Military Vehicles

aspqrz said:
... It has a Fuel Processor which, allegedly, allows it to produce its own fuel from seawater ... producing 20 times its volume in 24 hours, with a volume sufficient to produce 30m3 (fuel bunkerage is 21.6m3).

Apart from the problem that this makes it a perpetual motion machine, see the real problem?
...

Hi,

I believe that the statement above is not correct. In order for the vessel to be a perpetual motion machine it would have to output a power greater than or equal to the power input into it, which is not the case here.

Although the ship only has to expend a small amount of energy to collect & purify the fuel & to convert the fuel's energy in the ship's power plant, this doesn't mean that you are getting more energy out than you put in because its really a matter of how much energy you are getting out of what is stored in the fuel.

A real world analogy that might help clarify this is a "campfire".

Say for instance you are camping & you want to build a fire.

-1st you would probably expend a small amount of energy gathering fuel in the form of twigs, branches, & kindling

-next you may purify your fuel by removing leaves & wet bark, etc expending a small amount more of energy

-next you would probably expend a small amount more of energy stacking this fuel (wood etc) into a mound for use as a campfire (ie transferring the fuel to the power plant)

-finally by applying a small amount of additional energy, in terms of a spark, you can then initiate a reaction that causes the stored energy in the fuel to be converted into thermal energy, which can be used to boil water, cook food, or provide warmth & light

In the end then you end up expending only a small amount of energy to extract the relatively large amount of stored energy in the fuel (wood) into useful energy or power.

However, it is not a perpetual motion or energy device because the energy output from the fire is less than the potential energy stowed in the fuel (wood) regardless of how much (or little) energy was expended collecting purifying it etc.

Regards
PF
 
FreeTrav said:
Duroon said:
There are two schools of thought for stuff like this. The gear heads will always note the flaws in any system, regardless of how good or bad it may be. Then there are those of us that look at it and say "hmmm a system for creating imaginary vehicles to be used on imaginary worlds... good enough for me!"

I think there's sort of a third school of thought, more closely allied with the first than the second - they say "Neat idea! Here are the fixes for it!".

The people who propose fixes are the ones that are in the first school of thought as well I am afraid.
 
PFVA63 said:
aspqrz said:
... It has a Fuel Processor which, allegedly, allows it to produce its own fuel from seawater ... producing 20 times its volume in 24 hours, with a volume sufficient to produce 30m3 (fuel bunkerage is 21.6m3).

Apart from the problem that this makes it a perpetual motion machine, see the real problem?
...

Hi,

I believe that the statement above is not correct. In order for the vessel to be a perpetual motion machine it would have to output a power greater than or equal to the power input into it, which is not the case here.

Although the ship only has to expend a small amount of energy to collect & purify the fuel & to convert the fuel's energy in the ship's power plant, this doesn't mean that you are getting more energy out than you put in because its really a matter of how much energy you are getting out of what is stored in the fuel.

A real world analogy that might help clarify this is a "campfire".

Say for instance you are camping & you want to build a fire.

-1st you would probably expend a small amount of energy gathering fuel in the form of twigs, branches, & kindling

-next you may purify your fuel by removing leaves & wet bark, etc expending a small amount more of energy

-next you would probably expend a small amount more of energy stacking this fuel (wood etc) into a mound for use as a campfire (ie transferring the fuel to the power plant)

-finally by applying a small amount of additional energy, in terms of a spark, you can then initiate a reaction that causes the stored energy in the fuel to be converted into thermal energy, which can be used to boil water, cook food, or provide warmth & light

In the end then you end up expending only a small amount of energy to extract the relatively large amount of stored energy in the fuel (wood) into useful energy or power.

However, it is not a perpetual motion or energy device because the energy output from the fire is less than the potential energy stowed in the fuel (wood) regardless of how much (or little) energy was expended collecting purifying it etc.

You realise I was being figurative and not literal, hey? 8)

Phil
 
For those who would like to create ‘Real World Vehicles’ with the design system, how would you suggest designing an internal combustion power plant that can model the engine in a model A ford, the engine in a Sopwith Camel, the engine in a Submarine Spitfire, the engine in a Sherman Tank, and the engine in a German U-boat (which are all Internal Combustion Engines of the same TL) such that the cost, weight and power of each is correct? Heck, the difference between a 1918 $US and a 1939 $US and the cost of manufacturing will introduce nearly an order of magnitude difference even if the details are 100% accurate.

Here is another real world factor that will take a great deal of the fun out of a design system, efficiencies of scale. A 2009 Helicopter Turbine and a 2009 Rocket Engine have a similar number of parts, are made of similar materials and are manufactured to similar tolerances. However, a helicopter engine costs $50,000 and a comparable size Rocket engine costs $500,000. The Helicopter engine was mass produced on an assembly line in batches of thousands. The rocket engine is hand made in batches of ten.

And that is just power plants, you still have the hulls and other components to design.

Is that really a design system that you would want to use?
 
