Ship Design Question:
- Thread starter Nerhesi
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Not relevant. YOU need to show YOUR reasoning for having gravity acting like atmosphere in a vacuum. The onus is on you since it was your origination...
Well, unless you take into account grav-based inertial compensators that are not limited. Is there limits in the rules I'm missing? I concede it's possible.
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Ok. It's more fun, and I see nothing in the rules that contradicts it and on the contrary, Mr. Miller specifically describes pilots being able to dodge and weave in space combat, at least in CT anyway. So, Mr. Miller (at least initially) apparently designed his RAW universe as having pilots and ships being able to make fine and fast course changes. All I'm doing is putting forth a pretend reason why this might be true, just like ya'all are putting forth pretend theories about why this isn't true. Also, saying that I said that gravity acts like atmosphere in a vacuum is a straw man argument. What I said was that gravity manipulation could be imagined to allow a pilot and craft to perform maneuvers like atmosphere allows real-world pilots to in the real world. Notice that this statement does not say that each mechanism has to function identically or even similarly, only that the basic end result is similar. Still, what is friction but an outside force acting on the momentum of a given object? While the precise mechanism would be different, at it's simplest, controlling gravity to allow a craft to maneuver would just be using gravity as the controlled outside force acting on the object. My pretend universe works on "fun physics", where any time a question about how physics works comes up, the question of what's fun takes precedence over what's real. Sometimes, what's fun and what's real are the same. Sometimes not. As we all know, the precise points where these align or not is often different for different folks. What is easy to suspend disbelief about for me and my players may be outrageous for you and yours. Such is life
Still, I'm really enjoying the discussion so far, and I often learn quite a bit from opposing opinions such as ya'all's. Sometimes I even change my mind, although I have not yet seen reason to in regards to this point so far. I was mainly wondering why the fact that Traveller postulates gravity manipulation and how that might be used to allow a pilot to perform fine maneuvers in a small craft had not been brought up.Don't bother - its assertions based on their assumptions.
Assumptions:
That targetting can pick out the target without error at a hundreds or thousands of kilometers.
That the direct fire system has the rate of fire, or beam sustainability to fill all possible dodge vectors.
Turret accuracy and response time.
No baseline Electronic Warfare/baseline stealth that can interefere with these perfect systems (this is above and beyond "active jamming" or stealth armor/hull materials).
And that somehow, with all these perfect systems, gunnery skill still has some value.
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Assumptions make anything, including the irrelevance of gunnery, piloting, and hell - crew , an easy reality.
Hell, we don't even need dice with some assumptions
Assumptions:
That targetting can pick out the target without error at a hundreds or thousands of kilometers.
That the direct fire system has the rate of fire, or beam sustainability to fill all possible dodge vectors.
Turret accuracy and response time.
No baseline Electronic Warfare/baseline stealth that can interefere with these perfect systems (this is above and beyond "active jamming" or stealth armor/hull materials).
And that somehow, with all these perfect systems, gunnery skill still has some value.
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Assumptions make anything, including the irrelevance of gunnery, piloting, and hell - crew , an easy reality.
Hell, we don't even need dice with some assumptions
Don't bother - its assertions based on their assumptions.
Assumptions:
That targetting can pick out the target without error at a hundreds or thousands of kilometers.
That the direct fire system has the rate of fire, or beam sustainability to fill all possible dodge vectors.
Turret accuracy and response time.
No baseline Electronic Warfare/baseline stealth that can interefere with these perfect systems (this is above and beyond "active jamming" or stealth armor/hull materials).
And that somehow, with all these perfect systems, gunnery skill still has some value.
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Assumptions make anything, including the irrelevance of gunnery, piloting, and hell - crew , an easy reality.
Hell, we don't even need dice with some assumptions
It's ok, we're all entitled to our opinions, and if that's how they would like this stuff to work in their games, rock on. I have seen nothing to convince me to change how I run things, however.
