Publishing Update

I've made 3 hard copies of the Sky Mall and 2 copies of the Rule Booklet for use at the table.  I have one copy of the character generation charts for everyone for use at the table, and a pile of 20 character sheets.

Over at the Traveller wiki, I've uploaded all the Starship cards and Vehicle cards I've made.  So, if you want to try a space battle or two before Sunday, get a few cards and the Rule Booklet from the wiki page and you'll have everything you'll need.  Wiki page is here:

http://www.lordsofhack.com/traveller/doku.php?id=document_page

P.S.  I've put a link from the Lords of Hack wiki index page that led to the Badlands wiki that will also lead to the Traveller wiki.

P.P.S.  Blogger has certainly improved between the time I slacked off blogging in the winter and my recent return this month.  The comments are less buggy, and the navigation is generally improved.

Time to Publish

I've finally done enough testing and think I'm ready to release my two main documents.  I've put them up on Andrew's most excellently provided wiki on the Traveller documents' page at this link:

http://www.lordsofhack.com/traveller/doku.php?id=document_page

The first two documents are THE SKY MALL, which contans all the weapons, armor, vehicles, robots and assorted gear we should need,  and the RHYLANOR EXPRESS RULES BOOK, which contains some notes on character generation changes, but more importantly the Space Combat Rules and Ground Combat rules.  You can't generate characters with just this booklet, but the combat rules are complete.

I'll have character generation stuff in hard copy for everyone on Sunday, unfortunately my scanner doesn't support my computer's OS, so it's become just a photocopier. 

I may add some more documents (starship and vehicle data cards) at some point soon.

Boarding Action--with ROBOTS!

My group of 6 guys, back from the dead, are sitting around their scout ship (plans from the poster feature of my copier) when they are suddenly boarded by 4 EVIL ROBOTS!

Side A:
Major Arnold--Army:  smg, Auto-cannon
Sam the Scout:  heavy laser rifle
Mack the Marine:  RAM grenade launcher
Nick the Navy Guy: hides in a closet
Melvin the Merchant: hides in a different closet
Otto the Other: hides in a still different closet

Side B
War Android laser rifle, blade
Kill-bot: power saw hands, laser eyes
Heavy Repair Bot, reprogrammed for evil, huge arms, laser welder
Security Robot:  tranquilizer pistol.

Turn-1
Once again the high Tactics of Arnold and Mack allow the crew to take up position, hiding in doors along the corridor from the common area to the bridge.  Robots come batteling into the common area and start firing.  The security robot fires a tranq round at Otto, misses.  Killbot fires 2 laser eyes at Sam, but misses as well.  The android fires laser rifle at Mack, but misses too.  The repair bot has no clear target.

The crew returns fire.  Otto's, Melvin's and Nick's weapons are ineffective against the robots.  Mack fires his grenade launcher at the killbot, the crew spends 3 of its 6 tactics pool to score a hit.  It is a minor penetration, jamming the killbot's legs.  Sam fires his laser rifle against the killbot too, but the bolt does not penetrate.  Major Arnold then mans the Auto-cannon installed by Sam just to repel boarders and lets rip.  He hits the Killbot 1 time, but it does not penetrate.  He hits the Android 4 times for 1 surface hit (loose 1 turn).  He hits the Security bot for 4 surface hits.  He hits the repair bot for 4 minor penetration, one of which is pushed up to a major and causes the repair bot to explode.

Turn-2
Mack fires his grenade launcher at the the killbot, exploding it.  The autocannon fills the remaining two robots with a flurry of surface hits, causing them both to lose their turns.

Turn-3
The crew finishes off the robots.

LESSONS LEARNEDYou absolutely must have heavy weapons to fight robots.  Cover is very good.  The crew was well covered when the robots burst in.  The -3 penalty saved the crew a bunch of pain.   It was also fortunate that the robots had single-shot weapons.  I also realized that I need to clarify the damage results for the robot tables.

A More Ordinary Test: PC's vs Army

Side A:
Sam the Scout:  vacc suit, med kit, laser pistol
Arnold Army Major: cloth, SMG, scanner, Tactics Skill-3!
Mack the Marine Lt: combat armor, gauss pistol, RAM GL, Tactics 2!
Nick the Navy Guy: vacc suit, shotgun
Melvin the Merchant: cloth, light assault gun
Otto the Other: cloth, auto-rifle

Tracked ATV, Auto-cannon

Side B
Sarge:  flak jacket, assault rifle, Tactics-1
7 troopers, flack jacket, assault rifle

Heavy APC, Auto-cannon

Surprise Check: both sides spot each other easily, driving around in big, noisy tracked vehicles.  Since Side A has 5 Tactics points, vs. 1 on Side B, Side A chooses to be Intruder.

Turn-1
Adventurers drive ATV behind stone wall, 4 jump out for cover.  Arnold fires Auto-cannon against APC, but it proves too well armored.
Army guys return fire with their auto-cannon, impeding the tracks on the ATV and jamming the adventurers' auto-cannon.  Arnold tries to clear the jam, but since he has no mechanical skill, he fails.
6 of the army guys disembark from the APC along another stone wall.  They let loose with their auto-cannon again, totally jamming the ATV tracks and shearing off its antennas.

