Astrogation needs help
- Thread starter Vormaerin
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alex_greene
Guest
It isn't like piloting an F-16 in the skies over some warzone. The dogfighting rules for space combat take Traveller into the realm of fantasy.
CordwainerFish
Emperor Mongoose
In my game, the computer operator (me) and the astrogator are about to try to write a program to match an unlabeled star chart against the IISS maps.
alex_greene
Guest
That will be fun. Checking the records for wobbles to indicate how many planets orbit; getting the range to the star through parallax (you know those extended array things? That's what they do); checking the system over time, multiple readings, to work out the planets' orbital periods, and whether or not there are eccentric worlds. Finally, probably picking the gas giant (the biggest planet) as the destination, plotting the course, and off you go.
Or you can just roll Astrogation and hope for an Effect of +3 or greater.
CordwainerFish
Emperor Mongoose
We tried the clever way and it didn't work, so now I'm hoping brute force and enough CPU time will do the trick.
Anstett
Emperor Mongoose
We have got this.
Gavain
Banded Mongoose
Not official adventures, but I have them for various reasons. The major ones have been when trying to approach a planet without being seen, the crew had to use astrogation to plot a course that would have minimum time with them "visible" to the planet. ie using moons and other bodies to hide their passage. The other one is to check where they exited jump space. I have an Ancients construct that forcibly ejected them into jump space. Eventually the emerged at the edge of the great rift. Appart from their initial view of no stars, they had to use astrogation to find pulsars and triangulate their location. I also made them use it when using a gas giant to try and ambush a pirate they were chasing. They made an excellent roll and I allowed them to come out of the clouds and static close behind their target. A bad roll would have placed them directly in front of their foe and loose their advantage.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
I prefer the term cinematic cartoon physics...
More constructively I would like to see much more use of the Astrogation skill in several areas of ship operation - isn't there a Starship Operator's Guide in the works
hey, stop revealing my sekret agendaI prefer the term cinematic cartoon physics...
More constructively I would like to see much more use of the Astrogation skill in several areas of ship operation - isn't there a Starship Operator's Guide in the works
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
The most obvious benefit would be effecting the duration and quality of jump transitions.
Astrogators could be replaced by computers, but then so could pilots and gunners. Basically, all the jobs in Traveller will likely have been replaced by robots in 5000 years time. We are seeing this happen right now; AI development is occurring so quickly that there is going to be a massive disruption within our lifetimes.
Unless we want to all play robots, and have a universe like Charles Stross' Neptune's Brood, we have to make some assumptions about future developments which reflect what we want to see in an exciting RPG, but which probably will not happen in reality.
One main assumption we need to make the Traveller universe work is that AI development just doesn't continue at the current pace; soon it hits a wall. Other things that we have no reason to believe will happen, in fact will happen in Traveller: Jump drives, grav tech being the main ones. If I had to bet money on it, I would bet that AI will be doing all this kind stuff soon (and much more), and jump drives and grav tech will never happen.
However, since we want to play human characters in a certain kind of space opera scenario, that is nonetheless believable enough and internally consistent enough to allow us to suspend disbelief, we have to limit AI development, and have our jump drives and handwavium grav drives.
Limited AI means allows us to need human astrogators, who maybe don't need to take out their slide rules like in Heinlein novels because they do have computers, but who nonetheless have a roll in the process of both calculating jumps and plotting maneuvers.
As for their being no mechanic, 1) actually not misjumping is pretty important - this is easy under ideal circumstances, but what if you have to do it in a gravity well? or with a damaged engine? etc. You will need all the bonuses you can get. 2) lots of times in Traveller there is no direct rule for the skill to use, but as others have pointed out, astrogation becomes to go-to skill for doing the fancy stuff space opera heros do with their spaceships. Want to calculate where those illicit drugs you dumped will be in two years time? Astrogation check. Want to jump back into the system near them, later on? Astrogation check. And so on. Also, players will often think up ways to use their skills different from what the main mechanical purpose is.
And how is Gun Combat not a social skill? Some people talk with their mouths, some with their hands, and others with their guns. There can be many different approaches to solving the same problem. (also, if you need to Carouse with gun enthusiasts at a gun show, Gun Combat (edu) can be in the task chain - you are the kind of guy who can talk about muzzle velocities and optics and alternate ammunition types). Every skill is a social skills, if used socially...
Unless we want to all play robots, and have a universe like Charles Stross' Neptune's Brood, we have to make some assumptions about future developments which reflect what we want to see in an exciting RPG, but which probably will not happen in reality.
One main assumption we need to make the Traveller universe work is that AI development just doesn't continue at the current pace; soon it hits a wall. Other things that we have no reason to believe will happen, in fact will happen in Traveller: Jump drives, grav tech being the main ones. If I had to bet money on it, I would bet that AI will be doing all this kind stuff soon (and much more), and jump drives and grav tech will never happen.
