Military Vehicles

[aspqrz]

Have you given it a try to convert Stuff to MGT rules? I mean if you create weapons using Stuff! how hard it is to convert them to MGT weapon stats?

I've used stuff to reverse engineer weapons and vehicles for a number of systems, including Mongoose Traveller.

In writing "Audace ad Gloriam" (a supplement containing Exploration and Survival oriented gear) primarily for MongTrav, which includes a small number of missile and melee weapons, I used the extensive notes provided in Stuff on cross system conversion for weapons and came to a quite satisfactory end product.

Vehicles are easier, in a sense, since you simply do a straight conversion of performace stats ... only the armour and hull/structure values require a bit of thought.

The next project, after AaG is put to bed (almost done, just a page more of Utility Vehicles, an Intro, ToC and Index and some other minor things ... a week, probably, or not much more) my next project will be what I have tentatively entitled "Condottieri" will have a lot more weapons, armour, military vehicles (combat and noncombat) so I intend to use Stuff! very heavily for that ... the only problem might be the fiddles that the MongTrav people have made with "SuperAP" and the other categories they've had to introduce because the armour system sucks ... but Stuff! is flexible enough to handle it (and I have some ideas for a more workable system to supplement/replace the ... quirky ... one of MongTrav ... that is, I'll include straight MongTrav stats for the weapons and also include at least some of my ideas purely as options).

Phil

Phil

 

[SnowDog]

Okay, thanks for the info!

I remember buying the EABA years ago and also the Stuff! I might have to take a look if I can find the printed stuff (and/or pdfs).

 

[apoc527]

well for some of us who like things simple, Mongoose Traveller offers something that in a way classic traveller lacked. Accessibility.

I am not a scientist, theoretical theorist, planetologist, geologist. I do not work in areospace, engineering or have a background in the military. Adding more than three numbers gives me a headache.

And i love MGT. agreed, Merc lacked.... clarity, but the other books so far, besides a few technical errors, and a few points that needed explaining, worked great!

i don't mind Scout not having expanded planet/system creation. if the players want to go to the fourth moon i will knock up a description for it on the fly. if i have lots of tables, rules, cross references that i have to refer to to make it "real" or "believable" then as a GM i'm not doing my job right. and for me it takes away from the important thing, which is the story!.

Yes MGT concentrates on the RPG side of things. But for me, personally, thats what i want it to do.

i have a design idea in my head right now that isn't presented in the main rule book. i don't care if it isn't possible or pratical in real life, i just care that i want to get this idea down on paper so it can interact with the rest of my world. to do that i will probably refer to both books. so i will be buying both at some stage.

points about editing aside, the basic premise; to recreate one of the premier science fiction rpgs of all time, mongoose is doing a great job.

keep it up!

Chef

I concur. Everyone knows that many Traveller fans are gearheads, which is great, but I discovered with GURPS Vehicles 2nd edition that I'm not one of them, which was a shock, because I thought I was.

Turns out, what I really need is a workable game, not a perfect simulation.

 

[Treebore]

You know what I do to make the Trav creation tables work perfectly? When they don't, I make it do so.

Meaning, when the final results are out of whack, I make them workable. Between my basic knowledge and the power of Google I get perfect results with the Traveller charts.

So even though they don't work perfectly, with a swift kick or two from me, I get perfect results.

I never, ever thought anything would pull me away from MegaTraveller. Mongoose has done so, congratulations!

 

[SnowDog]

Tweaking is fine in a lot of cases but I don't really want to do that when I am building a vehicle or something. Mind you, I have not seen the MongTrav vehicle building system myself, so I can't say whether it works or not without tweaking.

Probably the most simple, yet effective vehicle building system was in a Heavy Gear. Granted, it was not without it's problems either but it was easy to use. But still FF&S for TNE was a dream come true for me.

 

[alex_greene]

You know what would really help in designing and developing military vehicles?

Top Trumps.

Yes, the card game. Specifically, anything where military ground, air and water vehicles are covered.

What non-military Referees and players really need are stats on RL vessels - length, beam, draft, volume, mass, top speed, cruising speed, endurance, armaments, crew capacity.

