Babylon 5 Technology - A Humble Request

[pasuuli]

Gentlemen,

Babylon 5 players have something valuable to contribute back to Mongoose.

As many of you know, Mongoose Traveller is to be a generic sci-fi ruleset, and is currently in playtesting on this forum.

Some of you may know about technology in Traveller. If you are not interested in it, please forgive this post and move on.

One of the things Gar is highly interested in at this point is, in his words, "The usefulness of the tech from a 'Traveller as a generic ruleset' perspective".

To me, this means Gar needs to know how Traveller must adapt.

This is an unusual request, but if anyone here is interested, I think it would help Gar if you would take a look at how Traveller treats technology and give him some suggestions.

The reason I'm asking you guys is because B5 is not Traveller, and therefore has different tech assumptions, and that adds a kind of objectivity to your view that can help Traveller become better suited to generic Sci-Fi.

If any of that makes sense, please glance over the playtest and let Gar know what you think about Traveller tech from your perspective.

 

[Valarian]

Firstly, let me say I like the Traveller universe and have played the T20 version. I'm not fond of the rules as laid out in the playtest documents so far. They're likely to appeal to the Classic Traveller player, but I'm not a fan. I would sincerely hope that Mongoose will not be migrating the Babylon 5 rules to Traveller, and will only be releasing a Babylon 5 sourcebook for the Traveller rules. As far as I know, this is the intent as laid out in Signs and Portents. My personal ideal would be the Traveller universe, using the Babylon 5 second edition rules. I for one, will not be purchasing the new Traveller rules.

The major issue with the Traveller technology levels and Babylon 5 is the introduction of gravitics (TL9). There is an assumption that the spacefaring races have control of gravitic technology. In B5, this is not the case. The Earth Alliance uses rotating sections and fusion drives on their ships. A lot of the League worlds are also at this level, without gravitational control. However, the Earth Alliance is beyond the TL8 level, I'd put them about TL10 (but without the gravitics).

Then there is the jump technology, which is completely different and available to relatively small ships in Traveller. In Traveller, a ship enters jump space for a fixed period of time, a week. In this time, the ship travels a number of parsecs equal to the jump-rating. In B5, only large ships can create their own jump points, smaller ships have to use jump-gates. The time spent in jumpspace (hyperspace) depends on the distance in hyperspace between the beacons. More advanced ships are able to travel further off beacon, speeding their transit. You could fit this in by making the Traveller jump-rating a speed rating in B5 for hyperspace travel.

I think that there's a lot of work to make B5 fit to Traveller technology levels. It would probably be better to redefine the TL ratings in B5 terms for the proposed sourcebook.