Thanks, Jake.
IIRC, the T2Kv2.2 vehicles should all have been eyeballed, but maybe
updated compared to T2K2 to reflect newer information or game mechanics.
The reason for this is that we did it in about 10 days start to finish.
Frank came in one day and said that since TNE was running late and
wouldn't be out in time for the summer con season, we needed a big release
for the summer cons. So we dropped everything and put out T2Kv2.2. So
there would not have been time to design them all from FF&S.
What you say about the ETC guns was a blend of on-purpose and less on
purpose.
It was definitely on purpose in that in TNE we believed very strongly in
chemical energy storage. Chemical energy is just a great way to store
energy. Maybe not as flexible as gas tanks or electricity, but compact and
efficient. And since ETC raises chemical energy to the next level,
perfecting it effectively, it was supposed to be the bomb. And all of that
was based on current weapons research, so was as realistic as we could
make it.
The less on-purpose part I'm less happy about. By 1993-4 Traveller had
established so many categories of alternative weapons (slug throwers, ETC
slug-throwers, lasers, plasma/fusion weapons, gauss/rail/EM weapons) as
being "in use" in the game that it made it very difficult to work out what
their ecological niches would be. I am a stickler for trying to make sure
that the way you say things work in a game is REALLY how they would work.
Hence my disdain for the "Picard Maneuver." And it was very important for
me to try to make sure we worked it all out in advance as much as we
could. My previous discussion about space combat missiles is an example of
the time we would spend on that. In the "real" "future," if there is such
a thing, you would see the laws of practicality working out which families
of weapons would actually pan out and replace or supplant each other as
time went by. You wouldn't have a bunch of parallel approaches supposedly
living side-by-side, not if raw physics and economics showed that one was
more cost-effective than the others. However, by 1993 had a sixteen-year
backlog of established designs saying Imperial tanks used fusion guns,
Zhodani tanks used lasers, these guys use gauss rifles, those guys use
ACRs, etc. And there was simply not enough time to take each and every one
of those design sequences and really work out all of the macro-economics
on them to say, "at TL X, people use this, at TL Y this one is better."
Besides, even if we had, that would have upset people, because they had
certain facts in their heads, that a "TL 15 Trepida Grav Tank" used a
fusion gun. So we basically left established, popular weapons in place so
that people could still play with them, even though in some cases they
didn't follow from tested logic. And as I'm sure you can imagine, in order
to do all of that right would have required a lot of detailed, fiddly
redesign of the design sequences to make sure, "At TL A, tech P becomes
better than tech Q, so sand off a little performance on Q here, pump up a
little performance on P there." In an ideal world, that's what we would
have done. Ideal worlds come around only infrequently. Another artifact of
that is the huge mish-mash of weapons in Striker II units. They are
basically like that because we had rated up all of these classic Traveller
weapons (gauss rifles, ACRs, LAGs, etc.) that were established as being
used by people, and people needed to be able to see them in the game.
One more tension between "in-game realism" and established "in-game facts"
and the complexity of trying to make a design sequence for every
technology imaginable, and the fact that time is incompressible. People
sometimes ask me, "what would you do differently," and the answer always
comes out, "not much," because the only way to have done anything
differently was to somehow have had more time that we didn't have. You
can't say, "I would have been taller, or better looking, or have a
prehensile tail," and you also can't say, "I would have had 336 hours in a
week instead of 168."
Dave
> Good stuff guys.
>
> On the Abrams - you should use HRT as the thermals. As TLs advance you
> replace HRT with passive EMS. Earlier TLs use the passive IR sensors
> before HRT becomes available. You can also give the Abrams 300m short
> range HRT to start and then upgrade it to 3km short range HRT for later
> variants.
>
> Dave - I always wondered if the TW2k 2.2 AFVs were designed with FF&S (as
> it was the same game system by then) or were 'eyeballed'. There are books
> and books of modern AFVs and weapons for TW2k 2.2 if people want modern
> equipment.
