High Guard Capital Ship questions

[The Accountant]

I've been looking at the design of Capital Ships, and I'm stymied at the Section Hit Tables. More specifically, how to allocate weapons to slots on the table

For example, looking at the battleship on p. 101, it has the following:
50 Large Meson Bays
200 Torpedo Bays
206 Particle Beam Turrets
600 Laser Beam Turrets
300 Missile Turrets
560 Sandcasters

How do you determine how to divide these among the available "A" slots on the table? ie. How do you determine that you group 75 Laser Turrets together?

 

[AndrewW]

There's isn't an exact way you have to do it. Just divide. If you've got 4 slots to allocate and 100 turrets you could put 25 in each slot.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I did it by total size of each weapon type. The bigger weapons (by total size, not individual size) got the more likely hit slots.

You can also "double up" which is what I ended up doing... For the Weapon Systems, I used 2 entries, first roll did a hit on the first entry, second roll did a hit on the second entry, third roll back to the first entry etc. Only did one combat, but it seemed to work.

The problem is of course that you cannot accurately model a to-hit table for such a large ship with so many different weapons using only a 2D table.

Also, I combined my Sand and Lasers into a "Point Defense" hit.

 

[SSWarlock]

The problem is of course that you cannot accurately model a to-hit table for such a large ship with so many different weapons using only a 2D table.

Hmm. Is it worth the trouble to develop an expanded damage allocation chart by changing the meaning of the 2D roll in the same manner as some of the careers? That is, expand the damage chart from 2-12 value to 16-66 values by using one die value as the ones value and the other as the tens value instead of adding the two dice together.

Has anyone attempted this?

 

[BP]

Its a good thought - except each outcome is equally likely*.

Best to use more dice - what's a few extra rolls for something that can have significant roleplay influence.

(*You can, of course, apply some things for multiple values, but then you quickly loose range and are basically back to the limited number of options 2d6 provides.)

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

A 3D table might work.. That would give odds down to 1:216 (about 0.5%) so for a 10,000 ton ship, you would get down to about 46 tons; just about right for a single Bay Weapon.

For really big ships (>100Ktons) you might want to look at a 4D table.

 

[zero]

Whoa, I never knew capital ships had that much gear... I just own the Traveller Core and my own 100dton shuttle just has a Beam Laser/Sand Caster double turret on it...

Makes it like a mosquito next to a capital ship and I expect a single Beam Laser doesnt have much chance of punching any damage into a capital ship either right?

 

[barnest2]

Pretty much. Your 'shuttle' could probably not touch a capital ship, especially considering that high guard changes beam laser damage to 1d6

 

[SSWarlock]

Its a good thought - except each outcome is equally likely*.

Well, nerts. *pout*

Best to use more dice - what's a few extra rolls for something that can have significant roleplay influence.

True. And it's easy to keep track of the many results totals by using multiple pairs of differently colored/sized dice.

 

[Vile]

Percentile dice. You know it makes sense. 8)

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Blasphemer! :wink: