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Incoming!! But how fast?

Battle Rider is definitely a better game with more game sheets - the detection ranges work better in a wider space and there is more room to actually maneuver rather than just line up and shoot as you fly past each other.
 
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It also brings in gameplay issues. The retrogrades are perfectly valid tactics, that happen to make for really crummy game play. Having Mayday battles at high speeds, dunno how interesting those battles are not. The Battle Rider Map is 2 sheets of 18x11. A speed 20 game on that play field would be a real pain to pull off.

The average realistic civilian-involved battle in CT will be a stern chase by a faster ship. Target Civilian is racing for either the world or the jump point. Aggressor is giving chase, be they hostile civilian, pirate, or military.

Missile advantage, to Target civilian. But slight.

A meeting battle (which really should be stupidly rare outside of wars) will be both vectored towards each other at relatively low vectors.


A Passing Battle will be extremely high vectors - as in, 2+ G-days. Missile fire will be one shot to shoot down, and impact. Targeting enemy ships will be single round. Advantage to numbers. Side with more missiles has numbers....
every missile he diverts lasers from to shoot missiles is a laser not hitting a ship.

As players, we naturally constrain ourselves to the available play field, even on a floating map folks try to not run to far off course.

But it also points to the other issues, simply space is big, and there are rarely any fixed targets.

You might, but I've had running battles in SFB cross 5 mapsheets, and will note that Tourney enforces a boundary as a fiat narrative that also makes the tournaments an in-universe thing. (How many quatloos on the winner again?)

There are enough of us who have floated maps that the issue isn't so much do we think of the maps as a limit but "is it worth it to continue the battle on another sheet, or can we just shift everything on the map we have down?"

I've run more than a few stern chase battles by moving only ordinance and the pursuit ship. (Done that in Car Wars a lot, too.)
 
One hundred quatloos on the newcomer!

My friends and I stayed in the bounds of one map and I almost always had my butt handed to me.
 
The original Fed CL was a crummy ship. Much like the original Fed DD. The DD wasn't great, the CL was worse. Heck, many of the early ships were lousy, especially when held in the light of the later ships.

But, yes the game certainly transformed over the years from the heady chaos of the original expansions. I never played a lot of plotted movement, and never really learned the game that way, even in the beginning we just "skipped that part".'

Fed CL? We played with Fed CAs and CXs mostly, are you referring to the Romulan war-era box or the later CLs?

Skipping that part makes it more casually playable, but not as much a test of wits and foresight.


it was self imposed from ADB with their promotion of the BPV. With BPV dominating the "scenario" state, everyone was looking for spikes in the BPV curve, so they had to special rule everything. It's not that gatling phasers (for example) are overpowered, but rather they're cheap for what they can do, so they clamped down hard on when and where they can be deployed on ships.

We used to play simple free-for-alls where each player rolled 100-600 BPV on dice for their fleet and just managed to do what they could. More than once I rushed in, crashed shield, burned a ship and just ran away since I was so completely outnumbered.

But, certainly, at least in our group, we all loved the war cruisers for their speed.

My group's issue with the War Cruisers was not their design or even logical role within a Trek universe at war, but the 'hey me too/its not fair' red vs. blue play they were catering to.

Can't even really fault ADB for playing to the market. It just became a game we were not the slightest bit interested in after being VERY into it (my Klingon court martial trial after the VERY unfortunate run-in with a Fed freighter still makes me shudder).

Well that's my point. I'm focusing on the rules of the system, not the "physics" of it. The rules and mechanics represent the "understanding" of the engineering available. For whatever reason, the missiles in early Traveller were little more than tiny ships with all of their limitations, and better used as "smart mines" than "missiles".

Okay, now if we approach this whole question from a 'gameplay' perspective rather then anything else, then the bigger question is what effect and feel you want for those combats, not rulesmongering, which I am indulging in for a tad but only to point out there are other ways to think about CT combat and I'm not alone in thinking them.

If that plays better for you, great. It just doesn't for me because I was ALWAYS coming at this from an Imperium/HG perspective with those relationships, and when I get back to that Mayday movement/HG energy allocation game I will be seeking to maintain that on a larger scale.

And I can see appreciate how the missile didn't operate like some may visualize missiles, but that didn't make them useless. Less useful? Perhaps. Harder to deploy? Sure. But not useless.

Sigh. We're gonna have to plot this out aren't we.


