Vehicle Handbook - Now Shipping!

I own MegaTraveller, Traveller 4, and Traveller:2300, so I know all about editing problems. There are quite rampant in the gaming industry, and unfortunately common in various editions of Traveller. I don't say this to excuse any errors, just to put them in context.

While it is unfortunate that this error slipped through, the design system itself has been tested fairly thoroughly, and works well. I will provide a few different design examples, including one from 2300AD, over the next few days.
 
BP said:
I'd no more intentionally buy a book that lacks decent editing

It has nothing to do with editing - and, as lead developer on this book, I'll take the can on it.

The issue was a) that playtesting on this book went on right up until it went to print and b) there were more playtesters involved than, I think, any other Traveller book beyond the core. And they went into a _huge_ amount of detail, not just reading and testing, but suggesting new entries and possibilities - pretty much all of which we included, as we wanted the book to be truly comprehensive.

The example issue is one that is not without precedent among RPGs, and they are the absolute bane of developers, who necessarily keep 90% of their attention on the structure of the rules. Change one, and you map out the effects it has on all the rest - and one, little example, might just slip you by on that change.

I do apologise for that, but I believe you will find the rest of the book solid. It really is very good, Colin did some awesome work on this, as did the playtesters who contributed.
 
My own view on this kind of thing is that I can live with a few errors in design examples - none of which I would ever be likely to notice myself actually. It's when the rules or design system are seriously flawed that I get bothered.

The fact that the product has been thoroughly play tested, well edited, and obviously has some lovely work in it by far excuses any minor issues found in the design examples. I would love to see lots more Mongoose Traveller publications of this quality. This is one book I will definitely be buying.
 
Apologies and explanations are fine, but something along the lines of the following would be better:

  • We will put up errata concerning the issues that have been raised and work up a more complete errata soon.

Believe a lot of time and effort were spent on development, but that doesn't make rules solid for a reader who is presented with examples that don't match the rules, for whatever reasons.

As to 'editing', I'll let others, including the very first Google hit on 'editing' clarify my meaning:

  • Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete work.[1]

    The editing process often begins with the author's idea for the work itself, continuing as a collaboration between the author and the editor as the work is created. As such, editing is a practice that includes creative skills, human relations, and a precise set of methods.
    - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editing

  • 'I've only had the book for a few hours, and have not given it a thorough read...'
    -jwpacker's words
 
I would like to second the notion of posting errata documents for every product that you produce, and making them a sort of living document, where your customers know that if they have version 1.2 of the errata, and there's a 1.4 out there, there are more changes or recommendations to be had. People slammed WotC for this practice when their D&D 4th Edition came out, and they immediately started tinkering with the rules, but I appreciate that level of immediacy and the feel of applying "patches" to the game, much like we do with software when bugs are found. And eventually, it became a standard, and now people want it everywhere.

What to include?
New examples - that's an easy one, now that the rules are set.
Fixes for problems - pop-up turrets, for example, are contradictory, and will need to be clarified
Missing info - still not sure if it's just me, or if there really isn't any set rules that made it into the book to determine how much cargo capacity the vehicle has when all is said and done (specifically the translation between spaces and kg/tons). And a simple table with each vehicle included in the book, the chassis it was built on, and the number of spaces it was assigned (though this is a two-edged sword. Those of us that will want to will reverse engineer the vehicle and make the mods we want to make, but some of them will surely find other problems where the math doesn't jibe with the rules!). And I'd like to see rules on retrofitting specifically laid out, like you do with adding armor after the fact. I want specifics on how you should go about adding machine guns to a standard ground car or the like - it's the sort of thing that shows up in games (and in montage sequences in movies) after all.

