• Welcome to the new COTI server. We've moved the Citizens to a new server. Please let us know in the COTI Website issue forum if you find any problems.

13.5 or 14?

T

TheDS

SOC-13
Which displacement ton do you prefer?

13.5 kl is the value used in CT and MT. It has the advantages of being previously established, and also of being the correct value.

14 kl is the value used in TNE and T4. It seems to be well accepted, and is easier to punch into the calculator.

I'd make this a poll if I could...

Which value do you prefer, and do you have an overpowering reason why you prefer it?

(For those wondering, it's for my FFS3 project.)

Incidentally, what does T20 use?

Thank you for your participation.
 
14kl, it makes the math much easier.
T20 uses 14kl per displacement ton.
One other thing I like about 14kl is that it gives you 0.5kl fudge factor when drawing up deck plans.
 
Originally posted by Andrew Boulton:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> my FFS3 project
Click to expand...
Hmm? </font>[/QUOTE]DS is doing an update of Fire Fusion and Steel. FFS3 refers to it being the third incarnation of Fire FUsiona nd Steel, with TNE and T4 having earlier versions.


Shane
 
Originally posted by Andrew Boulton:
Ah, yes. Let me rephrase my "Hmm?".

Ooh! Ooh! FF&S3! What's in it? When am I gonna get to play with it?
Click to expand...
Ah, sorry, I mistook the intention of your "Hmm"...


Shane
 
I think you got it right, I don't think he read about it, and wanted to know what I meant. I think it's mentioned only in a couple other posts, or hinted at, or whatever.

FFS3 project (Unless someone comes up with a better name... FFS Mk1 Mod2 has been rejected for now): I liked the design of FFS1, and FFS2 seemed to me to have added stuff here and there to improve on the whole bit, but at the same time is almost unreadable. So I want to take the best of both worlds, and make them into a single, defining volume. It will try very hard to be readable, and retain the useful and fun science information found in FFS1.

This involves adding in any other rules I can find, in particular, RCEG, Vampire Fleets (Robot rules, extensible for Battle Dress), Striker 2, and a couple Challenge magazines (75 and 76) have been consulted. I have actually scanned in all of the above material, and have OCR'd about 40 pages of stuff so far. OCR isn't fun by any stretch, lemme tell you. Spelling/grammar corrections from the books (and the OCR misreads) will be corrected vigorously.

This also involves applying all errata I can find (and I have found the FFS1 to FFS Mk1 Mod1 errata, the FFS mk1 mod1 errata, and the 16 pagelet errata booklet that I think came with FFS1 and has rules upgrades for TNE and FFS. I've also got errata for FFS2.

I DON'T have any idea what T4.1 entails, or if it modified FFS2 any. I DON'T know if there was a similar update to FFS2 that there was to FFS1... no Challenge magazines were published, and that's the only Trav mag that ever wound up being findable at the game store. I DO have a Definitive Sensors file for T4/FFS2. If anyone knows of errata I missed, link it up here or the actual post in the TNE subforum.

I am also intending to correct any glaring deficiencies in the book. This means adding water-craft rules, the Robots section will allow for better powered armor design sequence, the fusion rocket will follow the same "rules of physics" that the other engines are following, organizing the book to flow a little more freely, and above all, trying really hard to stick as much as possible with canonical stuff.

On top of all that, I hope to make it as "systemless" as possible. Being completely true to that is impossible, but I want to express things in a way that will allow the INT 6+ GM to massage the results into whichever rendition of the rules he wants. Where rules *must* be applied, I'll probably use a system closer to Harpoon than most Trav players are used to. (EG, how do you express the effectiveness of MFDs without using terms of a single game system? You can't, so to be fair, I say the odds of something are a certain %, and the MFD ups your chances by a certain %, or something along those lines.)

Once I've got all the information OCR'd, and I run into trouble, you can believe I'll be crying for help.

In the meantime, you guys can tell me what size Dtons you prefer. To THAT question, I've thought of a couple more things. First, a 15kl Dton is even easier to wrap your head around; figuring out if a number is divisible by 15 is MUCH easier than figuring 14 or 13.5. You don't even need a calculator for it (unless you can't add single-digit numbers together and recognize the difference between "5", "0", and other numbers)!

OR, we can go a GURPSian route and get rid of Dtons altogether, and just use kL (not cf). Large ships would be in the kkL and MkL (or ML and GL) sizes. Craft density is easier to figure out.

So: Should a Dton be 13.5, 14, 15, or non-existant in designs?
 
Aha. Look forward to it.

You must keep dtons, because every version of Traveller uses them.

Since it's almost impossible to use FF&S without a calculator (and you really need Excel), "easy" numbers aren't too important. I'd go for the correct figure.
 
