General How to develop a vehicle design sequence

[kilemall]

I'd argue it has everything to do with the fact that the games people use the designs for are popular, rather than the inherent characteristics of the design systems. Virtually nobody plays TNE space combat anymore ergo virtually nobody uses FF&S. I can't use a FF&S warship to play High Guard, or at least it would make a lot more sense to just use HG Shipyard to design it.

I too like elegant rules. But for me HG is combat by spreadsheet. I can't stand the lack of manoeuvre. Give me Battle Rider any day and twice on Sundays.

Help is on the way.


But of course, I expect everyone to hijack it and bend it to their own purposes.

 

[Tiikeri]

Quick tangent for the military historians.

What exactly does it mean to "reduce" a city, in the context of ww2 or similar?

 

[Tiikeri]

Anyway im interested in design systems because traveller is one of the only games where it matters. Different planets doing different things. The fleets of the imperium facing the fleets of a pocket empire or an alien race with radically different designs. A lower tech fleet against one tl 15 cruiser. A band of intrepid player characters can settle a new world, design the ships and vehicles they need, and have a rogue world build it in their tl 15 cad-cam rapid fabrication industrial base. This can all happen in traveller and the design sequences give us the tools to do it.

 

[whartung]

Anyway im interested in design systems because traveller is one of the only games where it matters. Different planets doing different things. The fleets of the imperium facing the fleets of a pocket empire or an alien race with radically different designs.

But it doesn't really matter.

Sure, you can make any kind of design you want, but in the end, it's the weapons that matter, and Traveller's variety is pretty limited. Lasers, Missiles, Energy Weapons, PAs and Mesons.

Countered by dampers, meson screen, repulsors, and armor.

And of those, the Meson is the deal breaker.

Compare to SFB: Phasers (I, II, III, IV, Gatling), Photons (N[ormal], Proximity, O[verloaded]), Disruptors (N, O), Fusion Beams (N, O), Hellbores(N, O, Direct Fire), Plasmatic Pulsar Device (N, O), Drones (vast array), Plasma Topedoes(F, G, S, R), Plasma Bolts, and whatever it was that the Adromedans used (essentially a PH-IV). And I have no idea what the more modern races offer.

Then you have the other systems: Tholian Web, Tholian Web Casters, Expanding Sphere Generators, Stasis Field Generators, Cloaking Devices, Engine Doubling

Those fleets and ships were design around the weapons they carried, the doctrines they practiced, etc. There's racial limitations to systems and their use (some of the weapons are very powerful). Klingons and Kzinti are both rely on Disruptors and Drones, but the ships fight completely differently.

The point being that in Traveller, you can make all sorts of different size boxes, but they all hold the same, limited stuff, so in the end, there's really not that much variety.

And yes, I understand they're completely different games, but the point remains that despite the free form nature of ship design, in the end, (i.e. in game combat), there aren't really that many decisions to make that matter.

 

[Tiikeri]

I guess youre right, it comes down to an abstraction in the combat table.

 

[kilemall]

Quick tangent for the military historians.

What exactly does it mean to "reduce" a city, in the context of ww2 or similar?

Wiki is good enough for the purpose.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduction_(military)

 

[Tiikeri]

Perfect, thanks.

 

[Condottiere]

Implied would be that the city's defences have been eliminated.

In the Medieval context, that would mean the walls had been destroyed.