A question about Manoeuvre Drives

[GhengisRexx]

I am coming back to Traveller after a very long absence. (CT, 1980s). I have been looking at the high guard rules and tinkering with the ship design rules preparing to run the Pirates of Drinax campaign. With the play test rules it seems very cheap and easy to get high M drive ratings. The cost in space does not increase proportionally to the increase in thrust. Based on this, it seems like a no brainer to design with the highest possible thrust allowed by TL. "Speed is life."

If this is correct it raises two concerns. This largest being that if all the older designs were limited to Thrust 6, 20 some odd years of classic designs are somewhat obsolete. ("Oh, a dragon class SDB. How quaint. It only has 6 g acceleration, see you later! " )

The second concern is that any design system should offer hard choices and compromises. If I can make a ship 10 - 15% faster for only 1% of my internal hull space. that is not a choice, and it would seem that nearly all designs would logically max out M drive.

I know a few of you out there are busily testing capital ships and fighters, and clearly have been at this a while. I would love to hear your reply.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The thrust is linear to mass of drive. 1G requires 1%, 6G requires 6%.

The M-Drives are much smaller than CT High Guard, but as usual a warship design will be rather tight. There are a lot of systems competing for space in a ship.

The drives are not free they cost money. E.g. the hull and drives for a cruiser:

                             dTonn    Cost    Power
Hull                         33000             6600
Config  Streamlined                   1980  
Hull strength  Standard          
Armour BondedSuperdense  15   3960    2376  
              
JumpD  Budget,Late  J-3       2480    2790     9900
ManœuvreD  VAdv,2*EneEff 9G   2970    7425    14850
PowerP                        1491    2981    29810

The entire cruiser costs GCr 28, the M-Drive is GCr 7.4 thereof.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Or take a 400 dT J-1 freighter.

with 1G it costs MCr 58 and can take 276 dT cargo.
with 9G it costs MCr 103 and can take 223 dT cargo, at double the cost and 80% of the cargo it will hardly be economical.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The practical answer is that most warships will have max M-Drive.

You can also add Reaction Drives, up to an additional 16G, with massive fuel requirements.

So you can have a total of 25G for a short while, instead of the old 6G. That is a, ahem, "feature" of the system. Few jump ships will have Reaction Drives.

Armour is very light and cheap compared to CT High Guard, most warships will max M-Drive and armour at all TLs. It's a bright new world.

There are plenty of hard choices, but just not about that.

 

[GhengisRexx]

Are these design choices different from the previous MT version?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Basically no, but practically yes.

You can stuff you ships shock full of weapons. There are many viable weapon systems, with different defences. You can't defend against everything... Cost is as always a major concern.

 

[GhengisRexx]

Was there a particular thought process that went into that? It seems to be a pretty drastic change. It seems that every military vessel will be max thrust and max armor. This will make all the ships in the older books completely outdated, and will create a huge gulf between military vessels and civilian vessels. And while that is realistic, as a gm, I certainly would want players in a civilian ship to fear a military vessel, but with these rules, no economical trader would be able to run or fight any T9 armor 12 fighter, escort or other ship.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I'm just a lowly beta-tester, I have no idea why these changes were made.

You would have to ask msprange, or perhaps AndrewW or Nerhesi?

... with these rules, no economical trader would be able to run or fight any T9 armor 12 fighter, escort or other ship.

Yes? Just like in CT? Traders are slow, warships tend to be fast.

 

[GhengisRexx]

Of course in any 'realistic' simulation a military vessel would smash a civilian vessel. But for an exciting game (or movie for that matter) encounter, this seems like it would be so realistic as to create inevitable results.

I guess I am just hung up on this because it is a huge change, that seems to have a fair number of cons, and I am having trouble finding the pros. (Not of the entire system, there is a lot I like, but of the armor and M drive changes.)

Hopefully someone further up the ladder will chime in and shed some light.

 

[AndrewW]

Was there a particular thought process that went into that? It seems to be a pretty drastic change. It seems that every military vessel will be max thrust and max armor. This will make all the ships in the older books completely outdated, and will create a huge gulf between military vessels and civilian vessels. And while that is realistic, as a gm, I certainly would want players in a civilian ship to fear a military vessel, but with these rules, no economical trader would be able to run or fight any T9 armor 12 fighter, escort or other ship.

M-drive percentages where higher initially, but where set at what they are now from above, we didn't have a choice in the matter.

Even in the previous High Guard M-drives did go above thrust 6, was just limited to small craft then.

