5FW: Why?

[GabrielGABFonseca]

Also worth pointing out that anything to do with how capital ships interact right now should be seen as a placeholder (funnily enough, was chatting to Marc about this a couple of weeks ago). At some point (he said) we will tackle capital ships and fleet combat on an 'official' level, but it will be done during a game that focusses on that level of fighting (roles of missiles, fighters, spinal mounts, secondaries, etc).

Some of the core mechanics in the new VHB may help out here, but we will see what you chaps think of them first.

I have just made a surprisingly accurate, spontaneous impression of Leonard Nimoy's Spock Eyebrow™ at this statement.
I am thoroughly intrigued!

 

[MasterGwydion]

I have just made a surprisingly accurate, spontaneous impression of Leonard Nimoy's Spock Eyebrow™ at this statement.
I am thoroughly intrigued!

This doesn't intrigue, it irritates Me. If I understand this statement correctly, which I may not, this shakes My faith that Mongoose is different than the suits at Hasbro. The employees may be owners as well, but that apparently doesn't make them better than WotC. I very much hope that I am mistaken in My understanding of this issue.

Why waste pages for something that you know you are just going to scrap later instead of filling that with things that might actually be useful to the rest of Us? Why have Us pay for that? That means that anything could be a placeholder and We would never know it until someone from the "inner circle" says so. So, We waste Our money on pages that were never intended to be the actual rules. That is just bad faith as far as I am concerned.

 

[Condottiere]

Beta testers?

 

[Sigtrygg]

Also worth pointing out that anything to do with how capital ships interact right now should be seen as a placeholder (funnily enough, was chatting to Marc about this a couple of weeks ago). At some point (he said) we will tackle capital ships and fleet combat on an 'official' level, but it will be done during a game that focusses on that level of fighting (roles of missiles, fighters, spinal mounts, secondaries, etc).

How did I miss this, or is it just memory failing?

A Call To Arms: High Guard.

Fleet battles during the FFW

(but may be adapted to other eras - Consolidation Wars, ISW, Pacification campaign, Julian War, Civil War, Solomani Rim War, Frontier Wars... Rebellion )

Will it include ship combat in other than Third Imperium settings? T2300 Star Cruiser...

A Call to Arms: Star Cruiser

ship to ship combat in the 2300AD setting.

Plenty of ship to ship combat prior to the Kafer War, and then the Kafer Wars themselves.

Then there is the Shoulder of Orion campaign vs the advanced craft of the provolutionists

 

[boggo2300]

Wait where is that announced?

 

[ross]

Why waste pages for something that you know you are just going to scrap later instead of filling that with things that might actually be useful to the rest of Us? Why have Us pay for that? That means that anything could be a placeholder and We would never know it until someone from the "inner circle" says so. So, We waste Our money on pages that were never intended to be the actual rules. That is just bad faith as far as I am concerned.

I think a better question is "is everybody going to use this?" I can definitely see a capstone fleet combat system that probably 90% of players would never use. Big Fleet battles and Traveller are very rare to begin with, a lot of players may not be even interested in them. This calls to mind, Brilliant Lances, and it's greater failure. I'm interested in playing a roleplaying game. So unless these fleet rules are significantly affected by what my player can do, I don't have any interest in them.

 

[Sigtrygg]

GDW was a wargame company first, rpgs second.

Snapshot, Mayday, Dark Nebula, Double Star, Belter, Triplanetary, Imperium, Invasion Earth, Brilliant Lances, Battle Rider, Star Cruiser, Striker, AHL.

I have them all, I have played them all. There is a wargame market out there.

 

[Condottiere]

That aspect will likely get computerized.

Or, you get to buy models and set up enlarged deckplans on a table.

 

[Vormaerin]

GDW was a wargame company first, rpgs second.

Snapshot, Mayday, Dark Nebula, Double Star, Belter, Triplanetary, Imperium, Invasion Earth, Brilliant Lances, Battle Rider, Star Cruiser, Striker, AHL.

I have them all, I have played them all. There is a wargame market out there.

