Traveller General

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So, Cepheus, Mongoose or CT? What do you guys prefer?

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>>51673549
Classic, because it's always been my one true love and I enjoy the old retro feel. I have a pile of battered LBBs still prefer them other more modern stuff. That being said, I have no problem plundering the good bits from every other system.

>>51673549
CT77, followed by a more generic CT 1-3 & CotI & one or two other sources, followed by RTT1, all with random bits of GT & GTIW.

>>51673775
All seasoned with SWN, which is basically the MSG of Traveller - it improves everything and some people are prejudiced against it.

So how about that new Mongoose Vehicle Handbook. Anyone got it yet?

>>51673549

Classic for a few reasons.

I've played Classic the longest and thus know it backwards and forwards.

System wise, Classic is "sparse" or "bare bones" and that allows me to easily "bolt on" stuff I plunder from other sources.

Finally, Classic emphasizes "role-ing" more than "rolling". No feats, no levels, no classes, no geegaws, skill bloat is easily pruned, etc. You don't need to throw dice every time you take a breath.

>>51673790
It's even out?

>>51674669

As a pdf, yes. They're taking pre-orders for the splat.

>>51674669
came here looking for this. I hope some good soul will put it in MEGA soon.

Also, I play Mongoose 2ed, because I started Traveller just couple of months ago.

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>>51674824
Nice, I have mixed feeling about mongoose but more traveller is ever good.
>>51675850
7chan doesn't have it yet, with cleaning it and all that I expect it will be a few days until we get the copy.
Is that one with the mechs?

>>51675879
yup, mechs, vehicles and rules to build them. Basically on-planet High Guard

>>51673415


There was another traveller general up yesterday, but it rolled off pretty fast: >>51660724

Also, try to use one of the simpler OP images, I've found in making these threads over the past couple of years that it helps if the thread stands out visually on the catalog. I think a lot of our posters don't intentionally CTRL-F and search for Traveller, they just sort of notice it in passing.

>>51677366
I only recently realised I could add filters that'd bump certain threads to the top of the catalog and highlight them.

some of us are stupid ok

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>>51673783
>People are prejudiced against it.
I don't see why, it blends pretty well with Traveller. The sector generator for example is a thing of beauty.

What do you guys use to make spaceships? For the actuals stats and deckplans,some software to make it easier or the old school way of papper and pen?

>>51681142

I use a clunky old program called High Guard Shipyard for design. I don't usually do deckplans for stuff I design, though I probably should.

>>51680614
>I don't see why, it blends pretty well with Traveller.

He was making a joke about monosodium glutamate (MSG) and not SWN. Sheesh.

>>51681956
\m/

I used to use that, when I still used Book 5 ship design. Now I spend my days idly pondering breakpoints in Book 2 and wondering why they didn't put the tech levels from Book 3 on the drive table so you could actually look at the breakpoints.

Also, man, Book 2 is harsh on size breakpoints in a way that makes small pocket empires much more viable, because lol if you think you're building anything jump 4. Jump 3, perhaps, maybe j2m2 fighter carriers if you're brave, but they won't give you much strategic range.

>>51682245
>Book 2 is harsh on size breakpoints in a way that makes small pocket empires much more viable

That's 'cause LLB:2 is pure "Proto" while LBB:5 is the Great CT Schism in book form.

So I just want to say that I don't really have much experience with Traveller at all, just reading MGT2 Core and talking about some other people that play. Might have a game coming up soon. I just say this because I know it's frustrating for me when people who don't understand games I play try to make changes or recommendations.

But I've been rolling up a lot of characters and it seems that characteristic arrays can be very, very volatile. Now, stat DMs seem to be significantly less game-changing than in other systems and I think it's overall a bit neat how the character generation overall forces you into paths you might not have chosen otherwise. But you can still end up with some real dinky characters.

Would it be entirely unreasonable to put some sort of limit on the minimum possible sum of player attribute DMs? Something like if your total DMs add up to -2 or -1 or less then you can reroll or bump some stats up till you hit the break point.

>>51684257
>Would it be entirely unreasonable to put some sort of limit on the minimum possible sum of player attribute DMs? Something like if your total DMs add up to -2 or -1 or less then you can reroll or bump some stats up till you hit the break point.

I would consider that a decent houserule for MGT -- Mongoose put a lot more weight on those randomly rolled stats than there used to be. (In Classic only about 25% of tasks in the book use your stats at all, the rest are based on skills, things in the world, or even just straight 2d6 for a couple of things. It also helps that a guy with a 2 is not a cripple or anything by the CT rules for encumbrance and things)
For Mongoose I'd say if your DMs are negative when added together then reroll your lowest stat, and repeat until it's in the clear.

>>51684381
Agreed. I'd offer it as an option for a house rule, if anyone seems particularly upset. If it turns out to be a problem, have them train the stat during travel as a fluff-wise justification for the change during play.

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>>51681142
First of all, Mong 2E user.

I make my spaceships using a simple google sheet with basic formulas already in. Works well, does mean I need HG on the other part of the screen and a lot of manual imput.

For deck plans, I liked the flashy isometric ones in the rulebooks. So i downloaded icons and grid and use GIMP to create deck plans. It does take a while with larger ships, but when you get the swing of things it's pretty intuitive and looks good.

Oh and here's the ship my players currently use:

>>51690250

Very nice. Thanks for sharing it.

>>51690250
Damn, that's comfy

>>51690250
Cool, that's a cool ship bro.

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>>51690250
And here's the stats, from one note:

>>51690250
please post more! I'm making an airship game and I need ideas on how to represent ship designs.

I have a tough nut to crack, maybe you can help me: (Mong 2E btw) I have a gal in my party that's a one-trick pony really: 14 EDU, 12 INT, 4 in Science (phytopathology), 1 persuation, 11 electronics (drones), 1 engineer (power plant), 1 profession (pharmaceuticals) 1 deception (we have better) 1 Medic (we have better)

I'm stuggling to make encounters for her to have a use, she's useless in space combat, she's useless in ground combat, she's a great RPer with tons of ideas but when dices start rolling there's not much she can do. Any help?

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>>51690458
here's 250t transport with some fighting capacity (two double pulse laser turrets)

>>51690533
>Any help?

Tell her that her PC is useless for the current campaign. If she's the great RPer you claim she is, she'll make a new PC which is more in tune with the game.

Is traveller an "easy" system to pick up? My group wants to play it, but none of us have ever tried it. Our experience is limited to 3.5e, pathfinder, and board games. In general they want a Star Trek-lite sort of experience. Which edition would be best for us?

>>51690682
>Which edition would be best for us?

MGT because you're familiar with 3.5e.

There is also a d20 version of Traveller called T20.

>>51690682
Mongoose 2 ed is in my opinion easy to pick up, has clear and intuitive rules and works good.

Assuming you stick to CT or Mongoose, it's way simpler than the goddamn mess that is 3e.

Even GURPS is.

Trek's more a feel sort of thing. Give them a big ship and a crew and let them boldly go from system to system surveying things, perhaps? Not necessarily a huge crew, but double digits. Maybe give them a ship like the Kinunir, refit a few things to give it fewer marines (just a redshirt section) and more science.

>>51690712
>There is also a d20 version of Traveller called T20.
ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.

>>51690533
>Science (phytopathology) ... 1 profession (pharmaceuticals)

There's your problem. You let her make a character that is based around an idea that's completely incompatible with all forms of campaigns. Not only that but you let her pick a skill that's a subcategory of a subcategory (phytopathology would be part of biology), and is completely useless (and against the rules).

You said she's a great RP-er. Those kinds of players are the best because they can make the best out of subpar characters, but if you let them make one that's so completely incompatible with the rest then there's not much you can do. Also just because you have a character that does something "better" doesen't mean that she couldn't do it. If she's into RP-ing but the party will never let her do stuff because her dice rolls are a bit worse then you're going to have bigger problems than this situation.

But in any case either rework her character a bit since you did allowed it to be done wrong (give her biology 4 instead or maybe allow her to get bio 2 & another one at 2) and she'll instantly have a better character. As for the rest of the skills, tell her that at least having gun combat 0 would be great since then she could do something useful in combat. Also bring the idea of skill software up, they are generally good to think about when your char has subpar skills IMO.

>>51690682
>>51690725
CT's Leviathan has a real Trek feel, albeit with more a commercial theme.

>>51690742

Leviathan is a great adventure. The ship's crew numbers 50+ however so the referee is going to be saddled with a shitload of NPCs even if the players run 3 or 4 PCs on their own.

>>51690742
That's probably a better idea than Kinunir, but hey, what problems can't the PCs solve when they have a 35-sophont marine contingent on board?

>>51690735
Maybe make her a sector-renowned specialist in the field who's not exactly einstein, but can get in the back door of anywhere with a science team by talking shop with someone who nerds out over that sort of thing. Like a super-social face character, but specialised in science - the usual security forces will never think to screen the scientists, they'll be concerned with infiltrators in bars chatting people up not someone offering to discuss their new paper and wandering around in a white coat.

>>51690712
>>51690723
>>51690742
Thanks, we'll check them out

>>51690723
I'd stick to 1e. Especially if you don't have much experience outside 3e. Sure the supplemets are a mess (and you should really really stick to the core rules until you get more experienced so you know what's crap). 1e's general GM-ing side is well the most similar to D&D 3e. 2e effectively removes the ability from the GM to give out modifiers instead you change the target number around and they also felt in necessary to include 5e's advantage/disadvantage for some reason.

But in reality 2e is very much like 1e so even if you go with that it's completely fine. Most of the changes are just changes for change's sake and the couple actual improvements/downgrades can be easily houseruled in to eachother.

>>51690777
My main point was that a biology 4 character could still be a sector wide known specialist in something while being mechanically superior in all respects to the example character because biology 4 can be used for more than just plant diseases.

