Here are some perennial issues about
Traveller, and what I decided for my Universe.Here are some perennial issues about
Traveller, and what I decided for my Universe.Missile Magazine rules for HG 2nd ed.
Crew vs. Passenger Stateroom Use
Habitable Duration of Quarters
Jump Drive Capacitors (and why they can't be used to power fighters)
Meson Guns as Particle Accelerators
Critical Hits and Planetoid Hulls
Minimal defensive requirements
Alternate Rules for Book 2 Power Plants
Extended Tables for Nuclear Dampers and Meson Screens
In My Traveller
Universe Codes
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Jump DrivesThe jump space universe is distinct from our "normal" universe, and does not conform to the same physics rules. Even after thousands of years of research, Imperial scientists understand only small bits of the jump universe. One of the major problems with understanding, is that so far the jump universe has been almost entirely unavailable for experimentation. The nature of jump Drives creates a bubble of normal space that seems to travel through a portion of jump space. Many people wonder what might happen when a ship going at high velocity (high enough for relativistic effects to become obvious) that enters jump space. The norm for starships is to be going fairly slowly with reference to the planet they are leaving. There have been a few well conducted experiments concerning ships moving at relativistic speeds upon entering jump Space. Due to the limited number of experiments, statistically significant results are not possible, but interesting numbers came out of the experiments anyway. As seasoned travelers know, the time spent in jump is somewhat variable, but lasts about a week. The ships that went into jump while going very fast tended to come out of jump toward the earlier end of that range, but none of them was below the lower end of the time range for jumps. Ships that misjump tend to be on the longer end of the time range, and sometimes are very much longer. Misjumps seem to occur slightly more often for vessels going very fast in the normal universe, but again not enough to be statistically significant.
In the CT era, Imperial scientists have the best understanding of jump space of any of the Major Races, yet the Imperial understanding of jump space is still at a mostly empirical stage. Experiments with jump drives of different configurations, the first use of drop tanks, and the new concept of jump nets are all part of a significant effort on the part of Imperial scientsts to understand jump space better. There are standing orders at all Imperial starports to record all information available from mis-jumps and forward them to the Imperial government.
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Thruster plate limitsDue to the way thruster plates are designed (and the physics that allows them to exist), the maximum G rating available is 6Gs. Anti-grav modules can provide larger forces, but are only useful within a significant gravity well. Because of this, HePlaR drives still exist, expecially as drives for deep space vessels that need high acceleration.
The 6G limitation is IMTU a function of the gravitics theories and technologies that allow thruster plates. Ships using reaction engines are able to go faster, but tend to be fuel limited (HEPlaR and such), and vessels using anti-grav modules are not limited on speed but performance drops off rapidly beyond low orbit and are useless beyond 10 D.
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Missile Magazine rules for HG 2nd ed.
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Crew vs. Passenger Stateroom UseThis is my take on the crew vs. passenger stateroom issue:
I will be making a comparison to the seating arrangements used in present-day airliners (not anything else about the planes nor their economics). I would suggest that High Passage is similar to First Class - big and fancy seats, good food, lots of personal attention from the crew, let on the ship first, etc. Middle Passage would be similar to Business Class - seats almost (or as big as) First Class, but the surroundings and food not quite as nice or fancy, with less attention from the crew, and the seats in a less desirable place in the ship. Low Passage would be Economy Class or Steerage - minimal room and minimal attention from the crew, and located wherever the rest of the passengers are not. Crew get decent or minimal accomodations (depending on their position), but a lot of the crew are not going to be using them much because of taking care of the ship and passengers.
The reason(s) for allowing two crew to the stateroom in the OTU and only allowing one passenger (HP _or_ MP) to the stateroom may be: 1. Passengers are expected to be in their staterooms a good part of the time, while crew are expected to _not_ be in their staterooms most of the time. This allows the crew roommates to adjust their schedules so they don't interfere with each other, or so their schedules coincide as they wish (subject to staffing needs of course). 2. Force of custom may be the reason for this, as it may have been this way since Vilani times and no one feels a strong need to change it. 3. Imperial law or mandates may dictate how many passengers can be in each stateroom for "safety" reasons or some such. 4. This may be the way the MegaCorp liners do things, so any passenger will expect to be treated fairly similarly on the smaller lines. 5. Imperial tax incentives. 6. ???
