Should maned small combat crafts be deleted from chartered space?

[Endie]

Why wouldn't you scale these up to the battle riders that carry capital ship killing weapons? Why risk a single life when you can have virtual crew, robots et al operate your warships...

The people can stay on the carriers, tenders and battle directors, ready to jump away if the battle goes against them...

the sad thing is if you apply MgT rules and supplements as written this is how it would be done, and only the Hivers value life enough to do it.

Because that doesn't sound like fun, and I am not running a simulation so I get to focus on what's fun for the players.

If they tried flying fighters they would very quickly cease having fun with those, too!

 

[Condottiere]

It's sort of inferred that every spacecraft has to pay for every copy of their computer programmes.

The Imperium heavily discourages piracy.

 

[Vormaerin]

Obviously, it's not fun or desirable. My position is that they should write the rules so that it is also sensible to do it the fun and desirable way, rather than idiocy. But this applies to a lot of things in the military space combat rules. Spinal Mounts are supposed to be decisive, battleships necessary for big battles, and various other things that are just untrue in the rules as written.

Traveller's rules should probably make TL matter more and not just be "ooh, I get a +1 for being better". Space Above & Beyond may well make sense at TL 8-10 and not make sense at TL 14-15.

Manned fighters can useful in patrol roles even if they are pretty stupid in giant space battles. In the level where players matter, six fighters patrolling from a deep space platform (ship or station) with human pilots can be fun and make sense where thousands of pilots getting swept from the skies by automated PD in a large battle does not.

 

[collins355]

Good thread - but For the Love of all that is Holy - it is Charted Space!