Traveler core rules deck plans, first impressions
- Thread starter bytedruid
- Start date
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
There was some controversy as to the original intent of the balonied decks, in that it was original envisioned to be lateral, but page layout favoured the skyscraper mode, after I think Mongoose revised the deckplans.
Ship design rules vary by edition, and acceleration factor two at that time was a viable compromise.
I do it because I try to keep ship costs down.
Ship design rules vary by edition, and acceleration factor two at that time was a viable compromise.
I do it because I try to keep ship costs down.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
No, someone at Mongoose made up a story about the AHL having linear decks as original intent. trouble is you can actually buy the AHL production sketch that shows it was always a tail sitting tower block.
MgT1e did the deck plans right
MgT2e HG got them wrong
MgT2eHG 2022 update corrected this by going back to the tower block plans.
There is another way to get the deck plans, get the MegaTraveller Arrival Vengeance folio adventure
preview.drivethrurpg.com
Click on the preview and you get a good look at the deck plans.
I wish Mongoose had gone with tower block for the element class cruisers, the deck plans in AHL are useful at the table, the deck plans in ECC are not.
MgT1e did the deck plans right
MgT2e HG got them wrong
MgT2eHG 2022 update corrected this by going back to the tower block plans.
There is another way to get the deck plans, get the MegaTraveller Arrival Vengeance folio adventure
DriveThruRPG
preview.drivethrurpg.com
Click on the preview and you get a good look at the deck plans.
I wish Mongoose had gone with tower block for the element class cruisers, the deck plans in AHL are useful at the table, the deck plans in ECC are not.
AndrewW
Emperor Mongoose
More like got told "It was never meant to to be a tail sitter" from someone in Marc Miller's inner circle. If you look at the pictures it doesn't look like it was intended to be a tail sitter.
Speculation is that it might have been made one for miniatures purposes.
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
I don't doubt that AHL was only a tail-sitter because it fit better for maps for miniatures or counters that way: Book format-controlled design. Probably why subsectors are 8 x 10, in the first place -> best use of page space.
But, that doesn't make the tail sitter a bad idea. For capital ships, the conceit is that they can't / don't land, but there is no game mechanic that governs this (I suppose in T5, but I struggle to use that system as anything other than a reference book). Whatever the deck layout, it needs to work when the power is off and sitting in a gravity field, or maintenance and emergency procedures become... difficult. So the decks should match an 'at rest' position. Whether or not occupants of an m-drive ship would feel acceleration without compensation and what grav plates actually do/ how they work, is unclear. The test would be: what about someone on the hull of an accelerating ship? So it's something that should be addressed, but really isn't. 2300AD solves the problem by limiting the amount of magic tech, but it also makes for disjointed ship designs.
I still favor tail-sitting spheres, but I can see the point of making flying saucers. But saucers just don't match the game ascetic. K'kree should definitely use saucers (I wrote sauces there - must be being manipulated) , but I suspect as drawn, they have the drives on the wrong axis.
But, that doesn't make the tail sitter a bad idea. For capital ships, the conceit is that they can't / don't land, but there is no game mechanic that governs this (I suppose in T5, but I struggle to use that system as anything other than a reference book). Whatever the deck layout, it needs to work when the power is off and sitting in a gravity field, or maintenance and emergency procedures become... difficult. So the decks should match an 'at rest' position. Whether or not occupants of an m-drive ship would feel acceleration without compensation and what grav plates actually do/ how they work, is unclear. The test would be: what about someone on the hull of an accelerating ship? So it's something that should be addressed, but really isn't. 2300AD solves the problem by limiting the amount of magic tech, but it also makes for disjointed ship designs.
I still favor tail-sitting spheres, but I can see the point of making flying saucers. But saucers just don't match the game ascetic. K'kree should definitely use saucers (I wrote sauces there - must be being manipulated) , but I suspect as drawn, they have the drives on the wrong axis.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
"We examined both before going with tail-sitter" is probably closer to the truth but that was a long time ago, and even with email text the game of Telephone persists.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
It's really a question of cost cutting.
If you use a non gravitated hull, and you don't plan on accelerating beyond factor three.
If you use a non gravitated hull, and you don't plan on accelerating beyond factor three.
Last edited:
bytedruid
Mongoose
Very Nice! Already purchased. The launcher tube for fighters was a nice effect.There is another way to get the deck plans, get the MegaTraveller Arrival Vengeance folio adventure
DriveThruRPG
Click on the preview and you get a good look at the deck plans.
Man, if only battletech would have given their capital ships this kind of treatment. Funny that Traveller, a game that seems to promote theater-of-the-mind combat, instead miniatures-on-a-map combat, would spend so much more effort on what are essentially location maps. Anyway, glad they did.
Nice work GDW, and thanks for the recommendation.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
I think the Intruder (?; the one with the two "cheek pads" at odd angles off the nose) is three times the volume of the Lightning class. Most of the actual battle-designed starships are so Brutalist it's silly.
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
Yeah, not a fan of the guy who did the art for Fighting Ships... and for some reason we're stuck with it. Too bad Chris Foss wasn't available. Best part of T4 was the Foss art.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
I was referring to the Battletech ships, but your point stands.
The artist for CT Fighting Ships mentioned years ago that it was a struggle to come up with the shapes for all those ships, and some just ended up as "eh, whatever" designs.
A couple of the MT Fighting Ships of the Shattered Imperium art pieces were worse, though.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Fighting Ships of the Solomani Confederation actually had a theme, pizza slices.
It looked like the artist borrowed heavily from the Empire.
It looked like the artist borrowed heavily from the Empire.
Bill Sheil
Banded Mongoose
Very late to the game here but while you are not wrong (excluding handwavium concepts like reactionless drives or integral inertial dampners) it is also worth noting that the huge amount of Traveller resources, concepts and designs stretch back to the mid-1970s and then and most of the intervening decades belly lander design has been the staple for sci-fi starships.
On the tailing sitting side you have really only got the hard end of sci-fi like Clarke and Niven (sometimes) and, very recently, the Expanse on screen.
On the belly landing side you have Star Wars, Star Trek, Asimov, Forbidden Planet, the Aliens movies, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Starship Troopers, most modern pulp sci-fi series...
So yes, it doesn't make sense (and its a bit of a missed opportunity to add some realism, IMO), but it is not surprising.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
Not sure I buy that thesis. Much of the Pulp era of SF was populated with tail-sitters, from E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensmen, through van Vogt's "Voyage of the Space Beagle" and quite a lot of Heinlein, Andre Norton, and right up to Thunderbirds.
True as far as it goes, but bear in mind that many of the items you cited would fall on the side of "harder science than the bulk of today's sci-fi", especially once you factor in how the scientific knowledge has changed over the year. (I recall one of the essays R.A.H. published which spoke of a short story he wrote and had published which referenced - and made plot use of - how many chromosomes made up the human genome. When the publisher requested to republish the story in an anthology of the Grandmaster's work, he agreed on the condition that he could rework the story to "correct" the matter... and within a few years, the "official" number of chromosomes changed again. He swore he'd never rework a story to account for changing art again.) And Thunderbirds was largely split on the belly-lander/tail-sitter question as I recall.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Part of the charm was the different spacecraft tropes, which you'll note in Captain Scarlet and UFO.
Something that Anderson neglected in Space 1999.
Something that Anderson neglected in Space 1999.
Sorry, late coming back to this thread. Regarding bytedruid's question:
I see what you did there.
The question illustrates the inauthenticity of the soft-science approach to spacecraft design, wherein deck arrangements are based on 20th and 21st century TV and movie filming requirements, rather than actual space travel requirements.
Agreed!
