Who plays/uses Azhanti High Lightning?

[GunnyJohnson]

Hello all.

I have recently been playing a lot of AHL and I am wondering whether this has become a lost art? I have a small CT campaign running, so in addition to using it for campaign purposes, I have also tried it out as a stand alone skirmish game. I think it works great but then again I could be trapped in 1982 and not know it.

So I ask: do you play/use AHL? do you have house rules or modifications? is there a terrible flaw that I am missing in the game?

very curious to here what you all think

"Gunny Johnson"
travellermerc.wordpress.com

 

[robject]

No flaw at all. It's an excellent lite combat system.

 

[aramis]

It's striker mashed up with Snapshot...

For skirmish, I've always preferred striker... but ignoring the detailed C&C rules.

For RPG use, I felt for years that AHL and Striker weren't granular enough. I no longer feel so.

 

[shield]

Agree

I use the striker combat system - which is effectively the same as AHL to resolve all gunfire hits and damage as well as other stuff. Don't use the action points bit for PCs, they already have an idea of what they can do in a combat round.

Cheers
Richard

 

[snapshotbygdw]

Great game, like you I've played it since I got a copy in early eighties, haven't found much that needs changing other than introducing rules for house weapons.

 

[GunnyJohnson]

Thanks all of you for confirming that if I am crazy, then at least I am not crazy alone.

So my next question is why do I see so little mention of AHL on this site and on others?

I have found AHL to be a great introductory game (even with the AP system) that I have been able to "explain" to players without even a break in the role play action. Granted I do tend to play Traveller with the support of miniatures even when no gun play is expected. Experience shows that 3D props help create the shared reality quickly especially when trying to integrate newbies to the campaign, Traveller or RPG. I always seem to have some of them.

At the same time, I have a few players who are veteran AHLers and really know how to work the system to create in-game advantage. I like that too. No one so far has seemed to balk at it (except when it comes to vehicles.)

Is it just that few people have a copy since it was a fairly expensive buy back in the day or that they don't use minis or that they have found something better?

I do extend AHL to include pretty much everything in Striker. Even the morale and command control rules if the game is big enough to merit it.

While I have your collective ears, what do people do about vehicles in AHL/Striker or whatever else you all use?

Thanks for both your Traveller and your therapeutic contributions...

 

[far-trader]

Is it just that few people have a copy since it was a fairly expensive buy back in the day...

Pretty much that I think. At the time anyway.

And that up until a couple(?) years ago when it came out as PDF for a decent price it was stupid money to try and pry one out of the hands of collectors.

So now I've got a copy and nobody to play. Not face to face much anyway, and I haven't got into the internet play options.

 

[snapshotbygdw]

I'd agree with the cost thing as I've posted to another thread I can remember my father, much to my teenage mortification, acutually having a row with a game shop owner over how much I'd paid for a copy! At the time I thought it was "Christmas" money well spent.

 

[aramis]

Thanks all of you for confirming that if I am crazy, then at least I am not crazy alone.

So my next question is why do I see so little mention of AHL on this site and on others?

In my case, once I switched to MegaTraveller, I had a better system than the cumbersome mix of AHL/Striker over CT. (MT is essentially Strikerized Traveller... Pens & armor are on the same scale, and the addition of damage points made it superior to Striker. Further, the changes in CGen rendered CT obsolete, and the task system made the game much easier for me to run.)

I've used Striker vehicles in MT just by calculating damage points.

 

[GunnyJohnson]

Very interesting feedback. Thanks to all so far and I hope to hear more from others out there.

My success with AHL has mostly been running character-centric scenarios with folks on foot. Our group ran into a major bust up one time over how fast one could do a tight U turn with an air raft. Grav Veh-0 driver claimed he should be able to make the turn in about 1 AHL phase (3 sec?) and I as referee claimed a more robust but still speedy 5 phases.

A search of the Traveller, Striker and even MegaTraveller material yielded a big zero in terms of turning (I don't own COACC). Checking NOE speeds for air rafts indicated that they could fly off the board, back on and back off again in the space of an AHL turn (100kph=1.6km/min=400m/AHL turn=about 270 squares or 11 feet!) Obviously you can't be flying that fast if you expect your player characters to hop on as you fly by, but even at a fraction of that speed an air raft is likely to be able to do whatever it wants on an AHL scaled board. Slower vehicles still have the same problem just scaled down.

In practical fact of course turning at speed is a challenge. Vehicles have to slow down to avoid risk of mishap. How much? how much can they turn? Is there help on these questions in the canon?

I have of course developed house rules for these things but I would like to know what others might have done.

 

[Icosahedron]

I've always found combat to be a problem in Traveller and I'm still looking for the perfect (or even decent) combat mechanic. Having said that, houseruled AHL is about the best I've found so far. LBB1 was too simple, MT and ACQ was too complex, MGT is inherently flawed, outside systems are hard to tailor...

Unfortunately, I haven't found anyone to play FtF with in a long time and I find combat with decent rules to be almost impossible in PbP games, as it takes far too long. Against my will, I've found myself pushed toward LBB1 for PbP combat simply to keep the game moving.

I've spent some time in bursts over the years houseruling AHL, creating rules for diving into and out of cover, firing two weapons, etc. Some cinematic options, some not, but it's been a largely academic activity, since I've never actually used them in a game.
I never really brought vehicles into AHL. I'd use Striker for games involving vehicles.