>>51690781
>you should really really stick to the core rules
whichever edition you pick, this is pretty solid advice. Don't add stuff just because it's there, especially if it's a mongoose product, but even classic runs better without the expansions for some people.

>>51690809

Dittoing this. Keep things simple, especially at first. There's so MUCH material out there across several editions and 40+ years that you can quickly drown in it all.

Classic's initial 3 books advised that one or two subsectors could provide years of play.

>>51673549
Mongoose, because I prefer relatively generic systems, and particularly because the retro feel isn't *necessary*, especially in MGT 2e, which gives the system better flexibility with portraying generic settings.

>>51684257
Also remember that Mongoose allows for a Skill package at the end of character creation, so you don't end up with 5 guys on a ship who all can't fly it.

>>51690735
Yeah, I already treat the phytopathology as a biology most of the time, just have hard time making it useful in an adventure. Also she has Admin, Diplomat, Drive, Explosives, Gun combat, investigate, tactics and vacc suit at 0.

>>51690777
yeah, the problem is although she's a renowned specialist, she did burn a lab at the end of her career and has 4 SOC. So no love from anyone, basically.

I think I might ask her to rework the char a bit, or maybe make another one from scratch,

>>51690800
I'd be glad if you could shoot me with some applications for her science skill, so far she only used it once or twice sadly. I have no problem with other chars (and we DO have not-gun wielding aristocrat with some admin skill, for example)

And the biggest problem is space combat- really there's nothing she can do apart from maintaining the power plant.

Funny thing is, her smart ideas and lucky persuasion rolls saved them a couple of times already.

>>51690533
>>51691239
>14 EDU
So one of the great things about Traveller is that many of its rules and modules are cross-compatible. A 14 EDU qualifies the character for Advantages in the Mongoose 1e supplement: Cosmopolite (it's up in the archive above if you want it).

These Advantages are fairly situational (and have some wonky rules interpretation, which is unfortunately par for course with Mongoose), but they can offer some crucial general bonuses.

>Also she has ... investigate, tactics ...at 0.
Then she's fairly set; with high EDU and INT, she's a fairly good investigator and can form military tactics

>space combat
She has electronics (drones) 1. Get a few million credits and make a tiny drone ship (say, 5dtons with a fixed pulse laser turret, chemical rockets and a bunch of fuel (for exploiting thrust points)) and she'll be fine.

>>51691316
Thanks, I'll check the supplement!

Well half the team are decent investigators, so she does it from time to time only.

But the drone idea is great! I was waiting for the vehicle book to work something out, but I guess making a small flier without the bridge is not strictly AGAINST the rules, eh?

Thanks once again!

>>51691239
>I'd be glad if you could shoot me with some applications for her science skill,

If she won't reboot the PC or if you can't persuade her to, then use her as an adventure hook.

She's some sector-wide boffin in phytopathology? Then have someone or some government show up wanting to hire her as a consultant for precisely that.

There's huge habitat on some planetoid, moon, or airless planet somewhere whose life support systems are slowly deteriorating. The various algae, mosses, plants, and whatnot such large scale systems use are ailing and dying out. The crisis point hasn't been reached yet but, unless the problem can be reversed, the systems will break down and the population begin to die. The PC is offered a large amount of money to investigate the issue and the other PCs are hired as her assistants.

The investigation could be easy or hard. The reason could be natural or sabotage. The solution could be simple or complex. The danger could be nonexistent or extreme. You get the idea.

>>51691316
>She has electronics (drones) 1. Get a few million credits and make a tiny drone ship (say, 5dtons with a fixed pulse laser turret, chemical rockets and a bunch of fuel (for exploiting thrust points)) and she'll be fine.
She may not be able to fly the ship or run a gun turret, but give her a drone and an x/box controller and she'll do you top-notch aerospace support.

>>51691477
>small flier without the bridge is not strictly AGAINST the rules, eh?
In fact, in HG 2e, it's explicitly mentioned. So long as the ship has a computer (and they all do), it can be flown as a drone. Keep it small, as exterior docking or a small docking space on the main ship still takes up a bit of space, and you don't need a large drone/fighter ship to put a weapon and some engines on it.

It'd probably be better to stat it out as a ship so it has decent anti-ship weaponry rather than suffer the damage penalty for using planetary-scale weaponry on vehicles.

>>51691517
> fly the ship or run a gun turret
Auto-gunner programs. Just hand-wave something or other that connects her electronics (drone) skill to the operation of the drone, and its done. The electronics (remote operations) in 2e specifically uses this as an example.

>>51691506
that idea is golden, than you SO MUCH, I'm stealing it.

>>51691542
So I'm a dummy for not reading the High Guard carefully then, as I didn't catch that bit.

In fact they have a 30 dT fighter-shuttle she could use! Damn, thanks guys.

>>51691506
>She's some sector-wide boffin in phytopathology? Then have someone or some government show up wanting to hire her as a consultant for precisely that.
>There's huge habitat on some planetoid, moon, or airless planet somewhere whose life support systems are slowly deteriorating. The various algae, mosses, plants, and whatnot such large scale systems use are ailing and dying out. The crisis point hasn't been reached yet but, unless the problem can be reversed, the systems will break down and the population begin to die. The PC is offered a large amount of money to investigate the issue and the other PCs are hired as her assistants.
This is good.

Hell, make it a semi-regular thing - convert some cargo space into a samples & flora lab, grow a ton of babby bits of ecosystems, pick up something new at every world you visit and some day that weird pseudolettuce will come in really handy, or the way the root nodules work on ethoian jahsweed will be relevant to a research project halfway across the sector.

>>51692036
For ground combat, a robot could be remote operated as well. Like a small personal drone with an attached laser pistol/rifle.

>>51690533
>11 electronics

Holy shit, is this MGT2 skill bloat or something?
In CT, 1 point means you're employable, 2 means you're good, and 4 means you're like an expert. A Medic 4 who has high dex is a friggin' surgeon. At 6 points you're widely renowned in your field, and even folks outside that field have likely heard of you.
11 points in something would probably make you the finest expert in the known galaxy. If she was with a party at my table, the whole adventure might have to revolve around her, because she's clearly an amazingly important person.

>>51692463
No no no it's just 1. I double clicked, sorry. And she's the only person with skill higher than 3.

>>51692262
Yeah I will think about that as well, shouldn't be hard to do.

Thanks all of you, kind souls! Thanks to You I think I can make the game better and make sure this Traveller has shit ton of work. You're the best!

>>51692036
>that idea is golden, than you SO MUCH, I'm stealing it.

No problem. Glad I could help. >>51692188's advice is good too; you can use the "scientist-for-hire" angle in many different ways.

>>51690250
>>51690554
Huh. Wonder what program these deckplans were made with.

>>51697430
GIMP, with deck plan icons from Mongoose, their grid and some time.

If you want some specifics ask away!

>>51697616
Wow, GIMP? I hadn't any clue it could do stuff like that; I've always thought of it as... well, open-source photoshop. Then again, maybe my impression of what photoshop can do is colored by the fact I'm still using CS1.

>>51697828
Well, it's not difficult, really. First you make some paths for outer hull, fit it on the grid, then autodraw some lines. Then make inner walls (in another layer) then in yet another layer you paint the floors (fit this layer under the grid) and at the end plonk some icons that Mongoose provides. After a while it gets pretty intuitive and quick. If you want I can provide a project for one of those in .xcf

>>51698067
Nah, I'm good. I'll muck about it myself; the experience feels to stick longer that way, I think. Thanks, though! This opens up a bunch of stuff!

>>51698133
Yeah, the best advice I can give you is LAYERS! As much layers as you want, and then some. It's better to have more than less, to make sure you can always make some changes if needed easily.

I've got a question about the MG2E travel time formula. It seems they, in lieu of calculating the orbital position and distance between you and the target object they instead make you flat out travel at an effective half speed.

Did I fuck up my calculations or am I right in stating that?

I was thinking about laser communications in Traveller. They're effectively un-jammable and un-interceptable, so they're attractive.

But how small can someone make a laser and still have it be useful for communication without being affected too severely by atmospheric scattering?

Further, how small could one make a laser if one were trying to communicate with an orbital asset from the ground?

Is this something I should just not worry about and essentially handwave?

>>51699321
It's something that I would usually hand-wave.
But if you want to dive into it, here's a paper about using lasers to communicate from ground-space-ground using small satellites. It might have some useful math.
http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2733&context=smallsat

>>51701024
Nice! Thanks, anon!

>>51690250
>So i downloaded icons and grid and use GIMP to create deck plans
Where did you get these?

>>51701385
I think they're available on DriveThruRPG for free; I'm seeing both 2D and 3D packs for deckplan building here; those're probably them.

>>51698804

Yup, that's it. It's a good way to quickly fudge travel times and keep the course of play flowing.

Keeping the course of play flowing is the important thing.

>>51706101
Oh that is not going to end well.

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So, haven't gotten my grubby mitts onto the new MGT2e Vehicle Handbook yet (it's really expensive!), but from the few pages sprinkled around the internets, here what we have (in reference to questions last thread):
- Yes, there's walkers. Walkers also have new options for multi-legged things. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, manipulator arms have no stats as to how much they can carry.
- it's essentially 1e vehicles with a major retooling by getting rid of M^3 mechanics for a more generic 'spaces'. Frankly, as much as I enjoy math, this is a good change.
- As we saw in 2e core, no more 1e velocity calculations; rather vehicles use speed bands in chase/combat, which is more useful at the game table.
- Again, as in core, we have shipping space, so filling up your ship is nice and easy.
- Vehicle modifiers seem to be intact from 1e.
- Biotech vehicles from that one special supplement that no one ever used/read, are in.
- Unfortunately, this being Mongoose, there's already some inconsistencies in the writing (in particular, regarding mounting starship weapons on vehicles. Oh, yes, starship weapons can be mounted on vehicles now.) There's also your usual editing issues and a few typos. Ex: bombs don't have the 'one-use' trait even though missiles do.

