Has anyone done a conversion or established rules for using weapons from High Guard with the ship construction rules from Book 2? I would like to include bay weapons, energy/particle weapons but I really don't want to reinvent the wheel if someone has already done so. Its been years since I have played Traveller regularly so I am not anywhere close to an expert with this type of thing. The small ship universe (5000 tons and under) appeals to me; at the same time it would be nice to have more weapon choices for starships (to differentiate between civil and military ships).
Using High Guard Weapons with Book 2
- Thread starter ddamant
- Start date
It covers "small ship universe" with different building rules and basic assumptions for construction when using CT. But, yes, you can do a small ship universe very easily using only Book 5.
I believe the OP is asking for conversions that use the Book 2 paradigm as opposed to the Book 5 paradigm from CT. I could be wrong though.
I haven't done any conversions for the Book 5 weapons myself, as by the time I was interested in a unified ship creation rules, I bought my copies of MT, and it fit the bill for what your asking for very nicely. It even included damage numbers for use when the PCs start shooting guns at ship components with their small arms. Since that time, nearly every subsequent rule set had integrated design rules as well. CT is pretty much the only version of Traveller where you have two sets of design paradigms.
Steve Osmanski and Mike Wightman have tried this in a few ways. Mike is a frequent poster; he's bound to come along soon.
On the other hand, I've back-ported the T5 small starship design rules into a Book 2 mold. The discussion link is here. T5 ship combat takes these HG-sized weapons into account. It allows me to have Book-2-like ships with the full range of Traveller technology.
On the other hand, I've back-ported the T5 small starship design rules into a Book 2 mold. The discussion link is here. T5 ship combat takes these HG-sized weapons into account. It allows me to have Book-2-like ships with the full range of Traveller technology.
Nothing official or canonical as such, but I (and other folks I should imagine) have done Book 2/Book 5 hybrids on various occasions. Some of the rules I did include mods to the Book 5 system:
- 2t and 3t laser barbettes. 2t barbettes use double the power, and get a further +1 factor and -2 to damage. 3t barbettes use triple the power and get a further +2 factor and -3 to damage.
- Partial bay firings. Assume that a bay holds enough missiles for 3 turns. You can fire half the bay at -1 factor and 1/4 at -2 factors.
- For small ships, make up some low-factor, higher-tech spinal mounts in the A-G factor range or thereabouts. These should be small enough to fit into 5000-10,000 ton hulls.
- Maybe give fusion guns a -2 to damage like pulse lasers.
- Use the book 2 computer rules instead of the High Guard ones. This one also addresses some of the balance issues in Book-5 combat with smaller ships.1
- Also, make computers bigger than about Model/3 much more expensive - perhaps 10-50x as you get bigger. They could also be bigger. Goose the size and cost of the highest factor computer at a given tech level even further. This reflects a more even cost for the capability bigger computers get, and also reflects that high-tech fire control and sensor systems are not exactly mass market items, so they can be expensive as you also have to amortize R&D costs.
- Pimp bay mounted particle accelerator or meson guns a bit. They're underpowered for the resources you need to put into them (displacement and power plant). This would make them an effective main armament for 1000-5000t ships.
- I also did a rule for 50 ton bay weapons that allowed a ship of 500t+ to mount a single 50t bay weapon at a cost of 5 turret slots. This is quite useful for SDBs or escorts in the 500-1000t range as it gives them an option for a main armament of a 50t bay.
1The most notable balance issue with the Book 5 system is that small, high-agility ships can be very hard or impossible to hit unless the firing ship has a large advantage in computer size or weaponry. It's quite easy to make a 6G fighter or system defence boat that's incapable of hitting a ship of its own or a similar class.
The other potential balance issue is that computers give an effective +1/-1 dichotomy per tech level, which means that (as a rule of thumb) the lower tech player needs about a factor of 3 advantage in budget to even out the odds.
Only if you consider "Any hit is a mission kill" to be "covers very well".
Many people think HG (1E or 2E) sucks REALLY BADLY for anything below about 10KTd.
As for conversion...
PA Barbette: +2 to hit, 2 hits (one on the SS 3 radiation table, one on the standard table), based upon the material in JTAS 4 ...
So, I'd say, hits= weapon factor of single weapon.
PA, Plasma, Fusion all should have shorter range, but higher hit probability, as implied in the Gazelle article.
Mesons, if imported, do double their rating - but get reductions for configurations.
Missiles and Missile Bays as per SS3: Missiles.
I'd say Fusion and PA (and meson, if you import bays) do radiation hits - 1 for fusion, half for PA & meson. SS3 has the radiation table.
Armor and screens: roll 1d to penetrate, with 6 open-ending as 5+1d (and if that is 11, 10+1d, and so on). On failure to penetrate, the armour takes damage; after (Td hull)/100*AV hits, reduce AV by 1.