Reason 1 seems most likely to be the case, with reason 3 being a good second choice, and reasons 2 and 4 seem somewhat weak to me. I am sure we can come up with other reasons, the tax concept put forward by Jeff on the 14th being one of them. Of course the "real reason" may be some combination instead of just one.
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Habitable Duration of QuartersFor short duration (max 12 hrs) acceleration couches (1 per person) are used. 0.5 ton, Cr25,000.
For long duration (up to two weeks) a small-craft stateroom can be used. Small-craft staterooms have less extensive entertainment, storage, and environmental systems than their larger cousins. Two people can use a small-craft stateroom (by hot-bunking), but this also halves the effective duration to 1 week. Small-craft staterooms are not allowed in starships in the 3I, because the variable nature of time between planetfall for ships that jump. 2 tons, Cr50,000.
For longer duration (up to four weeks) a half stateroom can be used for crew on starships or small craft. With more entertainment, more storage, and recycling capabilities in the environmental systems, the half stateroom can cover most of the possible variations in jump travel. In the 3I half staterooms are not double-occupied (though they could be in an emergency, reducing the effective duration to 2 weeks - just barely enough to complete a jump). 2 tons, Cr250,000.
For the longest duration (effectively unlimited assuming resupply is available from cargo stores) a full stateroom is used. The larger space available minimizes the psychological stress on the individual, and the full share of the environmental system allows prolonged cruises. A full stateroom is required in the 3I for each passenger a starship is rated to carry. 4 tons, Cr500,000.
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Stateroom ContentsConsider that half or more of the stateroom space on a starship is "occupied" by corridors, communal areas, piping and other environmental systems.
The full size stateroom floorspace is probably 8 ft x 10 ft with two beds that fold out of the walls (large enough to have the beds down and still use the desk with its separate chair and washbasin at the same time). RL example: this is about the size of my current cube at work.
A half stateroom is probably 8 ft x 5 ft (large enough to have the bed down for use as a couch during the day, and the bed probably doubles as the chair for the fold down desk). RL example: this is about the size of my old small cube at work.
A small craft stateroom may be 8 ft x 3 ft (if you want to fold up the bed to get at the desk XOR the washbasin - not both at the same time, you have to wiggle off the end of it). RL example: this is the size of many bedroom closets in US homes.
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Jump Drive Capacitors (and why they
can't be used to power fighters)Start of Off-the-cuff response
As far as capacitor powered fighters, we could restrict jump drive capacitors to those ships that have jump drives. Of course that begs the question of why we should so restrict them. Perhaps the jump drive capacitors are designed to interact with jump space somehow, which is also why they can have such wildly high energy densities (part of that energy is in jump space?). This might also suggest that black globes are based on jump drive technology somehow, which is why they connect to the jump drive capacitors. By extension this would also mean that black globes could only be put on jump drive equipped ships.
To further limit the strategic utility of black globes and the general concept of using capacitors to power a ship, it could be ruled that since jump drive capacitors are designed to release their energy in one swell foop to open jump space for the ship (which takes a few seconds once the button is pushed), any long term use (meaning powering ship systems for HG turns of 20 minutes) will strain and/or damage the capacitors in ways that make annual maintenance a quarterly (or monthly?) procedure and requires a full replacement of the capacitors each 10 (or 5?) years instead of lasting the life of the ship.
End of Off-the-cuff response
Obviously this response MUST BE CONSIDERED AS A HG VARIANT since no such restrictions are written in the rules. This does answer both the question of capacitor powered fighters/ships and how capacitors have such high energy densities.
