Striker vs High Guard designs

[Murph]

Striker came out, and we all bought it. Then we discovered a flaw in the ointment...weight. A typical Striker TL 13/14/15 APC weighs 400+ tons, the same or more than a Type R Fat Trader. And with less effective weapons, and not as much armor (since ships armor 0=40 Striker armor factor).

Now with High Guard, you design a 20 ton ships boat like vehicle w/ a 1g drive, a ships laser, automatically gets 40 armor, and can carry more troops.

Why the disconnect? We ended up going back to High Guard to build Imperial and other class vessels.

Plus looking at the economies of it, with the Striker system, there is no way any government can afford to invade another system at all with anything other than light grav sleds, leg infantry, and hovercraft. The sheer magnitude of the lift requirements was unbelievable for a mechanized regiment, much less divisions and corps of troops. No way that even the 3rd Imperium could devote that much space/lift capacity/hull tonnage to moving troops.

So how is this reconciled with the notion of the 5th Frontier war's masssive troop movements?

 

[Anthony]

High guard tons are a measure of volume, striker tons are a measure of mass. That 400 ton APC was something like 10 tons volume.

 

[BMonnery]

Originally posted by Anthony:
High guard tons are a measure of volume, striker tons are a measure of mass. That 400 ton APC was something like 10 tons volume.

Aye, to convert displacement tons into metric tons, multiply by roughly 10.

Modern vehicles in displacement tons are roughly:

APC: 3-4 tons
MBT: 6-8 tons
747 Jumbo: 200 tons
Frigate: 400 tons
Supercarrier: 10,000 tons
Fighter Aircraft: 6-10 tons

I found that 2300AD uses displacement for vehicles, but this theory caused a lot of consternation (that a heavily armoured APC didn't really weigh the same as a modern sportscar)

Bryn

 

[Psion]

Like someone else said: stiker tons are real tons. High Guard tons are a unit of volume equal to that consumed by a ton of liquid hydrogen. Something like 13.5 cubic meters IIRC.

At any rate, take a look at megatraveller ship designs sometimes. The megatraveller ship system is sort of an odd hybrid of striker and high guard. MTdesigns have units of both volume and weight. Let me see if I can dig a sample up.

From http://www.republicofnewhome.org/lair/games/traveller/designs/megatrav1.html#TOC1 :

Type S Scout/Courier TL 11

Ye old standard Scout ship.
(snip)

CraftID: Scout/Courier, Type S, TL 11, MCr 33.245

Hull: 90/225, Disp=100, Config=1SL, Armor=40E,
Unloaded=1224 + vehicle, Loaded=1475 + vehicle

(remainder snipped)

See that "Disp=100"? That's 100 displacement tons.
Then see that "unloaded" and "loaded"? That's metric tons of mass. Whoever said "x10" wasn't too far off. But really, in MT it varies wildly based on what is in the space. Ships with big fuel tanks will be lighter in comparison to ships with smaller fuel tanks of the same size. An xboat is probably much lighter than a type S scout/courier.

 

[Uncle Bob]

High Guard tons are mass tons. Displacement doesn't come in to it until you start to make deck plans, which wasn't done very often.

 

[hunter]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
High Guard tons are mass tons. Displacement doesn't come in to it until you start to make deck plans, which wasn't done very often.

Incorrect. High Guard tons are displacement NOT mass.

Hunter

 

[Uncle Bob]

Originally posted by hunter:

Incorrect. High Guard tons are displacement NOT mass.

Hunter[/QB][/QUOTE]

Where did it say this in High Guard or anywhere in CT? It does give the 14m3 guideline for making floorplans, but maneuver drive rules make no sense as displacement.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Originally posted by hunter:
Incorrect. High Guard tons are displacement NOT mass.

Hunter

Where did it say this in High Guard or anywhere in CT? It does give the 14m3 guideline for making floorplans, but maneuver drive rules make no sense as displacement.

 

[hunter]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by hunter:
Incorrect. High Guard tons are displacement NOT mass.

Hunter

Where did it say this in High Guard or anywhere in CT? It does give the 14m3 guideline for making floorplans, but maneuver drive rules make no sense as displacement.</font>[/QUOTE]Book 2 pg 13
Under Required Starship Components - The Hull
"Hulls are identified by their mass displacement, expressed in tons. As a rough guide, one ton equals 14 cubic meters (the volume of one ton of liquid hydrogen)."

