Reimagine the OTU!
- Thread starter EDG
- Start date
I like the OTU setting but I have some concerns about some of its elements. It has something to do with suspension of disbelief.
1 - Tech levels : too much difference between tech levels IMO, even in the Spinward Marches. I don't like the idea of TL12 to 15 worlds being close to lower tech level worlds, unless the world is populated by an isolationist nation or unless it is a primitive world that needs to be protected. Of course, we can also imagine that the world believes in a religion or philosophy that is limiting the spread of technology though. Otherwise, I think that the average tech level should be raised in the Imperium and in the Spinward Marches.
2 - Jump drive technology : as suggested by Ken Pick's article on Freelance Traveller's website I would change jump drive the following way (parts taken from the article being in Italics).
Trimmable Duration and fuel consumption -- what if all jumps didn't take a week? What if jump number indicates an actual FTL speed, like Star Trek's Warp Factors? With this tweak, a jump number moves you any number of parsecs at that "jump speed"; a ship with a Jump-4 drive could jump four parsecs (taking one week), three parsecs (taking 3/4 week), two (half a week), or one (1/4 week).
This breaks down the smoothest around TL12 (a decent Tech Level for a "low-tech" Classic Traveller campaign):
* Jump-1 (TL9+) moves you a hex in six days ("about one week");
* Jump-2 (available at TL11) moves you a hex in three days;
* Jump-3 (TL12 ships only) moves you a hex every two days.
* Jump-4 moves you a hex or so every 1,5 days
* Jump-5 moves you a hex or so every 1,2 days
* Jump-6 moves you a hex every day
3 - Vargr : may be am I influenced by my personal background and especially my academic background but I don't think a civilization can go to the stars, build starships and build fleets until it reaches a critical size. The problem with Vargr as they are described in the various Traveller books is that they are so a squabbling lot that they can't even form a regular starship's team (may be am I exagerating a bit but this is the way I feel when I read things about the Vargr). I would make them less boisterous and more receptive to high tech large scale propaganda policies which would allow them to build pocket empires ruled by charismatic leaders. The fact those various "pocket empires" would fight together would make them unable to band together and threaten the other interstellar powers... which would put us on par with the current OTU setting.
4 - The Imperium inner workings : once again my academic background is influencing the way I see things (if not how I can see it). I have studied, and I am still studying, public and administrative law in a practical and historical perspective. The result is that I don't see how the Imperium can work as it is described, especially when we consider the Moot. The information lag implied by the fact that information is travelling at the speed of Jump drives does not have a real impact on the administrative system described in the various books. This is a real problem to me and I am sorry to become a bit technical. As far as I am concerned I can't suspend my disbelief when it comes to the administrative organization of the Imperium. There must be a strong "decentralization/deconcentration" somewhere if we want it to work. In other worlds I would keep a Nobility but I would create a stonger decentralized/deconcentrated administration (that which does not mean autonomous) with subsector and sector moots. The Moot (the Imperial one) members would be made of subsector representatives elected or nominated by the subsector nobles. Some Nobles in the Imperium could have the right to sit at the Moot but it should be restricted to the Higher Nobles, because of the transportation lags, these nobles could have the right to have representatives bound to follow their instructions. This way, it would still be possible to petition nobles in order to influence their vote.
1 - Tech levels : too much difference between tech levels IMO, even in the Spinward Marches. I don't like the idea of TL12 to 15 worlds being close to lower tech level worlds, unless the world is populated by an isolationist nation or unless it is a primitive world that needs to be protected. Of course, we can also imagine that the world believes in a religion or philosophy that is limiting the spread of technology though. Otherwise, I think that the average tech level should be raised in the Imperium and in the Spinward Marches.
2 - Jump drive technology : as suggested by Ken Pick's article on Freelance Traveller's website I would change jump drive the following way (parts taken from the article being in Italics).