Libris said:
The Mongoose Traveller rules are fine but I do get the impression that the technical ability of some of the writers is somewhat challenged.

I’m just going to chime in on this statement as I think it needs to be broadened. I stopped buying MTrav books, sight unseen, after Agent. The company is producing them too fast to have any decent playtest time or research involved. Agent was a disaster and it was clear that the writer research consisted of watching Lethal Weapon about four times. All of the books are suffering from vagaries, contradictions, useless text and incomplete attribution to the system at large. I agree that Mongoose needs to ride the wave and publish books while they’re hot but, I would think, they would realize that duration of that “wave” is dependent on the strength of their product.

I did pick up Civilian Vehicles but it was all crunchy and I haven’t monkeyed with it. I recently made the decision to pass on Military Vehicles and Scoundrel and went with Hellas instead because I am pretty confident I’m tossing my money away on about eight pages I’d get use out of.

Mongoose needs to slow down and produce quality product or they’ll bury Traveller in the same bin that it’s been sitting for so many years. With such a strong start, it’s pretty disappointing to look at the line today.

It's unfortunate because I'm deciding not to purchase Elric or RQ based on the strength of the Traveller products and I'd really like to explore those games as well.
 
Agent was a disaster and it was clear that the writer research consisted of watching Lethal Weapon about four times.

I find this critic amusing; as I have received more emails and reviews that Agent was one of the better M.Trav books we've done than any other product I have done (save for the CSC, but that was a joint project).

So, I'm sorry YOU find Agent so poor...but many others did not, quite the opposite, in fact.

-Bry
 
Kilgs said:
I’m just going to chime in on this statement as I think it needs to be broadened. I stopped buying MTrav books, sight unseen, after Agent. The company is producing them too fast to have any decent playtest time or research involved.

Just because they are producing a number of books, doesn't mean the product cycle is any shorter then it would normally be. Playtest or research time does not have to suffer.
 
For gaming purposes - I consider stated cost as the RSRP (rulebook's suggested relative price). The RSRP can be assumed for simplification purposes and the author's sense of game balance. The 'real' price may be nothing at all even resembling that price.

As a referee - things like how bad the players need/want it and how important the price is to the plot - these 'set the price' when the RSRP just won't do. :)


  • I find discussions on 'real world' prices humorous at best - prices are always arbitrary. They are based on profit (margin) and what one can get - and thus depend on numerous factors - predominantly social. Depending on market, such things as MSRP (manufacturer's suggested retail price) may be the price one would never pay.

    In the RW - cost of relative complexity (tech), raw materials, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, etc. are just a factor (or an excuse) - the price of something is not rooted in the physical 'laws' of reality. This, in turn, leads to - negotiation. Personnally, I negotiate even items at retail stores (like tires and vacumm cleaners at Walmart and Lowe's, etc.). What one pays for something is what they are willing to pay - or what they can get away with paying.

    It is not unusual for goods to be sold at an intentional loss - such as to support long term investments or collatoral sells - such as hi-tech goodies (like game machines and printers) or low tech materials like lumber - or for more mundane reasons like taxes (getting rid of inventory so annual taxes are avoided and selling at a loss to claim losses to ofset gains for market reporting). Precedence is often set in a market causing items to always be sold at a 'loss' or extreme profits (cars, furniture, cosmetics, art, etc).
 
So far, I've had no complaints about Mongoose's Traveller output. The only problem with said output has been simple finance and availability - the lack of the former to buy these lovely tomes, and the distance I have to travel to obtain them.

(I have no credit card with which to buy online, either, so I'm stifling that line of response before it begins.)

I'm going to look into Waterstone's, among other locations, for books covering the stats and performance of various RL military vehicles, and see if I can work on the rules accordingly to get some military vehicles designed for myself.

And yes, Jane's Fighting Grav Tanks is not exactly going to be easy to find ...
 
Mongoose Steele said:
So, I'm sorry YOU find Agent so poor...but many others did not, quite the opposite, in fact.

-Bry

I'm well aware of that. However, that doesn't defeat the fact that it presented new abilities with no discussion of how they functioned in the game or direction for a GM, presented all sorts of talk about crimes but none about actual police work (ie. criminal procedure) such as search warrants in the Imperium, evidence gathering techniques, the application of Imperial law v. planetary law, the overlapping jurisdictions, absolutely no discussion of alternate court systems beyond the trial/jury system, the discussion of law levels without any actual discussion of the varieties of justice available under such (for example, a Law Level 1 could actually be an autocratic, repressive justice system where there was no trial just an executioner), actual rights and how they may be affected, the inclusion of assassination with bounty hunting, a table system for bounty-hunting that missed the most obvious random elements such as "who is the criminal" and "twists".

Lethal Weapon may ignore the elements of criminal procedure but if you're writing a book on police work... it is must have. In fact, it's not a book about running police games without it. The failure to address Networks and Cover Identies in detail was egregious error.

