Weapons in Mercenary

[Infojunky]

Ok then. I get it. One of y'all is the systems perfect no changes needed.

The other is its all bollocksed and needs to be fixed.

Well, I have to come down on the it's broken side. But since this is Traveller we don't need to rewrite the base system. The Traveller way is to build a new one and let the players decide. (example; Snapshot, AHL, Striker, ACQ (which is technically a rewrite of Snapshot)).

The first item I would address is scale. Current thresholds given:

• personel = 1
  Starship = 50

Right off the bat there probably needs to be at least on intermediate step there. Say a Vehicle step.

Ponder this damage is a one to one effect to people scale things, one to two for vehicle scale things, and one to 200 for starship scale things (this is considering direct damage to the item without armor) This is based off of the provide damage charts, which I don't have in front of me so I am just working from memory here.

So in this light maybe there needs to be a damage chart for personnel damage?

The next question is; What is Damage? Is it the rote penetration of armor?
Is it penetration and the disruption of what ever is behind said armor?

With this I must point out how a biological being responds is vastly different than how a machine responds to the act of being damaged. A person hit with a armor piercing round my shrug off the clean through and through hit while the machine suffers catastrophic damage. And situation where the reverse is true.

Thus what is Damage?

As for the ongoing argument, well chock it up to a difference in play style, if the core system works for you and your group fine. If it doesn't well we have a place to hash it out. Hell and even the permission to fix it publicly if we choose to.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

Like Hell I am going to call the jeep an armored fighting vehicle. Or a fighting vehicle. The jeep wasnt designed to be taken into combat. Sure, it had a MG mount for defense, but thats not the same.

Well fair enough, but neither did I. I said "standard fighting vehicle", as said the text. I'd expect the TL15 equivalent of a humvee to be well armoured in comparison, in this case, close to a WW2 era front line tank (IMO, based on the weapons available to defeat said tank).

Your interpretation supposes that for some odd reason the author decided not to put any "real" tanks in either book.

Not odd. These be common vehicles to encounter. MBTs are not 'common', even in a well equipped military, compared to other types of vehicles.

You will also note that the AFV is described as "a heavily armored ATV". Note emphasis on "heavily". If an armor value of 18 is "heavily armored, then it is logical to assume that the G-carrier, with an armor value of 25, is in fact a fully armored tank. Lets not even think about why the Imperium would put dual Fusion guns on the thing and pay 15 MCr for it unless it was heavily armored.

It says a "heavily armoured ATV"; not that AR18 is necessarily 'heavy armour' in itself. A diplomatic Mercedes could be said to be a "heavily armoured car"; that would not make it an AFV. And 15Mcr may be quite steep but it is capable of reaching orbit and can reach more than half the speed of sound, carrying weapons that a guy in battle dress, or just strong, can wield. And it can carry troops; MBTs do not do that.

You are assuming that an armor value of 25 represents something lightly armored. In fact, 25 is the heaviest armor in any book, and from the vehicle descriptions, it is plain in my opinion, that the G-carrier is a full tank.

Lightly armoured, at tech level 15.

having said that, you now have to presuppose armor technology has completely stagnated in order to give 20th century tanks an armor value >12 or so.

That is your presupposition, sir, not mine. I'm suggesting AR30 or so for current era tanks.

A 7.62mm LMG, which for the purposes of this exercise I will regard as a belt fed ACR. 3D, +6 AUTO

No, thats a LMG. 4D6 damage.

A .50 cal MG, which here we will stat as the Mercenary LMG. 4D, +6 AUTO.

No, thats more like a 6D6 machinegun (~same ammo as the LAG).

The Mercenary LMG seems quite a fuzzy thing that is trying to be both the LMG and HMG at once. My suggestion is to separate them into different weapons.

.50 cal is 12.7mm. The LAG is 20mm, a special hi-ex/armour piercing round. A .357 round is about 9mm in diameter. No one can argue 9mm Parabellum is equivalent to .357 magnum. A somewhat obtuse comparison, but the respective rounds are designed for very different purposes.

Since when are a number of different proposed fixed difficult ?

1) re-rate vehicle armor and weapons
2) use the same sort of mehcabism for vehicles that exists for starships
3) add a damage bonus/penalty for shooting at lower/higher TL vehicles.

None of this is rocket science.

1) fair bit of faff. And invalidates all the stuff currently published. The number of dice will get to messy proportions.
2) even more faff, in game faff too. And it invalidates all the stuff currently published.
3) easier and simpler, but stiff faffy in game.