Trimmable Duration and fuel consumption -- what if all jumps didn't take a week? What if jump number indicates an actual FTL speed, like Star Trek's Warp Factors? With this tweak, a jump number moves you any number of parsecs at that "jump speed"; a ship with a Jump-4 drive could jump four parsecs (taking one week), three parsecs (taking 3/4 week), two (half a week), or one (1/4 week).
This breaks down the smoothest around TL12 (a decent Tech Level for a "low-tech" Classic Traveller campaign):
* Jump-1 (TL9+) moves you a hex in six days ("about one week");
* Jump-2 (available at TL11) moves you a hex in three days;
* Jump-3 (TL12 ships only) moves you a hex every two days.
* Jump-4 moves you a hex or so every 1,5 days
* Jump-5 moves you a hex or so every 1,2 days
* Jump-6 moves you a hex every day
3 - Vargr : may be am I influenced by my personal background and especially my academic background but I don't think a civilization can go to the stars, build starships and build fleets until it reaches a critical size. The problem with Vargr as they are described in the various Traveller books is that they are so a squabbling lot that they can't even form a regular starship's team (may be am I exagerating a bit but this is the way I feel when I read things about the Vargr). I would make them less boisterous and more receptive to high tech large scale propaganda policies which would allow them to build pocket empires ruled by charismatic leaders. The fact those various "pocket empires" would fight together would make them unable to band together and threaten the other interstellar powers... which would put us on par with the current OTU setting.
4 - The Imperium inner workings : once again my academic background is influencing the way I see things (if not how I can see it). I have studied, and I am still studying, public and administrative law in a practical and historical perspective. The result is that I don't see how the Imperium can work as it is described, especially when we consider the Moot. The information lag implied by the fact that information is travelling at the speed of Jump drives does not have a real impact on the administrative system described in the various books. This is a real problem to me and I am sorry to become a bit technical. As far as I am concerned I can't suspend my disbelief when it comes to the administrative organization of the Imperium. There must be a strong "decentralization/deconcentration" somewhere if we want it to work. In other worlds I would keep a Nobility but I would create a stonger decentralized/deconcentrated administration (that which does not mean autonomous) with subsector and sector moots. The Moot (the Imperial one) members would be made of subsector representatives elected or nominated by the subsector nobles. Some Nobles in the Imperium could have the right to sit at the Moot but it should be restricted to the Higher Nobles, because of the transportation lags, these nobles could have the right to have representatives bound to follow their instructions. This way, it would still be possible to petition nobles in order to influence their vote.
Tech Level Disparity
I think this is only a problem due to the time spans. I agree that the variety in TLs doesn't make sense for a region of space that has been settled and had a central administration for hundreds, even thousands of years. If you collapse Imperial history to be only a few hundred years long, it makes a lot more sense.
Jump Technology
I've not problem with the overall rate of travel using Jump Drive. A maximum speed of one week for 6 parsecs is fine by me, the details of how that breaks down for shorter jumps doesn't concern me too much one way or the other.
Imeprial Bureaucracy
Also IMHO not a problem. Historically empires have operated in much the same way that the Imperium does. How long did it take a message to get from Hadrian's Wall to Rome? I do think the economics of the Imperium could do with a major overhaul because economics will drive politics. Even then though, if the Imperium proves to be economically unsustainable in the long term, you can still get away with it if the timeline is shorter because economic factors take time to play out and can be held back by as long as a few generations, at a military and political cost.
Simon Hibbs
I think this is only a problem due to the time spans. I agree that the variety in TLs doesn't make sense for a region of space that has been settled and had a central administration for hundreds, even thousands of years. If you collapse Imperial history to be only a few hundred years long, it makes a lot more sense.
Jump Technology
I've not problem with the overall rate of travel using Jump Drive. A maximum speed of one week for 6 parsecs is fine by me, the details of how that breaks down for shorter jumps doesn't concern me too much one way or the other.