>
> The 120mm ETC autocannon is (as we've discussed before on this list) one
> of the best all-round weapons at ANY tech level using the design rules of
> FF&S. It simply outclasses anything else on bang-for-buck. Fusion
> weapons are still neutered, even after Striker-II. Mass drivers take too
> much power. Ordinary CPR run out of puff. ETC weapons are the bomb!
>
> For Striker-II battles I always equip my vehicles with ETC autocannon if
> designing from scratch. My mercenary unit 'Devlin's Dragoons' use some
> nasty grav tanks with frontal armour proof against all the standard
> Imperial fusion guns and packing ETC autocannon that out-range and
> out-penetrate them. Who knows why the Imperium sticks with fusion (I
> usually handwave it with vague references to ammo resupply in
> expeditionary operations at stellar distances).
>
> --- In , dcndcn13@... wrote:
>>
>> > Yessir, sorry I guess I should make it a habit to sign my emails.
>>
>> No problem. It's just that when I hit reply on this webmail all I see in
>> the To: block is the group, and in order to see who sent it I have to
>> save
>> the draft, back out of it, etc.
>>
>> > Excellent. Do you have the designs anywhere? On that Mac you can't
>> get
>> > into perhaps?
>>
>> Probably. However, I have recovered them from storage, and will try to
>> get
>> into them. Only one of them should have been PW protected, and the other
>> should allow me to read the floppies, and back in the day most of our
>> work
>> was stored on floppies rather than HDs, and I have found a couple of
>> floppies.
>>
>> > I recall the "Rapira" 120mm ETC gun from Challenge that the Oriflammen
>> > retrofitted on Intrepid-120's as well. Your work, as well?
>>
>> Yes. That was one of those designs that I had to do to match up with an
>> illo. Rather than saying, "you drew that tank wrong," it was an
>> opportunity to say, "Cool, variant."
>>
>
>
>
IIRC, the T2Kv2.2 vehicles should all have been eyeballed, but maybe
updated compared to T2K2 to reflect newer information or game mechanics.
The reason for this is that we did it in about 10 days start to finish.
Frank came in one day and said that since TNE was running late and
wouldn't be out in time for the summer con season, we needed a big release
for the summer cons. So we dropped everything and put out T2Kv2.2. So
there would not have been time to design them all from FF&S.
What you say about the ETC guns was a blend of on-purpose and less on
purpose.
It was definitely on purpose in that in TNE we believed very strongly in
chemical energy storage. Chemical energy is just a great way to store
energy. Maybe not as flexible as gas tanks or electricity, but compact and
efficient. And since ETC raises chemical energy to the next level,
perfecting it effectively, it was supposed to be the bomb. And all of that
was based on current weapons research, so was as realistic as we could
make it.
The less on-purpose part I'm less happy about. By 1993-4 Traveller had
established so many categories of alternative weapons (slug throwers, ETC
slug-throwers, lasers, plasma/fusion weapons, gauss/rail/EM weapons) as
being "in use" in the game that it made it very difficult to work out what
their ecological niches would be. I am a stickler for trying to make sure
that the way you say things work in a game is REALLY how they would work.
Hence my disdain for the "Picard Maneuver." And it was very important for
me to try to make sure we worked it all out in advance as much as we
could. My previous discussion about space combat missiles is an example of
the time we would spend on that. In the "real" "future," if there is such
a thing, you would see the laws of practicality working out which families
of weapons would actually pan out and replace or supplant each other as
time went by. You wouldn't have a bunch of parallel approaches supposedly
living side-by-side, not if raw physics and economics showed that one was
more cost-effective than the others. However, by 1993 had a sixteen-year
backlog of established designs saying Imperial tanks used fusion guns,
Zhodani tanks used lasers, these guys use gauss rifles, those guys use
ACRs, etc. And there was simply not enough time to take each and every one
of those design sequences and really work out all of the macro-economics
on them to say, "at TL X, people use this, at TL Y this one is better."
