Why are warships built without armored bulkheads, EM hardening, and backup power?

"Ok you encounter an alien ship of completely unknown design"
<rolls 2d-1 for size, a 2 so it is 100 to 199t in size
roll 1d three times - 4, 2, 4, it is jump 2 (lowest die) m-drive 4 (next lowest die) pp-2 highest die)

" A quick sensor scan and analysis of its jump flash indicates 100t minimum displacement, jump 2 and maneuver 4 performance."

Yup I have done this at the table.
 
Sigtrygg said:
"Ok you encounter an alien ship of completely unknown design"
<rolls 2d-1 for size, a 2 so it is 100 to 199t in size
roll 1d three times - 4, 2, 4, it is jump 2 (lowest die) m-drive 4 (next lowest die) pp-2 highest die)

" A quick sensor scan and analysis of its jump flash indicates 100t minimum displacement, jump 2 and maneuver 4 performance."

Yup I have done this at the table.
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I never have. I have a folder of about 100 pre-made ships. If there is a random encounter, I just grab the one closest to what the encounter is supposed to be. Prep work is a pain in the ass, but it makes everything run smoother.
 
Sigtrygg said:
"Ok you encounter an alien ship of completely unknown design"
<rolls 2d-1 for size, a 2 so it is 100 to 199t in size
roll 1d three times - 4, 2, 4, it is jump 2 (lowest die) m-drive 4 (next lowest die) pp-2 highest die)

" A quick sensor scan and analysis of its jump flash indicates 100t minimum displacement, jump 2 and maneuver 4 performance."

Yup I have done this at the table.
Click to expand...
I (and several other players that I know) have quit games where it was obvious the GM was pulling crap out of their a.. the air. If the referee does not care enough about the game to do any preparation before launching into a major plot point, then the game will be crap.

One such group was in another game, the group had signed on to run through 'Dungeon of The Mad Mage' -- and the campaign materials had been specifically purchased for that purpose. It was game-a-week, and every session for more than half a year was a boring routine of 'kick in door, fight monsters, get screwed on how little loot there is'; several players quit. It turned out, talking later to other players who had been through that adventure before, that there was actually a lot of politicking with the various power-groups that inhabited the dungeon; and one of the major hooks that led into that aspect of the game was an encounter with a guy trapped in a well. In our campaign, we has helped that NPC out of the well and he had instantly attacked us 'because he was some sort of undead, I dunno'. When I later discovered that NPC had been a 'revenant' -- vengeful vs only a specific group of people who were not the PCs, I realized just how badly we'd been cheated.

The GM had not even bothered to read the encounter description; nor the rest of the module, didn't know what motivated this NPC, or how undead like him worked, and had no grasp (or even basic awareness) of the interesting and fun story which was available -- and which established DotMM as a well written adventure.

So yeah, you dice up some random schmuck who does not matter to the adventure -- or make up a weird never-seen-again alien ship, fine. But if that ship is the exploration adventure, or a crucial combat encounter, or any sort of plot point which will be important later? You prepare it before hand.
 
That's a common way to play. But there are plenty of game styles where that is not how it has to work. Worrying about how other people play the game is not especially useful.
 
I find that these days I do not need the preparation, I understand the rules I use, the setting we play in, and how everything fits together so i can generate stuff as we go. That and the forty plus years of notes, ship designs, vehicles, weapons etc. and a pretty good memory for where stuff is to be found in the corpus of books.

Which is just as well since predicting what the next steps of the whoop of baboons I game with will be is nigh on impossible to predict. I don't go in for railroading.
 
Sigtrygg said:
I find that these days I do not need the preparation, I understand the rules I use, the setting we play in, and how everything fits together so i can generate stuff as we go. That and the forty plus years of notes, ship designs, vehicles, weapons etc. and a pretty good memory for where stuff is to be found in the corpus of books.

Which is just as well since predicting what the next steps of the whoop of baboons I game with will be is nigh on impossible to predict. I don't go in for railroading.
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Yeah. When I am a player, I definitely fall into the category of "baboon". lolz. I don't think that We have ever completed an adventure the way the DMs planned them out. We always completed them, unless We all died, but usually in the most ridiculous way possible. (such as killing a Mock Dragon, taxidermizing it into a wagon that looks like a Mock Dragon, call it Our Mock Mock Dragon, and sell sno-cones out of the inside of it like an ice cream truck to infiltrate a circus as vendors.) lol

As to the other... I find that the older I get, the more prep work I need. My mind just isn't as good as it once was for keeping everything in My head.
 
Sigtrygg said:
I find that these days I do not need the preparation, I understand the rules I use, the setting we play in, and how everything fits together so i can generate stuff as we go. That and the forty plus years of notes, ship designs, vehicles, weapons etc. and a pretty good memory for where stuff is to be found in the corpus of books.

Which is just as well since predicting what the next steps of the whoop of baboons I game with will be is nigh on impossible to predict. I don't go in for railroading.
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The bolded sections are called 'preparation'.