For your example of characters climbing aboard, I'd just use a GM decree. The speed of a vehicle is probably irrelevant at that scale, it would be about it's acceleration and braking, and I'd probably just get a 'feel' of what would be realistic.
The last time I tweaked combat rules, I was trying to incorporate Car Wars rules...

Edit: Some time ago, I was involved in a discussion about grav vehicles, acceleration, deceleration and turning, over on the Striker Yahoo Group. The upshot was that G-vehicles with fractional-G lateral thrust would slide around like pucks on ice, but 1G lateral thrust would handle like a decent ground car. Anything higher could stop on a postage stamp - you'd need internal inertial damping to keep the occupants safe...

 

[GunnyJohnson]

I also posted a version of the vehicle question over there and got some references to the threads I think you were referring to. Without having done the math, I had already seen some of the problems (like what happens to a grav vehicle when it is hit by a 15cm KEAP round -- sounds like a hockey puck to me.) Some of these situations make one radically re-think one's conception of a grav vehicle as a flying ground car.

Instead of moving like the ground car, some combination of ACV, helicopter and boat might be a better model. Basically the lack of an obvious "grip" against the ground makes them float like a boat or an ACV unless serious hardware is in place to provide a simple pilot interface for a complex interaction between lift and grip.

As far as an AHL game goes the short version is that they would be limited in speed to a fraction of their potential. That rule also applies to the Tech 5 armored car rolling down the city streets but perhaps not in the same ratio.

What part of Terra do you current call home Icosahedron?

 

[Icosahedron]

Yes, and later editions of Car Wars had rules for ACVs, helicopters and boats, which was as far as I'd got...

Of course the 'way anti-grav works' might include some sort of 'grip'. Not sure how that would work, but then I'm not sure how anti-grav would work either. GM call, I suppose.

I'm on the other side of the Pond, Gunny - too far for a FtF, I'm afraid.

 

[SgtHulka]

prefer snapshot

I prefer Snaphsot to AHL. In my experience Snapshot makes for more exciting games.

The trouble with the penetration mechanic in AHL and Striker is that it further emphasizes the tech discrepancy direction Classic Traveller was going in as more and more supplements were released. In other words, higher tech = god-like power. I prefer a grittier Aliens/Vietnam style game, where high tech gives you an advantage but you can still have your a$$ handed to you by a dedicated low-tech enemy if you're not careful.

In AHL, and to an even greater degree in Striker, you simply can't damage TL 14+ battledress or even combat armor unless you have TL 14+ weaponry. Characters really need to be armed with Gauss rifles to have a chance. Even ACRs can't really do the trick.

In Snapshot, however, penetration and accuracy are combined into a single roll. This way high characteristics can allow you to put the snub pistol HEAP round in exactly the right place to hurt that battledress dude if you can manage to ambush him. A character with a high dex armed with an auto-rifle is still the cat's meeow. I also love the Snapshot/Book 1 characteristic damage system.

To be clear, I know that what I'm talking about is highly subjective. I can see some people thinking the AHL/Striker penetration mechanic to be far more realistic. And if vehicles enter the combat, I'd definitely switch to Striker to resolve that combat. Once a vehicle enters you have to expand your table to encompass a much larger in-game area, so again, I'd just immediately switch to the Striker turn sequence and combat resolution system.

 

[McPerth]

I've also using usually an own adaptation of AHL for combat in traveller/MT, mostly for its quickness.

Even so, one of the flaws I see on it is the use only of its penetration power as a measure of the lethality a wapon has.

So, a shotgun, that is nearly a usless weapon against a heavy armored opponent, besomes equaly useless against a unarmored opponent.

Spanish conquistadores found a problem with indians blowgun, as their needles just passes through the soldiers chainmail. This coulsdbe seen as a good penetration power, but from here to say they were so lethal (at least without its poison)...

Of course, the reverse is true on CT/Snapsoot, a shotgun may be quite useful against a battledressed marine, if you're good enough at it (a skill 3-5 man could kill that marine with it).

 

[nobby-w]

I do have AHL, and I also used to have Snapshot, which used a similar action point system to AHL but used a hit resolution system based on CT Book 1.

As I recall, AHL was quite expensive due to the large deck plans of the eponymous cruiser shipped with the game, so it didn't sell in large numbers. Striker was considerably more popular, and I've used that as a combat system for Traveller since I first got hold of it around 1985.

From Megatraveller onwards a number of the Striker-isms got incorporated back into the combat system. I carried on using Striker because I had a bunch of legacy IMTU stuff, vehicle designs and other odds and sods that I couldn't be arsed porting at the time.

 

[aramis]

I've used AHL+Striker as my go-to combat system in the past. I prefer MT's take slightly, but note that MT is a variant of Striker/AHL.

I'm not so much a fan of the action points as I used to be, so I don't think I'd use AHL for RPG sessions anymore. I don't think I've seen my dead tree copy in about 5 years.

 

[Spartan159]

Sadly my deck plans got destroyed in a house move a few years ago.

 

[spinwardpirate]

I played the Wine Heist scenario (solo-style) year or so ago using Fate Core, just to see what I could do with it's combat system.

I documented it for my Facebook page. He's one of the pics.

"On Fuel Deck 34 the lift door opens. Poor crewman Bob didn't know what hit him."

It worked really well, but the AHL rules as written still work for me, too.

 

[robject]

So my next question is why do I see so little mention of AHL on this site and on others?

So, first of all, AHL works fine.

However.

Perhaps it's a bit dated in mechanics now. As Icosahedron states:

I've always found combat to be a problem in Traveller and I'm still looking for the perfect (or even decent) combat mechanic.

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