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Piracy and Commerce RaidingThere are a variety of thoughts on the topic of piracy and commerce raiding. Those whose TUs try to be fairly consistent with current physics will usually say it is almost impossible to hide a functioning ship in "empty" space. The IR signature is pretty much a dead giveaway that there is a ship out there. IR emissions can be shielded from a small arc with good insulation, but not from the whole ship. Submarines are not a good comparison in "realistic physics" universes. A better comparison would be surface ship vs. surface ship. If you can see them, they can almost certainly see you (except in unusual circumstances). They may not know what KIND of ship you are until you are much closer, but they can almost always tell you are there. 2300AD had this mode pretty well described - you could see a bogie (a black ping pong ball when using miniatures) very far away and you then had to successfully roll to get a sensor lock before knowing what class of ship it was. Surprise in the sense of "I didn't know they were there" is very unusual, but surprise in the sense of "I thought that was a Type-S Scout until it started shooting with four turrets" is not terribly unusual.
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Book 2 Standard DrivesI've always thought (once HG came out) that the B2 drives are TL15 designs, ruthlessly optimized, and reduced to the construction level of "insert tab A into slot B." This is how you can build a B2 Jump drive A at TL9 and have it do Jump 2 (in a 100dt hull) when J-2 is really a TL11 capability. This is also for maintenance needs, making the drives capable of being maintained at fairly low TL facilities and still work properly.
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Manned TurretsI figure that if you have a gunner in a manned turret, he/she can use any or all of the weapons in that turret. High Guard is assuming unmanned slave turrets set to work as a unit, fired by a gunner at a workstation, or having one manned turret that has the others in the battery slaved to it. This is why in HG you can have one gunner per battery, in contrast to the one gunner per turret in Book 2.
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Close Structure definitionI have always assumed dispersed structure to be an open frame with stuff attached to it. The ship Discovery in _2001_ is a good example. A close structure I have always envisioned as essentially boxy and not aerodynamic. Many of the larger warships in Supplement 9 are described as close structures, and the pictures tend to be of boxes with stuff sticking out. Examples from Sci-Fi would be the Battlestar Galactica (blunt and boxy, not capable of atmospheric entry), and all versions of the Enterprise so far shown (saucer secion vaguely aerodynamic if separated from the rest of the ship, but incapable of atmospheric entry as a whole).
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SalvageIt certainly appears to me that computers and weapons would easily transfer from ship to ship (though conceivably an especially large computer core would have to have a hole cut through the hull to get it out). I'm not sure the bridge and staterooms would be as easy to transfer, though that depends on your ideas of them. The bridge is the nerve center of the ship, and as such is probably one of the last places completed. On most ships the bridge will not be slapdash or shoehorned into some out of the way space. Certainly some of the components (seats, consoles, etc.) will transfer easily, but I envision the bridge space as an integral part of the ship. One could design the bridge as a module, but I would put a note to that effect in the ship specifications were I doing such a design. On passenger vessels, I don't see the staterooms (at least the passenger ones) as being slapdash at all. Most passenger vessels will be very carefully designed around what will be easiest and most pleasant for the passengers. Crew quarters, on all ships, I imagine to be tucked into whatever space is left over, so the chrome that can be come up with is almost limitless for them.
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Crew Quarters ChromeFloor of quarters is an odd half-step up from the corridor to clear refit conduits on deck below. Roll against dexterity to deal with the step in an emergency.
Quarters have full volume, but there is a conduit right through the middle of it, making it necessary to do gymnastics to get around.
Quarters are stuck in an oddly shaped corner of the hull, and none of the standard sized components quite fit right.
Quarters have low ceiling and tall people are in constand danger of bumping their head.
Quarters open directly onto an engineering space. Clanks, hisses, and other engineering sounds are likely to disturb sleep until the person is used to them.
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Meson Guns as Particle AcceleratorsJTAS 13 has an article on P.A.weapons (and Meson weapons). It was written by David Emigh, who was one of the people GDW consulted when they designed High Guard. I will quote a few paragraphs here.
p7: "The third consideration [of why you can't have a P.A. with just one set of plates] is related to the fact that accelerated particles emit light and thus lose energy. For small acceleratioins this is not very important, but for larger ones it is a significant factor."