However, since we want to play human characters in a certain kind of space opera scenario, that is nonetheless believable enough and internally consistent enough to allow us to suspend disbelief, we have to limit AI development, and have our jump drives and handwavium grav drives.
Limited AI means allows us to need human astrogators, who maybe don't need to take out their slide rules like in Heinlein novels because they do have computers, but who nonetheless have a roll in the process of both calculating jumps and plotting maneuvers.
As for their being no mechanic, 1) actually not misjumping is pretty important - this is easy under ideal circumstances, but what if you have to do it in a gravity well? or with a damaged engine? etc. You will need all the bonuses you can get. 2) lots of times in Traveller there is no direct rule for the skill to use, but as others have pointed out, astrogation becomes to go-to skill for doing the fancy stuff space opera heros do with their spaceships. Want to calculate where those illicit drugs you dumped will be in two years time? Astrogation check. Want to jump back into the system near them, later on? Astrogation check. And so on. Also, players will often think up ways to use their skills different from what the main mechanical purpose is.
And how is Gun Combat not a social skill? Some people talk with their mouths, some with their hands, and others with their guns. There can be many different approaches to solving the same problem. (also, if you need to Carouse with gun enthusiasts at a gun show, Gun Combat (edu) can be in the task chain - you are the kind of guy who can talk about muzzle velocities and optics and alternate ammunition types). Every skill is a social skills, if used socially...
My point about there being no mechanics is twofold
1) Astrogation is not a skill most players have any personal framework for. It is not a skill that gets featured in media or do most people have any idea what you might do with the ability to navigate better. Player is a space pilot, lots of examples of that role out there. Same with Engineer. Examples of things that you can do with Astrogation during play besides making a help test for the Engineer would be useful.
2) Several of the examples in this thread are interesting, but how that actually works is not clear. Matt, for instance, suggests that Astrogation would help you win a space race. How much faster can you get to Jupiter from Earth if you make an Astrogation success with 2 Effect? 1% faster? 10% faster? What's a good way to determine the "terrain" on your Earth to Jupiter race to deliver medical supplies that you are navigating around/taking advantage of? Is the astrogator the one who determines if a slingshot is successful? Or is it like jumping, where the astrogator is a help test for the person making the main role (such as the pilot in this case).
It is easy to make a skill important. It is harder to make it interesting. This is a game and how it works is a decision about what's fun. If we want humans doing the space navigation, that's cool. But it needs support for players actually going "Right, I'm the astrogator. I can't wait to this cool stuff!".
This game isn't only for people with a deep knowledge of how space works. And the space opera media largely treats astrogation as a thing pilots or computers do. Star Wars and Firefly don't have navigators "on screen". Star Trek, the navigator is the Bridge crew's red shirt until Chekov and they pretty quickly moved him to weapons officer. Next Generation didn't even pretend to have a navigation officer. Reading the rules on Astrogation in the game doesn't give any examples either.
In addition to guidance and examples of realspace uses for Astrogation, making jump more interesting would help. Crew wants to go explore this adventure site around a brown dwarf in a nebula. That's gonna be a pretty difficult test. Are there things the crew, the astrogator in particular, can do to break it down into more manageable steps? Is there interesting narration to go with making the test? Something other than "I do some math and send it to the engineer?"
"Save or die" to get to the adventure is certainly important. I don't know that its fun. That isn't all that Astrogation can or should be, but that's basically all that you'll get from reading the rules. And we can't rely on media or real world experience to flesh it out in this case.
1) Astrogation is not a skill most players have any personal framework for. It is not a skill that gets featured in media or do most people have any idea what you might do with the ability to navigate better. Player is a space pilot, lots of examples of that role out there. Same with Engineer. Examples of things that you can do with Astrogation during play besides making a help test for the Engineer would be useful.
2) Several of the examples in this thread are interesting, but how that actually works is not clear. Matt, for instance, suggests that Astrogation would help you win a space race. How much faster can you get to Jupiter from Earth if you make an Astrogation success with 2 Effect? 1% faster? 10% faster? What's a good way to determine the "terrain" on your Earth to Jupiter race to deliver medical supplies that you are navigating around/taking advantage of? Is the astrogator the one who determines if a slingshot is successful? Or is it like jumping, where the astrogator is a help test for the person making the main role (such as the pilot in this case).
It is easy to make a skill important. It is harder to make it interesting. This is a game and how it works is a decision about what's fun. If we want humans doing the space navigation, that's cool. But it needs support for players actually going "Right, I'm the astrogator. I can't wait to this cool stuff!".