Simply, my lament about "realistic" space combat systems is that the playing field is so level (big, empty space), that simple, raw firepower (i.e. ships design/economics) dominates the outcome. Up to the point where we have High Guard which basically completely hand waved almost the entire concept of maneuver. In SFB, maneuver (and the use of energy allocation to facilitate the balance of maneuver and weapons) is the heart of the game and a key component that distinguished good players from poor players. So, eliminating maneuver, to me, is a "big deal".

Raw firepower dominates so greatly, I feel (and it's just a feeling, having not played any volume of actual games), that the player brings little to the table that can affect the outcome of a scenario outside of blowing on the dice. I can see very little hope of a "Taffy 3", or some smaller force routing a larger one.

Oh quite, HG coupled with TCS is effectively a 'roll your own fleet design/line em up/roll a LOT' more detailed Imperium, and should not be confused with anything but.

I'm just a madman for wanting to bring CT/Mayday maneuver TO HG, or more like HG toys to CT maneuver/captaining.

But, for the most part I'm sticking to CT for the purposes of this thread since it's about the missiles in the CT game.

In CT, the dominating characteristic other then ship size, engagement choice via M-drive and armament is the ship's computer. You can easily sink the cost of the original ship into upgrading the computer and the programs, but you will have a much deadlier ship for doing so.

In that case a smaller ship can 'punch above it's weight', but from a megacredit resource perspective it's a similar outlay to buying raw ship and weapons.

Skill matters especially if you can afford the predict programs AND the gunner interact with good gunners, effectively making impossible shots possible and landing more hits then the opponent. That too is a matter of resource outlay, although maybe not in terms of MCr, more in acquiring/developing and keeping talent.

In this way, High Guard is actually rather insightful. But as some who enjoys pushing the ships around and feeling theirs a purpose to it, it kind of takes the wind out of my sails to acknowledge that all that pushing may not matter at all in the big picture.

Add in some stealth mechanic, and you might be able to have some guerrilla action where a small force keeps a larger force pinned in a system, but then we start drifting away from "realistic".


Well, I always did my darnedest to blow up enemy transports in Imperium, that way even if the enemy got space superiority he wasn't going to be landing anything. Tankers were a major target too, so if you have any logistics work going on that should be a way the small fleet can act.

I have stealth, but it's only effective for spec ops or deep space small patrol ambush. The assumption is linked VLA type sensor work, too many eyes, too many crew and computer cycles crunching every cubic meter of space, to get away with it against a major fleet.

I wouldn't feel badly OR take too much 'insight' from HG, it was designed for what it was designed for and NOT as a maneuver game.

Among other things you can expect from my maneuver version are differences in power/effect at range especially against armor/screens, lower probability of hits the further out you go, kinetic impact power increases from missile vee, and all sorts of decisions from general maneuver to power to roll state to shot patterns from the gunners.

The end product should feel like an energy allocation version of playing CT starships, with skill rolls baked in. Quite a bit different from the 'acid test of the ship builder's art' HG really is built to do.

That miniatures game that just finished it's Kickstarter may be more of what you are looking for, with the pitch, arcs and whatnot.
 
Several things:

In Re Traveller: DOn was given a pretty free hand in the errata. Marc's oversight was present, but mostly focused upon the material for T5.

That may be. I certainly do not know the circumstances, only that the trust seemed to be there. It may be that Don put in what he thought and slipped it in and Marc said sure go for it, but the SS3 revision's inclusion in the current CD-ROM suggests a certain amount of cachet over and above Don freelancing.

Again, not definitive, certainly everyone can go back to missiles as they knew them before, but in answering the OP's original question it has to be regarded as at least 'more then opinion/less then holy writ'.

After the OP gets the facts and opinions, he can make his own judgement as to what effect he wants from the game.

And the other things...
1: the fed CL and DD were pretty solid in the first edition of SFB - provided you used the proportional movement costs. The later churn (commanders and captains editions) was filled with bad ideas made manifest, and lots of good ideas tossed in the mix.

Well, yes, proportional movement along with turning rate is critical for the small boats, both for power AND maneuvering out of weapon arcs.

If latter-era ADB monkeyed with those they were playing with ship differentiation dynamite, but given where the rest of it went, wouldn't surprise me.

2: The free movement was a different, but equally as good, game. Still, ADB adopted it not because they thought it better, but because fans demanded it. SPP commented about this on GEnie.

Can't argue with their business decision, it was clear attending the tournaments and the race 'owners' where things were going- just an entertainment decision on our part not to follow along.

3: Starfire is a great game... but it's always been a free movement game, with the option for plotted... Choosing it over SFB when one dislikes the free movement game rings false; failing to mention its relative speed and ability to handle larger scenarios also rings a warning tone about credibility... or the lack thereof.