And I didn't say anything about 'railroading'; but if you plan to drop an 'explore this weird alien craft' adventure hook, then prep it beforehand. If the players do not take it, then fine -- have a stack of other things for them to do ready, and see which one they choose. My preferred method is to drop in two or three different hooks at each opportunity. Have they leaned more to speculative trade lately? Make sure there are a couple such 'Patron' encounters -- carrying frombotzers to the next port, but there is a problem; or a Broker who has a shady connection looking to unload some smokeshifters at suspiciously low prices; or an underworld type who promises to cut them in on a huge pay-out if they will only give their banking information to his pal the impoverished Ginerian prince.... But if they choose not to interact with any patrons then those adventures are unused -- simply change a few names, and maybe they will try them later. Or do similar hooks with Passengers; or Bureaucratic Customs Officers. Hooks they pass on now, they might come back to. Hooks that lead to other styles of adventure are fine, too -- either as a change of pace, or (if the players lean into it) maybe a complete shift in how the players approach the whole campaign.

The 'I randomly rolled an unexplained encounter, now you are all dead! Yay!' is not fun.
 
It was never work, it was all done for fun, relaxation, and an outlet for imagination. Work is what you get paid to do and hate, as a wise person once said if you can get paid doing what you enjoy you will never work a day in your life :)

One of the things I have always liked about Traveller is every one of us could go away and in our own time generate characters, worlds, build ships then later vehicles and weapon. Over the years the long running planet of the week game has used many planets the players generated and fleshed out
 
Vormaerin said:
Also, I think there's a rules violation in the Riders build. They use Fire Control/5. Fire Control is a basic program. It only can be used for Turret weapons per the description. Yes, it says "fire a number of turrets or assist the gunner with an attack", but there's no non turret weapons in that set of rules.

Advanced Fire Control's description reinforces this by saying Basic Fire Control is useful for small ships with a few turrets and you need Advanced Fire Control for more sophisticated weapons.

High Automation isn't mentioned anywhere in the Fleet Combat Rules, but I'd say it counts as +2 to Crew Skill since that's the closest comparable, which means it effectively a +1 to the Offensive & Defensive DRMs for Fleet Combat since Crew Skill is halved in those calculations.


Also, I think it is a flaw in the rules that you can upgrade a bay to be longer range than the same weapon type's spinal mount version, but ymmv.
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Sorry, late response here, but I'll dispute the house rule suggested of allowing high automation to add +2 to your existing Fleet Combat crew skill. That would have a dramatic effect and far outweigh the effect the +2 gives in normal HG combat.

I could live with +1 I suppose, but even that is arguable. The crew skill in Fleet Combat is a coarse measure and I think it can be argued that high automation falls below the level of abstraction. But could live with +1 as suggested for novice or average crews.
 
collins355 said:
Sorry, late response here, but I'll dispute the house rule suggested of allowing high automation to add +2 to your existing Fleet Combat crew skill. That would have a dramatic effect and far outweigh the effect the +2 gives in normal HG combat.

I could live with +1 I suppose, but even that is arguable. The crew skill in Fleet Combat is a coarse measure and I think it can be argued that high automation falls below the level of abstraction. But could live with +1 as suggested for novice or average crews.
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It is an optional rule, but an official one, so not one that binds even as much as the normal rules do since we ignore the ones we don’t like.

It would have an outside effect for sure. The language is clear inside it though. All shipboard rolls.
 
Terry Mixon said:
It is an optional rule, but an official one, so not one that binds even as much as the normal rules do since we ignore the ones we don’t like.

It would have an outside effect for sure. The language is clear inside it though. All shipboard rolls.
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Hmm, I think that applies to normal High Guard combat, not Fleet Combat which is its own thing. But of course, YMMV.
 
Sigtrygg said:
It was never work, it was all done for fun, relaxation, and an outlet for imagination. Work is what you get paid to do and hate, as a wise person once said if you can get paid doing what you enjoy you will never work a day in your life :)

One of the things I have always liked about Traveller is every one of us could go away and in our own time generate characters, worlds, build ships then later vehicles and weapon. Over the years the long running planet of the week game has used many planets the players generated and fleshed out
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Well yeah; I love playing the various mini-games -- character generation, designing ships, world-building, writing scenarios. People who do not love doing those things can always fall back on what others have done; but someone, somewhere has to put in the effort -- whether it is 'for love of the game' or to sell a one-shot through DriveThruRPG.

Players can define the universe too; they can design equipment, ships, worlds, NPCs, cultures, etc. Although they cannot put them directly into the particular universe they are gaming in, they can submit them to the GM and watch as they seep into the adventures they are playing in. Again, someone has to put in the effort, and the referee has to be familiar with it and choose to put it in.
 
Yeah. I think of prep as being "things I'm building for a particular adventure." And I basically don't do that. I know the rules for any game that I intend to run and what gameplay is supposed to look like. And then I react to the players' actions using my creativity, experience, and resources I have (whether stuff I bought or stuff I made up).

