High Guard Errata Submissions

MongooseMatt

Administrator
Staff member
Hi guys,

Mercenary is about wrapped up, so we are now prepping an official errata for High Guard. Again, we want to catch as many issues as we can.

I would like you all to dive into this thread, and list any issues in High Guard that you think need attending with regards to stats, rules and typoes. Please note that we are not looking for changes to actual content. What we are primarily looking for are actual mistakes and oversights.

So, please let your comments and views flow!
 
Can I assume you got all those emails I sent in when High Guard first came out, and not need to repost all of that¿
 
I think that the barrage rules need to be clarified. Right now, individual weapon damage isn't being taken into account very clearly. The simplest way to do that is to simply add the weapon's barrage damage value to the to hit roll and then proceed as normal. This has the same mathematical effect as subtracting armor from weapon damage and applying that as a defense DM (keeping the plus or minus sign, of course).
 
msprange said:
AndrewW said:
Can I assume you got all those emails I sent in when High Guard first came out, and not need to repost all of that¿

You better resend, just in case I miss one!

Done, just put it all into one email this time.
 
Sounds like Rikki Tikki Traveller and AndrewW have been ready for this for a while - I suspect between them they have most things covered.

I'm not gonna throw my list up till PMing them at least - so I don't saturate things...

One point I am curious on - the deckplans.

They are, shall we say, not optimized at the larger size, if they are shrunk further in their existing state, well... the ink might be better saved ;)
 
Couple of things confused me in Char Gen early on.

The example and rules are not aligned.
Naval College
Naval College Entry mentioned as Soc 6+, but each college has their own admission roll none is soc 6+.
Implies
Re-write first paragraph of example page 40 to fit in with new tables. Page 4 re-write paragraph starintg "if character attends..." as you choose the course before trying to enter.


Expand the "Navy Type" box on page 6 to note mustering out is not per career but per navy type as per the example -unless the example is wrong.
 
BP said:
They are, shall we say, not optimized at the larger size, if they are shrunk further in their existing state, well... the ink might be better saved ;)
I have to agree here, I'd rather see a 'greyed out' area in the LBB representing the Jump drive or any other system/section that the detail currently used.

I don't know if this counts as 'oversight' so I'll put it forwards to be skipped if necessary. What is the rationale behind needing previous service to join the Flight/Gunner/Pilot career path? At the moment you can undertake military service in any of the world's main militaries as a 'Gunner' or a 'Pilot' or the equavalent of the 'Flight'. If you have the personal attributes and the competence, you are given what training you need to fulfil these rolls as soon as you graduate and I can't see any need for previous naval service to join these career paths in the future.

Also, (and assuming you do remove the need for previous naval service) why do crewmen have access to Pilot (starships). Small craft I can just about see, but if you have two core Naval career paths for pilots there is no really not much call for crew members to pick up the skill IMO.
 
mrfingle said:
...Also, (and assuming you do remove the need for previous naval service) why do crewmen have access to Pilot (starships). Small craft I can just about see, but if you have two core Naval career paths for pilots there is no really not much call for crew members to pick up the skill IMO.
Budgets? A big fancy starship is expensive - relatively more so for smaller Navies - funding for staffing may not always be up to funding for status. Just a rationization for something that is probably as much game mechanic as representative of RW.
 
A few issues reposted from other threads:

please see this thread:

Still confused by capital ship combat

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=42451&start=30&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

....
I think importance of individual damage dice is to be inferred from the following:

Quote:
The damage from each individual weapon must still be noted, though,
as armour is obviously much more effective against smaller weapons
than larger ones. The notation for a barrage is therefore:
(Number of Dice) – (Weapon Type) – Range – (Individual Weapon
Damage in dice).


The only way this IWD works like this is if it is added as a modifer to the score AND assuming missiles IWD is that for an individual missile rather than a group. (see comments on the d24 100 to bay as to why)

The following example ignores this nomenclature anyway and describes weapon mounts in one case and maybe die of damage from weapons in the other?:

Quote:
For example, the fifty beam laser barrage mentioned above would be
noted as 50–Beam Laser– Medium–1 and a barrage from ten missile
50 ton bays of multiple warhead missiles at long range would be
noted as 10–Missile–Long–12.


None of the examples actually show you using the IWD as I have described.

The final example gratuitously increases the damage by 2 which also happens to be the weapons IWD value. I cannot tell if this is coincidence or a failure to multiply the weapons by IWD at the start. That 200 missile strike should have been a 400 missile barrage maybe????

Quote:
A net dice roll of 5 gives 50%, so Victory is hit by 100 nuclear missiles for
a total of 200 points of damage.





Considering the core rules I think that adding IWD in the way described at the top makes the *most* sense.

