What's the range of starship missiles?

[Arkathan]

My memory is about that age as well. Aside from the coolness of the Hydran Hellbores I recall that your warp engines and impulse engines generated your energy (as well as APR's and battery's if you wanted to discharge them). It took one point of energy (from any source) to power any system - including your engines. Tactical speeds were up to 32(?), and was considered impulse speed. After that it was warp speed and you could not engage in combat at warp speed. The ST reboot (and maybe Enterprise) changed that, but prior to that (at least as I recall) the game and the tv shows had it so that combat during warp was not possible.

I've seen the Ad Astra game, haven't gotten it though.

1 was impulse, Sublight. 2-32 were warp powered movement, but "slow" enough not to go zipping off the board. Since warp is a log scale, over 32 was too fast to engage and you went away.

 

[MonsterX]

Good times. SFB was a lot of fun.

 

[collins355]

My memory of it, (which is nearly 40 years out of date so it could be my fading memory, or changes in-between times leading me astray), is that you got 1 hex per turn from impulse drives, and then you could add to that with your warp drives - and shooting could take place while using warp. However, this isn't so important as there is no warp in Traveller, and takes the discussion well away from Traveller, and into the realm of an old man reminiscing about how things used to be when people played real games before these damn youngsters messed everything up.

If you want something that has a lot of elements from SFB, such as the importance of facing - Attack Vector from Adastra https://www.adastragames.com/products looks promising. They've even adapted it to Traveller. Vector and 3D movement are their trademarks. I haven't bought the game though, and would very much like to hear from anyone who has about their experiences applying it to Traveller. Two issues seems to come up 1) from what I can see there is a steep learning curve, during which a LOT of time is probably spent figuring things out. and 2) adapting the ship designs to the combat system is important, and so it would either need a long line of products to make it useful to campaign referees who will have lots of different ship types in their games most of which aren't represented.

I have the Ad Astra game called Squadron Strike that builds upon the earlier Attack Vector. The learning curve is steep (way too steep for most roleplayers). The full system is 3d vector combat. It really only is possible to play with a handful of vessels, because you're almost literally flying them.
There is an intermediate system included that avoids the full 3d mania and is more playable. That is the level that I play it at.

 

[MonsterX]

I have the Ad Astra game called Squadron Strike that builds upon the earlier Attack Vector. The learning curve is steep (way too steep for most roleplayers). The full system is 3d vector combat. It really only is possible to play with a handful of vessels, because you're almost literally flying them.
There is an intermediate system included that avoids the full 3d mania and is more playable. That is the level that I play it at.

It sounds amazing. But also a heavy commitment of brain cells. Maybe when I retire, I'll tackle it. if I still have enough brain cells left to manage it.

 

[Sigtrygg]

After a few games you get the hang of it. You can also get the spreadsheets for ship and weapon design from their website once you have purchased the game. If you have played a lot of AV/T then SS:T is pretty quick to pick up.

A nice transitional game is Power Projection: Fleet

 

[phavoc]

1 was impulse, Sublight. 2-32 were warp powered movement, but "slow" enough not to go zipping off the board. Since warp is a log scale, over 32 was too fast to engage and you went away.

I had to go look this one up (books are in boxes). I found this errata for the 2004 rulebook edition - which is waaay after the editions I played:

(C7.11) This first sentence of this rule was changed to read:“On a given game turn, the starship wishing to disengage by acceleration must move (for the entire turn) at the maximum possible practical speed which it can, as restricted by available warp engine power (which may have been reduced by combat) and the game imposed speed limit of 31.” This added the word “warp” before the word “engine”. Some believed that the use of the term “engine” without the word "warp” meant a ship which never had warp, but had impulse engines could disengage by acceleration as long as it had half of its impulse engines. Since half of zero warp is still zero warp and the maximum practical speed was one.

Not 100% definitive. There were other references elsewhere that referred to movement "impulses" of 32, thus the maximum speed by which combat is possible is 32. Warp is a log scale, but combat, as far as the game and TOS went, was never done at anything but impulse speeds.

But, in any case, I don't see myself digging through boxes to get to the books to definitively resolve this, so no biggie if we continue to have different recollections from a game played decades ago. I've slept a few times since then.

 

[Arkathan]

The way you can tell is by looking at the sublight Warbird and the OLD Old Light Cruiser. When a warp capable ship in on teh board, their movement is limited to speed 1.