This suggests that P.A. weapons would be very visible when firing, essentially emitting a beam of light with the particles. Not being a nuclear physicist, I don't know if this light would be equivalent to a laser, or just a very bright regular light (though I suspect the light woudl be nearly monochromatic). This light may be part of the surface damage effects of a P.A. weapon.
p8: "A meson gun is actually two very high energy accelerators, one of which accelerates electrons and the other positrons. Both of these beams are directed to a point in space, and the two collide. One of the by-products of this collision will be mesons, produced in such a way that most of them will travel inthe direction of the target."
"The point at which the component beams meet will determine when the mesons are formed, and where they decay."
Unless your ship is significantly longer than your meson gun and you are willing to leave three paths free of anything interesting, then you wouldn't want to bury the P.A. "muzzles." Certainly the idea of having an armored cover for the muzzle when not in use is quite reasonable (and matches the OT canon quite well).
Planetary Defence MGs would have quite a large cavern where the MGs P.A. streams could converge unhindered. The inside of that cavern would be a nasty place for people when the MG is in use. [This brings up an image of a 007 type movie where the villain ties up the hero and leaves him in the MG cavern of a PD site just before a test firing.]
It would be an unusual circumstance, but I could imagine a GM imposing secondary effects to other ships when a MG fires (for ships in one or both of the divergent P.A. streams). This is the kind of thing most captains would ignore, but someone like Honor Harrington would use to good effect.
Based on this, you could use a Meson gun as a PA weapon if you adjusted the targeting somewhat. I suppose I would probably rule that a Meson gun used this way would only be about half as much a USP number as a PA than as a M.G. (i.e. a USP 8 M.G. could work as a USP 4 P.A.).
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Critical Hits and Planetoid HullsThe concept in my head is that a critical hit is destroying load bearing structures (among other things), and sometimes pieces of actual armor. Without the load bearing structures, the armor is much less useful. In HG the term 'armor' may also have greater compartmentalization included in it as an abstraction (GT pulls that out separately for example). In a planetoid hull, the extra armor is really a portion of the rock that has not been excavated, thus giving larger load bearing sections.
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Minimal defensive requirementsMost of you have done this figuring long ago to make your HG battles work in your favor, but I sat down and derived the minimum defensive requirements for the various attacks. All these cases assume equal computers (except for Repulsors).
To have any effect against a factor 9 missile attack, a sand caster battery needs to be at least factor 7. At TL 10+ this costs 4 hardpoints, 4 tons, MCr2.5, and 0 EP.
To have any effect against a factor 7 missile attack (the highest turret based factor), a sand caster battery needs to be at least factor 5. At TL10+ this costs 2 hardpoints, 2 tons, MCr1.5, and 0 EP.
To have any effect against a factor 9 missile attack, a beam battery needs to be at least factor 7. At TL13+ beam lasers cost 5 hardpoints, 5 tons, MCr15, and 15 EP. At TL13+ pulse lasers cost 10 hardpoints, 10 tons, MCr15, and 30 EP. At TL12+ plasma guns cost 10 hardpoints, 20 tons, MCr30, and 20 EP. At TL14+ fusion guns cost 5 hardpoints, 10 tons, MCr20, and 20 EP. Beam lasers are recommended in most cases.
To have any effect against a factor 7 missile attack (the highest turret based factor), a beam battery needs to be at least factor 5. At TL13+ beam lasers cost 2 hardpoints, 2 tons, MCr6, and 6 EP. At TL13+ pulse lasers cost 4 hardpoints, 4 tons, MCr5, and 10 EP. At TL12+ plasma guns cost 5 hardpoints, 10 tons, MCr15, and 10 EP. At TL14+ fusion guns cost 1 hardpoints, 2 tons, MCr2, and 2 EP. Fusion guns are recommended in most cases.
