Tug Concept

[aramis]

That'd be great if they were compatible, but HG and LBB2 are two different animals. Between the two I prefer LBB2.

Same.
But Marc seems to prefer Bk 5...

 

[aramis]

I think that the inconsistencies in the drive table in Book 2 '81 are intentional (except possibly the 2000-DTon 'J' entry). Somebody sat down and re-did the table between '77 and '81, and they chose those numbers. They were obvious informed by a pattern, but chose to break it, for whatever reason(s).

Among other reason I believe this, ex-GDW staff have said that they'd often publish tables that had an entry that didn't quite match the rest (rounded the 'wrong' way, or the like) so that they could more easily prove someone had plagiarised their work. They were not 'purists' when it came to formulas in their games, so if they wanted better performance for large ships than the formula suggested, the formula lost.

IN THE US: You can't copyright a table of formula output; if you have non-formulaic entries, you can copyright the table.
And the formula itself is dubious when it's a game rule.

 

[Grav_Moped]

From the work I've done a type Z drive "should" cap out at 4800 dTons, if you're projecting the drive table to be a strictly linear progression.

View attachment 7620

At the top you have a drive table based on the idea that each drive's potential increases by 200 for each 5 dTons the drive increase in size.
the red highlights indicates where the table deviates from CT. As you can see everything above type "X" deviates from the paradigm.

Don't get me wrong there's nothing wrong with that, except that size and cost-wise these drive follow the usual progression. So they end up being vastly more effective cost and size wise.

Take the type Z drive, in a 2000 dTon hull it gives performance 6, but is only 125 dTons for J-6 or 6.25% of the ship's volume. Compare this with 20% for a 100 dTons ship, 17.5% for a 200 dTon ship, 16.25% for a 400 dTon ship, and 15.625% for a 800 dTon ship. The cost savings are equally out of line. A type Z drive in a 2000 dTon hull is stupidly broken.

I understand they were trying to give some engine options for the larger ships, but they should have increased the price and size to be "correct" for the performance given. For a type Z drive to give that level of performance it would need a potential of 12,000. Which would give the performance you project, but the cost and size would need to be much higher.
View attachment 7619

I found where I'd gone over this before -- it starts about the 11th page of my Gypsy Queen Fast Merchant (199Td, J2/6G/Pn7, LBB2) thread.

Basically, if the Drive Performance Table kept to the formulas that hold for Drives A-V, while keeping the 1000Td intervals above 1000Td, Size V drives would almost be the largest drives needed. In 800Td a Size Z Drive would get you a rating of 6 where V would only yield 5; other than that, results for Sizes W-Z would be the same as for Size V. Oh, and ships max out at 4000Td because nothimg provides Rating-1 in 5000Td.

So you would have basically the bottom 4 rows of the table being identical, with the last one being all dashes. Wasted space.

Keeping the 200Td interval beyond 1000Td (1200, 1400, 1600, etc.) would probably give a bit more varied results, but would require adding 16 more rows to the table (1200, 1400... 2200. 2400... etc) -- rows that would likely see little use.

 

[Grav_Moped]

So you would have basically the bottom 4 rows of the table being identical, with the last one being all dashes. Wasted space.

... and this is why it may have seemed reasonable to stuff bonus performance into the last 4 (TL-15) drives. There wasn't going to be anything else "interesting" in that part of the table.

 

[mike wightman]

I'll just point out that they did fix the thing - they changed it in High Guard, and the jump drive size formula from HG remained current in MT, TNE, T4, T20, and GT at the least (I don't have a copy of Hero Traveller to check, and don't feel like trying to work out what T5 is saying).

High Guard is not the same paradigm as LBB:2, the similarity and mixing within the setting causes a lot of contradictions and needless hanwacery.
High Guard is not fixed LBB:2.
They maintained letter drives in '81 revised, they could have switched to HG percentages but didn't. They completed the CT line with TTB and SE both of which continued with letter drives and jump number decoupled from TL.

Then MgT1 went back to LBB2 (but not exactly) with HG percentages for large ships, which seemed like a step backwards to me.

MgT2 uses fixed percentages, HG-style, but rather bigger ones (2.5% x Jn + 5 DTons, rather than HG's 1% x (Jn+1)). At least it's consistent across ship size.

I feel like this was a solved problem for over 25 years, and then for some reason it was decided to unsolve it, and then sort of solve it again.

Different iteration had their differences, Minimum size for jump engines differs across editions, minimum hull size differs in some cases, amount of fuel required, the need for an equal sized power plant that sort of thing.

 

[spank]

No, what I am saying is people are arguing for something the authors intended, it was no mistake hence they did not change the table despite having multiple opportunities to do so.

There is no error in the drive tables, they are exactly as the author intended.

Those engines are TL15, the best engines in the game, hence their superior performance.

Every few years someone thinks they have rediscoverd a secret formula - did so my self about twenty years ago - but there is no evidence at all the drive tables were ever any more than a look up table with numbers made up by the authors to fit the pattern they wanted, no formula involved, and no mistakes as far as they were concerned.

This can not have been intentional.


The idea that this happens because these engines are TL15 is also quite laughable, Firstly it is not even hinted at, anywhere that this is the case, secondly it creates a number of problems. Such as, why aren't there TL-15 engines in LBB 2 for 100, 200, 400 & 600 ton ships? Why can these ships be produced at any Starport while High Guard ships need to be produced at TL appropriated Startports? Where are the TL-15 drives for the other hulls? Why are these TL-15 Jump and Maneuver Drives so much smaller and cheaper when High Guard versions don't get any smaller or cheaper at TL-15? How are the powerplants 40% smaller and 40% cheaper than the equivalent TL-15 HG drives?

At 200 dTons ship with LBB2 drives and a ship with HG drives are roughly equivalent, The HG ship is 12% cheaper and has 14% more free space
But at 2000 dTons the LBB2 ship is 40% cheaper and has 30% more free space.


Using the Type-Z drives you can build 5 ships for every 3 built using High Guard Drives.




And you think this is intentional?