Restrict Ship Sizes?

[casquilho]

Was thinking the other day, and realized I did not know of any for sure.

Does anyone restrict the max size of ships in their Traveller universe?

Artificially keep the ships smaller, if so, what is your max size ships?

Just curious about it.

 

[whartung]

Cephus does that? In their system, I think? They don't restrict the size, they just make the large ships difficult to travel through their waypoints or whatever they are.

 

[kilemall]

LBB5 was restricted by model computer minimum per TL. LBB2 was by tech level per drive that was minimal to move/jump the hull size.

 

[Enoki]

Anything bigger than about 1000-tons shows up only as an NPC ship and usually just for background. Player ships are almost always smaller than the 1000-ton size simply because they can't afford to operate anything bigger.

Now, if you were playing Traveller as a wargame rather than an RPG, yea bigger stuff is going to show up a lot in larger battles and such, but that's a different animal.

 

[Starglim]

Cephus does that? In their system, I think? They don't restrict the size, they just make the large ships difficult to travel through their waypoints or whatever they are.

Clement Sector? Yes, ships above 2000 tons have a chance of failure (dropping out of Zimmspace somewhere along the route, which is almost certainly bad) and ships above 5000 tons can't travel that way.

 

[Carlobrand]

Clement Sector? Yes, ships above 2000 tons have a chance of failure (dropping out of Zimmspace somewhere along the route, which is almost certainly bad) and ships above 5000 tons can't travel that way.

What's a zimmspace?

 

[kilemall]

What's a zimmspace?

It’s like zooming, only zimming. See?

 

[whartung]

Clement Sector?

I always get them confused.

 

[Diveguy]

Anything bigger than about 1000-tons shows up only as an NPC ship and usually just for background. Player ships are almost always smaller than the 1000-ton size simply because they can't afford to operate anything bigger.

Now, if you were playing Traveller as a wargame rather than an RPG, yea bigger stuff is going to show up a lot in larger battles and such, but that's a different animal.

Similar thought process in mine. The justification is that players on the frontier, and infrastructure isn't there to support larger vessels. Plus, I like the aesthetics of a small-ship game better.

 

[casquilho]

Just to be clear, I was not asking for PC ships only. I mean, for example, 100k ton ships just do not exist, PC or NPC. My thinking was, does anyone just not have million ton ships at all.

 

[casquilho]

Similar thought process in mine. The justification is that players on the frontier, and infrastructure isn't there to support larger vessels. Plus, I like the aesthetics of a small-ship game better.

I agree, my PCs, if they have a ship at all, it is not a large ship. 300 ton Far Trader maybe.

 

[chipla]

I’ve run a game in a lower tech (mostly 11-12 max 13) smallish ship universe with the largest megafrieghters maxing at 30kish tonnes and major battleships coming in around 20k.

Obv these are set dressing. Players were working for a pocket empire without major combatants and they them selves were rocking around in a 300ton raider/trader

 

[mike wightman]

I stick with CT for the most part with a couple of fudges.
The most important fudge for hull sizes is that 12,000t ships are possible if you look at the drive potential table a certain way.

TL	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
hull max	800t	1,600t	2,000t	2,400t	3,000t	3,600	12,000t

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Does anyone restrict the max size of ships in their Traveller universe?

I don't see the point, you just get more of them...

Instead of a 100 kDt ship, you get a swarm of smaller ships. One ACS is still insignificant.



To get a "smaller" campaign, you need to restrict the amount of money available in the economy.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I stick with CT for the most part with a couple of fudges.

CT ≠ LBB2 alone.

Note that in LBB2 ships or shipyards don't have TLs.
Used ship components don't have to be local. As long as someone can build LT-15 drives, all shipyards can use them.
Even Kinorb (A663659-5) [Regina 602] can build starships...

 

[kilemall]

CT ≠ LBB2 alone.

Note that in LBB2 ships or shipyards don't have TLs.
Used ship components don't have to be local. As long as someone can build LT-15 drives, all shipyards can use them.
Even Kinorb (A663659-5) [Regina 602] can build starships...

I can accept the letter drive ones but LBB5/TCS is a different critter.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I can accept the letter drive ones but LBB5/TCS is a different critter.

Agreed, LBB5 is a completely different ballgame.

 

[McPerth]

Does anyone restrict the max size of ships in their Traveller universe?

Yes, there are some ATUs where there's a maximum size for ships, be it claiming there's a maximum size to jump, or any other reason.

You can find one of those in this old thread, just to give you an example...

 

[whartung]

There's a difference between a small ship universe and a small ship universe.

For example, the Greek ships were not that large, but they had a lot of them -- ~1200 attacked Troy.

Being on a planet being serviced by 1000 trade ships make for a busy starport. The US peaks at over 5000 aircraft in flight at once, each day. (A "small ship" universe if there ever was one).

It more comes down to how the traffic is justified.

 

[infojunky]

Was thinking the other day, and realized I did not know of any for sure.

Does anyone restrict the max size of ships in their Traveller universe?

Artificially keep the ships smaller, if so, what is your max size ships?

Just curious about it.

Depends, there has been a lot of discussion of Small ship and Large ship universes here over the years.

I trend towards the small ship model myself. Which means there a lot of ship's in my universe. Especially if you use a extensive amount of secondary worlds and stations.