The closest thing I do to "prep" is writing up my notes after the session in case I forget the details. :p
collins355 said:
Hmm, I think that applies to normal High Guard combat, not Fleet Combat which is its own thing. But of course, YMMV.
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If it applies to Normal Combat, it should apply to Fleet Combat. Since High Guard crew rating is half the skill, I suggested that the automation counts as +1 (half its regular value).

That said, I think the idea that high automation is a thing that isn't normative in ships already to be rather specious. You'd more likely have crappy automation as a penalty if you want to distinguish it from TL at all. But then you get into the can of worms that is how software and other elements of the computer system are designed.
 
J. L. Brown said:
Well yeah; I love playing the various mini-games -- character generation, designing ships, world-building, writing scenarios. People who do not love doing those things can always fall back on what others have done; but someone, somewhere has to put in the effort -- whether it is 'for love of the game' or to sell a one-shot through DriveThruRPG.

Players can define the universe too; they can design equipment, ships, worlds, NPCs, cultures, etc. Although they cannot put them directly into the particular universe they are gaming in, they can submit them to the GM and watch as they seep into the adventures they are playing in. Again, someone has to put in the effort, and the referee has to be familiar with it and choose to put it in.
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Most people use "prep" to mean work that goes into planning for a particular session. Saying that I know how Traveller or Ars Magica or whatever work well enough that I don't need to put specific work into specific sessions is still "prep" kind of makes any conversation about prep moot. It doesn't really mean anything at that point.

There are a few games, like highly mechanically complex ones such as Champions, or very dungeon crawl focused ones that would probably need session specific prep because of the nature of the game. While there are others like Blades in the Dark where session specific prep is anathema. Most games are in between.

Yeah, I like to world build. I work on all kinds of game stuff for various games because I enjoy that activity, whether I expect to ever use them or not. I don't consider that "prep" because it isn't prepared for any particular application. Sometimes I get to use it in a game. That's bonus.

I started playing Traveller in 1979. One of the first books I got (other than the core rules) was 76 Patrons. That, and the Amber Zones in JTAS, are the way I learned to "prep" Traveller adventures. A sentence or three of situation. A few ideas for different twists on the ending. Nothing much in between, because who knows where the PCs are going to go or what they are going to try to do.

If the players decide to just go gather rumors amongst the salvagers and I throw out a lead to a derelict ship, I personally don't need a mapped out derelict ship planned. I know what ships look like in Traveller and the players aren't likely to have schematics anyway. So I can sketch out a ship as needed basically on the fly.

But that's me. That's how I learned to run games and what works well for me. I don't expect that to be what works for other people. I don't tell people to stop prepping if prepping is working for them and they are having fun.

To your earlier point, yes, if I actually picked up an adventure and told people "Hey, we are running Secrets of the Ancients", I would indeed feel like I should read that adventure and run it reasonably faithfully (subject to whatever customization needed for the group of people playing). But I've only ever encountered a few adventures where I thought I might want to do that. (Bayern for MgT2300 and Six Seasons in Sartar for Runequest).
 
Vormaerin said:
If it applies to Normal Combat, it should apply to Fleet Combat. Since High Guard crew rating is half the skill, I suggested that the automation counts as +1 (half its regular value).

That said, I think the idea that high automation is a thing that isn't normative in ships already to be rather specious. You'd more likely have crappy automation as a penalty if you want to distinguish it from TL at all. But then you get into the can of worms that is how software and other elements of the computer system are designed.
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I'm not sure you're grasping how different Fleet Combat is to regular High Guard. It really is a completely different system. But I fully understand most people have never read or played it. [note, I'm not promoting Fleet Combat. I think it is a dog. But it is the dog we have.]

That said, I agree with +1 to the crew rating for novice and average crews in Fleet Combat when using High Automation.
 
collins355 said:
I'm not sure you're grasping how different Fleet Combat is to regular High Guard. It really is a completely different system. But I fully understand most people have never read or played it. [note, I'm not promoting Fleet Combat. I think it is a dog. But it is the dog we have.]

That said, I agree with +1 to the crew rating for novice and average crews in Fleet Combat when using High Automation.
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lol. sort of confused here. "You are totally wrong and don't understand fleet combat. But the one thing you actually said is correct"?

Anyway, as I said, I think High Automation is dumb. And I wasn't aware that Traveller has ever had a fleet combat system that was actually capable of producing results in line with the fiction. So... *shrugs*
 
Vormaerin said:
lol. sort of confused here. "You are totally wrong and don't understand fleet combat. But the one thing you actually said is correct"?

Anyway, as I said, I think High Automation is dumb. And I wasn't aware that Traveller has ever had a fleet combat system that was actually capable of producing results in line with the fiction. So... *shrugs*
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LOL! You make a great point.

My comment about Fleet Combat is solely relating to the rules and the playability as a gamer. I don't make any comment whether the results match the narrative.
 
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