Mongoose Traveller - Aurora-class Starfury

[Deniable]

Has anybody got miniatures and a measuring cup? I'm starting to think it would be easier to measure the displacement and scale the results. It's going to have negative buoyancy so it should all be volume of the solid, right.

It should work nicely; just remember to (gently) cap the mount holes, and slowly lower the mini into the water. But a gradiated cylinder will be needed, as will a catchbasin. If you have a decent gradiated cylinder, use a pipette to get it to a nice reference point, then drop the model in, and subtract the reference point from the new measure.

Will scale matter for this? The ActA minis aren't produced to scale with one another.

Short answer is no, but you'll have to do the scale calcs for each model.

You can either use it to get a percentage of bounding volume (as was being estimated above) or you'll have one key measurement and can scale the results from that.

To determine empty space, if the overall dimensions of the miniature are say 2x3x4 cm this will give you a bounding box of 24 cm^3. This is also 24 mL. If it only displaces 12 mL of water then you know that about 50% of the box is waste space and so on.

If you know the model is 4cm across and the original is 200 m then you know that you have a 1:5000 scale model and need to scale up the model displacement to obtain the 'real' volume. This is where I need to double check the scale factors.

1. Take the displaced model volume in mL.
2. Multiply by the scale factor cubed. (scale * scale * scale) This is still a (huge) value in mL.
3. Divide by 1000 to get liters or by 1 million to get cubic meters.
4. Divide cubic meters by 14 to get displacement tons.

Now, I'm pretty rusty on this so hopefully someone will point out any mistakes.

 

[AKAramis]

Has anybody got miniatures and a measuring cup? I'm starting to think it would be easier to measure the displacement and scale the results. It's going to have negative buoyancy so it should all be volume of the solid, right.

It should work nicely; just remember to (gently) cap the mount holes, and slowly lower the mini into the water. But a gradiated cylinder will be needed, as will a catchbasin. If you have a decent gradiated cylinder, use a pipette to get it to a nice reference point, then drop the model in, and subtract the reference point from the new measure.

Will scale matter for this? The ActA minis aren't produced to scale with one another.

You need one good measure to scale the ships. You measure that dimension on the mini, and you can scale the ship's volume from the mini and that known measure.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

As a quick way to model the B5 Hyperdrive using Traveller, I have come up with the following:

Ships only have to have a single jump drive, without jump rating, so, reverse the Jump Drive sizes based on TL...

What I mean is:

At TL 9 and 10, a ship must buy a jump drive sized for J6 etc.

So,

TL 9: J6
TL 10: J6
TL 11: J5
TL 12: J4
TL 13: J3
TL 14: J2
TL 15: J1

Now, the fuel cost starts out at a whopping 60% of the ships mass at TL 9 and reduces to 10% of the ships mass at TL 15.

Half of the fuel is used to open the Jump Point at each end.

THAT is why Jumpgates are so valuable. Lower TL ships save a LOT of space on fuel and Jump Engine Space. Even high tech ships would probably still use jump gates whenever they could to save the fuel costs.

Build a Jump Gate with a maximum ship tonnage allowed (say 1MTon) and based on the technology level of the building race, you get a size for the jump gates.

Note, that makes Minbari gates much smaller than Earth Alliance Gates. Alternately, you can assume that the Jump Gate technology has been shared between the races and pick a TL that becomes the default for the Gates. Centauri taught the Humans how to build Jump Gates and the first gates were built by a long-dead race (a First One?) so that might work too.

Quantium-40 replaces Lanthanum as the critical element for building FTL drives (or gates) and off you go.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

I think Jump Gate tech is more or less universal - the network was put in place by a race of First Ones so long ago that no remaining race knows exactly who or when. New Jump Gates are built to replace those damaged or destroyed and to grant access to newly discovered systems.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Agreed, but from a BUILD/DESIGN point of view, I think they could be modeled as TL 15 Jump Drives for 1MTon ships. It gives a first approximation for now.

 

[pasuuli]

As a quick way to model the B5 Hyperdrive using Traveller, I have come up with the following:

Ships only have to have a single jump drive, without jump rating, so, reverse the Jump Drive sizes based on TL...

What I mean is:

At TL 9 and 10, a ship must buy a jump drive sized for J6 etc.

That's very clever. I like it.

 

[pasuuli]

From babtech-onthe.net... which is the voice of sanity for B5 ship lengths, by the way...

Assuming the Vorchan is 240 meters long:

Its dimensions to be 240 x 60 x 60 for the middle chunk, and 400 x 25 x 100 for the main 'wing'. Volume is therefore around 1,864,000 cubic meters, or 130,000 tons.