Turn-2
Arnold and Sam jump out of the vehicle.  Mack fires his RAM Grenade launcher at the APC, and despite spending a tactics point, he misses by 1.   Nick fires his shotgun at long range and misses.  Mevlin fires his light assault gun and misses, and Otto fires his auto-rifle and misses too.

The six army guys return fire, spraying the line with bullets,  Melvin is hit for a serious wound, 2 light wounds and a graze and is out of the fight.  Otto takes a a light wound but keeps fighting.  Mack's combat armor shrugs off the bullets.  The auto-cannon fires too, missing 3 targets, but hitting Arnold for a serious wound, knocking him out of the fight too (a Tactics point from the pool saves him from a mortal wound).

They continuing firing, the auto-cannon killing Nick and Melvin, seriously wounding Sam.  Regualr bullets give Otto a serious wound, taking him down too.

Turn-3
Mack, alone and wounded, fires his grenade launcher one more time at the APC, hitting it.  It manages to moderately wound the auto-cannon gunner, but Mack, realizes he's been beaten and surrenders.

LESSONS LEARNED
This was the most fun of the battles so far.  Having actual player character types involved made it more enjoyable.  The adventurers were outnumbered, by a little.  The heavy armor on the APC made it immune to the adventurers' auto-cannon, and they had to rely on Mack's launcher.  Trouble was, no one in the team had more than launcher-0 skill. 

The adventurers had a metric pile of Tactics.   I was too stingy on how I allowed people to spend tactics points.  I had limited it to 1 point per roll.  I'm going to change it to any number per roll, and you can spend them after you roll (to Mike it, as it were).  I seem to remember doing that back in the old days (or at least I remember Tom Larkin calling out "tactics point" a lot). 

If the adventurers could have spent their 6 ponts (3 from Arnold, 2 from Mack, 1 from their battle computer) all at once, then they could have hit with the first grenade, and perhaps saved themselves from being raked by 2 rounds of auto-cannon fire.

Also, man, someitmes a weak space guy is just no good in a ground fight.  The fact that the army troops all had Rifle-1 skill made a huge difference, especially when they shot twice with their assault rifles and many of the adventurers were firing with gun combat-0.  Also, whoever came up with the idea of giving each character level 0 skills for all their service skills chart was a genius, he immiediately made everyone more useful in a variety of situations, without making them over-powered super monkeys.

More on Vehicle Battles

After thinking it over a bit, I modified the damage effects tables a little bit, making it slightly easier for marginal weapons to score a Surface Damage result, and slightly harder to get a Major Penetration.  Still, if you use the big freaking tank guns, things blow up.

Interface Battles:
Always the whole in Traveller, I finally tested a starship vs. vehicles.   I used a Heavily Armored Troop Carrier starship attempting to land while opposed by a tracked crawler mounted with a starship grade missile launcher, and by a armored grav fighter with a fuzion-Z gun (the nastiest vehicle weapon around).

I thought it went the way I'd have expected it to go.

  Lander fires 2 beam lasers at the Crawler, hitting once and destroying its engine.  It then fires a beam laser and 2 missiles at the fighter--scoring 6 hits total and destroying the fighter.  The crawler misses its return fire missile.

Crawler takes its turn, firing a missile, hitting the lander for 5 hits.  destroying the cargo hold, one of its G-carriers, damaging its man-drive 1 level, 1 fuel hit and damaging its computer 1 level.  The lander returns fire and kills the crawler's crew.

Lessons;  A 200 ton ship vs. a 10 ton crawler and 8-ton fighter, that went as one would expect, the lander wiped them out, but suffered noticeable damage on the way int.

I think vehicle battles are going to end up very short and to the point.

Tag Team Battle in the Sky: next test

I've been working on vehicle stats, and deiced to let the top-of-the-line duke it out.
So, it was a tag-team match in the skies among a handful of TL-14 or 15 grav vehicles.  They could all fly, some very fast, some very slow, but they had the best armor and weapons that could be had.  As soon as one went down, a new one would arrive to replace it.

Turn-1:  TL-14 Light Grav Tank with Fusion Gun and TAC missiles vs. Tl-14  Armored Attack Speeder with VRF gauss gun and TAC missle.

The Tank's fusion gun doesn't score a hit due to the speeder's fast speed, but the TAC missile has a huge hit bonus to overcome that.  The missile slams into the speeder and scores 3 major penetrations, the second of which explodes the speeder all over the landscape.

Turn-2:  a TL-15 Armored Grav Fighter streaks in to avenge the speeder.  It also misses with its fusion gun and hit the tank with a TAC missile, killing the crew and knocking out the drive, electronics, and main weapon.

But then, a Heavy Grav Tank-14 shows up.  It also fires a fusion cannon and a TAC missile.  The fusion cannon misses, but the missile hits the Grav Fighter, knocking out its electronics, but the fighter still flies!   The fighter returns fire, launching another missile and fusion shot.  The fusion shot misses, and the TAC missile would have hit, but the Heavy Grav tank has a point defense system and manages to shoot down the missile first.

Turn-3:  The Grav fighter decides to save its last missile, seeing how effective the Point Defense was, and simply fires its Fusion cannon,  which hits!  It destroys the grav locomotion systems of the tank, which plummets to the ground.

Turn-4  a Grav APC-14 arrives to avenge the tanks.  It fires off a missile, which hits the Grav fighter, knocking outs its engine, fusion cannon and drives, and it also plummets to the ground.

