Retro Rockets?

[jawillroy]

Looking at the early CT oeuvre, I'd come to the conclusion that right from the beginning MWM had artificial magic-gravity as standard in starships; although LBB2 doesn't make any reference to it at all, all of the deck plans produced explicitly seem to have it.

But I'm curious about your thoughts on a few points:

1) What changes would you make, in terms of game play and setting, if CT maneuver drives are understood to be fusion torches?
2) Let's suppose that at TL 9 or thereabouts contragrav is still new enough tech that while having such units in vehicles is feasible, paving starship decks with it might be too expensive until a higher tech: how would you envision the lack of CG on ships (say) TL12 or less affecting a TU?

As for one, Certainly, ground starports would be way WAY out from any inhabited areas and landing near a settlement would be an act of war; I see starports at the edges of deserts or on the shores of oceans, with the actual landing-take of zones way the heck out there away from the facility. Ship's boats would, I guess, be chemical burner rockets and I'd be inclined to limit burn time on them: those can land a little more safely.

Commercial ships would, for the safety and comfort of passengers, accelerate and decelerate at constant 1G in order to maintain comfortable interior gravity. Military vessels would be able to do better, but wouldn't unless in actual combat situations: those 6 gees would get pretty brutal. Any ships meant to stay on position for long periods would be built with rotational gravity in mind.

What else, do you think?

Again, I know it's not OTU, and it might not even end up MTU - but I'm curious to hash this out.

 

[Gadrin]

Isn't that a common enough topic in Larry Niven's Known Space books ? I seem to remember something about using the fusion drive as a weapon, in maybe the "Soft Weapon" story, and possibly others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known_Space

• Singleship — a small spacecraft occupied and flown by only one person. It is a term short for single occupant spaceship. The singleships are commonly used by Belters for mining and transportation. During the Man-Kzin Wars they were also used as warships, since the fusion jet (so the colloquial name a Torchship) which propels the vessel could be used like a miles-long flamethrower.

 

[jawillroy]

I haven't read the Known Space books yet - though I clearly ought to. In terms of Traveller-style combat, though - when significant distances are measured in light-seconds, a miles-long fusion flamethrower doesn't mean too much, does it?

 

[Ishmael]

I definitely remember that in the LBB's , that ship's exhaust could be used as a weapon. You just had to get really close ( .25 inch? )
Even as a kid, I don't think I'd have made that up in the middle of a hotly contested battle with my best friend. ( iirc, I danced when I made a perfect series of vector changes to be able to use it. )

but to go one step further, you'd have to keep track of reaction mass
and that means limited burns and that makes the travel time calcs a lil bit trickier

 

[Gadrin]

I haven't read the Known Space books yet - though I clearly ought to. In terms of Traveller-style combat, though - when significant distances are measured in light-seconds, a miles-long fusion flamethrower doesn't mean too much, does it?

Unless you're attacking a planetary target.



>

 

[aramis]

I definitely remember that in the LBB's , that ship's exhaust could be used as a weapon. You just had to get really close ( .25 inch? )

It may have been in 1st ed CT, but it was not in the version of CT I had.

 

[BlackBat242]

I haven't read the Known Space books yet - though I clearly ought to. In terms of Traveller-style combat, though - when significant distances are measured in light-seconds, a miles-long fusion flamethrower doesn't mean too much, does it?

Unless you're attacking a planetary target.

Or trying to prevent that Corsair from docking.

You think WET Vargr smell bad... :smirk:

 

[Icosahedron]

The exhaust weapon idea was in the 1st edition of High Guard and was dropped along with a number of other ideas when the 2nd edition was published.

 

[jawillroy]

I do remember something about that; it's interesting to me in that it suggests that as originally envisioned, Traveller space/starship maneuver drives were fusion torches.

In LBB1, first edition, didn't small craft have some sort of fuel limitations for their drives? Anyone have the book, or remember? I know Mayday has fuel limits for small craft, and that might correspond.

It makes the shuttle/ship's boat a lot more important if it's the only acceptable way of getting planetside, no?

 

[Mithras]

How will it effect the game? Well, look at 2300AD ... most ships are spacebound , using shuttles and space planes to reach the surface. Someships have spin areas for artifical G, some dont. Think of the Lewis & Clark from EVENT HORIZON.

As long as the crews can get some Gs somewhere. Either in a spinning portion of the ship for regular gym sessions, or more commonly I suspect, tread 1G on the habitats in orbit around worlds. Every High Port is a rotating wheel (if small - 2001 style), or a tera-ton cylinder rotating habitat, like the one in Neuromancer. What was that called...how could I forget - it is my all-time favourite novel. I need to re-read it!!!

 

[jawillroy]

Straylight?

I figure pretty close to what you say.

