Updated Vehicle Handbook in the works

[phavoc]

I'm going to stick with the canon answer for meson guns. (which may or may not also apply to cannon - oh, never mind, that was bad, even for me, and I'm not even a dad.) It does to allow forward observers to be used. And if the editor doesn't agree, its not hard to move the meson guns to a different section and a different table.

The way Heavy Weapons skill is written in the Core book is unhelpful, because the specialties are Artillery and Vehicle (and Portable - but that's not as important), are whether they are mounted on a vehicle (Vehicle) or put in emplacement (Artillery). Not as either direct or indirect fire. Heck, even the definition of Portable isn't exact since it describes things that could be a lot bigger than what even a Virushi could carry.

And the examples both indicate an 'Artillery Piece' and talk about 'at a visible target' and 'using indirect fire' with the Heavy Weapons (artillery) skill.

The specialties could be described as (direct) or (indirect) but the same weapon (in the case of cannon, anyway - howitzers certainly) could potentially be fired directly or indirectly. So are you skilled in the weapon system (which could do both) or in the way a whole bunch of otherwise unrelated weapons are aimed? Or are you only good at firing the same weapon system if its installed in a vehicle (regardless of whether its a tanks of a battleship) on in an emplacement (which could be in a concrete bunker or just siting in a field weighed down with sandbags?

I dunno.

A sensor is a forward observer. It's the electronic equivalent of a the man in the foxhole calling back "right 100, up 200 - fire for effect" in the modern world. I would expect most FAO's in the future to be sensor drones, or fixed sensors, or whatever fusion of data you need for your firing vehicle to make it's target determination. You'd also have direct feed or pre-plotted data sent to you. Energy weapons function so much differently than anything tube-based it's not even funny.

Having a vehicle move your tube vs lugging it yourself doesn't change much how you fire it. Once you understand how a mortar (or cannon) works you've met half the problem. And gun bunnies who use towed vs motorized artillery do the same job - the towed guys just have to know how to set up the gun spades and couple/decouple from the truck. The rest (humping shells, tossing out spares, counting powder bags, etc) is the same. More maintenance on motorized gear, but essentially the same job across the spectrum. There are going to be some peculiarities between say an 82mm mortar crew vs. M1129 Stryker 120mm mortar system. And when you get into vehicles you get silly things like autoloaders where you can actually fire 3-5 rounds back to back and have them all essentially impact at the same time (yay ballistics!). Can't do such things with single-round tube style, but you get the point.

I can tell you that they don't really train you much to employ your indirect fire weapons in direct-fire mode. That's the equivalent of the "shiite has hit the fan" and you are desperate to stop an enemy who is not too close to you. If your primary job is indirect fire then that's what you train for and that's what your bosses want you to do. As I stated elsewhere, it's entirely POSSIBLE to have 0 degree elevation and engage a target in front of you with your gun (or even howitzer). It's just that the Book says that's not your job and you should really be moving to the rear with your gun if the enemy is getting that close. In ye olde days you'd load case shot for times like that, but there's no anti-personnel rounds these days for tube artillery.

Just so you know, a howitzer and gun (or cannon) are the same thing - but designed for different ranges and types of fighting. Howitzers trajectories (hence their lower range) are different than guns/cannons. Think bell curve for howitzers and a better distribution level for the gun. The howitzer has a shorter barrel than the same type of gun to enable it to fire in a different mode. Rarely would you see a gun have a fire mission at very short range, where you 'd expect a howitzer to do so. A howitzer crew is expected to be much closer to the enemy than a gun crew, and, generally, are assigned lower down in the ranks for fire support. Guns are meant to deployed further to the rear and their usage is directed at higher levels (think company level for howitzer assets and brigade/division for guns). That's a general rule of thumb, but it gives you a good idea of some of the differences.

 

[Condottiere]

If the howitzers have to fire over open sights canister shot, something has gone wrong.

If they have to load armour piercing rounds, something has gone very wrong.

 

[Nelphine]

For me direct fire has always meant 'the attack follows a direct predictable path which the target, upon realizing they are under attack, can easily move in order to put an obstacle in the direct path which then will prevent the attack'.

In that sense, a meson weapon is an indirect fire weapon, because there is no direct predictable path that the target can use to their advantage to avoid the attack.

