2300 questions

[tytalan]

So I’m trying to wrap my head around ship design and I want to make sure I understand this right. A turret take 1 Hard Point and uses 1 ton of space. It can have any single none heavy weapon but the weapon itself also takes tonnage. For example a turret with a single LL-88 takes two tons 1 for the turret and 1 for the weapon? It’s very not clear in the book.

A Barrette takes 2 tons and can have a single heavy weapon in it. For example a Barrette with a LD-90 takes 6 tons 2 for the Barrette and 4 for the LD-90.

Do I got this right because the book doesn’t explain this at all?

Now on to Drones. They use Missile, Drone, and Fighter pretty much interchangeably but I think I got those down too. Missiles are one shot bomb pumped laser drones while Fighters are Drones that have a battery power weapon system and can be recovered and reused. Drone bays don’t take up any hard points but instead just take up the space of the drone plus 10%. Drones my be directly controlled from the ship or it the drone has a robotic brain it can be targeted and left on its own.

Submunitions don’t require a Hard Point either but are much more limited in capability since they are basically a bomb pumped laser minefield

Did I miss anything or get anything wrong? Also has anyone done a spread sheet for ship design?

 

[Bryn the 2300AD guy]

Welcome to the trainwreck that is the Aerospace Engineers Handbook. The simple answer is, it is inconsistent. People who have tried to use it have mostly thrown their hands up in the air and given up.

However, when designing a ship, hardpoints take no tonnage (pg 65). They only take tonnage as retrofits (why?). However based on the examples, the numbers are multipliers since, for example:

Martel

2 EA-1000 (should be 4 tons based on the source material, but is 1 in Mong, also should be LL-98 from the source) fixed retreactable w/UTES = 4 dTons

Each mount should be:
fixed mount is 0 tons
Weapon is 1 ton (but should be 4)
UTES adds 1 ton
Retractable should double the total tonnage, but only doubles the mount = 2 tons per weapon

Aconit

2 LL-98 (should be 4 guns from the source) in retractable surface mounts w/UTES = 8 dTons (4 per weapon)

Each mount should be
Surface mount is 1 ton
Weapon is 1 ton
UTES is 1 ton
Retractable doubles the mount = 4 dTons per weapon

Since the Aconit should have 4 guns...

Kennedy

8 EA-1000 (should be EA-122 from the source) in retractable surface mounts w/UTES
1 Type 29 PDS (no mount given)
Total = 37 dTons

EA-1000 w/UTES = 4 dTons per weapon = 32 dTons (10 dTons if 4 ton guns = 80 dTons)
PDS = 4 dTons (see example)
= 36 dTons

Now, using the GDW source, weapons should be:

LL-88 and LL-98 = 1 dTon
EA-122 = 3 dTons
EA-1000 = 4 dTons

Targeting system (either TTA or on the mount UTES) = 2 dTons

Mounts are:
External mount = 1 dTon
Masked mount = 1x installed systems plus installed systems (i.e. double)
Jack mount (retractable) = 3x installed systems plus installed systems (i.e. 4x)

A EA-1000 jack/UTES should be 24 dTons. Making weapons heavy limits their number.

The 1.1 multiplier for missile is missing even the basic packing parameter. In GDW a missile consumed double it's volume at a density of 2 plus the missile. This is reasonable.

The missiles are poorly designed, and the nukes far too large. I redid them here.

 

[Jame Rowe]

I also think that crews are a bit too large compared to the original 2300AD.

 

[tytalan]

Welcome to the trainwreck that is the Aerospace Engineers Handbook. The simple answer is, it is inconsistent. People who have tried to use it have mostly thrown their hands up in the air and given up.

However, when designing a ship, hardpoints take no tonnage (pg 65). They only take tonnage as retrofits (why?). However based on the examples, the numbers are multipliers since, for example:

Hard Points are not Turret or Barbette they are locations for the Turret or Barbette pg 66 each of these do take tonnage? At least that how it reads.

Martel

2 EA-1000 (should be 4 tons based on the source material, but is 1 in Mong, also should be LL-98 from the source) fixed retreactable w/UTES = 4 dTons

Each mount should be:
fixed mount is 0 tons
Weapon is 1 ton (but should be 4)
UTES adds 1 ton
Retractable should double the total tonnage, but only doubles the mount = 2 tons per weapon

UTES is one per ship. According to Aerospace the 2 EA-1000 should be would be 2 each since they are retractable but the targeting system cannot be a UTES since that would require a gunner per mount. It should be a LTA and there’s absolutely no reason for the mounts to be retractable so it should read as
EA-1000 Fixed Mount x 2 with LTA for 4 tons.

