Traveller Without Grav

[Madarin Dude]

Just a thought. I like grav tech but in soem ways it is sort of a handwave to me too. I also like the idea of having to design things differently. Your scoutship will have 1 each ford station wagon instead of an air raft. Think of ho wit woudl change things without having reactionless drives to land ships too.
What would the modern merc companies carry. Jump jets fusion powered tanks. Everything woudl need a relook and a rethink but it would make for a very different traveller universe.

 

[kafka47]

Traveller without Grav, would not be all that different from 2300AD. In fact, Traveller establishes that the Solomani were latecomers to Grav technology so one might to see all sorts of aircraft in the Solomani Sphere that one would not encounter elsewhere.

In terms of the Interstellar Wars milieu, I wonder how did the Terrans fight in vastly different atmospheres without too much in the way of Air Support, surely, this would have been a decisive advantage that the Vilani possessed unless Grav tech was also limited on the Vilani side?

 

[Golan2072]

Aliens had shipboard gravity but no grav vehicles (in fact, the Dropship even had Scramjet engines for atmospheric manmouvering IIRC); Babylon 5 had gravitic technology but it was pretty high tech which the Earth Alliance did not posses (they had to use rotation gravity on ships and stations).

The real difference will be that most large ships will have rotating sections and that ground vehicles will look somewhat like these in Aliens; a free trader/Type-S will have no shipboard gravity except for what the manouver (fusion?) drive will provide by constant (or is it?) acceleration.

 

[TKalbfus]

The reason they had ship board gravity was to save on zero-g special effects. Ships under acceleration don't need artificial gravity At TL 9 all maneuver drives are capable if is 1-g acceleration. Ships that are capable of greater than 1-g acceleration would have reason to want artificial gravity, mostly to counteract the effects of continous 2-g+ acceleration. That's the only reason you'd need gravity control.

 

[kafka47]

Don't be so rash there, Young Tom. Don't equate Grav plates with Artifical Gravity. (Agreed the movie producers wanted to save money...)

However, the vehicles in Aliens & 2001/2010 show that Grav can be simulated by rotation much as it did in 2300AD. Plus, there is selective magnetic coupling devices that can be fitted on shoes.

I agree with your point about acceleration, however, aren't those the responsibility of Inertial Compensators, and I am not sure if there is some real life physics here or another Traveller handwave?

Geez, for a supposely Hard SF game Traveller does have alot of handwaves...

 

[daryen]

Originally posted by kafka47:
Geez, for a supposely Hard SF game Traveller does have alot of handwaves...

Well, it was rather hard for what the game designers knew in 1977. It is only the intervening 28 years that made the tech go from "hard" to "soft" to "retro-squishy".

Of course, trying to "re-harden" it only creates *more* problems.

 

[mike wightman]

I've posted this list before, but it is fun to do so now

The magic tech of Traveller is:
jump drive
grav plates
null grav modules/contragrav
reactionless thrusters
acceleration compensators
nuclear dampers
meson screens
black globes
psionics

CT is not a hard sci fi game, if you agree to the definition that hard sci-fi can only break one law of physics

Traveller 2300 is much closer to hard sci-fi IMHO

 

[flykiller]

Well, it was rather hard for what the game designers knew in 1977. It is only the intervening 28 years that made the tech go from "hard" to "soft" to "retro-squishy".

not at all. you have to remember when dungeons and dragons and munchkins ruled the day. "my +97 sword of world-wide domination." traveller was never hard-science, but it certainly seemed like it at the time.

 

[kafka47]

For me the Hardness of Traveller emanates from the fact that it attempts a scientific explanation. Whether or not our current understanding of Science is sufficient to make head or tail of what is being proposed is a different matter.

So, yes, this does allow a lot of handwaves to creep in but if it is done thoughtfully then heck I would allow a few laws of physics to be broken in the name of good fun & a shared understanding of a fantastic (as opposed to scientific) understanding of reality.

And, yes, 2300AD is a much Harder milieu, if played right. For that reason, much of MTUniverses have tended more to resemble that milieus rather than an AD&D with spaceships.

Swords and all that date from the fact the different tech levels exist across the Imperium and the Long Night induced a type of preservationist stance which continued well into any sort of New Era.