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>>51706999
>>starship weapons on vehicles

>>51706999
It sounds pretty great, to be honest. I don't know how I feel about starship weapons on vehicles, tough. Can't wait to get my dirty pirate hands on the pdf...

I'm going to go visit some friends. Was thinking of picking up a traveller rulebook and running a oneshot. The only traveller I've run previously was Mongoose Traveller 1e; should I aim for Mongoose 2e, stick with 1e, or what?

>>51706999
Using generic space instead of cubic meters was already done in 1e, in the combined Supplement 5-6 (the second version of the vehicle rules for 1e).

From what I have seen, 2e vehicle design has more in common with Supplement 5-6 design, not the separate Supplement 5 and Supplement 6 stuff.

>>51707212

It's a one-shot so stick with what you already know.

>>51707245
If it goes over well it might wind up a monthly repetition, and I'm wondering whether this is the mythical system where integer upgrades are flat improvements over the previous editions or not.

>>51707212

See >>51661288 in the short-lived Friday thread.

>>51707264

In order for it to go well, they'll have to like playing. There's a better chance of them liking the game if you referee in a smooth, confident manner. You have a better chance of being a good referee if you use a system you have experience with. Stick with what you know.

Then, when or if, they want to play Traveller again, you tell them the game's been updated and you all can learn the new version together.

Set the hook first. Update and expand later.

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>>51707215
>Supplement 5-6
Yes, though personally I was never fond of it. It went too far the other way, to the point where it was downright minimalistic and not very interesting. I suppose I (wrongfully?) assumed people didn't much care for it either.

I agree, though, this new vehicle book seems to be picking from lots of pies. Or however that saying is supposed to go.

Though now that I look at it, there doesn't seem to be an open-topped option for walkers? How else am I going to make advanced war machines that are easily taken down by bows and arrows by primitive blue-skinned aliens in some silly, misplaced wankfest?

>>51707326
Buying two books tho...

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>>51707376
(They're both in the master archive above. Just saying)

>>51707376

When you said you'd run 1e before, I mistakenly assumed you had a copy. Sorry.

Go to the links at the top of the thread and download the free Cepheus Engine. It's essentially MGT-Lite.

You're running a one-shot. You aren't going to be building ships, wasting time on chargen, rolling up subsectors, etc. You're going to dropping the players into a simple, short, situation with pregens and playing out the story to a conclusion in a few hours.

Tell them they'll be using the "Lite" version in the interest of time. Tell them if they like the game you all can migrate to 2e and start buying splats.

Have fun!

>>51707357
It had its ups and downs. If I recall, the 5-6 combined system let people do some whacky things that shouldn't have been possible with the more time consuming M^3 system. I hope they managed to capture the best of both worlds, though I doubt it; I'd love to have a system which is both easy and doesn't allow people to create broken shit because of slop but those two things usually don't go together.

How many MW is a Power Point in Mongoose 2? I'm reading High Guard and I can't find it.

>>51708752
That is because it isn't there. Just like how computers use a generic bandwidth rating instead of a processor speed and storage space.

>>51703537
>DriveThruRPG
I think I'm retarded because I can't fucking find them.
I liked the design of your ships so much than I downloded GIMP and I'm learning this shit right now, how do you make the grid? It looks so good.

>>51709395
Ah, I'm not actually >>51690554 but rather the guy who first asked him how he did it

Let me just link you directly to the listings themselves; I'm sorry, I really should've done that in the first place. I'm not all here right now, I've been pulling a lot of all nighters lately. Height of laziness. My bad.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/181544/TAS-3D-Deck-Plan-Templates

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/181541/TAS-2D-Deck-Plan-Templates

Hopefully >>51690554 will pop back in at some point and he can reveal to you his secret voodoo

>>51709395
>>51709504

Oh, I'm the guy behind the deck plans. Yeah the links are correct, and as far as I remember the grid is inside as well. All you have to do is extract the blue lines from the white background, then put your "floors" layer between them.

Will gladly help with any questions!

And if you have some problems I can provide you with the grid with 2 layers or one of the projects to look at and see how I do it.

>>51709504
Thanks bro, and no apologise needed, it was my fault for being dumb, a quick search into the TAS would have solved my problems.
>>51709606
It would be pretty cool, I'm learning as fast as I can but the only design program than I used was paint to make shitty edits so I'm a wee bit lost.

>>51709755
https://mega.nz/#!kZNWwZ5A!BEC6MISulLV4iHivV2p8jgNJP5cfGoOCE8huj5lAwZo

Here's the project. Main things I learned: you want to use layers, lots of them. More layers means much easier tweaking and believe me, you WILL change shit as you go. A LOT. Then, path tool is your best friend, lets you make all the walls hull etc really easy and allows for tweaking on the fly basically.

If you have any specific questions fel free to ask. And uh, some things in here might not be in english, sorry for that.

>>51707490
> You're running a one-shot. You aren't going to be building ships, wasting time on chargen,
IDK about you senpai, but I think chargen is one of the coolest features of traveller.

>>51713209

I love chargen too, but I'm not going to tell people new to the game and looking forward to playing a one-shot that we're going to spend an hour or so in chargen.

>>51713209
I agree, but it can take hours. In my group, our first session was 4 hours long and all they did is chargen and buying equipment and ship. That's not an interesting one-shot.

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>>51709504
>>all these comments in the link on not knowing how to use art resources
Faith in humanity -5.

Speaking of which, we need some luxury passenger quarter templates. How else are my characters supposed to travel around the galaxy? In bunk bed berths? Like peasants?

>>51713374
>That's not an interesting one-shot.

Exactly. It's a one-shot. Folks want to go places and shoot things.

>>51713398
Yeah, I agree, there are not enough icons. Creating something in a similar artstyle should not be terribly complicated I think. Would make a nice addition to the trove. Then again you have to be able to produce art in the first place, so I'm out.

>>51713374
>I agree, but it can take hours.

That's the downside of Mongoose's expansion of chargen. But on the other hand, chargen is fun, too, so hey.

>>51713619
Eh, we had a blast actually. It was VERY entertaining and linked the team quite well. I had a group that did not know each other much, and it was great for bonding and team-building.

And it was their first time with this system, so it took a lot of explaining.

>>51714031

That's why I said "chargen is fun" -- because Mongoose took one of my favorite parts of Traveller and expanded it with more details and stuff, so you can easily do chargen for hours if you like. (And it's easy to like) It's just a downside that if you want to do it quickly, like for a one-shot, Mongoose is no longer suited to that.

>>51715661
>don't talk to me or my son ever again

>>51719575
Hadn't seen that one before. Neat!

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>>51717359

>>51681142
I just work out the stats in a text editor and draw the deckplan with Inkscape.

>>51723829
Is that one exceedingly weird ship or four very different ships very close together in the bottom of that picture?

>>51723965
That would be from the Terran Trade Authority Handbooks, so "exceedingly weird ship" is probably spot on.

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>>51673415

I would love to play Traveller. Unfortunately I can't play it with my group without it devolving into a power wank sci fi.

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Do you guys fluff what people in the different worlds eat?
I found the Vilani very interesting for they aproach to eating, it made communal living and thinking an imperious necesity because lone wolfs would starve.

>>51713398
You know that the people who leave reviews are either interested, aware and know what they are doing, or have no ranks in Computers.

>>51724186
What's wropng with power wank sci-fi?

>>51726024

Well in Traveller it tends to result in TPKs?

>>51726024
If I wanted a superhero game i'd play pathfinder.

>>51726024
Because it wasn't fun. They weren't interested in anything other than combat. All the staples of a sci fi setting - adventure, intrigue, trade, exploration - they ignored because they wanted a power fantasy wank. Everything they did was to fuel their desire to be unstoppable combat machines and they ignored everything else.

>>51727089
Sounds like a shitty group no matter the system. I'd get another one.

Jump

How much does Traveller naval combat change if J-Drives are system-edge to system-edge and M-Drives are more efficient the further from a gravity well you are?
Also assuming dedicated naval tenders are optimised to get hydrogen from Kuiper-esque-belt bodies.

I was thinking the invading fleet would probably b-line to the nearest gas-giant/hydrogen source if it's undefended, elsewise sticking to the kuiper-esque-belt, while the defenders would probably be orbiting whichever body is the most strategically most important in the system, ie the inhabited world if one exists.
That said, it might be more effective to orbit the furthermost gas-giant when it orbits close to an enemy border

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So I might be using Mongoose 2e Traveller to run Fragged Empire, which is supposed to be a post-post apocalyptic setting, humans are extinct, and the vast majority of the sector is unexplored, uncharted planets. The "alien" races aren't aliens at all, they're bioengineered creations of the Archons, a race of beings who were created by humanity to inherit their empire after they went extinct.

How well would that kinda setting translate into Traveller? The races listed here probably wouldn't be too hard to figure out, but there's also some weird races like "robots" who are human minds downloaded into robot bodies, a sentient bioweapon that's more like a grey goo hive mind of sentient cells that takes humanoid form via building bodies out of wood, stone, metal, etc.

Big thing is there's no humans, no sprawling star empires, and the tech level across planets aren't wildly disparate like they seem to be in Traveller's "default" setting.

>>51730968
You could actually defrost all dem snowballs outside systems.
Gas Giants would probably have military bases for those systems that could afford em.

>>51731629
reminds me of Albedo.

>>51731856
Aye, but if it was Equal Fleet vs Equal Fleet, what would happen?
Also most habs are likely to declare for whichever side has the nearest railguns?

I was thinking the invading fleet would send wolfpacks against the system infrastructure, while the invading fleet would send out wolfpacks to to secure said infrastructure.

