MegaTraveller Players & Referees...
- Thread starter DonM
- Start date
I use mayday movement rules and MT Personal Combat mechanics.
my website includes all the tables for various weapons detailed out and/or extrapolated.
http://aramis.hostman.us/trav/mtswt.html ship's weapon tables
Batteries are just conglomerate units.
Damage to vehicles is allocated per the vehicle damage tables in the Ref's Manual.
1 G-Turn of speed is 1 hex per turn; use 60 sec turns to match the large scale combat and 36km hexes.
Note that at this speed...
Distant: same hex, Att 5 is halved pen.
VDist: 1 hex, Att 6 is halved pen,
Regional: 2-13 hexes,
Continental: 14-138 hexes
Planetary: 139-1388 hexes
But also note: fire control can't hit at FO... so It's a non-issue... kinda...
Oh, and Sandcasters vs lasers: add damage to AV, and fire at distant.
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Hmmm, tough call
The one in the book feels like it should be great... it has all sorts of cool systems and stats.
But it has (ah, MT, how I love thee!) errata galore. And even without it, you still have the classic 'he brought a single laser turret and a weak hull to an SDB fight' problem. Uneven forces really are and death will usually ensue for the weaker, slower, etc. Skill can only go so far in this respect and in MT, I found it not so far.
I like Mayday, but it handles only CT ships and bringing MT ships over is tougher than you'd like to think.
I like HG, but its not an RP fight system. Similary, neither is Power Projection:Fleet or PP:Escort. Those do larger fleet fights well, but just aren't great (IMO) for small ship fights. HG particularly with the 'close range, open range' tends to not bear much similarity to realspace fights in every space sim I've played, which end up being jousts. Or slow broadsides. But not both.
Then we have Brilliant Lances. Brilliant game, excellent detail, PC ships that can actually do something (because the whole setting is about small ships generally). OTOH, does not translate other ships into that system well (I tried and tried to make MT ships work, but it hurt me more and more... I gave up).
So what does that leave? Not too much.
The system you need is probably a narrative one, but there MT helps you. Look at the numbers for the ships, let that guide you in what sorts of things can happen, and then let rolls and PC skills play it out (in a narrative way, without obsessing with details). How will your PCs know? If you can't figure out the ship combat tables, they sure aren't likely to.
MT gives you a great skill system to handle initiative and to handle task resolution from firing, to dodging, to damage control. So do it in a narrative style, moreso than a literalist tactical boardame style.
The type of ship combat I'd really like to see is one from the old Star Trek RPG adapted to Traveller. In that game, various PCs took different bridge positions. The idea was every player should have something to do in the fight and decisions to make and things to track. And it worked well for that aspect and it was so-so as a fighting game (balance wasn't 100%, but it worked well enough).
We need THAT sort of a multi-player-involved tactical narrative system for running fights, moreso than we need another gearhead mess of errata that only really lets one or two players do anything in a fighting turn and requires lots of table lookups.
So I'd go with the narrativist approach. The game is what its all about. If you use colourful damage descriptions, makeup task for patching hull holes, getting airtight seals shut, stopping atmo leaks, working on damage repair as anyone with a tech skill, trying to rescue trapped people with the battle dress (greatest damage control tool ever is the powered armoured exoskeleton), and so on. Let the pilot dodge and be evasive. Let the navigator try to cut the corner to slingshot the planet. Let the gunner try to shoot out the larger ship's sensor cluster or master fire director.
The players won't care if the game is a fun one; The details of a table heavy, errata laden morass aren't what they come to play for (in most cases).
If you have to pick a system, and you have standard CT ships in the MT world, go with Mayday. Otherwise, stick to a narrativist solution that keeps most players involved doing something during the fight other than just sitting waiting for the ship to blow up.
I have some pretty good coverage here of non-combat operations, but you'll notice the section at the end trails off... where combat is, because I never did have time to work out a great MT combat system. But maybe some of the non-combat stuff will help enhance your game...
http://traveller.kaladorn.emwd.com/ad_astra_per_aspera/knowledge_base/rules/starship_ops.html
The one in the book feels like it should be great... it has all sorts of cool systems and stats.
But it has (ah, MT, how I love thee!) errata galore. And even without it, you still have the classic 'he brought a single laser turret and a weak hull to an SDB fight' problem. Uneven forces really are and death will usually ensue for the weaker, slower, etc. Skill can only go so far in this respect and in MT, I found it not so far.
I like Mayday, but it handles only CT ships and bringing MT ships over is tougher than you'd like to think.
I like HG, but its not an RP fight system. Similary, neither is Power Projection:Fleet or PP:Escort. Those do larger fleet fights well, but just aren't great (IMO) for small ship fights. HG particularly with the 'close range, open range' tends to not bear much similarity to realspace fights in every space sim I've played, which end up being jousts. Or slow broadsides. But not both.
Then we have Brilliant Lances. Brilliant game, excellent detail, PC ships that can actually do something (because the whole setting is about small ships generally). OTOH, does not translate other ships into that system well (I tried and tried to make MT ships work, but it hurt me more and more... I gave up).
So what does that leave? Not too much.
The system you need is probably a narrative one, but there MT helps you. Look at the numbers for the ships, let that guide you in what sorts of things can happen, and then let rolls and PC skills play it out (in a narrative way, without obsessing with details). How will your PCs know? If you can't figure out the ship combat tables, they sure aren't likely to.
MT gives you a great skill system to handle initiative and to handle task resolution from firing, to dodging, to damage control. So do it in a narrative style, moreso than a literalist tactical boardame style.
The type of ship combat I'd really like to see is one from the old Star Trek RPG adapted to Traveller. In that game, various PCs took different bridge positions. The idea was every player should have something to do in the fight and decisions to make and things to track. And it worked well for that aspect and it was so-so as a fighting game (balance wasn't 100%, but it worked well enough).
