> I disliked the 2cm LAG intensely.
Why? Not arguing, I'm just contrasting that with the way Loren and I loved
it for being a big goofy thing and the flavor it added.
> I was kind of a firm believer that fuel for Jump was consumed during
jump
> to maintain the jump envelope.
I kinda sorta agree. What I mean by that is "gradual burn to maintain the
envelope" was always in my mind as a ref, coupled with enough "sudden
burn" to "tear the hole" (and the TNE workings of Jump Space, Jump Drives,
entry angle of attack, "tracking/predicting" jumps, etc., would have been
some of the stuff I included in the TNE "Ref Ref" ["Referee's Reference,"
I just realized the ideal name]), BUT that has to be tempered by the
established fact of drop tanks. My hand-wave for that is that is why Jump
Drives contain that very high percentage of capacitors (established in
Book 5, I think, for use with Black Globes): some of that "instant burn"
goes straight into tearing the hole, and part into the capacitors, where
it is spent to maintain the jump envelope. So my ruling would have
disallowed your rule that allowed just-in-time refining in jump, but you
can obviously rule otherwise "IMTU."
By the way, I will indulge my sense of "remembering moments in other
moments" for a bit, I just learned that my grandmother died. Clara
Robinson reached 100 years of age this past year. She was a fine lady, a
merry soul, and remained her lucid, merry self to the end: a good, tough
old Norwegian. She died almost exactly 30 years to the day (within 12
hours) after her husband, Edwin D. ("Easy Dog") Robinson, who appeared as
a character in the 2300 adventure "Ranger," with which connection I can
smoothly return you to our list in progress. It's all memory, it's all
woven into the tissue of our lives, it all relates.
> Hahaha. Ya guns were one of my things in the game, my character designed
a
> couple of gauss weapons for specialized rolls, I disliked the 2cm LAG
intensely. A 4mm Gauss SMG with 30mm GL and a 10mm Gauss rifle for anti
battle dress / robot / light armored vehicles. The nail gun.
>
> The smg was actually compact enough that I ended up slinging it under
the
> front end of a 5 round semi auto GL, it was odd looking but was a stupid
handy weapon. The door crasher special.
>
> I've got some super nice deckplans somewhere too.
>
> I was kind of a firm believer that fuel for Jump was consumed during
jump
> to maintain the jump envelope. Once you had enough fuel to create the
hole
> in space / time you could get in and continue refining and burning while
you were in the hole.
>
> Derek Stanley
> Sent from my iPhone...
>
> Derek Stanley
> Sent from my iPhone...
>> On Mar 10, 2014, at 10:13, wrote:
>> Derek--
>> You are definitely a man after my own heart, and this is a perfect example
>> of how I hoped players would pick up and run with the "fiddly tactical
detail" that we opened up in TNE/BL with ditching reactionless drive
for
>> reaction mass. And you probably noticed how I started defining required
fuel volume per parsec of jump in ship designs to allow players to
trade
>> jump for G-turns. And also similarly, "turn off this to run that." (My
intent was to introduce skill libraries to say, "turning this off and
that
>> on normally takes X time, or a Difficult engineering task to do it in Y
time, Outstanding success yields Z time" and that sort of thing.) And
also your example of the use of missiles as sensor drones was exactly
>> the cool elements we pulled from Star Cruiser into TNE.
>> I also heartily approve of/agree with your use of common areas for
cargo/supplies. You've probably heard of how when US submarines depart
on
>> patrol they do so walking on layers of canned food in the passageways
which are gradually consumed early in the patrol. I think that is
exactly
>> how "real" starships would operate, especially in the "TNE universe"
(RC/post-collapse) where you're not sure when you're getting your next
resupply.
>> I also hao/aw low berths serving as bunks. That was always the case IMTU,
>> and I think that assumption may have seeped into TNE. Certainly if anyone
>> had asked, "is this allowed?" I would have said "yes," probably with the
>> caveat that in impairs crew efficiency if done too much/too long. But then
>> going back to US SSNs, you're aware that 688 boats routinely hot bunk so
>> there is an acceptable level of routine inconvenience that is
>> acceptable.
>> Finally, after this big love-fest, you just had to toss a turd into the
punch bowl, didn't you? :-) Yeah, I've heard the slug glitch before,
definitely on this list. Maybe even before GDW went down and we had a
fix
>> to put into FF&S Mk 1 Mod Next.
