Ship design and space combat playability

[apoc527]

I've recently been re-interested in MGT and I'm wondering about ship design and combat: specifically, how playable is it? I've played a LOT of sci-fi RPGs and the one weakness always seems to be a completely unusable ship design and/or ship combat system. Star Wars d6 from WEG back in the day had playable, albeit simplistic, ship combat.

I have HG and TMB and the rules seem manageable, but I've never tried it. From the perspective of those who have run games, what do you think? Playable? Not? Yes, but needs some house rules (if so, what are they?).

Thanks so much!

(The same questions hold true for vehicle design and combat, but I understand those rules aren't widely available yet.)

 

[IanBruntlett]

I've recently been re-interested in MGT and I'm wondering about ship design and combat: specifically, how playable is it?

I'm a newbie so I'm learning from scratch. In the spirit of computing's FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions or maybe Frequently Answered Questions) I've done a couple of articles for use with my players.
0. About Traveller.
1. Tell me about ... skills (1 A4 page printed)
2. Tell me about ... combat (Just over 1 A4 page printed - quite rough)
3. Project Steel referee's notes to be revealed to the players after the game has finished.

EDIT: Maybe you'd like to try writing up the ship combat rules yourself? Its quite challenging but it really improves your ability to handle rules under pressure.

 

[AndrewW]

I've recently been re-interested in MGT and I'm wondering about ship design and combat: specifically, how playable is it? I've played a LOT of sci-fi RPGs and the one weakness always seems to be a completely unusable ship design and/or ship combat system. Star Wars d6 from WEG back in the day had playable, albeit simplistic, ship combat.

Having had a bit of ship design experience (up to 540,000 tons) while I don't agree with the way they do everything I wouldn't say it's unusable.

 

[lordmalachdrim]

From the few exchanges of fire that has occured in the game I'm running it seems playable though the players haven't stuck around to really duke it out.

As far as playable space combat systems go my players and I still find Alternity to have the best rules. (GMG/Starship rules, we're not fans of the complete rewrite in warships)

 

[ozchandler]

we use the ship building and space combat rules from the main rule book and they work just fine. high guard is nice, but too detailed for us. ymmv

 

[AndrewW]

we use the ship building and space combat rules from the main rule book and they work just fine. high guard is nice, but too detailed for us. ymmv

For the combat? The ship building really doesn't add much in the way of complexity, just more options. (plus systems for small craft and capital ships).

 

[ozchandler]

our campaign deals with scouts and free trader sized vessels mostly; usually ships under 500 tons. for our needs, the main book is fine. but as i said before, ymmv :wink:

 

[AndrewW]

our campaign deals with scouts and free trader sized vessels mostly; usually ships under 500 tons. for our needs, the main book is fine. but as i said before, ymmv :wink:

Can do those fine with just the core book, though they can still make use of some of the options in High Guard.

 

[Bobson]

I have HG and TMB and the rules seem manageable, but I've never tried it. From the perspective of those who have run games, what do you think? Playable? Not? Yes, but needs some house rules (if so, what are they?).

From my game's experience, the space combat rules from the core book are reasonable, although not highly exciting. After a few rounds of combat, both sides have figured out which of their weapons has even a chance of damaging the other and who's faster (and thus eventually gets to choose the range). At that point, it simply becomes a matter of duking it out at the faster ship's preferred range until the faster one chooses to break it off (or let the slower one do so) or one ship is so damaged as to change the balance of power (engines go offline, or the one useful weapon does, or armor is damaged and so now more weapons can work....)

 

[apoc527]

Maybe I'll use the new AP rules from CSC in ship combat to make things a big more interesting then. In my opinion, having weapons bounce harmlessly off the armored hull time after time after time is not that exciting, as you said.

What about if we were to house rule the armor so it got damaged easier? Maybe keep track of cumulative damage and say that ever 10xArmor Value points of damage (as rolled on the dice, not converted into hits), automatically inflicts one Armor Hit (thereby reducing armor by 1).

For example, a ship with 4 points of armor can absorb 40 damage before taking an automatic Armor Hit, reducing its armor from 4 to 3.

With 1d6 beam lasers, this is going to take a while, but obviously multiple weapons and/or pulse lasers will drastically speed things along.

Also, why do contact nukes only do 2d6 damage?!?!?!

 

[Elysianknight]

We have had a few ship to ship fights, and one mass battle. I wouldn't change the basic ship to ship rules: combat is lethal, but we have always been fighting evenly matched foes. for the mass combat we used our own house rules we apply for all mass battles, regardless on game genre (with a few tweaks) HG mass combat rules are stupidly fiddly. (IMO)