Search found 1527 matches
- Tue Mar 07, 2017 11:52 am
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Questions about sensors, comms, signals, etc.
- Replies: 31
- Views: 8128
Re: Questions about sensors, comms, signals, etc.
It’s very easy to misunderstand just how huge space is and just how tiny even the biggest ships are. For an example, the Apollo missions left 1 square meter reflectors on the moon so we could bounce lasers off them to measure the distance to the moon. The laser is beamed through a telescope to maxim...
- Mon Feb 27, 2017 4:47 pm
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: HMS Dreadnought
- Replies: 14
- Views: 2434
Re: HMS Dreadnought
You don't need to limit armour on smaller craft, if you say that larger weapons inflict a certain minimum amount of damage irrespective of the armour on the target. That should 'discriminate' against smaller craft in the way that we want while also causing an attrition effect on larger ships so they...
- Mon Feb 27, 2017 4:28 pm
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Roug concept: Mobile anti ship guns, with illustration
- Replies: 59
- Views: 9610
Re: Roug concept: Mobile anti ship guns, with illustration
IMHO the idea that standard civilian starship hulls are even comparable to tank armour is daft, given how small starship turrets are. If TL tank armour is 40 point on a MT scale I'd expect starship hulls to start at something like 10 points or so with starship weaponry scaled to match. When it comes...
- Wed Sep 14, 2016 12:45 pm
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Wormhole Drive
- Replies: 16
- Views: 2346
Re: Wormhole Drive
What is the reason for the hydrogen cost to using the wormhole?
- Tue Sep 13, 2016 10:56 am
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Wormhole Drive
- Replies: 16
- Views: 2346
Re: Wormhole Drive
There's no real problem with this. Wormhole and stargate style systems are well established in SF, the only real wrinkle is the 5 day warmup time. In practice this means the optimum approach is for settled systems to have space stations maintaining wormholes continuously to common destinations. Thus...
- Wed Aug 17, 2016 2:31 pm
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: High Guard is Here!
- Replies: 391
- Views: 49605
Re: High Guard is Here!
Possible errata? The Holographic Hull states it uses 1 Power for every 2 tons of hull. Seriously? That means even a small 200 ton ship would be using 100 Power to have a holograph on the hull... as that uses more power than the basic system and Jump drive put together? Surely that's gotta be an err...
- Tue Aug 16, 2016 9:14 am
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: High Guard - On The Way
- Replies: 100
- Views: 15491
Re: High Guard - On The Way
What about people who buy the PDF - rightfully assuming that it's a finished, proofread product - and then print it out themselves to discover that it's full of errors? For what it's worth I agree if you are buying a commercial product sold as final, but I have no problem with publishers releasing ...
- Mon Jul 18, 2016 10:53 am
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: FTL starship today
- Replies: 110
- Views: 23429
Re: FTL starship today
The warp drive time traveling slingshot effect is pure Star Trek technobabble. Outside of Star Trek it has no theoretical basis whatsoever beyond any FTL travel system being equivalent to time travel anyway. The IXS is intended to use the Alcubierre warp drive. If that's the case, the inside of the ...
- Mon Jul 18, 2016 10:47 am
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Lots of Dice and a little Cepheus Engine, too
- Replies: 200
- Views: 24546
Re: Cepheus Engine
Well, what set me off was having to do a rebuttal of Jeff’s point of view that there’s legitimacy to the manufacturability and accessibility of d6es, in support of the idea that we should seriously consider where there are potentially more ideal dice out there to use for Traveller games. In a moder...
- Fri Jul 15, 2016 1:15 pm
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Lots of Dice and a little Cepheus Engine, too
- Replies: 200
- Views: 24546
Re: Cepheus Engine
Also, there is a reason for Stars Without NUmber doing comparatively well: It caters squarely to the D20/Pathfinder crowd. They don't have to relearn mechanics just to play space opera. And there are _lots_ of them - easily more than for all other RPGs combined. And here we are again. Familiarity i...