Ngl, I have a sub-layman-level-of-knowledge of wet fleet tactics, let alone black-fleet-tactics.

Also the average Children of a Dead Earth Mission beyond the Mercury one needs an evening of planning

>>51732058
Also, this is assuming a civil war across know space which any given hab could pick any given side on. Though most are Independant

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>>51731867
Kinda, but there's no anthomorphic animal races except for one, and I don't think humans ever existed in Albedo at all.

>>51732415
If we're talking about the same Albedo, that reveal was thirty years ago...

>>51733203
Yup.
Then the book pretty much died.
I was sad.

>>51730968
>if it's undefended
Reminder that the High Guard is literally the SDBs hiding out in a system's gas giants to deny invaders easy logistics and delay their ability to refuel.

>>51731629
It can translate well. Aliens are easy to make and translate, the tech level and default setting are not set in stone. Being not familiar with the setting, how do you want to handle space travel?

>>51735376
Well jumping between star systems takes about six days spent in hyperspace per hex. There are some hexes Travel between locations in a system usually takes anywhere from a day to a week or two depending on where you are and where you're going.

>>51735483
That is exceedingly easy to do in Traveller, and sound relatively close to the default system of Jump Drives. You might just have to do some minor refluffing of names.

>>51735510

Ah, good to know it's not drastically different. And for some reason my tablet tore out an entire sentence here >>51735483

I was gonna say that there's some hex spaces that actually take up multiple hexes as a single space, if that makes sense. So you can travel across these "ley lines" to take shortcuts around the system.

Are drones a thing in traveller? Like little robits you can control via remote controls or what have you?

>>51735636
Yes, there are definitely drones and robots of all shapes, sizes and uses.

>>51735020
They do this in Niven's Known Space as well.

>>51723965
>>51724024
According to the article in Great Space Battles, it was a improvised rocket platform, only two were built.

What would you advise for a first time traveller gm? I have the mongoose edition.

>>51735020
>Reminder that the High Guard is literally the SDBs hiding out in a system's gas giants
Eh?
The term refers to the fleet elements stationed above a gas giant to protect their fellows during the delicate process of refueling deep in a gravity well that would kill them if they were damaged by attackers. SDB's deep in the gas giant are the *counter* to the High Guard.

>>51738155

Start small and keep things small. There's so much material that you can very easily get overwhelmed. Only add those things you truly need.

Ask your players what sort of game they're interested in. That will help you prune away all the stuff you don't need.

If you're interested in sandbox play, look into using Stars Without Number with Traveller: SWN to create and manage the setting, Traveller for play.

>>51738335
Thanks, I was planning on running a sandbox style game so was wondering what advice you might have for that

>>51738559
Ask the players where they want to go or what they want to do at the end of each session. Prepare material regarding that place or activity for the next session. Be prepared to wing it if they choose to do something else instead.

>>51738559
>Thanks, I was planning on running a sandbox style game so was wondering what advice you might have for that

Okay, I've got some links which may help. 1st, a checklist for building a Trav sandbox:

batintheattic DOT blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-make-traveller-sandbox.html

Classic said that 2 subsectors could provide years of play and Classic is right.

2nd, link which will generate those 2 subsectors for you:

swn.emichron DOT com

They're in SWN terms, but those terms are easily translated into Traveller. SWN was designed from the first so it could be easily used with other systems. The online generator basically does the first 9 steps in the sandbox checklist for you and gives you material to work with for the rest.

3rd, give your players at least ACCESS to a ship right off. You want a ship available because the players are going to want to go places. It's a space game, they should be traveling through space, right?

They don't need to own a ship or be making mortgage payments to have access to a ship. They can start off by working for someone and the job(s) they get can start the campaign right off.

4th, plunder all the previously published stuff for your needs. The on-line generator cranked out a subsector for you so grab the plot from an old adventure, file off the serial numbers, and plop it down on a likely world. Classic's adventures are great for this. One book of adventures for Classic called "Lee's Guide" is even designed for it. It should be in the 3rd Party portion of the Classic links above.

Finally, KISS. "Not keep it simple stupid" because I hate the idea that asking for advice is somehow "stupid", but "Keep it small and simple". Traveller has 40+ years of materials across several rules sets, dozens of publishers, wargames, and tons of other stuff. You can get overwhelmed real fucking quick.

Keep it small and simple. Add stuff only when you absolutely need it and only when you can handle it.

>>51735771
Aren't they like, super fucking complicated to build though?

>>51739368
Access to a ship could just as easily be coughing up a few hundred credits for a low passage.

>>51739368
>3rd, give your players at least ACCESS to a ship right off. You want a ship available because the players are going to want to go places. It's a space game, they should be traveling through space, right?

Pretty good post, but I'm gonna point out that buying tickets and negotiating for a working passage are things which both keep you from needing to deal with ship travel and combat rules when you're learning to run everything else, and make players want to get their own ship. (If they get a ship in chargen and you're not ready for that, there's always good old Exit Visa, a short adventure about trying to get planetary bureacrats to authorize the release your ship from impound. Found in Classic's The Traveller Book)

>>51739715

Robots are tricky to build in Classic if you use Book 8 Robots, but that thing was made as Megatraveller was folding Striker rules into vehicles, and likewise uses those crunchy rules for robots.
I recommend using the much simpler robots rules from the JTAS, which I have extracted and placed in the Classic Core books folder.

>>51740297
Cool, I'll give it a look when I can. Is it any compatible with Mongoose 2e stuff?

>>51740434

I haven't tried to do so, but I'm pretty sure it would work.

>>51740434
You'll probably have to do some tweaking but it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

>>51740275
>>51740297

Exactly. Access to a ship can be as easy as buying a ticket, negotiating for working passage, or being provided with transportation by a patron.

Let your players travel. Find ways for them to do so. Don't keep them planet-bound until they've got the money for a down payment or plan a hijacking. There are many different ways to get it done.

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>>51681142

I'm making a ship for SWN right now in google sketchup, if you want to use it go ahead. I'm modeling it after a floor-plan I found on google.

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>>51741513
Whoa, isn't that a load of work? It looks profesional as fuck too, amazing work anon.

You guys have piqued my interest and am now going through character creation. I'm doing education right now, character successfully entered university and graduated, no honors. Major in phys science, minor in space science. What changes do I make to the character? It says graduation is education 9, does this mean the related skills are level 9? Or my education stat goes to 9? (is already at 10).

Please send help. Stranded on planet Chargen

>>51741684
I should clarify, am looking at traveller5, since there's actually a group near me looking for people conveniently.

>>51741684

It means you set your EDU stat to 9 if you graduated. (If it's already 9 or higher, you add 1 to it, like it says above the Graduation column)

>>51741672

It's pretty fast once you get the hang of it, sketchup has a library of random furniture and stuff to paste in, the only challenge is keeping things clean as you make walls and such.

I just worked on it while listening to podcasts, a pretty chill way to pass time.

>>51741725
>traveller5

T5?

Oh... that's one HELL of a learning curve, Anon. I've been playing Trav since the 70s and I'm still struggling with aspects of T5.

Why not check out Classic, Cepheus Engine, or MgT at the links above first? There's no need to start playing the game for the first time on Ultra High Hard Mode.

>>51741879
Availability of people to play with, really. There's a group nearby playing it looking for another one or two people, then I saw this thread so I figured i'd dig into it.

>>51741787
But what about the Major and Minor that I picked? What happens with those? Also I don't see the graduation column you're referring to. I'm jumping between pages 100 and 71

>>51741879

Well, he said he's found a group nearby that's playing it.
Personally, I think T5 would be great rules for a video game, but I wouldn't want to play it at the table. Still, some folks play Phoenix Command or that Song of Swords thingy, so I guess it's doable. And maybe this nearby group has their own houserules or whatever to make it easier to play.

>>51741922

The table I was looking at is on page 40. It summarizes everything related to education.
It looks like you bump up your Major's skill by 1 for every pass you get, and your Minor for every two passes.

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>>51741958
And forgot the image.

>>51741958
Ah, I've been using the 5.0 book because all the page references I can find googling refer to it instead of 5.09. Thanks

>>51741922
>There's a group nearby playing it

Are you sure they're using T5? Not the Mongoose version? Early on some people referred to MgT as T5 because it was the first version released after T4 and Miller hadn't put his project in any kind of shape yet.

The only reason I'm asking is because I've heard of very people actually using T5 for RPG play.

>>51741859
Huh. neat. I'd never heard of this program before now. I'll give it a look.

>>51741965
Holy moly. I may have found something to pleasure my autism.

How do people incorporate (or not) Psionics and Ayys into their games?

Just asking cause I am kinda new, and while I know they have been part of the game forever, they feel kinda out of place to me.

>>51745595
Well I got rid of the Psionics, but I have my own universe, so yeah.

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>>51745595
I think AYYS are a great roleplaying opportunity. I don't begrudge people of the D&D syndrome of wanting to play a rainbow special snowflake coalition in their games; to me, that just means that's what they come to roleplaying for. To get away from being a normie schlep. Same thing with Psions, I guess.

Psions, especially, are neat if you're doing an OTU game, because they're a hunted minority in the Imperium. Makes for a great plot hook that you've caught the unfortunate "attention" of the Traveller equivalent of 40k's Black Ships. It's a neat tradeoff of, "Okay, sure. You can have what are essentially super powers. But know that the more often you use them, the more you run down the clock on inevitably being identified as a potential Zhodani spy and getting killed for it, or worse." It's essentially a mechanic that balances itself, because the more powerful a psion they are/the more psions there are in the party, the faster that clock speeds along to zero hour and the more distrust they must have of spending too much time in one place.

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>>51741929
>Phoenix Command
Anon, you know that whenever you mention Phoenix Command, you are obligated by /tg/ law to post this picture

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>>51745595
>they feel kinda out of place to me.
But vaguely defined biological/mental/religious powers and/or exaggerated raical stereotypes are a staple of sci-fi. The Psi Corps in Babylon 5, biotics in mass effect, psykers in WH, Vulcans in ST, Jedi in SW.