To answer at least one of your questions, the T5 book does refer to the Pilot skill being useful "To maneuver against an opponent in a space fighter". I have not yet read T5 thoroughly enough to determine how effective this is, but the rules do include it as a mechanic.
Everyone is most definitely entitled to how they want to run their game! Thanks Sigmund - I can't wait to get my book
There's a long-standing compensation limit of TL-9 G's. T5 may not have explicitly included it, but unless it explicitly excludes it, it's probably still part of Marc's rationale. By the way: 6G is tolerable for only several hours in a suitable couch...
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
The following is from Wiki just because it is quick and easy. Also so you can look it up and I don't have to convince you that I'm an engineer with decades of training in the use of applied physics.
>>>Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and material elements sliding against each other. There are several types of friction:
Dry friction resists relative lateral motion of two solid surfaces in contact. Dry friction is subdivided into static friction ("stiction") between non-moving surfaces, and kinetic friction between moving surfaces.
Fluid friction describes the friction between layers within a viscous fluid that are moving relative to each other.
Lubricated friction is a case of fluid friction where a fluid separates two solid surfaces.
Skin friction is a component of drag, the force resisting the motion of a solid body through a fluid.
Internal friction is the force resisting motion between the elements making up a solid material while it undergoes deformation.<<<
Space, due to occasional random molecules, could (wrongly) be thought of as a fluid (A fluid is a liquid or a gas). It could never be regarded as a viscous fluid though. No friction of any consequence in space, as far as Traveller is concerned.
There is a force whenever there is a change in VECTOR. So, if your ship changes velocity, or direction, there is an inertial force to overcome. It wouldn't be a gravitational "force", but in certain cases gravity might cause it. (Gravitational attraction of a near mass, such as a planet.)
In theory, part of a ships thrust will degrade a forward component of the resulting vector. It won't be much, and at very high speeds, can be pretty much ignored. For what you are suggesting, this comes close, but it isn't the same, and, it will be negligible in CT/HG terms. (Fun physics is FUN so by all means enjoy it!)
There are enough gearheads, grognards and pseudo physicists here (some very good ones I might add) that you aren't going to convince anyone with your argument. Just do your own thing it YTU and have fun.
You can poo poo these assumptions all you like, but if you don't have these, then we don't have much of a space game. Otherwise, maneuver the ships to within 100 km of each other (while traveling at 1000's of km per sec) and trade grape shot. "FIRE!" "Ok, bring us about....intercept in 17 hours, reload for another broadside, put the blades in your teeth and get the grappling hooks!"
If you narrow the ranges, then all of these "assumptions" become much less of an issue and more readily in the reign of what we have even today.
Some systems offer EM masking as a capability of ship design that offers bonuses in combat.
The problem isn't the ships, it's the domain they're fighting in. Space is much more clutter free than a the wet navy problem. Modern aircraft suffer the same problem -- being readily seen and tracked by RADAR, thus relying on stealth characteristics or active measures (jammers, chaff) to confuse the targeting sensors. Aircraft gain the benefits of the ground clutter when they fly NOE, but most don't fight well at those altitudes.
Meanwhile, space offers no ground clutter, no NOE, no bushes to hide behind or ditches to dive in. Best you get is Det laser white noise jamming as presented in games like Brilliant Lances. Other than that, it's hockey players on an ice rink with light machine guns.
All of these assumptions are basically as presented by the rule system, and they're also consistent with physics as we know them in general. They're not made up out of thin air.
And I would argue that gunnery or piloting has no value whatsoever. Feel free to present discussion points on how the carbon based protein computer, with it's coarse manipulators and slow, low resolution sensors can be an effective asset in this environment outside of the fire/no fire decision and strategic decision making of showing up in the first place.
It could be argued that "Well, they must have some value since the rule system justifies them", and sure, there's sense in that. But there don't seem to be any valid use cases to describe exactly how their performance impacts combat. These artifacts stand out as being inconsistent from the rest of the system as described.