Then you were more focused on finding a forum gotcha with me then paying attention to my group's underlying entertainment motif.

We wanted, still want if we have time for it, to play games with sides that have different capabilities but have an equal chance at victory, even if the victory condition is something akin to 'delaying at the Alamo to set up San Jacinto'.

When SFB went 'me too' in ship and fleet design, everybody has to have fighters, everybody has to have X technology, everybody gets pseudofighters, and coupled it with tractor-ECM/ECCM auctions and the like with no command challenge of plotting, we bowed out.

Instead, Starfire let us indulge in our freakiest design imperatives.

Starfire in many respects is a simplified HG, ship design with X economics in service to both building fleets AND something to fight over. It's NOT SFB, it's a different animal.

We set up campaigns with even budgets and used random Dark Nebula maps to create our schematic 'system/warp point' map, and went at it.

We could give up plotted movement if it meant we could allow our inner Ids and ship designer urges loose upon the universe. And we did.

One fellow built what he called the 'Russian' fleet- cheap disposable large numbers of firepower, not much protection. And like the Russian fleets, he tended to put his fleet into split positions and get defeated in detail.

Another built all primary beam armed ships. He didn't last long.

He kept on theming his fleets after Balkan countries and Mormons in space, so disaster karma was likely anyway, but his design choices didn't help.

Still another, the Fed player from our SFB days, ran both the alien menace fleet and an overall balanced mix fleet, merging two of his empires in the last iteration we went through. His Reagan-class destroyer design became the benchmark standard.

The guest starring short-lived but memorable Redneck Empire was famous for their Pabst Blue Ribbon missile cruisers.

The Advertising Empire ran to SDs and CVs, although everyone HAD to kill the destroyer Ancient Chinese Secret. Just cause.

I built mostly special-build missile or beam battle cruisers- an analysis was run and my fleet was 30% larger then everyone else's by tonnage. However, not so good for warp point assaults or if I could not optimize a coordinated maneuver.

Ultimately, it's immaterial to me whether you consider this a credibility issue- I'm posting in the context of his comments which made me realize he didn't do plotted movement, and what my gaming group collectively thought about the SFB slide into free movement and red vs. blue.

We all went for Starfire for the reasons noted above decades ago, with no concern for anyone's credibility assessment in a future forum.

Others may judge as they will.
 
I'm just a madman for wanting to bring CT/Mayday maneuver TO HG, or more like HG toys to CT maneuver/captaining.

Oh, I don't think that. There's Mayday rules to, sorta, adapt HG weapons, mostly it concentrates on what "long" range means, and punt to HG for the To-Hit numbers.

As an aside, I was rather surprised at how damage works in Mayday. 4 hits (even NE results) on a ship destroys it, everything else is either NE or, essentially, a critical (weapons dead, drive dead, etc.). A 200 ton ship with 2 Triple beam laser turret can destroy a 5000 ton ship in one go with these rules...scary.

Skill matters especially if you can afford the predict programs AND the gunner interact with good gunners, effectively making impossible shots possible and landing more hits then the opponent. That too is a matter of resource outlay, although maybe not in terms of MCr, more in acquiring/developing and keeping talent.

RPG skill here, not player skill.

Well, I always did my darnedest to blow up enemy transports in Imperium, that way even if the enemy got space superiority he wasn't going to be landing anything. Tankers were a major target too, so if you have any logistics work going on that should be a way the small fleet can act.

That's a strategic objective, rather than a tactical one. It brings in to question whether a mixed fleet can actually protect it's assets. With as deadly as Mayday damage is, flying through each others lines could be quite costly. With CT, perhaps not, and maybe it would be more difficult to protect the fleets rear in system.

I wouldn't feel badly OR take too much 'insight' from HG, it was designed for what it was designed for and NOT as a maneuver game.

To me the insight is quite telling. Much like the discussions of range bands vs 2D maneuvering vs 3D maneuvering, I'm just curious if they tried to fight some larger battles "tactically" and found that the maneuvering aspect just washed out, and that was one reason (though not only) they went with the simplified "line 'em up and let fly" system in HG.

Among other things you can expect from my maneuver version are differences in power/effect at range especially against armor/screens, lower probability of hits the further out you go, kinetic impact power increases from missile vee, and all sorts of decisions from general maneuver to power to roll state to shot patterns from the gunners.