High Guard pg 21
Under Basic Starship Components - The Hull
"Hulls are identified by their mass displacement (expressed in tons; one ton equals 14 cubic meters)."

Hunter

 

[Uncle Bob]

Uh, the hull is not the whole ship. It has to be big enough to carry the lightest component, in this case LH2. Assuming the total tonnage is other than mass makes a joke of the engineering and maneuver rules. This I would prefer not to do.

 

[DrSkull]

Like it or not, joke or not, CT and High Guard ships are designed completely on a Volume basis.

 

[Psion]

Yup... high guard never even mentions mass, it just sort of assumes that the difference comes out in the wash.

The MT design system takes mass into acount somewhat -- in agility -- but not in drive G ratings. It sort of assumes that while in transit, you don't need all those laser turrets and whatnot powered up and thus you will have enough power to power the drive.

 

[aramis]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by hunter:

Incorrect. High Guard tons are displacement NOT mass.

Hunter</font>[/QUOTE]Where did it say this in High Guard or anywhere in CT? It does give the 14m3 guideline for making floorplans, but maneuver drive rules make no sense as displacement.[/QB][/QUOTE]
Bk 2, in the section on deckplans.
TTB, same reference.
Striker, Bk3

 

[Uncle Bob]

And here I was thinking Traveller was "hard" SF. All the effort I put in to vector movement made me think that F=mA was a valid game concept too. It seems it was all smoke and mirrors and really F=(volume)*Accelleration.

Well, if you don't mind I'll keep pretending that tons are tons and displacement is an artefact of floor plans. I won't bother you anymore, but at least that way I can enjoy the game.

 

[DaveShayne]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
And here I was thinking Traveller was "hard" SF. All the effort I put in to vector movement made me think that F=mA was a valid game concept too. It seems it was all smoke and mirrors and really F=(volume)*Accelleration.

Well, if you don't mind I'll keep pretending that tons are tons and displacement is an artefact of floor plans. I won't bother you anymore, but at least that way I can enjoy the game.

A reasonable IYTU decision. Of course going by weight instead of volume begs questions as well. For instance why does a stateroom (mostly empty air) mass 4000 kg?

 

[Tom Schoene]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
And here I was thinking Traveller was "hard" SF. All the effort I put in to vector movement made me think that F=mA was a valid game concept too. It seems it was all smoke and mirrors and really F=(volume)*Accelleration.

Well, if you don't mind I'll keep pretending that tons are tons and displacement is an artefact of floor plans. I won't bother you anymore, but at least that way I can enjoy the game.

Hey, there's no gamer police that will knock down your door if you don't play the game the "right" way.

High Guard made what the designers thought was a playable assumption about the relationship between mass and volume. It turns out to be a poor assumption in many cases.

The non-linear scaling of M-drives makes it pretty clear that there isn't a direct relationship here anyway. If a 17-ton drive can accelerate a 100-ton ship at 6g, it should also take a 17-ton drive to acccelerate a 600-ton ship at 1g. But High Guard says it takes only a 12-ton drive.

FWIW, at least one theoretically possible reactionless drive (the Alcubierre warp-drive) actually does depend on the volume of the accellerated object, not its mass.

 

[Murph]

I agree with Uncle Bob. High Guard was elegant, and Striker was a kludge IMHO. Mass is Mass.

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
Uh, the hull is not the whole ship. It has to be big enough to carry the lightest component, in this case LH2. Assuming the total tonnage is other than mass makes a joke of the engineering and maneuver rules. This I would prefer not to do.

 

[StrikerFan]

Originally posted by Murph:
I agree with Uncle Bob. High Guard was elegant, and Striker was a kludge IMHO. Mass is Mass.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
Uh, the hull is not the whole ship. It has to be big enough to carry the lightest component, in this case LH2. Assuming the total tonnage is other than mass makes a joke of the engineering and maneuver rules. This I would prefer not to do.

</font>[/QUOTE]Except that Striker accounted for the mass, which High Guard did not. Armor mass, in particular, was not accounted for in High Guard but it was in Striker.

StrikerFan