....

We are also struck with the oddity that a 5000 ton cruiser can be equipped with 50 triple particle beam turrets doing a 450 point barrage which on even dice will inflict enough damage to destroy itself with a single salvoe. ( 50 H and 50 s per section) Assuming say high tech version (TL wpn mods, with good fire control and ships crew modifiers even for average crew would add +8 and even ignoring possiple "+IWD" will negate a dodge "-2" and 6 points of armour!. All you need is a power plant 5+.

Although the rules are for capital ship combat - they are not for fleet actions as ships will rapidly run out of reactions needed to trigger screens, sandcasters, point defence lasers, and dodge (limited to 3 anyway by evade tech).

Why is the action phase (in which you attempt sensor locks) after the combat phase?

The rules clearly indicate (p.73) that movement is a combat action, and you loop through all ships in initiative order until all actions are exhausted - presumably you can still only move once? or more to the total limit of your MVR rating??. .

Are repairs (like sensor locks) an ships' action, and so NOT part of the looping combat system (pace p. 79).

Mystified

regards
 
How do Spinal weapon crews get to be "on average" +3 to +5?
+3 is Elite
+4 Legendary
+5 ? Yoda takes over?

just curious
 
I would like to see a clarification of damage in starship combat. Does effect add to damage as it does in ground combat or not?
 
I had some questions that were on my thread about starship combat:

1. Don't know if a triple turret fires 1 weapon 3 times or 3 weapons all at once. Don't know if a Gunner affects each of the three weapons on only one.

2. Don't know if a dodge affects only 1 weapon or 1 turret or all of 1 enemy's shots or all shots against the ship.

3. Don't know if evade programs add to dodge, or are in lieu of dodge or when they are declared or if they use a manoeuver.

4. Don't know if effect adds to damage as in the prior post.

5. Don't know how EMP exactly works. Sounds like a nuke generates one. Do you roll if computers shut down or what?

6. Don't have costs for many of the things like torpedos, railguns, etc because I probably have a first print of HG.

7. Noticed in the naval academy you roll for qualification. Succeed and you are in. Fail and you are not in but don't burn a term. Then you roll for success. If you succeed you get a commission and so on. The book fails to address if you fail. Do you lose a term? Do you finish, but don't get a commission?

8. I am really at a loss as to movement. For example, often a ship is trying to get to 100 diameters for jump. In the game to go a distance in space you accelerate for the first half, spin and decelerate the second half of the trip. If a ship of say, thrust 2 is thrusting for 50 turns or whatever to get to 100 diameters, then its speed is 2x50 or 100. No pirate corsair would have time to intercept it as it would be through the sensors too fast. The game seems to treat acceleration as speed. Is thrust speed or acceleration?

9. Not that it matters much but in ship design, I used a "labratory" as a medic sick bay.
 
I note the hit tables do not include damage to items listed in sample ships such as hangars, craft, grapples etc. Not sure how to deal with these - actually neither do the core rules
 
I'm not sure this is errata for High Guard, but it should be a design consideration.

In Fighting Ships, the Kokirrak Imperial Battle Dreadnought is something of an odd duck. It's got 6 armor. And 600 triple particle beam turrets. Each section has 1,000 hull and 1,000 structure.

Using High Guards still confusing Barrage rules, if two of these things were to get angry at one another, I think it would be over really fast.

They each can bring about 80% (or 480) of their particle turrets to bear on each other. Crew skill of +3, with +5 Fire Control against a dodging opponent is still DM +6. Assuming that we add Individual Weapon Damage, it's a DM +9. Defenses amount to Armor (DM -6). That's it...so a total of +3 DM. With an average roll of 7 on 2d6, that's a 10. Which is 175% damage. So, 480*3*3*1.75 = 7560 barrage damage, divided by 2 against two adjacent sections is 3780. Hmmm...that's 1780 more damage than needed to completely destroy two sections.

Can this be intentional?

If we use the better designed Plankwell-class, which has 12 armor but otherwise the same number of triple particle beams, the situation is somewhat less extreme. Instead of a +3 DM total, there's a -3 DM, so with an average roll of 7, you get a 4, which is 25% damage. So instead of 7560 barrage damage, it's only 1080 damage, divided by 2 is 540 to each of two sections, which only takes away about half the Hull.

Anyway, with these rules, armor is extremely important and triple particle beam turrets are probably brokenly powerful. In other versions of Traveller, you can only fit 1 particle beam in a turret. That tends to help balance things out (oddly, the Tigress mounts 1000 single-mounted particle beams. This makes no sense--forego the spinal mount entirely and just make those, 1000 turrets into triple particle beams--that's a doomsday weapon!).
 
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