High Guard 4th edition

[Sigtrygg]

For the past twenty odd years many of us on CotI and before that the TML played a game called how would you fix High Guard (LBB:5 1980 edition)

Now that Mongoose has three editions of High Guard out, lets play the game again. How would you fix it.

First of all Mongoose Traveller 1e used the letter drives in the crb and then adopted High Guard for big ships and fleet combat. 2ed MgT dropped the letter drives.

Even forty four years on many in the Traveller community consider HG80 to be the benchmark.

Suggestion 1 - go back to basics, take a good look at HG80 and fix its faults.

Suggestion 2 - start with outcomes and work backwards, what sort of ship to ship combat are you seeking to model (there can be more than one)

Suggestion 3 - keep it simple.

 

[Limpin Legin]

The simplest solution would be not to buy it and rely solely upon the core rules, but somehow Traveller gamers are tempted to do otherwise.

 

[Sigtrygg]

So what was wrong with HG80? My list:
lack of movement rules
lack of facing requirement for spinal mounts
too many dice rolls requiring statistical resolution
no alternative technologies

What sort of ship combat - PC roleplaying scale, PC boardgame scale, squadron scale and fleet scale.

 

[collins355]

Lack of role for sensors
Lack of role for maneuver
Battle Rider did it better in both of these regards, and also made the sensible decision to only focus on critical hits, which are the right things to focus on in fleet combat to avoid the monotony of attritional damage from HG and PP:F

 

[Sigtrygg]

Sensors and EW should be an important part of warship combat.

Star Cruiser, TNE and T4 all provided useful rules.

Maneuvering being more than pick a range band, should facing for spinals be important?

 

[ottarrus]

OK, Traveller's ship rules, but High Guard especially, have always had three audiences it's trying to please.
- Roleplayers: Ooh! Cool ship. My character would LOVE that ship!
- Gearheads: I don't care what it looks like, nothing happens till the math works out
- and Wargamers: Give me statistics that are easy to read and rules that are easy to understand so I can game out the Battle of Efate.

For the most part all of us Traveller grogs are somewhere on this spectra to one extent or another. Me, I'm more Roleplayer and Wargamer than Gearhead. But every version of High Guard has failed one of these audiences. The LBB Book 5 was great for roleplayers [all that Navy character generation] and wargamers but the gearheads spent a lot of time trying to make the math work out between published ships and the systems that're supposed to be wedged into them.

This is what High Guard 4 ought to be IMHO. YTUMV and all that....
1. It should be extensive. It should define and describe everything about starships, their use, design, construction and economics in one book. If that means the book hits a 400 page count, so be it. But it must include as much information and detail as possible to save everyone the hassle of the buying multiple books on the same subject.
2. It should carefully describe ship construction, design, and economics to remove as many points of confusion and misinterpretation as possible. If that means 'breaking it down Barney style' then 'sharing is caring' and get on with it.
3. Not only should it cover the OTU technologies, but it should cover non OTU technologies in a completely separate chapter, clearly defining 'this is canon, this is not'. A discussion of what Charted Space has, what it has in development, and the utterly outlier odd-ball technologies should be clearly labeled. If you want 'hyperdrives' in YTU, then the book should describe that technology in a 'Non-OTU Canon Technologies' chapter.
4. It should NOT try and reconcile adventurer ship combat and fleet combat as the same system. Fights are fights and wars are wars. They operate on entirely different scales of magnitude and the mechanics can, in fact, be different without breaking the logic base.
5. It should finally reconcile all the different Standard ship designs and deckplans. I suggest that each Standard ship ought to be described at two TLs... TL 12 and 15 [including deckplans]. A TL 12 lab ship is gonna still look like the Flying Donut, but its capabilities will be very different from 4 TLs 'distant'.
6. I can't stress this one enough... THE ART, THE TEXT, AND THE STAT SHEET SHOULD DESCRIBE THE SAME THINGS. For example, illustrating a Type S Scout deckplan with a Common Room, putting a 'cramped but adequate common spaces' description in the text, and absolutely no space for said common space [cramped or not] in the stat sheet is unsatisfactory. Consistency is important and Mongoose needs to address that.

Now, I have other details I that I think are 'kind of' important [adequate troop berthing, not putting the bridge of warships in a tower or at the nose of the ship, etc.] and you undoubtedly have your peeves as well. But the above stuff is what I perceive to be absolutely necessary for a New High Guard, most especially the consistency issue.

 

[Grognardia]

OK, Traveller's ship rules, but High Guard especially, have always had three audiences it's trying to please.
- Roleplayers: Ooh! Cool ship. My character would LOVE that ship!
- Gearheads: I don't care what it looks like, nothing happens till the math works out
- and Wargamers: Give me statistics that are easy to read and rules that are easy to understand so I can game out the Battle of Efate.

For the most part all of us Traveller grogs are somewhere on this spectra to one extent or another. Me, I'm more Roleplayer and Wargamer than Gearhead. But every version of High Guard has failed one of these audiences. The LBB Book 5 was great for roleplayers [all that Navy character generation] and wargamers but the gearheads spent a lot of time trying to make the math work out between published ships and the systems that're supposed to be wedged into them.

This is what High Guard 4 ought to be IMHO. YTUMV and all that....
1. It should be extensive. It should define and describe everything about starships, their use, design, construction and economics in one book. If that means the book hits a 400 page count, so be it. But it must include as much information and detail as possible to save everyone the hassle of the buying multiple books on the same subject.
2. It should carefully describe ship construction, design, and economics to remove as many points of confusion and misinterpretation as possible. If that means 'breaking it down Barney style' then 'sharing is caring' and get on with it.
3. Not only should it cover the OTU technologies, but it should cover non OTU technologies in a completely separate chapter, clearly defining 'this is canon, this is not'. A discussion of what Charted Space has, what it has in development, and the utterly outlier odd-ball technologies should be clearly labeled. If you want 'hyperdrives' in YTU, then the book should describe that technology in a 'Non-OTU Canon Technologies' chapter.
4. It should NOT try and reconcile adventurer ship combat and fleet combat as the same system. Fights are fights and wars are wars. They operate on entirely different scales of magnitude and the mechanics can, in fact, be different without breaking the logic base.
5. It should finally reconcile all the different Standard ship designs and deckplans. I suggest that each Standard ship ought to be described at two TLs... TL 12 and 15 [including deckplans]. A TL 12 lab ship is gonna still look like the Flying Donut, but its capabilities will be very different from 4 TLs 'distant'.
6. I can't stress this enough... THE ART, THE TEXT, AND THE STAT SHEET SHOULD DESCRIBE THE SAME THINGS. For example, illustrating a Type S Scout deckplan with a Common Room, putting a 'cramped but adequate common spaces' description in the text, and absolutely no space for said common space [cramped or not] in the stat sheet is unsatisfactory. Consistency is important and Mongoose needs to address that.

Now, I have other details I that I think are 'kind of' important [adequate troop berthing, not putting the bridge of warships in a tower or at the nose of the ship, etc.] and you undoubtedly have your peeves as well. But the above stuff is what I perceive to be absolutely necessary for a New High Guard, most especially the consistency issue.

And examples! Many more examples to clarify any ambiguous wordings.

 

[Condottiere]

Let's be fair.

They added the sidebars from GURPS.

 

[ottarrus]

Sensors and EW should be an important part of warship combat.

Star Cruiser, TNE and T4 all provided useful rules.

Maneuvering being more than pick a range band, should facing for spinals be important?

About ranges and spinals, I would contend that at anything more than a 5 or 10 kliks, facing doesn't matter. Ships can detect incoming fire and roll, yaw, or pitch the weak spots out of the line of fire so long as they're making headway enough to use momentum. Sure, in very close 'knife fight' ranges facing is important, but most naval combat isn't that close.

 

[Sigtrygg]

A spinal requires pointing the entire ship at the target, can you do that while also using your m-drive to accelerate, evade etc?

 

[ottarrus]

Sure, but I suppose it would also depend on how long the turn is in fleet combats. LBB 5's turns were 20 minutes long, so it wasn't an issue then.

 

[Geir]

What Ottarrus says on requirements is a good summary of the three types of things to address and a pretty good layout for it.

More examples is something I'm running into right now, and though I'm usually three edits and into the email, after two edits, I think I need some more examples and more reality checks, especially on some of the more 'wargamy' rules in the back. I mean, they 'seem' practical. But I can't test them as well as with vehicle builds and I'm still ironing out things there.

As for facing, even the the Agility -6 vehicles, as of last night, at least, can do a 180 in a little less than a minute, so the facing of a spinal in a six minute round shouldn't matter - especially since High Guard armour, unlike vehicle armour doesn't care about faces. Or batteries bearing. The way Highguard works, a 100kton ship can still go just as fast as a fighter... it just takes longer to zoom past your window so it 'looks' bigger. No rules tell us they don't have commensurate attitude control, though the longer 'spin arm' on a flip probably pushes those compensators on either end harder.