>> > I was very much a designer in this vein when I was building ships for
>> the
>> > PE campaign I ran about 14 years or so back. The ship typically had
>> enough
>> > juice to run the engines at full throttle and the weapons but if you
wanted to crack fuel you had to turn something off. The Jump drives
>> were
>> > J3 but it was only fueled for J2 so if you wanted to do a J3 you had
>> to
>> > consume some of your maneuver fuel so the crew had the option of
>> knocking
>> > a week off the trip but what was the consequence to be at the far
>> end?
>> > Would they be short on fuel if they got into combat? The solution
that
>> the
>> > players came up with was to jump in, launch all the missles and use
>> them
>> > as drone sensor net for information gathering while the ship ran
>> silent.
>> > They'd then insert the missles into orbit as overwatch while they
>> went
>> > dirt side and when the job was done they'd simply pick up the
>> missles,
>> > refuel and restock them for the next port of call.
>> >
>> > I had a hand wave that allowed the characters to use common areas as
>> cargo
>> > spaces, typically because they ships they were in were so tight and
>> high
>> > strung they didn't have much more cargo space than was absolutly
>> necessary
>> > for that APC / Grav Van that they were transporting. Unfortunately
>> filling
>> > the halls with cargo makes routine maintenance much less routine.
>> >
>> > I was also running a handwave that allowed the use of lowberths as
>> bunks.
>> > The crew bunked out in a single area and the captain had the only
>> cabin.
>> >
>> > IIRC there was some weirdness in FFS around the design of small arms
>> that
>> > basically increased range and dmg the larger the round and the slower
>> it
>> > was traveling.
>> >
>> > ----- Original Message -----
>> >
>> > From:
>> > To: "Traveller TNE" <>
>> > Sent: Monday, March 10, 2014 9:18:27 AM
>> > Subject: [Traveller_TNE] Unique tech advancement approach
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > I think Uxi and I discussed this system before, either on this forum
>> or
>> > directly, and I liked it. I think this is related to something you've
tried in your games, like those skill-related system charts?
>> >
>> > This reminds me of two things, and since I'm in a chatty mood lately:
>> >
>> > 1. I've mentioned this here before, but I was moving toward a
skill-related system in the TNE starship construction system. I found
>> in
>> > the process of designing Brilliant Lances (also rolled into FF&S)
that
>> the
>> > system's (incrementally) greater detail required more design
>> trade-offs,
>> > and this requirement could be turned into a virtue by introducing
>> fiddly
>> > little flaws and "personality" into ship designs (the sort that many
games, most annoyingly BattleTech, handled by fake fiat, as it was
>> not
>> > based on any actual antecedents in the design process) that would
>> then
>> > require crews to counterbalance. In BL you were always finding
>> systems
>> > that you could almost, but not quite, make as big as required. You
>> could
>> > design them this way, but they would function less effectively. There
would be defined thresholds based on % of actual requirement, and at
>> each
>> > threshold the system would require a set of tasks (played day-to-day
>> at PC
>> > level) or +1 skill, say Engineering (played at the long-term/fleet
>> level)
>> > to keep the ship running effectively. I was already starting to put
>> this
>> > into designs in fuel purifiers and power plants that couldn't run the
whole ship at the same time (FP in the form of time to process full
>> load,
>> > time to process J1, etc., or PP can run this, but not that at same
>> time)
>> > and was going to define engineering tasks for "here39;s what it takes
>> to
>> > seamlessly switch power between these systems under duress," but
>> didn't
>> > get there before the lights started going out at GDW. I was really
>> looking
>> > forward to this, because players and refs and ship designers and
>> fleet
>> > builders who like "crunchy" details would have enjoyed it, although
>> not
>> > everyone would have used it, as it would have raised the level of
>> detail.
>> >
>> > 2. I did some work over the years on a ship design system kind of
>> broadly
>> > based on things like the pre-WWI British-German naval arms race that
>> was
>> > like Uxi's system, except that instead of player skills, it would be
>> based
>> > on investment in industrial plant and research through-put, where
>> instead
>> > of a one-size-fits-all "tech level" the different nations (wet navy)
>> or
>> > races (SF) would have a "State-of-the-Art" (SOTA) which represented
>> their
>> > farthest mass-producible engineering solutions. Obviously this would
>> not
>> > be Traveller, as the global TL is exactly what it was NOT doing.
>> Rather,
>> > it would be more like Imperium or Task Force's StarFire or Star Fleet
Battles. The SOTA would be defined in several areas, engineering
>> plants,
>> > weapons systems, sensor suites, etc. and these would embed various
>> design
>> > trade-offs, so that one player might have systems that were lighter
>> or
>> > faster, while another might have systems that were more robust or
>> damage
>> > resistant, and these would interact to allow them to create ships
>> that
>> > were distinctively different, and would have different implications
>> for
>> > how they were operationally used, both at the fleet level and within
>> the
>> > design. Another example of this from the pre-WW1 arms race would be
>> the
>> > way the British a continuous powder train and the Germans had better
ammunition hoist practices which affected rate of fire, but also
meant
>> the
>> > Brits were more susceptible to catastrophic damage from flash. This
>> is
>> > very similar in feel and intent to what Uxi describes. I would say,
>> "great
>> > minds think alike," but that would mean complimenting myself.