LESSONS:
It is perhaps not surprising that anti-aircraft missiles do most of the work in an aerial battle.  The armor system is very unforgiving.   The armor ratings run from 0 up to 70, the weapons penetration ratings run from 0 to about 79.    However, if your armor is 6 points higher than the penetration of the weapon shooting at you, it cannot ever hurt you.   If the penetration is 5 better than the armor, it will score a major penetration (which are really, really, permanently bad) every time. 

I'm thinking that maybe I ought to change the roll for penetration after the hit.  I'd like to have seen more minor penetrations or surface hits.  Maybe a 2d6 roll that parallels the Personal Wound chart.

Not an Ambush this Time, ground combat test 3

Not an Ambush this time!

I decided to re-try the 4 TL-14 Battle Dress guys vs. the 8 TL-10 guys.  This time I gave each side a sergeant with leader and tactics skill, and a spotter with Observer skill and a scanner.

Side A—the New Battle-Dress Badasses:

Sergeant Ator:  heavy laser, advanced battle computer

Spotter Bilko: RAM auto-GL, advanced battle scanner

Trooper Clangor:  FGMP-14

Trooper Dunlevy: laser pistol, TAC missiles

Side B—The Returning Champions

Sergeant Florus:  laser rifle, disposable rocket launcher, battle computer

Spotter George:  RAM grenade launcher, battle scanner

Trooper Hank: Advanced Combat Rifle, 2 rifle grenades

Trooper Irving: TAC missile, laser carbine

Trooper Jimbo:  ACR, 2 rifle grenades

Trooper Kastor: ACR, 2 rifle grenades

Trooper Louis: ACR, 2 rifle grenades

Trooper Mike: ACR, 2 rifle grenades

Spotting Round:

Both Sides spot one another since they have both the equipment and skills to make a good attempt.

So, Florus and Ator must compare Tactics, they’re tied, but the Advanced Computer gives a better bonus so Ator wins, and chooses to be Intruder.

TURN 1

Intruder Movement:  Ator and Bilko “stand” behind a stone wall waiting for targets.  Clangor and Dunlevy run up to get cover far ahead, but Dunlevy falls short and is partially exposed to fire.

Intruder Direct Fire: only Dunlevy has a shot and fires his laser pistol at Mike, but misses.

Native Return Fire: Mike fires at Dunlevy with a rifle grenade and kills him dead.

Morale Phase:  since the Badasses have lost 25%, they must check morale, and fail.  I have a tantrum and rule that colonel Klink rides past and rallies them.

Command Phase: Klink rallies Badasses.

Native Movement: The entire squad moves into shade of building on the opposite side where Clangor is waiting. 

Native Direct Fire: no targets available

Intruder Return Fire: no targets available

Native Command Phase:  Mike reloads his rifle grenade.

TURN 2

Intruder Movement: Ator and Bilko stand, waiting for targets; Clangor runs behind a shed farther away from the enemy.

Intruder Direct Fire: no targets

Native Return Fire: no targets

Intruder Command Phase: none

Native Movement: Mike stands but pokes his head around the corner.  Louis walks around the corner to the next alley.  Jimbo and Kastor stay under cover behind Mike.

Florus, George, Hank and Irving rush around the other side of the building to the shed.

Native Direct Fire:  Mike fires at Bilko, but misses due to the cover of the stone wall.   Louis also misses Bilko because of cover and his snap-shot penalty.

Intruder Return Fire:  Bilko turns his RAM AutoGL against Mike and Louis, pumping 10 grenades down line.   Louis is hit 4 times and is turned to grease.  Mike is only hit once because of cover, but once is enough and he’s grease.

Morale Phase:  The Champions hold morale.

Native Command Phase: none

TURN 3

Intruder Movement:  Ator and Bilko stand still waiting for targets.  Clangor ‘evades” from the back of the shed toward the stone wall.

Intruder Direct Fire: none

Native Return Fire: None

Morale Phase: none

Command Phase: none

Native Movement:  Florus, George, Hank and Irving “walk” out to form a skirmish line to get shots at Ator and Clangor.

Native Direct Fire:  the Snap-Shot penalty combined with the cover or evasion bonuses are too much, and all four miss their shots against Ator and Clangor.

Intruder Return Fire:  Ator hits Florus with a heavy laser rifle and evaporates him.

Morale Phase: Champions fail

Command Phase: none

TURN 4:

Intruder Movement: none

Intruder Direct Fire: Ator evaporates George.  Clongor evaporates Hank

At this point it’s over and the remaining champions flee the field.

LESSONS LEARNED:

Not ambushes are much more interesting than ambushes.  I know the turn sequence may seem clunky on paper, but I actually really liked it in practice, far more than I expected.  It was basically the Striker turn sequence made to match the Space Combat sequence in terminology.

Man, running around in front of guns is really stupid. Now this was a fight where everyone was using weapons that way over-matched the target body armor.   In normal fights where people will be shooting guns and wearing ballistic cloth armor, there will actually be wounds instead of gruesome disintegration on every hit.

Dirty Dingus Magee

I just watched the 1970 movie "Dirty Dingus Magee", starring Frank Sinatra and George Kennedy.  It was supposed to be western-comedy.

Worst
Movie
Ever

Poster Success

I figured out once again how to get my copier to may poster-sized out-put.  You just have to keep punching a variety of buttons.  I managed to take a half page map and make it into a 4 page plan.  So now I have a deckplan of a scout ship that has squares just about right for putting miniatures onto it (it's a little tight, but works).