For maneuver to work, there has to be scarcity. If two ships are closing on each other and just blasting away with their lasers each and every turn, cuz, why not?, then maneuver is factored out. Rather, as the "turns" advance (i.e. the ships close), the odds get better for both parties until one eventually rolls better than the other. High Guard without the counter pushing. Scarcity through arcs, scarcity through, perhaps power cycles (I won't fire because my weapon take so long to reset), obviously limited ammunition (i.e. missiles), can all impact this.

But if firing weapons has no cost (as currently with any energy weapon in CT/HG), then, fire away Griddly, and keep firing until the dice reduce to 0, then turn around.

The end product should feel like an energy allocation version of playing CT starships, with skill rolls baked in. Quite a bit different from the 'acid test of the ship builder's art' HG really is built to do.

We'll have to wait and see then. The nut there is to advance the story behind the weapon systems, in a "realistic" rule set.

But once you get there, you start to see the problems ADB was having with the BPV economics of ship balance, being as soon as you introduce scarcity, along with design, folks will want to build scarcity out of their design. i.e. is one ship with "no scarcity" (such as an over abundance of power) that costs twice as much as 2 ships "with" scarcity simply a better value for the dollar. Have to play those things out and see how it works.

An example of this from SFB were the escort cruisers, with power curves designed for heavy weapons, but instead bristling with P-Is (or, worse, P-Gs) instead. Very fast, very dangerous, and very cheap ships resulted. (and they were special ruled out -- had to have a carrier to bring escorts.)
 
As an aside, I was rather surprised at how damage works in Mayday. 4 hits (even NE results) on a ship destroys it, everything else is either NE or, essentially, a critical (weapons dead, drive dead, etc.). A 200 ton ship with 2 Triple beam laser turret can destroy a 5000 ton ship in one go with these rules...scary.
Mayday turrets are not quite the same as LBB2 turrets, it's one of the other differences between the two games.

That's a strategic objective, rather than a tactical one. It brings in to question whether a mixed fleet can actually protect it's assets. With as deadly as Mayday damage is, flying through each others lines could be quite costly. With CT, perhaps not, and maybe it would be more difficult to protect the fleets rear in system.
Yet another difference, in Mayday you are at -1 to hit will lasers per hex, which makes the six hex engagement range of missiles much more useful.

Ships that get too close to each other are running the risk of one missile and one laser hit being enough to kill them.

Now add a fleet element, you have several ships moving in formation, if you focus your fire you can take out an enemy ship, if you are facing another fleet and you pick individual targets you may only degrade rather than destroy.

So what do you do?

Stand off and send in small craft armed with missiles to soften yup the enemy fleet? Stay away from effective beam weapon range and send in flights of missiles to soften up?
Charge in and hope to kill more of his ships than he kills of yours. This is starting to abstract to HG range bands...

To me the insight is quite telling. Much like the discussions of range bands vs 2D maneuvering vs 3D maneuvering, I'm just curious if they tried to fight some larger battles "tactically" and found that the maneuvering aspect just washed out, and that was one reason (though not only) they went with the simplified "line 'em up and let fly" system in HG.
Exactly.
I don't think enough people have actually tried playing Mayday with five colonial cruisers vs five colonial cruisers ;)



For maneuver to work, there has to be scarcity. If two ships are closing on each other and just blasting away with their lasers each and every turn, cuz, why not?, then maneuver is factored out. Rather, as the "turns" advance (i.e. the ships close), the odds get better for both parties until one eventually rolls better than the other. High Guard without the counter pushing. Scarcity through arcs, scarcity through, perhaps power cycles (I won't fire because my weapon take so long to reset), obviously limited ammunition (i.e. missiles), can all impact this.
Star Cruiser, and then later BL/BR solved this problem by limiting beam weapon ranges and introducing sensor lock rules to avoid the boredom of simply moving your counters into weapon range, lining up and blasting away ;)
 
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The average realistic civilian-involved battle in CT will be a stern chase by a faster ship. Target Civilian is racing for either the world or the jump point. Aggressor is giving chase, be they hostile civilian, pirate, or military.

Missile advantage, to Target civilian. But slight.

A meeting battle (which really should be stupidly rare outside of wars) will be both vectored towards each other at relatively low vectors.


A Passing Battle will be extremely high vectors - as in, 2+ G-days. Missile fire will be one shot to shoot down, and impact. Targeting enemy ships will be single round. Advantage to numbers. Side with more missiles has numbers....
every missile he diverts lasers from to shoot missiles is a laser not hitting a ship.

Agreed on the average nature of CT battle and meeting battles.

Not agreed on missile advantage and passing battle at high Gs, at least with the #-G-burn interpretation of the missiles in a CT/SS3 maneuver context.