I realize in theory things like a mortar can be blocked by a sufficiently thick roof, but unlike a wall, or hill, or tree, there is often no way to easily find a suitable roof.

 

[Terry Mixon]

As an old Army guy, I'll throw in my 2 cents worth. If the shooter needs a forward observer because they can't see the target themselves, that's indirect. It's the requiring outside assistance that makes a difference. Need a drone to pinpoint the enemy? Indirect. Can see them shooting and fire a grenade through the window and nail them? Direct. Greetings to you and your grid square? Area of effect.

 

[phavoc]

As an old Army guy, I'll throw in my 2 cents worth. If the shooter needs a forward observer because they can't see the target themselves, that's indirect. It's the requiring outside assistance that makes a difference. Need a drone to pinpoint the enemy? Indirect. Can see them shooting and fire a grenade through the window and nail them? Direct. Greetings to you and your grid square? Area of effect.

Go find me a box of grid squares soldier!

It's a fair definition. It's also fair to have it being what the weapons intended mission is as well. Is a grenade a direct weapon if you throw it at the guys charging your line, and an indirect one when you toss it in through a window?

I'm comfortable going with classification of the weapon for it's intended use. Anything you can fire over an object you aren't seeing can be classified as in indirect weapon if you get too expansive with it (an M-16 is perfectly acceptable as an indirect weapon by shooting up in the air - terrible accuracy, but eventually those bullets have to fall somewhere). Energy weapons tend to be direct fire - except meson guns because of how they work.

If the howitzers have to fire over open sights canister shot, something has gone wrong.

If they have to load armour piercing rounds, something has gone very wrong.

And in battle things have gone very wrong before. Tis the nature of warfare. Moltke originally said (more or less) that "no plan survives contact with the enemy". Same goes for using weapons in ways they weren't intended. Desperation makes for some awesome creativity.

 

[J. L. Brown]

A. 4 Spaces to a dton and a basic assumption of half isn't defined, but can be modified later on. Compatibility:- this is an update to fix and expand, not completely demolish and start over. If you hated what I did with slots in the Robot Handbook, you'll hate this too, if you could live with, you can probably live with this too. Still converging on components and things, though, to make an easier transition in some undefined future rev.

Could you please make this a 'design a structure' handbook, with 8 spaces per dTon -- and then explicitly take up 4 spaces per dTon (or less, depending on TL and options) inside the vehicle for powerplant & drivetrain?

[Edit: armor already works this way; but it would be nice to extend it to all construction materials as well -- lower tech materials take up more space. This also is influenced by 'light & fragile' vs 'heavy & durable' construction options]

Can we also specify 'packed up & collapsed for shipping, including the crates' volume vs the 'ready to be used right now' volume as a function of TL and options or features of the structure or vehicle? Sure, a non-rigid airship collapses down into a smaller volume than a steam locomotive of the same starting volume -- but a higher TL airship (made of mylar & titanium, instead of paper, wood, & pigs' bladders) should pack down into a smaller volume than a lower tech airship that has exactly the same options. Maybe (number of spaces) minus TL <minimum of 1> / (2x number of spaces) + TL or something.

Neither of these will change the stat block; both the 'what is inside' and the 'shipping' volume will be calculated in the design sequence, for those who love the design sequence.

[Edit: Also, add me to the list of people who want to be able to track 'power' for Vehicles and Structures.

Since a 'space' is one eighth of a dTon, it would be a simple matter of just scaling starship powerplants down by a factor of eight -- ie, a one space Vehicle TL 8 fusion plant provides ten points of 'Vehicle Power', OR (if it matters) 1.25 points of 'Starship Power'. It might be reasonable to assign a core 'minimum size' to a power plant, and have each additional 'space' provide 'x' power per space -- and, maybe, get ambitous and vary all of the above a little bit by TL. This allows having trade offs between one big power source, or multiple smaller sources -- because each would require the doesn't-produce-power-on-its-own 'core'.

Fancy options that gearheads like me might include: each added power-point or space-of-powerplant after the first costs more than the last, up to a maximum power; and an added 'interconnect' which allows multiple small plants to work together -- and each interconnect (number required = of other plants connected to, for each plant & plus all connected plants must be the same size) takes up space, mass, and budget. All powerplants get smaller and less expensive every TL after they are introduced, or use the 'Early Prototype', 'Prototype', 'Basic', 'Budget', 'Standard', 'Enhanced', 'Improved', 'Superior' and 'Advanced' versions. Maybe allow more than 3 points of improvements, too.