Aconit

2 LL-98 (should be 4 guns from the source) in retractable surface mounts w/UTES = 8 dTons (4 per weapon)

Each mount should be
Surface mount is 1 ton
Weapon is 1 ton
UTES is 1 ton
Retractable doubles the mount = 4 dTons per weapon

Since the Aconit should have 4 guns...

So your right that the weapons should be 4 dton each and a UTES for them adds 1 dton but I’m not seeing where it states that it should have 4 unless your talking about previous editions which would not really count.

Kennedy

8 EA-1000 (should be EA-122 from the source) in retractable surface mounts w/UTES
1 Type 29 PDS (no mount given)
Total = 37 dTons

EA-1000 w/UTES = 4 dTons per weapon = 32 dTons (10 dTons if 4 ton guns = 80 dTons)
PDS = 4 dTons (see example)
= 36 dTons

the Kennedy at least figures out
8 EA-1000 retractable surface mounts w/UTES is 4 per mount plus a UTES targeting system (they are a single battery) 33 dton
1 Typr 29 PDS (since it replaces a EA-1000 it uses the same type of mount) 4 dTons does not require a tracking system
Total 37dton like in the book.

So the issue seems to be the ships in the core box set not matching up with Aerospace which is nothing new compare Highguard with the CRB. As for not matching the GDW I don’t see the issue that’s a different edition and there are bound to be differences just like CT when compared to MgT2. But thank you comparing your examples cleared up the issue with weapons some. The mount Turret or Barbette are limited to one weapon each and the size (again Turret or Barbette) is determined by the weapon regular (turret) or Heavy (Barbette) and every ship requires at least one targeting system, in the case of a TTA one per group of identical weapons but only one gunner is required for that group or in the Case of a UTES only one per ship but the weapons each needs their own gunner.

 

[tytalan]

Martel

2 EA-1000 (should be 4 tons based on the source material, but is 1 in Mong, also should be LL-98 from the source) fixed retreactable w/UTES = 4 dTons

Each mount should be:
fixed mount is 0 tons
Weapon is 1 ton (but should be 4)
UTES adds 1 ton
Retractable should double the total tonnage, but only doubles the mount = 2 tons per weapon

I stand corrected at least a little most of the fighters seem to give retractable for free in ships of the frontier than adds UTES or the UTES on fighters is free. except for the Mistral which is completely out of wack. I think at the least we need an errata. As for the ships not matching GDWs version I’ll be honest that doesn’t really matter

 

[ottarrus]

You'll also find that the starship economics are seriously buggered.
There is little or no possible way that you can run a typical Traveller free trader campaign and still pay all the costs involved. Most ships can't even pay crew salaries on what they make hauling cargo and freight.

Now, don't get me wrong here. 2300AD is definitely not the Traveller OTU. There are gonna be a lot of huge differences, starship economics being one of the bigger ones. Space travel is more expensive and there is far more governmental and corporate control over space travel; in the 2300AD milieu, far fewer people take to the stars... both in terms of the percentage of the population and in actual numbers. And nearly every one of those people are employees of an organization that's paying their way. Even independent contractor 'troubleshooters' are just temporary hires.

 

[Grognardia]

I really really wish they had followed the rules in MGT2 High Guard for most of the 2300AD ship designs. They just needed to kludge something together for the stutterwarp.

Instead, they went ahead and made a total dog's dinner of the whole thing. Such a pity.

 

[Arkathan]

Aeroshells: AEH pg 58
Is this in addition to or in place of the other hull materials?

 

[ottarrus]

I really really wish they had followed the rules in MGT2 High Guard for most of the 2300AD ship designs. They just needed to kludge something together for the stutterwarp.

Instead, they went ahead and made a total dog's dinner of the whole thing. Such a pity.

Well, the problem was that so much of 2300AD's tech is so very different than OTU Traveller's. It isn't just stutterwarp, it's also the various power systems like MHD turbines, the lack of gravitics, spin cages, landers and so on and so forth. Even the Tech Level system in 2300 is different than the OTU. The original designers wanted 2300's tech to be so different that nobody could mistake it for 'regular Traveller'. And they succeeded at it.
But that success has made mashing the character generation, skill system, combat system and space technologies a stone bitch to write in a clear and consistent way. @ColinD has done a good job with what he had to work with, and follow-on authors have too, but 2300's tech just doesn't fit in the Traveller spectrum very well.

