A Suitable Fleet

[JMISBEST]

A GM I know says her Players have been doing Drinax for around 252 years of in-game time and around 8.8 real-life years, this has been across 10 generations of the players families with each player training his or her successor and that successor taking over when The Pc is dead

Drinax has unofficially stood for 51.7 years and has officially for 37.3 months and The combined Fleets of The Pcs and The Starguard alone can muster 303 ships that consist of 416 Fighting Dice of regular Ships that range for 100 tons to 31,700 tons and 6 Capital Ships is the form of 4 50,000 ton Freighters converted into 2 Medium Carriers and the 2 Heaviest Custom-Made Cruisers in history, A 75,000 ton ship of The Same Make as The Eurisko that The Zhodanni manipulated The 13th Duke of Tobia since it started into giving them after losing, again cos of Zhodanni Manipulation, A bet of The Cr 20 Billion Ship VS The 10th Ruler of Drinax since Olebs Cr 25,6 Billion Art Collection and A Custom Build 113,800 ton Freighter converted into A Cruiser. What would be a realistic fleet for The Hierate to send to try to conquer Drinax?

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

A fleet built on handwavium.

 

[paltrysum]

Sounds like a really unenjoyable campaign to play in. When you give the players everything, why should they try?

 

[M J Dougherty]

I've never met anyone who tried to play a game like Traveller on such a grandiose scale. You seem to know several gaming groups who do nothing but.

Drinax, like most other Traveller products, is aimed at a group of guys struggling along on a shoestring and (occasionally) getting lucky. Once you start talking about fleets of dozens of ships you're way beyond what the designers intended and basically on your own. When it's hordes of The Best Ships Ever, the setting is so distorted that it's hard to see how any of the original provisos of the adventure could apply.

The short answer to this (and most of your other) questions is: 'you've created a situation far beyond the scope of a typical game as envisioned by the writers. You'll have to create a suitable response to go with it.'

 

[M J Dougherty]

Presumably this duke of Tobia was executed for treason? Giving away the Best Ship Ever on a bet isn't something a responsible political figure will do. A lunatic might, but he'd be removed as a warning to others and the ship would not be handed over.

These games you describe seem to all have built into them a way for someone who just happens to get the Luckiest Roll Evar to get handed vast riches and power. And then they make that roll. And you have to ask how to deal with it.

The answer is to not shovel heaps of diamonds over your Travellers at the whim of the dice. Three ships in the 200-400 ton class is an impressive force in the Trojan Reach, and achievng this force level is a thing to be proud of... in the game as the designers envisioned it. Overcoming challenges on a shoestring is what Traveller is all about... at least to me.

I would suggest that the answer to your many problems is to reduce the scale back down to 'some guys in a small ship' and make the Travellers work for their successes. That way you don't have to deal with how the Imperium would respond to a small power in Trojan Reach that has more ships than the Deneb, Marches and Corridor fleets combined and they're TL18 and they have impenetrable shields and they carry psionic marines and........

Alternatively, if this is how you like to play, by all means play that way. But you can't expect the forum community to provide answers to these situations you create. They just wouldn't happen in any other person's game that I've ever seen.

 

[JMISBEST]

Presumably this duke of Tobia was executed for treason? Giving away the Best Ship Ever on a bet isn't something a responsible political figure will do. A lunatic might, but he'd be removed as a warning to others and the ship would not be handed over.

These games you describe seem to all have built into them a way for someone who just happens to get the Luckiest Roll Evar to get handed vast riches and power. And then they make that roll. And you have to ask how to deal with it.

The answer is to not shovel heaps of diamonds over your Travellers at the whim of the dice. Three ships in the 200-400 ton class is an impressive force in the Trojan Reach, and achievng this force level is a thing to be proud of... in the game as the designers envisioned it. Overcoming challenges on a shoestring is what Traveller is all about... at least to me.

I would suggest that the answer to your many problems is to reduce the scale back down to 'some guys in a small ship' and make the Travellers work for their successes. That way you don't have to deal with how the Imperium would respond to a small power in Trojan Reach that has more ships than the Deneb, Marches and Corridor fleets combined and they're TL18 and they have impenetrable shields and they carry psionic marines and........

Alternatively, if this is how you like to play, by all means play that way. But you can't expect the forum community to provide answers to these situations you create. They just wouldn't happen in any other person's game that I've ever seen.

But he was Psionically manipulated in a way that makes it look like a alliance of The Ine Givar and Zhodanni where for reasons never uncovered trying to start A War between Drinax and what at the time was The dying 3rd Imperium and is now the less then 11.7 years old 4th Imperium

 

[MonkeyX]

M J Dougherty’s post still stands. Just how many campaigns of Drinax are being run here? The questions are all about having a gazillion ships fighting another gazillion ships. I think on that scale a game of Risk is more useful.

 

[M J Dougherty]

My point is that the scale of your version of the setting is so wildly different to the setting as written that none of the underlying provisos apply.

There always seems to be a reason - psionic manipulation of a rich noble to do something stupid, luckiest die rolls ever, aliens from 4.45 galaxies over arriving with 119,436,442 TL21.6 ships carrying 114.6 combat robots each or whatever - why the players have enormous fleets of superpowered warships and vast heaps of cash. Which always creates the same problem - your questions involve an incredibly contrived situation that simply would not exist in any game I've ever seen.

The answer is always the same: If you want to play on this scale, figure out how to handle it. Nobody else is doing it, so nobody else has answers for you.

Other, of course, than 'that situation seems very contrived. I can't see how it could happen'.

 

[M J Dougherty]

Are you familiar with the adventure Flatlined?

That was the last one I ran.

Four Travellers woke up in a sinking cargo shuttle, in a lake. Without even proper shoes.

We got hours of play time just getting out of the shuttle and yomping to the nearby outpost. Yet more time spent dealing with what was going on there.

For these players, getting some shoes was an achievement to celebrate. Even if they didn't fit properly.

You don't need to play for 268.67 game years and own half the universe to enjoy the game.

And it's much easier to come up with sensible answers to questions like 'how do I get those ration bars out of the locker in the flooded galley?'

 

[steve98052]

I think there actually is a rule set that kind of applies: Trillion Credit Squadron, from the classic era. If you know enough players to use the fog of war rules, it could be fun.

But of course any technology level above 15 is a McGuffin as far as published rules are concerned, so while massive fleets are workable under Trillion Credit Squadron rules, it's probably best to cap technology at TL15 -- or switch to Star Fleet Battles rules.

 

[Pyromancer]

In my own game (loosely based on the "Pirates of Drinax" campaign, but centered on Inurin), the Duke of Tobia has secretly given an old, mothballed TL12 battlecruiser to Inurin. 20,000 dton, J-2, but with a (theoretically) functional spinal weapon. And that's a total game changer for the subsector.

I use (a somewhat simplified version of) Power Projection: Fleet for space battles. It has rules on how to convert Classic Traveller High Guard ships to PP:F stats, and the system works nice for battles with a few capital ships like the old battlecruiser and numerous smaller ships. You might want to look into it.