Drive rating changes

[Infojunky]

So the idea occurs to me tonight that one way to change the how ship combat feels is to reset the maneuver drives to be rate to the nearest quarter g. In that a 1g trader would have a 4 thrust increments to play with instead of just the one.

A lot of the games I have run over the years 1 and 2 g ships have been pretty much the norm and I have always been kinda frustrated of how boring from the maneuvering point of view ship combat can be, so why not pump up that low range a little bit?

The only change is the quarter g is the combat increment instead of the whole G.

Thoughts?

 

[Condottiere]

Sure, that would mean even fractions of acceleration become significant enough to be calculated.

 

[phavoc]

It doesn't make a lot of economic sense to run at 1/4G unless you are maneuvering to land or dock. Unless there is a corresponding savings in fuel, running at lower speeds makes no sense.

But, if you are wanting to play around with things to make space combat more of a thinking game, then I could see that your acceleration rates for civilian drives would be say 1/4G per turn, and military drives would be 1/2G per turn. Adding additional price to military drives makes them less palatable to pure merchants, but entirely within reason for smugglers and pirates.

And, to continue along that line, allow a player to add "overthrust" up to say 50% of the standard output. Sort of like adding NOX to your fuel system, with the added risk of blowing something the longer you run at an extended output.

I think something like that could be easily added without breaking any of the other rules.

 

[Condottiere]

It would make sense if you're manouevring on reaction drives, where you consume 2.5% tonnage per gee hour.

 

[mr31337]

To change the feel of space combat I'm vaguely considering changing the timescale. Five minutes seems a very long time. I haven't done any play testing yet, but on the surface of it I think 1 minute seems more appropriate, especially at closer ranges.

 

[Infojunky]

Sure, that would mean even fractions of acceleration become significant enough to be calculated.

Yes, I am just lowering the the significant digit to a multiple of 0.25g instead of the whole G. Which generally mean the thrust to change range table gets multiplied by 4.

And with the enlarged range then even a 1g ship can evade effectively....

 

[Infojunky]

It doesn't make a lot of economic sense to run at 1/4G unless you are maneuvering to land or dock. Unless there is a corresponding savings in fuel, running at lower speeds makes no sense.

Read the maneuver section of the starship combat rules, as this is a combat option not and in game economics question mostly.

Look at it this way, it also give a larger range of significant drive outputs when designing ships. You can see the differences in drive outputs that where lumped together before.

But, if you are wanting to play around with things to make space combat more of a thinking game, then I could see that your acceleration rates for civilian drives would be say 1/4G per turn, and military drives would be 1/2G per turn. Adding additional price to military drives makes them less palatable to pure merchants, but entirely within reason for smugglers and pirates.

Your over thinking it I am just suggesting expanding one section of the combat rules by add a broader range within the stated limits of 0 to 6gs....

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I've proposed my own drive rating changes here:
http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=89&t=73554

 

[Infojunky]

I've proposed my own drive rating changes here:
http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=89&t=73554

Tom my suggestion is not as big a change as you are advocating.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I've proposed my own drive rating changes here:
http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=89&t=73554

Tom my suggestion is not as big a change as you are advocating.

Yep. you are suggesting going in quarters, I'm suggesting percentage points of a G., the Jump Drive then becomes a short range planetary lander, no artificial gravity except what can be produced by spin or acceleration, this makes the Solar System a much bigger place, every thing else works much the same as before, grav vehicles become flying cars, grav belts become jetpacks, lasers work as before, Interplanetary travel takes longer, low berths are available. You can call this Traveller Interplanetary if you like, I believe there was a commercial product that followed this same idea.

 

[Infojunky]

I've proposed my own drive rating changes here:
http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=89&t=73554

Tom my suggestion is not as big a change as you are advocating.

Yep. you are suggesting going in quarters, I'm suggesting percentage points of a G.,

You are suggesting changing the output of the drives, whereas I am only suggesting changing the rounding factor from a whole G to a quarter G. (note the letter rated drives have a 200 ton increment between each letter)

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

...

Tom my suggestion is not as big a change as you are advocating.

Yep. you are suggesting going in quarters, I'm suggesting percentage points of a G.,

You are suggesting changing the output of the drives, whereas I am only suggesting changing the rounding factor from a whole G to a quarter G. (note the letter rated drives have a 200 ton increment between each letter)

[/quote][/quote]

Sure you could do that, so A gives 200 tons of thrust, when you apply that to a 200 ton hull you get 1g of acceleration An A drive on a 150 ton hull will give 1.33 g since 1.33 is 0.08 from 1.25 and 0.17 from 1.5 g this would round off to 1.25 g, am I correct?

 

[Infojunky]

...

Tom my suggestion is not as big a change as you are advocating.

Yep. you are suggesting going in quarters, I'm suggesting percentage points of a G.,

You are suggesting changing the output of the drives, whereas I am only suggesting changing the rounding factor from a whole G to a quarter G. (note the letter rated drives have a 200 ton increment between each letter)

[/quote]

Sure you could do that, so A gives 200 tons of thrust, when you apply that to a 200 ton hull you get 1g of acceleration An A drive on a 150 ton hull will give 1.33 g since 1.33 is 0.08 from 1.25 and 0.17 from 1.5 g this would round off to 1.25 g, am I correct?[/quote][/quote][/quote][/quote]

Exactly.

 

[Condottiere]

It gets more interesting with capital class ships, since thrust is based on fixed percentages, and you can only pro rata the sub gees.

 

[Infojunky]

It gets more interesting with capital class ships, since thrust is based on fixed percentages, and you can only pro rata the sub gees.

Gee why not go throw yet another entirely set of formula at me.... (it's do-able but it is more a ground up sort thing)

Though to be honest since i have got Mark's work around numbers for standard drives I am probably golden up to 5000 dtons and probably some where beyond.