 

[AndrewW]

I guess I am just hung up on this because it is a huge change, that seems to have a fair number of cons, and I am having trouble finding the pros. (Not of the entire system, there is a lot I like, but of the armor and M drive changes.)

Armour didn't change from the previous Mongoose High Guard (other then the addition of Molecular Bonded armour and a switch to the percentages and cost per one point instead of multiple points.

 

[Nerhesi]

Several of us advocated for geometric scaling of M-drive weight/space.

Direction from Marc M was very clear on exact values for jump drives, m-drives, what can be a turret, barbette or bay and some other things

 

[Condottiere]

And then you have UPS Delivery Cruisers.

 

[Chas]

I understand where you are coming from GhengisRexx having been in something of a similar situation myself. However I think at the end of the day M9 standardizing at high tech level is not a deal breaker in terms of what has gone differently from the very first rule sets. The jumps not changing is the main point for me and I assume most users. That the new breed is all faster isn't going to change much (relatively) in game worlds made or otherwise. The key flavor elements are still there and we'd be very surprised to see a chunk of the other rules hadn't been changed, given the issues of the original HG with rules not matching intended ship design.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Any increase over 6g as warship maximum makes these rules yet another variant rule system for the OTU.

Within the OTU as published to date 6g is max, MgT HG2 appears to be set to invalidated pretty much all previous canon - or there needs to be a line that says within the OTU 6g is max.

Take a minute to look at all the core rules in HG second edition that are not in the OTU:

Ion weapons (totally science fantasy since PA are ion guns - the ion weapon should really be renamed electromagnetic pulse gun or something like that)
tachyon weapons (great idea - destroy a target before you know it's there so you have no reason to fire on it - should be called a paradox gun)
gravimetric distorters
maneuver drives over 6g

 

[Nerhesi]

Any increase over 6g as warship maximum makes these rules yet another variant rule system for the OTU.

Within the OTU as published to date 6g is max, MgT HG2 appears to be set to invalidated pretty much all previous canon - or there needs to be a line that says within the OTU 6g is max.

Take a minute to look at all the core rules in HG second edition that are not in the OTU:

Ion weapons (totally science fantasy since PA are ion guns - the ion weapon should really be renamed electromagnetic pulse gun or something like that)
tachyon weapons (great idea - destroy a target before you know it's there so you have no reason to fire on it - should be called a paradox gun)
gravimetric distorters
maneuver drives over 6g

OTU had 9G small craft.
OTU has 9G because OTU is Marc Miller. T5 has 9G - and Marc has indicated this now must have it.
Mesons don't use Mesons - thats OTU. So Tachyon not being tachyon, Ion not being Ion, Gravimetric being faerie dust are all perfectly fine.

OTU doesn't mean it will never change - OTU just means whomever the authoritative source is gets to say what is official and what is not.

Even if I disagree with some changes. If energy shields are suddenly in-play tomorrow, then that is OTU.

 

[AndrewW]

Within the OTU as published to date 6g is max, MgT HG2 appears to be set to invalidated pretty much all previous canon - or there needs to be a line that says within the OTU 6g is max.

OTU is whatever Marc Miller says it is. Yes, some new toys come into the OTU at times (psionics for example) and some go out (such as Meson Bays).

You left out 500 ton bays and molecular bonded armour. Doesn't mean things didn't exist just because they wheren't detailed previously. I would say things being taken away that did exist in the OTU is more of a change to canon.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Within the OTU as published to date 6g is max, MgT HG2 appears to be set to invalidated pretty much all previous canon - or there needs to be a line that says within the OTU 6g is max.

Pick your battles. This seems to be happening.

You could just multiply old m-drives by 1.5, and the old ships will fit right in.

 

[Nerhesi]

Some of Your questions are better posed on the T5 citizens of the imperium forum. It's been out for a couple of years and has already set the OTU to 9g for example

 

[GhengisRexx]

Thanks for all the replies. Now I have to get my head around whether I want to just take the existing rules and change them so they make some sense, or play MT 1.
Seems like my choice is either,
A. Put up with being annoyed by a design system where every ship has max M Drive, and Max armor. And none of the cannon ship designs are usable anymore. To me, this is a terrible design choice. I don't mind M9, but to make M9 and max armor standard is just......
Or B, I can redo some design math to make sense (not so big a deal) design all new ships (a big deal) , and ignore all the shiny new products that will be coming out (bad for supporting the good people making the game. Meh.