Repulsor bays of either size and any tech level are effective against factor 9 missile attacks unless the computer differential is greater than 4 in the attacker's favor. Repulsors cost 10 hardpoints, 50 or 100 tons, MCr6 or 10, and 5 or 10 EP. If you have hardpoints to spare, repulsors are less expensive than beam lasers.
To have any effect against a factor 9 missile attack, a nuclear damper needs to be at least factor 2. Factor 2 nuclear dampers cost 15 tons, MCr40, and 20 EP.
To have any effect against a factor 9 beam laser attack, a sand caster battery needs to be at least factor 6. The cost at TL10+ is 3 hardpoints, 3 tons, MCr2, and 0 EP.
To have any effect against a factor 9 fusion gun attack, a sand caster battery needs to be at least factor 8. The cost at TL10+ is 7 hardpoints, 7 tons, MCr5, and 0 EP.
To have any effect against a factor T Meson gun attack, a Meson screen needs to be at least factor 7. This costs 20 tons, MCr40, and 0.014 EP per ton of ship (=1.4 EP per 100 tons of ship).
To have any effect against a factor T Meson gun attack, the configuration of the defending ship needs to be 1 (needle/wedge), 7 (dispersed structure), or 9 (buffered planetoid).
There are no defenses against particle accelerator weapons aside from not getting hit. This means having a small, agile ship with a good computer. This is true for defense against all weapons, but especially P.A.s.
Missile defense: If you are limited by hardpoints and need to defend against missile attacks, put in sand caster turrets (at TL14+ you could save 1 hardpoint at an additional MCr0.5 and 2 EP if you don't need to defend against bay missile attacks). If you have hardpoints to burn, put in repulsor bays (they take more tonnage, but are far more effective - and in most cases will use fewer MCr and EP). If you expect nuclear missile attacks, you would do well to get a nuclear damper.
Beam defense: You probably want to put in at least 7 sand caster turrets, since this will help defend against both beams and missiles.
Meson defense: Meson screens cost a lot of power, but if you have the EP to spare, go for it. You almost certainly want to go with configuration of 1 unless there is some special reason to do otherwise.
P.A. defense: Try not to make any ship bigger than 19,999 tons, give it lots of agility, and get the best computer you can afford (again, this is true for defense against all weapons).
Armor doesn't keep you from being hit, or a hit from penetrating in HG. Armor minimizes damage that does hit and penetrate though. This is a different system than other games use, but it seems to work reasonably well.
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Alternate Rules for Book 2 Power
Plants
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Extended Tables for Nuclear Dampers
and Meson ScreensExtended Tables for Nuclear Dampers and Meson Screens
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K'Kree family sizeBy my reading, the minimum size of a K'Kree family will consist of 3 K'Kreer!: You can have a well-born patriarch of caste 2, with no wife, one bodyguard, and one servant. I suspect that three is the minimum size of vehicle crew as well. Since the huge majority (roll of 5-12 on 2D) of patriarchs will have at least one wife, and you can figure on at least a couple of kids or an extra servant or so, the smallest "normal" family will consist of 6 K'Kreer!. I would suggest that K'Kree ships will tend to have quarters added in groups of 6.
With a quarters group of 6, the minimum size of a TL9 1G J1 K'Kree ship is 377 tons (which leaves only a fraction of a ton for cargo). The minimum size for a similar TL15 ship is 368 tons (the 9 tons is accounted for by a smaller power plant). These numbers make it easier to see why K'Kree ships tend to be made in multiples of 1000 tons - you need that space to do anything more than just exist.
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Repulsor effectsMy assumption is that repulsors are tightly focussed so that even at B2/HG distances the force applied from the repulsor on the missiles would be across an area of a square meter or less. An M-drive would either be much less focussed (spreading out across a significant cone - perhaps even a hemisphere), or focussed much closer to the ship (as the "drive cones" behind many pictures of CT ships suggest).