Also -- more options for types of powerplants and drivetrains! RTGs show up in Robots, but not vehicles. ICE is neat, but steam is iconic, Stirling engines and electric motors get little love, muscle power (and beast of burden) is super important for low-tech gaming, but what about artificial myomer for higher TL, or hydraulic drives? /Edit]

 

[ottarrus]

 

[MasterGwydion]

My thoughts on this:

1) make sure whatever is written passed the common-sense sniff test. Example - in the MGT CRB it talks about a "tow cable" for a starship, and in previous editions things like "Jump nets" are mentioned and in some book there is an illustration of a ship with a literal net of rock being towed behind it. In a game that says we use Newtonian movement that is just plain.... stupid. I don't know if anyone has ever towed a vehicle before with a tow rope and no breaks on the towed vehicle, but you kinda get where this is going. Sure, as long as you never turn or never have to slow down it can work. Otherwise it's just a damn silly idea. A very SIMPLE correction would have been to add one sentence that says the "rope", when charged by the towing ship, become rigid - still messy as all hell, but with some slight understanding you could make it work.

2) There shouldn't be much time spent on sail, animal or steam-powered vehicles. In fact I'd lump anything that all together. Anything that primitive and basic isn't going to be much use in the game. A horse is a horse is a horse, and whether you have a 2-space cart or a 14 space Connestoga covered wagon, there isn't much difference other than hauling capacity. Same goes for making differences known between various forms of galleys or the differences between a schooner, barque, brig or brigantine. While it's entirely possible star-faring civilizations may devolve for a variety of reasons on a planet, building these vessels doesn't do a whole lot for the game as a whole, in my opinion. The fact that you might be able to design the Titanic liner seems a bit pointless. Doesn't mean you can't mention them, but making up design rules that fit within the system is where I'm going with this.

Unless they plan on doing a "Primitives" Book, these rules have to go somewhere. I have used Traveller to run games on Low-Tech worlds. I did this with one world and the players never knew they were in Charted Space until one day a ship crash-landed violating the Red Zone. This is after the game had run for a little over a year. Until then, they just thought they were in some dark ages-type world. It never occurred to the players that they were in a larger universe.

3) Ideally things will scale up and you can mix and match the items. Though that's may be too tall of an order. In theory you could have internal combustion engines being replaced with hydrogen-powered ones, or fuel cells). Perhaps space remains the same but power output will go up/down to try and keep things simple. Dunno what the final model may be, but obviously some parts will have to get combined if one is going to try and keep things within a design system.

4) It would be nice to see some acknowledgement that just because you have flying things, there are still concepts like the laws of aerodynamics that must be observed. Many an argument about supersonic fat traders has been made - except when you see the various illustrations of said ships you'd realize that the aerodynamic stress forces on such a ship would be massive (air flow abhors such configurations at high speed). Anything that's meant to fly fast either needs to do so in the upper atmosphere or else it needs to concede through its design that its gonna be smooth and sleek. Otherwise it's limited to a few hundred KPH. Even Tim "the Tool Man" Taylor would have to acknowledge that "more power" does not fix everything.

This seems to be more of an "art issue" than a rules issue. As long as the ship has a Streamlined Hull or whatever to vehicle equivalent is. It just has to work mechanically.

5) Scaling of weapons would be nice as well. Starships don't have meters-thick armor, so if a lowly Free Trader can have 0 armor why can't a flying tank do the same? And if that's the case, then the weapons created to hurt or kill tanks can do the same to starships that don't have that meter-thick armor. Of course that's probably beyond the scope of the Vehicle book, but maybe it needs to be fixed here and applied elsewhere. Wouldn't be the first time in the history of MGT books for such a thing to be the case.

Finally, hopefully it gets some good editing and play testing, with enough time to incorporate the feedback before the PDF version is published. I don't know if it's intentional or not, but publishing the PDF prior to sending it off to the printer does offer a great deal more opportunities to catch things that weren't caught prior to getting put into print.

 

[MasterGwydion]

As an old Army guy, I'll throw in my 2 cents worth. If the shooter needs a forward observer because they can't see the target themselves, that's indirect. It's the requiring outside assistance that makes a difference. Need a drone to pinpoint the enemy? Indirect. Can see them shooting and fire a grenade through the window and nail them? Direct. Greetings to you and your grid square? Area of effect.

