Starship Combat Variants?

[Salem]

I am just getting back into Traveller (I haven't touched it since the 80's). Right now I am just enjoying reading the material and dreaming up a campaign.

I was never very keen on the concept of sandcasters and I believe I will do away with them entirely in my campaign. I have read some interesting ideas regarding alternate defense systems but I am curious if anyone else has gone down this road already. I found this article really helpful to get some ideas.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardefense.php

I'm leaning more towards Reflec/Ablative armour to deal with energy weapon hits and using a modified gravitic drive field as a kinetic barrier in defense against missile/kinetic attacks. Really I think that space combat, even in the Traveller universe should be more about the electronic warfare between ships attempting to detect each other and obtain a firing solution.

One concept that I like is the problem of heat dispersal. This was mentioned in the Mass Effect series of video games as well. Ships build up a lot of heat in combat and if you can't get rid of it fast enough you have to withdraw or end up cooking your crew...

I don't want to over-complicate my game, but I think I can make some of these modifications work.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

The beauty with these RPGs is that we can do whatever we want in spaceships. I tend to role-play doing things that other players would be familiar with in their own sci-fi experiences.

 

[phavoc]

If you want to deal with heat, you may want to add in the idea that ships with full fuel tanks have more time in combat, as they can dump excess heat into their fuel systems, up to a point.

The F-35 does that today too.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Vectored movement and the impact of gravity ala the Mayday game. I never went whole hog with the CT miniatures movement system but liked the use of hex mapping and present/future counter system in the Mayday game.