Originally posted by TheDS:
This involves adding in any other rules I can find, in particular, RCEG, Vampire Fleets (Robot rules, extensible for Battle Dress), Striker 2, and a couple Challenge magazines (75 and 76) have been consulted. I have actually scanned in all of the above material, and have OCR'd about 40 pages of stuff so far. OCR isn't fun by any stretch, lemme tell you. Spelling/grammar corrections from the books (and the OCR misreads) will be corrected vigorously.
Click to expand...
I don't know how many outside-of-Traveller rule books you have consulted, but may I suggest two:

GURPS Vehicles 2nd edition by Steve Jackson Games
CORPS Vehicle Design System by BTRC.

Both are in print and are the high end of vehicle building cruchy goodness.

I recommend both of these because I've found holes in the FF&Ss and they may give you ideas on how to fill them.
 
I'd like to get GURPS Vehicles... but am really low on fundage atm. As soon as I can, I intend to get it.

I've got the latest 3G3 from BTRC (my cousin has an older version, about the time MT was "in" which impressed me). I would LIKE to replace the TNE weapon design system with it, but it is awfully hard to manage. (FFS was based on 3G3, so you'd think it was a lot more compatible!) I AM trying to make a spreadsheet for the 3G3, but simplified to a feeling like FFS gives, and I don't think I will succeed at this. It's probably not a task for right now anyway.

I don't like how, in FFS, a 20mm rifle and a 2cm "gun" have got wildly different stats and characteristics. The rifle is almost too heavy to carry, but with DS-ammo, it will smash through even heavy battledress (DV 16 or 17), whereas the gun will bounce off even light BD, but at least it weighs less (IIRC). 3G3 scales completely, near as I can tell (haven't read it very thoroughly yet, thanks to its PDF-ness and I haven't printed it out yet for a solid perusal).

So by the same token, is CORPS Vehicles the same in regards to vehicles that 3G3 is to guns? That is, it doesn't require you to buy CORPS to use it, and gives results in real-world terms (as much as possible)? GURPS pretty much requires owning the books, but I already do, otherwise I would ignore it. (I can't say as I like "Space" in that the ship-design rules are based too much on GURPSism than on gearheading, but I imagine Vehicles will at least show me how to compute realistic speed for wet ships.)

Thanks for the info and the opinions. The polls are still open!
 
Originally posted by TheDS:
So by the same token, is CORPS Vehicles the same in regards to vehicles that 3G3 is to guns? That is, it doesn't require you to buy CORPS to use it, and gives results in real-world terms (as much as possible)?
Click to expand...
Yes, mostly. Like Vehicles, the VDS produces a stat block with about half usable real world values and half game mechanics which may or may not make sense if you don't have the game. One advantage of VDS is it's written by Greg Porter, who wrote pretty much all the T4 technical manuals. Given what I've seen of FF&S2, you can think of VDS as the next version.


GURPS pretty much requires owning the books, but I already do, otherwise I would ignore it. (I can't say as I like "Space" in that the ship-design rules are based too much on GURPSism than on gearheading, but I imagine Vehicles will at least show me how to compute realistic speed for wet ships.)
Click to expand...
Yes, it will, given the assumptions of the rest of the design system. The real advantage of reading both books would be to see the different ways of approaching the design.

For example, FF&S1 includes about a dozen power plants, for generating power in your vehicle.
VDS power plant is an abstracted design system, you select TL, Type (normal, enhanced, exotic, dangerous, etc), and fuel type (normal, enhanced, exotic, dangerous, etc). From this you calculate your engine weight, cost, volume, power output and fuel consumption.
Vehicles has more than 50 power plants of all types. Plus variations for fuel types and TL.


I would LIKE to replace the TNE weapon design system with it, but it is awfully hard to manage. (FFS was based on 3G3, so you'd think it was a lot more compatible!)
Click to expand...
Another reason to get Vehicles. The weapon design system is much simplified from FF&S/G3G system and seems to produce much more realistic values for weapon sizes. If nothing else, you could use it as an example of how to simplify a system.
 
Thanks for all the useful info. That spreadsheet linked is the least-suckiest one I've seen yet (high-praise indeed!), but unfortunately, it looks so different from an FFS1 design sequence, it makes me deathly afraid to crack open FFS2 and try and read that part and make sense of the sheet! (Not to say that MY sheet is not sucky - it DOES suck - but it naturally follows the design sequence and has tons of comments so you can make stuff WITHOUT holding the book open.)

I appreciate the opinions and helpful advice being bandied about. After some consideration, I am heavily leaning toward the value of 13.5, because it makes the scientific calculations (like, converting the fuel consumption of fusion reactors from masses to volumes that everyone is familiar with) a lot easier. HOWEVER, I am leaving open the definition of what a Dton is, so that a designer can choose what value he wants to describe his ship with.