If you want to reframe the combat system to hand cranked laser turrets, or gyro stabilized gun mounts, with ranges measured in 10's of meters, and starships taking up multiple hexes like Dragons in the old Melee and Wizard games, that would be interesting also.
But as described, the two dynamics are incongruous, so one of them has to give.
And that is exactly my point
The middle point between what some of us can assume is hyper realism for 5000 years from now (where dice rolls, piloting and gunnery skills, and characters become irrelevant) and the cinematic starwars/star-trek/whatever (where Characters, dice rolls, and skills matter) is nothing more than my (or your) arbitrary decision as to what we prefer.
Thankfully, as is, Traveller does support something more gamey, where our characters actions do matter - which is good because me and my friends are looking to play a game
Just playing devil's advocate here, but ...
We know that gravity slings (as a maneuver) work as a means to alter the direction of a vector without the need to expend thrust canceling out the previous vector and accelerating along the new vector (like standard vector movement would require).
And we know that inertia can be negated (in Traveller) through some means and at some level of effectiveness.
And we know that gravity (and anti-gravity) can be created (in Traveller) through some means and at some level of effectiveness.
Therefore, I posit the possibility that a ship can be made 'virtually inertialess' (possessing the equivalent of a very small mass to the outside frame of reference) and a 'significant' point source of 'virtual mass' (gravity) can be created outside the ship to bend the vector of the virtually inertialess ship not unlike a gravity sling maneuver of a conventional ship around a conventional mass (like a planet). This might allow a spacecraft to maneuver (change vector) more like an aircraft than simple thrust vector Newtonian physics would suggest.
In terms of targeting and gunnery, this would change the probability ellipse into more of a sphere.
Anyway, just a thought.
Arthur
Will do, and for the record, I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. Just kinda playing Devil's Advocate myself. While your friction links may be correct, they are also actually irrelevant to my point (despite the fact that the part of your quotes where it says, "Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces" actually supports my previous point). My point really is, as long as we're pretending (and we are), there's no reason we can't pretend that our pretend gravity control could create a phenomena that allows a pretend space fighter to pretend to maneuver in a manner similar to the way friction (among a plethora of other factors) allows an aircraft to maneuver in the real world. Also, I might not have been posting here for very long, but I've been playing Trav since it was first published, so I'm no noob myself when it comes to thinking about and providing explanations for this stuff. I just know better than to try to explain or rationalize (at least in any serious way) the super-science in a space fantasy game (which is what almost all sci-fi games are). I know by what he wrote that Marc envisioned fighters maneuvering in a manner similar to real world dogfighting, he says so right in the CT rule book. He even uses the word "Dogfight" in the T5 book under the Pilot skill, so I feel confident in saying that he envisions some sort of piloting skill-based maneuvering even in T5. If we're going to talk "real world", the only statement to make is that the author of the rules wrote it into the rulebook and included dice mechanics to support it, so that's why it works, no matter what "real world" physics say (just like magic in a fantasy game). All that said, I do appreciate a good pseudo-physics discussion, as long as we're remembering that this is all just pure fantasy made-up stuff. In reality, there are no laser turrets, space fighters, weaponized starship laser cannons (that I know of anyway), gravity control technology, or super laser fire-control computers. Once again I'm wondering why, since we're talking pure made-up stuff here, and the game already includes make-believe gravity control technology, and the assumption that fighter pilots can indeed dodge laser attacks, nobody other than me has even mentioned the possibility that the gravity control technology on which at least some of the maneuver drives are based, combined with the pilot having a super special fancy computer of his own, could be the reason piloting skill would allow a fighter pilot to "dodge" an incoming beam attack.
Edit: And also for the record, I will certainly acknowledge that when it comes to real world physics and friction etc I will be best served to defer to your obviously superior knowledge (and I don't mean this in a sarcastic way), as I'm just a biologist.