Missile advantage is utterly with the pursuing ship, as they will line up on the slower ship, box it in with a spread and do much more damage with impact rules.

The escaping ship's missiles are effectively firing retros to slow down enough to hit the enemy ship, pursuing ship to an extent is on higher G rails to get to a potential impact site but has choice of range engagement, imparting a higher vee to the missiles further back a turn or two then slowing to avoid 'impaling on the stake line' before the pursuer missiles strike home.

On passing battles, the missiles can largely be ignored past a certain speed assuming it's truly a passing battle (vees not on collision course and roughly parallel or diverging), but could be a bigger threat if the target ship(s) are going so fast they cannot evade outside the 2500 km homing range. The lower end of that scale, I want to say about 10Gs, is achievable by 1-G craft even within a little over 3 hours, and of course can be reached most of the time by warships in an hour or less.

I also don't get the assertion that one more anti missile shot is one less on target on the ship. Certainly true if you allow for long range shots on missiles (although that's a horror show for use/misuse of the limited Target capacity), but in most cases the rules are clearly allowing the same laser to fire/double fire, antimissile fire on the last ditch defense, AND return fire if the program is running.

The really big part of all this is that 25mm 2500km homing range part of the missile rules. It's pretty easy to put the evade on, which can be countered by a missile spread, but then that takes several of the missiles out of contention and makes the anti-missile shot easier, possibly multiple lasers on fewer missiles.

This is why missiles NEED that #-G-turns of burn interpretation in CT, to get enough freedom of movement to generate more hits and have a wider envelope then the near boarding range of 60,000 km or less.

Most consistent effect of missiles with the limited interpretation might be to force a ship to evade right out of it's protective sand cloud.
 
RPG skill here, not player skill.

While true from a gamer definition perspective, I was just pointing out that CT ship battles are not ALL hardware deterministic, and are carefully calibrated to where the player character often makes the difference.

Player skill to equip the ship to that level, and player skill to maneuver the ship- in situations where the player has a choice. As Aramis points out, there are standard scenarios where the player is already running full out one way or another, and the choices are limited to begin with.

That's a strategic objective, rather than a tactical one. It brings in to question whether a mixed fleet can actually protect it's assets. With as deadly as Mayday damage is, flying through each others lines could be quite costly. With CT, perhaps not, and maybe it would be more difficult to protect the fleets rear in system.

While I am no fan of the system and passed on it when it was released, I will say that it makes sense because of the much larger time scale- hours instead of 1000 seconds, a LOT of shots can occur in that time frame.

To me the insight is quite telling. Much like the discussions of range bands vs 2D maneuvering vs 3D maneuvering, I'm just curious if they tried to fight some larger battles "tactically" and found that the maneuvering aspect just washed out, and that was one reason (though not only) they went with the simplified "line 'em up and let fly" system in HG.

Don't know, but my gut tells me they didn't even bother, that HG was designed for a different thing then RPG combat. It's just too Imperium to be a coincidence.

My gut could be wrong.

For maneuver to work, there has to be scarcity. If two ships are closing on each other and just blasting away with their lasers each and every turn, cuz, why not?, then maneuver is factored out. Rather, as the "turns" advance (i.e. the ships close), the odds get better for both parties until one eventually rolls better than the other. High Guard without the counter pushing. Scarcity through arcs, scarcity through, perhaps power cycles (I won't fire because my weapon take so long to reset), obviously limited ammunition (i.e. missiles), can all impact this.

I'm coming at this as a naval mini guy before Traveller, and neither HG nor CT really incentivizes optimal range fire and therefore a reason to hold at X range, or have to close because of the heavier armor of the target. If anything CT/SS3 is 'smarter' then HG because it does have at least 3 bands of probability and 'torpedo runs'. I'm going for a lot of nuance interaction between ship design, maneuver, and combat results, and I think people will be surprised how easy it is once you are willing to throw away some of the conventions.

Gotta make those old girl designs pop.

We'll have to wait and see then. The nut there is to advance the story behind the weapon systems, in a "realistic" rule set.

But once you get there, you start to see the problems ADB was having with the BPV economics of ship balance, being as soon as you introduce scarcity, along with design, folks will want to build scarcity out of their design. i.e. is one ship with "no scarcity" (such as an over abundance of power) that costs twice as much as 2 ships "with" scarcity simply a better value for the dollar. Have to play those things out and see how it works.