And at any rate, Traveller psionics are relatively low-powered affairs, with lengthy recovery times.

I've seen some discussion about this in the past but it didn't really stick with me. Now that I have High Guard, however, has there been any consensus on the difference between Standard Structure and Close Structure aside from the latter apparently costing 10% less for free?

>>51746995

I believe it used to have drawbacks in 1e, but Mongoose left them out of 2e.

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>>51746995
So, it's one of those things that was taken out of 1e because mongoose is forgetful. Basically here's what the original rules were:

A standard structure hull has a Bearing of 80%. That is, the maximum number of the ship's weapons that can be fired at a single target in a round. A ship that has a Close structure hull has a Bearing of 70%.

Essentially these rules were restricted to Capital Ships (>3000dtons) since smaller craft tended to have low enough inertia that reasonably sized gravitic drives could swing them about. I don't know what Mongoose had in mind when porting over this to 2e, but that's what it was.

>>51747223
>corier
Gets me every time.

>>51747215
>>51747223
Huh, well, I guess I'll just strike Close Structure from my copy of High Guard.

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>>51747223
>>MgT 2e already needing errata
god fucking damnit.

>>51747536
To be honest, it's a much, much better job than 1e. 1e's (semi-official) final set of errata is CHAPTERS long and that was still full of unanswered questions.

That being said, the new vehicles handbook, for which none of us yet have, seems to already have some issues that need errata. (bombs not having one-use trait, mismatching of words regarding open-top configurations, easily misrepresented rules regarding starship weaponry on vehicles.)

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>>51747818
I just wonder what it must be like over there that this is an issue so consistent so as to have become a trope with their stuff. I briefly did some work with my University's press body, and even a positively provincial institution like ours manages to consistently turn out documents which can hit low hanging goals like "being free of typos."

I wonder if Mongoose is some sort of super-hostile or otherwise whacky workplace where there are clowns ambushing people with pies or mole men living in the server closet, or some other confluence of regrettable circumstances that make it difficult to work there. It -has- to be something weird for it to be such a blatant problem for a span of decades.

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>>51747989

One of our finest operatives managed to slip a camera into one of Mongoose's secretive staff meetings and smuggle out this telling photo.

>>51747989
I'd be pretty surprised by that. I'm not sure if I've ever read something over 50-100 pages that doesn't include at least one accidental typo of the sort that isn't caught by spellcheck.

Been playing around with High Guard some more, trying to make a 70-ton Heavy Bomber so that it can hold a Torpedo Barbette as well as a turret. The problem is it's pretty hard to fill up 70 tons on something you can't put a J-drive in and is only designed to be in space for a few hours at most. I could save a few Mcr by switching to a Reaction drive and putting in a large fuel tank. Of course if I did that I would require a much smaller power plant.

I do notice that the 50-ton Heavy Fighter in the book includes staterooms (even though it uses a cockpit and not a bridge). I just can't wrap my head around a sensible doctrine that makes use of that.

>>51748528
The stateroom thing -is- weird. Best notion I can think of is that it's an attempt to be "multirole" in kinda the same way the Merkava tries to double as an APC for tag-along infantry. That, and I suppose if a fighter has a proper stateroom, you could assign it for longer voyages where the crew needs to "cruise" for a while, which would be very uncomfortable with only a cockpit.

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>>51748528
a combination of a small gravitic drive and a relatively large reaction drive is the way to go, for a number of reasons:
1) cost: you don't need a large powerplant with this setup, and you may lower the TL of the ship, meaning it's cheaper to build and run as well.
2) flexibility: a gravitic drive of 1 or 3g is more than sufficient for non-combat scenarios, and because the power plant will be so small on a small craft, you essentially don't need to worry for it about fuel outside of combat.
3) insane thrust numbers: in Mongoose 2e, they explicitly say that thrust from gravitic and reaction drives are additive (and not substituted, as was assumed in 1e). So you can have your 2g gravitic drive pair up with a 6 or 8g reaction drive.
4) Reaction drive maths: because of the way the maths work, you want to fill up about 30-50% of your tonnage with fuel to give you enough leeway in combat rounds.
5) Because of the lower TL of reaction drives, absolutely take the fuel-efficient advantage for them; this significantly boosts your range and combat thrust points to ludicrous levels.
6) drop tanks are your friend. You can use this to dramatically increase the overall percentage of your ship that is fuel. A 20 dton fighter that carries 5 dtons of fuel uses 25% of its capacity; add a pair of 5dton fuel tanks, and it's using 15/30=50% of capacity, which translates to huge endurance (though the max thrust will be reduced, so you may want to drop them in combat).

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>>51749350
>Breaking the rules for fun and profit
So, let's build a hypothetical TL15 15 dton fighter, armed with whatever you can mount in a fixed mount.
- streamlined hull, add any non-tonnage modifiers you'd like
- no armor (it takes up space!)
- TL15 reaction drive (TL12+3 for fuel efficient x3) along with a TL 13 gravitic drive (TL10+3 for size reduction x3), for a combined thrust of 16+3g.
- an antimatter reactor would push the TL to 20, so just slap on a fusion one and hope you have space left over.
- standard cockpit, holographic controls, whatever computer and sensors you can afford (probably won't fit anything larger than military sensors)
- aerofins (because, wings are fun)
- drop tanks (fitting 10 dtons of drop tanks only takes up 0.04 dtons on our ship)
- fill everything else up with fuel.

Without drop tanks this fighter (depending on the size of your powerplant and also your fuel ratio) can maintain 19g for about 2 hours.

19 thrust is enormous, allowing you to cover whatever range bands you'd like, win your dogfighting rolls easily, and have more than enough left over to dodge everything everywhere all the time.

>>51749522
(side-note, a 19g fighter craft could do the ~4,000km sprint from New York to Los Angeles in 4.8 minutes)

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>>51748528
Keep in mind that the 50-ton fighter is 50 displacement tons (of liquid hydrogen). That's 700 cubic meters, or about 5 railroad boxcars. It's about 4.5x the amount of space that's inside a B-52 Stratofortress bomber. And that's just the internal space. It's enormous.

pic related. 5 of them.

>>51749522
>TL 13 gravitic drive (TL10+3 for size reduction x3)
That size reduction only saves .135 tons, so maybe not worth the cost.

Here's a somewhat filled out design from your sketch:

4.8T TL12+3 Reaction Drive (40% fuel consumption)
.45T TL10 Gravitic Drive
1T TL12 Fusion Power Plant (15 Power)
1.5T Cockpit
2T Mil. Sensors
1T Pulse Laser
4.08T 17 Combat Rounds Fuel (1.7 hours)
.12T 1 Bonded Superdense Armour
.05T Free

Actually come to think of it, .135 tons is enough for another point of armor but I don't want to redo my numbers.

Power Use
3 Basic Systems
4.5 Maneuver Drive
3 Pulse Laser
2 Sensors
2.5 Free

I think you can cut the armor and bump the M-Drive up 1 G with Size Reduction.

Drop tanks would also definitely give you a lot more time in space and space on the ship but I tried to keep it simple.

>>51749985
Oh if the Pulse Laser is Fixed Mount it doesn't cost a ton, right. There's a lot of free space there.

>>51749758
True. I am still pretty much in Star Wars mode and tried first to make what is pretty much a Y-Wing.

Although without the firm point restrictions the thing would be more in the 35-40 ton range anyway.

>>51747989
You think it's bad now, try back when they decided to try doing their own printing in-house.

>>51748740
Patrols, basically. Lets you send a fighter or two out to hang out somewhere for a couple of days rather than having to RTB constantly.

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Got a little farther with this ship, first deck is mostly done.

>>51751972
that looks pretty fucking awesome. Congrats man, you're doing great work.

>>51749758
I love traveller for using volume, it makes so much sense. Using fucking TONS as a unit of volume tough? Not so much.

But the sizes of ships seem just right to me, so at least there's that.

>>51752086
The tons in this case are displacement tons (of hydrogen), or ~14 m^3. Half a displacement ton is conveniently close to a square (1,5m X 1,5m X 3m volume) while drawing a deckplan. If the floor height sounds unreasonably tall, remember that you often need to pinch a few squares from somewhere for access routes and that it also includes the ceiling and the floor.

>>51752120
I know that perfectly well, and understand the maths and all. The problem I have is it's counter-intuitive and explaining it to the players can be pain. It's sciency in a sense, and convenient, I get it. But it still has more drawbacks, IMHO.

>>51752138
Yeah I know. One of my players told me the unit should be something more reasonable, like one square on deck plans.

>>51752158
That's the problem. If I hear "ton" i immediately think "1000 kg", and there's really no way around it. They'd be better devising their own unit for that volume, even at the cost of being less sciencey.

On the other hand in the US they don't use the metric system, so maybe it's not so much of a problem there. I don't know.

>>51747536
It is Mongoose. What do you expect. That aren't exactly well known for quality.

>>51752203
"dton" is a common shorthand for the Traveller version.

>>51750194
It's not very clear in the text, but it should be mentioned that you can mount much lighter vehicle weaponry on a ship (1e High Guard had separate mounting spaces for that, but it was a mess due to the various Vehicle Handbook space considerations). In fact, a Y-Wing's blaster cannons probably don't even qualify for a pulse laser even after range decrements for small craft.

Remember, planetary scale weapons in Mongoose 2e are, occasionally, capable of damaging spacecraft. Rolling 2DD on your FGMP is a range of 20 to 120 damage, or 2 to 12 starship scale damage, which can be enough to get through the armor and hull of lighter craft.

So you could build your Y-wing with a torpedo rack or barbette, and then just slap on some vehicle weaponry for its blasters and whatnot.

