No Ship Design Process

[allanimal]

Power requirements are on a table on p. 144.
Weapon costs are in the table at the bottom of p.158

It would be nice to have a consolidated table, but the info is all there.

 

[phavoc]

I posted this in the Common Spacecraft section as well but I want to re-iterate here since it's pertinent to the discussion. I'm willing to allow for the idea that the CRB includes many ships to use and that one of the cool perks with High Guard will be "Build your own ships!". But the problem is that a lot of the common spacecraft are incomplete in that case. What I mean is, where are all the guns? I get that free traders come hot off the press without guns but come on, nobody is going to fly around the marches or the Trojan sector without packing some heat and free traders get retrofitted with guns all the time. Even some of the armed ships are just armed with empty turrets (i.e. Scout/Courier and Seeker Miner). The space combat section of the rules for some reason includes the rules for how many hardpoints a ship gets and the costs of turrets and weapons and such. This stuff would make way more sense at the beginning of common spacecraft so that you can actually outfit your ships with guns. But even still, something is missing. The entries for the different guns are missing their power requirements so that if I want to run a game with just the CRB I can't because I can't equip the ship and no how much power the guns require. So a "meet us in the middle" thing here might be to have the rules for adding guns in the beginning of the Common Spacecraft chapter.


************************************OR****************************************

Include weapon loadouts in ship descriptions. So a Scout/Courier for example could have listed.
Loadout A:
Double turret with x2 Pulse lasers(4 power each)
[list the stats of the guns]

Loadout B:
Double turret with x2 Beam lasers(2 power each)
[list the stats of the guns]

etc. maybe have two or three loudouts per ship. That way players can actually get into firefights with the core rules but, again, high guard would allow greater customization.

In many ways this could be accomplished by expanding the ship description a bit more. By adding in a paragraph you can provide additional details regarding a) the ships normal operational uses, b) common configuration and equipment, and c) some interesting ideas or starting points for uses within adventures.

Ships like the Lab ship are pretty specialized and you'd wonder just how or why you would have some PC's tooling around space in a ship that's not really good for much of anything but keeping geeks from gasping in a vacuum. I know to do this right would add probably 4-5 pages, but I think it wouldn't be for nought.

 

[chiron0224]

It would be a smart move too in terms of helping to justify the fact that there aren't ship design rules in the CRB. Then it would be more like "Ok, so this book really is a complete game that we can play right now. It doesn't look like we were sold 3/4 of a game. And look! There's a supplement with rules for designing our own ships!". Rather than this reaction "Wow, Mongoose clearly wants to make sure that we have to buy other books to even really play this game. What a rip off.". I like Mongoose publishing, for the record. I say these things only because I want Traveller to reach a wider audience so more people can love it like I do and I believe that Mongoose has the best damned Traveller rules out there. I'd hate to see MgT2 flounder because new players see a rule book that looks like it was left incomplete in a thinly veiled bid for more money. I know and have seen firsthand in my short time on this forum that the author of the book really does pay attention to our feedback and for that reason I sincerely hope he takes this feedback to heart and takes steps to create a CRB that feels like a complete book while still allowing for supplementation.

 

[FallingPhoenix]

I posted this in the Common Spacecraft section as well but I want to re-iterate here since it's pertinent to the discussion. I'm willing to allow for the idea that the CRB includes many ships to use and that one of the cool perks with High Guard will be "Build your own ships!". But the problem is that a lot of the common spacecraft are incomplete in that case. What I mean is, where are all the guns? I get that free traders come hot off the press without guns but come on, nobody is going to fly around the marches or the Trojan sector without packing some heat and free traders get retrofitted with guns all the time. Even some of the armed ships are just armed with empty turrets (i.e. Scout/Courier and Seeker Miner). The space combat section of the rules for some reason includes the rules for how many hardpoints a ship gets and the costs of turrets and weapons and such. This stuff would make way more sense at the beginning of common spacecraft so that you can actually outfit your ships with guns. But even still, something is missing. The entries for the different guns are missing their power requirements so that if I want to run a game with just the CRB I can't because I can't equip the ship and no how much power the guns require. So a "meet us in the middle" thing here might be to have the rules for adding guns in the beginning of the Common Spacecraft chapter.


************************************OR****************************************

Include weapon loadouts in ship descriptions. So a Scout/Courier for example could have listed.
Loadout A:
Double turret with x2 Pulse lasers(4 power each)
[list the stats of the guns]

Loadout B:
Double turret with x2 Beam lasers(2 power each)
[list the stats of the guns]

etc. maybe have two or three loudouts per ship. That way players can actually get into firefights with the core rules but, again, high guard would allow greater customization.

In many ways this could be accomplished by expanding the ship description a bit more. By adding in a paragraph you can provide additional details regarding a) the ships normal operational uses, b) common configuration and equipment, and c) some interesting ideas or starting points for uses within adventures.

Ships like the Lab ship are pretty specialized and you'd wonder just how or why you would have some PC's tooling around space in a ship that's not really good for much of anything but keeping geeks from gasping in a vacuum. I know to do this right would add probably 4-5 pages, but I think it wouldn't be for nought.

This kind of idea is fantastic, in my opinion. For a few lines/paragraphs, you can add common upgrades/uses of the ships in the core rulebook, which effectively gives new players a potentially very large selection of ships without needing to add in design rules.

Or maybe just put the types of things that might be seen as common modifications? Maybe basic stateroom size, so you can turn a free trader into a small passenger craft? Other things that could conceivably be added to an existing ship without huge effort (like remodeling your kitchen in real life).

Or, to keep it even simpler and not duplicate design rules, maybe a few 'modules' for each ship in the core book, so you could have a far trader passenger ship, blockade runner, explorer, gun boat, etc.

 

[Meeko100]

If there's enough common space craft as is, and there is some way to retrofit new stuff onto your ship it would be enough for the "players handbook"

The "GM's guide" in high guard and the CSC would be fine, with those books allowing for a expanded game setting. Maybe add a book with tips on how to come up with your own little setting, with what would be good to flesh out existing ideas for your setting. Like the DM's guide in D&D. Something for later. So I suppose kind of a Pocket Empires book for 2e? I didn't get the luxery to see that book.

But, again, if there is enough designs as is stands, and there are rules to change them up slightly, then its fine, really. A "Ship-design lite" would be nice to have (and a nice place to name drop high guard) pointing out that it is a lite version of the rules, and many options for the designs were cut back.