An example of this from SFB were the escort cruisers, with power curves designed for heavy weapons, but instead bristling with P-Is (or, worse, P-Gs) instead. Very fast, very dangerous, and very cheap ships resulted. (and they were special ruled out -- had to have a carrier to bring escorts.)

Well, far as HG is concerned, those higher tech smaller cheaper power plants could make for scarier ships, but if you are paying top TL15 coin, it SHOULD be a damn scary boat.

At lower TLs there is always something you will be short of re: armor, speed/agility, etc., the basic ratios and interactions are sound, I'm not worried about the 'perfect ship' solution.
 
Star Cruiser, and then later BL/BR solved this problem by limiting beam weapon ranges and introducing sensor lock rules to avoid the boredom of simply moving your counters into weapon range, lining up and blasting away ;)

Loved stutterwarp and them detlaser missiles, but the 2300 skies always seemed a bit empty, more like StarForce then anything else re: ship density.

And radioactive grav dumping annoyed me. Not every damn game has to be nodal.

I have sensor rules, partially to allow sneak ops drama, but also some subtlety in interaction and misunderstandings-

  • a science ship scan CAN look like a fire control lock on,
  • detection is an automatic bridge/computer function, target/scan requires running programs
  • a ship may try a difficult passive lock on to not let on an ambush is coming or 'be diplomatic' while being prepared,
  • stealth ships may pass each other without detecting each other at all,
  • countermeasures figure large,
  • breaking lock is possible but detection is almost impossible to break,
  • active ships are almost impossible to not lock onto,
  • scan programs are better at getting tactical intel,
  • active target/scan are detectable, and
  • incoming radio/laser comms and fire is the most 'active' thing to detect and allows detection far beyond civilian set limits.
 
One additional thought on the whole Mayday vs. Revised SS3 5G5 type definitions-

we should EXPECT that the missile definition is different for Mayday and CT:SS3.

Simply because the scale is greatly different.

Mayday is 1LS hexes and 100 minutes, or 6000 seconds, CT:SS3 is 10000 km per G burn per 1000 seconds.

In order to get a 300,000 km vee in 6000 seconds a Mayday 1G1 missile is accelerating at a minimum constant 50 meters per second.

To translate that into CT missiles, that's an SS3 Revised 5G6 missile, literally (5 G burns for 6 CT turns).

So just getting the slowest Mayday missile possible requires a standard SS3Rev 5G6- the standard 6G6 Mayday missile (assuming the commonly understood 1G/one burn ratio) translates into an SS3Rev 30G1 missile.

Using the 'old' interpretation, a CT missile would have to be 30G30 to match the standard Mayday missile.

Not sure that would fit into a standard missile casing, just highlighting the differing systems' ranges and missile valuation.

<Shrug> if we take Mayday missile conversion to Traveller literally and directly, one could keep the Mayday/original SS3 interpretation and just multiply the CT missile G by a factor of 5, with whatever burns to support it.

That would be one HAPPENING missile- and much closer to the current interaction of missiles with ships and aircraft in our real world.

In that case I think I would WANT limited burn interpretations.

Of course, the ships are also accelerating at 5x to make that Mayday time scale work, so arguably it's a wash re: missile/ship relative speed interaction.

Bottom line though, those Mayday missiles at the very least burn 6x as long as CT missiles even if the Gs are ship speed, seems a reasonable conversion to go with the Revision version when using CT and continuing to use Mayday valuation under that system.
 
One additional thought...


You keep looking for ways to knit all of Traveller's disparate ship combat systems together while overlooking - perhaps deliberately - that they were never intended to work together as seamlessly as you wish.

Mayday was one of GDW's Series 120 games; games with 120 or fewer counters that could be played in under 120 minutes. They took a few ideas from Traveller as a starting point and crafted a game that more fit the Series 120 paradigm than the Traveller setting. You cannot make Mayday fit any better than it's designers intended it to fit.

Dark Nebula is another example of that. GDW took the pre-Traveller game engine, slapped in a few concepts from the RPG, and added a few special rules to quickly create a fun game. Despite the fact that DN was never meant to truly "fit" Traveller people are still wasting their time trying to make the game's maps fit the RPG's maps.

The same holds true for all the other games and systems. You're not going to be able to stitch them together without some pretty noticeable "scars".
 
You keep looking for ways to knit all of Traveller's disparate ship combat systems together while overlooking - perhaps deliberately - that they were never intended to work together as seamlessly as you wish.

<smacks forehead>

I have said that these are different games many times, including this thread. Don't know how people get these ideas.

I'm not the one insisting Mayday interpretations should be a guide to SS3 missiles, these guys are. If anything I'm arguing for them to be on their appropriate range/speed interactions.