To Shreds, You Say--Ground Combat Test 2

I decided to try out the the biggest baddest armor.   Tech Level 14 Battle-Dress is Armor Value 18, which is pretty huge.  Basically, bullets stand no chance against it.   I made up 4 Tech14 troopers with a variety of weapons, and put them up against 8 tech-10 troopers, wearing Combat Environment Suits (Armor Value 6).

The laser rifles and Advanced Combat Rifles carried by tech 10 troopers simply can't hurt the Battle Dress Troops.  But, they had a good supply of support weapons:  1 grenade launcher, I disposable rocket launcher, 1 TAC anti-tank missile, and each rifleman had 2 rifle grenades.

As luck would have it the tech 10 troopers got surprise.  They figured they had to go for broke up front, since they only had 1-2 rounds of grenades and rockets and then they were helpless.  So they didn't worry about cover or anything and just let 'er rip down the line.

Trooper Florus fired his disposable rocket at Trooper Ajax and missed.,

Trooper George emptied a magazine of RAM grenades at Ajax and hit him twice, utterly destroying him beyond all revival chance.

Trooper Hank fires a rifle grenade and missed.

Trooper Irving fires the Anti-tank missile, and missed.

Trooper Jimbo fires a Rifle Grenade, and blows Trooper Bootes to complete shreds.

Trooper Kastor fires a Rifle Grenade and misses.

Trooper Louis fires a rifle grenade and kills Trooper Callimachus dead.

Trooper Mike fires a rifle grenade and utterly destroys Trooper Diomedes.

LESSONS LEARNED:

This battle went completly against my expectations.  The super high tech equipment wasn't a match for a rocket powered grenade.   Once again, don't get surprised.  Both tests so far were decided by who got surprise.  Choosing where and when to start shooting is awesome.   Now, none of the example guys have had any Recon Skills, and I didn't give anyone any Scanners.   I need to start seeing about that.  If both sides spot each other, then cover etc., will be more important.  Just one or two points of cover would have made a huge difference.  Also, HEAP grenades are just plain brutal.  Even if they hadn't killed all their targets stone dead, their explosive effects would have increased their wound severity by one.  Ouch.

Multiple Targets problem

In the Striker miniature game, from which I'm taking most of my weapon data for Traveller, many weapons can shoot at more than one target a turn.  

It is, however, unclear to me whether it is permissible to use the multiple targets to completely mess up a single target.   So, if you have a VRF Gauss gun on your G-carrier, and it has 16 permissible targets, if there's only one guy out there, can you roll to hit him 16 times, or only once, with the rest of the bullets tearing up the ground in front of and behind him?  

It's a hard question to decide.  One the one hand, it's awesome to mess guys up really badly.  On the other, it would definitely be better to give than receive.

Traveller Personal Combat Play Test 1

I finally wrapped up my rules revisions for a simplified integration of Striker with Classic Traveller (without turning it into MegaTraveller).  Here's my first gunfight test, 4 army guys against 4 thugs in a modern-day tech level fight.

The Army Ambushes Thugs

Army: 

Lieutenant Luke,  flak jacket, sub-machingeun (-1 to hit, poor Dex)

Trooper Alvin, flak jacket, assault rifle
Trooper Bill, flak jacket, auto-shotgun
Trooper Chaz, flak jacket, rifle

Thugs:

Boss Man:  flak jacket, auto-pistol  (pathetic Str, Dex and Endurance)

Xavier: jack armor, auto-pistol  (poor Dex)
Yancy: flak jacket, gauss pistol
Zeb:  mesh armor, shotgun  (poor dex)

Surprise Check:

Both sides fail to spot the other on the first attempt.

Army Spots the Thugs on the second attempt and achieves surprise.

Surprise Round:

Trooper Bill and Trooper Chaz walk into the room and clear the entry corridor.

 Lt. Luke fires his SMG at Xavier (at effective range) and Yancy (at long range).  He hits Xavier three times, inflicting 2 serious wounds and a kill shot.  Xavier learns that Jack Armor isn’t worth Jack.    Luke misses Yancy, due to the range.

 Alvin fires his assault rifle at the Boss and at Yancy.  The Boss is hit once for a Light Wound, protected by cover.  Alvin his Yancy 4 times for 2 moderate wounds, a serious wound and a graze.  The serious wound crumples Yancy and he’s out of the fight.

Now Bill fires his auto-shotgun at the boss.  Despite the fact that he’s well protected by cover, the mass of shotgun pellets hits the Boss 5 times.  However, the flak vest reduces the hits to 3 light wounds and 2 no effects.  However, the boss only has an Endurance of 2, and with 4 light wounds now, he crumples exhausted out of the fight.

 Trooper Chaz has a simple rifle and fires at Zeb, just barely hitting him (-2 snap shot penalty for moving).  However, the hit is a serious wound and knocks Zeb out of the fight.

LESSONS LEARNED:

Don’t get surprised.  Automatic fire weapons are way cooler than non-automatic fire weapons.   Body Armor makes a huge difference, don’t cheap out on your protection.  Using the 2d6 scale and the fact that people have limited skill levels (everyone had gun combat skills at only level 1) means that every single bonus or penalty makes a freaking huge difference.  

