MegaTraveller Minus One

[robject]

Seeing recent threads about the love/hate relationships of CT and/or MT, I've thought about what MT would have been like if a couple of key items were not integrated in.

MegaTraveller Minus One (MTMO)

Striker Curtailed. In MTMO, Striker is streamlined for sensible vehicle design. Moreover, its clever component design system is tuned to build the components we already know and understand from High Guard 2 and Book 2.

High Guard 3. Starships use High Guard 3, which (by the way) uses pre-designed components, built from this version of Striker.

Personal Combat. Combat is still MegaTraveller - despite its difference from CT, it has a lot going for it. However, MTMO has streamlined it, to make the transition easy for CT players. Certain problematic bits of MT combat may be relegated to the back of the combat chapter, under "optional considerations".

Range Band Consolidation. The master range band table is used for all range-based tasks and equipment, including DMs.

 

[mike wightman]

Trying to base starship construction of Striker numbers was the biggest mistake they made.
A more sensible way would be to stick to HG2 numbers and adapt Striker to produce them at that scale.
That way jump fuel and power plant fuel use for starships would have remained the same as in CT/HG
MT is not HG3 - it is a modification of HG2 that makes critical key changes such as reduced agility (forced by the Striker integration decision above) and a move to task resolution that changes the nature of the game and as to the movement rules <shudder>
Personal combat - if only we had got the fast play version they had on the drawing board rather than the confusing system we got.

 

[snrdg082102]

Hello robject and mike wightman,

Striker when, in my opinion, using the standard equipment is just about the same as MT design. However, when you decide to customize equipment Striker becomes more detailed than MT. In my opinion the Striker custom equipment design is the building block for TNE FF&S.

The only "High Guard 3" I am aware was an exercise lead by Donald McKinney on ct-starships on Yahoo groups back in 2008. During the process we used material from MT, Striker, Mayday, and I think the Special Supplement on Missiles. At the end of the process Donald indicated that we had been working on a draft for T5.

Unfortunately, my knowledge base on MT character generation is pretty much nil. Way back when someone created a, I think DOS, application to create characters. I tried to use the application when reading the rules and something came along distracting me from that project.

My opinion is that MT range bands was a nod back to CT LBB 2 combat versus the abstract combat system of CT LBB 5.

Comparing MT vehicle design I see the system to be closer to CT LBB 5 HG1/HG 2 and CT LBB 2 than Striker. In my opinion Striker was specifically designed as a standalone product with rules for integrating back to CT LBB 2 and CT LBB 5 created after Striker was completed.

I have CT, MT, TNE, and T4 with the GDW affiliation. The only one that I have actually adventured in was CT. So far I have been comparing the other three on and off for a long time. Of the three T4 is my least favorite because of the issues with errata. I started a project to go through the design systems, only to discover that TNE FF&S and not T4 FF&S was used in the Quick Ship Design and Standard Starship Designs. The vehicle design system used the author's design system which is different fro either TNE FF&S and T4 FF&S. It is a toss-up between MT and TNE.

Of course I am probably lost in the woods on this topic.

 

[Vargas]

Trying to base starship construction of Striker numbers was the biggest mistake they made.

Agreed.

 

[aramis]

Hello robject and mike wightman,

Striker when, in my opinion, using the standard equipment is just about the same as MT design. However, when you decide to customize equipment Striker becomes more detailed than MT. In my opinion the Striker custom equipment design is the building block for TNE FF&S.

The only "High Guard 3" I am aware was an exercise lead by Donald McKinney on ct-starships on Yahoo groups back in 2008. During the process we used material from MT, Striker, Mayday, and I think the Special Supplement on Missiles. At the end of the process Donald indicated that we had been working on a draft for T5.

T20 ship design was a revision of Bk5 High Guard.

 

[snrdg082102]

Morning PDT aramis,

T20 ship design was a revision of Bk5 High Guard.

Thank you for letting me know that T20 ship design was a revised CT LBB 5 HG2 rule set. Would T20 ship design then be considered CT LBB 5 HG3?

 

[aramis]

Morning PDT aramis,



Thank you for letting me know that T20 ship design was a revised CT LBB 5 HG2 rule set. Would T20 ship design then be considered CT LBB 5 HG3?

More like HG 2.5 design, and HG 4 for combat ...
the changes

• Computers - goes to a 4 rating version, rather than one rating.
• Airframes - 5% tonnage of a streamlined hull
• allows multiple mounts of same type - you can have turret batteries, bay batteries and a spinal of the same type, EG: a group of identical batteries of meson turrets, plus a number of meson bays, plus a meson spinal mount.
• High tech levels allow reduced jump fuel.
• Specific allowance for double occupancy staterooms for passengers.

Note that MT doesn't use HG design sequences, but does produce UCP values that are scaled the same as those in CT HG2, and further, the combat system is a task-system variation on CT HG2. Essentially, MT ship design "strikerized" HG2...

 

[GypsyComet]

Essentially, MT ship design "strikerized" HG2...

And changed a number of relationships in ship design in the process.

I suspect that "simply" changing the power numbers, both generation and usage, that MT adopted from Striker, would allow the MT design sequence to produce HG approachable designs. Restore the original fuel ratios and everything else drops into place, becoming "more detail" instead of "blatantly incompatible".

The default design choices should produce tonnage breakdowns that fall very close to HG2, while the available options should allow a ship to wildly depart from HG2.