That said, I don't want my comments to come off as being angry, or indicating that my review will be a negative one. Just an area where improvement can be made in an existing product, honestly. The rest of the rules look solid. The battledress design rules are particularly intriguing and make me want to run a military/mercenary campaign just so I can use them. I was concerned that, in streamlining things, the flexibility would be lost, but the chapter on overall modifications, applicable to any type of vehicle, was quite good, with a great deal of breadth that alleviated that concern immediately.

As someone who is unashamedly a Mongoose fanboy, a fan of their books and of the IP they've chosen to associate themselves with, I just wish there was a way that I could afford to volunteer my services as a playtester/editor/reader so that, in addition to last-minute "we changed some rules, and so the examples are now broken" issues being caught, I could help with every "loose =/= lose" and missing parenthesis problem as well.
 
msprange said:
The example issue is one that is not without precedent among RPGs, and they are the absolute bane of developers, who necessarily keep 90% of their attention on the structure of the rules.

Respectfully. If this is a known issue with RPG development, then maybe your production process should explicitly not include writing examples until the rules component is locked down.
 
Stainless said:
msprange said:
The example issue is one that is not without precedent among RPGs, and they are the absolute bane of developers, who necessarily keep 90% of their attention on the structure of the rules.

Respectfully. If this is a known issue with RPG development, then maybe your production process should explicitly not include writing examples until the rules component is locked down.

I would second this - put in a placeholder that says "EXAMPLE NEEDED" and either put in your most recent test of the rules as written, or leave it blank until the end, but go back and revisit every one of those placeholders as the penultimate act prior to submitting it to the printers.
 
I will post the errata for the design examples this weekend, with any luck. Typing the example out takes more time than actually designing it on the back of an envelope, and I have other writing that I need to do...
I will post a couple more design examples over the next week as well, touching on things like airships and other more esoteric vehicles.
 
Cargo is whatever Space is left over after everything else goes into the vehicle. 250 kg per Space is just a guideline. Basically, if you have one Space of cargo, you have enough space to stash a body...
 
Colin said:
Cargo is whatever Space is left over after everything else goes into the vehicle. 250 kg per Space is just a guideline. Basically, if you have one Space of cargo, you have enough space to stash a body...
Yeah, the ones that had me curious were the ones that declared that there was room for 0.27 tons of cargo, or 1.67 tons, figures that didn't make much sense unless there are some small fractional spaces being used. I'm happy to go forward with "roughly 250kg" for each space dedicated to cargo at this point.
 
I don't have my copy yet, so I've just skimmed the PDF. I haven't really looked at any of the designs; none of them were designed by me, so I can't really speak to them.
 
I'll also say that I was a little disappointed that, by RAW, you can't mount a meson accelerator on a battlemech, er, "heavy walker" because of the size, but the fact that I can put one in a C-130 or perhaps on an enormous dirigible helps to salve the hurt. ;)
 
Colin said:
Basically, if you have one Space of cargo, you have enough space to stash a body...
True story: when I was looking at sports cars a couple of years ago, the dealer tried to point out that the luggage space was relatively large by saying "you could get a body in there" :shock:
 
Colin said:
Cargo is whatever Space is left over after everything else goes into the vehicle. 250 kg per Space is just a guideline...

Which, perhaps not coincidentally, seems to go back to CT where the G-Carrier denotes that for every person seat capacity swapped for cargo space you gain 250kg of carrying capacity and that 1,000kg of space is 1 Ton (strongly implied 1 dTon imo) of cargo.

Colin said:
Basically, if you have one Space of cargo, you have enough space to stash a body...

A large body, possibly armoured, in comfort... ;)
 
nerfherder said:
Colin said:
Basically, if you have one Space of cargo, you have enough space to stash a body...
True story: when I was looking at sports cars a couple of years ago, the dealer tried to point out that the luggage space was relatively large by saying "you could get a body in there" :shock:

Oh, we typically rate the size of trunks around here in terms of bodies. My first car, a '72 Buick LeSabre had a four-body trunk, for example.
 
A lot of stuff does get a good going over.

