Pot hole map (Holes in rules for GM's watch out for)

[F33D]

I wanted to get a list of items together for MGT GM's (I'll make a PDF & Open Text doc) that lists any significant rule ambiguities and/or holes. (I know every game has them and this isn't a critique really) Just add to this thread as you uncover.

I'll start.

1) Is inertia preserved when entering jump space and present upon leaving jump space?

 

[Hopeless]

I wanted to get a list of items together for MGT GM's (I'll make a PDF & Open Text doc) that lists any significant rule ambiguities and/or holes. (I know every game has them and this isn't a critique really) Just add to this thread as you uncover.
I'll start.
1) Is inertia preserved when entering jump space and present upon leaving jump space?

If you mean when you reenter normal space are you travelling at the same speed as when you entered?

Then I'd say yes which is why I told my players that there was an actual law about jumping from one system to another to avoid unnecessary collisions because some idiot decide to jump whilst flying at full speed!

2) Does a jump take a full week between entering jump space and then returning to normal space?

 

[nDervish]

1) Is inertia preserved when entering jump space and present upon leaving jump space?

Yes. It's established Traveller canon that your vector on exiting jumpspace is the same as your vector when you entered. Standard practice is, therefore, to decelerate to a locally-"stationary" vector prior to jumping. (A zero-vector relative to your destination would make more sense to me, but canon is what it is...)

2) Does a jump take a full week between entering jump space and then returning to normal space?

Approximately. The exact details vary from one edition of Traveller to the next, but the Mongoose edition states that a jump takes 148+6d6 hours. (p.141 under "Jump Travel" heading) 168 hours = 1 week, so the odds are about 50/50 for whether it will take more or less than a week, but it won't vary by more than about a day (27 hours) in either direction.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Followup on the Jump Time:

Can a Navigator calculate the exact jump time before actually jumping or is it some kind of random thing that everyone sits around for a day waiting to come out of jump?

OH, and a related question:

How can Traveller justify the accuracy of the Jumps (3,000 km) when the time in Jumpspace varies by 10%. 3,000 km over a distance of even 1 parsec is like landing on a needle from a ballistic launch from the other side of the solar system.

 

[dragoner]

I'll start.

....with the "How does jump work flamewar."


lol

:twisted:

 

[F33D]

1) Is inertia preserved when entering jump space and present upon leaving jump space?

Yes. It's established Traveller canon

This thread is for MGT rules as written only (and the missing parts/rules that may impact the running of the game). Items that the GM will have to rule on. Not, what a particular ruling should be.

 

[F33D]

I'll start.

....with the "How does jump work flamewar."


lol

:twisted:

No, you don't understand the purpose of this thread.

 

[dragoner]

I'll start.

....with the "How does jump work flamewar."


lol

:twisted:

No, you don't understand the purpose of this thread.

No worries, it was just a bit of humor.

 

[F33D]

2. Can a Navigator calculate the exact jump time before actually jumping or is it some kind of random thing that everyone sits around for a day waiting to come out of jump?

Good one.

3. How do ships land & take off from worlds? The wording is contradictory. A verbatim reading means that no type of hull can take off once making a wilderness landing on an world with no atmosphere and, hulls that aren't lifting bodies (missile shaped) can "glide" :roll:

 

[phavoc]

1) Is inertia preserved - Yes. According to the original JTAS article on jump travel, a ships entry vector and speed were preserved upon leaving jump space. But most ships come to a halt relative to their departure system before jumping so that they have no speed when entering realspace at their destination. This is for safety's sake. And it also doesn't take into account the real-world issue of differences in relative systems velocities... but its a game.

2) Does Jump take a full week - It's a week plus a random variable. The specifics were already provided. And there isn't really any canon explanation for having more than one ship making simultaneous jumps (aka fleet or flotilla jumps) where all ships enter and exit simultaneously, or a close facisimile thereof. There are a couple of articles out there that players have come up with to explain how that works.

3) Can a navigator estimate the exact time for a jump to take place - Under the various rule sets there has always been a randomness thrown in. So I would say 'no' to this question.

4) Jump accuracy - Just like Han Solo says, if you don't make the right calculations in jump speed, you'll pass through a sun and end your trip real quick. But, if you think about the massive leaps in capabilities of computers in the future, and the nearly unlimited amount of memory, it's quite possible to calculate your jump entry point to 20,000 decimal places - which gives you the accuracy cited. And yeah, its like finding a needle in an ocean if you crossing parsecs... but maybe that's the fiction in science fiction role playing game.