Well, I have to come down on the it's broken side. But since this is Traveller we don't need to rewrite the base system. The Traveller way is to build a new one and let the players decide. (example; Snapshot, AHL, Striker, ACQ (which is technically a rewrite of Snapshot)).

The first item I would address is scale. Current thresholds given:

• personel = 1
  Starship = 50

Right off the bat there probably needs to be at least on intermediate step there. Say a Vehicle step.

Actually that would be quite a drastic step. It would require redoing half the combat mechanics and all the vehicle and weapon stats. It would be a marketing disaster to replace half the system at this early stage in MGTs life. Recalling and replacing all those books would be tad uneconomic, too.

There is, however, nothing stopping anyone producing a variant system of sorts within the OGL.

I do suggest that merely 1D less damage dice for small arms vs vehicle, and conversely 1D more damage to field weapons vs personnel is a much simpler fix. That solves the problem quite adequately without invalidating the published material.

The thing I really like about MGT is that it is customisable around the edges without messing around with the core mechanics at all.

With this I must point out how a biological being responds is vastly different than how a machine responds to the act of being damaged. A person hit with a armor piercing round my shrug off the clean through and through hit while the machine suffers catastrophic damage. And situation where the reverse is true.

Thus what is Damage?

A perennial discussion in rpgs. Damage can only really be an abstract measure of degraded capability, really, and a limit of punishment until the unit ceases to function/dies. MGT is one of the better ones, doing that. Actual injury and wounds are too complex for even computer games to bother modeling 'accurately'.

As for the ongoing argument, well chock it up to a difference in play style, if the core system works for you and your group fine. If it doesn't well we have a place to hash it out. Hell and even the permission to fix it publicly if we choose to.

Well indeed. I do enjoy debating style. And these discussions do improve my game, and my understanding of the game, so all's good.

 

[Infojunky]

The thing I really like about MGT is that it is customisable around the edges without messing around with the core mechanics at all.

Cool, you go play that, and we'll discuss what changes we would like to see.

Remember Traveller is a constellation of mechanics and related games, use what you will. PLEASE don't keep trying to cram your P.O.V. down our throats just because we have a different opinion. This supposed to be fun, not a pissing contest.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

Cool, you go play that, and we'll discuss what changes we would like to see.

Remember Traveller is a constellation of mechanics and related games, use what you will. PLEASE don't keep trying to cram your P.O.V. down our throats just because we have a different opinion. This supposed to be fun, not a pissing contest.

OK, fine. I thought we were having a discussion. I've only been responding to points made, in the hope of finding solutions. I've found this quite helpful. Sorry you haven't.

I would still suggest OGL is a much less disruptive solution than trying to get Mongoose to change their rules as published, but that is just my opinion. Anyway, I'll leave you to it, chaps, if my comments aren't welcome. :?

 

[Infojunky]

OK, fine. I thought we were having a discussion. I've only been responding to points made, in the hope of finding solutions. I've found this quite helpful. Sorry you haven't.

You will have to forgive me if I kinda was abrupt. Yesterday was a very BAD day and when I sat down at the keyboard I was being less than my reasonable self. I need Google goggles for the rest of the day... Or I am reviewing my entire days output as to see who else was at the receiving end of less than polite discourse.

Again I will have to beg your understanding..

 

[Klaus Kipling]

No probs. Tone and nuance are difficult on boards.

The argument has run it's course anyhow, and the good bits have moved into other discussions. All good.

 

[MadDog]

On the issues of the G-carrier (tank or not a tank) I suppose we could just ask the author what his intent was when he wrote the stats.

Mad Dog

 

[Emperor Herdan]

On the issues of the G-carrier (tank or not a tank) I suppose we could just ask the author what his intent was when he wrote the stats.

Mad Dog

While I cannot speak for the author, in my view anything that carries passengers (while acknowleging the Israeli armour vehicle variant and then dismissing it as a specialized case), isn't a "tank".

I see it as a heavier APC with 1 fusion gun (FGMP I think it is...).

A MBT type version I don't think we'll see for a while... Might come out in a Mongoose FF&S book but (shrug). Maybe there will be a "Hammers Slammers" version ala the Babylon 5 book..

Take care

E. Herdan

 

[mlooney]

The first item I would address is scale. Current thresholds given:

• personel = 1
  Starship = 50

Right off the bat there probably needs to be at least on intermediate step there. Say a Vehicle step.