The design sequence is going away from "1 kl per Dton" and going toward "5% of the volume" or whatever it converts to be. This allows a person to simply write the percentages and add them up. For instance, say a jump drive takes 2% of the hull, its fuel takes 15%, a maneuver drive takes 30%, its fuel takes up 20%, that means those 4 things take up 67% of the hull. You now have an easy way to tell just how much volume you have left over for guns and power plants and such, and you only have to multiply .67 by your volume to see what it is.

An awful lot of things are a percentage of a hull's volume. Life support, controls, CG, AG, jump drive, even most maneuver drives and their fuel requirements. No more of this irritating mixing of Dtons and KLs.

The designer chooses which value he wants his Dtons to be, picks his hull based on that (I choose a 10,000 ton hull, so that's 140,000 kl), and his calculations are based on a figure of 140,000, not 10,000. He shows the thing to the GM, who prefers 13.5, so his ship is now 10,370 tons, no redesign necessary. Or maybe he likes the 15 value, and so the ship is 9333 tons.

(Oh, and don't worry about tonnage-based DMs for combat; that's going away too. Size DOES matter, but not if it's measured in Dtons.)
 
14.124 m3/ton is the proper volime for liquid hydrogen. Assuming 5% by mass for insulated tankage for long-tem storage gives you 13.5 m3/tons, which works well for deckplans. Works for me.

I am not quite sure where you are going here. The tonnaage of a ship should not be left to a referee's discretion (except in as much as all rules are referee's discretion.)

"Oh, and don't worry about tonnage-based DMs for combat; that's going away too. Size DOES matter, but not if it's measured in Dtons." So you are not just writing FFS but also there is a new High Guard. I hope you realize what that is going to do to all the "legacy" vehicles.

Now, if I was going to start with a clean slate I would list components in tons mass and kl. I would rate hulls in terms of kl and G-tons. That is, a 1400 kl hull might be rated for 1200 G-tons. That is, it could handle 200 mass tons at 6 Gs or 400 mass-tons at 3 Gs. For even more detail maneuve drives don't count for the G-tons

Deck plans get trickier because you have to balance the massive components on the centerline, but that can be fun for us gearheads.
 
Originally posted by plop101:
Well, the referee in me says 13.5.

The pc in me says 14.0.

I guess thats a half vote each. Oh well...
Click to expand...
:D

Uncle Bob:

You are a maniac, but you're a GOOD maniac. Interesting ideas there. I'm not sure I want to go THAT far, but I suppose if there's enough outcry, anything could happen. And now, for why I believe a Dton is 13.5kl:

- - - - - -

The atomic weight of hydrogen is 1, and the atomic weight of oxygen is 16.
In water, you have 2 H for each O, hence H2O.
Water’s atomic weight is therefore 18 (1+1+16).
If we electrolyze water it separates into H2 and O.
The H2 takes up double the volume of the O.
The mass of the H2 is 2/18 that of water, and the O is 16/18 of water.
The volume of H2 is 2/3 and that of O is 1/3.
(2/3) x (1/9) = (2/27) = (1/13.5)
So it takes 13.5 units of H to equal 1 unit of water.
1 Displacement ton equals 13.5 KL.

- - - - - -

I worked this out a few years ago, and have been wondering if my math was right or my assumptions were wrong. It doesn't take isotopes of H and O into account, but their fractions are small enough that it shouldn't make a big difference. (Not even a single percentage point, as hydrogen is 1.0079 and Oxygen is 15.999 accoding to my periodic table.)

Andrew:

Thanks for pointing this out! His FFS file is damaged or something (tried DLing it twice and each time, winzip says it's missing 2 bytes), but the SSDS sheet was a sheer joy to use! It could use some sprucing up, but it was completely functional AND fairly easy to use. The only "major" problem was that it was SSDS and not FFS, so I had to work within those narrow limits. All and all the best spreadsheet I've seen.
 
Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
An exquisite proof, but flawed somehow.
The density of LH2 is 70.8 Kg/m3 at 20.28 K
http://www.efunda.com/materials/elements/element_info.cfm?Element_ID=H

Accept my 5% tankage, it made life easier for me and it can do the same for you. :D
Click to expand...
Hmmm. Unfortunately, that only argues for 14, if true. Because a lot of the ship is NOT fuel tanks and it uses the same displacement for a ton.

Then again, the Imperial standard for a ton may have somehow changed such that it really is 13.5 by that time period....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Grav_Moped
CT Only: Type S5 Long Scout (199Td, J5/3G, HG'80 at TL-14)
2 3
Replies
47
Views
1K
Grav_Moped
Grav_Moped
C
Auto-Jimmy v0.9.1: Now with custom sector support
Replies
10
Views
2K
Spinward Flow
Spinward Flow
robject
The Economics of Piracy by Walt Smith (1999 TML)
Replies
1
Views
221
Straybow
Straybow
Baroun Tardis
Umbra class ships
Replies
1
Views
184
coliver988
coliver988
Baroun Tardis
T5 House Rule: Robots, Droids and Bots
Replies
3
Views
183
kilemall
K
Back
Top