 

[tytalan]

Aeroshells: AEH pg 58
Is this in addition to or in place of the other hull materials?

Aeroshells are a type of landing vehicle not a hull type they are a ballistic hull with heat shielding and a landing system.
“Aeroshells are designed as ballistic hulls, with heat shields and a recovery package. The recovery package includes a single-use de-orbit motor, guidance system and parachutes. This consumes 5% of the hull volume and costs 0.2MLv per ton. Most aeroshells are designed for a single use and so have the Disposable trait.” Its not a hull or ship if you read thru it you design a ballistic hull with heat shielding than add the recovery package and possibly other options under Aeroshells, but no other drive or systems

 

[Arkathan]

Aeroshells are a type of landing vehicle not a hull type they are a ballistic hull with heat shielding and a landing system.
“Aeroshells are designed as ballistic hulls, with heat shields and a recovery package. The recovery package includes a single-use de-orbit motor, guidance system and parachutes. This consumes 5% of the hull volume and costs 0.2MLv per ton. Most aeroshells are designed for a single use and so have the Disposable trait.” Its not a hull or ship if you read thru it you design a ballistic hull with heat shielding than add the recovery package and possibly other options under Aeroshells, but no other drive or systems

Quoting the book, when I have already cited the page number is not helpful.
What I need to know, for purposes of creating that spreadsheet you asked about, is whether the Aeroshell is in addition to or instead of hull materials. The calculation acts like a material. That determines whether it is an add-on like heat shielding (included) or another type of material with strict requirements. It also affects the cost of your drop pod. Hull + Aeroshell or choose one.

They are a hull option, but it doesn't specify how to apply it.
They require a ballistic configuration and are limited to 5-400 tons.
Under 100 tons, they are disposable. Over 100 tons gets the option to reuse them.

Things like this are why no one has made a spreadsheet for 2300.

I suspect that I will need to add both Aeroshell and Inflatable Module as hull materials so that every type of construction is covered. Then use Collapsable as an add-on for the 100 - 400 ton band of Aeroshell. But I wanted to eliminate the possibility of that course being completely wrong prior to putting in the effort to code it.

 

[tytalan]

Quoting the book, when I have already cited the page number is not helpful.
What I need to know, for purposes of creating that spreadsheet you asked about, is whether the Aeroshell is in addition to or instead of hull materials. The calculation acts like a material. That determines whether it is an add-on like heat shielding (included) or another type of material with strict requirements. It also affects the cost of your drop pod. Hull + Aeroshell or choose one.

They are a hull option, but it doesn't specify how to apply it.
They require a ballistic configuration and are limited to 5-400 tons.
Under 100 tons, they are disposable. Over 100 tons gets the option to reuse them.

Things like this are why no one has made a spreadsheet for 2300.

I suspect that I will need to add both Aeroshell and Inflatable Module as hull materials so that every type of construction is covered. Then use Collapsable as an add-on for the 100 - 400 ton band of Aeroshell. But I wanted to eliminate the possibility of that course being completely wrong prior to putting in the effort to code it.

It’s in addition to tho if I read it right the actual modification is “The recovery package includes a single-use de-orbit motor, guidance system and parachutes. This consumes 5% of the hull volume and costs 0.2MLv per ton.” And “A collapsible aeroshell costs 50% more than a normal reusable model and loses another 5% of its interior volume for the structural features that allow it to be collapsible. It consumes 75% less space for shipping purposes to get it back into orbit, however.” It’s really a system added to a Ballistic hull with a heat shield to creat a drop system.

 

[Bryn the 2300AD guy]

I really really wish they had followed the rules in MGT2 High Guard for most of the 2300AD ship designs. They just needed to kludge something together for the stutterwarp.

Instead, they went ahead and made a total dog's dinner of the whole thing. Such a pity.

Over 20 years ago I wrote a simple conversion of 2k3 to dTons etc. and sent it to Colin, who was at a loss of what to do. Something very like that became the 1st Mong ed design system. That at least gave reasonable representations of the ships in the new system.

