House Rules, Starship Design

[Blue Ghost]

When you only have about 2-3 pages of LBB space to spend detailing standard starship designs, there isn't going to be a huge amount of variety in starships defined for you within the setting. LBB S7 and S9 did a good job of providing all of the OTHER starship designs to encounter in the setting beyond the basic few in LBB2, and LBB S4 added a couple more to the list as mustering out benefits, but in CT that was pretty much the extent of it (aside from LBB S5 of course). LBB A5 was the invitation for people to design their own fleets of ships and fighters, while LBB A1 detailed the Kinunir class ... and LBB DA1 had the Annic Nova, of course.

Thing is that the LBB format, being printed books (rather than wiki pages on a site), meant that the amount of space to detail the wealth of possible starship designs was necessarily limited ... and LBB1-3 were about as bare bones as you could get within their respective formats. So the impulse towards premature optimization made a lot of sense for LBB2, but that sensibility got overtaken by LBB5 and the more robust space construction system released in that book, which just simply more "powerful" of a custom design tool (imnsho).

Well, I suppose so. Even with Traders and Gunboats I thought there was still room for more than was presented, but I think that's just the greedy fan in me wanting more material to play with.

I had a "long scout" concept that would be maybe 150 to 175 tons, but there was no reason to build such a beast if the only benefit was living space and some fuel storage. I had some deck plans partially drafted via an old copy of Autosketch (they stopped making it some years back) but when I started putting in things that would make it worth while it was still limited to J1 movement. So, what was the point? I had an idea for a scout ship class that could "stay on station" for an extended period of time, and maybe jump a little further than your standard Type-S.

But again it was the limitations of the design system and how starships moved across the map. I may just finish the deck plans and throw them up here for people to look at and use. The scout ship was the do-all generic starship for player groups starting out, or even for long time groups that had been campaigning, but I always felt that it was somewhat limited. The Gazelle broke things up, along with the Prospector, but it seemed like there would be more "small operation" vessels in or around the scout ships weight class, but there weren't. Oh well.

 

[Fovean]

What attracted me to Traveller was that it wasn't lightsabers and blasters and Buck Rogers. It was CoDominium, Dorsai, Outland. "Shotguns in space".

And Book 4 cemented it. Always liked the tech in Book 4.

Yeah that was the fascinating thing about the game that hooked us. But with the design systems and all the encouragement to create… of course a few 12 year old knuckleheads were going to try their hands at all the stuff on the movie screens

 

[mike wightman]

My 'holy grail' for starship design as it is today:
cherry pick LBB2 77/81
- 81 drive table
- 77 pp/mdrive requirement
- most favourable crew requirements for ships 200t and lower
And fix some stuff such as pp fuel, add a discount for civilian drives, new rules for adding additional weapons such as barbettes, bays and spinals; screens and armour for LBB2 ships and combat; adding LBB4 weapons to ships/smallcraft.

 

[Fovean]

My 'holy grail' for starship design as it is today:
cherry pick LBB2 77/81
- 81 drive table
- 77 pp/mdrive requirement
- most favourable crew requirements for ships 200t and lower
And fix some stuff such as pp fuel, add a discount for civilian drives, new rules for adding additional weapons such as barbettes, bays and spinals; screens and armour for LBB2 ships and combat; adding LBB4 weapons to ships/smallcraft.

Sounds cool. Feels pretty close to the Mongoose rules, although 2e has gone back to percentage-based drives. Not advocating for Mongoose, just ruminating.

Vectors or range bands?

 

[mike wightman]

For ship to ship encounters during a role playing session I usually go with range bands from Starter Edition plus some house rules for what the various crew PCs can actually do.

For more military/wargame encounter situations then vector movement based on Mayday hexes but LBB2 damage resolution.

 

[Dragoner]

A couple of years ago for the last game of CT I ran, the players had an Avery Panther from TTA that I spec'd as an 800 ton ship using LBB2/TTB rules; added a PA Barbette and made it 1d6+1 damage, basically like a missile +1. I also did the whole "m drive is a fusion torch" thing and switched fuel around, though that just added extra work for me so I dropped it. Used a picture from bisbos and drew up a deck plan.

 

[infojunky]

My 'holy grail' for starship design as it is today:
cherry pick LBB2 77/81
- 81 drive table
- 77 pp/mdrive requirement
- most favourable crew requirements for ships 200t and lower
And fix some stuff such as pp fuel, add a discount for civilian drives, new rules for adding additional weapons such as barbettes, bays and spinals; screens and armour for LBB2 ships and combat; adding LBB4 weapons to ships/smallcraft.

Your list looks a lot like mine.

 

[kilemall]

I don’t get waiting on pro ships to be defined… if you want a range of ships that do different things, just build them.

 

[Spinward Flow]

I don’t get waiting on pro ships to be defined… if you want a range of ships that do different things, just build them.

But that takes TIME!
And EFFORT!

What self-respecting Referee has got too much of those two commodities to burn building "one offs" for a campaign that no one else will ever see (or use)?

 

[Grav_Moped]

but it seemed like there would be more "small operation" vessels in or around the scout ships weight class, but there weren't.

The 100Td size class is very limited under LBB2 '81.
It allows a pointless J-0/6G speedster with Pn=6/6G and just enough room left over for the computer and pilot stateroom.
J-0/4G gives 20Td payload (staterooms, cargo, and/or a turret).
With a Jump Drive, it's either an XBoat that stretches the rules as written farther than many referees are willing to allow, or a Type S (give or take a stateroom or two, or an air/raft).

Toss the 100Td Standard Hull into the mix and only J2/2G makes sense at that tonnage.

Bump it up to nearly (but not exactly) 200Td and exploit the loopholes in the mandatory crew rules for under-200Td ships and some options appear -- but the extra cost of non-Standard hulls still limits their economic viability even before you get to the hardpoint constraint.