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High Guard play balanceI had the opportunity last Saturday to introduce my 14 yr old nephew to the joys of High Guard battles. Since it was his first time playing HG (though he has played Warhammer 40k), I thought I would start out with a nice simple battle of one ship on each side. In trying to get started quickly, I decided to pull a couple of ships out of Supplement 9. I started out with the Chrysanthemum and Fer-De-Lance 1000 ton destroyer escorts, but since both of them have agility 6 and low USP weapons, they could hardly hit each other over many turns (this stalemate convinced me to drop this battle). This caused me to pull out the 30kton ships in Supplement 9 (I don't remember their names at the moment), and we came to a satisfactory conclusion after a much smaller number of turns. The nephew had to go home (though he is coming over again this Saturday!), but my 7yr old was impressed and demanded to play. I spent several hours on Sunday doing HG battles with him, using a variety of TL9 and 10 ships that we designed using HGS. I chose those TLs so we could possibly get more hits on each other, but they were still long battles with neither hitting the other for many turns in a row. Since I have mostly done ship designing with HG and not too many battles in the past, this brought out some points very clearly to me:
Most of these points have been brought out before, but this is first-hand experience for me.
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Jump EffectsQ: If two 100ton scouts are flying in normal space close beside each other, and #1Scout jumps, how will this effect #2Scout, who stays in normal space?
A: The first point is that they will be at least 100 diameters apart. That is a minimum distance of approximately 1400 meters for a spherical ship.
Unless the jumping ship is using drop tanks, there should not be any matter (aside from possibly some hydrogen) leaving the ship, so ship #2 won't be hit by anything. The more extreme of the "hydrogen fuel used to make jump bubble" advocates might postulate a bit of that hydrogen escaping the bubble formation, but that couldn't be more dense that a very high (100km+ altitude from size 8 planet) atmosphere level. Even unstreamlined ships should be able to fly through that without any danger.
If the jump process is primarily gravitational in nature, ship #2 might have a small vector added to whatever movement it already had. This might conceivably do uncomfortable things with loose objects inside ship #2, but should not damage the ship as a whole.
If the jump process is primarily electromagnetic in nature, ship #2 might become a pole that spare energy from the process might be attracted to. On the other hand, the energy level would need to be pretty high to bridge the gap of 1400 meters in a vacuum.
Some sources suggest a "blue glow" around a jumping ship. Nabbing an idea from C.C. MacApp's (or McApp - my copy is at home) book "Recall Not Earth" (an older book which I can't find on Amazon, oh well), perhaps the blue glow would affect other objects in the neighborhood of the jumping ship. In this concept, the glow would be more intense for more powerful jumps, so a 100 dton ship doing a jump 1 would induce a blue glow in ship #2 that was only visible to special instruments. A Tigress class dreadnought doing jump 4 would create a naked-eye-visible blue glow on all objects (including people) in ship #2.
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Turret CapacitiesHGv2 p30: "... Lasers, sandcasters, and missile racks may be mounted in any turret; energy weapons may be mounted in single or dual turrets..."
My interpretation of this is that you could mount a 2 ton energy weapon turret, put in one energy weapon, and the fill the other space in the turret with an energy weapon, laser, sandcaster, or missile rack. I would not allow a one ton "regular" turret to hold an energy weapon plus something else though.
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Small Craft Weapons FireHG v2 p34: (small craft design)
"The Bridge and Computer: ...A bridge allows operation of the craft; no computer is necessary. If no computer is installed, use factor zero for the computer. ... If a computer is installed, but no bridge is present, then the computer is treated as one level lower in combat..."
HGv2 p49: (Explanation of Damage Results)
"Bridge Destroyed: The ship may not maneuver or jump. It fires and is fired upon as if its computer were half its actual factor (rounding down)..."
"Computer Destroyed: The USP computer factor is reduced to zero; the ship may not jump, although it may continue to fire weapons and maneuver."
"Spinal Mount/Fire Control Out: ...on a roll of 4-6, fire control is out, and no weapons except the spinal mount may fire."
Note that HG does NOT say "no computer, no fire."
My suggestions based on the preceeding rules quotations and James' suggestion:
Rupert Boleyn says "You left out 'A computer is required if the craft is to mount weaponry.'"