- Fri Jul 15, 2016 10:47 am
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Lots of Dice and a little Cepheus Engine, too
- Replies: 200
- Views: 24546
Re: Cepheus Engine
I’m more inclined to think that they’d be offended by Traveller canon putting planets where they don’t belong. Who wants to go to a star system only to find out that the planet they just read about in the paper a month ago isn’t there , because some other asinine planet with no relation to the real...
- Fri Jul 15, 2016 10:40 am
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Lots of Dice and a little Cepheus Engine, too
- Replies: 200
- Views: 24546
Re: Cepheus Engine
Familiarity and dice availability are red-herrings. Modern boardgamers will have played with lots of unusual dice by the time they make it to Tabletop RPGs. You're addressing my incidental examples, not my actual points. I'll try to be clearer. 1. What criteria do you propose to distinguish between...
- Thu Jul 14, 2016 12:02 pm
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Alternative Jump Drive
- Replies: 29
- Views: 3305
Re: Alternative Jump Drive
The technicalities are all very well, but I'm not seeing anyone give any reasons why a change like this would be desirable. What is broken about the current system that this fixes? The standard J-Drive has the following consequences for settings: * Ships are confined to chains of worlds within the s...
- Thu Jul 14, 2016 9:38 am
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Lots of Dice and a little Cepheus Engine, too
- Replies: 200
- Views: 24546
Re: Cepheus Engine
I never said d6es are wrong; I said that we should seriously think about if anything is right about them in a modern context before deciding that they are, in fact, the best choice for Traveller, moving forward. Best according to what metrics though? It's meaningless without providing a way to dist...
- Wed Jul 13, 2016 10:27 am
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Lots of Dice and a little Cepheus Engine, too
- Replies: 200
- Views: 24546
Re: Cepheus Engine
No, you really don’t. The player subtracts -8, but the GM adds or subtracts the more vague situational modifiers on top of that. Locking you into the most common target number isn’t a bad thing , when all the other numbers are either obvious to the player, or subtle effects hidden by the GM. It mea...
- Mon Jul 11, 2016 3:04 pm
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Lots of Dice and a little Cepheus Engine, too
- Replies: 200
- Views: 24546
Re: Cepheus Engine
It's the worst explanation for how simulated gravity works on starships, except for all the others.Condottiere wrote:I'm fairly sure I prefer Traveller with artificial gravity fields; medical science seems fairly convinced it's a good thing.
Simon Hibbs
- Mon Jul 11, 2016 10:13 am
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Lots of Dice and a little Cepheus Engine, too
- Replies: 200
- Views: 24546
Re: Cepheus Engine
Every time we roll a skill, we subtract -8 at the end of that roll. Why not just bake it into the dice, if it’s always there ? Is that somehow not an improvement to you? Aha, an actual concrete suggestion. Anybody that's ever played Monopoly knows how to roll and sum 2D6. It's almost certainly the ...
- Wed Jul 06, 2016 1:30 pm
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Lots of Dice and a little Cepheus Engine, too
- Replies: 200
- Views: 24546
Re: Cepheus Engine
Sold. Just picked up the PDF. Consider it a down-paymentFlynn wrote:An editable document format will be forthcoming, for those interested in such...

Simon Hibbs
- Wed Jul 06, 2016 1:13 pm
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Lots of Dice and a little Cepheus Engine, too
- Replies: 200
- Views: 24546
Re: Cepheus Engine
My favourite die I own is a black skew D6. I use it when playing Trail of Cthulhu or Night's Black Agents so I can claim I'm doing 'non euclidean damage'.Tom Kalbfus wrote:I like dice with numbers on them.
http://www.mathartfun.com/DiceLabDice.html
Simon Hibbs
- Wed Jul 06, 2016 12:00 pm
- Forum: Traveller
- Topic: Lots of Dice and a little Cepheus Engine, too
- Replies: 200
- Views: 24546
Re: Cepheus Engine
They're not using 2D6 as a selling point, they're using it as a coded message that this is a Traveller compatible rules set.Tom Kalbfus wrote:What so great about using 2d6 as your main selling point?
Simon Hibbs