On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 1:43 PM, <> wrote:
>
>
> 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.
>
I remember finding the T2k stats for the M1A1 and the damage I came up with
was in the ballpark, so it was a good eyeball. Or perhaps better kudos to
FF&S, which is still one of my favorite products of any RPG, both for doing
justice to it's our source material aas well as a general sci fi primer
with all it's alternate tech.
>
> 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.
>
In that way, Traveller is definitely an interesting time capsule on small
arms theory as it was in the 70's and 80's as much as it's computer
paradigm.
> 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."
>
Course when you put it way seems easier to rationalize it as localized
preconceptions on the "right way" to do it... or just to be different.
Kinda like the Russians perpetuate some of the old Warsaw Pact theory and
logistics even though the Soviet Empire is long gone.
> 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."
>
>
>
Definitely makes sense. I'e said before, but what you "would have done" as
line manager isn't nearly as interesting to me as what you would do now as
a hobbyist unconstrained by the realities of employment with a production
schedule and deadlines, compromise, etc.
>
> > 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.
>
>
Yesterday I was inclined to do interpolated values to get a 1km short range
HRT. Today I was leaning on TL8 passive IR thinking the HRT sounds more
like the new FLIR in the AIM/D/SEP, and the FLIR from the M60A3 which our
(old school tankers raved about vs the TIS) - would be the TL7 HRT, skipped
for procurement/logistical/political issues in the M1 and M1A1. Now I'm
somewhere in the middle. Probably not that big of a nit to pick, either
way, though.
I did something similar for the radios, too, since SINCGARS performance
seems to fall in between the first couple table entries, as well.
>
>
> 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.
>
I remember finding the T2k stats for the M1A1 and the damage I came up with
was in the ballpark, so it was a good eyeball. Or perhaps better kudos to
FF&S, which is still one of my favorite products of any RPG, both for doing
justice to it's our source material aas well as a general sci fi primer
with all it's alternate tech.
>
> 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.
>
In that way, Traveller is definitely an interesting time capsule on small
arms theory as it was in the 70's and 80's as much as it's computer
paradigm.
> 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."
>
Course when you put it way seems easier to rationalize it as localized
preconceptions on the "right way" to do it... or just to be different.
Kinda like the Russians perpetuate some of the old Warsaw Pact theory and
logistics even though the Soviet Empire is long gone.
> 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."
>
>
>
Definitely makes sense. I'e said before, but what you "would have done" as
line manager isn't nearly as interesting to me as what you would do now as
a hobbyist unconstrained by the realities of employment with a production
schedule and deadlines, compromise, etc.
>
> > 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.
>
>
Yesterday I was inclined to do interpolated values to get a 1km short range
HRT. Today I was leaning on TL8 passive IR thinking the HRT sounds more
like the new FLIR in the AIM/D/SEP, and the FLIR from the M60A3 which our
(old school tankers raved about vs the TIS) - would be the TL7 HRT, skipped
for procurement/logistical/political issues in the M1 and M1A1. Now I'm
somewhere in the middle. Probably not that big of a nit to pick, either
way, though.
I did something similar for the radios, too, since SINCGARS performance
seems to fall in between the first couple table entries, as well.