>> >
>> > Obviously Uxi's idea, though cool for your individual "IMTU," would
be
>> a
>> > difficult fit over top of Traveller UWPs. As the UWPs were already
sufficiently buggy to begin with, adding an additional layer of
interpretation over top of them would make everyone's head explode.
>> >
>> > Finally, "Bonus Dave Crunchy Hooey," the mention of "folio games."
>> One
>> > thing we learned at GDW was that every time we tried to define a new
>> way
>> > to knock out a "simple, quick" product that would free up design time
>> for
>> > the bigger projects it always worked in reverse. The time required to
develop them always became disproportionate to what we could make
back
>> on
>> > them proportionate to their size. The series of "folios" (what did we
>> call
>> > them?) we put out for MT, Dark Con, and Twilight were blood baths. It
turns out, as famously observed by Mark Twain, that it takes longer
>> to
>> > write short than it takes to simply allow something to run long
>> (observe
>> > my e-mails, for example), just so you can set a lower price point for
>> it.
>> > Another "hey, here's a good quickie we can knock out" idea was Star
Vikings. I think the end product was good, but it was not quick, nor
>> a
>> > time-saver.
>> >
>> > Ah, well, life's a bitch, and then you die. There are trolls out
there
>> who
>> > will observe that this demonstrates the need for real business models
>> and
>> > MBAs in the gaming industry. When I was in the biz, GDW was still a
remnant of the "mom 'n' pop" operations that gave us the "golden age
>> of
>> > wargaming," and that's where a lot of its fun and eclecticism came
>> from.
>> > Besides, anyone with an MBA would know that there wasn't enough money
>> in
>> > that sort of wargaming to begin with. The two answers to that, WotC
>> and
>> > computer games are 1) life lessons on what happens when you get it,
>> and 2)
>> > it's a completely different industry completely underwritten by
>> deliberate
>> > government tax breaks. Welfare state for "slackers," perhaps.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>
Why? Not arguing, I'm just contrasting that with the way Loren and I loved
it for being a big goofy thing and the flavor it added.
> I was kind of a firm believer that fuel for Jump was consumed during
jump
> to maintain the jump envelope.
I kinda sorta agree. What I mean by that is "gradual burn to maintain the
envelope" was always in my mind as a ref, coupled with enough "sudden
burn" to "tear the hole" (and the TNE workings of Jump Space, Jump Drives,
entry angle of attack, "tracking/predicting" jumps, etc., would have been
some of the stuff I included in the TNE "Ref Ref" ["Referee's Reference,"
I just realized the ideal name]), BUT that has to be tempered by the
established fact of drop tanks. My hand-wave for that is that is why Jump
Drives contain that very high percentage of capacitors (established in
Book 5, I think, for use with Black Globes): some of that "instant burn"
goes straight into tearing the hole, and part into the capacitors, where
it is spent to maintain the jump envelope. So my ruling would have
disallowed your rule that allowed just-in-time refining in jump, but you
can obviously rule otherwise "IMTU."
By the way, I will indulge my sense of "remembering moments in other
moments" for a bit, I just learned that my grandmother died. Clara
Robinson reached 100 years of age this past year. She was a fine lady, a
merry soul, and remained her lucid, merry self to the end: a good, tough
old Norwegian. She died almost exactly 30 years to the day (within 12
hours) after her husband, Edwin D. ("Easy Dog") Robinson, who appeared as
a character in the 2300 adventure "Ranger," with which connection I can
smoothly return you to our list in progress. It's all memory, it's all
woven into the tissue of our lives, it all relates.
> Hahaha. Ya guns were one of my things in the game, my character designed
a
> couple of gauss weapons for specialized rolls, I disliked the 2cm LAG
intensely. A 4mm Gauss SMG with 30mm GL and a 10mm Gauss rifle for anti
battle dress / robot / light armored vehicles. The nail gun.
>
> The smg was actually compact enough that I ended up slinging it under
the
> front end of a 5 round semi auto GL, it was odd looking but was a stupid
handy weapon. The door crasher special.
>
> I've got some super nice deckplans somewhere too.
>
> I was kind of a firm believer that fuel for Jump was consumed during
jump
> to maintain the jump envelope. Once you had enough fuel to create the
hole
> in space / time you could get in and continue refining and burning while
you were in the hole.