I do think though that CT vs. Mayday is a special case, as 90% of the chrome IS CT systems and ships, both putatively a CT/computer/maneuver game, and so should yield similar results, in the same way a naval miniatures game should have similar outcomes even with different systems in play.

AS for the CT:HG:Mayday merge project, that's just to play with all the HG goodies as RPG/fighting the ship goodness, and so more RPG chrome and putting them into a maneuver/energy enviornment.

I don't confuse that with the source games as I am looking to create something that was never made otherwise, but I DO have to understand the source games, their entertainment intent and 'point of view' and understand what parts can support my entertainment/POV design decisions.

In the context of the OP's thread I am primarily concerned with having CT missiles work, which IMO they don't in all but 'missile run advantaged' maneuvers, naval mines or outnumbered launchers such as the fighter problem in another thread.

So as interpreted without SS3Rev they might as well be regarded as spar torpedoes or a particularly slow mass driver weapon.

Surprising that so much of the CT community has worked with this interpretation of the 5G6 rules this long. Suggests to me that most have been working in range bands all this time.
 
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I have said that these are different games many times, including this thread.


My apologies. I'd only skimmed the thread because, quite frankly the topic is both tedious and had been Done To Death. How tedious and Done to Death? Well, the first ASCII text document I opened from a Traveller BBS via my dail-up Sears Prodigy connection was all about trying to make LBB:2, Mayday, HG2, and MT work better together.

Don't know how people get these ideas.

Perhaps, like me, they stop paying any real attention when they see someone flogging the dried spot on the road where the dead horse used to be.

My RPG group in the late 70s were wargamers first and roleplayers a distant second. We picked up D&D via Chainmail, for example, and played En Garde for the duels more than the gambling, clubbing, and wenching. When we got Traveller we used it as a man-to-man/small unit combat system for months before even using the chargen.

When one of my friends got his copy of HG2 in 1980, he immediately began trying to mesh it with LBB:2 and Mayday. I watched him fail in his quixotic quest then, have watched too many others to count fail in their quixotic quests over the ensuing decades, and will watch you fail too.

Remember that: You will fail.

Because there are so many decisions, adjustments, and what not to be made, because there are so many disparate elements to choose from, because there so many things still not covered in any of the rules, you're going to homebrew something which will be specifically tailored for you and your group. It will be good, don't get me wrong, but it will only work for you and people who think/play like you.

For example, you've mentioned you'd like to see an energy point allocation system like that in SFB. My players already played and enjoyed the Task Force Games SFB version but, if I'd tried to introduce something like that into Traveller ship combat, they'd had laughed themselves sick.

You'll come up with something that works for you, more or less. Just don't be disappointed when that something doesn't work for everyone else, more or less.

Have fun.
 
My apologies. I'd only skimmed the thread because, quite frankly the topic is both tedious and had been Done To Death. How tedious and Done to Death? Well, the first ASCII text document I opened from a Traveller BBS via my dail-up Sears Prodigy connection was all about trying to make LBB:2, Mayday, HG2, and MT work better together.



Perhaps, like me, they stop paying any real attention when they see someone flogging the dried spot on the road where the dead horse used to be.

My RPG group in the late 70s were wargamers first and roleplayers a distant second. We picked up D&D via Chainmail, for example, and played En Garde for the duels more than the gambling, clubbing, and wenching. When we got Traveller we used it as a man-to-man/small unit combat system for months before even using the chargen.

When one of my friends got his copy of HG2 in 1980, he immediately began trying to mesh it with LBB:2 and Mayday. I watched him fail in his quixotic quest then, have watched too many others to count fail in their quixotic quests over the ensuing decades, and will watch you fail too.

Remember that: You will fail.

Because there are so many decisions, adjustments, and what not to be made, because there are so many disparate elements to choose from, because there so many things still not covered in any of the rules, you're going to homebrew something which will be specifically tailored for you and your group. It will be good, don't get me wrong, but it will only work for you and people who think/play like you.

For example, you've mentioned you'd like to see an energy point allocation system like that in SFB. My players already played and enjoyed the Task Force Games SFB version but, if I'd tried to introduce something like that into Traveller ship combat, they'd had laughed themselves sick.

You'll come up with something that works for you, more or less. Just don't be disappointed when that something doesn't work for everyone else, more or less.

Have fun.

Mongoose did that PP in combat with a book-2 like modality and Bk5 weapons... in their playtest for MGT 1E. It worked. Really well.

