Jump Plant Requirements, Core Book vs. High Guard

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

One of the problems I have with the Tables without formulas is trying to design alien ships that are truly different.

I just posted those equations. They are Marc's not mine. What i don't have are the rounding/arbitrary changes that where used after the formula where run. Well I do, but it is a backwards examination from the results that one could used to make a limited Matrix equation with, but if simple percentages are too much Matrices are super beyond that.

Sure wish there was a way to adjust the tonnages for TL...

 

[Condottiere]

Reading between the lines, not only tonnages, but costs.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Agreed, I could see the cost per ton going up and the size goes down. Not necessarily keeping the overall cost constant, but possibly close.

 

[Anonymous]

Agreed, I could see the cost per ton going up and the size goes down. Not necessarily keeping the overall cost constant, but possibly close.

I think I must be misunderstanding you but High Guard on page 53 has options to decrease drive size as TL increases and increase price as TL increases.

Or did you mean something else?

 

[Condottiere]

Probably was too laconic, but TL 5% discounts per TL difference exists, maximum 30%.

 

[simonh]

I was just confused as to why 2000 tons was the oddly arbitrary drop off point for suddenly much more efficient drives. It would make more sense that as you went up in size it wasn't so linear and the drives became more efficient at moving larger ships. Then you hit the 2000 ton point the size of the drives was inline with the next step up in the High Guard book. If the simple answer is "tradition", that they were following classic traveller as an example, it's disappointing but understandable I guess. I just wish they would have fixed the glaring discrepancies in the old system while updating.

I wouldn't call it tradition, as much as compatibility.

There are thousands of Traveller ship designs out there, with many classics that Traveller players are intimately familiar with. If Mongoose had radically changed the design parameters, they would end up with deigns for those ships that would be radically different from the 'known' versions. As it is, I can take the stats for a ship designed using the old High Guard and, apart from a few minor issues here and there, know that the overall design will be fine to use in an MgT game. That's a valuable capability.

In practice I've never found it an issue in an actual game. Unless your players happen to be in the market for a ship precisely in the 2k dton size range and want to design it themselves it's really not going to be a big deal.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Galadrion]

I always liked the idea of using both, and there is a legacy justification. Been rereading the T4 rule set, and it includes this idea: Ships built under the core books design system are built using highly modular components and can be built at either a class A starport or a world with TL9+, and are eligible for a 25% discount to their price once everything is totaled. The ones designed using the system in Book 2: Starships are somewhat modular (it's not mentioned, but I would require these to be built at a starport with construction yard facilities - class A, or maybe a class B of appropriate TL, with possibly a requirement for the world to also have a suitable trade code) and are eligible for a smaller (10%) discount. Both are restricted to smaller sized hulls - 5000 Td in that rule system. Then there was the Technical Architecture manual (Fire, Fusion, and Steel 2), which allowed (technically) any size hull... and the capability of designing some really big guns to go with the really big hulls.

Anyway, getting back to MongTrav... use the core rules as the "modular construction" setup, allowing these ships to be assembled anywhere you deem appropriate (any class A starport, TL9+ worlds, any others the referee can justify to himself) and offering the discount. Use the High Guard rules only at a world with both the required TL and starport, allow no discount (unless the buyer is buying enough hulls on his own to warrant it - probably a minimum order of thirty or a hundred hulls or so), but the buyer gets a custom-built hot rod of a ship, very space-efficient but also very expensive, and probably a pain to get maintenance on ("Nope, never seen one of these before. Did'ja bring the manuals? No? Ooh, that's gonna make things expensive!")

 

[Anonymous]

That's a good way of looking at it but, to be a bit of an asshole about it, should it really take an interpretation of a previous rule set to justify a current one?

All those years in the future I can see factory A knocking out modular drives to ship out to an entrepreneur on a TL9 world to bolt into a hull they bought from factory B, it makes sense and it fits into the whole free trader mentality of jury rigging together anything you could get your hands on and calling it good.

