Making High Guard Statistics Compatible with MgTraveller

[Tom Kalbfus]

Hull Codes
0 to 99 tons
1 100
2 200
3 300
4 400
5 500
6 600
7 700
8 800
9 900
a or A 1000 tons
The lower case letters are the codes for mongoose Traveller, they are

b 1100
c 1200
d 1300
etc

The upper case letters are the classic Traveller Hull codes
B 2000
C 3000
D 4000
etc.

What do you think of this idea?

 

[Infojunky]

I largely didn't use them with CT, why would I use them now?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I largely didn't use them with CT, why would I use them now?

For backwards compatibility, I noticed that the Hull codes deviate from Classic Traveller at around size A, so what if I wanted to describe a capital ship that is larger than 3400 tons which Mongoose traveller tops out at, both size codes use letters of the alphabet and I don't want to confuse the Mongoose size codes with the classic size codes, so I convert the Mongoose letters to lower case, B becomes a b C become c and so on so I know that were talking about d meaning a ship with tonnage of 1300 tons , not D which describes a ship that is 4000 tons.

 

[Anonymous]

Till we've seen the 2e High Guard there seems little point discussing High Guard.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Till we've seen the 2e High Guard there seems little point discussing High Guard.

Just the point, since we don't have 2e High Guard, I make do with CT High Guard, and I think there is a way to make it compatible with MgTraveller.

 

[-Daniel-]

I have a hard enough time remembering what the codes mean and in what order, I really do not want to begin using upper and lower case to give me even more to remember. Just my opinion.

 

[dragoner]

It sad that CT HG missed the opportunity to make ships better, instead they went with puff points and unitary systems. I had a friend who is an aerospace engineer, back then he drew up some ships off LBB2, mixing it with real world ideas, not too crunchy but logical, by then we were already war gaming HG & TCS (Hampsters in the first row!).

 

[Anonymous]

Till we've seen the 2e High Guard there seems little point discussing High Guard.

Just the point, since we don't have 2e High Guard, I make do with CT High Guard, and I think there is a way to make it compatible with MgTraveller.

Too much looking backwards for me. If CT HG checks the boxes for you, excellent, rock on, if not why take any time to merge it with another system if there's a new version about to appear that may answer some of your issues with what's already out there?

It's your time of course so have at it.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Having codes for CT is all nice and well, but this impacts the combat system you may be using, particularly hits to the engines and powerplant. The granularity of engine hits is different between CT Book 2 and that of Mongoose Core Rules. Same with the two versions of High Guard. Finally crossing the streams between Core/CT and MgTHG/CTHG. This has impact.

 

[Condottiere]

Having a unified design system may make that irrelevant, though I do wonder if there will be a separation between the adventure and capital classes.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

adventure and capital classes.

Are you referencing T5? There is a distinction there of which we do not know much there, yet. I thought this discussion was about GDW/CT and MgT. Tom, what are YOU referencing?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Till we've seen the 2e High Guard there seems little point discussing High Guard.

Just the point, since we don't have 2e High Guard, I make do with CT High Guard, and I think there is a way to make it compatible with MgTraveller.

Let me list them then:
Hull (dtons) Hull Code
0-99: 0
100: 1
200: 2
300: 3
400: 4
500: 5
600: 6
700: 7
800: 8
900:9
1000: A or a
1100: b
1200: c
1300: d
1400: e
1500: f
1600: g
1700: h
1800: j
1900: k
2000: B or l
2100: m
2200: n
2300: p
2400: q
2500: r
2600: s
2700: t
2800: u
2900: v
3000: C or w
3100: x
3200: y
3300: z
4000: D
5000: E
6000: F
7000: G
8000: H
9000: J
10,000: K
20,000: L
30,000: M
40,000: N
50,000: P
75,000: Q
100,000: R
200,000: S
300,000: T
400,000: U
500,000: V
700,000: W
900,000: X
1,000,000: Y
reserved: Z

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Having codes for CT is all nice and well, but this impacts the combat system you may be using, particularly hits to the engines and powerplant. The granularity of engine hits is different between CT Book 2 and that of Mongoose Core Rules. Same with the two versions of High Guard. Finally crossing the streams between Core/CT and MgTHG/CTHG. This has impact.