For example every vehicle in both Supplement 5: Civilian Vehicles and Supplement 6: Military Vehicles was gone over, all the calucations where checked. Though there where some changes to the design system after this was done. Mistakes will slip through sometimes.

Sometimes mistakes can slip in through this process as well though. If a change is made without checking with the author first they may not have known what the author did, which may have been correct all along.
 
Just posted this as another thread is stating that the "destructive" plasma guns are a rule change, not an error. Not sure if this applies just to direct hits or all target in the area of effect.

A couple of other things that may be errata, or may be rule changes.

p23 Heavy jet structure 3 hull or structure points per 4 space, I think it should be 1 point per 4 spaces.

p49 The battle dress extras, especially medikits and "looking glass" (appears to replace vislight chameolion) very different from csc and core.

Egil
 
Being a Hammer's Slammers fan I am happy that HS vehicles are in the new book. But I got worried when I compared the old Hammer's Slammers Handbook vehicles to the new Vehicle Handbook. In particular, the T-11 Thyseen Colonial Light Tank went from 90/75/75/60/??/35 to 30 all around. Why such a change I asked? So I looked at the rules and examples. Unfortunately, I got more questions than answers!

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT - MANY EXAMPLES ARE BROKEN AND IT MAKES ME SAD.

The G-Carrier design example on p.54 is TL 14; so base armor is 5. Doubled for AFV is 10. Add 30 for a total of 40/face. However, the example states that when making the vehicle an AFV that "[T]his uses two Spaces (10% of total)." Under "Adding Armour to Vehicles" and "Armoured Fighting Vehicles" on p. 29 there is no mention of Spaces used to add armor. Does adding armor use Spaces or not? EDIT - Found the answer on p. 18, where a AFV modification for a Heavy Grav Vehicle "takes up 10% (round up) of a vehicle's Spaces." Only three chassis types can be made AFVs; Heavy Ground, Heavy Hovercraft, and Heavy Grav Vehicles. Why the Spaces part of the rule was not repeated on p. 29 is confusing.

Seeking clarity, I looked at the G/Carrier (p. 104). MORE CONFUSION! The G/Carrier is TL 15 (Base Armor 6), an AFV (base doubled to 12), with Additional Armor (+12) for a total of 24/face. The vehicle also has ERA (type IV) which (per p. 37) should add +13 PER FACE. [See "Armour and Defensive Modifications - Explosive Reactive Armour (ERA)," specifically "ERA adds Armour to each face of the vehicle."] So the G/Carrier should have 37 Armour/face, yet the example has only 25!

Trying again, I looked at the G/Carrier Heavy Variant (p. 105). TL 15 is Base Armor 6, but the Other Equipment/Modifications does NOT specify this vehicle is an AFV, nor does it have Additional Armour but it does have ERA (type IV) which gives it a total of 19 armor/face; short of the 25/face specified. BUT...if you treat it as an AFV and double the base armor (12) and ADD the ERA (+13) you get 25! So which G/Carrier example is right?

Within "Hovercraft of Hammer's Slammers" on pp. 174-175 all three of the Slammers hovertanks - the signature vehicles for this setting - have wonky armor values. In just one example, the M2A1, the "backbone of the Slammers arsenal" (p. 175), is TL 11 (Base Armour 4), an AFV (Base x2), with Additional Armour x15 (+120) for a total of 128/face. With ERA (type II) you add +9/face for a grand total of 137/face, or 822 Armour to go around 6 faces. Yet the values shown are 180/150/150/150/140/70 for a total of 840. Where do the extra 18 armor factors come from?

I think the rules are decent enough that the problems can mostly be figured out and numbers rectified, but why am I doing it with a purchased copy and less than 2 hours of time when Mongoose had weeks/months to figure this out?
 
On p. 6 of the new Vehicle Handbook, Mounted Weapons ranges are given as an extension of the ranges found in the Core Rulebook (CRB p. 64). These new ranges are useful extensions of the original rules but make obsolete some rules found in other supplements. The vehicle design examples are also riddled with errors.