I'd agree that all you needed to do is add stutterwarp (which GDW already did in FF&S) to HG and a few more tweaks. Working out what 1 power is and implementing it properly as well. I've done this, and 1 power = 25 kW.

 

[Bryn the 2300AD guy]

Even the Tech Level system in 2300 is different than the OTU.

Sorry about that. I misread an interview in a British RPG magazine in the '90's in which (ISTR) David Nilsen was explaining their plans to produce a 2300ad SB for TNE. He said there was a "tech cap" of TL-12, meaning nothing beyond TL-12. I misread this as a general capability. I then misinformed Colin and he ran with it...

 

[Sigtrygg]

So it is all your fault...
nope, not at all.

The fault is to not go back to first principles with what the design system is meant to do.

Star Cruiser is not very compatible with LBB:5 High Guard or MegaTraveller, but take a look at Striker and especially TNE Fire, Fusion and Steel. And Star Cruiser was a very elegant design system, despite all the variables - mass, volume, surface area, power, heat radiators, oh and cost.

What Dave Nilsen was saying in his interview was that they may get round to revisiting 2300AD, all the tools are there, the d20 house system now it its nearly final form and the design system of FF&S based on real world units rather than the abstractions that plagued and continue to plague Traveller to this day. Did you know that they actually considered scrapping the jump drive for the Imperium setting and going with stutterwarp? That was in an interview too.

Instead of taking High Guard and adding stutterwarp, removing gravitics and jump, I wonder what you get if you add gravitics and jump to Star Cruiser...

 

[Bryn the 2300AD guy]

Instead of taking High Guard and adding stutterwarp, removing gravitics and jump, I wonder what you get if you add gravitics and jump to Star Cruiser...

You get my teenaged Traveller campaign from before I discovered 2k3, set in the aftermath of an Anglo-Russian war...

 

[Bryn the 2300AD guy]

Stutterwarp in FF&S is a little different, in that the equation has 2 dTons as the minimum drive size, thus:



This would have had some serious effects, such as missiles having to be really big (ca. 10 dTons) to be viable. The stutterwarp drive of a SIM-14 missile would be 3.32 dTons, and the whole missile about 5-6 dTons and go around warp 1.6.

However, the warp efficiency formula is correct, and was the essentially one used in 1st Mong edition. Colin had an unfortunate visit from the good idea fairy in 2016 and I missed it, and so he changed the formula without regard for the effects. It's now trivial to design warp 10-20 vessels (due to the changed formula, and an increased power output with > 100% efficiency being normal), and the warp limits in the AEH were a change Colin made whilst in press when I pointed out the mistake. He also lowered the warp multipliers, but didn't recalculate the examples.

It was apparently too much work to go back and correct the fundamental mistake.

 

[Condottiere]

In Jeff Hawke, there may have been an Anglo Russian alliance, against the Chinese.

 

[tytalan]

Sorry about that. I misread an interview in a British RPG magazine in the '90's in which (ISTR) David Nilsen was explaining their plans to produce a 2300ad SB for TNE. He said there was a "tech cap" of TL-12, meaning nothing beyond TL-12. I misread this as a general capability. I then misinformed Colin and he ran with it...

It’s even different from that because worlds don’t have separate tech levels TL 10 is colonial standard, TL 11 is core standard and TL 12 is military (that’s a over simplification but it’s the jest). And electronics are TL 13, TL 14, and TL 15 respectively. No fusion plus and no grav technology. That’s pretty much how the setting always been just not officially codified.

 

[Bryn the 2300AD guy]

In terms of fixing the AEH, the two most major fixes needed are:

1. Power

The conversion of power to MW is wrong. The true value is 40 PP = 1 MW.

2. Stutterwarp

It needs to be the physically correct cubic formula, as per the original. The FF&S formula for warp eff. works. Given 40 PP = 1 MW the formula becomes:

Warp eff = TLM * cuberoot (PP/400*D)

Where PP = power points and D = displacement. TLM is TL+4, 14 at TL-10, 15 at TL-11 and 16 at TL-12

The Kennedy, which is a 1,250 dTon vessel by the deck plans with a 40 PP (10 MW) fusion plant. The warp eff. of the Mong Kennedy is thus 0.69. This fits with the design, because the GDW original was "all engine" with about 5/8th's of the mass dedicated to powering the drive, whereas only about 2% of the Mong Kennedy is dedicated to powering the drive...