>>51750011
Yeah, there's not much reason to waste a ton of space on a turret if you're going to have enough thrust points to consistently win every dogfight round. Better to use it on more fuel or perhaps some armor. But otherwise, yeah, that's about what I math'd up as well. A smaller hull would be more efficient for putting on more and more armor, but eventually that silly 1.5 dtons that you need for a pilot gets prohibitively cumbersome.

Hmm... maybe a 5dton drone is the way to go?

>>51754868
I think you want a skilled pilot in this thing. With Evade/3 and winning dogfights you can give enemy attacks DM -9 or so to help make up for the lack of armor and hull points.

>>51755076
Well, AFAIK with electronics (remote ops) it works the same as pilot, so it seems a small drone is indeed the way to go.

>vector movement
>space
>dogfights

Thank you, Mongoose, for fucking up Traveller yet again.

>>51752120
3m isn't unreasonably tall when you realise there's shit in that height that isn't walking space, both above and below.

>>51755451
>don't put in dogfighting
casuals don't want to play
>put in dogfighting
nerds scoff at the idea of piloted spacecraft at all

lose-lose, anon.

>>51755798
>casuals don't want to play

Fuck 'em. They can go play Star Wars.

>nerds scoff at the idea of piloted spacecraft at all

Comm lag among other things. Pilots don't even 'fly" fighter aircraft now. Instead, they direct a computer to perform certain maneuvers and other tasks.

>>51755864
>Pilots don't even 'fly" fighter aircraft now. Instead, they fly aircraft.

really makin me think

>>51755864
>Comm lag among other things.
If you're doing very long-range missile combat, you might want someone between the missiles and the launcher to handle final targeting, ECM/ECCM and such. Can't remember the setting, but one series I read had some poor fucking junior officer launched with the missiles in a high-g pinnace - nowhere near as fast as the missiles, but they were closer enough to make a difference to the salvo.

And then had to hang around and be picked up after the battle, if they were lucky.

Of course, CT fighters kind of are this - they're fighter platforms. If you're a Book 2 kind of person you can use a Ship's Boat as a high-grade fighter with a computer slapped in - just giving it a laser and the appropriate software means it stands a decent chance of shooting down incoming missiles, and still has space for two other weapons, but the basic fighter can only have 1 laser, 1-3 missiles, or 1-3 sandcasters - no mix & match on the 10dT craft.

>>51755864
I really wonder what do you define as "fly". Pilots do the same tricks with the same controls as 100 years ago. The only difference is that the moves of stick are not transfered mechanically but translated by computer but that's the only way in those speeds.

>>51756074
>really makin me think

Google "fly by wire" and do some thinking.

Current fighters are basically semi-autonomous. The "pilot' aboard sets priorities and initiates actions while the systems do all of the actual work.

>>51756239

Exactly. Comm lag is going to put drones, RPVs, and other assets which require input from operators at a physical distance measured in light-seconds.

>>51756395
>Pilots do the same tricks with the same controls as 100 years ago

No they don't. "Fly-by-wire" systems veto pilot inputs which would take the craft out of it's flight envelope. Such systems also control craft which human pilots and their reaction times can not. The now obsolete F117, for example, could not be flown by human input using mechanical or even electro-mechanical means. Only a computer could make the necessary adjustments at the necessary speeds & finesse.

The joystick and throttles aboard your cutter or free trader aren't linked directly to the attitude jets and m-drive. And vector movement means you're not going to be involved in some dogfighting "furball".

>>51756408
>Comm lag is going to put drones, RPVs, and other assets which require input from operators at a physical distance measured in light-seconds.

My apologies, potato phone. That's supposed to read:

Comm lag is going to put drones, RPVs, and other assets which require input from operators at a physical distances measured in multiple light-seconds at a distinct disadvantage.

>>51756514
It's not like the pilot just tell's the plane where to fly and sits with legs up. Fly-by-wire is very important at high speeds and when plane isn't stable dynamically (? I'm not sure if this is the correct term in English, it's not my first language). Computer acts as a dynamic regulator of oscillations.
Pilots of military aircracfts (which I assume we're talking about) can and often do maneuvers that take them out of flight envelope, even in training flights (cocky motherfuckers, all of them).

>>51756757
>It's not like the pilot just tell's the plane where to fly and sits with legs up.

You'd be surprised.

Fighters no longer need and pilots no longer provide the CONSTANT CONTROL INPUT that was necessary only a few decades ago.

Yes, pilots do occasionally take their craft outside of the flight envelope. However, the degree to which they do so and the amount of time they may do so is wholly controlled by the fly-by-wire systems. Try to do too much for too long and the plane vetoes your input.

Between the 50s and 70s, pilots making split second maneuvering mistakes at supersonic speeds could and often did put their craft into a orientation which tore it apart. Since the advent of fly-by-wire, the craft will NOT ALLOW that point to be reached.

Getting back to dogfights, vector movement in space means no dogfights despite what the physics-illiterate assclowns at Mongoose say.

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>>51756408
>>51755864
>Comm lag among other things.
Clearly you haven't thought this through. We know that quantum entanglement is a thing, and probably true as well. If it is, and it is manipulable, then there's no comm lag, since, by definition, it does not obey our understanding of light travel.

But beyond that, you have a setting in which FTL travel is possible, which it isn't. Not simply because our current understanding of physics says it isn't possible, but because FTL travel explicitly implies time travel, in that the idea of causation is completely broken. A burning match causes a house to burn down. But in the wacky universe where FTL is possible, a bunch of ashes spontaneously rearranges into a house, which causes a burning match to go out.

Now if you're saying that THAT is more plausible than dogfighting, then clearly your bubble of 'plausible' is just as ridiculous as your casual audience.

At the end of the day what it boils down to is what your suspension of disbelief is. And frankly, trying to get more 'realism' is just a recipe for disaster and/or no-fun-allowed.

>>51757027
I completely agree on the point of no dogfights in space. What is the source of your technical knowledge about aircrafts? I admit that aircrafts that I came in contact with are not cutting-edge.
>>51757082
Quantum entanglement cant send any information FTL. And your example why FTL is impossible is not valid.

>>51757027
>Getting back to dogfights
I think you're missing the original point of the "casual" comment. It's not that dogfights are silly (they are), it's that so is the entire idea of manned spaceflight. Why would you put a human being on a military spacecraft at all? If you are a space-faring race, then material deprivation is essentially a non-issue, especially in relation to the biological limitations of what we know as life. And thus the reasons for less-than-apocalyptic solutions are also gone; no need to keep around population centers if they cause problems, just drop asteroids on them ad infinitum, wait a few thousand years for the effects to clear, and start anew.

There's no reason to have space navies or anything of the sort to begin with. Except that it's interesting for our made-up games.

>>51757082

There is no FTL communication, in our universe, or the OTU. In both settings, all comms happen at the speed of light, and one light second of distance means two seconds of input lag on a drone's controls.

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>>51757168
>Quantum entanglement cant send any information FTL
Yes it can. That's the entire point. Take two particles that are entangled. Separate them by, say, one-light-year. Rotate one. The other rotates, instantly, faster than the time (1 year) light would take to get to the other. It has transferred information, faster than light speed. It's been posited since at least 1935:
>http://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.47.777

>And your example why FTL is impossible is not valid.
According to special relativity, two events that happen in one frame will happen at different times in another, because the two frames occupy different relative velocities. The problem is that if event A sends a message to event B faster than the speed of light, then in some reference event B occurs before event A due to the frame reference.

Ergo, time travel.

>>51757248
You don't rotate the particle. You can only check it's spin which is random, and the other particle in that instant has opposite spin. But you can't change it's spin, ergo no FTL communication.
Google "quantum entanglement communication" and you'll find plethora of sources that explain that better than me.

>>51757192
>There is no FTL communication
Here's some papers:
>https://arxiv.org/abs/1303.0614
>http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v8/n12/full/nphys2460.html
Essentially the point is: the measurements of the physical properties of these states change at a rate faster than light can communicate that change, in the first paper at less than 0.01% of the time it would take for light to travel the distance. That is literally FTL communication. It can't be taken advantage of, yet, but it's certainly there.

>>51757248
>Yes it can

No, it can't. Your link does not claim it, much less prove it. Modern experiments have shown again and again that you can't send any information via QE, because you can't actually determine what the particles' states are going to be when you examine them, just that the two will turn out to have been in the same state.

>>51757298
>It can't be taken advantage of, yet

It can't be taken advantage of AT ALL. If you intentionally change one of the particles, you break the entanglement. You can not send information like this, it's impossible.

>>51757352
This bro is right.
>>51757298
Not to dismiss your links as invalid, but you should watch out for papers from Chinese science teams. They've been time and time again proven to be full of manipulated data and often jump to unproven conclusions.

>>51757459
>https://arxiv.org/abs/1303.0614

His link here seems fine at a brief look, but here's the thing: it doesn't say what he claims it does. The paper is about measuring the speed at which the changes in state appear to propagate. It has nothing to do with sending information.
As a counterexample, if you were watching a wave crashing against a light-year wide beach the wave's crash would appear to "move" up and down the beach much faster than the speed of light. But that's the movement of an effect, not a solid thing. We don't know how quantum effects propagate yet though if the EM drive is real, then the Copenhagen interpretation is bullshit and there's some underlying hidden variables -- in this case you're probably looking at pilot wave theory, where there's a hidden wave function that determines this stuff; not that that will be any help since we can't access it but we do know that we can't send information via this channel, it's been shown theoretically and backed up experimentally.

>>51757352
Page 7 of Yin et al. clearly describes the pair. I think you misunderstand. It is not the physical state of the entangled pair that is the data. Just as bit sequences carry data depending on the order of the electrical charges, it is the arrangement of the entangled particles themselves that carry information.