Need something to handle capital class starships until MgTHG finally arrives. Generally speaking, if an Adventure class starship goes up against a Capital class starship, the Adventure class will lose, the only hope is to escape, not to destroy the Capital Class, because that is not going to happen. If you have multiple Adventure class starships versus a capital class, you might want to use the CT rules to resolve the combat, You can create CT analog stats for the MgTraveller starships, I Have begun doing that for the Scout ship, using high guard rules to include all the MgT features of the Scout ship and see what the stats look like. It appears High Guard rules tend to produce higher prices for small ships, than the basic or MgTraveller Core rules.

 

[Anonymous]

Need something to handle capital class starships until MgTHG finally arrives. Generally speaking, if an Adventure class starship goes up against a Capital class starship, the Adventure class will lose, the only hope is to escape, not to destroy the Capital Class, because that is not going to happen. If you have multiple Adventure class starships versus a capital class, you might want to use the CT rules to resolve the combat, You can create CT analog stats for the MgTraveller starships, I Have begun doing that for the Scout ship, using high guard rules to include all the MgT features of the Scout ship and see what the stats look like. It appears High Guard rules tend to produce higher prices for small ships, than the basic or MgTraveller Core rules.

Why?

You're running a game where this is happening and you need to do what that requires a rewrite of rules that are generations apart?

 

[Condottiere]

If a capital ship is anything two thousand and one tonnes plus, I'd say a two thousand tonne ship can take it.

An actual capital ship is something in which the prestige of the owner and a great deal of money invested manufacturing and designing a vessel fitted out with the latest technology, that can take on most comers; the civilian version would be the Titanic.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

If a capital ship is anything two thousand and one tonnes plus, I'd say a two thousand tonne ship can take it.

An actual capital ship is something in which the prestige of the owner and a great deal of money invested manufacturing and designing a vessel fitted out with the latest technology, that can take on most comers; the civilian version would be the Titanic.

The current rules don't have anything to deal with a million ton starship, although CT High Guard does. In another post, I detailed the floorplans of a Capital class starship, basically a space going dungeon, the only problem is I don't have stats for it, but then a long lost Classic Traveller book turned up, and I'm using the High Guard rules there. I am making up an excel spreadsheet so I can make up stats for CT High Guard spaceships, the rules are sort of complicated and poorly explained in the book, so I am coding the rules after carefully reading and understanding them into my excel spread sheet so I can more easily generate these stats.

 

[Anonymous]

Don't know which rule set you're looking at Tom but my MgT HG has million dton ships, hull code CZ on page 62.

 

[Anonymous]

If you have multiple Adventure class starships versus a capital class, you might want to use the CT rules to resolve the combat, You can create CT analog stats for the MgTraveller starships, I Have begun doing that for the Scout ship, using high guard rules to include all the MgT features of the Scout ship and see what the stats look like. It appears High Guard rules tend to produce higher prices for small ships, than the basic or MgTraveller Core rules

The current rules don't have anything to deal with a million ton starship, although CT High Guard does. In another post, I detailed the floorplans of a Capital class starship, basically a space going dungeon, the only problem is I don't have stats for it, but then a long lost Classic Traveller book turned up, and I'm using the High Guard rules there. I am making up an excel spreadsheet so I can make up stats for CT High Guard spaceships, the rules are sort of complicated and poorly explained in the book, so I am coding the rules after carefully reading and understanding them into my excel spread sheet so I can more easily generate these stats.

Google a program called "High Guard Shipyard". It was written for windows, but will run on linux or mac under wine. It'll do all the maths and apply the rules correctly with the JTAS errata.

Make sure you have the 1980 edition of High Guard as they completely changed the ship design and combat rules form the 1979 edition. But I will tell you there is no point, zero, in fighting adventure-type ships against a functioning, alerted CT: High Guard warship.

There is a die modifier of target agility and relative computer size on all to hit rolls (check the errata in JTAS 14). An Imperial warship, even at 1000 tons, is going to be agility-5 minimum, and a model/9 computer (fancy electronic stealth and jamming). A Type-T patrol cruiser has a model/4 at most? He's going to be attacking at -10 to hit on a base of around 7+. i.e. 17+ to hit on 2D is a miss. Basically the target is invisible to his basic radar.

The computer DM will make the return fire highly accurate and no quanity of Type-T ships can do anything except slowly die. If we're talking real capital ships, like 50 kiloton cruisers, and not 1000 ton escorts, they're going to die at the rate of 50 per combat turn.

I would just use the computer program to work out how many staterooms and tons of drives the ship has, and use that to draw the map. Or you could just use the printed maps of the 60,000 ton Azhanti class from one of the classic traveller supplements.