Imeprial Bureaucracy
Also IMHO not a problem. Historically empires have operated in much the same way that the Imperium does. How long did it take a message to get from Hadrian's Wall to Rome? I do think the economics of the Imperium could do with a major overhaul because economics will drive politics. Even then though, if the Imperium proves to be economically unsustainable in the long term, you can still get away with it if the timeline is shorter because economic factors take time to play out and can be held back by as long as a few generations, at a military and political cost.
Simon Hibbs
Jame Rowe said:
Yeah, it always struck me as really strange that garden worlds were only able to be high tech because of their starports or populations. A pop 8 garden world with a D starport would only have a tech level range of 1-6, because it has no modifiers. Even if a C starport, the maximum TL it could have is 8.
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
Jame Rowe said:
My initial thought about the garden world issue suggested was that it implied a more settled OTU, and thus less frontierish; on the other hand, it does make sense that better worlds will have better development -and it would reduce the oddity of hellholes next to under populated garden worlds.....although, after living inLA, the concept seems much less unreasonable (gated, wealthy communities next to crowded and horrible crime ridden neighborhoods).
As to the Starport/Tech discussion, there are good (and bad, loud and rancorous) arguments for both sides of the issue.
Still, I wonder if UWP code discussion is way more micro level discussion than the intent of the thread.
Still it does raise an interesting question: should the worldgen system be expected to produce a result similar to the described setting ? Or should it be specified setting, more generic worldgen ?
Without seeking to hijack the thread, I think 're-imagining' the OTU is pretty much what happens everytime a GM sits down to map out what is going to happen in his or her campaign, set in some version of the OTU.
That said, if I did get to somehow rebuild the OTU from the ground up, I'd probably do a lot of what other posters have already suggested. Some of this I already do, admittedly.
1) I'm not knowledgeable enough to kvetch on the real science behind worldbuilding, but I'd likely try to make worlds that made sense to me, as some in the OTU don't. Of course, that would probably make my own mistakes at least as egregious as any made by GDW, et al.
2) Very definitely I'd retool as a fusion power based non-gravitic society, or at least make gravitics grossly expensive, and limited to very large platforms. (The occasional flying city or artificial gravity equipped large space station is just too cool to pass up)
3) A very much truncated known universe, size wise. Time frame would probably be 2300ish, complete with world wide collapses on Earth, and a long period where mankind largely lived in the Solar System, without a means to leave other then slow ships. Jump would be pretty much limited to 1 or 2.
4) Small ship, with 5000-10000 tons marking the far end of size. Only because it makes 400-500 ton ships potentially a major issue, and even a 200 ton ship means more.
That said, if I did get to somehow rebuild the OTU from the ground up, I'd probably do a lot of what other posters have already suggested. Some of this I already do, admittedly.
1) I'm not knowledgeable enough to kvetch on the real science behind worldbuilding, but I'd likely try to make worlds that made sense to me, as some in the OTU don't. Of course, that would probably make my own mistakes at least as egregious as any made by GDW, et al.
2) Very definitely I'd retool as a fusion power based non-gravitic society, or at least make gravitics grossly expensive, and limited to very large platforms. (The occasional flying city or artificial gravity equipped large space station is just too cool to pass up)
3) A very much truncated known universe, size wise. Time frame would probably be 2300ish, complete with world wide collapses on Earth, and a long period where mankind largely lived in the Solar System, without a means to leave other then slow ships. Jump would be pretty much limited to 1 or 2.
4) Small ship, with 5000-10000 tons marking the far end of size. Only because it makes 400-500 ton ships potentially a major issue, and even a 200 ton ship means more.
DCAnsell said:
Good insight, that's basically the approach I've taken for each of my campaigns.
The cost of space travel is directly related to the cost of gravitics, if that's the main way to reach space. Expensive gravitics equals expensive space travel which means much restricted access to it.
That's ok, but you need to be aware of the consequences.
One way out of this might be to make gravitics far, far less efficient out of a gravity well, so a 3G drive near a planet drops down to 0.3G in deep space. That would make space travel cheap while massively reducing the problems of near-c rocks and such.