Aiming your meson gun with a Densitometer as part of the weapon and firing directly at the enemy? Direct? Yes?

 

[Terry Mixon]

Aiming your meson gun with a Densitometer as part of the weapon and firing directly at the enemy? Direct? Yes?

As the guy on Community College says: "It's unusual, but I'll allow it."

 

[phavoc]

Unless they plan on doing a "Primitives" Book, these rules have to go somewhere. I have used Traveller to run games on Low-Tech worlds. I did this with one world and the players never knew they were in Charted Space until one day a ship crash-landed violating the Red Zone. This is after the game had run for a little over a year. Until then, they just thought they were in some dark ages-type world. It never occurred to the players that they were in a larger universe.

Not saying it wouldn't happen. But my point is that Traveller is a science-fiction game, not an age of sales or even steam-punk one. They travel between worlds and would not be TL1 primitives. Don't waste precious page space on TL 1-5 vehicles that should not play much part with a game setting that has humaniti spread across thousands or worlds.

This seems to be more of an "art issue" than a rules issue. As long as the ship has a Streamlined Hull or whatever to vehicle equivalent is. It just has to work mechanically.

Aerodynamics works regardless of "art". People have argued that the Scout ships design is enough to generate lift. Well, a brick would, technically, generate lift. The odds of either of them generating enough to stay aloft due to their mass and lifting surface are pretty much close to nil. Same goes for some of the ships designs and people arguing they can go supersonic in high-density atmospheres like near the surface of the planet because they have magical M-drives. That's again ignoring how things work. Streamlining, at least by some of the illustrations in various games, is extremely generalized.

Again, the point I'm making is to keep the concept close to the definition and the actual ways of how things work. Who builds a starship to Mach 3? Nobody said common sense. A starship needs to only do a few hundred kph since it's going to be equipped with anti-grav and it can literally stand on it's nose and go straight up. At that speed you'll exit the atmosphere quite quickly - or in more than enough time for a vessel designed to move between planets would ever need.

 

[tytalan]

Could you please make this a 'design a structure' handbook, with 8 spaces per dTon -- and then explicitly take up 4 spaces per dTon (or less, depending on TL and options) inside the vehicle for powerplant & drivetrain?

[Edit: armor already works this way; but it would be nice to extend it to all construction materials as well -- lower tech materials take up more space. This also is influenced by 'light & fragile' vs 'heavy & durable' construction options]

Can we also specify 'packed up & collapsed for shipping, including the crates' volume vs the 'ready to be used right now' volume as a function of TL and options or features of the structure or vehicle? Sure, a non-rigid airship collapses down into a smaller volume than a steam locomotive of the same starting volume -- but a higher TL airship (made of mylar & titanium, instead of paper, wood, & pigs' bladders) should pack down into a smaller volume than a lower tech airship that has exactly the same options. Maybe (number of spaces) minus TL <minimum of 1> / (2x number of spaces) + TL or something.

Neither of these will change the stat block; both the 'what is inside' and the 'shipping' volume will be calculated in the design sequence, for those who love the design sequence.

[Edit: Also, add me to the list of people who want to be able to track 'power' for Vehicles and Structures.

Since a 'space' is one eighth of a dTon, it would be a simple matter of just scaling starship powerplants down by a factor of eight -- ie, a one space Vehicle TL 8 fusion plant provides ten points of 'Vehicle Power', OR (if it matters) 1.25 points of 'Starship Power'. It might be reasonable to assign a core 'minimum size' to a power plant, and have each additional 'space' provide 'x' power per space -- and, maybe, get ambitous and vary all of the above a little bit by TL. This allows having trade offs between one big power source, or multiple smaller sources -- because each would require the doesn't-produce-power-on-its-own 'core'.

Fancy options that gearheads like me might include: each added power-point or space-of-powerplant after the first costs more than the last, up to a maximum power; and an added 'interconnect' which allows multiple small plants to work together -- and each interconnect (number required = of other plants connected to, for each plant & plus all connected plants must be the same size) takes up space, mass, and budget. All powerplants get smaller and less expensive every TL after they are introduced, or use the 'Early Prototype', 'Prototype', 'Basic', 'Budget', 'Standard', 'Enhanced', 'Improved', 'Superior' and 'Advanced' versions. Maybe allow more than 3 points of improvements, too.