Actually, there is 3 scales right now. The Capital ship scale is ~3.5 times the Star ship scale. (i.e one dice of damage Star ship scale is 1 point of Damage Capital ship scale), which is the concept I'm working on for an up coming set of war game rules.

Let me toss some numbers out there, with some real world things attached to them.

Light armored Fighting vehicles normally have from 5 to 8 mm RHA armor. That makes the "small arms and shell splinter proof". An AFV (page 103 TMB) has 18 points of personal scale armor. That makes it more or less immune to all 3d6 weapons, which is to say all pistols and all long arms other than a Gauss rifle. That means it's got roughly 8-10 mm of RHA. Let's assume an effect of 2, and the 1 in 216 chance of doing max damage. That means that 20 points of damage will penetrate 10mm real armor, or more simply, 2 points of damage/armor is equal to 1mm RHA real world armor.

This means that 50 points (i.e. 1 point space ship armor) is equal to 25mm RHA.

Umm. Houston, we have a problem. That means that an 1940 era Panzer III has one point of SPACESHIP level armor. A T34/85 has 3.6? If we round that up it's got the same armor as a Type S scout?

Taking the LOWEST estimate of the RHA equivalent for a M1A1 MBT turret vs KE weapons (940 mm) we find that it has 1880 points of personal scale armor (37.6 points of Spaceship armor). You will note that this is more than twice the max legal amount of armor on a space ship, at tech level 15.

This also means that modern MBT killing weapons do Space Ship level damage. A US M829A3 120mm APDSFSDU penetrates 765mm at 2km (close range at space ship level, FWIW). Working backwards that's 1560 points of human level damage or ~445 dice of damage.

I laugh at your FGMP-15 and it's max of 96 points of damage and call it a silly thing.

My head hurts.

I think that means a M1A2's 120mm weapons counts as a spinal mount in Capital Ship combat. <checks Book 2>. Yeah, it is, once you allow for rate of fire. A single shot from one MBT is doing the same amount of damage as 3 triple turrets of beam lasers, firing for 6 minutes. Um, a M1A2 has a ROF of ~4 rounds a minute, or 24 rounds per turn. That's 230 dice of damage, space ship scale, which is just a little over the smallest size spinal mount.

My head does hurt. Some one, find a hole in my math, please...



Need to crunch lots of numbers. More later.

 

[RandyT0001]

This sums up my design process for RPGS pretty much to a 'T'. As to an earlier poster who asked what I was thinking when I stylsed the ranges and damages and such in Mercenary; this is the best answer - to make the game more fun.

Although I agree that realistically some of these weapons should be firing miles of distance and a MBT should not have to worry about a row of infantry with ACRs, but adding a theatrical element of danger and drama to ALL aspects of RPG combat is better than simply playing the "I win" card.

I agree that perhaps players who want a more realistic game should tweak the heck outta my numbers, but as a few posters (and my own home sessions) have shown, Mercenary works just fine as it is if you look at it in the light of fairness instead of technical-accuracy.

As a quick aside, this book was not designed for military-oriented gamers.(SNIP)The closest thing I might do is aim at a specific role or mentality of the characters,.....All I aim for is a book that is interesting to read and a game that is fun to play.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Umm. Houston, we have a problem. That means that an 1940 era Panzer III has one point of SPACESHIP level armor. A T34/85 has 3.6? If we round that up it's got the same armor as a Type S scout?

Taking the LOWEST estimate of the RHA equivalent for a M1A1 MBT turret vs KE weapons (940 mm) we find that it has 1880 points of personal scale armor (37.6 points of Spaceship armor). You will note that this is more than twice the max legal amount of armor on a space ship, at tech level 15.

This also means that modern MBT killing weapons do Space Ship level damage. A US M829A3 120mm APDSFSDU penetrates 765mm at 2km (close range at space ship level, FWIW). Working backwards that's 1560 points of human level damage or ~445 dice of damage.

I laugh at your FGMP-15 and it's max of 96 points of damage and call it a silly thing.

My head hurts.

I think that means a M1A2's 120mm weapons counts as a spinal mount in Capital Ship combat. <checks Book 2>. Yeah, it is, once you allow for rate of fire. A single shot from one MBT is doing the same amount of damage as 3 triple turrets of beam lasers, firing for 6 minutes. Um, a M1A2 has a ROF of ~4 rounds a minute, or 24 rounds per turn. That's 230 dice of damage, space ship scale, which is just a little over the smallest size spinal mount.

My head does hurt. Some one, find a hole in my math, please...

Need to crunch lots of numbers. More later.