 I guess it was pretty realistic, if heavily armed gunmen burst into a small room and blaze away at you from close range, everyone’s going to crumple quickly.

I almost forgot the ROBOTS!

I thought I was about to get all my rules revisions into shape, and it suddenly hit me!  I had forgotten the robots.  It wasn't hard the whip them up, but it was nearly an embarrasment.  I also decided to scale back Forgery as computer intrusion and put in the Intrusion skill.  All these guys on the internet said I was totally lame and they new all about breaking into electronic locks.  And I mean, if I can't trust a guy on the internet who says he's done it all for real, who can I trust?

Breaking In (With Forgery!)

While putting together my customary campaign gear book, I wanted to include an "Electronic Lock Pick", a device used to pick locks that used a retinal scan, finger print, pass word, or voice code.  I thought I would use the Electronics skill to acheive the task roll, but ran into a problem.  It seems that the Rogue career, the one most interested in lock-picking, does not have Electronics skill as an available option.

I looked over the list a few times and it finally hit me that I should use the Forgery skill.   I mean, forging paper documents suddenly seemed so 20th century.   Forgery for me now will be the main skill used for computer crime on high tech worlds.   You need to forge passwords, access codes, authentication protocols (is that a thing?) and so forth.

Gun Fight Tutorial

To Hit With a Sub-machinegun:

Here are the stats on a Sub-machinegun
Targets        Effective            Long           Extreme         Magazine
2                  25(2)+4              50(1)+3      100(0)+1        30

If Frank fires a SMG at a squad of approaching monkey-men, he checks the range: 25 meters or less would be Effective Range,  26-50 would be Long, and 51-100 would be Extreme.

Say the monkeys are at 20m, he would be effective range.  At effective range he must roll 8+ on 2d6 (Long is 10+, Extreme is 12+).

The +4 is the "autofire bonus" at that range.  So, Frank rolls 2d6, adds his Skill (say he has Machinegun 2) and the autofire bonus.   He rolls a 7, adds 2 for skill, and 4 for autofire bonus, for a total of a 13.   For each 2 points he rolls over 8 means he has hit his target an extra time.   So 8,10,12 means 3 total hits.  and he will roll three damage rolls on monkey-man number 1.

But wait, there's more!  Since his weapon has 2 targets, he gets to fire again at a second target.  He rolls a 5, plus 6, gives an 11, for 2 hits on monkey #2.

In the parentheis after the range number, is the Penetration for the weapon at that range.  Damage works by rolling 2d6, adding the Penetration of the weapon and then subtracting the Armor value of the target's armor.   Each one of Frank's shots will roll 2d6+2, minus the monkey-men armor to discover the wound effect (but that's another story).

A two-target weapon uses 10 bullets per round, so Frank has blown through 1/3 of his magazine.

A Scale Problem

After my three big play-tests, I'm prety well satisfied with the details of the Space Combat rules that I've stitched together from the various rules sets. I haven't tested out Fighter squadrons, but the other play tests lead me to believe that if they're packed full of missiles they'll be awesome, and if they mount lasers they'll suck.

I've moved on to the Personal Combat side of things.  I wanted to use the basic framework of the Striker miniatures game, but with more of a role-play side spin on it.   I also wanted to strip away a lot of the over-crunchiness of the vehicle and weapon design system.  Finally, I wanted to be able to interface star ships, vehicles and hand weapons together smoothly and consistently.  I've had a lot of practice doing this (with my other homebrews, and the d20 Traveller play test) and think I have it all worked out, except for one big problem:  Ground Scale.

The weapon data I used came from Striker.  The scale used there was 1cm equals 10 meters, and it was meant for 15mm miniatures.  It was simple to take the data, multiply by 10, and get the ranges and area of effects in meters.   This is handy because the various descriptions of weaponry outside of Striker use descriptions in meters. 

The problem is that most of the published deckplans use a scale of 1 square equals 1.5 meters.  So that means, if we use that scale, I'll have to change all the ranges to "Squares" dividing the ranges by 1.5.  I'll either have to go back and make all those changes by hand, or we'll have to constantly do divison at the table.   The other option is to use a 1 square or inch equals 1 meter and have all the deck plans be wrong.   I suppose we could just fudge and say that on non-published maps 1 inch equals 1 meter, and on deckplans we'll just say that the ranges and explosive effects are reduced by a factor of 1.5.  It won't matter much for range, since inside a space ship most all gunfire is short range. Or thirdly, we could measure ranges and area of effects with a metric ruler where 1cm equals 1 meter, and 1 square would then equal 1.5 meters, but we wouldn't use the squares for much.

Do Not Explode the Happy Fun Ball, test 3

Okay, this time I tried some heavy combat ships.   Our old friend the 800 ton Mercenary Cruiser, a.k.a. the Happy Fun Ball--the MSS Cutlass, which had a pair of 50-ton cutters as well.   I put it against a 400 ton Close Escort, which although it was half the size, it had 2 particle accelerators and Heavy Hull armor.  I wanted to see just how my armor rules worked, having had to adapt the High Guard armor to the Book 2 rules set.  The NSS Zebra also had a 30-ton gig. 

DETECTION:  the Close Escort, with a slightly better computer, gets surprise and begins the battle 10 hexes to the rear of the Cutlass, both moving at vector 4.   If I had thought it out better, he would have been 2 hexes closer, for a first turn short range attack.