 

[Madarin Dude]

Gettign around onboard ship would not be so hard a few things that can be done. Magnetic shoes like 2001 or spin grav. I think that they woudl nto go for 1 G but for more on line with .3-.5G to make it so there is less a chance of problems from the spin grav(motion sickness etc) and the spin can be at a lower rate.　
One of the big problems is hard acceleration at over 1 G. You would need to line your floors up with the angle of acceleration also what about deceleration. You would need to be able to take a place on the ceiling. Grav couches can be used for periods of hard acceleration but even then it can only be maybe 2G with acceleration up to 6G for a few seconds.
I am actually more interested what does a TL12 helicopter look like? How effective is a high tech tank. （I do remember designing one in striker a tl 12 with a 10cm Mass driver worked on treads had a road speed of over 100kph.）
　　　

 

[Andrew Boulton]

"CT is not a hard sci fi game, if you agree to the definition that hard sci-fi can only break one law of physics"

Well, yes, but as Kafka47 says, it does soft-SF in a hard way.

It's very difficult to do truly hard *fun* SF. No FTL travel, so you're limited to one star system. In-system travel takes weeks at best, and years at worst, so you're pretty much stuck with one or two worlds. In fact, getting up and down the gravity well is so hard you're mostly stuck on-world or in orbit. Now, you *can* have a lot of fun in a situation like this, but your options are limited, and it ain't Traveller.

 

[mike wightman]

Transhuman Space plus jump drive?

Could be kind of fun, especially to extrapolate Traveller future history from a THS base and then meeting the Vilani...

 

[parmasson]

I don't have Transhuman Space. I see that it is GURPS and has no FTL drive. Their concept art strikes me as TL 8-9. That would be a very cool idea for a campaign. Lower tech aggressive, bio-enhanced, Terrans vs. the Byzantine Vilani.

Must resist other system . . .more reprints to buy . . .

 

[TKalbfus]

kafka47 said,

I agree with your point about acceleration, however, aren't those the responsibility of Inertial Compensators, and I am not sure if there is some real life physics here or another Traveller handwave?

Inertial compensators are simply grav plates attached to accelerometers. The properties such a grav plate must have is to be able to quickly change its gravitational output in response to what the accelerometer reads. The grav plates completely surround the occupants of the ship and can pull in any direction, they typically pull in the same direction as that in which the starship is accelerating, they are basically the same thing as those other grav plates that are holding the ship's crew down to the floor of the ship, the only difference is that while the floor grav plates privide a constant 1-g pull toward the floor of the ship, the grav plates designated as inertial compensators must be responsive to every acceleration the ship makes, that way the ship's crew doesn't feel any acceleration other than the 1-g pull toward the floor of the ship.

 

[TKalbfus]

Sigg Oddra said,

I've posted this list before, but it is fun to do so now
The magic tech of Traveller is:

Ok, lets examine this list:

jump drive - magical means to travel interstellar distances.

grav plates - to emulate those TV shows that don't have the FX budget to simulate zero gravity.

null grav modules/contragrav - essentially the same as a grav plate, except that contrav modules output an antigravity field that pushes instead of pulls, good for counteracting the effects of gravity and levitating off the surfaces of planets. Contragrav would probably work by pushing on the ground underneath it and the air below it. I'm assuming an inverse square law here, so the effect is probably short range, as long as there is air below the craft of ground underneath, the grav vehicle can levitate, if it is far away from anything to push against, it can't move at all. Contragrav still obeys Newton's laws of motion.

reactionless thrusters - Something that violates newton's laws of motion, Are the Traveller thrusters truly reactionless? they do require energy inputs, they use up fuel and they provide acceleration. I think what it is, that the traveller rules don't specify exactly what it is that they are, it just assigns them a general category of thruster that provides acceleration and consumes a certian amount of fuel or energy.

acceleration compensators - grav plates or contra grav plates that quickly react to accelerometer readings by providing a force that acts in the same direction and magnitude as the ship's acceleration.

nuclear dampers - Dampens or possible strenghtens the forces holding atomic nuclei together. If an atom can't be spit, you can't release the binding energy holding it together and you get no nuclear explosion.

meson screens - mesons is a form of temporary dark matter, that decays into not so dark energy after a short period of time elapses, by this means, it can get past physical obstacles before exploding and destroying what's behind it. A meson screen causes such particles to decay prematurely before reaching its target.

black globes - an energy transfer mechanism, transfers directed energy to some safe location where it can't harm the ship.

psionics - a hand wave, as their is no evidence for it, but people like to include such in many scie fi milieus, so they are included, it is basically a form of mind magic.