Using the CRB and new Supplement 5-6, combat ranges are:
Personal: Less than 1.5m
Close: 1.5-3m
Short: 3-12m
Medium: 12-50m
Long: 51-250m
Very Long: 251-500m
Distant: 501-5000m
Very Distant: 5001-25000m
Extreme: 25001-50000m
Continental: 50-500km
Orbital: 501km+

When firing using the CRB, the "range" of a weapon is based on the type; i.e. a TL12 Gauss Rifle uses the Ranged (Rifle) modifiers when firing (see CRB p. 65 and 99).

To make matters confusing, in the 2008 edition of Mercenary, there is a rule named "Extreme Range Firing" found on p. 71. The disastrous Support Weapons ranges on p. 105 were corrected by errata and eventually replaced by the Central Supply Catalogue (CSC, published 2009). But CSC used either the Ranged (Weapon) or an actual distance (meters or km) to describe ranges.

In Hammer's Slammers (published 2009), a new Vehicle Scale was introduced on p. 165. The HS Vehicle Scale is:
Adjacent: Less than 10m
Close: 10-50m
Short: 50-250m
Medium: 250m-1km
Long: 1-10km
Very Long: 10km to Horizon
Distant: Over the Horizon

So now I am trying to make sense of the weapons in the Vehicle Handbook; but it is challenging. On p. 102, the G/AV is listed as having the Light Advanced Autocannon with a range of "Very Distant" or up to 25,000m. This weapon is otherwise like the Light Advanced Autocannon found on p. 107 of the CSC, but the range there is given as "Rifle" which in turn is 501-5000m. Did the weapon get an upgrade?

The very next page has the G/AT with the Light Hypervelocity Gun and a range of "Very Distant'" or again up to 25000m. Yet the Light Hypervelocity Gun in the CSC (p. 123) has a range of 5km/5000m. Another change?

It looks like nearly all weapons with a m/km range from CSC are wrong. Most have had a range band added, but a few (like the Vargr G/Carrier) have lost range.

Worse is my beloved Hammer's Slammers where the M2A1 (p. 175 in the new Vehicle Handbook) has a 20-cm Powergun with a range of "Long." Under the (old) HS Vehicle Range this works out to 1-10km - close to the source literature - but under the new system it is a mere 250m! Error in translation to the new Vehicle Handbook?

Like my armor post above this took a short amount of time (30 minutes) to discover. C'mon Mongoose! Get your proofreading/editing together!
 
After working armor and combat range issues I figured I would try to reverse-engineer several of the design examples to see how they work. So I started with the Hammer's Slammers Skimmer on p. 176. A nice simple design; what could go wrong?

The Skimmer is obviously a Light Hovercraft. Based on a shipping size of 1.5 tons I started out with Space 3. Base Price of Cr60,000. Increased Speed x2 adds 20% of Base Price or Cr12,000 and increases speed from 200kph to 240kph. This also uses 2 Spaces, leaving one for the crew. The Open Frame reduces cost by 50% of Base Price or -Cr30,000.

So I figure the cost should be Cr42,000, yet the Vehicle Handbook has Cr72,000! Forgot to subtract that Open Frame discount?

Can anybody tell me where the Cargo rules are? How does the skimmer get .25 tons cargo? If I add one Space (4 total) the Base Price changes to Cr80,000. Add Cr16,000 for the Increased Speed x2 and subtract Cr40,000 for the Open Frame and you get a cost of Cr56,000. Seems to make it more wrong than right. Adding a full space doesn't seem right either since under Vehicle Size and Layout (p. 7) it states, "...one Space is roughly equal to one and a half meters squared. Note that the deck-to-deck height would be closer to two metres of even less...."

The Skimmer should be the easiest design, yet it is still confusing!
 
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