This game isn't only for people with a deep knowledge of how space works. And the space opera media largely treats astrogation as a thing pilots or computers do. Star Wars and Firefly don't have navigators "on screen". Star Trek, the navigator is the Bridge crew's red shirt until Chekov and they pretty quickly moved him to weapons officer. Next Generation didn't even pretend to have a navigation officer. Reading the rules on Astrogation in the game doesn't give any examples either.
In addition to guidance and examples of realspace uses for Astrogation, making jump more interesting would help. Crew wants to go explore this adventure site around a brown dwarf in a nebula. That's gonna be a pretty difficult test. Are there things the crew, the astrogator in particular, can do to break it down into more manageable steps? Is there interesting narration to go with making the test? Something other than "I do some math and send it to the engineer?"
"Save or die" to get to the adventure is certainly important. I don't know that its fun. That isn't all that Astrogation can or should be, but that's basically all that you'll get from reading the rules. And we can't rely on media or real world experience to flesh it out in this case.
Thread related: split out catastrophic misjumps from off-target misjumps. On time, on target is an Astrogation roll, and you roll every time to see if you're exactly where you want to be, or are taking extra hours/days/weeks to get to your intended port of call. Doesn't completely screw over player character parties who go short on Astrogation, while explaining why NPC merchants and megacorps staff it religiously. Catastrophic misjumps either return to Classic rules, or roll Engineer but set the numbers so you're only at risk if you're taking penalties.
Random thought: Sensors + Astrogation to determine where another ship is going when they jump. Though you need to be actively scanning at the moment they jump, and it's still difficult.
I think rolling it into Sensors/Comms officer co-pilot is entirely a good thing. Not every skill that needs covered needs to be an entirely separate class role, and not every separate class role (say, pilot) needs to have only one person with the primary skill in a player party.
Chance of making money. And you get some interesting different character concepts if it doubles up with Steward (ship's purser), or with Streetwise (smuggler), or with Gambler (not sure what you'd call that, except keep an eye on him).
And finally there's the moment when you realize you can take starting credits as trade good loads, or when you divide the price of a flamethrower into the price of a load of Advanced Weapons and buy 50 flamethrowers at a discount just because you can.
Random thought: Sensors + Astrogation to determine where another ship is going when they jump. Though you need to be actively scanning at the moment they jump, and it's still difficult.
I think rolling it into Sensors/Comms officer co-pilot is entirely a good thing. Not every skill that needs covered needs to be an entirely separate class role, and not every separate class role (say, pilot) needs to have only one person with the primary skill in a player party.
Chance of making money. And you get some interesting different character concepts if it doubles up with Steward (ship's purser), or with Streetwise (smuggler), or with Gambler (not sure what you'd call that, except keep an eye on him).
And finally there's the moment when you realize you can take starting credits as trade good loads, or when you divide the price of a flamethrower into the price of a load of Advanced Weapons and buy 50 flamethrowers at a discount just because you can.
Oh, I agree that not every skill needs to be role. But Astrogator is explicitly a role as written. Obviously, I only know about games I've played in, but it seems like Pilot/Astrogator are almost always merged on PC ships. (which is the expected function on the Empress Marava class in High Guard 
) That's not intrinsically a problem. But it is nice when the fiction ("all ships have a separate Astrogation Officer") and gameplay align. Expanding the role to cover other skills (Electronics for Sensors/Comms, for instance) is a reasonable way to go. But clarifying the range of stuff Astrogation skill can do would help also.
I do like the idea of splitting the Jump test into separate tests instead of a task chain, so the Astrogator is doing something besides providing a bonus to the Engineer on their central function.
I would love to see the Starship Operator's Manual lay out explicitly the mechanics for some of the things in this thread (and in the High Guard role write up). Having rules for how much a good astrogation roll can tighten the time of arrival, for instance. Stuff on using Astrogation to benefit realspace travel. Possibly some discussion of the interaction between Sensor Ops and Astrogation (ie, do you need both skills, either skill, or what). Does plotting a jump path without a computer take longer? If so, how much longer? Can the PC plot the jump path while tied up by pirates or do they need some gear to do it without computer assistance? Can the astrogator create a jump plot to appear on the opposite side of Jupiter from the Jupiter Naval Base? How difficult would that be if so?
) That's not intrinsically a problem. But it is nice when the fiction ("all ships have a separate Astrogation Officer") and gameplay align. Expanding the role to cover other skills (Electronics for Sensors/Comms, for instance) is a reasonable way to go. But clarifying the range of stuff Astrogation skill can do would help also.I do like the idea of splitting the Jump test into separate tests instead of a task chain, so the Astrogator is doing something besides providing a bonus to the Engineer on their central function.
