Travellers Needed! High Guard Updates

[Terry Mixon]

You could reach a compromise, in that it requires one full hull point to be counted as a spacecraft.

So, 2.5 tons for a standard hull. I'm not sure why the compromise is needed, though.

What purpose does a 2.5-ton minimum serve that is any different than a 5-ton minimum? Ot a 1-ton minimum? Or a fractional ton minimum? Any hit is going to FUBAR all of them. I say dump the artificial minimum and just let small hulls be super fragile, like they are.

 

[Condottiere]

Anything below one hull point would need to be a vehicle chassis, adapted for outer space.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Anything below one hull point would need to be a vehicle chassis, adapted for outer space.

While I see your intent, I think I'll disagree on general principles. One could as easily say that all vessels, of whatever size, have a minimum of 1 hull point. In fact, I think that is a good idea.

I present a spacecraft use built with the High Guard rules except for the size minimum.

 

[Terry Mixon]

This lifepod does away with the also nonsensical (in my opinion) 1 power point minimum rule to make an emergency life pod that is just under 1 ton because of the rounding up of docking bay size to the next ton. Another rule that needs to be deep sixed.

 

[Terry Mixon]

I can build a vehicular weather satellite and escape pod. It doesn't change my opinion, though. They should be valid spacecraft builds.

Even so, I’ll build vehicle versions until the rules do change.

 

[Condottiere]

I used to build rocket sleds with actual high burn thrusters, at, I think, two tonnes.

But, when you get lemons, you squeeze them into other drinks.

I think, structural integrity would be the issue, since, arguably, a twenty kilogramme dogfight missile could be considered a spacecraft.

 

[Technetium 98]

So, 2.5 tons for a standard hull...

christopher something-or-other griffen i swear on my honour as spreadsheet-man if you let non-integer ship sizes into this book i will come to your house and piss on your toothbrush

 

[Sigtrygg]

Remove the restriction saying small craft must be 5 tons. I made life pods that are less than a ton at smallest, and there isn’t a need to restrict the size. There will only be some limited uses for them, but they are valid.

I made the small life pod less than a ton so the docking bay for it wasn’t rounded up to the next full ton if the life pod was a ton. Just have the docking bay be an additional 10% and let that be what it is. If it fits, it sits.

I agree that at this size it is more akin to a vehicle - but that would require consistency and scaling between HG and Veh...

 

[Sigtrygg]

So, 2.5 tons for a standard hull. I'm not sure why the compromise is needed, though.

What purpose does a 2.5-ton minimum serve that is any different than a 5-ton minimum? Ot a 1-ton minimum? Or a fractional ton minimum? Any hit is going to FUBAR all of them. I say dump the artificial minimum and just let small hulls be super fragile, like they are.

Once again I am agreeing that anything smaller than 2.5 tons be designed as a Vehicle...

but I also agree with you that minimum sizes often have no justification other than as rules meta.

If I want to build small craft using millitons (mT _D ) as my base units then I can with one milliton being one thousandth of a displacement ton or 14dm³

Just noticed - 5 mT _D is the size of an average human...

 

[Condottiere]

To be fair, other species could be smaller.

Or, it's a computer controlled probe.

But, within the confines of what might be possible in the current set of design rules, I do think that vehicles, and robots, can be space proofed and space mobile.

Put a rocket pack on a spacesuit (while in orbit), and it becomes a space vehicle.

 

[Terry Mixon]

To be fair, other species could be smaller.

Or, it's a computer controlled probe.

But, within the confines of what might be possible in the current set of design rules, I do think that vehicles, and robots, can be space proofed and space mobile.

Put a rocket pack on a spacesuit (while in orbit), and it becomes a space vehicle.

Robots top out at 1 ton. Vehicles don’t seem to have an upper limit but the rules for movement in space aren’t there. High Guard bottoms out at 5 tons and the rules for moving in space are needed at smaller sizes. The quantifies where I was running into issues though I was having issues putting it into words. Thank you all for helping me see the problem more clearly.