Ok, but are you having Fun yet?

And remember it's being designed this way using a as-yet-unpublished design sequence/system.

If Mongoose were clever, they would develop and properly beta test a starship/vehicle/equipment design system (a la FF&S), but keep it in-house, and then use it to generate a host of starships/vehicles/equipment (a la Fighting Ships or 101 Vehicles or Central Supply Catalogue), and then release supplements containing those pre-designed vehicles/equipment first.
(SNIP)
Result=consistency across product line. Starships, vehicles, guns, etc that match the design sequences (rather than tons of errata or handwaving to make stuff 'thought up' in early products match the eventual design sequences).

Umm, that is exactly what we are doing

EDIT:Added the part about yhr design sequence

 

[mlooney]

You are assuming that an armor value of 25 represents something lightly armored. In fact, 25 is the heaviest armor in any book, and from the vehicle descriptions, it is plain in my opinion, that the G-carrier is a full tank.

It's the highest armor that is listed and is human scale. A 25 makes it immune to all slug throwers in the basic book (4d6=24). That makes it, in current terms "immune to AP small arms in the frontal arc". That might make it have around 15mm RHA armor. My back of envelope calculations above would put it at 12.5 mm or a half inch.

That's not a tank, and hasn't been for well over 60 years. That's a light armored fighting vehicle, which makes sense. It's got armor that will stop any thing a poggo can carry, and it mounts a weapon than can hurt it's self. It carries a squad or so of poggos. It's a freaking APC, not a tank. It's more like a M113 or a M2 Bradly than a M60 or M1 MBT.

The more I think about the armor issue, the more I come to realize that you really do have to have 2 types of attacks. One for personnel, one for vehicles. If a human gets hit with a weapon that can damage armored vehicles he or she dies. Even light anti-armor weapons (i.e. 12.7 mm sniper rifles, or 20mm auto cannons) when applied to human targets cause over kill effects. The thing is, in general, you don't shoot people with anti-tank weapons.

If my numbers are right, however, it does appear that you do shoot space ships with them. A company volley, sustained over the course of a full space combat turn of M1A2 would do some thing like 3220 space ship dice of damage.

Really need to crunch some numbers and gets some rules up for play test.

 

[mlooney]

Although I agree that realistically some of these weapons should be firing miles of distance and a MBT should not have to worry about a row of infantry with ACRs, but adding a theatrical element of danger and drama to ALL aspects of RPG combat is better than simply playing the "I win" card.

Argh! Can he not do simple math?

In MGT 21 points of damage, after armor, is "lethal". 14 points is "not dead but out of the fight" (knocked out is as good as dead in this context), both cases assuming bog standard humans.

So, the "I win" card is any thing that does 4 dice of damage, after armor effects are accounted for.

Let's see. Restricting our selves to Mr. Steele's weapons, that would mean that a TL 8 Sniper rifle, a MagRail Rifle, any of his Energy weapons, (other than Matter Disintegrators), all Heavy Weapons and all Support weapons, other than TL 3 Field Mortars, are "I win" cards vs unarmored targets.

Skipping ahead, let's give our target the best possible armor, TL 15 "Artillery" Battle Dress. That means that 20 points, or just under 6 dice. So, because Mr. Steele doesn't believe in "I Win" cards, that means he shouldn't have made any weapons that do more 10 dice or more of damage.

Opps, there is that 10,000 credit ARMP (which is a fairly good simulation of a M82A1A .50-cal Anti-Materiel Rifle). Let see. TL14 Battle Dress Armor cost 3,500,000. Weapon that defeats it cost 10,000. So for each Imperial Marine you deploy I can deploy 350 poggos with a ARMP. I think I can win this fight. Particularly because if we give the Marine a weapon, I get to add between 2 and 40 poggos to the mix (PGMP-12 cost 20,000 while a FGMP-15 cost 400,000).

Oh, then we have the even cheaper TL-10 Mass Driver support weapon. I get over 1,100 of them for the cost of one unarmed suit of battle armor. Granted the Mass Driver as a crew of 3.

So, all you would be TL-14+ invaders, stay away from TL-10 planets! They will eat your lunch if you land.

 

[rust]

Let's see. Restricting our selves to Mr. Steele's weapons, that would mean that a TL 8 Sniper rifle, a MagRail Rifle, any of his Energy weapons, (other than Matter Disintegrators), all Heavy Weapons and all Support weapons, other than TL 3 Field Mortars, are "I win" cards vs unarmored targets.

