If you could change space combat, how would you do it?

[Nathan Brazil]

I would like the combat on a game board. I am not a big miniatures fan (not up to doing the measuring from stand to stand). That old Mayday game used the best of both world with it use of semi-vectored movement with the past/present/future counters. That also allowed for players to understand better where ships were going to be once they realized ships at speed could only alter their vector by so much.

 

[Anonymous]

And to pinch the idea from the CotI thread, yeah, some form of simultaneous movement or incremental movement would be excellent based on velocity and initiative.

 

[dragoner]

I'm pretty happy with it so far, one recently in the game I GM, twice in the one I'm a player. Though if I could change something, it would be the encounter ranges, many seem way too short.

I pulled the Datacaster from T5, the player crit'd the other ship with it, a nice little add on.

You know, there were self-sealing fuel tanks in WW2, hulls would probably be self-sealing.

 

[Infojunky]

You know, there were self-sealing fuel tanks in WW2, hulls would probably be self-sealing.

The option is in the TMB (pg.106) but is pretty much unexplained.

 

[dragoner]

You know, there were self-sealing fuel tanks in WW2, hulls would probably be self-sealing.

The option is in the TMB (pg.106) but is pretty much unexplained.

That and Radiation shielding, which seem a no-brainer to buy; both are good things to have standard. Otherwise ships are just death traps in a way, but not gamewise.

 

[AndrewW]

That and Radiation shielding, which seem a no-brainer to buy; both are good things to have standard. Otherwise ships are just death traps in a way, but not gamewise.

Ships already have radiation shielding the option gives it extra protection.

 

[Reynard]

If Star Trek, Star Wars and other science fiction setting can have ships take heavy battle damage that doesn't kill the ship and crew in two shot while patching the holes and kicking in the redundants to keep going through the fight then my rpg games can do the same! I prefer my games fast and fun rather than having the 'realistic' rules the size of a 20 volume encyclopedia. Clean and clarify the rules is all I need. you fix broken not discard it all.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I would really like the combat system to address VELOCITY (speed and direction) and ACCELERATION (how fast you change velocity).

Within the rules, it Acceleration often gets confused as velocity, or speed, which is completely not true and REALLY an issue in space where there is no atmosphere and thus no drag. As long as you can accelerate, even at 0.000001g, you can eventually get close to the speed of light.

The MGT combat system treats acceleration as speed, that needs to be fixed.

But, as was posted upstream here, it DOESN'T need to track actual speed, only RELATIVE speed between the two ships. Thus the ship with the higher acceleration can change the relative velocity between the two ships, which will affect how fast the range changes. Acceleration does not directly affect the range as MGT uses it.

 

[sideranautae]

But, as was posted upstream here, it DOESN'T need to track actual speed, only RELATIVE speed between the two ships. Thus the ship with the higher acceleration can change the relative velocity between the two ships, which will affect how fast the range changes. Acceleration does not directly affect the range as MGT uses it.

I've wrestled with this since Mayday came out way back when. There's no easy way to do it without a computer pgm. If a person created a visual pgm that handled this it would probably sell.

 

[Reynard]

I've played Mayday. It's not an RPG extension and it's not easy on its own most especially for more than two ships. The ship to ship mini game in the core and high guard books are meant
for fast and easy play in conjunction with the main game. I'd say if people want a more complex and separate ship game then maybe Mongoose can license Mayday or use a version of A Call To Arms.

 

[sideranautae]

I've played Mayday. It's not an RPG extension

Mayday was designed to be standalone & an RPG extension. It was intended as Game 1 for the Trav RPG (CT) and used a variant of the Trav ship rules.

Newbies don't generally know this about the game.

 

[Anonymous]

Can we please bring it back to the topic and not a history of gaming?

Thank you.

 

[sideranautae]

Can we please bring it back to the topic and not a history of gaming?

Thank you.

Necessary to know that such a combat system was designed for use WITH the Trav RPG. I won't leave misinformation about the topic uncorrected.

 

[Reynard]

Actually we are both showing there is an alternative change for the space combat system and that's Mayday which, as sid says, is part of Traveller already. Some may like the aspects of a more complex vector game as opposed to the very simple ship combat used in the core and even the High Guard books. Explaining the history of Mayday also explains the game for people who haven't heard about it. My only issue with Mayday is it doesn't work well combining the player level and it would take over the table during combat.

Sid is right, it is also part of the RPG as Snapshot was for tabletop combat but both products were also boxed standalones playable without ever needing to know the Traveller RPG existed.

 

[Infojunky]

And to pinch the idea from the CotI thread, yeah, some form of simultaneous movement or incremental movement would be excellent based on velocity and initiative.

Consider this, Turn order;

1. Roll Initiative

2. Move, everybody moves in Reverse Initiative order, Point defense fire against missiles that have reached their targets.

3. Shoot and Damage, everybody moves in Initiative order

4. Turn end Bookkeeping

Note this the basic frame I have been playing with for use with the hex based vector system presented in Mayday. (Note a Vector system is presented in MgT's High Guard, it also needs some clean up to be playable as well)

 

[dragoner]

Some love vector, some don't; an argument as old as LBB2.

I prefer my games fast and fun rather than having the 'realistic' rules the size of a 20 volume encyclopedia.

Most people complain that Traveller is too realistic, oh well. My problem with the 20 volume set is that sometimes people get the basic concepts wrong on page one, then it cascades through the whole work.

 

[DivineWrath]

Well, the thing that I've focused on time to time is all the ship parts and stuff. I've looked enough to know that there are gaps in the books, and plenty of them are in the High Guard book. If I could make changes, I would make a complete book for designing ships. A place to collect all the stuff put in the books thus far, and then take a look how they all fit together. A single place to look at for all your ship needs.

 

[Imeanunoharm]

Just give me a comprehensive flowchart, and I'll work from there.

 

[AndrewW]

Well, the thing that I've focused on time to time is all the ship parts and stuff. I've looked enough to know that there are gaps in the books, and plenty of them are in the High Guard book. If I could make changes, I would make a complete book for designing ships. A place to collect all the stuff put in the books thus far, and then take a look how they all fit together. A single place to look at for all your ship needs.

Agreed, but in the meantime this might help:

http://www.wuala.com/AndrewW/Traveller/Ship Components.png/

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

You know what would be great? If someone could implement a 3d combat board in software. You know you have virtual miniatures, and with a mouse you can drag them onto a 3 dimensional space represented in the computer, and click on it and you can store information on its velocity vector and acceleration vector to plot the course of each spaceship turn by turn. Perhaps it could include icons for different size planets which you could zoom in and zoom out on, all the way out to the 100 diameter limit for example. 2-d playing surfaces can never do full justice to space combat in 3 dimensions. Now that were talking about it, maybe 3 dimensional sub-sectors in which one can rotate and zoom in and out with as well. 2-d paper is somewhat limited on what you can represent. I''l bet there is somewhere software which can already do what I described, but I never seen it. Maybe a website could be established for this purpose for making an storing these three dimensional maps.