High Guard 1

[mike wightman]

Does anyone still use rules from High Guard 1st ed?

The reason I ask is that I recently obtained a copy off ebay and...

what happened to 10t bays, fusion drives as weapons, high intensity missile fire, missile magazines, low power plant fuel consumption and a much better damage table(IMHO)?

Ok, a lot of HG2 is better but I can't help feeling that some of what was dropped could have been included and would have given us a richer game as a result.

Does anyone combine the two?

I'm sorry if I am resurrecting a very old topic for discussion but us newcomers (22 years off and on) may never have seen HG1 before.

 

[DaveShayne]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Does anyone still use rules from High Guard 1st ed?

The reason I ask is that I recently obtained a copy off ebay and...

what happened to 10t bays, fusion drives as weapons, high intensity missile fire, missile magazines, low power plant fuel consumption and a much better damage table(IMHO)?

Ok, a lot of HG2 is better but I can't help feeling that some of what was dropped could have been included and would have given us a richer game as a result.

Does anyone combine the two?

I'm sorry if I am resurrecting a very old topic for discussion but us newcomers (22 years off and on) may never have seen HG1 before.

Well I'm an old grognard and I still haven't seen HG1. I'd love to peruse it just to see what some of the differences are. There are many areas in which I prefer the 1st edition of the core books to the 2nd edition that appears in the reprints volume. And of course many instances where I prefer my house rules.

 

[marginaleye]

I don't have a copy of the first edition of the "High Guard" rules, but if they're even remotely similiar to the second edition, I think removing the rules for using fusion-rocket maneuver drives as weapons was probably a good idea. Why? Because the "High Guard" system doesn't have rules for the consumption of reaction mass (at least the second edition certainly doesn't) -- which is a big enough issue that it really can't (or at least shouldn't) be "hand-waved" away. Implying that maneuver drives are reactionless thrusters (as the second edition does) is more in keeping with the complexity level of the design system as a whole.

That being said, I really wish there were rules of fusion rockets, HEPlaR, and other non-reactionless maneuver drives for "High Guard." It would bring a lot of badly-needed "color" to the system, especially for lower Tech Levels.

The big problem, as I see it, is that writing in rules for non-reactionless maneuver drives would demand one think seriously about starship mass, in addition to starship volume, which would greatly increase the complexity level.

 

[Traveller]

Originally posted by DaveShayne:
Well I'm an old grognard and I still haven't seen HG1. I'd love to peruse it just to see what some of the differences are. There are many areas in which I prefer the 1st edition of the core books to the 2nd edition that appears in the reprints volume. And of course many instances where I prefer my house rules.

What do you like about the 1st edition core books compared to the revised edition? I just got mine, and the only major differences I've noted so far in going through them is that some of the skill tables were re-ordered, Vehicle skill was added, modifiers to damage were removed from weapons, and of course very few if any diagrams and the like.

I just did up my house rules and it totalled out at about thirty statement size pages, not including the essays on Warp Drive and the reprint of Roger Moore's "Preventing Complacency in Traveller Gaming".

 

[DaveShayne]

Originally posted by Strephon Alkhalikoi:
What do you like about the 1st edition core books compared to the revised edition? I just got mine, and the only major differences I've noted so far in going through them is that some of the skill tables were re-ordered, Vehicle skill was added, modifiers to damage were removed from weapons, and of course very few if any diagrams and the like.

The big changes are in Book 2. With 1st ed your power plant only has to match your manuever drive in second ed it has to equal or exceed manuever or jump whichever is higher. I find that messes with the symetry of the drive sizes and how they relate to the standard hulls.

I go back and forth on a ship using it's full jump fuel requirement regardless of whether it makes it's maximum jump or not. On the one hand allowing the fractional use of fuel for fractional jumps makes more intuitive sense but on the other hand I tend to prefer to accentuate the ineficiency of high jump ships in low jump situations.

Both of those changes make Book 2 compatible with HG. I tend to prefer making High Guard compatible with book 2 (so I've switched the drive percentages table for jump and manuever IMTU as well)

 

[mike wightman]

Book 2 second edition makes the X-boat in Traders and Gunboats a broken design, it has to include a powerplant, and let's not mention the Annic Nova .
I think the powerplant/maneuver drive in first edition book 2 always suggested to me some sort of reaction drive, especially when it gives the number of combat turns (288=48 hours) the m-drive can be used with a full fuel tank.
Perhaps the maneuver drive generates an inertial mass reduction field around the volume of the ship (this could explain its' radiation blocking properties as well

) and a small fusion rocket is then used for thrust, hence you design a maneuver drive for a volume and not a mass. Too big a rocket for the field and it breaks down.