Any weapon of that kind would have a comparably high chance to disable
or kill an unarmoured person under real world conditions.

If someone would point a TL 8 Sniper rifle at me, I would immediately
concede that he has an "I Win" card in his hands.

And as for the financial side of weapons versus armour, just think of
Blowpipe or Stinger and Soviet helicopters and jets in Afghanistan. It
is really not uncommon that it is much cheaper to destroy something
than to build it.

 

[apoc527]

Although I agree that realistically some of these weapons should be firing miles of distance and a MBT should not have to worry about a row of infantry with ACRs, but adding a theatrical element of danger and drama to ALL aspects of RPG combat is better than simply playing the "I win" card.

Argh! Can he not do simple math?

In MGT 21 points of damage, after armor, is "lethal". 14 points is "not dead but out of the fight" (knocked out is as good as dead in this context), both cases assuming bog standard humans.

So, the "I win" card is any thing that does 4 dice of damage, after armor effects are accounted for.

Let's see. Restricting our selves to Mr. Steele's weapons, that would mean that a TL 8 Sniper rifle, a MagRail Rifle, any of his Energy weapons, (other than Matter Disintegrators), all Heavy Weapons and all Support weapons, other than TL 3 Field Mortars, are "I win" cards vs unarmored targets.

Skipping ahead, let's give our target the best possible armor, TL 15 "Artillery" Battle Dress. That means that 20 points, or just under 6 dice. So, because Mr. Steele doesn't believe in "I Win" cards, that means he shouldn't have made any weapons that do more 10 dice or more of damage.

Opps, there is that 10,000 credit ARMP (which is a fairly good simulation of a M82A1A .50-cal Anti-Materiel Rifle). Let see. TL14 Battle Dress Armor cost 3,500,000. Weapon that defeats it cost 10,000. So for each Imperial Marine you deploy I can deploy 350 poggos with a ARMP. I think I can win this fight. Particularly because if we give the Marine a weapon, I get to add between 2 and 40 poggos to the mix (PGMP-12 cost 20,000 while a FGMP-15 cost 400,000).

Oh, then we have the even cheaper TL-10 Mass Driver support weapon. I get over 1,100 of them for the cost of one unarmed suit of battle armor. Granted the Mass Driver as a crew of 3.

So, all you would be TL-14+ invaders, stay away from TL-10 planets! They will eat your lunch if you land.

Waitasecond. I'm trying to figure it out who it is, exactly, who can't do "simple math."

First, I'm going to assume you were being reasonable and taking only the average damage from 10d6, which is, of course, 35. Anybody who knows math wouldn't make the mistake of using anything over this fair average because the chance of deviating from the average with 10 dice is fairly small. So, 35 damage. Your ARMP. Vs TL15 Artillery battledress, AR 20.

Now, you also assumed that "21 points" of damage past armor is lethal. I'd argue that for any actual soldier, it's more like 9s in the physical stats, so let's boost that to 27 damage being lethal after armor.

Hmmm...35-20 = 15. Hurt, but not lethal. And we are talking about a weapon designed to eliminate APCs. I see nothing wrong with that.

What else, keeping in mind that I don't yet have Mercenary, so I'm going off the preview...

How is 4d6 an "I win" card under your definition? 4d6 will do a reliable 14 damage. That's a full 7 less than your "lethal 21." Are you actually trying to argue that 4d6 has a realistic chance in play of regularly doing over 20 damage? My friend, how many RPGs have you actually rolled dice in!?! Assuming you want to argue that 14 damage is "out of the fight/as good as dead," that's fine. However, it's pointless to make an argument with 4d6 weapons against UNARMORED targets. Try more like TL11 combat armor--now we have AR12 vs 14 average damage, which equates to a paltry 2 points of damage per hit. Even a TL8 flak jacket will cut the 14 down to 6 actual damage. So, what, exactly, is your point with these examples?

Anyway, I'll keep out of this argument further until I have Mercenary, but I'm not seeing this horribly broken thing that some of you are seeing. In many games, vehicle weapons HORRIBLY MUTILATE the PCs unless they are driving around in their own tank. This is realistic, no doubt, but it also means that unless the GM wants to just achieve a TPK for the hell of it, these types of weapons do not show up and if they do, it's only because the GM wants to send a clear message to Not Go That Way.

I'm sure my 15 years of GMing is piddly compared to some true Traveller grognards, but I have learned during that time that realism in RPGs is not all it's cracked up to be. I used to drool over GURPS...but it was a huge pain in the butt to play and a laser pistol was almost always instantly lethal when fired by a skilled shooter.