Granted, there were a number of things I liked about it. Character generation was excellent and the court system was actually cool as long as you assume that every planet in the universe is modeled on western legal traditions.

I understand that it was a decent book but, frankly, it's missing whole chapters of information if someone wanted to play a hard sci-fi police/espionage game.

/end threadjack
 
Mongoose Steele said:
Agent was a disaster and it was clear that the writer research consisted of watching Lethal Weapon about four times.

I find this critic amusing; as I have received more emails and reviews that Agent was one of the better M.Trav books we've done than any other product I have done (save for the CSC, but that was a joint project).

So, I'm sorry YOU find Agent so poor...but many others did not, quite the opposite, in fact.

-Bry

Dude, intelligence is distributed on a bell curve. Please don't mistake 'props' from the bottom 30% as an actual 'job well done'. You are in fact, the worst of the MGT product writers. Seriously, Mercenary was a disaster. I look at every product's author before I buy any MgT product and if your name is there, it's an automatic pass. You are the weakest link... Goodbye...
 
Kilgs said:
Mongoose Steele said:
So, I'm sorry YOU find Agent so poor...but many others did not, quite the opposite, in fact.

-Bry

I'm well aware of that. However, that doesn't defeat the fact that it presented new abilities with no discussion of how they functioned in the game or direction for a GM, presented all sorts of talk about crimes but none about actual police work (ie. criminal procedure) such as search warrants in the Imperium, evidence gathering techniques, the application of Imperial law v. planetary law, the overlapping jurisdictions, absolutely no discussion of alternate court systems beyond the trial/jury system, the discussion of law levels without any actual discussion of the varieties of justice available under such (for example, a Law Level 1 could actually be an autocratic, repressive justice system where there was no trial just an executioner), actual rights and how they may be affected, the inclusion of assassination with bounty hunting, a table system for bounty-hunting that missed the most obvious random elements such as "who is the criminal" and "twists".
/end threadjack

While that may have been missing from Agent, Scoundrel has an entire chapter on the subject.

Mithras said:
Agreed. Does this forum have an 'ignore' feature? Mmm, unfortunately not ....

I do so wish that this forum had an ignore feature at times. Of course I would end up missing many of the "livelier" discussions if it did.
 
I'm outraged on behalf of Bryan Steele. Seriously, what a moronic comment. Can we get an "Ignore" or "Vote Off the Island" button?

First of all, none of the MGT books are what I'd call particularly "bad." They ALL provide useful pieces of information. Granted, some of them are more useful than others, but by and large, they all add something to the game.

Second, what are you people expecting? Mongoose employs game designers, not lawyers, scientists, engineers, weapons experts, hard bitten detectives, ship designers, government assassins, black ops security experts, or virtually any of the professions that RPGs, as a rule, try to cover.

I get so tired of this double standard in the RPG writing industry. A fantasy author can write garbage because, well, it's fantasy. Who's to say what makes sense in any given fantasy world? It's all made up! Well guess what--so is sci-fi. "Hard" sci-fi depends so utterly on the reader/gamer, that one man's fusion drive is another man's unrealistic abomination. The same goes for technical points in any of these products, whether they be design systems or manifestos on legal and criminal procedure.

When I buy an RPG book, I expect reasonably thought out game mechanics and enough of an overview of any given concept that I can make a go of faking it when I GM. I'm a lawyer in real life, so if I wanted, I could spice up any legal stuff. But guess what, I really don't want to do that. I want to get to the parts about which I have very little real life experience.

The goal of these games is to have fun, not model reality as accurately as possible. If all the complainers and whiners don't like the realism present in MGT, which is a science FICTION game, then don't spend your money on it and please don't come on these forums and clog them with your useless ad hominem attacks on game designers.

Thanks.
 
Kilgs said:
......presented all sorts of talk about crimes but none about actual police work (ie. criminal procedure) such as search warrants in the Imperium, evidence gathering techniques, the application of Imperial law v. planetary law, ......

I believe there isn't much on law enforcement in Agent because there are distant plans to do a police book (because I volunteered to be a source of information and wasn't told 'no we aren't doing such a book' :))

If someone dislikes an author, I would suggest making intelligent points to back his opinion not a juvenile rant. (directed at Chrome not Kilgs)
 
Well, I do like the new books. Sure, it has some flaws, but overall I find them useful. About new rules for World creation and such, I see the supplements as player books, with only a few items for referees. Taking that into account, these books do their job pretty well.

About the feasibility and realism of vehicles: playability and realism tend to diverge after a certain point. There is only so much realism you can take before making the game umplayable (or having to spend hours just to design a single vehicle!). And for TL8+, there is no such thing as realism :)

I'll give it a chance nonetheless.

Cheers!
 
Chrome said:
Dude, intelligence is distributed on a bell curve. Please don't mistake 'props' from the bottom 30% as an actual 'job well done'.
With this you just insulted me (and a lot of other people who liked Agent)
quite badly, too, and for a moment I was tempted to react accordingly...
 
Back
Top