Simon Hibbs
Tobias
Banded Mongoose
I'm late to the party, but I recently had some thoughts about a re-imagined OTU, and stumbled upon this thread.
Things I would keep:
- The basic scale. Tens of thousands of settled systems.
- The basic political structure of the Imperium and other polities.
- The existing major and most minor races
- The signature technologies (Gravitics, jump drive, meson guns, spinal mounts, plasma/fusion weapons, battle dress, gauss rifles etc.)
- The signature places (Spinward Marches, Regina, Mora, Rift, etc.)
Things I would modify:
- Much more impressive technology. I want spaceships pulling dozens of Gs, Antimatter, AI, megastructures, even stellar engineering. Maybe also some nanotech and biomodification, but not too "transhuman".
- Hivers. Aslan and K'Kree could be tweaked to be more physically alien (it's too convenient for them to be 1G-oxygen breathers). Aslan also should be more vicious - more Kzinti, less Hani.
- 3D universe, with more realistic stellar distribution and world generation. Also, more sensible population distribution. Less random low-tech worlds floating around. Densely settled high-tech in the core sectors, colonial patterns (with a lot of unsettled systems) at the frontiers.
- Two or three truly alien major races should be added. Updating the Jgd-Il-Jagd to true major status, with interstellar empire and all, would be one. Maybe another one of methane breathers or somesuch.
Things I am not sure about:
- Somewhat smaller starships. Starship technology could be designed in such a way that the ideal Battleship is about 20K dtons, not 200K. This scales better with the smaller ships - a Gazelle would be a credible escort, not an insignificant speck. Of course, extremely large freighters and space stations should still exist.
- Condensed timeline. I'm not sure if it is necessary, but probably no damage would be done by condensing everything after ~2000AD by a factor of 2 or 3.
Things I would keep:
- The basic scale. Tens of thousands of settled systems.
- The basic political structure of the Imperium and other polities.
- The existing major and most minor races
- The signature technologies (Gravitics, jump drive, meson guns, spinal mounts, plasma/fusion weapons, battle dress, gauss rifles etc.)
- The signature places (Spinward Marches, Regina, Mora, Rift, etc.)
Things I would modify:
- Much more impressive technology. I want spaceships pulling dozens of Gs, Antimatter, AI, megastructures, even stellar engineering. Maybe also some nanotech and biomodification, but not too "transhuman".
- Hivers. Aslan and K'Kree could be tweaked to be more physically alien (it's too convenient for them to be 1G-oxygen breathers). Aslan also should be more vicious - more Kzinti, less Hani.
- 3D universe, with more realistic stellar distribution and world generation. Also, more sensible population distribution. Less random low-tech worlds floating around. Densely settled high-tech in the core sectors, colonial patterns (with a lot of unsettled systems) at the frontiers.
- Two or three truly alien major races should be added. Updating the Jgd-Il-Jagd to true major status, with interstellar empire and all, would be one. Maybe another one of methane breathers or somesuch.
Things I am not sure about:
- Somewhat smaller starships. Starship technology could be designed in such a way that the ideal Battleship is about 20K dtons, not 200K. This scales better with the smaller ships - a Gazelle would be a credible escort, not an insignificant speck. Of course, extremely large freighters and space stations should still exist.
- Condensed timeline. I'm not sure if it is necessary, but probably no damage would be done by condensing everything after ~2000AD by a factor of 2 or 3.
I like the large space ships, because it underscores how the Navy rules the stars because they're the ones crewing 100K+ warships.Tobias said:
As for making smaller ships relevant, think of the real world. The USN has the massive Nimitz class supercarriers, but they also have patrol ships because not every mission needs a supercarrier. The Coast Guard gets around on cutters as well.
To use that as an analogy, your 100 or 200K warships can exist in the same universe as a 400t patrol ship. There are never enough patrol ships anyway.
