David--
Good name! My parents gave me mine.
> [snip excellent exposition]
Thank you. I hope it didn't come out as too pedantic, but seriously, we
went around and around and around those issues for a significant amount of
time, so whenever the question comes up, the WHOLE furball gets summoned
out of my brain.
>> So it's background-focused more than anything.
>
> This makes more sense than any discussion I've ever read on the topic -
> THANK YOU! :-)
You're very welcome, and I am glad to have been able to, what, help
clarify some of that.
While I am talking about this, I must point out that John, Gary, Antony,
and the other guys' excellent FF&S efforts even as we speak remind me that
there are actually TWO issues about missiles, and I only discussed one of
them.
My discussion was based on the "classic" Traveller understanding of
missiles as something in the Terrier/Talos/Tartar/Nike/Hawk vein, rather
than the torrents of kinetic-kill grapeshot model, which is really a
separate issue.
First, in original Traveller, a missile rack had, as I recall, one missile
plus two or three reloads, so 3 or 4 missiles per rack for a total of 9 or
12 missiles per triple turret. After that the turret had to be replenished
through some more-or-less laborious process. So this was very much the
model of the single- or dual-armed missile launchers of the 50s, 60s, and
70s, before VLS came along. And as, face it, Traveller and classic SF
space fleet combat was modelled on 20th century naval warfare, that was
the model that we stayed with. These missiles were things that were in
relatively short supply and were used to make sure that each one (okay,
two, they usually fire them in pairs) counted, rather than big blasts of
dumb or terminally-guided grapeshot. Brooke-class FFGs had only 13
Tartars, C. F. Adams and Perrys had 40-42, the Talos ships had 40-some per
launcher, the double-ended Terrier ships had 80, and so on.
Second, the idea of firing big sheafs or torrents of individually cheap
slugs/projectiles/missiles, while it is clear you could make it work,
would have fundamentally changed the feel of Traveller space combat from
what had been established, so we stayed away from that completely. Just as
you noticed the "2300-like" quality of TNE, going to the torrents of KKMs
model would have drastically changed the feel of Traveller starship
combat. So we simply "looked the other way" and put out FF&S to allow
players who like that sort of thing to create it without saying,
"Everything you know about Traveller starship combat is wrong." (And we
went to great lengths to keep that feel. Gravitic-focusing was necessary
to allow lasers to do damage out at the established ranges. Also, the KKM
swarms model would make space travel MUCH more dangerous, as every single
grapeshot blast from every space battle in history would still be out
there, shredding Free Traders every time you looked up.) And this goes
back to the inescapable tension in Traveller between published background
and how we say things are, and the ability of the game to allow you to
create things that call that into question. While that is a little
confusing perhaps, we didn't like the idea of the "If your female dwarves
don't have beards, you're not playing AD&D" route (In Gary's defense, I
think he was kidding when he wrote that, but I don't think most readers
realized that). Instead, "The basic, traditional visualization of the game
says this, but if you want to try other things, we've got these design
rules."
So we have both TNE's understanding of "here is how relatively valuable
individual missiles work" as well as people exploring other possibilities,
and hopefully both groups are having fun.
> So one possible approach, one that allows both the before-and-after
> scenarios, is to say that prior to TNE only the Navy had such weapons, but
> afterwards the "rules" (Imperial, Of War) either disappeared (in the RCES
> area of ops) or were relaxed (in the Regency), allowing PCs to tote nukes
> aboard ship.
Exactly. That is the way I would look at it.
> Although I admit to allowing some trusted starmerc bands the possibility
> of having them as part of a Letter of Marque, even back in 1105. "Trusted"
> wasn't that onerous to prove either, since there was ALWAYS the threat of
> the real Impies coming down on you if you f---ed up:
> <http://members.tip.net.au/~davidjw/tavspecs/adifux/marque_a.htm>
Absolutely.
>> Low-end v. low-end is the niche I think we are maybe talking about
>
> I think you're right. But when I went back and read earlier in this
> thread, Derek reminded me that chemically-pump XRay laserheads were also
> developed in TNE, and they'll do just fine for the Regency or the CT-era.
Yeah, and that's maybe where we did allow for the "don't let everyone have
nukes" thing, but I didn't remember it.
>> I think I got at this above, with the Challenge article, where in Free
>> Trader vs. Far Trader scenarios, all lasers are PD lasers, so skin-skin
>> missiles still don't buy you that much.
>
> Got it. Rules change. I was still thinking of Striker's horribly
> high-priced PD.
Yeah, that's why I was putting "point defense" in quotes, as I didn't
recall PD being something you put on a starship, the thing you put on a
starship was the MFD.
>> God yes, as I hope the discussion above gives you some taste.
>
> Good to know it's not just list grognards, then. ;-) ;-)
To a large extent, we designers were like the worst of the grognards, with
the important exception that we had to keep pumping this stuff out to keep
the lights on, so made the best decisions we could at the time, and
expanded later.
Nice to meet you, David.
Dave