Electronic Warfare in Space, a Helpful Tip

[CordwainerFish]

And even if GDW weren't aiming at veterans, a lot of them themselves were veterans. That is going to inflect what one writes.

 

[Condottiere]

A lot us swallowed ten kilogramme zweihanders, until it was carefully explained that Dungeons and Dragons was fantasy, not history.

Reverse engineering tended to pin the blame on survivor bias.

Game mechanics should feel like they make sense.

 

[Arkathan]

If the grid board is already down on the table, and each player has their miniature, then all they have to do is put them in a relative position and the GM set out bad guys. The current game rules work, and the minis definitively tell the player and the GM where everyone is.
Theater of the mind works for some things, but it does not work for ensuring that the intended position of the participants is correctly interpreted by all players and the referee. Few things are more annoying to me in a theater of the mind fight than tipping the leader's secret weapon only to have the player say, but I said I was going over here. Reset one turn and now the cat's out of the bag.

 

[Vormaerin]

Traveller wasn't tailored to veterans, but there were a Hell of a lot us back then. Making a pure spitball guess, I should think that 40% of Traveller purchases were made by veterans in the 80s, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was an out-and-out majority. First you start with GDW's beginning audience of wargame fans. Then the very first 'expansion' [other than Supplements and Adventures] was Book 4: Mercenary followed by Book 5: High Guard. And the gearhead folks are just as likely to be wargamers or veterans as the shoot 'em up guys. There's nothing that precludes any of these sub-communities from mixing and matching.

In any event, Traveller has traditionally catered to the 'warhead' demographic... veterans, wargame fans, military historians and the like. But I see that changing. There are more people becoming fans of Traveller that have a civilian mindset. This is fine with me, but my point is that I think the militarily knowledgeable of us need to make some of the more misunderstood military concepts easy for the new fan to digest.

All RPGs in the 70s started from wargaming groups so that's kind of not anything unique about Traveller. D&D was mostly wargamers at first too. That's who designed it. I played wargames and read military history before RPGs came out too.

I just don't see any evidence that Traveller's rules in any way had a meaningful bias towards military or wargaming knowledge. GDW made a bunch of other games that were actual wargames that were adjacent to Traveller, like Striker & Snapshot, that some folks adapted back into Traveller. But they weren't actually Traveller.

Anyway, it's not worth arguing about.

 

[AndrewW]

A lot us swallowed ten kilogramme zweihanders, until it was carefully explained that Dungeons and Dragons was fantasy, not history.

Does that make Traveller future history?

 

[Condottiere]

I'll go with, yes.

 

[Sigtrygg]

"Broadsword— The largest of the sword weapons, also called the two-handed sword because it requires both hands to swing. The blade is extremely heavy, two-edged, and about 1000 to 1200 mm in length. The hilt is relatively simple, generally a crosspiece only with little basketwork for protection. When carried, a metal scabbard is attached to the belt; less frequently, the scabbard is worn on the back and the sword is drawn over the shoulder. Weight: 2500 grams. Base price: CR 300."

compared with:

"The average claymore ran about 140 cm (55 in) in overall length, with a 33 cm (13 in) grip, 107 cm (42 in) blade, and a weight of approximately 5.5 pounds (2.5 kg)."

 

[Condottiere]

 

[steelbrok]

That's not a broadsword, it's a montante or zweihander

 

[Sigtrygg]

Broadsword— The largest of the sword weapons, also called the two-handed sword

Ask a weapon's expert what a longsword, broadsword and claymore are. Their answer will allow you to instantly appraise their level of knowledge and cultural bias.

 

[Sigtrygg]

But back to sensors and electronic warfare.

What I am after is a rating that determines range and power, and a simple comparison with signature gives the modifier for the sensor task (or autospot range for a wargame...)

 

[Condottiere]

Blades have many subcategories, preferred methods of operations, and roles.

But ye classic two handed sword was immortalized in Dungeons and Dragons.