>
> Derek Stanley
> Sent from my iPhone...
>
> Derek Stanley
> Sent from my iPhone...
>> On Mar 10, 2014, at 10:13, wrote:
>> Derek--
>> You are definitely a man after my own heart, and this is a perfect example
>> of how I hoped players would pick up and run with the "fiddly tactical
detail" that we opened up in TNE/BL with ditching reactionless drive
for
>> reaction mass. And you probably noticed how I started defining required
fuel volume per parsec of jump in ship designs to allow players to
trade
>> jump for G-turns. And also similarly, "turn off this to run that." (My
intent was to introduce skill libraries to say, "turning this off and
that
>> on normally takes X time, or a Difficult engineering task to do it in Y
time, Outstanding success yields Z time" and that sort of thing.) And
also your example of the use of missiles as sensor drones was exactly
>> the cool elements we pulled from Star Cruiser into TNE.
>> I also heartily approve of/agree with your use of common areas for
cargo/supplies. You've probably heard of how when US submarines depart
on
>> patrol they do so walking on layers of canned food in the passageways
which are gradually consumed early in the patrol. I think that is
exactly
>> how "real" starships would operate, especially in the "TNE universe"
(RC/post-collapse) where you're not sure when you're getting your next
resupply.
>> I also hao/aw low berths serving as bunks. That was always the case IMTU,
>> and I think that assumption may have seeped into TNE. Certainly if anyone
>> had asked, "is this allowed?" I would have said "yes," probably with the
>> caveat that in impairs crew efficiency if done too much/too long. But then
>> going back to US SSNs, you're aware that 688 boats routinely hot bunk so
>> there is an acceptable level of routine inconvenience that is
>> acceptable.
>> Finally, after this big love-fest, you just had to toss a turd into the
punch bowl, didn't you? :-) Yeah, I've heard the slug glitch before,
definitely on this list. Maybe even before GDW went down and we had a
fix
>> to put into FF&S Mk 1 Mod Next.
>> > I was very much a designer in this vein when I was building ships for
>> the
>> > PE campaign I ran about 14 years or so back. The ship typically had
>> enough
>> > juice to run the engines at full throttle and the weapons but if you
wanted to crack fuel you had to turn something off. The Jump drives
>> were
>> > J3 but it was only fueled for J2 so if you wanted to do a J3 you had
>> to
>> > consume some of your maneuver fuel so the crew had the option of
>> knocking
>> > a week off the trip but what was the consequence to be at the far
>> end?
>> > Would they be short on fuel if they got into combat? The solution
that
>> the
>> > players came up with was to jump in, launch all the missles and use
>> them
>> > as drone sensor net for information gathering while the ship ran
>> silent.
>> > They'd then insert the missles into orbit as overwatch while they
>> went
>> > dirt side and when the job was done they'd simply pick up the
>> missles,
>> > refuel and restock them for the next port of call.
>> >
>> > I had a hand wave that allowed the characters to use common areas as
>> cargo
>> > spaces, typically because they ships they were in were so tight and
>> high
>> > strung they didn't have much more cargo space than was absolutly
>> necessary
>> > for that APC / Grav Van that they were transporting. Unfortunately
>> filling
>> > the halls with cargo makes routine maintenance much less routine.
>> >
>> > I was also running a handwave that allowed the use of lowberths as
>> bunks.
>> > The crew bunked out in a single area and the captain had the only
>> cabin.
>> >
>> > IIRC there was some weirdness in FFS around the design of small arms
>> that
>> > basically increased range and dmg the larger the round and the slower
>> it
>> > was traveling.
>> >
>> > ----- Original Message -----
>> >
>> > From:
>> > To: "Traveller TNE" <>
>> > Sent: Monday, March 10, 2014 9:18:27 AM
>> > Subject: [Traveller_TNE] Unique tech advancement approach
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > I think Uxi and I discussed this system before, either on this forum
>> or
>> > directly, and I liked it. I think this is related to something you've
tried in your games, like those skill-related system charts?