TURN 1
Zebra  lets loose with 2 particle accelerators and 6 beam lasers at long range, and they all miss.  Cutlass returns fire with a laser battery and 6 individual lasers, which also all miss.   The Zebra launches its gig. 

Cutlass moves forward, fires all its laser again, and they all miss,  Zebra returns fire and all miss again. 
The Cutlass launches 6 missiles and its 2 cutters.  The missiles should impact at the end of turn 3.

TURN 2
Now the Zebra gets to short range and fires its 2 accelerators and 6 lasers.  Both PA's hit, doing 6 damage rolls:  hull, jump, turret, fuel, turret, hold.  One laser hits and damages the computer.
The Cutlass returns fire and the laser battey makes one hit, for some hull damage.

The Cutlass holds course and lays down more laser fire, all misses again (the damaged computer hurts).
In its return fire, the Zebra turns the laser turrets against the wave of incoming missiles, shooting down 2 of them, while continuing to use the particle accelerators against the Cutlass (missing again).

The Cutlass launches 6 more missiles at the Zebra (inpact turn 4), and the cutters each launch a missile of their own at the Zebra (also turn 4).  The Cutlass engineer tries to repair the computer and fails.

TURN 3
Still at short range, the Zebra uses the Particle Accelerators against the Cutlass, while keeping the laser turrets for use against the missiles.  One PA hits, damaging a missile turret, and doing some fuel and hull damage. The lasers shoot down 3 more incoming missiles.  The gig fires at a cutter, hitting the cabin, depressurizing it.    The cutter returns fire at the gig and misses.  The  Cutlass returns fire on the Zebra, with the laser battery hitting for more hull damage.

The Cutlass continues to pour laser fire at the Zebra, to no effect.  The cutters both fire on the gig, and miss.  The Zebra returns fire, managing to intercept 3 more incoming missiles.

With One missile turret damaged, the Cutlass can only launch 3 more missiles this turn, but the cutters support it with one more each.  The cutters missiles will hit turn 4, but the cutlass's on turn 5.  The engineer attempts to repair the missile turret and fails.

TURN 4
The Zebra fires its particle accelerator at the Cutlass, getting a critical hit that causes the mercenary cruiser to completely explode all over the place, destroying it utterly.   The laser turrets intercept 3 more missiles.

The cutters and gig exchange missile fire, while the Zebra uses all its guns to fend off the incoming swarm of missiles.  It shoots down 3 more, but 2 missiles strike home.   The hull, computer, and jump drive are all damaged, but the power plant receives a critical hit and is destroyed.  The Zebra is now crippled, unable to change vector, jump or fire its weapons until rescued and rebuilt.

TURN 5
4 more missiles impact the Zebra for minor damage.   The two cutters fly off to find a friendly refuge, and the gig begins rescue operations for the Zebra's crew.

LESSONS LEARNED:
Long range is for missiles, you just don't get many gun hits unless you have a big advantage in skill or computer power.  Small craft suck at gunfire since their computers are so weak, but might do some good work with missiles.  I was worried about PA's, Laser Batteries and Heavy Armor.  All three are nice to have, but don't break things completely.   The CE was half the size of the Happy Fun Ball, but without the lucky crit,  I think that the 1 better computer rating was a more important factor than the armor and PA's.     Man  +1 is worth a lot.  Once PC's start getting in the mix, it's going to get interesting.  A gunnery or pilot of level 3-4 would be worth a lot.

I used the giant graph paper sheets for this battle, and that does work better than a tape measure.  A hex map would be better, but the hexes need to be an inch wide.   I'm using 2 inch counters for the Ships and 1 inch counters for the small craft.  You just have to keep the counter centered on its space.

Counter Maker

Above is a counter I rendered from  a site I discovered called "The Zhodani Base" it allows you to make spaceship and ground unit counters in either 1 inch or 2 inch size, based on various Traveller board games.  The above is a an 800 ton mercenary cruiser (8C), with a model 5 computer, and 3-G acceleration, but that was my arbitrary choice, you can set the counter numbers to mean anything you want them to.

From this page you can access the counter generator for ground units, space ships and tanks
http://zho.berka.com/traveller_rules/

Additional Lessons

Using the Mayday system of vector movement (having a "future location" and "past location" marker in addition to the main marker) works pretty well, but it would work much better using a hex map than using a tape measure.  I should try to find a large-hex map of some sort for the space battles.

I've been putting ship stats on paper, since it seems that my printer won't do 3x5 cards, only 4x6.  I've been putting them on a table, 8 per page.   I think I want to put them on something bigger, just to have more room for recording battle damage.  I might go back to 4x6 cards, or maybe 6 or 4 ships per sheet of paper and cutting them up, rather than 8.

I was trying to work in "Fleet Tactics" and "Ship Tactics" skills from High Guard, but I think it would be better to collapse them into a single "Space Tactics" skill.

Oh, the second battle I did do away with the vector movement for missiles.  I just had missiles fired from short range impact the next turn, and from long range the turn after that.  It worked just fine and was easier to manage--although I did have to keep a "missile impact sheet" to the side.

The Lightning Cannon Sucks, play test 2

This time it was a 400-ton Laboratory ship, re-figured by pirates, called "The Wheel O' Death" with a turret with 2 missile launchers and 1 sand caster, and a second turret with 2 pulse lasers.   Fighting it were 2 200ton-Yachts, the "Howell" which had a mssile rack and sand caster, and the "Trump" which had 2 beam lasers.