 

[Jame Rowe]

Let's go with something close to MG2e HG. Most importantly, no letter drives.

 

[ottarrus]

What Ottarrus says on requirements is a good summary of the three types of things to address and a pretty good layout for it.

More examples is something I'm running into right now, and though I'm usually three edits and into the email, after two edits, I think I need some more examples and more reality checks, especially on some of the more 'wargamy' rules in the back. I mean, they 'seem' practical. But I can't test them as well as with vehicle builds and I'm still ironing out things there.

As for facing, even the the Agility -6 vehicles, as of last night, at least, can do a 180 in a little less than a minute, so the facing of a spinal in a six minute round shouldn't matter - especially since High Guard armour, unlike vehicle armour doesn't care about faces. Or batteries bearing. The way Highguard works, a 100kton ship can still go just as fast as a fighter... it just takes longer to zoom past your window so it 'looks' bigger. No rules tell us they don't have commensurate attitude control, though the longer 'spin arm' on a flip probably pushes those compensators on either end harder.

Thanks for the compliment.
About the wargame aspect... if HG 4.0 is not gonna be a wargame document that's alright. Just say so up front and don't treat it otherwise. TNE did that with FFF and Brilliant Lances /Striker 2 and that worked out fine. Separating the design engine and the wargame aspects with abundantly clear tie-ins is a perfectly logical way to go about it. That way those who aren't interested in wargaming are not forced to buy 200 some-odd pages of stuff they're never gonna use.

 

[Condottiere]

You can make your own alphabet drives.

You just need one (or more) rationale(s) for the selection.

 

[collins355]

Thanks for the compliment.
About the wargame aspect... if HG 4.0 is not gonna be a wargame document that's alright. Just say so up front and don't treat it otherwise. TNE did that with FFF and Brilliant Lances /Striker 2 and that worked out fine. Separating the design engine and the wargame aspects with abundantly clear tie-ins is a perfectly logical way to go about it. That way those who aren't interested in wargaming are not forced to buy 200 some-odd pages of stuff they're never gonna use.

Absolutely - I've no problem with this product distinction if clearly signaled.

But make damn sure your designers for each of these are talking to each other the whole time (if not the same person!). Nothing worse than a wargaming product that bears little relation to the gearhead product, or vice versa.

 

[MasterGwydion]

OK, Traveller's ship rules, but High Guard especially, have always had three audiences it's trying to please.
- Roleplayers: Ooh! Cool ship. My character would LOVE that ship!
- Gearheads: I don't care what it looks like, nothing happens till the math works out
- and Wargamers: Give me statistics that are easy to read and rules that are easy to understand so I can game out the Battle of Efate.

For the most part all of us Traveller grogs are somewhere on this spectra to one extent or another. Me, I'm more Roleplayer and Wargamer than Gearhead. But every version of High Guard has failed one of these audiences. The LBB Book 5 was great for roleplayers [all that Navy character generation] and wargamers but the gearheads spent a lot of time trying to make the math work out between published ships and the systems that're supposed to be wedged into them.

This is what High Guard 4 ought to be IMHO. YTUMV and all that....
1. It should be extensive. It should define and describe everything about starships, their use, design, construction and economics in one book. If that means the book hits a 400 page count, so be it. But it must include as much information and detail as possible to save everyone the hassle of the buying multiple books on the same subject.
2. It should carefully describe ship construction, design, and economics to remove as many points of confusion and misinterpretation as possible. If that means 'breaking it down Barney style' then 'sharing is caring' and get on with it.
3. Not only should it cover the OTU technologies, but it should cover non OTU technologies in a completely separate chapter, clearly defining 'this is canon, this is not'. A discussion of what Charted Space has, what it has in development, and the utterly outlier odd-ball technologies should be clearly labeled. If you want 'hyperdrives' in YTU, then the book should describe that technology in a 'Non-OTU Canon Technologies' chapter.
4. It should NOT try and reconcile adventurer ship combat and fleet combat as the same system. Fights are fights and wars are wars. They operate on entirely different scales of magnitude and the mechanics can, in fact, be different without breaking the logic base.
5. It should finally reconcile all the different Standard ship designs and deckplans. I suggest that each Standard ship ought to be described at two TLs... TL 12 and 15 [including deckplans]. A TL 12 lab ship is gonna still look like the Flying Donut, but its capabilities will be very different from 4 TLs 'distant'.
6. I can't stress this one enough... THE ART, THE TEXT, AND THE STAT SHEET SHOULD DESCRIBE THE SAME THINGS. For example, illustrating a Type S Scout deckplan with a Common Room, putting a 'cramped but adequate common spaces' description in the text, and absolutely no space for said common space [cramped or not] in the stat sheet is unsatisfactory. Consistency is important and Mongoose needs to address that.