 

[collins355]

But back to sensors and electronic warfare.

What I am after is a rating that determines range and power, and a simple comparison with signature gives the modifier for the sensor task (or autospot range for a wargame...)

Surely one option is to have your craft creation system spit out four ratings: active sensor score; passive sensor score, signature, and (if fitted) jamming/ECM score.
Every vehicle/starship in the game has these same four scores. Your combat system and rules mechanics then use them along with various die-roll modifiers for doing things like running silent to determine outcomes of spotting attempts.
Bruce Alan Macintosh bless his name used to drum this into us on the TML back in the day.

 

[Sigtrygg]

That's what I have been suggesting but with the splitting of signature into active signature and passive signature, so us gearheads will have array areas and energy inputs and surface area and configuration and power plant output to determine active signature (relative ease with which active sensors can detect you due to size, configuration and stealth), passive signature (relative ease with which passive sensors can detect you due to your power plant emissions, gravitics and stealth) and an electronic warfare rating which can degrade, confuse or brute force jam enemy active sensors and provide passive decoys...

 

[WHULorigan]

Broadsword— The largest of the sword weapons, also called the two-handed sword

Ask . . . what a longsword, broadsword and claymore are.

I'll give it a shot.

Broadsword. A one-handed weapon of the late 16th-18th Century, usually with a basket or full hand-guard, with a blade of roughly 30"-36" in length that was broad in width as compared to the gentleman's ceremonial or dueling Rapier or Small Sword. The term itself is modern (19th+ Century), not contemporary, and never referred to a Medieval 1-Handed blade (such as the knightly Arming Sword), let alone a two-handed sword.

Longsword. 15th Century blade, longer than the One-handed Medieval Knightly Arming Sword, but smaller than a proper two-handed sword ("Zweihander") of later eras, with a blade length of about 35"-45" and a two-handed grip, similar to the historical "bastardsword" known as the Greatsword.

Claymore (Claidheamh-mòr = "Big Sword"). Contemporary 17th-18th Century term for a Scottish Basket-hilted "Broadsword", as opposed to the Claybeg (Claidheamh-beag), or smallsword, side-sword (bilbo), or rapier carried by gentlemen.

Claybeg (Claidheamh-beag) = "Small sword"). Contemporary 17th Century term for small side sword or rapier carried by gentlemen. Some modern historians apply this term to the Claymore (Claidheamh-mòr), as they consider the term Claymore (Claidheamh-mòr) to more properly belong to the Scottish two-handed sword. But there is apparently no clear reference to the use of the term Claymore (Claidheamh-mòr) prior to the 17th Century, when the Two-hand sword had already fallen out of general use, and the Basket-hilted Broadsword was the large sword of the day as compared to the smaller and thinner swords of the time.

Claidheamh-da-laimh (= "Clay-da-lay" / "Two-hand sword"). Proper (and simple/descriptive) period term for the two-handed Scottish Weapon. This weapon is sometime called a "Claymore" (Claidheamh-mòr) by some historians, but no contemporary documents of the period apparently use this term for the weapon during its heyday of usage.

 

[Condottiere]

For all intents and purposes, spears have a greater reach.

So any bladed weapon larger than can be carried comfortably at your hip, usually has an explicit purpose.

 

[rinku]

Swords. They're pretty much all just swords in local languages until the Victorians got stuck into over classifying the subject.

 

[Condottiere]

Evolution.

It defines us.

 

[ottarrus]

Swords. They're pretty much all just swords in local languages until the Victorians got stuck into over classifying the subject.

Well, fair being fair, the Brits might have over-classified the weapons but did they also carefully separate the techniques involved. Swordsmanship never has been a one-[sword] size-fits-all affair and you can't fight a smallsword like you do a broadsword.
But yeah Ewart Oakshott [who should have been knighted before he passed] really did go crazy with classifying bladed weaponry. Even the minutiae of the apocrypha had footnotes