5) How do ships take off and land - Pretty much every ship is equipped with anti-grav, and that more than makes up for not having a lifting body. You don't need forward momentum to create lift, you use your ships reactor to do that for you. If I recall the anti-grav device explanation correctly, the stronger the grav field, the more powerful 'lift' you get. It's only when you are getting away from gravity does your anti-gravity capabilities fall off in effeciency.

 

[hdan]

phavoc as usual nailed it. I want to add a few comments:

2) Does Jump take a full week - It's a week plus a random variable. The specifics were already provided. And there isn't really any canon explanation for having more than one ship making simultaneous jumps (aka fleet or flotilla jumps) where all ships enter and exit simultaneously, or a close facisimile thereof. There are a couple of articles out there that players have come up with to explain how that works.

I figure fleets should jump into a system far enough away from the defenders to be able to regroup for the attack. If you guess wrong, well, battles are won by the side who makes the next to last mistake.

4) Jump accuracy - Just like Han Solo says, if you don't make the right calculations in jump speed, you'll pass through a sun and end your trip real quick. But, if you think about the massive leaps in capabilities of computers in the future, and the nearly unlimited amount of memory, it's quite possible to calculate your jump entry point to 20,000 decimal places - which gives you the accuracy cited. And yeah, its like finding a needle in an ocean if you crossing parsecs... but maybe that's the fiction in science fiction role playing game.

There was a JTAS article by MWM who laid out how amazingly precise a jump is meant to be.

5) How do ships take off and land - Pretty much every ship is equipped with anti-grav, and that more than makes up for not having a lifting body. You don't need forward momentum to create lift, you use your ships reactor to do that for you. If I recall the anti-grav device explanation correctly, the stronger the grav field, the more powerful 'lift' you get. It's only when you are getting away from gravity does your anti-gravity capabilities fall off in effeciency.

I seem to recall the correlation between lift and local gravity also. Something about pre-thruster plate gravity drives (lifters, like are used in an air/raft) needing something to "push" against. Thruster plates are more like "warp drives" in that they twist space directly instead of "surfing" on a local gravity well.

My favorite version of ship launch is that ships lift up more like weather balloons than rockets, except that they start moving slowly at first. Especially for ships that aren't optimized for atmosphere (with fins and such), they drift upward at an increasing rate until they are clear of enough dense atmosphere that they can kick in their maneuver drives and scream up into space. Aerodyne ships can move through dense atmosphere more quickly, and need to spend less time and energy fighting the local gravity.

But then again, I'm perhaps overly influenced by the idea of anti-gravity as being more like buoyancy than thrust. (Why else would they call them "air/rafts"?)

 

[F33D]

Again, this thread is NOT about other rule sets. It is simply a listing of holes/ambiguities in the rules that a ref will have to decide on. Suggestions are good but I am just trying to make a comprehensive list for this rule set.

4. What is the armour rating of an "unarmoured" ship hull vs. personal/vehicle weapons?

 

[Jak Nazryth]

I would say 50 points, which is what I use.
This extrapolates the "1/50th" rule found... I think in High Guard... sorry, been a while since I looked it up.
Since 1 point of "ship sized" weapons = 50 points of "person/vehicle" sized weapons.
Technically a hull would get 1 point vs ship sized vehicles, but I make a simple house rule.
The same applies to structural damage as well. My players were fighting on board a VERY damaged Far Trader with only 1 structural point left. I PGMP 14 was being used in the fight. If it missed and hit any "structural" portion of the ship, I would roll damage. If it resulted in more than 50 points, the ship would begin to break up. Luckily for the players, the 50 point threshold was never reached.

Anyway, sorry for the long example, but my vote is 50 points, with the caveat that a ship sized weapon would do "just enough" damage to ignore the "50 point" hull DR.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

Here is something that has come up in my game several times, and in a couple of threads within the past year.

Missile defense lasers...
At what range do you roll against incoming missiles, torpedoes, and even drones? You can also target boarding parties etc... per the rules
Close, adjacent? Does the gunner get all the negative modifiers for range, plus the -2 for using a pulse laser if that's all you have? If you go buy the rules and distance charts, you are at a -4 to hit the first missile with a pulse laser.