Assuming the narn's Bin'Tak warship is 500 meters long, and dimensions roughly 35:15:10. Volume would be 500 x 210 x 140, or 1 million tons.

Minbari Sharlin Warcruiser, 300m long, dimensions 300 x 300 x 160, or one million tons. NOTE: This ship's length is provided on a tactical readout from the show. This serves to reinforce the website's credibility.

Earthforce Omega-class Destroyer, maybe 1300m long, dimensions 1300 x 60 x 60, or 330,000 tons.


Alright. If B5 dreadnoughts actually fit into Traveller's ranges, then I see no conversions necessary. Do any in fact push beyond the million-ton mark?

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Gee that's twice now you've complimented me.... 8)

Better stop or I'll get a swelled head.

And YES, I have been working on how to translate some of the B5 stuff to Traveller ever since B5 came out. I thought it would make a great alternate setting for Traveller!

 

[AKAramis]

From babtech-onthe.net... which is the voice of sanity for B5 ship lengths, by the way...

Assuming the Vorchan is 240 meters long:

Its dimensions to be 240 x 60 x 60 for the middle chunk, and 400 x 25 x 100 for the main 'wing'. Volume is therefore around 1,864,000 cubic meters, or 130,000 tons.

Assuming the narn's Bin'Tak warship is 500 meters long, and dimensions roughly 35:15:10. Volume would be 500 x 210 x 140, or 1 million tons.

Minbari Sharlin Warcruiser, 300m long, dimensions 300 x 300 x 160, or one million tons. NOTE: This ship's length is provided on a tactical readout from the show. This serves to reinforce the website's credibility.

Earthforce Omega-class Destroyer, maybe 1300m long, dimensions 1300 x 60 x 60, or 330,000 tons.


Alright. If B5 dreadnoughts actually fit into Traveller's ranges, then I see no conversions necessary. Do any in fact push beyond the million-ton mark?

Note that all your measures are apparently bounding box. The Sharlin is probably only 3/4 the bounding box value, if that.

 

[pasuuli]

From babtech-onthe.net... which is the voice of sanity for B5 ship lengths, by the way...

Assuming the Vorchan is 240 meters long:

Its dimensions to be 240 x 60 x 60 for the middle chunk, and 400 x 25 x 100 for the main 'wing'. Volume is therefore around 1,864,000 cubic meters, or 130,000 tons.

Assuming the narn's Bin'Tak warship is 500 meters long, and dimensions roughly 35:15:10. Volume would be 500 x 210 x 140, or 1 million tons.

Minbari Sharlin Warcruiser, 300m long, dimensions 300 x 300 x 160, or one million tons. NOTE: This ship's length is provided on a tactical readout from the show. This serves to reinforce the website's credibility.

Earthforce Omega-class Destroyer, maybe 1300m long, dimensions 1300 x 60 x 60, or 330,000 tons.


Alright. If B5 dreadnoughts actually fit into Traveller's ranges, then I see no conversions necessary. Do any in fact push beyond the million-ton mark?

Note that all your measures are apparently bounding box. The Sharlin is probably only 3/4 the bounding box value, if that.

Well, close to bounding box, anyway, and even then I snip off the leggy bits (the Sharlin is allegedly 1600m tall). And the Earthforce Omega Destroyer is more like 1300 x 100 x 100, just under one million tons [*].

Last night I cruised a number of websites, including these forums, and found that there are no real values.

I even found a fellow who did B5 meshes, and asked him about calculating volumes. He gave some suggestions, like make sure the mesh is closed, then calculate the volume of each section, but his main concern is that measurements have to be very precise, which brings me back to my initial problem that there are no real values.

Anyway, I think sinking them and measuring displacement that way would be very handy.

Here's a well done site with meshes.

http://www.meshweaver.com/Craft_Comparisons/Craft_Comparisons_1.htm


[*] Even Mongoose has long lengths for B5's ships...

 

[pasuuli]

One observation, and one note.

Note that Mongoose's B5 game classifies ships into size ranges.

IIRC size ranges are related directly to the length of the ship. So length is to B5 as volume is to High Guard. More correctly, the size classification indicates High Guard volume, of course.

 

[pasuuli]

This is very rough and I'm not an ACTA player by any stretch, so apologies to all and sundry here. Goals are to roughly pigeonhole B5 ships from Mongoose based on some generic characteristics to get the feel for their range. Given that plus knowledge of Traveller/High Guard ship abilities gives a starting point for a conversation.