Robot rules need to allow for larger robots, really. Vehicles need clear space space thrust rules to be used from ships as parasite vehicles to fill the smaller than 5 ton niche.

@paltrysum and @Geir, this latter part needs to make it into The
Vehicle Handbook Update 2026 so we can have vehicles moving at space speed with clear rules. Robots, too, as robotic missiles are a thing. I suppose that means we need Vehicle rules first high thrust or something in words translating the vehicle speeds for grav vehicles to Thrust numbers.

Do vehicle grav drives operate outside of 1D or 10D? Clarification on that is needed. If not, that means rules are needed for making ships under 5 tones or vehicles that can work in space away from a planet as needed.

 

[wintertraveller]

Ship cost inflation across editions:

It may be only a perception on my part, but it seems like the amount of credits that a ship and ship options/components cost seem out of balance.

It used to be that a Billion or a Trillion credits would buy a squadron or a fleet of ships and now its seem these large numbers will maybe buy a single ship (Frigate to Battleship).

I wonder if a modest adjustment would be useful?

On a character scale the relationship between earning credits with a ship and the operating costs of the ship are also an increased challenge. I'm aware that Traveller has design intent in driving characters to adventure, and I'm not suggesting changing that. However, I think there has been inflation to ship costs as additional features have been made available to us. A pass at adjusting general prices for ships or ship options may be useful to the 2e community at this stage. HG has so many great options for ships.

 

[Ol'Weedy]

To be fair, other species could be smaller.

Yep, this sort of thing happens all the time.

 

[mavikfelna]

Ok, my take so far. We really need a consolidation of the build rules and tech items. They are scattered everywhere and often contradictory or at least incompatible with other rules and tech.
Life support and crew requirements needs clarification and better examples. Often on official designs, the crew requirements listed do not match those in the design rules. And the effects of having one crew hold multiple jobs isn't discussed anywhere. (I don't have all the rulebooks, but I have the Core, HG, ACS, SCC and SOM, which I'm still working through.) Also, the effects on crew of not having sufficient Common Area is never mentioned beyond saying it has some sort of effect. Also, I've been told that a small craft with a cockpit only has 24 hours of oxygen and no way to improve it. Why not? What about adding an Acceleration Seat and Common Area, would that change the calculation? Or putting in a 1 dTon Biosphere?
After talking with Terry Mixon, it's blindingly clear that automation is the way to go for Starships, but the rules are vague and not clear. I'm still working my way through the Robot Handbook, but how do those integrate with the ship building and crew rules?
Also, as a personal project, I started going through all the books working on correcting all the errors in the ships and small craft. I've done Core, High Guard and most of the Small Craft Catalogue. About 1/3 of the designs have some error, some of them very egregious. Most common is cost, usually due to a typo or using the incorrect value for a component. 2nd most common is incorrect tonnage values, usually from typos or not using the correct value from HG for the components. The 3rd most common issue is not following the build rules. This is very prevalent in Modules, where the rules are clear that they cannot have computers, power plants, maneuver drives or operate independently. And yet we have all of these appearing in official designs, some designs with all of them. I don't think there is any reason to exclude these things, but that needs to be updated in the rules. I think allowing modules to be fully capable ships on there own would be fine as long as they are built as ships. If built as modules, they get the bonus of cheaper hulls but then must be limited to only being used aboard ship or possibly on a planet with appropriate atmosphere. The ability to add gravitics to the hull of the modules would be good for those times when it's being used but not connected to the ship.

Also, much thanks to Arkathan and his spreadsheet. That's the only I've been able to reconcile as much of the rules as I have been able to.

 

[wintertraveller]

After talking with Terry Mixon, it's blindingly clear that automation is the way to go for Starships

Absolutely. My car agrees with you. It just told me so.