In the same missile rule framework, at what range does a Bomb pumped laser "go off"? Can the gunner select any range he wants? If not, what is the range? Does the range modifier chart affect the BML missile? If it "goes off" at adjacent range, and your BPLM is using a pulse laser, is it also a -4 to hit?

One more related question that was answered a variety of ways in an older post, how many torpedoes come preloaded in a bay weapon? How many missiles? The rules simply state how much tonnage are required for extra missiles/torps.

Sorry if I got any of this wrong. I'm at the office and haven't crack open my books for a couple of months...

 

[F33D]

5. Missile defense lasers...
At what range do you roll against incoming missiles, torpedoes, and even drones? You can also target boarding parties etc... per the rules
Close, adjacent? Does the gunner get all the negative modifiers for range, plus the -2 for using a pulse laser if that's all you have? If you go buy the rules and distance charts, you are at a -4 to hit the first missile with a pulse laser.

6. In the same missile rule framework, at what range does a Bomb pumped laser "go off"? Can the gunner select any range he wants? If not, what is the range? Does the range modifier chart affect the BML missile? If it "goes off" at adjacent range, and your BPLM is using a pulse laser, is it also a -4 to hit?

7. One more related question that was answered a variety of ways in an older post, how many torpedoes come preloaded in a bay weapon? How many missiles? The rules simply state how much tonnage are required for extra missiles/torps.

Thanks! Added to da list.

 

[GypsyComet]

Again, this thread is NOT about other rule sets. It is simply a listing of holes/ambiguities in the rules that a ref will have to decide on. Suggestions are good but I am just trying to make a comprehensive list for this rule set.

Ah, but many of the ambiguities have been answered *in other editions*. Often ambiguously.

The Fleet jump coordination question got a MegaTraveller answer, for example. Fleets which spend a bit of extra time and hot comms linkage at the jump origin can tighten their jump arrival times with respect to each other.

 

[F33D]

Again, this thread is NOT about other rule sets. It is simply a listing of holes/ambiguities in the rules that a ref will have to decide on. Suggestions are good but I am just trying to make a comprehensive list for this rule set.

Ah, but many of the ambiguities have been answered *in other editions*. Often ambiguously.

So true. :lol:

 

[GypsyComet]

So true. :lol:

I also find it personally annoying when fans of dead* editions complain about one rules hole or other, then turn a blind eye toward the answer to their complaint solely because it wasn't part of "their" edition. They aren't going to get an answer for "their" edition. Ever. The authors *did* answer the question, but the edition label on the cover means that isn't good enough. The argument *might* hold water for games with a mistaken sense of balance (no RPG manages real balance), but Traveller does not labor under that illusion.

--
* as in, never going to see more official products; I'm aware that all of them are still played. Or "played".

 

[F33D]

So true. :lol:

I also find it personally annoying when fans of dead* editions complain about one rules hole or other, then turn a blind eye toward the answer to their complaint solely because it wasn't part of "their" edition. They aren't going to get an answer for "their" edition. ...

That's why I am confining to current edition. Also, new GM's & players aren't likely to read 100 & 1 articles from what are now out of print or obscure sources.

 

[F33D]

3. How do ships land & take off from worlds? The wording is contradictory. A verbatim reading means that no type of hull can take off once making a wilderness landing on an world with no atmosphere and, hulls that aren't lifting bodies (missile shaped) can "glide" :roll:

One hole filled. I searched over at the MGT forum at COTI and found a clarification from the author of this particular rule.

Also, for those arguing about hulls, I checked my original manuscript. I'm not sure when the text got changed, or who changed it, but the hulls were originally broken down as follows:


"A ship may have any of three configurations – standard (a wedge, cone, sphere or cylinder), streamlined (a wing, disc or other lifting body allowing it to enter the atmosphere easily) or distributed (made up of several sections, and incapable of entering an atmosphere or maintaining its shape under gravity)."

As I said - I can't recall writing that section, and it's not in the final manuscript I sent in, so it must have been added in editing. I'd ignore it - standard-hull ships are pretty unaerodynamic, but can take off if they've got a working m-drive and enough hull integrity to hold together (Structure >0).

So, the M-drive in MGT IS a Grav drive and NOT thrust plate type like in MT.