Bk5 drives:
JD: 1 hit per 5 Td
MD: 1 hit per 2 Td
PP: 1 hit per 4 Td
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Here is what I do these days. Note you need to get the radiation damage table from SS3 missiles or make a simple one for yourself.
PA barbettes/heavy turrets - +1 DM to hit, 2x normal damage rolls, 1x radiation damage
Plasma guns - -1 to hit, double the laser range DMs to hit, 2x damage rolls
Fusion guns - double laser range DMs to hit, 2x damage rolls
Bays:
meson bays - double laser range DMs to hit, normal damage hits = weapon factor, radiation damage hits = half weapon factor (round up)
PA bays - +1 DM to hit, normal damage hits = weapon factor, radiation damage hits = half weapon factor (round up)
Energy weapon bays - double laser range DMs to hit, number of hits = weapon factor
Armour - use HG to determine armour
roll for each hit - any criticals ignore armour and reduce armour value by 1.
any hit has to roll higher than armour rating on 2d to be confirmed (apart from the criticals), bay weapons get a +4 DM, meson guns ignore armour.
PA barbettes/heavy turrets - +1 DM to hit, 2x normal damage rolls, 1x radiation damage
Plasma guns - -1 to hit, double the laser range DMs to hit, 2x damage rolls
Fusion guns - double laser range DMs to hit, 2x damage rolls
Bays:
meson bays - double laser range DMs to hit, normal damage hits = weapon factor, radiation damage hits = half weapon factor (round up)
PA bays - +1 DM to hit, normal damage hits = weapon factor, radiation damage hits = half weapon factor (round up)
Energy weapon bays - double laser range DMs to hit, number of hits = weapon factor
Armour - use HG to determine armour
roll for each hit - any criticals ignore armour and reduce armour value by 1.
any hit has to roll higher than armour rating on 2d to be confirmed (apart from the criticals), bay weapons get a +4 DM, meson guns ignore armour.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Missile bays - launch a number of missiles equal to bay factor.
Repulsors - as laser anti-missile (roll 8+ to destroy missile, DM + repulsor factor)
Nuclear dampers - neutralises nukes on a roll of 8+, DM + screen factor
Meson screen - roll 8+ to penetrate screen (DM = meson bay factor - screen factor)
Repulsors - as laser anti-missile (roll 8+ to destroy missile, DM + repulsor factor)
Nuclear dampers - neutralises nukes on a roll of 8+, DM + screen factor
Meson screen - roll 8+ to penetrate screen (DM = meson bay factor - screen factor)
But on a Scout, or Free Trader, or an SDB, or a Gazelle, or most any of the other small canonical designs, that meson gets to crit the heck out of the target, which basically means a mission kill.
A triple beam laser gets a free crit on a Free Trader.
So, small ships mean lots of crits, and crits can mean easy mission kills.
shouldn't it?
shouldn't it?
(I don't know that there's anything "free" about it - that's 4MCr for the system, not counting a competent gunner after all .... and let's see, factor 3 is 7+ to hit, plus agility modifier, plus pilot skill modifier, plus size modifier (-1), plus armor (-1 crit per 2 factors of armor) (if importing those hg2 rules), plus sand .... no, it doesn't look "free" at all.)
heh. and so it begins ....
lbb2 weapons are a minor component of the lbb2 ship systems, so ep can be ignored for the sake of simplicity. lbb5 posits very large and energy intensive systems which situation most people feel requires address. if you import the large energy intensive systems into lbb2, you'll have to import the ep concepts as well.
or you could just ignore ep altogether and say "ooh, look at all these new toys!" ....
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Using a direct port of LBB2 designs to the HG EP rules makes most ships too underpowered since they were not designed with HG EP requirements in mind.
One solution is to double the EPs a ship's pp generates, the other is a complete redesign of the ship to HG compliance.
One solution is to double the EPs a ship's pp generates, the other is a complete redesign of the ship to HG compliance.
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I just use HG as a design system, although I adapted the standard drives to work better across a spread of hull sizes up to about 20,000 tons (the largest ships one would commonly see in my small-ships variants).
For example, Jump drive A would be Jump-2 on a 100t hull, Jump B would be jump-2 on 1 150t hull, Jump C would be J2 on a 200t hull. I also did stats for higher than 6 power plant effects - for example, there would be power plants that could be PP7, 8 or more on a relevant hull.
Some notes from the Striker rulebook to stir up discussion
No special rules on Meson Bays or PA Bays
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
I take that 25cm business for the missiles and figure on a 250kg missile as per the SS3 rules.
Striker uses cm as a reference to compare equivelent of bore size of Chemically Propelled Round (CPR) as opposed to other measures like 8-inch gun, 16-inch gun and such
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Understood, just figuring missile size by the larger circumference/bore size and extrapolating volume.