Now it is true that were the information itself to be somehow physically transferred (whether by movement or by more exotic means such as quantum teleportation), then it would, by experimentation, be limited to the speed of light. But since violations of Bell's inequality seem to actually occur, it would seem that it is NOT due to 'hidden variables' in QM to allow for the quantum entanglement effect.

>>51757459
Maybe you trust Swiss researchers:
https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0007009

>>51756408
So I'd be just as good in a jet fighter as someone with thousands of hours of flight time? After all the computer handles everything.

I know what fly by wire is. But you still need good input on the pilot side.

>>51757600
>Maybe you trust Swiss researchers:
>https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0007009

>The correlation between the data can’t be explained by local variables, as
>demonstrated by Bell in 1964 [2], although they can’t be used to communicate
>information faster than light

>the only difference with respect to the first measurement is that the local state
>of the second measurement contains ”information” about the outcome of the
>first measurement. Since this ”information” cannot be used to transmit a classical
>message, there is no direct conflict with relativity and we term this ”information” as
>quantum information.

You're just trolling us here, aren't you?

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BACK TO TRAVELLER CIVILIANS, END THIS SCIENCE DISCUSSION.
Seriously, nobody's gonna get convinced and we all know it's pointless.

>>51757733
What's a good premade to run for noobs?

>>51757873

BITS has a few. "Cold Dark Grave" gets a lot of praise and, IMHO, correctly so. It was a 'Con game so it's was "play tested".

In Classic, many of the Double Adventures can work as one-shot, intro-to-Trav, games. The "Plague" half of the Chamax Double is one. "Death Station" is another. "Shadows" can be great in the right hands. All of Classic's adventures come with pregen PCs.

There's a section at freelancetraveller DOT com called "Getting Off The Ground" that is full of one-shots. The entire FT site is well worth visiting.

>>51758418
BITS?
Same breath, are all edition's adventures pretty much interchangeable?

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>>51755325
Been playing around with the numbers some more. Somewhat arbitrarily decided on 2 hours of fuel at maximum thrust. The 10 ton version is my favorite I think. Weaker sensors and a more innaccurate weapon since this ship is designed to fight at Adjacent ranges anyway it shouldn't be that big of a hassle. Plus the smaller size means you can fit many more on a carrier.

The fairly beefy computer makes up well over half the cost of the ship and I'm not sure how much it actually contributes to a mission success. It might very well be a good idea to take out the cockpit, simplify the computer quite a bit, and make it a semi-disposable drone. You could probably shave a few tons off that way even after bumping the sensors back up a grade.

>>51758526

Archivist here. Some are, some aren't. I've been labelling stuff with edition where I can, and leaving edition neutral stuff just labelled with "Traveller" but it's still a work in progress. A lot of files aren't labelled like that yet.
Most of BITS' stuff supports multiple editions, though.
Also with a little work, you can usually translate stuff from one edition to another. Classic and Mongoose are mostly compatible, the two differences that come to mind are having to swap out armor values, and the animal encounters use totally different stat blocks.

>>51758526

>BITS?

British Isles Traveller Support. They're a well regarded 3rd party publisher for Trav and have been creating material since the mid-90s. The various archives links will have folders labeled "BITS".

>Same breath, are all edition's adventures pretty much interchangeable?

Sort of. Some editions are more different than others and all have their quirks.

Classic and MT are pretty much interchangeable, but late Classic and MT have "skill bloat". MT has a task system while Classic was pretty much Rule 68A. TNE is an entirely different system, you can convert to and from it, it will just take more work. T4's system goes back to Classic/MT sort of. MgT1e was supposed to be an update to Classic and MgT2e was supposed to fix MgT1e's mistakes. Both are serviceable and neither achieved what they were intended to.

There's also a relatively new open source edition called Cepheus Engine that many 3rd party producers have migrated to after Mongoose stabbed them.

>>51747278
>>51747223
>air rock

Anyone have a Mongoose 1e GM screen? I can't find one at a reasonable price anywhere, so I'm making my own. Still, I'd rather avoid the work if I can.

>>51761925

There was a homemade one posted a few times to some of the Traveller threads about two years back, you could maybe search the archives?

What's a good way to keep track of the dynamic initiative in Mongoose 1e? I'm using roll20, but it doesn't seem to have an easy way to sort everything out and keep track of modifications on a round-by-round basis.

>>51762041
I think it might be easier to just make my own.

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>>51762049

Found one of them, made by Anonymous Mongoose Referee who used to post here about his campaigns.

>>51762049

For initiative, I'd use a piece of lined paper with some numbers on it, and drop some markers down for individuals. I guess you could do that in Roll20, though it'd be a bit clunky.

>>51762456
Thank you! This will help a lot!

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>>51762473

Hey, I managed to pull the other one out of suptg.

>>51754813
That sounds like a really good solution. Also, holy crap FGMPs are incredibly efficient damage dealers. I went looking for a a 2DD weapon in the .25-1 ton range so it could be mounted on a turret but all other 2DD weapons are at least a couple tons. The turret restrictions in the Smaller Weapons sidebar seem kind of dumb to me anyways. I'm going to put 2 FGMPs in a turret on my 35 ton craft.

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Happening, lads.

>>51760388
Someday someone somewhere will actually say from on high something about these "air rocks"

- or not.

>>51764598

Fortunately this isn't the OSR, where rocks are OP.

Holy cow, Antiradiation Torpedos do a ton of damage. DM+6 to attack rolls if the target used ewar in this round or the last. And since they have Immediate travel time as long as you can get into Medium range you can strongly discourage enemy ships from using ewar. It's hampered by heavy armor but it's still deals more damage than a Plasma Torpedo at half the price. Just as susceptible to point defence of course. Now I just need a multi-warhead version.

>>51764705
Rocks are one of the classic Traveller arguments, along with jump torpedoes and the economics/existence of piracy.

>>51680614
Wait. "Armored Merchant" instead of "Armed Merchant"?

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>>51691239
>I'd be glad if you could shoot me with some applications for her science skill, so far she only used it once or twice sadly. I have no problem with other chars (and we DO have not-gun wielding aristocrat with some admin skill, for example)
Look up Classic Traveller Adventures: Adventure 2: Research Station Gamma, Adventure 3: Twilight's Peak, and the basic (and ancient) "Traveller Adventure" where knowledge in xenobiology and plants can save the players a huge headache on one of the planets. Dragon Magazine used to put out a horror Traveller adventure every Halloween and one of them was where the players were hired by a corporation to check up on a science ship doing pharmaceutical research on an new alien plant they had discovered, which promised a new line of cheap combat drugs and rage zombies .

>>51762469
You could just make an image with numbered boxes on it, and just put a second token for every participant on it.

Though personally I don't find the turn order manipulation thing too hard. I just shift them around manually and it works good enough (though you do need to rember who went already)

>>51757082
Your understanding of quantum entanglement is naive and completely wrong, no matter how often you say "but it works". Google why, or ask /sci/.

>>51766978
Thanks! Definitely will check out.

These threads are really a godsend.

>>51768891

Sadly, >>51766978's "advice" is mostly mistaken.

Research Station Gamma is a dungeon crawl through a station, the player's research nothing. Twilight Peak has the player's researching port records and then engaging in a dungeon crawl beneath an abandoned survival shelter. In one TTA scenario, the players harvest a type of wood and encounter an animal which is sacred to the locals. Again, they research nothing and messing around with the sacred animals is a good way to get jailed if not shot.

GDW's Challenge magazine, not Dragon, ran Halloween issues. The combat drug adventure mentioned is found in the "Death Station" Double adventure and not the mag. While the ship is conducting pharma research, the players aren't doing any of it and are instead involved in another dungeon crawl.

Let me suggest you look at MT's Referee's Companion. It contains an excellent section on research projects and rules along with an example of how to apply them.

>>51769170
MT is MegaTraveller, right? Thanks. Well, dungeon crawls is NOT what I'm looking for, that's for sure. There are other systems much more suited for it than traveller, in my opinion.

>>51766850
Yes, you can always switch out weapons in a ship, but once armoured you can't retro-fit. So it's the Armoured merchant.

>>51769210
>MT is MegaTraveller, right?

Yup. I checked and the Referee's Companion is in the Archive linked above under MT.

>>Well, dungeon crawls is NOT what I'm looking for, that's for sure.

In the late 70s & early 80s that's how RPGs worked. Just like how many of the early Classic stuff had the players committing arson, kidnapping, murder, etc.

In Research Station Gamma, the players meet up with a Chirper (they're a type of Droyne, it's complicated.) They learn it's family is being held captive and are promised payment in gold to free them. That might as well be D&D, right? Anyway, they travel to the station and skulk through it. There's only one researcher present and he's a hermit. What the players have to contend with is wandering robots of different types. Again, D&D as sci-fi, right?

In Twilight's Peak, the players are searching for a treasure hinting at in an epic poem. The visit different worlds checking out locations until they find the right place. They then investigate a staircase & caverns underneath (D&D!!!) which eventually lead to a long lost hidden base full of uber-powerful aliens in cold sleep. (D&D!!!)

Death Station has the players working as schlubs in shitty jobs trying to earn enough to leave the planet they're stuck on. They get hired to check out a ship in orbit which has gone silent. Once aboard, they find the place a shambles, dead crewmen laying about, loose lab animals, and a few super paranoid survivors.

You could piggyback a research adventure onto to that by having your players hired AFTER the dungeon crawl to figure just how the chemicals released by the sabotage caused what they did, but there's no research at all in Death Station as written.

>>51769690
>In the late 70s & early 80s that's how RPGs worked.

That's fairly true, but at the same time, most of the more popular Classic Traveller modules are not dungeon crawls. Like say, Nomads of the World Ocean, or Safari Ship, or The Traveller Adventure.
People used to rip on Judges' Guild for doing the "D&D in Space" thing so blatantly and often with their modules.