I will have to examine the weapon and armor stats in MGT some more, because I plan to make my own setting anyway, which requires a custom weapons list. However, I don't think, from what little I've seen (and read about here), that the game is borked.

 

[atpollard]

However, I don't think, from what little I've seen (and read about here), that the game is borked.

Yeah, what he said.

I liked the choices for support weapons from a roleplaying perspective. In the 'good old days', all weapons fell into three damages ... 3D6, 4D6 and 10D6. The choice was generally driven by TL availability with a clear 'best weapon' for any given TL.

In MGT:Merc I can choose a support weapon that will spray an area and decimate many lightly armored foes, or a weapon that will put a single shot thru virtually any armor. The choice has consequences and there is now a 'right tool for the job'.

 

[apoc527]

Ok I have Merc now. I do think something needs to be done and I think I have a very elegant solution using an idea in HG and second edition WEG Star Wars. For "vehicle vs character" treat all weapons as Super High Yield, making any roll less than 4 count as 4. For the other way around, treat any roll higher than 3 as a 3. Voilà. If you want more death, increase vehicle-scale weapon dice to d8s or d12s vs character-scale targets.

 

[weasel_fierce]

so has this whole "platoons of elite rifle men standing in a straight line gunning down tanks for several turns in a row" thing actually happened in a game yet ?

What did the tank do in the meanwhile ?

(also, it should be abundantly clear from the original game that Traveller has never been designed for military guys.. try playing a combat using the scifi weapons in book 4 and weep... cutlasses hacking through battle dress, Gauss rifles hitting pretty much automatically..vehicle combat was.. oh..wait, it wasn't)

 

[AKAramis]

so has this whole "platoons of elite rifle men standing in a straight line gunning down tanks for several turns in a row" thing actually happened in a game yet ?

What did the tank do in the meanwhile ?

(also, it should be abundantly clear from the original game that Traveller has never been designed for military guys.. try playing a combat using the scifi weapons in book 4 and weep... cutlasses hacking through battle dress, Gauss rifles hitting pretty much automatically..vehicle combat was.. oh..wait, it wasn't)

I've don military games under MegaTraveller repeatedly. The Ability to brng down a tank with a gauss rifle required exceptional hits; I've only had two PC's pull it off against a moving target... and both before the x10 hits errata... by taking out the PP with lucky shots as the tank overflew the infantry hidden position. Shoot n' scoot. Once the first one goes down, the rest get really mean.

 

[mlooney]

How is 4d6 an "I win" card under your definition? 4d6 will do a reliable 14 damage. That's a full 7 less than your "lethal 21."

14 points is, to a normal person, 2 stats reduced to 0, therefor knocked out. 21 points is "He's dead Jim". In the context of a tactical fight, the difference between dead and laying on the ground near death is zero. Hence, 14 points is down and out, but might, assuming his/her side wins, get slapped in an auto doc and get a chance to go again.

However, I don't think, from what little I've seen (and read about here), that the game is borked.

The game isn't. Selected weapons are. There are 2 main issues,
1) Armor scaled for humans doesn't scale to armored vehicles.
Which leads to the 2nd,
2) Mr. Steele attempted to make the heavy weapons human scale, for the most part, which means that they have absurdly low ranges and damage amounts.

Here begins a rant.
What got me going was his defense that he did that for a sense of fairness and "fun".

On the fairness thing, well, the cost in credits of a weapon that will defeat any armor that a human can wear is 10,000 cr (vs 3,500,000 cr for the armor). Not Game Balanced, and saying that the other weapons are lamed for "fairness" reasons is, well, lame.

On the fun thing, this isn't WH40K with less Orks. It Traveller. Traveller has generated Striker, with it's design system, Fire, Fusion and Steel (two versions) with their design systems, and Striker II, with it's mods to the FF&S rules. Plus, of course the design systems in MegaTraveller and the some what hard to read design systems in T4. All version, including MGT have complex and more or less rational design systems for space ships. Being able to design rational weapon systems is a core part of the Traveller canon, and to blow off long time players with "I did it to make it more fun/fair" is missing a major point. Particularly given with in the same book he has "normal" weapons, costing "normal" prices, with rational ranges and damage effects.


Hear ends the rant.

 

[Deniable]

IIRC, in TNE a TOW to the front of an Intrepid / Astrin won't make a scratch. An M1A1 APFSDSDU round won't either. I'll have to dig out T2K 2.2 and RCVG to double check.