That way, when developing their own versions of cruisers, destroyers, fighters, attack helicopters, AFVs and APVs they'll have some basis of comparison. At least they'll know that if a RL vehicle's top speed is, say, 140kph they know what sort of ground pressure and power-to-weight ratio to go for, and what sort of vehicle endurance that vehicle will need, which of course affects fuel tank size, armour, crew capacity and so on.

At the very least we could do with some sort of minimum standards as determined by the various Ministries or Departments of Warmongering: "A Corvette must have a minimum length, beam and draught of XYZ metres, a maximum crew complement of of so and so, a minimum cruising speed of X kph and a maximum of Y kph," and so on.

Whatever isn't classified, that is.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Whatever isn't classified, that is.

I'd rather settle for the classified myself, but ...

 

[alex_greene]

So would I, but at least we wouldn't get arrested for this.

 

[Treebore]

Just get the "Jane" books if you really want to know. They may not be exact, but they are close enough.

 

[alex_greene]

Jane's Guides. Sterling idea. Thank you.

 

[SnowDog]

It just occurred to me that isn't the vehicular design system used to design vehicles in Judge Dredd, Hammer's Slammers etc.? How do you think those designs worked out?

 

[AndrewW]

It just occurred to me that isn't the vehicular design system used to design vehicles in Judge Dredd, Hammer's Slammers etc.? How do you think those designs worked out?

Yes, the same vehicle design system was used. Hard to tell though as they don't really give the details in Judge Dredd at least.

 

[SnowDog]

So, if the system was used in those supplements and the vehicles work in those settings I wouldn't call it a total miss, then. It is just curious that the system has received so much flak when someone is trying to create new vehicles or using vehicles in the vehicle book but I don't remember reading anything bad about vehicle stats of various sourcebooks.

 

[aspqrz]

So, if the system was used in those supplements and the vehicles work in those settings I wouldn't call it a total miss, then. It is just curious that the system has received so much flak when someone is trying to create new vehicles or using vehicles in the vehicle book but I don't remember reading anything bad about vehicle stats of various sourcebooks.

Well, they're hardly "real world" vehicles, and the books that inspired them don't give a whole hell of a lot of performance stats to compare the design system results to, so it's not at all surprising that there would be no complaints :wink:

I suspect they simply worked out what they wanted and then tweaked the system to give it, which probably explains why it can't cope with real world vehicle designs. YMMV of course

Phil

 

[SnowDog]

Yes, you are probably right that Mongoose used non-RL vehicles as data points for creating the vehicle design system. In that case it should be considered in that light no matter how much it irritates that it is not possible to create RL vehicles.

Granted, it would have been nice if the system could have been used to create stats for RL vehicles, too

 

[aspqrz]

Yes, you are probably right that Mongoose used non-RL vehicles as data points for creating the vehicle design system. In that case it should be considered in that light no matter how much it irritates that it is not possible to create RL vehicles.

Granted, it would have been nice if the system could have been used to create stats for RL vehicles, too

And not particularly difficult, I would have thought :roll:

Still, maybe there's a way that the design system can be salvaged with some additional work by ... well ... any gearheads out there.

I can think of a couple of areas where some simple changes would improve things ... but I have my suspicions that the underpinnings may be so (let's be generous) ... flawed ... that it may be easier to simply ignore it and use any of the wide variety of alternatives that have been suggested

Many years ago, in the last days of the first incarnation of the TML, I was working on a simplified vehicle design system based on RTG's Maximum Metal, but for T4 ... in my copious free time ( :lol: :lol: :lol: ) I may dig it out and see if I can work up something that could do the job ... but no holding of breath, please, so you better hope there's some suck ... er ... hard working ... gearhead out there who doesn't have a life and will be willing to work on a solution merely for the kudos (or, considering this is a Traveller forum) the bricks and brickbats :wink:

Phil

 

[Duroon]

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!"

 

[Old timer]

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 agree.

 

[FreeTrav]

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!".

 

[aspqrz]

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!".

And I believe that is what we are looking for ... for some values of "we" of course :wink:

Phil