Tangential Rant - When New Canon Rules Break The Game

[paltrysum]

It certainly conflicts with the in-system travel time table, which supposes constant acceleration to the midpoint of travel before turnaround and deceleration. Incorporating this rule change, you would have to calculate the diameters of all nearby important celestial bodies (well, just stars and planets, really), then calculate your travel time to the extent of that limit, then remove acceleration from the equation, coasting until you reach 1000D of another object which presumably you could use to continue accelerating.

I mean, I get what T5 was trying to do, but it really flies in the face of a simplistic approach, which is sort of the bread and butter of Traveller.

 

[Saladman]

As a blanket rule I agree 1000D limit is a bad rule.

I'd like it better if it were one out of several more drive options. I can imagine a drive that "pushes" off of electromagnetic fields, so common to aircraft and shuttles on certain worlds but much less so on interstellar craft. And an anti-grav drive that only pushes away from or pulls toward the nearest/strongest gravity well, but you need other thrusters to move horizontally/fly. (I've placed these as lower tech grav belts/chutes, but never taken the next logical step.) And I wish we had numbers for a more efficient rocket drive, the numbers we have seem very 20th/21st century. Good for a near future game, bad for a far future one.

If we had all those, plus a 1000D limit reactionless, plus an unlimited reactionless, they could all be sorted by tech levels, plus a note about which ones or one to use as a setting decision.

I'm guessing T5 was trying to wrestle with getting away from Push The Magic Button And It Goes sci fi and back to a more gritty sci fi. They might have even been on the right track, but no one stopped and thought strategically. Game book writing, but not Game Design.

But all that out of the way - I'm still a core book plus home rolled subsector GM, so I haven't payed much attention to either Page 33 of Deepnight Revelation, book 2, Campaign Guide or T5.

 

[alex_greene]

I don't really know how to resolve this, because I'd need to understand what the goal was meant to be.

But there was a clear hierarchy being demonstrated in having limitations on manoeuvre drive expressed in tens of diameters, and then the drop off the cliff.

It would explain why no one goes to empty hexes, because they'd have no traction, unless they had precise locations of large enough gravity wells.

It might force more microjumps, though at this point, you'd decrease that to five percent fuel usage, and maybe less time dilation.

Thing is, I would trust your workarounds. Though I wouldn't be surprised if your best workaround was "Nah, this rule is unworkable. Let's ignore it. And pray nobody puts it into the next High Guard."

 

[wmarshal]

If someone creates the 1000D limit to prevent a craft from reaching relativistic speeds could they not accomplish something similar by having the rule apply at the boundary of the heliopause? That would still allow any part of the solar system that could be of any interest be reached.

I think I do agree with others here that the 1000D rule seems to be a rule in search of a valid purpose.

 

[Vormaerin]

If someone creates the 1000D limit to prevent a craft from reaching relativistic speeds could they not accomplish something similar by having the rule apply at the boundary of the heliopause? That would still allow any part of the solar system that could be of any interest be reached.

I think I do agree with others here that the 1000D rule seems to be a rule in search of a valid purpose.

While the most egregious problem with the limit is trying to maneuver in the outer solar system, not being able to do more than inch along in deep space is pretty sucky and renders some adventures unplayable and makes things like deep space refueling depots go from pretty expensive to extremely crazy, because if you were a bit off on your jump emergence, you'd be SOL on ever getting to the fuel depot or being rescued.

 

[paltrysum]

While the most egregious problem with the limit is trying to maneuver in the outer solar system, not being able to do more than inch along in deep space is pretty sucky and renders some adventures unplayable and makes things like deep space refueling depots go from pretty expensive to extremely crazy, because if you were a bit off on your jump emergence, you'd be SOL on ever getting to the fuel depot or being rescued.

Either that or it makes everything a microjump, which I really don't think was the intention of the rule. Now any travel, whether between stars or between planets requires a jump? That just doesn't tell a good story.

 

[Vormaerin]

Either that or it makes everything a microjump, which I really don't think was the intention of the rule. Now any travel, whether between stars or between planets requires a jump? That just doesn't tell a good story.

It does solve the problem of whether piracy is a thing.

 

[Galadrion]

To quote myself from this thread:

Meh. I've come up with a house rule which essentially eliminates the problem for my games. M-drive works to the given rating out to the heliopause (or the local stellar system's equivalent), which I pretty much set as 120 AU times the square root of the stellar system's luminosity - fairly arbitrary, but at least it gives me something to work with. Beyond that, out in interstellar space, M-drive rating is decreased by one, or halved if it's already one or below. Move out into a rift area - something I define as more than nine parsecs from the nearest stellar system - and the M-drive rating drops by another one (or halves again, if already one or below). From there, every time you move out "range band" (another factor of nine from the nearest stellar object - 81 parsecs for the second range band, 729 for the second, which is considerably more than halfway between the galactic arms for the most part), the M-drive rating drops again by the same scheme. It should be pretty clear that dropping to negligible M-drive ratings is fairly unlikely, since you'd run out of jump fuel first (and be well outside the galactic halo).

Barring misjumps, it's something that almost never comes up in my games anyway - my players generally try to stay out of deep space. Not a healthy place, y'know? Space dragons and such...

Oh, and just to clarify a possible question: there's nothing particularly magical about the "factor of nine" the range bands increase by - I just wanted a geometric progression for the drop-offs, and that range factor puts the next drop in efficiency at around a subsector distant. It's easily adjustable, depending on your own vision for the game.

 

[Geir]

In the solar system, the D1000 limit only makes a difference if you want to go to the ice giants or beyond. You can pretty much make Saturn, especially if you take into account its D1000 limit. I'm not a mind reader and I have no inside info on this, but I can think of two other reasons why the D1000 limit entered into it, besides the relativistic kill vehicle problem.

One is 'history'. The jump drive, once invented in the solar system was used for 'in-system' travel and only later for interstellar travel. One reason for this was that you could actually get to the Kuiper Belt faster with a micro jump, but the now retconned reason also applied: the drive puttered out past Saturn.

Two is the newer explanation of how m-drive works. This seems to change from version to version (honestly, I sort of liked HePlar in TNE - just about the only thing I liked about TNE. G-hours got me thinking down a road that eventually led to me learning 'real' rocket science... a story for another day and another product...). Now (T5, and by semi-extension MgT2) the m-drive interacts with the gravitation field, so if the field is too low, it doesn't reach whatever threshold is required for it to 'get a grip'. Sort of like a reverse MOND. Or something. T5 makes it even more complex: there is also a Thruster drive that works beyond the limit (high tech, lower thrust) and a NAFAL (not a fan of the acronym: Not As Fast As Light - why not just stick with STL: Slower Than Light?) that works for whatever time it takes to accelerate for one year, it seems - that's a really odd nerf that I can't really explain other than to limit you to a certain percentage of light speed for NAFAL STL starships.

But, even though I threw the 1000D thing into the WBH (I didn't do it first: Beyond DNR, It's also sort of buried in Beyond the Claw - early in the Deneb Sector where Jump Bridges are mentioned), I did it mostly to try keeping things harmonized, as much as, playable plausible with T5. But, that being said: Rule Zero the sucker - ignore it or make up your own rules for m-drive limits. As someone said above, it's not in the Core book at all.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Hey everyone,

This is something that obviously needs a look - we will go into it at a suitable point.