He is correct, but I haven't reworked the above concepts yet to take account of my omission.
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Turret Weapon BatteriesDefining a battery as an oversize turret is one way of visualizing them, but I don't think that is what was intended. If you look at Fire, Fusion, and Steel (TNE I know, but I'm a gearhead...), they define Master Fire Directors which allow you to aggregate multiple turrets into one central control. My image of batteries (excluding bay and spinal weapons) is that they are regular turrets that hook into a centralized controller. The centralized controller (the MFD) is somewhat expensive, so wouldn't normally be put into a merchant ship. Part of the "Weapon -n" hits represent damage to the turret control circuits. IMTU I allow turrets in batteries to be manned individually, though normally they would be controlled by the centralized gunner. Most batteries don't bother manning the individual turrets though, since the navy wants to have more weapons pointed at the enemy, so they use the battery mode.
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Imperial vs. Local CurrencySince the Imperium is primarily a commercial union, IMTU the Imperial Credit is a valid form of cash payment anywhere in the Imperium or its client states for any interaction with governmental entities. Local worlds are _allowed_ to have their individual currencies if they wish (and most do). Any government entity (local or Imperial) is required to accept Imperial Credits. Bribes may be more acceptable in local currencies in some cases however. Arrangements for credit (the banking tool, not the currency) depend on the commercial entity you are working with; nearly all will accept Imperial Credits, though some will convert them immediately to local currency. Non-governmental entities are not required to work in Imperial Credits, but nearly all large and medium sized companies on a world will accept Imperial Credits. On the other hand, local shops like the vegetable stand in Out-of-way, Back-of-the-Boondocks, Ruie/Regina might only accept local currency. The MegaCorps all use Imperial Credits for their accounting (though again, a local bribe might be more acceptable in local currency).
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House RulesAt one point (1979), there hadn't been
rules published for the difference between Streamlined and Airframe hulls. I
came up with a quick 'rule' and said that a 'wing' (meaning Airframe) took 0.5
dtons per 50 squares on a deckplan (2 squares to the 'ton'), and cost MCr0.012.
I no longer use this house rule but a number of my early designs used it.
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Here are my IMTU Codes, along with
why I chose them.tc+ I appreciate the Classic Traveller ruleset and universe.
tm I use the MegaTraveller ruleset as a resource.
tn I use the Traveller the New Era ruleset as a resource.
t4 I use the Mark Miller's Traveller ruleset as a resource.
tg I think the Gurps version of Traveller is good to keep things alive, but I hate the measurement system (SI is so much better).
tt I use the Traveller:2300AD (2300AD) ruleset as a resource.
to+ I use the RuneQuest ruleset for tasks and combat.
ru I use the Traveller rules, more or less.
ge+ I like details about gear.
3i The 3I is a stable confederation, held together by the nobility of its population, but not all-powerful and overall not wealthy. Interplanetary trade is regular. Starports are common.
c+ Jump drives work sort of like this...
jt Jumpships under 100t might exist in experimental form -- but there are various problems with the design.
au+ Starship automation is commonplace. You still need crew normally, but the crew gets a lot of help from automation.
st Two timelines won't affect the game's popularity.
ls Life support can be do-it-yourself with off-the-shelf components.
pi Piracy only exists in the vacuum of government or corporate morals.
ta Drop tank-assisted jumps are usable at TL14+.
he(--) The material is fine as it is. (Marc Miller said it, I believe it, and that settles it.)
kk K'Kree have a funny aftertaste...
hi+ Hivers are convincingly alien. (They are the best-done aliens in SF-RPGs I have found).
as- I have some problems with Aslan.
va Vargr are okay.
dr+ Droyne are convincingly alien.
ith- I have some problems with Ithklur.
vr Virushi are okay.
ne Newts are okay.
so You know how humans are...
zh+ Basically a bunch of great guys.
vi You know how humans are...
da+ Basically a bunch of great guys, and they have a fun background and society.
sy You know how humans are...
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