Yeah, a lot of people forget that GDW was wargaming first because it is its RPGs that have gone the distance. I don't have all of those, but I have quite a few and had a lot of fun with them. Fifth Frontier War and Invasion Earth were fun games.

I've especially used Azhanti HIgh Lightning and Mayday for various things over the years.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I think a better question is "is everybody going to use this?" I can definitely see a capstone fleet combat system that probably 90% of players would never use. Big Fleet battles and Traveller are very rare to begin with, a lot of players may not be even interested in them. This calls to mind, Brilliant Lances, and it's greater failure. I'm interested in playing a roleplaying game. So unless these fleet rules are significantly affected by what my player can do, I don't have any interest in them.

On that, I will say that it would benefit worldbuilding-referees greatly, the average player though, probably not at all. (Except through the worldbuilding of their referee, of course.)

 

[actionman]

Snapshot, Mayday, Dark Nebula, Double Star, Belter, Triplanetary, Imperium, Invasion Earth, Brilliant Lances, Battle Rider, Star Cruiser, Striker, AHL.

I have them all, I have played them all.

A true King.

 

[collins355]

I think a better question is "is everybody going to use this?" I can definitely see a capstone fleet combat system that probably 90% of players would never use. Big Fleet battles and Traveller are very rare to begin with, a lot of players may not be even interested in them. This calls to mind, Brilliant Lances, and it's greater failure. I'm interested in playing a roleplaying game. So unless these fleet rules are significantly affected by what my player can do, I don't have any interest in them.

Brilliant Lances was not/not a fleet (or even a squadron) combat system. It was an RPG-level ship-to-ship combat system that replaced the abomination in the original TNE corebook (an abomination that was actually more similar than not to MGT's corebook starship combat system). If you weren't interested in Brilliant Lances, it wasn't because it was a fleet combat system.

 

[rinku]

Excellent counter set and useful hex map sheets; I still use them to this day. For Mongoose.

I never really used the TNE space combat system. The one attempt at TNE never got that far.

 

[Sigtrygg]

That aspect will likely get computerized.

I'm not interested in a computer game, I wand a game I play on a table top.

It may have to be a big table top

Or, you get to buy models and set up enlarged deckplans on a table.

AHL deckpland were and still are useful for 15mm skirmish. The Element class cruiser deckplans are useless to me.

I backed Vanguard for a reason...

 

[MongooseMatt]

Why waste pages for something that you know you are just going to scrap later

It is not about scrapping - it is development. Something as immense as Charted Space does not come into being fully formed. Indeed, it has been around for coming up to five decades and it is still not 'there'.

And I hope it never will be. There will always be new ways of looking at things and new ideas to incorporate. We have never looked at Traveller (in terms of both rules and setting) as anything other than a 'living' place that will inevitably change as it gets defined.

In terms of capital ship combat, there is simply no real need for it in the game as it stands (the likes of Deepnight do push that boundary, obviously).

At some point, this will get looked at, in connection with a project that requires it. That does not necessarily invalidate what is currently out there. For example, we know there are fighters in space. How they are actually employed at a fleet level... is a bit of an open question right now. However, for the moment, all we really need to know is what happens when the Travellers get a couple of Sword Worlds fighters on the tail of their Far Trader.

Right now, that is the scope of the game. If/when the scope is increased or changes, aspects will get revisited.

It really cannot work any other way.

 

[MasterGwydion]

It is not about scrapping - it is development. Something as immense as Charted Space does not come into being fully formed. Indeed, it has been around for coming up to five decades and it is still not 'there'.

And I hope it never will be. There will always be new ways of looking at things and new ideas to incorporate. We have never looked at Traveller (in terms of both rules and setting) as anything other than a 'living' place that will inevitably change as it gets defined.

In terms of capital ship combat, there is simply no real need for it in the game as it stands (the likes of Deepnight do push that boundary, obviously).

At some point, this will get looked at, in connection with a project that requires it. That does not necessarily invalidate what is currently out there. For example, we know there are fighters in space. How they are actually employed at a fleet level... is a bit of an open question right now. However, for the moment, all we really need to know is what happens when the Travellers get a couple of Sword Worlds fighters on the tail of their Far Trader.