>> >
>> > This reminds me of two things, and since I'm in a chatty mood lately:
>> >
>> > 1. I've mentioned this here before, but I was moving toward a
skill-related system in the TNE starship construction system. I found
>> in
>> > the process of designing Brilliant Lances (also rolled into FF&S)
that
>> the
>> > system's (incrementally) greater detail required more design
>> trade-offs,
>> > and this requirement could be turned into a virtue by introducing
>> fiddly
>> > little flaws and "personality" into ship designs (the sort that many
games, most annoyingly BattleTech, handled by fake fiat, as it was
>> not
>> > based on any actual antecedents in the design process) that would
>> then
>> > require crews to counterbalance. In BL you were always finding
>> systems
>> > that you could almost, but not quite, make as big as required. You
>> could
>> > design them this way, but they would function less effectively. There
would be defined thresholds based on % of actual requirement, and at
>> each
>> > threshold the system would require a set of tasks (played day-to-day
>> at PC
>> > level) or +1 skill, say Engineering (played at the long-term/fleet
>> level)
>> > to keep the ship running effectively. I was already starting to put
>> this
>> > into designs in fuel purifiers and power plants that couldn't run the
whole ship at the same time (FP in the form of time to process full
>> load,
>> > time to process J1, etc., or PP can run this, but not that at same
>> time)
>> > and was going to define engineering tasks for "here39;s what it takes
>> to
>> > seamlessly switch power between these systems under duress," but
>> didn't
>> > get there before the lights started going out at GDW. I was really
>> looking
>> > forward to this, because players and refs and ship designers and
>> fleet
>> > builders who like "crunchy" details would have enjoyed it, although
>> not
>> > everyone would have used it, as it would have raised the level of
>> detail.
>> >
>> > 2. I did some work over the years on a ship design system kind of
>> broadly
>> > based on things like the pre-WWI British-German naval arms race that
>> was
>> > like Uxi's system, except that instead of player skills, it would be
>> based
>> > on investment in industrial plant and research through-put, where
>> instead
>> > of a one-size-fits-all "tech level" the different nations (wet navy)
>> or
>> > races (SF) would have a "State-of-the-Art" (SOTA) which represented
>> their
>> > farthest mass-producible engineering solutions. Obviously this would
>> not
>> > be Traveller, as the global TL is exactly what it was NOT doing.
>> Rather,
>> > it would be more like Imperium or Task Force's StarFire or Star Fleet
Battles. The SOTA would be defined in several areas, engineering
>> plants,
>> > weapons systems, sensor suites, etc. and these would embed various
>> design
>> > trade-offs, so that one player might have systems that were lighter
>> or
>> > faster, while another might have systems that were more robust or
>> damage
>> > resistant, and these would interact to allow them to create ships
>> that
>> > were distinctively different, and would have different implications
>> for
>> > how they were operationally used, both at the fleet level and within
>> the
>> > design. Another example of this from the pre-WW1 arms race would be
>> the
>> > way the British a continuous powder train and the Germans had better
ammunition hoist practices which affected rate of fire, but also
meant
>> the
>> > Brits were more susceptible to catastrophic damage from flash. This
>> is
>> > very similar in feel and intent to what Uxi describes. I would say,
>> "great
>> > minds think alike," but that would mean complimenting myself.
>> >
>> > Obviously Uxi's idea, though cool for your individual "IMTU," would
be
>> a
>> > difficult fit over top of Traveller UWPs. As the UWPs were already
sufficiently buggy to begin with, adding an additional layer of
interpretation over top of them would make everyone's head explode.
>> >
>> > Finally, "Bonus Dave Crunchy Hooey," the mention of "folio games."
>> One
>> > thing we learned at GDW was that every time we tried to define a new
>> way
>> > to knock out a "simple, quick" product that would free up design time
>> for
>> > the bigger projects it always worked in reverse. The time required to
develop them always became disproportionate to what we could make
back
>> on
>> > them proportionate to their size. The series of "folios" (what did we
>> call
>> > them?) we put out for MT, Dark Con, and Twilight were blood baths. It
turns out, as famously observed by Mark Twain, that it takes longer
>> to
>> > write short than it takes to simply allow something to run long
>> (observe
>> > my e-mails, for example), just so you can set a lower price point for
>> it.
>> > Another "hey, here's a good quickie we can knock out" idea was Star
Vikings. I think the end product was good, but it was not quick, nor
>> a
>> > time-saver.
>> >
>> > Ah, well, life's a bitch, and then you die. There are trolls out
there
>> who
>> > will observe that this demonstrates the need for real business models
>> and
>> > MBAs in the gaming industry. When I was in the biz, GDW was still a
remnant of the "mom 'n' pop" operations that gave us the "golden age
>> of
>> > wargaming," and that's where a lot of its fun and eclecticism came
>> from.
>> > Besides, anyone with an MBA would know that there wasn't enough money
>> in
>> > that sort of wargaming to begin with. The two answers to that, WotC
>> and
>> > computer games are 1) life lessons on what happens when you get it,
>> and 2)
>> > it's a completely different industry completely underwritten by
>> deliberate
>> > government tax breaks. Welfare state for "slackers," perhaps.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>