Also -- more options for types of powerplants and drivetrains! RTGs show up in Robots, but not vehicles. ICE is neat, but steam is iconic, Stirling engines and electric motors get little love, muscle power (and beast of burden) is super important for low-tech gaming, but what about artificial myomer for higher TL, or hydraulic drives? /Edit]

A space is 1 Quarter of a dton pg 14 Robots 1dton=4spaces=256 slots

 

[J. L. Brown]

A space is 1 Quarter of a dton pg 14 Robots 1dton=4spaces=256 slots

That is not my understanding. Gier mentioned earlier that a dTon is eight vehicle 'spaces' -- but that the assumption in the vehicle handbook is that when you are designing a vehicle, half of the spaces are automatically taken up with power-plant, drive-train, suspension, and other stuff; so that a designer only has 4 vehicle 'spaces' per dTon to work with. That assumption is an awful kludge, and needs to go away.

[Edit: Also, another feature request -- dedicated contra-grav 'lifters', perhaps with a 'fixed height' or 'maximum ceiling' option, that provide zero thrust. It seems silly, I know, but there are folks out there who would love to be able to design a grav push-cart. And please, as much as possible, try to cleanly separate 'gravitic' effects from 'magnetic' effects; folks get confused enough as it is. /Edit]

 

[Sigtrygg]

A space is 1 Quarter of a dton pg 14 Robots 1dton=4spaces=256 slots

That is a number plucked out of thin air and needs to change.

A space is defined as the volume occupied by a human seated at a workstation

"Each crew member and passenger will require 1 Space for basic seating. This kind of seating allows for little or no movement within the vehicle, effectively keeping each passenger and crew member in place (such as with a car, fighter jet or tank).
If crew and passengers need to move about within a vehicle (to reach engineering systems, cargo areas or freshers, for example), more Space needs to be dedicated to them. The more Space dedicated to each crew member or passenger, the more comfortable they will be. If 2 Spaces are dedicated to each passenger or crew member, things will be extremely cramped on board (similar to the conditions on board a submarine or cattle class on an airliner). 3 Spaces will allow a greater degree of movement (business class on an airliner, perhaps), while 5 Spaces per crew member or passenger will make even long distance travel at least tolerable (first class on an airliner, or what might be typical on an ocean liner).
There is no limit as to how many Spaces can be dedicated per passenger or crew member, and as many passengers as wished can be included in the vehicle for no cost other than the Spaces dedicated to them."

Now for reality:
"an airline pilot typically has around 1.8 cubic meters of space in the cockpit"
"an economy class passenger typically has around 0.50 cubic meters of space"

Back to Vehicles: cargo - 1 space is 250kg of cargo which if it is water is 0.25 cubic metres, if it is liquid hydrogen it is where the 4 spaces per displacement ton conversion comes from.

So a vehicle space can be anywhere between 0.25 and 1.8 cubic metres for a more relevant definition.

 

[MasterGwydion]

That is a number plucked out of thin air and needs to change.

All numbers in games are plucked out of thin air.

A space is defined as the volume occupied by a human seated at a workstation

This is just as dumb as creating a measurement system based off the size of the ruler's foot. Then a Space will be different for every sophont. That is a stupid way to build anything. 256 Slots = 8 Vehicle Spaces = 1 Dton. These are absolute, non-variable numbers. It makes everything work together instead of having different meanings based on how big the sophont using them is. By your logic, you need a different definition for what a Space is for every sophont.

"Each crew member and passenger will require 1 Space for basic seating. This kind of seating allows for little or no movement within the vehicle, effectively keeping each passenger and crew member in place (such as with a car, fighter jet or tank).

Why make 1 Space for seating? Personally, I think you can likely fit 6 or 7 people in a Dton, but that doesn't matter. The only reason We are having this conversation is because of cubic meters. If you remove Real World meansurements, no one will be having this discussion. Or if you remove conversions that make no sense. 250kg of water means nothing for converting to Dtons. We need to keep it more general, but still find a balance.