Both sides detected one another, and so were set at 30 inches apart with a vector of 4.  Since the yachts had more ships, they got to decide who went first, and they choose themselves.

Turn 1
Both sides accerlate 1" to a 5" vector but remain out of range.

Turn 2:
The Trump reaches long range and fires 2 beam lasers, which miss.
The Howell launches a missile and protective sand.
The Wheel fires 2 missiles and 2 pulse lasers at the Trump.  The lasers miss.

Turn 3:
The Trump and Howell reach short range.   The Trump fires 2 beam lasers, which miss.  The Howell launches sand and another missile.
The Wheel O' Death maintains vector and fires 2 pulse lasers at the Howell, which miss. And 2 missiles vs. the Trump.

Turn 4:
The Trump uses its lasers to intercept one of the missiles approaching it.
The Howell launches another missile.  The missile it launched on turn 2 impacts the Wheel for 6 hits, damaging its computer (twice), the jump drive, the missile turret, and 2 hull hits.
The Wheel O' Death fails its damage control attempt.  One of its earlier missiles strikes the Trump for 3 hits (power plant, fuel, cargo) and 2 others hit the Howell for 6 hits (turrret, computer, hold x2, hull x1, fuel x1)

Turn 5
Now as the ships are flying away from each other,  the Trump repairs its power plant.  The Howell repairs its turret and launches a missile.
2 previous missiles strike the Wheel.  One does 2 hull hits.  The other does 2 fuel hits, 1 computer hit, 1 hull hit, and a turret hit.

At this point the Wheel O' Death might possibly escape but has not chance of winning.  Another missile hit might be really bad news.

LESSONS LEARNED:

The -1 to hit with lasers vs ships from 100 to 400 tons, is crippling to laser fire.   Generally speaking the laser fire this battle was compeltely weak, only managing to get one hit (on a missile).   I'm definitely going to have to say a natural 12 is automatically a hit.   Also, the big lesson is that if you have a crappy computer, and crappy gunners, then your lasers are going to miss....a lot.

Space Ship Play Test 1

I drew 2 starships out of my deck of examples to do a playtest battle.   They were exactly evenly matched, so that was good.  It was the 200ton Yatch "The Bonanza" and the 200 ton Safari Ship "The Livingston"  each had 1 turret with a missile launcher and a sand caster.  They each had maneuver-1, and computer-1.

I tried out my sensor/detection/surprise rule and that worked pretty well.  Neither detected the other round 1, but round 2 the Livingston detected the Bonanza without being detected, and so the Livingston got surprise on the Bonanza, and began the battle coming in from the right-rear, about 6 inches away, with both ships at a 4 inch vector.

Turn: 1:
Both sides fired a missile at the other and launced sand for protection.  However, since the missiles were following the ship's vector, the Bonanza's missile was "going the wrong way" and had a lot to overcome.  Livingston keeps steady vector, Bonanza accelerates to 5 inches.

Turn 2:
The Livingston's first missile strikes the Bonanza, knocking out its cargo, maneuver drive, computer, ATV and air/raft.  Livingston launches 2nd missile, but keeps steady vector to keep sand protection.
The Bonanza crew repairs the maneuver drive.    Its first missile does not reach the Livingston.  It launches a second missile.

Turn 3:
Livingston's 2nd missile is still in flight.  Livingston launches 3rd missile.
Bonanza accelerates to 6 inches.   Bonanza's first missile finally hits the Livingston, the sand does not protect,  the attack does 1 hull hit and knocks out the computer.  Missile 2 is still in flight, missile 3 is launched.

Turn 4
Livingston continues forward on its vector.  It's second missile impacts the Bonanza for 4 hits:  hitting the ship's boat, the turret, the computer (again) and making 1 hull hit.   At this point it is clear that the Livingston has won the battle.

LESSONS LEARNED:
I am certainly glad I did this battle first.   The vector movement is fun--and Newton is a hard master.  The biggest eye opener is how much a pain in the ass vector movement is for MISSILES.  I ony had 2 missile launchers in operation, and only 5-6 missiles were launched, but that is far too many to keep track of.   I'm going to have to say that missiles are launched one turn and impact at a set time in a later turn, and not track them on the map, I just can't imagine tracking a Patrol cruiser launching 6 missiles a turn at a Mercenary cruiser launching 12 in return.

I am also going to have to tighten up some of the damage descriptions, to determine what is destroyed and what merely damaged.

Campaign Thoughts

The trouble with Traveller is the wide variety of directions a campaign could go:  mercenary, pirates, merchant-adventurers, guys bumming around in a scout ship looking for trouble.   I think that when we start, maybe we'll do a space battle, then a ground battle, all with pre-gens.  Then, roll up actual characters once people know what's what.   Then we'll see if the party has its own ship or not and whether their all gun-monkeys or space dudes or a mix.

Small Ship Universe

In the original form of Traveller, ships were limited to 5000 tons (each ton equalling 14 m3, the volume of 1 ton of liquid hydrogen), but with military ships practically limited to about 2000 tons.  Most ships players could get their hands on were 100-800 tons.