It would be nice tho to have the formulas that went to making those components so that we can tweak anything and everything to our heart's content and merge the two systems...

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Alphabets

I've always maintained that the Alphabets were off-the shelf components, and had to be cheaper and/or more convenient to obtain than the custom made ones.

In CT, I believe it's possible to min-max them to create cheap starships, whereas in Mongoose, it seems to be more cost effective to use the capital class ship design, and scale down to five hundred tons.

 

[Galadrion]

Should it need to take a previous edition to justify it? No... and it doesn't. However, it is a possibility, and one that makes a reasonable amount of sense.

*Shrug* If you don't like it, don't use it. It really is that simple. I was simply pointing out what I do, for the potential benefit of those who might like to use the idea. It works reasonably well, and certainly doesn't break the game. But you don't have to use it if you don't want to. I am not a gaming Nazi. I am not going to kick in your door and go all Krystalnacht if you choose not to go the same route I do.

It's your game. Do as you think best... or do not. It's your decision.

 

[Anonymous]

All true and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise, apologies if I came over as unappreciative.

 

[Condottiere]

Differing points of view have all their validity in discussing a pseudo fantasy technically very advanced civilization.

I've always tended to take the tournament view of rules as the foundation, and then tried to reconcile them with either some other similar set, and/or my own rationalization of what I'm presented with.

 

[dragoner]

Mongoose is smart not to throw out 40 years worth of canon and user made content. As far as the difference, there could be some sort of minimum sizing.

 

[Infojunky]

I've always tended to take the tournament view of rules as the foundation

Hum, What Tournament rules?

Or to put it another way the last set of tournament rules was CT's Trillion Credit Squadron and the results of said tournaments where covered in jTas....


One of the big issues With the Mongoose rules set is that is based off a large number of editions including T5 with ideas being tossed in then whittled down to fit the book. Couple that with idea that the TMB was supposed to be largely generic in frame. Then add in the core schizophrenia that has always been Travellers Starship construction/combat system.

With all that I like the Standard Drives, especially in light of the original Tech rules for them. In that Drives where available by tech level (Hint the Scout Boat is a TL9 ship) and their performance wasn't limited by fiat. So at TL9 Drives A through D are available with all their performance levels... Which really means smaller ships can be faster than larger ships....

 

[Condottiere]

Tournament view, basically as long as the official rules are followed, any ship design presented must be accepted as valid. Deviations from the rules or novelties must be documented, and can be rejected, since house rules can only be accepted by each individual player, not the community at large.

 

[Sevain]

Even when you look at the high end of the "player sized" ships, 2000 tons, it's still arbitrary. If you take the lowest jump 1 drive for a 2k ton ship, you get the K jump drive and it's 55 tons.

Now if you hop over to High Guard and start designing a 3k ton ship, to get it a jump 1 drive you take the tonnage (3k) and multiply that by 2% to get the jump drive tonnage. That's 60 tons. So, to move a ship that is 50% bigger, it only takes five more tons of jump drive?

If you even want to get really nitpicky you could go for a 2001 ton ship. For a jump 1 drive on that ship it would be 2% of 2001, so 40 tons. That's fifteen tons less than what's required for a ship that's 1 ton smaller!

Now I get the point that on 100-2000 tons ships that off the shelf drives makes sense, hence the A-Z drives. I have no problem with that. For ease of use it even seems that it's fairly linear and simple on the table on 108. I'd have liked to see a formula so that odd sized ships (150 ton or 1500 tons for example) were better represented, but I can extrapolate that information easily enough on the off chance that my players want to build one of those.

I was just confused as to why 2000 tons was the oddly arbitrary drop off point for suddenly much more efficient drives. It would make more sense that as you went up in size it wasn't so linear and the drives became more efficient at moving larger ships. Then you hit the 2000 ton point the size of the drives was inline with the next step up in the High Guard book. If the simple answer is "tradition", that they were following classic traveller as an example, it's disappointing but understandable I guess. I just wish they would have fixed the glaring discrepancies in the old system while updating. I never played classic traveller, it being a bit before my time. I only megatraveller, and the one after that...New Era? Never cared for the whole Virus idea. I seem to recall the book for creating ships back then requiring a huge amount of math, and probably took just as long making deckplans...