If crew and passengers need to move about within a vehicle (to reach engineering systems, cargo areas or freshers, for example), more Space needs to be dedicated to them. The more Space dedicated to each crew member or passenger, the more comfortable they will be. If 2 Spaces are dedicated to each passenger or crew member, things will be extremely cramped on board (similar to the conditions on board a submarine or cattle class on an airliner). 3 Spaces will allow a greater degree of movement (business class on an airliner, perhaps), while 5 Spaces per crew member or passenger will make even long distance travel at least tolerable (first class on an airliner, or what might be typical on an ocean liner).
There is no limit as to how many Spaces can be dedicated per passenger or crew member, and as many passengers as wished can be included in the vehicle for no cost other than the Spaces dedicated to them."

This is going to bog you down in details that I doubt many people would use. This isn't done for ship construction and no problems have come up for not knowing exactly how many square centimeters a doorway takes up, or a hallway. It just falls under Common Areas, I guess. Also, anything you design for one race, won't work for others. Aslan and K'kree are bigger than human, Droyne are smaller. Although, the current rules do not seem to take into account the size of the sophont.

Now for reality:
"an airline pilot typically has around 1.8 cubic meters of space in the cockpit"
"an economy class passenger typically has around 0.50 cubic meters of space"

Back to Vehicles: cargo - 1 space is 250kg of cargo which if it is water is 0.25 cubic metres, if it is liquid hydrogen it is where the 4 spaces per displacement ton conversion comes from.

So a vehicle space can be anywhere between 0.25 and 1.8 cubic metres for a more relevant definition.

This will create more problems than it fixes. 1 Vehicle Space is 1/8th of a Dton or 1.75m3 if you use 14m3 per dton or 1.6875m3 if you want to use 13.5 per dton.

In the end, reality has too much variation to be modelled in a non-simulation game. Otherwise, all armor only fits its designed user, that seat was designed for a driver who was only 5'4" tall, that ladder was designed for people with a 42" inseam, etc.

So, We need to pick one thing and stick with it for all of the definitions and conversion.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I am more than happy to go with 1->8->256, it is 1->4->256 which I don't think makes much sense for vehicles.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I am more than happy to go with 1->8->256, it is 1->4->256 which I don't think makes much sense for vehicles.

The 1-4-256 was a misunderstanding based on 4 being the number of available Spaces that can be used. The other half is taken up by the chassis, power supply, propulsion, etc. Same with Robots. Size 8 Robot is 256 Slots, but has 128 Slots available to be used.

 

[J. L. Brown]

I am more than happy to go with 1->8->256, it is 1->4->256 which I don't think makes much sense for vehicles.

I proposed that the current 1 -> 8 -> 256 (2^0 -> 2^3 -> 2^8) scaling should be made explicit; but the more I look at it the wonkier it seems. I think it would be more sensible and consistent to use a constant factor to scale between all the levels; 1 -> 16 -> 256 (2^0 -> 2^4 -> 2^8) or 1-> 8 -> 64 (2^0 -> 2^3 -> 2^6)

Since Traveller is almost exclusively metric, a 1 -> 10 -> 100 scaling appeals to me as well; but scaling volume is talking about cubes & '10 times' really does not fit neatly into that paradigm. Factors of a thousand could work, but runs into large numbers pretty quickly.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I proposed that the current 1 -> 8 -> 256 (1 -> 2^3 -> 2^8) scaling should be made explicit; but the more I look at it the wonkier it seems. I think it would be more sensible and consistent to use a constant factor to scale between all the levels; 1 -> 16 -> 256 (1 -> 2^4 -> 2^8).

I could get behind this idea.

 

[tytalan]

That is not my understanding. Gier mentioned earlier that a dTon is eight vehicle 'spaces' -- but that the assumption in the vehicle handbook is that when you are designing a vehicle, half of the spaces are automatically taken up with power-plant, drive-train, suspension, and other stuff; so that a designer only has 4 vehicle 'spaces' per dTon to work with. That assumption is an awful kludge, and needs to go away.

[Edit: Also, another feature request -- dedicated contra-grav 'lifters', perhaps with a 'fixed height' or 'maximum ceiling' option, that provide zero thrust. It seems silly, I know, but there are folks out there who would love to be able to design a grav push-cart. And please, as much as possible, try to cleanly separate 'gravitic' effects from 'magnetic' effects; folks get confused enough as it is. /Edit]

Gier might change it but as of right now it is both Robots and the vehicle handbook supports this. Vehicle handbook 1 available space equals .5 tons pg 14 VH. I actually suggests this does not change since it will invalidate the information in Robots 1-4-256 ton-space-slot