Ship Size     Speed    Armor

<1kt           10       8
<10kt          10      16
Cruisers        8      24
Dreadnoughts    6      36

Ship Owner    Speed    Armor       Wp   Agl   Stl
EA             +2(F)               2
NR                     +50%        1
CN             +2      +25%(L)     2  
MN             +4(D+2)             3    +2    +4
VR/S                   x10         4


Notes:

F: Fighters
D: Dreadnoughts
L: Ships of the Line (Cruisers and Dreadnoughts).
Agl: Agility bonus, general weight.
Stl: Stealth bonus, general weight.

Speed and Armor: a very general weighting.  Higher is better.
Speed per ACTA, but could be Accel.
Weapons rating: a very general ranking, unweighted.  Higher is better.

The weights are relative to their categories and, to some degree, each other.

As an example, a Narn battleship generically has Speed 6, Armor 54, and poor weaponry. Unfair assessment but this is work in progress.

As another example, a base Earthforce battleship has Speed 6, Armor 36, and fair weaponry.

A base Centauri battleship has Speed 8, Armor 45, and fair weaponry.

A base Minbari battleship has Speed 8, Armor 36, good weaponry, plus a bonus to Agility and Stealth.

A base Vorlon battleship, if one exists, has Speed 6, Armor 360, and excellent weaponry.

While this models tradeoffs well it is not all that accurate to any B5 system, but one must start someplace.


While the results are not at all satisfactory, the process seems good. But there are bits that seem wrong; for instance, a Sharlin must plainly outclass an EA battleship even without its Stealth, and so Armor must actually be greater, owing to materials technology for instance.

So the assumptions in the table needs revisiting.

 

[pasuuli]

First some goals.

Ships should increase in durability by size: Fighter, 'H'-class (100-999t), 'K'-class (1000-9999t), Cruiser, Battleship.

Firepower should increase as well.

Overall effectiveness should increase based on race: EA, NR, CN, MN.

All values can be traded off against one another to improve a desired value.

Ship Class    Points 
Fighter        12   
H-class        16   
K-class        20   
Cruisers       24   
Dreadnoughts   28   

Points are allocated between: Speed, Armor, Weapons, Agility

Race          Bonus
EA            Fighter +2 points
NR            Agl+2
CN            +2 points, Agl+2
MN            Armor x 2, Agl+4

An example Narn battleship has 28 points, so could have Speed 5, Armor 16, Weapons 7, Agility 2. Compare to a Minbari battleship with Speed 6, Armor 24, Weapons 10, Agility 4. And to an EA battleship with Speed 6, Armor 14, Weapons 8, Agility 0.

 

[pasuuli]

*Sigh* I'm totally off track now but pulling it back a bit, this is to start a conversation about how Mongoose-B5 ships look, and how Traveller ships look, and how the latter can serve the former.

Looking at the races I can pull out some recurring themes in their ships, naturally from the mind of Mongoose but still it's their game right.

* Narn ships usually have more armor
* Centauri ships usually are slightly better than Narn ships, but there's overlap.
* EA ships tend to have good armor and firepower but are early on at a disadvantage. They are not subtle, relying on raw power. Therefore I posit that the other races have Agility or Stealth bonuses by default.
* Minbari ships dominate but are not invincible.

 

[AKAramis]

Pasuuli:

While I applaud your enthusiasm, I'd recommend seeing what High Guard has for ship design add-ons. It might be a total replacement for the letter-drive based systems...

I suspect, in this case, patience will be worth it.

 

[pasuuli]

Pasuuli:

While I applaud your enthusiasm, I'd recommend seeing what High Guard has for ship design add-ons. It might be a total replacement for the letter-drive based systems...

I suspect, in this case, patience will be worth it.

So true... I can't see the letter drives applying to MHG...

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I think the letter drives are going to be in T5, so it is possible that some variation of the letter drive system might make it into MHG.

 

[pasuuli]

I think the letter drives are going to be in T5, so it is possible that some variation of the letter drive system might make it into MHG.

Here's hoping MHG runs on formula instead of a huge table of drive letters... works great for small ships but for a 20,000-odd ton Vorchan, well...

Ah and at the same time hoping it works with the small ship rules too. Complementary or interchangeable or something.

 

[pasuuli]

I just realized that High Guard ships are limited by their computer ratings, which is dependent upon their tech level. Thus higher TL ships have a double advantage (increased weapon power being the other).

That really does take care of combat differences between groups. It does not address the way races try to compensate, though, does it.

 

[LimeyDragon]

Did anyone ever come up with a good and easy formula to convert the B5 D20 stuff to Traveller? or any other source to Traveller.?