Actually, I think the rules for making small craft, starships and capital ships are surprisingly balanced. As you noted, by sticking that 1 additional displacement ton to your 2000 ton ship you get to use a smaller jump drive.

Your ship also just became a capital ship. Only an A-class starport can build it. You also have to have a configuration, which means you can fire a maximum between 60-80% of your guns at a single target.

The ship has also just divided into two sections, each with only 10 Hull and Structure. Crippling the ship just got a whole lot easier. On the other hand that also means instead of a 40 ton bridge you now have two 10,005 ton command modules. Yet on the gripping hand your ship now requires as a minimum 10 bridge crew, many of them entitled to a full stateroom. And you have to bring a service section of 6 hairdressers on board in case somebody on board needs a haircut. And so on, and so on.

All in all there are so many changes it is difficult to say whether you won or lost by taking on that one extra ton.

 

[Galadrion]

Your ship also just became a capital ship. Only an A-class starport can build it.

If you're talking about a starship, then under the rules as written it can only be built at a class A starport anyway. (As I implied earlier, I modify this in the games I run myself, but this is a different matter.)

In my games, as I said earlier, I will allow ships designed under the High Guard system even down in the adventurer-scale range. However, these are custom-designed and -built ships, which presents players wanting them with several difficulties. First, they have to locate a ship-builder who will tackle the job - starport chandlers aren't going to be willing to do so, as this is going to be too experimental of a job for them to be able to estimate profit comfortably. Second, since this is a custom job, the players are going to have to bear all the expenses that might otherwise get ignored or glossed over... such as architect's fees. And third, the players can forget about quantity discounts, unless they can guarantee that a certain number of ships will be built (and paid for!) within a certain amount of time. Buying fifty ships just to get a 10% discount is such a bad idea that even most story protagonists won't go for it...

 

[Sevain]

Mongoose Core rulebook, page 178 says a Class-B starport is capable of building Spacecraft and Small Craft. The side bar says: "small craft (less than 100 tons), spacecraft (100 to 5,000 tons)".

So... is the 2001 ton ship even a capital ship in the first place, since it is below the 5000 ton limit? Now I am just confused.

 

[Anonymous]

It's kind of an arbitrary limit don't you think?

The number was plucked from the ether!

The beauty and the exasperation of Traveller and what you may discover for yourself as you read the rules and the many forums devoted to it is there are many answers to the same question which has given rise to:

Your Traveller Universe.(TM)

AKA

In My Traveller Universe(TM)

:mrgreen:

We debate these heated topics that often circle as a new forum member raises one some of us thought long dead, on a regular basis.

In all honesty there are many answers and the correct one is that which fits in best with how you want Traveller to play. In all the groups I've played I don't think anyone has had an identical vision, there's lots in common but there are always variances.

I try not to get vexed by the rules or the Grognards, I sometimes fail, hahaha but the long and the short of it is any rule book is a framework, MgT works pretty well for a fast paced sci-fi space opera feel but if you want more detail you need to fill it in for yourself, either by making your own decisions or drawing from the ideas of other players and referees.

OK, I've whited that all out cos it isn't really part of the thread, I hope it's helpful even tho it doesn't directly answer a reasonable question!

 

[AndrewW]

Mongoose Core rulebook, page 178 says a Class-B starport is capable of building Spacecraft and Small Craft. The side bar says: "small craft (less than 100 tons), spacecraft (100 to 5,000 tons)".

So... is the 2001 ton ship even a capital ship in the first place, since it is below the 5000 ton limit? Now I am just confused.

Currently High Guard defines a capital ship as 2,001+ tons.

The pilot skill Specialities though:

Capital Ships: Battleships and other ships over 5,000 tons.