re-explained, no.
DGP did a mighty good job of "Re-explaining" in my opinion. Remember
the hull grid?
>Nah. They majorly changed the game.
Only your final comment saved you from my opinion here. :)
...
>Except that combat isn't as dangerous, you run out of fuel in
>space combat, in system transit times are alot slowers, blah blah blah.
Check the definitions of the wound levels again. Switch to Thrusters.
>I _LIKE_ TNE, but I'm trying to convert an existing campaign. Had they
>retained alot of the building blocks of CT and MT, they would have alienated
>fewer long time players and made conversion MUCH easier.
Show your players the price tag to fire one unrecovered missile and
they'll never complain again about not having them.
>Matt Goodman
>[email removed]
Then, Peter H. Brenton [email removed] says:
>Thank you, I actually *have* SM, but haven't yet waded through it
>(I just finished T:TNE).
To save time, flip to the Glossary in SM and look up "Dave".
> By playing "fast
>and loose" with the rules and doing some "backward engineering" I
>could come up with a Kinunir Class Cruiser that would be familiar
>to the players who went through Adventure 1 with me, pretty quickly
>too, but compatible at least in terms of game balance with MT.
This one at least won't be a problem: the Kinunir has a page
in Brilliant Lances.
>...gone are shipboard fusion, plasma, and particle
>accelerator weapons (again, I do not know if these are in BL/FFS).
The high energy weapons are _very_ short-ranged from the space
combat point of view. PAWs are in FF&S, but I haven't played with
the numbers to see if the old PA barbette is doable. With Laser
barbettes reaching to maximum combat ranges for a measly few
megawatts, I can happily leave PAs in the spinal mount and in bays.
>...I can not fit my Kinunir reasonably into the TNE
>universe (or the several dozen craft I have designed myself).
This is my biggest conversion complaint. All-cargo ships are
very difficult to build so they are worthwhile. The cargo capacity
of the Type R in the TNE book is not (very far) off, and is only
about half of what it used to be. Starship economics are considerably
bleaker than before because of this.
>Pete
James Kundert
[email removed]
[email removed]