When High Guard, book 5, came out, the limit was raised to about 1,000,000 tons.   In additon to the adventurer sized ships, now all the militaty main fighting vessels were 10's of thousands of tons, up to a million tons.

Apparaently, people fought huge battles using gigantic ships in tournaments and set-pieces.  But for me, this took the focus away from PC level action.   In original Traveller, if you got a mercenary cruiser, it could potentially stand up to any naval vessel you'd meet, but once High Guard ships were in play, it went from a useful naval vessel to something that really didn't qualify even as a naval escort.

In various interweb discussions, the Big Ship people claim that if the worlds aren't building huge expensive ships, they'd just be swamping the PC's in hordes of smaller ships.  I say, phooey.   I find the small ship universe much more appealing.  I prefer a loose, distant, corrupt imperium that cobbles together everything on the frontiers, to one that is omnipresent, tight and is aware and invincible.   THe small ship universe means the stuff players do iin their ships can actually count for something.

Star Ships

Coming up with a set of Startship rules has turned out to be pretty straight forward.  I wanted to do "Vector Movement" the way that Classic Book 2 did, and it turns out that the stand-alone game "Mayday" explained a way to do that which is much simpler than the original form.

I'm thinking that I want to stick to the original Book 2 "Small Ship Universe" where the biggest ships are about 5000 displacement tons (not the million plus of High Guard).   I may whip up a few rules adding fusion guns and partical accelerators to the basic game, and lumping several turrets into a battery for larger ships.

The Traveller Depth

The thing about Traveller is that there is such a huge amount of material.  There was Classic Traveller (9 "Books", 13 "supplements", 13 "adventures", 6 "double adventures", 7 'games" and a bunch of other stuff),   MegaTraveller ( a rework of the system, with a big shake up of the campaign universe, much of the stuff compatable with Classic, much not),  Traveller: The New Era (several books, none of the crunch compatable with the other 2),  Traveller 4 (new system, partially compatable with CT),  GURPS Traveller (looks of books, but it was GURPS),  Mongoose Traveller (in print now, very similar to CT but somewhat moderninzed),  Traveller d20 (had the traveller vibe, but was d20), and the initial files for Traveller 5 (on a CD).

I have them all.  Not every piece from every edition, but at least the core book and 3-4 books from each.

The damnest thing is that each one of has awesome bits and not awesome bits.

Classic Traveller:  is lean and loose, but has some weird intersections and holes.  It has 2 different starship design and combat sets of rules.  The designs are fun, but the basic system has computer rules that are way too 1970's, and the advanced system is made for huge squadron battles and abstracts away all the movement.  The personal combat system works for the basic weapons, but gets really broken when you add the additional high tech weapons from Mercenary.
Striker:  was a 15mm miniatures game for fighting small scale battles in the Traveller universe.  It contained rules for integrating into regular Traveller, and had a complete design sequence for vehicles, which the main rules did not have.  I've always loved Striker.  The design sequence is not fast and easy, however.  It's probably harder to design a Striker truck than a CT space battleship.  However, I've probably collected more than enough vehicles from the interwebs to not need to worry about desiging any more.
MegaTraveller: is an excellently integrated whole, but impossibly clunky in certain areas (combat and craft construction especially).  It has the best vehicle book (101 vehicles)
TNE:  okay that's the one I'd just as soon ignore completely.
T4:  good character generation and combat, and the best weapon book (Emperor's Arsenal), but the books are of widely different quality--some excellent (Emperor's Arsenal, Mileau 0), some are the absolute worst (Starships, First Survey, Emperor's vehicles).  The Weapon book and the Vehicle book, don't even have compatable statistics.  There's one other really annoying feature.  The most common roll you make is 2 and a Half d6's/  I really hate that half die business, and it almost wrecks the game.
T5:  interesting features, but far, far too crunchy.
T20:   I just don't want to deal with d20 NPC's anymore.  It do the best at allowing starships, vehicles and personal weapons all interact with the other levels of carnage.
Mongoose Traveller; is actually pretty good.  I only have one or two books, and really don't want to invest in the whole range again.  I don't think it adds all that much to one of the other versions.
GURPS Traveller:  I liked the StarMercs book alot, but am just not a GURPS guy.

What am I thinking?  Right now, I think I'd like to play a Classic Traveller base game.  I'd replace the personal combat rules with stuff from Striker.  I'd add a few rules from MegaTraveller to give the characters a few extra skills during character generation.  I'd use High Guard (CT book 4) for ship design, but cobble together rules from various editions to get a space combat system that allowed for maximum PC input.

The Bug

I know I haven't posted here for a long while.   Winter time is always the worst for me for getting enthused about anything.  I also was enjoying just playing in Andrew's campaign and not thinking about the world of rules and campaign management for awhile.  Now that spring has returned and my return to head chair approaches, the "Workshop" beckons and I'm starting to spend time tinkering again.

However, my interest has taken it's most horrifying and terrible form, a malady I call "The Bug", i.e., "Travelller Fever."  For some strange reason, The Bug has not manifested itself in actual play with our game group out of proportion to anything else.  We did do the Playtest Campaign for D20 Traveller, the creation of which I was deeply involved with.   We also did a Striker miniatures battle a long time ago.  Perhaps I sublimated The Bug into Space Bastards, and Space Bastards d20.  In any case in the last 13 years I seem to not have done a real Traveller campaign at all.   Now I have the Bug.   We'll have to see how it develops.