Besides, even if we had, that would have upset people, because they had
certain facts in their heads, that a "TL 15 Trepida Grav Tank" used a
fusion gun. So we basically left established, popular weapons in place so
that people could still play with them, even though in some cases they
didn't follow from tested logic. And as I'm sure you can imagine, in order
to do all of that right would have required a lot of detailed, fiddly
redesign of the design sequences to make sure, "At TL A, tech P becomes
better than tech Q, so sand off a little performance on Q here, pump up a
little performance on P there." In an ideal world, that's what we would
have done. Ideal worlds come around only infrequently. Another artifact of
that is the huge mish-mash of weapons in Striker II units. They are
basically like that because we had rated up all of these classic Traveller
weapons (gauss rifles, ACRs, LAGs, etc.) that were established as being
used by people, and people needed to be able to see them in the game.
One more tension between "in-game realism" and established "in-game facts"
and the complexity of trying to make a design sequence for every
technology imaginable, and the fact that time is incompressible. People
sometimes ask me, "what would you do differently," and the answer always
comes out, "not much," because the only way to have done anything
differently was to somehow have had more time that we didn't have. You
can't say, "I would have been taller, or better looking, or have a
prehensile tail," and you also can't say, "I would have had 336 hours in a
week instead of 168."
Dave
> Good stuff guys.
>
> On the Abrams - you should use HRT as the thermals. As TLs advance you
> replace HRT with passive EMS. Earlier TLs use the passive IR sensors
> before HRT becomes available. You can also give the Abrams 300m short
> range HRT to start and then upgrade it to 3km short range HRT for later
> variants.
>
> Dave - I always wondered if the TW2k 2.2 AFVs were designed with FF&S (as
> it was the same game system by then) or were 'eyeballed'. There are books
> and books of modern AFVs and weapons for TW2k 2.2 if people want modern
> equipment.
>
> The 120mm ETC autocannon is (as we've discussed before on this list) one
> of the best all-round weapons at ANY tech level using the design rules of
> FF&S. It simply outclasses anything else on bang-for-buck. Fusion
> weapons are still neutered, even after Striker-II. Mass drivers take too
> much power. Ordinary CPR run out of puff. ETC weapons are the bomb!
>
> For Striker-II battles I always equip my vehicles with ETC autocannon if
> designing from scratch. My mercenary unit 'Devlin's Dragoons' use some
> nasty grav tanks with frontal armour proof against all the standard
> Imperial fusion guns and packing ETC autocannon that out-range and
> out-penetrate them. Who knows why the Imperium sticks with fusion (I
> usually handwave it with vague references to ammo resupply in
> expeditionary operations at stellar distances).
>
> --- In , dcndcn13@... wrote:
>>
>> > Yessir, sorry I guess I should make it a habit to sign my emails.
>>
>> No problem. It's just that when I hit reply on this webmail all I see in
>> the To: block is the group, and in order to see who sent it I have to
>> save
>> the draft, back out of it, etc.
>>
>> > Excellent. Do you have the designs anywhere? On that Mac you can't
>> get
>> > into perhaps?
>>
>> Probably. However, I have recovered them from storage, and will try to
>> get
>> into them. Only one of them should have been PW protected, and the other
>> should allow me to read the floppies, and back in the day most of our
>> work
>> was stored on floppies rather than HDs, and I have found a couple of
>> floppies.
>>
>> > I recall the "Rapira" 120mm ETC gun from Challenge that the Oriflammen
>> > retrofitted on Intrepid-120's as well. Your work, as well?
>>
>> Yes. That was one of those designs that I had to do to match up with an
>> illo. Rather than saying, "you drew that tank wrong," it was an
>> opportunity to say, "Cool, variant."
>>
>
>
>