How combat works when we play Traveller5

[robject]

So let me set aside the rules for now, and talk about what happens when we sit around the table and play Traveller.

The players at various points get into unarmed and armed combat in various ways.

So far, the players have stuck together, and attack enemies at one or two different ranges. I note the range and calculate the size mod at that time.

Each player moves and shoots, and resolves his attack. After that, the bad guys move and shoot. Movement usually doesn't change the range; when it has, the size mod changes by plus or minus 1.

I use range as the number of dice to throw. They roll under characteristic + skill + the size mod. I'll tweak the task difficulty to account for aimed fire or, on the other hand, snapfire.

When two or more sixes show up, I think up something interesting and bad to happen. When two or more ones show up, I think up something interesting and good to happen. We've played maybe seven sessions, and doubles showed up maybe twice. Mishaps are good for imposing a "change ammo clips" moment, or, in the case of unsafe equipment, a malfunction.

 

[Epee]

I'm pretty sure that is how Marc intends it to work.

 

[Orionruse]

Do you put vehicles in your encounters? I ask because I see a lot of GMs limiting their combats to personal combat. I am also guilty of doing this. I think using vehicles is a pretty cool thing to do-- especially when that vehicle isn't something as simple as a tank or APC, but rather a drop ship capable of near orbit flight.

Vehicles tend to change range bands pretty rapidly, especially when the players are dirtside somewhere.

 

[robject]

Do you put vehicles in your encounters? I ask because I see a lot of GMs limiting their combats to personal combat. I am also guilty of doing this. I think using vehicles is a pretty cool thing to do-- especially when that vehicle isn't something as simple as a tank or APC, but rather a drop ship capable of near orbit flight.

Vehicles tend to change range bands pretty rapidly, especially when the players are dirtside somewhere.

Yes. Let's see, one entire day was done in grav vehicles, with three combat encounters: one was 'dogfighting' against large flying beasties, and two was combat aghainst ground units. Range changed dramatically with the beast combat, but against ground units the players got to choose the range, which allowed them to dominate that encounter nicely.

In a different day, one encounter was ship-to-ground, which doesn't really count, since that was more like an event than an encounter!

I was very glad that T5 had no scale factors between vehicles and players.

 

[Orionruse]

Yeah, I agree I'm going to check to see if a dirtside "observer" can ambush a smallcraft with a rocket launcher, and not get picked up by sensors or something like that. I'm toying around with the idea of needing scout drones as "whiskers," to detect potential hostiles in a landing zone.

It looks like most of my players just want to wreck stuff in a military game, and not "go commercial" as traders. I'll probably use a LOT of robots and clones, with as viscous as the combat system is.

 

[Thoom]

I was very glad that T5 had no scale factors between vehicles and players.

Thanks for sharing! Very interesting read. I don't understand what you mean by the above quote though, can you explain?

 

[robject]

Thanks for sharing! Very interesting read. I don't understand what you mean by the above quote though, can you explain?

I mean when a vehicle weapon attacks personal armor, it's point for point damage, and when a character's firearm attacks a vehicle, it's point for point damage.

Another way of designing combat is to scale damage between vehicles and people; i.e. a Laser Rife only counts half of its damage against vehicles, or a quarter, or a tenth, and a vehicle weapon does double (or quadruple, or ten times) the damage when used against people. This is a convenient way to keep the numbers down when using vehicles. It is also helpful, or even necessary, if a system's damage scale is logarithmic.

But I prefer not to have to think about it. (Starship weapons, though, do scale when used in personal combat ... and similarly, personal and vehicle weapons only do a fraction of their damage when used against ships. Since they're less frequent in personal combat, this is acceptable to me).