The problem was it was so tightly integrated with the playtest, that when they switched the task system, they also dropped and completely rewrote ship combat.

It was, however, awesome. I really wish it had been tossed into the SRD.

(Fixing their task system would need only to have reverse the direction of the roll to 2d6≤(6+skill) instead of (2d6+skill)≥8+.)
 
When one of my friends got his copy of HG2 in 1980, he immediately began trying to mesh it with LBB:2 and Mayday. I watched him fail in his quixotic quest then, have watched too many others to count fail in their quixotic quests over the ensuing decades, and will watch you fail too.

Remember that: You will fail.

Man that fired me up to finish it off and parade around the solar system with Meh Rules. Cause I'm 3/4 there, having to decide what to do about missiles and armor, and how much I want to deviate from the default HG damage tables for the single ship version.

Because there are so many decisions, adjustments, and what not to be made, because there are so many disparate elements to choose from, because there so many things still not covered in any of the rules, you're going to homebrew something which will be specifically tailored for you and your group. It will be good, don't get me wrong, but it will only work for you and people who think/play like you.

For example, you've mentioned you'd like to see an energy point allocation system like that in SFB. My players already played and enjoyed the Task Force Games SFB version but, if I'd tried to introduce something like that into Traveller ship combat, they'd had laughed themselves sick.

You'll come up with something that works for you, more or less. Just don't be disappointed when that something doesn't work for everyone else, more or less.

Have fun.
Well heck that deflated my bubble.

Of COURSE it won't fit everyone else, but with what 7-8 major versions of Traveller and as noted before every ref is running their own ATU, of COURSE it won't fit everyone's entertainment needs- those are already individual and fragmented by tastes.

But that doesn't make the attempt a failure, if for no other reason then people can tear out what they like and make their own mutant version.

And I am DAMN good at the rules modding thing.

Maybe a little less been there done that, and a little more put your own stuff out there would be more helpful.
 
Mongoose did that PP in combat with a book-2 like modality and Bk5 weapons... in their playtest for MGT 1E. It worked. Really well.


All the more reason to ditch it, right? ;)

While HG2 doesn't explicitly mention managing EPs, the black globe, gee/agility limited to PP/M drive number, and emergency agility examples are all there. Seeing as most damage to power plants involves reducing the plant's rating rather then destroying the plant outright and seeing as we've energy requirements listed for weapons, shields, and computers, we should be juggling EPs as damage accrues.

My groups tried it on occasion. Sometimes it was worth the book keeping and sometimes it wasn't. Horses for courses as always.
 
Mongoose did that PP in combat with a book-2 like modality and Bk5 weapons... in their playtest for MGT 1E. It worked. Really well.

The problem was it was so tightly integrated with the playtest, that when they switched the task system, they also dropped and completely rewrote ship combat.

It was, however, awesome. I really wish it had been tossed into the SRD.

(Fixing their task system would need only to have reverse the direction of the roll to 2d6≤(6+skill) instead of (2d6+skill)≥8+.)

That sounds too bad, they did seem to be shooting for relative CT simplicity with some nice chrome.
 
All the more reason to ditch it, right? ;)

While HG2 doesn't explicitly mention managing EPs, the black globe, gee/agility limited to PP/M drive number, and emergency agility examples are all there. Seeing as most damage to power plants involves reducing the plant's rating rather then destroying the plant outright and seeing as we've energy requirements listed for weapons, shields, and computers, we should be juggling EPs as damage accrues.

My groups tried it on occasion. Sometimes it was worth the book keeping and sometimes it wasn't. Horses for courses as always.

Doing EA straight up HG style is an exercise in futility. You have to be willing to destroy the system to save it.

Phasing for drama is the watchword.
 
Well heck that deflated my bubble.

It wasn't meant to.

But that doesn't make the attempt a failure, if for no other reason then people can tear out what they like and make their own mutant version.

Most people don't mod rules as often or extensively as you and I. They just rather play what's handed them and get to the fun.

And I am DAMN good at the rules modding thing.

Never said you weren't. Modding is a niche however. Most people play RAW more or less and the greater the mod the less likely they'll use it.

Again, it will be lights out for you and yours and "meh" for most. The fact that many will receive it with a "meh" says nothing about it's worth to you however.

Maybe a little less been there done that, and a little more put your own stuff out there would be more helpful.

I'm not here to help or wave pom-poms. You know what you want to do and you've needed little if any advice. Most of what you've posted here is you justifying decisions you're already made but you don't need to justify those decisions to us.

Seriously, just build what you want and have fun using it.
 
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