I would love to see the Starship Operator's Manual lay out explicitly the mechanics for some of the things in this thread (and in the High Guard role write up). Having rules for how much a good astrogation roll can tighten the time of arrival, for instance. Stuff on using Astrogation to benefit realspace travel. Possibly some discussion of the interaction between Sensor Ops and Astrogation (ie, do you need both skills, either skill, or what). Does plotting a jump path without a computer take longer? If so, how much longer? Can the PC plot the jump path while tied up by pirates or do they need some gear to do it without computer assistance? Can the astrogator create a jump plot to appear on the opposite side of Jupiter from the Jupiter Naval Base? How difficult would that be if so?
ProfGrizzlyJon
Cosmic Mongoose
That is the point I was trying to make. The game is set in the far-future, but we are writing it in “the now”.
In the late 1900’s, I had to learn to avigate using either a complicated, low-tech network of navigational aids (literally bending radials from UHF radios) or through dead-reckoning (plotting location via time-distance-heading, adjusted for drift). This century, most folks only understand navigation using a computer-derived plot from GPS data. The good-old-days are forgotten (no one even uses printed maps anymore)
For Traveller, we now have the same issue. In civilized areas, there is likely a space traffic control system
In the late 1900’s, I had to learn to avigate using either a complicated, low-tech network of navigational aids (literally bending radials from UHF radios) or through dead-reckoning (plotting location via time-distance-heading, adjusted for drift). This century, most folks only understand navigation using a computer-derived plot from GPS data. The good-old-days are forgotten (no one even uses printed maps anymore)
For Traveller, we now have the same issue. In civilized areas, there is likely a space traffic control system
ProfGrizzlyJon
Cosmic Mongoose
Ok, I swear that I posted that response yesterday.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
If you want to play a Sage or an Alchemist, you usually have to figure out a bit harder how to fit that/those class/es into the game, in a more active role.
Outside of subsidiary skills, probably involves making knowledge or chemistry more effective.
Better resurrection through chemistry.
Outside of subsidiary skills, probably involves making knowledge or chemistry more effective.
Better resurrection through chemistry.
OK, this is fair enough. In my mind it is crystal clear what the Astrogator does and it is both important and interesting. But I can see how it might not be so obvious to people who get most of their space knowledge from smattering of random scifi movies and TV shows. There is Traveller material out there that puts more meat on the bones in terms of how space travel and jumping really works in Traveller, but it is not all canon, isn't always written to be that accessible to people who aren't scientistists or hard scifi geeks, and doesn't always provide clear mechanical guidance for Mongoose. Maybe some clearer rules guidance on starship operations, including details on the different roles, position qualifications, licensing and educational backgrounds, manning rules and implications of undermanning, professional societies, unions and guilds, regulatory authorities, watch standing, characteristics of jumps space, and so on would be interesting, and provide possible sources of drama . Does a Scout really require 3 crew, or how does it get by with 1? How does combining roles work? Will safety regulators "delicense" you to carry passengers when your pilot is also doing astrogation "on the side"? Probably some of this stuff is in Mongoose publications already, but the core descriptions do require embellishment to breath life into them.
Also, not everybody is really clear on the "geography" (astrography?) of space. The relative sizes and distances of things are important, as well as orbital mechanics and the way things move in space, and an understanding of this makes it clearer why a skill like Astrogration exists. I think a referee can come up with this stuff independently, but doing it well and consistently requires a knowledge of space which cannot be assumed for all referees.
Shadowblayde99
Banded Mongoose
Is this discussion from a GM point of view?
What do players want?
Do players want task chains and having to roll every time they want to go from A to B in a system? Or would they be happy hand waving it?
How often does a non standard jump occur during a game such that an astrogation roll is really needed?
I read somewhere that we only roll when failing the roll means something interesting happens. What do you do if a player fails the astrogation roll? Do you add on an hour or a day to their trip? Is that going to make a difference to the story? If they fail and you call a miss-jump, do you follow through on it and how do the players feel about that?
What do players want?
Do players want task chains and having to roll every time they want to go from A to B in a system? Or would they be happy hand waving it?
How often does a non standard jump occur during a game such that an astrogation roll is really needed?
I read somewhere that we only roll when failing the roll means something interesting happens. What do you do if a player fails the astrogation roll? Do you add on an hour or a day to their trip? Is that going to make a difference to the story? If they fail and you call a miss-jump, do you follow through on it and how do the players feel about that?
you assume that all goes well in normal operations if you have an an actual astrogator; if you have a JOT - 1 sort of winging it then yes, maybe you start making roles to make sure normal operations don't get messed up. And I would certainly let a hotshot astrogator player save a little bit of fuel if they want to make roles to do that, but would ignore it otherwise.
But for more dramatic situations, what if you only have a small amount of fuel, or life support, because of battle damage and you have a long trip ahead of you? What if you want to intercept a ship which has gone ballistic, but which you can no longer detect, based on its last known position and vector? What if you want to emerge from jump space in close formation with your pirate buddies to ambush a trader on a known route, rather than ending up scattered all over the solar system? These are all astrogation roles.