Well, that's the thing.
We've all grown up with the history of dogfights in WWI and WWII, and how they are portrayed. It wasn't really until the show "Dogfights" on the History Channel that helped highlight the dynamics of dog fighting during the Korea and Vietnam era (as an aside, hands down, that show is simply amazing to watch -- it's frankly some of the most exciting television I've ever seen, google and look it up and watch some if you have the time).
Then, of course, we have had our heads in books, and movies, and wondering what it would be like.
And then, we have games like Traveller that make us think about what it would really be like, how it might really be and find, simply, that starship combat would be pretty ugly and sucky and no fun at all. Obviously, real combat should be ugly, and sucky. But starship combat is spectacularly so. It's simply a terrible way to do business.
The dark, cold of space is a terrible battleground to do operations. There's no subtlety to it. No honor in it. Just the awful work to be done until someone calls uncle, and not man's place -- the machines will rule here. There will be no stories of the "300" in deep space. Just wreckage, and a slight delay for the invader.
There may be stories from very small engagements, of mostly equal ships, where luck and crews can prevail. But nothing larger scale. Numbers win, big wins. Pretty basic.
Sorry, but wrong.
A slingshot uses the planet as reaction mass. The planet usually fails to notice the trivial change in its orbital velocity. The craft notices the same energy being applied to its trivial mass as a HUGE acceleration. The mechanism of thrust is gravitational acceleration.
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So the 'Virtual Mass' (created by gravity manipulation) projected from the ship will fail to notice the trivial change in its direction and velocity, while the craft notices the same energy being applied to its 'Inertial Compensated trivial mass' as a HUGE change in the direction of its vector (or a small 1G to 6G gravitational acceleration).
One of the old flavors of Traveller (TNE?) specifically describes ships as having their effective mass reduced so a 'conventional' reaction drive can produce super performance. I am simply applying the same criteria to maneuvering as has been 'handwaved' as the key to Traveller acceleration.
Not really intertialess. That would imply mass-less. Anti grav (also inertial comp) simply implies creation of a grav field. For moving a ship this would be creating a grav field right outside the ship so that the ship free falls into it (this would mean that the people in the ship wouldn't feel the thrust). Inert comp would be grav field created inside the ship 'pulling' in the opposite direction of an externally caused movement vector (hitting a planets atmosphere).
So, in this case, moving the ship would involve changing the position of the created grav field. With a 3G Grav drive the ship would 'fall' with an accel of ~30 m/s/s one direction and then change the grav field and 'fall' in another direction.
When you look at the Travel formulas for normal space movement you see that one accelerates for x amount of time then reverses 'thrust' direction for an equal amount of time. That is because you have inertia and the drives don't make you inertialless. So, the type of movement has been baked into the rules from the earliest by specifying vector movement using Newtonian physical laws.
Yeah, within the CT game mechanics, Newtonian movement is clearly the rule ... but having played several versions of vector movement combat mechanics, FUN is not a word that I would use to describe any of those sessions.
I completely agree with the 'combat sucks' view of vector movement and physics being what is written into the DNA of Traveller (with the caviat that some flavors DO apply Pilot Skill modifiers) ... I simply suggest a reapplication of existing handwaves from other areas of the game to justify a more 'cinematic' [and unofficial] version of starship combat.
Given the beating thermodynamics and conservation of momentum have already taken in the official rules [for completely understandable reasons of fun and playability], Starships banking like aircraft to dodge incoming laser fire really doesn't seem like such a big deal to me. [shrug]
To each his own.
Then you'll have to ditch the current rules of normal space movement. Unless you want to two sets of physical laws running for the same aspect of the game. Now, THAT would be REALLY strange.
You say that like it would be a bad thing?
Heck, just replace the starship movement with Car Wars complete with a funky little turning template.
That was a fun combat game.
