Recent content by J. L. Brown

Energy consumption per person is a matter of quality-of-life; it is a consequences of advancing technology, or an enabler, not usually a driver. I think the real driver for technological progression is population -- to a certain degree enabled by communication and computing, but population is...

No; I think each area of technology has a Technology Level; often quite independent of other areas at the same Technology Level. Whether or not your surgeons know about (or use) the Germ Theory of Disease has no impact on how sophisticated your Abacuses or Steam Turbines are. There might be...

According to the Robot Handbook Update (p 13), a Size 6 Chassis fills one Vehicle Space. That should be a quarter of a dTon, or four suits per dTon. If the Battle Dress is that large, then there is no room for grenades, sidearms, ammunition, power-cells, or non-BD armor -- of course, referees...

Found something else: I have added extra Sensor Stations -- and extra sensor arrays (and back-ups) -- onto a 5000 dTon design, but the sheet says the Ship only gets one sensor action. [Edit:] Terry Mixon pointed out my error; now it works. Thanks Terry! [/Edit] Also, Adding a 'Large Tachyon...

As Terry Mixon has mentioned; the Vehicle Handbook is currently undergoing revision. It needed it; not quite as bad a 'Field Catalog' needs a re-work, but still.... The original Vehicle Handbook is a flaming mess -- Mongoose leaned into 'rule of cool' and 'people hate math' far too much, and...

Not currently possible in the High Guard or Robots rules; but you might try building something (like a minimal-sized 'walker') in the vehicle rules.

As of the publishing of Singularity Act 2, a suit of Human-sized Battle Dress is exactly the same as a size-6 Robot. That comes out to 64 'slots'; 32 usable 'internal' slots, and 32 unusable 'workings, systems, and overhead' slots. The human occupant of the suit apparently occupies 16 of the...

Yes, I knew all that already. In the Singularity Act 2 adventure 'Suits', the following Robot stat blocks are given for TL-14 Battle Dress. Given this (now canonical) set of Battle Dress, please tell me how much space the human occupant (and there IS a full-sized human occupant) takes up...

It seems like a nice list; are you considering benefits from other editions as well? If so, then the 1e Mongoose Traveller profession books probably have a few worth including -- for example 'Portfolio' benefit, and 'Antique Artwork' from Dilettante. I think that 'Toolkit', 'Weapon', 'Armor'...

Just got done reading 'Suits'. Battledress is shown as being built as a size-6 (32 'slot') robot chassis; with room inside for a human occupant being provided by subtracting the volume of a (human sized) size-5 (16 'slot') robot chassis. This is completely sensible; but also completely...

There are several fundamental problems with Traveller Technology Levels. The first is that they have no solid foundation; they are not based on anything apart from general (and purely accidental) 'historical eras'. The second is that they are inconsistent; and the third is that projections of...

Are you having it look at 'Total Internal Cargo' tonnage? Cell 12-Cargo D56? The formula for D56 seems like it is asking for trouble; it sums (D30: D36) and (D40: D50) -- some of those cells are non-numeric. It also does not appear to account for Fuel/Cargo used as cargo space; but I think...

Fuel tab; validation on cell C11 ('Additional Tons of Fuel') is wonky. It accepts only numerical values between 0 and B1048567. This MIGHT be a result of my rather unconventional usage path -- I import the Excel sheet to Google Sheets & then download it as an 'Open Document' .ods file. My fix...

As you observe, very few Traveller deck plans are more than 5 decks tall. If you made your construction deck 18m tall, it would be sufficient for many vessels. The exact specifics depend on choices made at a particular table -- 'Small Ship' vs 'Large Ship' universes, and so on. I would tend to...

'Can Get' =/= 'Always Do Get'; every Rank-3 Belter gets Profession (Belter), though. But getting 'Jack of All Trades' requires taking a one in six chance on the 'Personal Development' table -- where they might end up with 'Profession (Belter)' anyway. For Belter probably: Athletics Melee...