Now, I have other details I that I think are 'kind of' important [adequate troop berthing, not putting the bridge of warships in a tower or at the nose of the ship, etc.] and you undoubtedly have your peeves as well. But the above stuff is what I perceive to be absolutely necessary for a New High Guard, most especially the consistency issue.

Well said and well written. I don't agree with all of it, but I definitely love how you are thinking! Nice work!

 

[Limpin Legin]

OK, Traveller's ship rules, but High Guard especially, have always had three audiences it's trying to please.
- Roleplayers: Ooh! Cool ship. My character would LOVE that ship!
- Gearheads: I don't care what it looks like, nothing happens till the math works out
- and Wargamers: Give me statistics that are easy to read and rules that are easy to understand so I can game out the Battle of Efate.

For the most part all of us Traveller grogs are somewhere on this spectra to one extent or another. Me, I'm more Roleplayer and Wargamer than Gearhead. But every version of High Guard has failed one of these audiences. The LBB Book 5 was great for roleplayers [all that Navy character generation] and wargamers but the gearheads spent a lot of time trying to make the math work out between published ships and the systems that're supposed to be wedged into them.

This is what High Guard 4 ought to be IMHO. YTUMV and all that....
1. It should be extensive. It should define and describe everything about starships, their use, design, construction and economics in one book. If that means the book hits a 400 page count, so be it. But it must include as much information and detail as possible to save everyone the hassle of the buying multiple books on the same subject.
2. It should carefully describe ship construction, design, and economics to remove as many points of confusion and misinterpretation as possible. If that means 'breaking it down Barney style' then 'sharing is caring' and get on with it.
3. Not only should it cover the OTU technologies, but it should cover non OTU technologies in a completely separate chapter, clearly defining 'this is canon, this is not'. A discussion of what Charted Space has, what it has in development, and the utterly outlier odd-ball technologies should be clearly labeled. If you want 'hyperdrives' in YTU, then the book should describe that technology in a 'Non-OTU Canon Technologies' chapter.
4. It should NOT try and reconcile adventurer ship combat and fleet combat as the same system. Fights are fights and wars are wars. They operate on entirely different scales of magnitude and the mechanics can, in fact, be different without breaking the logic base.
5. It should finally reconcile all the different Standard ship designs and deckplans. I suggest that each Standard ship ought to be described at two TLs... TL 12 and 15 [including deckplans]. A TL 12 lab ship is gonna still look like the Flying Donut, but its capabilities will be very different from 4 TLs 'distant'.
6. I can't stress this one enough... THE ART, THE TEXT, AND THE STAT SHEET SHOULD DESCRIBE THE SAME THINGS. For example, illustrating a Type S Scout deckplan with a Common Room, putting a 'cramped but adequate common spaces' description in the text, and absolutely no space for said common space [cramped or not] in the stat sheet is unsatisfactory. Consistency is important and Mongoose needs to address that.

Now, I have other details I that I think are 'kind of' important [adequate troop berthing, not putting the bridge of warships in a tower or at the nose of the ship, etc.] and you undoubtedly have your peeves as well. But the above stuff is what I perceive to be absolutely necessary for a New High Guard, most especially the consistency issue.

Certainly been a Wargamer, Gearhead and a Rolplayer over my lifetime. Many recent Roleplayers I meet don't like turning their game into a dice fortress/wargame type-of-thing.

 

[ottarrus]

Certainly been a Wargamer, Gearhead and a Rolplayer over my lifetime. Many recent Roleplayers I meet don't like turning their game into a dice fortress/wargame type-of-thing.

Yeah, I've noticed that too. But part of Traveller's appeal is that it traditionally has had an internal logic that accommodated wargaming in addition to roleplaying.

 

[-Daniel-]

Yeah, I've noticed that too. But part of Traveller's appeal is that it traditionally has had an internal logic that accommodated wargaming in addition to roleplaying.

While I agree, it has been there, I had a few groups that just did not have any interest in the war game aspect. Of the three themes listed, war games were the one I had the least interest in by players. There were always the RPGers and the Gear Heads. They seem to outnumber the war gamers in most of the groups I played in or ran. No judgement intended, just an antidotal observation is all.