A new vision for High Guard?

[actionman]

Sounds like no one wants a fleet combat resolution mechanism.

Well, I do.

But, my greatest concern is that Mongoose has to hammer out what they're going to do for it and keep it consistent, instead of invalidating every current version when a new book comes out. It also depends on if the system Mongoose hypothetically creates has the granularity to make thinking about it a worthwhile endeavor.

Battles, ship battles, and fleet battles.

I remember a quote from a British soldier who survived a Napoleonic battle. Someone asked him about this important battle he was in, and he responded with things that happened to him personally. I remember him quoted as saying, "...and then a horse ran over me."

How this relates:

Big things, like battles, are experienced by individual people as sequences of personal experiences. This is especially true because people tend to hyperfocus in such situations, and others (trauma nurses, emergency responders, etc.)

This can be used in Traveller by breaking down a big event, like a fleet battle, into separate, smaller parts, like the part the player character's ship would be involved in. Example: the fleet the players' ship is a part of engages a hostile fleet. The fleet commander gives the player's ship a role, responsibility, a job to do, and a location to do it in, like "do point defense for this cruiser" or "execute a bombing run against the asteroid base while our fleet engages the hostile ships" or "take a position in this particular flank of the battlegroup and engage all targets that enter your battlespace". This takes a fleet battle and breaks it down to the part of that event that the players would actually interact with, to a part that is small enough for the players to affect, a part small enough for to be a sequence of personal experiences for the player characters.

Example: Perform point defense for another ship. Scoffing and mocking aside, the Ref would set up point defense for the cruiser as a series of mini-encounters. The player characters make their skill rolls, etc, and these missiles attacks, drone waves, or fighter attacks are resolved, as per the rules. What the players fail to stop is then resolved by the cruiser. The more the cruiser is damaged, the less it can help the fleet. If the cruiser is rendered ineffective, that's going to have consequences and it could turn the tide of the battle against the players' fleet. What the players are doing is important. Some of the attacks could be against the players' ship, and then the players have to decide if they want to defend themselves or protect the cruiser while it hammers away at the hostile primary targets. If the players' ship takes damage, then you can have the developing situation of a character doing EVA damage control to make damaged turrets operational. Things are only boring if the Ref doesn't make an effort or the players' oppositional-defiant disorders are acting up. As the battle develops, the role of the players' ship changes. If the players' fleet is winning, the players' ship can join in pursuing the fleeing hostiles, or delivering boarding parties to disabled enemy ships, etc. Imagination is the limit. In this way, a big battle is broken down and transformed into a series of actions that the players can determine the course of with their efforts. The challenge is making sure the game mechanics can accommodate this. Modify if necessary.

Example: Take a flanking position in the battlegroup. Again the Ref breaks the battle down in smaller pieces, and the player's ship faces a series of mini-encounters against hostile ships as it protects the battlegroup's flank. The role and mission of the players' ship changes as the battle develops.

During times when the players aren't involved in much, like when their ship is guarding its flank and isn't facing attacks, the Ref compresses and dramatizes these periods with a couple of short narrative descriptions of what's happening, like radio traffic, activity on the bridge's tactical displays, etc., so the players know what's going on. Then mini-encounter happens. Then the aftermath.
It's like story structure:

• Narrative descriptions, a couple of descriptions - Buildup.
• Mini encounter - Climax
• Aftermath (damage control, medical response, racing against time to get vital systems back online, etc.) - lessening of tension, but not to the level it was before.

In this way a Ref can build tension in the adventure with a series of narrative waves of buildup-climax-aftermath that continually increase the tension until the climactic event that resolves the larger event one way or another.

Really, the fun in Traveller (or any ttrpg) comes from a symbiotic relationship between the dice rolling / working the game mechanics and the dramatic story that is developing in the imaginations of the Ref and the players. If people don't engage, like the Ref just wants to roll some dice and say 'okay you guys win/lose/whatever' or silently rolls dice to resolve the fleet battle while the players eat snacks or look at their phones and wait for the Ref to get back to them, or the players refuse to imagine anything, refuse to get into the spirit of what's happening with their characters, and generally sit there like lumps of overcooked potato and complain that it's boring, well, then nothing's going to work.

 

[actionman]

At some point, there will be cheap enough monitor screens that can be spread across a table, and blueprints can be scaled as appropriate to the situation.

One technique I heard about was a digital projector projecting down onto the table from above (the GM put together some kind of rack to hold it above the table). The GM would then project an image of the map on his computer down onto the tabletop itself, and he could control and modify the image to reveal the map as the players explored it.

 

[rinku]

Map Only As Really Necessary applies to this sort of stuff. Unless the players are at high command level (at which point mapping the battle IS probably necessary... but would likely be expressed in more abstract terms such as how an entire platoon fared) you can pre-determine the flow of events at a high level (by all means make some rolls) and then game out what's happening to the PCs.

But in any case, the players have to have the ability to affect and be affected by their immediate situation. It might just be "hold this hill"; if the battle is won, their efforts were important. If the battle is lost, they can consider the cost paid and maybe senselessness of it all as they fall back and give up their hard won gains.