We need THAT sort of a multi-player-involved tactical narrative system for running fights, moreso than we need another gearhead mess of errata that only really lets one or two players do anything in a fighting turn and requires lots of table lookups.
So I'd go with the narrativist approach. The game is what its all about. If you use colourful damage descriptions, makeup task for patching hull holes, getting airtight seals shut, stopping atmo leaks, working on damage repair as anyone with a tech skill, trying to rescue trapped people with the battle dress (greatest damage control tool ever is the powered armoured exoskeleton), and so on. Let the pilot dodge and be evasive. Let the navigator try to cut the corner to slingshot the planet. Let the gunner try to shoot out the larger ship's sensor cluster or master fire director.
The players won't care if the game is a fun one; The details of a table heavy, errata laden morass aren't what they come to play for (in most cases).
If you have to pick a system, and you have standard CT ships in the MT world, go with Mayday. Otherwise, stick to a narrativist solution that keeps most players involved doing something during the fight other than just sitting waiting for the ship to blow up.
I have some pretty good coverage here of non-combat operations, but you'll notice the section at the end trails off... where combat is, because I never did have time to work out a great MT combat system. But maybe some of the non-combat stuff will help enhance your game...
http://traveller.kaladorn.emwd.com/ad_astra_per_aspera/knowledge_base/rules/starship_ops.html
Aramis, you might want to consider the table on page 23 of the referee's manual titled Atmosphere Penetration Modifiers. This would indicate that in a vacuum, the listed attenuation of a 5 for a ships laser, TL 8 or 13, would become 8, giving a range before penetration is halved of continental 500 - 5000 km.
Personally, as I've told several times in different threads, I think starship combat (along with the trade system) is one of the worst aspects of MT, at least as role playing is concerned.
Is not well specified how skills are used, nor how damage is applied to exact ship's systems, and is more hardware oriented than people oriented (and this may be realist, but quite unrewarding, IMHO, for RPG).
Small ships (as the ones the party is likely to have) are likely to just pound themselves and reduce their weapons/fuel/maneuver until only one of them has weaponry left and keeps firing at the other until leaving it without fuel, as most damage will be surface explosions by small weapons, nukes are forbidden by imperium, and anyway prohibitively expensive, and PA turrets' radiation damage will only speed weapon and fuel damage a little, or reduce a little the computer, but any ship so disabled will be easily (though at great monetary expense for any playing party) reaparaible. A space version of the Monitor vs Merrimac, IMHO.
Only the criticals due to battery vs size table may avoid that if your ship's weapons are grouped in few 'large' batteries (factor 4-5, rarely will you have weaponry for more).
As I have no hard solution to this problem, when playing as a referee, I used to play it more in CT:B2/Mayday style, centering in the narrative part and player involvement, on the line Kaladorn suggested. just rolling to see if they hit and penetrated defenses, and rolling damage on the CT:B2 tables, adapting it to what I thought it meant (B2 system allowed you to get your ship hooled infinite times without true effect to the ship).
Is not well specified how skills are used, nor how damage is applied to exact ship's systems, and is more hardware oriented than people oriented (and this may be realist, but quite unrewarding, IMHO, for RPG).
Small ships (as the ones the party is likely to have) are likely to just pound themselves and reduce their weapons/fuel/maneuver until only one of them has weaponry left and keeps firing at the other until leaving it without fuel, as most damage will be surface explosions by small weapons, nukes are forbidden by imperium, and anyway prohibitively expensive, and PA turrets' radiation damage will only speed weapon and fuel damage a little, or reduce a little the computer, but any ship so disabled will be easily (though at great monetary expense for any playing party) reaparaible. A space version of the Monitor vs Merrimac, IMHO.
Only the criticals due to battery vs size table may avoid that if your ship's weapons are grouped in few 'large' batteries (factor 4-5, rarely will you have weaponry for more).
As I have no hard solution to this problem, when playing as a referee, I used to play it more in CT:B2/Mayday style, centering in the narrative part and player involvement, on the line Kaladorn suggested. just rolling to see if they hit and penetrated defenses, and rolling damage on the CT:B2 tables, adapting it to what I thought it meant (B2 system allowed you to get your ship hooled infinite times without true effect to the ship).
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Problem is that any solution involving porting to another edition is either HG based (which leaves PC scale craft subject to inability to kill each other), or incompatible assumptions about armor.
I mean, CT Bk2 damage tracks are EASY to figure.
PP: divide tonnage by 4 to get hits.
MD: Divide tonnage by 2.
JD: divide tonnage by 5.
Weapons: each turret or barbette is 1 hit
Hull: divide tonnage by 20
I mean, CT Bk2 damage tracks are EASY to figure.
PP: divide tonnage by 4 to get hits.
MD: Divide tonnage by 2.
JD: divide tonnage by 5.
Weapons: each turret or barbette is 1 hit
Hull: divide tonnage by 20
The tactical starship game for MT was never completed. There was an off-hand comment in one of the Travellers' Digest. There are artifacts for it in the ship characteristics.
I also tend to use the "narrative system" I work the task system hard, and it gives all of the players something to do.
I also tend to use the "narrative system" I work the task system hard, and it gives all of the players something to do.
One of the clearest summaries of the issue surrounding roleplaying vs. wargaming through space combats - thank you!
In addition to the excellent suggestions on how to bring more RP in, there used to be a "Roleplaying space combat" system available on the 'net. I used to have a link to it in my Jump Points pages, but they are badly out-of-date so I wouldn't bet on it. If the link is broken, remember Google Is Your Friend.^TM
;-)
