IMHO still the undisputed heavyweight champ of Traveller fleet battle game systems (once fixed with Merrick's errata reproduced below).
version 1.1 February 11, 1996
This is the latest revision of my BR rules. The major change is
my total abandonment of the "outstanding hits do double
damage" crap that exists now. I have no idea what they were
thinking on this one, it makes playing the same exact
engagement in BL, then BR different almost every time. Try it
some time, and make sure to use a smaller ship with a MG (an
Aurora, perhaps) and a larger one with a decent meson
screen. Many times in BR the little MG will never be able to do
damage to the ship with the screen, but the same ship (or
better, group of smaller ships) can actually critical the big guy
in BL. sigh
I have also updated this to include the BR versions of my BL
rules additions.
Rules Fixes
All Additional Rules require certain fixes to be made to BR to
make it mimic BL better:
Term
Abbreviation
Active EMS
AEMS
Bogey Detection
BD
Brilliant Lances
BL
Battle Rider
BR
Difficulty Level
DL, DiffLevel
Difficulty Modifier
DM, DiffMod
Meson Gun
MG
Meson Screen
MS
Particle Accel. Weapon
PAW
Passive EMS
PEMS
Rate of Fire
ROF
Short Range
SR
Tech Level
TL
Task Difficulty Fix
All sensor, jammer, screen and fire tasks are 1 Difficulty Level
harder. This is a change in the Base Difficulty Level, this is not a
DiffMod!
This reflects the fact that all the tasks considered Average in
BL, mysteriously changed to Easy in BR, even though the BR
rules give a table for converting TNE task DiffLevels to BR, and
1=Easy, 2=Average, etc..
Overpowering DiffMod Clarification
Overpowering -DMs may only be used to counteract +DMs
(same as FC rating rule).
Missile Damage Clarification
Det-Laser missiles do 1-6 hits of damage value 2 (or 3), just
like BL.
Damage Fix
(another non-BL compatible screw-up)
I've been thinking about the way damage is handled in BR, and
it seems a little screwy. The fact that you add Outstanding Hits
together is what bugs me. It can be argued that this is to cover
for the lack of incremental damage, but it alters MG/MS
interactions too much.
The solution is not to add Outstanding hits together, but to treat
them as separate hits. This will kill MGs unless you fix the
screen task (which is broken to the extent that the same
combat will never come out the same in BL and BR if MGs are
involved). PAWs will be pretty weak against big ships as well,
but that is the case with BL so at least it will be consistent.
In a nutshell:
1.Treat all Outstanding Hits as two separate hits.
2.Do Meson Screen tasks as they are done in BL. This
means that you need to do the following:
1.Meson gun hits target (outstanding hit counts as 2
hits *not* added together)
2.Lookup BL value of MG attack (chart at near end of
BR). Lookup BL value of MS (same chart).
3.Do the meson screen task, but with the following
DMs:
if the BL MG value exceeds the MS value by 2+ times,
DM=+1
if the BL MG value exceeds the MS value by 4+ times,
DM=+2
if the BL MS value exceeds the MG value by 4+ times,
DM=-1
4.Roll (draw card) the task. A success means the
MG attack is negated, a failure means the attack
succeeds and does full damage.