I like the feel of it, I think, for storytelling and setting building: It would certainly make some aspects of play more problematic, especially for your basic mercantile sort of game. Sure, if you're just going from high-port to high-port it's all very easy. But if you're trying to get those special, speculative cargos - it's a lot trickier trying to lay hands on them if you need to rely on local shuttles to bring the goods up to orbit. It's hard to maintain good trade relations with a merchant whose city you've just turned to slag...

 

[swb]

I've been kicking around the idea of no artificial gravity, and drives that are reactionless but not inertialess - so I get the effect of rockets without the minor side effect of making every spaceship a city-killing weapon. Of course, I'd break a half-dozen other laws of physics doing this, but they'll be somewhat less obvious to my players so suspension of disbelief should be a bit easier.

And nowadays I really like the idea of dedicated transfer vehicles (or space elevators on sufficiently advanced planets). I think it draws a nice line between planetary culture and traveller culture if you've got a significant population that spends most of their time off-planet.

1) What changes would you make, in terms of game play and setting, if CT maneuver drives are understood to be fusion torches?

I guess an easy one for starship combat is that active sensors are often unnecessary - ships under acceleration are detectable from anywhere in the system (and probably from the next system over, once the signal propagates).

2) Let's suppose that at TL 9 or thereabouts contragrav is still new enough tech that while having such units in vehicles is feasible, paving starship decks with it might be too expensive until a higher tech: how would you envision the lack of CG on ships (say) TL12 or less affecting a TU?

You could probably bring back the idea that small craft are faster than large craft - it'll be easier to design a fighter that can operate under extended 6-g than a battleship. If you want to deviate further, drones would probably be more common, since they're not restricted by the physiological limitations of humans.

 

[tim_manley]

I'm curious about your thoughts on a few points:

1) What changes would you make, in terms of game play and setting, if CT maneuver drives are understood to be fusion torches?
2) Let's suppose that at TL 9 or thereabouts contragrav is still new enough tech that while having such units in vehicles is feasible, paving starship decks with it might be too expensive until a higher tech: how would you envision the lack of CG on ships (say) TL12 or less affecting a TU?

Even though I haven't played in a couple of years I've run two very long running campaigns; all of which took place in one system. And, no anti-grav.

Not having AG meant that none of the standard book designs would work. Also the speeds of some of the ships was too fast with no fuel loss. So rockets replaced maneuver drives. GHours was the end all be all of how the ship travelled. Ships had to be designed with gravity in mind.

I created rules for how much G force someone could withstand over time. Then, we set about designing ships. Had to tweak the design rules a bit to make it work. My players and me all created our own designs based on the same rules.

One thing that came up was that small craft all of a sudden were the biggest winners. But, they wouldn't work for long space flights. So a bit of a redesign was done on them as well, mostly conceptual than anything. Basically "rocket pods" that rotated on pylons to alter thrust direction. That way the same deck plans were kept.

I was "buildings in space" with smaller craft for utility work. Which made sense as the GM I was creating the military ships and mega-corp ships.

One of my players did all saucer designed. Flat I space, streamlined in the air.

Another player did the rockets on pylon designs. He liked the naval ship type feel so he kept the flat line long deck plans and just put the engines on pylons about mid-ships. He also did the "star trek" feel, using the warp nacelles as the rockets, that rotated as well.

A third guy did combo ships. The main hull was more building like, the control cabin was set perpendicular to axis of thrust. So you climbed up into the bridge to fly the boat.

Of course, I have none of these old designs.... they were all done on paper in the 90s. And the ship design rules for that 1st game were so house-ruled up.

 

[su_liam]

You think WET Vargr smell bad... :smirk:

In space, no one can smell you burn...

 

[ThunderChilde]

To a certain extent this was addressed by C.J. Cherryh in Downbelow Station. The Chanur novels and others are also based on the underlying tech of the Merchanter and Union Universe. The ships run much much bigger than Traveller, yet can be crewed by very small crews, One person in one example, could be as few as 3-5. Warships still ran massive crews and carried 1-2,000 marines 'tween decks, with power armour.

Spin-G hab modules and cargo sections in a framework, with drives and fuel tankage at the rear. You have spin decks, and thrust decks, with a few compatment on cradles so that they can swing from one to the other, the bridge for example. Think L shaped walking surfaces for spin and thrust surfaces. M-drives are hellastrong, use of inertial sinks or compensators was key. Could achieve very high fractional -C velocities. Loss or damage to these was usually fatal. Use of Jump drives that need a G-field to enter and exit, I.E. a solar or planetary mass for space curvature effects.

I still use the station descriptions for how stations are off the prime routes of the Mains. Generally cold, spun for G, mercenary on costs, Atmo pressure might be a little low, icing could be a problem on deckheads where a ship docks into the ring. Standard shipping containers are the rule, usually called cans. Because all ships dock on the ring, there are occasions when slickers try to subvert cans right on the dock, piracy in plain sight in other words.

Deep space trading was not real common, but not unheard of either.