>>51771175
>That's fairly true, but at the same time...

As I wrote, it's true of the early modules. Not everything was written at the same time and the need of the market evolved very quickly.

>most of the more popular Classic Traveller modules are not dungeon crawls.

They're not early modules.

>> Nomads of the World Ocean

1983

>> Safari Ship

1984

>> The Traveller Adventure.

1983

Now compare those dates to these:

>Kinunir

1979

>Research Station Gamma

1980

>Twilight's Peak

1980

And the poster child for Traveller murderhobo play:

>76 Patrons

1980

Things changed and changed quickly.

>>51766978
>I'd be glad if you could shoot me with some applications for her science skill,
Biology is a consistently useful skill for planet hoppers, assuming you can get them out of the damned air-raft. The boxed campaign "Tarsus" has a couple seeds that would be enhanced with animal skills, including Biology. Safari Ship (CT) does as well.
Navigation and Astrophysics are also useful to spacers. What may only be figured out at length by others about odd planetoids or the path of an incoming derelict is easy money for those skills.

That last critter break your atmosphere tester? You *really* want a chemist or earth sciences type.

Murder at the academic conference. The scientist gets to shmooze and detect charlatans, and the others follow up more conventional detectiving.

>>51769690
Thanks! I checked the book and the mechanic involving research is pretty cool, although time consuming. I think I can find some use for it, that's for sure!

>>51771848
These are some pretty cool ideas. Thank You! And I'll check out the modules as well.

And considering they are as of now on a leash of an evil corp that's their main adversary in the campaign, I think they're in some deep deep trouble.

>>51777758
>I checked the book and the mechanic involving research is pretty cool, although time consuming.

Yeah, it's definitely a "one step per session" thing with the research project lasting an entire campaign.

Playing around with High Guard some more. If you make a small drone, pack it full of sensors, and give it a Virtual Crew/0 and use all of the bandwidth available to simulate Sensor Operators you can get 20-30 DM+10 EWar checks every turn. Since 10 is the difficulty to shut down missiles you're basically clearing 2D missiles from 20-30 salvoes every round from a fairly cheap base. Dispersed EW programming might be worth it in case your enemies get close enough to have Immediate travel times since you can't ewar as a reaction.

You could do something similar with Point Defense programming on a much smaller and cheaper platform but you'd need many many more of them and I don't think you can auto-succeed the roll unless you get the beam laser's DM+4 to hit in point defence rolls. I don't think you do though.

>>51673775
As a noob, could I get this translated?

>>51780313

I know, it's a lot of acronyms, huh? He means:
CT77: Classic Traveller 1977 - the first printing of books 1-3
CT1-3: Classic Traveller books 1-3
CotI: Supplement 04: Citizens of the Imperium

RTT: Rikki Tikki Traveller, a silly name for Mongoose Traveller, more commonly referred to as MGT
GT: Gurps Traveller
GTIW: Gurps Traveller: Interstellar Wars

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Finished the external sketchup of my player's ship, it's technically for a SWN game but feel free to use it. It was based on a floor plan I found for a Traveler ship.

>>51781333

and a link to the PSD if you want to change text or move things around.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/r27g5m2dc2nd3s2/FreeTrader.psd

>>51769690
I would argue that Science 4 and Electronics 1 (drones) would be useful in Research State Gamma, since electronics would help with the robotic staff and Science 4 would imply a lot of familiarity with the design of the standard Imperial Science Base.
Same with Death Station, presuming an imperial scientist character, they would know the Lab Ship layout better than the ship they're currently on.

The goal was to find something where the character would be useful, not specifically their skill set.

>>51781333
Mate that's fucking cool, nice ship.

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>>51783896

Thanks! Also working on a hauler.

>>51784194
Looks like you'd slot in cargo crates at the sides, so toss the antennas on the far side that'd get in the way of that.

>>51784194
Oh, hey, it's a Battlecruiser from Starcraft.

>>51784194
Pretty big guy, how many dt is this cutie?
Also any tutorial you would recomend for sketch up to make space ships?

>>51784268

Oh wow, it is pretty similar! Didn't even notice. I just started with the hammerhead shape and went from there. Although the perspective also makes it look more squat then it really is.

>>51784272
To be honest I just Google "how to do x in sketchup and basically watch the first video.

Just learn how to draw basic shapes, extrude them, cut them, mirror them, group them, turn them into components, copy/paste, keyboard shortcuts, etc.

Start with "how to build floors and walls" and go from there.

>>51784272

It's also worth noting that sketchup has something called the 3d warehouse, which has a library of models you can paste in like Clipart. You can edit those components too, so if you see something cool you can usually take it apart and see how it was made.

>>51784330
>>51784354
Thanks bro, going to try it.

>>51781700
>I would argue that Science 4 and Electronics 1 (drones) would be useful in Research State Gamma, since electronics would help with the robotic staff and Science 4 would imply a lot of familiarity with the design of the standard Imperial Science Base.

Perhaps. Electronics-1 could default to Robot Ops-0, but I'd rule that a PC with Science-4 would be familiar with research lab robots. More importantly, such a PC would be vary familiar with record keeping protocols. That would really help when the offices and computers are searched.

BTW, there is no such thing as a standard Imperial Research Station and the one in RSG is specifically said to have been originally in orbit.

>Same with Death Station, presuming an imperial scientist character, they would know the Lab Ship layout better than the ship they're currently on.

That's a very good point.

>The goal was to find something where the character would be useful, not specifically their skill set.

Again, a very good point. However, >>51766978's "advice" concerned the research opportunities in those modules they listed, research opportunities which do not exist. The PC in question will not be puttering around with test tubes during "Death Station" as written.

The PC's prior experiences as inferred from their skills are something else entirely and, as you correctly point out, such prior experiences do give such a PC some "utility" in the modules in question.

So, we have a copy of Mongoose Vehicle handbook yet or we are still waiting?

>>51790894

In a certain thread on a certain chan three doors up from this one, it's been posted that a copy has been donated to be cleaned.

>>51791036
Good, anyone has tried it? How crazy can you make vehicles the with it?

>>51791520
>Good, anyone has tried it? How crazy can you make vehicles the with it?

I don't know. No one at COTI has posted anything about it other than they plan on getting a copy. Mongoose has posted the usual page or two at COTI as teasers.

There might be better and more detailed discussions about it at the Mongoose forums.

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Skyscraper Configuration for spaceships: y/n?

Even with grav-plates, surely you could have less plates per floor if floors are arranged one above another? Unless a ship needs to enter a gravity-well of course.

I'm not gonna hide my bias and say Skyscraper-esque ships are cool

>>51794904
>Skyscraper Configuration for spaceships: y/n?

As with so much in Traveller: It Depends.

If the ship is never meant to land, designing it with the decks perpendicular to it's thrust has certain advantages.

>>51795274
I'm just making the point that it doesn't seem to be a factor in Traveller (or at least the editions I've read), so it's probably up to the shipwright.

Plus, I mean in a pure efficiency standpoint, you'd be able to substitute a bit of your gravity for thrust with the M-Drive, slightly reducing power usage

>>51797004
>(or at least the editions I've read)

In MT and TNE, you have to price and power grav plates and inertial dampers.

As you note, a "skyscraper" ship could use thrust for gravity thus saving on equipment and power costs.

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What is the biggest ship you would give to the players?

>>51800136
Well, my players fly a 350dT corvette now, I've prepared a 600dT upgrade with a similar design as well as a 1000dT frigate focused more on fighting. But I'm not sure if they'll use either.

And there are still 15,000dT destroyers that can scare the shit out of them, so I don't think that's an issue.

How to finance a spaceship bigger than 1000dT, I honestly don't know.

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>>51800213
Privateers, a Great corporation/entire planet sponsoring them, Special missions from the empire, the pc have big holdings or they stole it from bad guys and only have to pay for maintenance.

>>51800364
Yeah, that's a good point. I was thinking in terms "how much would PCs have to earn monthly to be able to afford such a beast".

Having a wealthy patron is great story-wise, but my band would never agree to let go of their freedom if they have another option. Stealing a big ass ship is interesting tough.

I have a question also- do all ships HAVE to have a bridge or cockpit? I'm toying with a drone of sorts and don't have the need to hut flesh in there, but I guess it could be explained by room to accommodate the computers and sensors, eh?

>>51794904
One downside is that you need more stairs and lifts to replace corridors. Most sophonts are built from sprinting between the bridge and engineering in an emergency, not climbing.

>>51800399
>Yeah, that's a good point. I was thinking in terms "how much would PCs have to earn monthly to be able to afford such a beast".

Okay, by "have" you meant "own/mortgage". 600dT was the biggest, j1 or j2 merchants. I had players seize/steal/salvage larger ships but they always trading them for something more manageable.

>Having a wealthy patron is great story-wise, but my band would never agree to let go of their freedom if they have another option.

That's the reward at the end of TTA. A patron the players have helped significantly throughout the campaign buys the subsidized merchant the players serve on and gives it to them.

>I have a question also- do all ships HAVE to have a bridge or cockpit?

As a discrete amount of tonnage? Only if you need to "hut flesh". Otherwise, jsut say it represents the volume of control systems and distribute that throughout the drone.

I'm working on small cards for easier inventory management- image from Central Supply Catalogue + name and stats. I was wondering if anyone was working on something similar and maybe had some tips and tricks?

>>51806536

Someone at COTI did something similar with weapons for CT. The cards had stuff like ranges, pen values vs. different armor, etc.

Many MT products have fairly detailed equipment sheets you can get some ideas from.

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>>51807549

Oh yeah, these things. Pretty neat.

>>51807549
>>51809812
Holy fuck that's brilliant. I can't believe it never occurred to me to just jot it down on a card instead of faffing about every time.

>>51810470

Yeah, a box of index cards is a Traveller referee's best friend. You can fit all sorts of stuff on one.