Right now, that is the scope of the game. If/when the scope is increased or changes, aspects will get revisited.

It really cannot work any other way.

Then I would advise you to tackle Trade & Manufacturing first as many people on these forums do keep tripping over not having any idea how trade actually works in Charted Space, and the Manufacturing rules as presented are basically cash printing machines. The closest to Fleet Combat that I have ever come has been in the Pirates of Drinax at the end of the campaign, and that was pretty horrible, but it was only a very small part of the campaign. Trade, Adventure-Class ship to ship combat, building pirates bases with manufacturing capacity, diplomacy, espionage, etc were all much larger parts of the game. In any FFW Campaign, the scale needs to be kept on the players and not on the overall battle, so even in FFW Campaigns, fleet combat rules are less important than other things. I can approximate a fairly accurate fleet combat using standard ship combat rules. It is complicated and a pain in the ass, but given how rarely I have to do it while running or prepping for a game, it is doable. Trying to figure out how Trade works though for everyone else in the Universe who are not PCs, is a bit of a problem that has no solution currently.

PoD gave Us a great sandbox campaign. I love it and it is one of My favorite campaigns of all time, but look at it's flaws and what it had to try and build from scratch because, the rules to do what the writer needed didn't exist in Traveller. People writing adventures or campaigns for publication shouldn't have to write their own rules to make their campaigns work. To this day, I still hate the whole base-building in PoD. "Person Work Hours" Dumbest thing I have ever come across. One, people do not usually work at the same rate. Two, skills and attributes have no real effect on your work speed. I could go on, but you get the gist of what I am saying.

Edit - Although, if Mongoose wanted to make a full wargame that was fully compatible with MgT2 Traveller rules as a separate game, with multiple titles and supplements, this would be cool for both wargamers and for worldbuilders, but won't really have any bearing on 99% of Traveller roleplaying campaigns.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Then I would advise you to tackle Trade & Manufacturing first

You are not wrong - and this has not appeared as yet because of similar issues as fleet combat.

Basically, this is not one book, it is several, that all need to be cross-compatible with one another. Which takes a number of writers working on a number of titles... and we have current projects that need attention first.

We will get round them to them though. We got round to the FFW in the end

 

[Terry Mixon]

It is not about scrapping - it is development. Something as immense as Charted Space does not come into being fully formed. Indeed, it has been around for coming up to five decades and it is still not 'there'.

And I hope it never will be. There will always be new ways of looking at things and new ideas to incorporate. We have never looked at Traveller (in terms of both rules and setting) as anything other than a 'living' place that will inevitably change as it gets defined.

In terms of capital ship combat, there is simply no real need for it in the game as it stands (the likes of Deepnight do push that boundary, obviously).

At some point, this will get looked at, in connection with a project that requires it. That does not necessarily invalidate what is currently out there. For example, we know there are fighters in space. How they are actually employed at a fleet level... is a bit of an open question right now. However, for the moment, all we really need to know is what happens when the Travellers get a couple of Sword Worlds fighters on the tail of their Far Trader.

Right now, that is the scope of the game. If/when the scope is increased or changes, aspects will get revisited.

It really cannot work any other way.

Fighters are something that I hope gets a look when the eventual High Guard 202? Update happens. As it sits, they’re just not the danger to larger ships that they should be. Such a cool thing to be nerfed.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Fighters are something that I hope gets a look when the eventual High Guard 202? Update happens. As it sits, they’re just not the danger to larger ships that they should be. Such a cool thing to be nerfed.

Torpedoes, maybe, need another look. Torpedoes are supposed to be how smaller ships can affect larger ones.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Fighters should be no danger to large ships, The end. Changing Traveller Third Imperium fighters to be yet more like Star Wars fighters is counter to the Third Imperium setting, not to mention even semi-realistic space warfare.

A Large ship can have a sensor suite bigger then the entire fighter, a large ship can have a weapon system bigger than a fighter, a large ship can power those sensors and weapon systems with power plants larger than that fighter, and finally that large ship can have bigger engines and more armour.

Space fighters have their place in science fantasy cartoon physics cinematic pew pew. I have no use for them.