What I would change is the type of ships we do get in the Navy. You want to design your ships for the mission they're expected to perform. Therefore, I would have classes focused on: assault carriers which carry thousands of troops plus landing craft; battle cruisers, the main ship-of-the-line which can operate independently or in squadrons, smaller escort vessels that stick close to the assault carriers, and patrol ships that are more numerous than the other three. I would also have tanker/supply ships, courier boats, and hospital vessels for non-combat roles. System Defence Boats and Monitors are a given as well.
Armaments would be the same as what we're used to - spinal meson mounts, protected by meson screens, and secondary armament consisting of particle accelerators, missile bays, and fusion bays. Lasers for point-defence, although I would reimagine sandcasters as a kind of chaff countermeasures (as opposed to a laser-beam-dispersal system).
I would get rid of nuclear dampers, however. For one thing I never liked the idea, and I want to keep nuclear missiles as an offensive problem for ship commanders, plus I would want fighters to be carried onboard battle cruisers. If a space fighter can be armed with a nuke then they might actually pose a threat to a cap ship.
I would change the fuel requirements for jump drives. I would have it as a blanket 15% of hull reserved for one jump. Higher TL jumps give higher ranges, but this is as a result of better navigation paired with better understanding of the jump drive. But for sanity's sake, most ship designs actually reserve 30% of the hull for jump fuel, so that you can jump twice if needed.
Tobias
Banded Mongoose
I actually did.Stofsk said:
See, an OTU battleship is about 200K Displacement, or about 500 times larger than a Gazelle. A Nimitz-Class CVN is about 100000 tons, which is about 50 times larger than a small coast guard cutter or a naval corvette, which represent the smallest type of blue-water (somewhat) warship today.
Hence my idea of reducing the larger warships by a factor of ~10. Note that this would still be fairly large. A 20K Displacement ship is 280000m³, which is incidentally still larger than the aforementioned Nimitz.
Well, I've given that a lot of thought as well lately. I've been considering the idea of a space combat game with the following weapons:
1. Spinal mounts. PAs - can be stopped by armor but not by screens. Meson guns - can be stopped by screens but not by armor.
2. Secondary Laser batteries.
3. Drones (really large missiles, about 10-20 dtons) armed with nuclear mirvs (or maybe als kinetic kill warheads). Can be shot down by lasers and stopped by screens. Armor helps against a near hit.
I'd roll meson screens and nuclear dampers into one. The whole idea is to make combat heavily dependent on launching drone salvos and organizing point defense. Also, sensors should play an important role.
Realistically? No.
There is simply no reason to mount a missile on a fighter instead of having the "fighter" be the missile.
Well, I gotta admit I am biased. I don't like the whole idea of the "space fighter" - it is silly IMHO.
Making high TL jump drive more efficient would be a good idea, yes.
snrdg121408
Mongoose
Howdy EDG,
Maybe I'm in error but here is a very simplified impression of the Traveller Universes.
Classic OTU: Imperium is static by and large however potential conflicts can occur with the Zhos, Sword Worlds, and any one of the other sapient races.
MTU: Rebellion
TNEU: Recovering from MTU Rebellion.
T4U: The rise of the 3rd Imperium after the Long Night.
T20 and MgT are, in my opinion, bascially CT with many improvements.
GT has added details, especially with the introduction of Interstellar Wars, that cover the fall of the 1st Imperium, the Ramschakle Empire, and the CT 3rd Imperium.
Anyone of the above settings can be used and modified to suit YTU.
Of course I'm up to game in any TU.
Maybe I'm in error but here is a very simplified impression of the Traveller Universes.
Classic OTU: Imperium is static by and large however potential conflicts can occur with the Zhos, Sword Worlds, and any one of the other sapient races.
MTU: Rebellion
TNEU: Recovering from MTU Rebellion.
T4U: The rise of the 3rd Imperium after the Long Night.
T20 and MgT are, in my opinion, bascially CT with many improvements.
GT has added details, especially with the introduction of Interstellar Wars, that cover the fall of the 1st Imperium, the Ramschakle Empire, and the CT 3rd Imperium.
Anyone of the above settings can be used and modified to suit YTU.
Of course I'm up to game in any TU.
