Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
a vector movement system is a required feature
Agreed. For me, this is the hallmark of a hard sci-fi environment. If I wanted swooping and turning, I'd be playing Star Warriors or Full Thrust with cinematic movement or Red Chicken Rising or some other 'cinematic' system of movement that bore little relationship to Newton...
sensors should play some part in the combat
How you do this part will be *the* defining aspect of your game. This can either make the game a sub hunt or a 'know where everything is' game.
fighters should have a role to play
I take Leviathan's approach
Fighters (when attacking a monster like a Tigress) should have to arrive in large squadrons (in Leviathan, it is squadrons of I believe a thousand).
Engaging smaller ships like a Beowulf or Marava, they should be a threat singularly.
the full range of HG weapon types should be detailed
Hmmm. I guess that depends. In a perfect world, yes. But no PC ship I ever run in an RPG-driven space combat will ever feature the word 'Meson' in it. Likely weapons for small ships are lasers, sandcasters, missiles, and maybe particle or plasma/fusion barbettes if you go a bit larger. Maybe a few of the smaller bays.
I did like what Brilliant Lances did with MFDs, but unfortunately it doesn't map to other non-TNE ship creation systems very well.
a detailed hit location and damage effects system
Yes, and having some sort of rules for raking fire (when you apply repeated hits along the side of a long thin ship) or blow-through fire (such as when you cross the T of a long cylindrical ship and fire down the length) would be nice. The advantages in going broadside with someone would be probability of damage to more areas of the ship, but any individual hit might well result in blow through and wasted energy. On the other hand, taking one 'down the gullet' might well expend the full energy of the shot into area after area of the ship. And having the ship's geometry control the damage would be wonderful. BL did this reasonably well...
the system should be scalable
I think you've just entered Holy Grail territory here. Yes, it'd be lovely. Do I believe it can be done? Having been on design/playtests lists for several games now... no. I don't believe it can be done *well*. It can be done, but at a cost.
I think you'd be better off picking what kind of system you are looking at (RPG extension or large scale combat simulator) and building the best version you can.
Trying to make a scalable system.... is interesting... but how useful in play?
Do I really need to know how much damage a 100 ton laser bay can do to my character?
I have this same issue with people carping about a scaleable combat system for T5 or T20. The truth is, once you start having to do that, you start having to define the types of impact single characters can have as negigible. If a beam laser from a ship comes anywhere near your character, time to get out 2d6. Similarly, if a 0.5Mdton BB pings a 100 ton Scout-courier with its fire control system, that's probably enough to blow out panels all over the ship! It doesn't even need to take its range finders off 'laser pointer' mode to cripple anything that small....
PC skills should play a role.
Depends what you are building. But I'd say they need to play *the central role* since my players want to think the game is 'about them'.
The answer to what people want depends on if they are the folks that play and GM traveller actively or the people who conduct gedankenexperimenten about who could have done what during whichever historical conflict. As Larsen puts it, the difference between those who 'play Traveller' and those who 'play with Traveller'. Neither is better or worse, but you better know who your audience is because odds are it is pretty near impossible to please both at once.