Non OTU: Ahab's Traveller Stuff

[Captain_Ahab]

I've been giving this problem some considerable thought.

Neither Azhanti High Lightning (iirc) nor T4 use damage in the same way as MT.

AHL uses pen as 2d6+pen-armor* as an index into a table that gives damage and it is primarily used for personal combat.

T4 only differentiates pen from damage where KEAP or some warhead types are used, mainly to see if armor is penetrated with damage coming from other sources where pen is different from damage.

If I use T4's method of pen vs armor, then my goal can be reached by reconsidering the "hit points" of ships and vehicles. Volume/15 and Volume/6 may not be reasonable in such a case. I might also change the vehicle's hit location from the 1d6 charts from MT and T4 to something more like what is used in BTRC's "Fires of Heaven". In the instances where I would use MT's large scale combat, individual hit tables would be meaningless until the units are broken apart again after combat, but needs investigation.
For large scale combat, the combined unit's "pen" would be the average of the pen/dmg as called for by T4 FF&S2 rules for the specific units involved, and the dmg would be figured as per the large scale combat rules, but with T4 values

great...
Now I have to throw together a spreadsheet and make a bunch of ships and missiles and drones to test this idea
thank goodness I have no deadline, eh?





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*I've always used the 'amount the to-hit roll was made by' + 1d6 + pen - armor, where the 1d6 is also hit location instead

1-head
2-chest
3-torso
4-legs
5-arms
6-graze

that 1d6 can be set as a called shot with an increase in difficulty
the result can either be used with the AHL table, or divided by 2 is the number of damage dice to apply to personnal stats

the 'amount the to-hit roll was missed by' can give an indication of scatter distance for possible collateral damage
my other houserules for AHL are not relevant to the damage process

 

[infojunky]

I've been giving this problem some considerable thought.

Neither Azhanti High Lightning (iirc) nor T4 use damage in the same way as MT.

AHL uses pen as 2d6+pen-armor* as an index into a table that gives damage and it is primarily used for personal combat.

T4 only differentiates pen from damage where KEAP or some warhead types are used, mainly to see if armor is penetrated with damage coming from other sources where pen is different from damage.

AHL and Striker both use the same system. Vehicle damage in Striker uses a 1d6+Pen-Armor. With "High and Low" penetration on the same chart with more damage occurring with the type of penetration. The crux of the system is more penetration more damage. (Side-note AHL and Striker use differing penetration values for the same basic weapons ( personally use AHL as my baseline as it is bit more forgiving than Striker)

MT added the Damage mechanic back akin to CT Books 1 & 4 with a differing use of penetration. Not the damage is basically 1d6 of hits per point of applied damage.

If I use T4's method of pen vs armor, then my goal can be reached by reconsidering the "hit points" of ships and vehicles. Volume/15 and Volume/6 may not be reasonable in such a case. I might also change the vehicle's hit location from the 1d6 charts from MT and T4 to something more like what is used in BTRC's "Fires of Heaven". In the instances where I would use MT's large scale combat, individual hit tables would be meaningless until the units are broken apart again after combat, but needs investigation.

Ok, now I would have to go back and look at T4 for specifics, but a bunch of it is just a extension of TNE, kinda.

Also note Greg Porter of BTRC and Guns, Guns, Guns did write one of the vehicles books.

Further more T4 unfortunately suffers from being incomplete in its technical aspects as a result of a Imperium Games internal Chaos. A bunch of great ideas that where half finished when printed was the result.

the 'amount the to-hit roll was missed by' can give an indication of scatter distance for possible collateral damage
my other houserules for AHL are not relevant to the damage process

As I said above I use AHL as base for my combat. As such I have rewritten the Penetration/Damage chart several times. I seem to have settled on the number rolled on the chart divided by two rounding down is the number of d6s of personal damage. For vehicles that same number straight for damage to vehicles. It seems to work on the small end. Meaning it looks like a start using the MT damage scaling on paper, I haven't playtested it much yet.

Though to be really honest I don't play or run heavily militarized games, as such for armored combat and ship combat I generally over the years have used CT Book2 starship combat in those situations

 

[Captain_Ahab]

I found my old copy of Striker in a box with wargaming stuff I brought with me to Oz, in the shed, so I could double check a couple of things.

From the personnel damage table, it can be argued that 1 pen in MT/Striker is the same as 1/2 d6 damage to people
Given that in MT, vehicle damage points are x10 that of personnel, it can be argued that 1 pen for vehicles is x20 the damage for people which is exactly what FF&S2 says it is in the section for building starship lasers... good enough for me

All I need to do is make sure that pesky x1.43 difference between MT/Striker and T4 toughness values for materials are kept straight, and that I'm making sure the design sequence is doing vehicles or personnel damage and making changes accordingly

I won't be using MT's damage resolution, but T4's instead where damage is related to +pen -AV instead of a separate dmg value like MT
This meshes nicely with my AHL stuff, too
Also, I'll likely ditch the whole attenuation thing and use AHL/Striker style range info instead
( I know how to figure it it for kinetic penetrators in an atmosphere, but not for energy weapons )

one less thing to shoehorn into the MT large scale combat system

Barring any unforseen gotchas, that's one rabbit hole explored

 

[kilemall]

You might find my alternate Striker of interest then.

After hit, I roll on two tables. One is hit location to determine half damage. Arms and legs are 1D, thigh/torso/chest is 2D, head is 3D. The character skill level can be applied here instead of to hit, increasing the chance of damage.

The other table is pen minus armor, with lowest pen being -3D and highest being +3D. Melee weapons get -4 on this table.

+1D for blunt impact/HE.

So then I know what location got hit how hard and if it’s different because say there is an armor vest but no arms/legs cover, that’s a different outcome.

This creates the possibility that a dagger can hit just right and do serious damage, or that a PGMP hit will just ‘take of an arm’, while still averaging out around the classic damage models.

The other reason is medical drama. I tie strength to cardiac/muscle/skeletal damage, dexterity to nervous system/muscle control and endurance to digestive-energy /infection control.

If I know what location got hit and the stat each die hit against, I can provide a detailed wound description for medical personnel to diagnose/treat and wow that’s really is bad damage.

As to vehicles, definitely ATU- use MgT2 vehicle builds, buy Striker weapons, convert armor by eye or Gygax as some put it. Just a lot faster to create families of vehicles.

 

[infojunky]

I found my old copy of Striker in a box with wargaming stuff I brought with me to Oz, in the shed, so I could double check a couple of things.

From the personnel damage table, it can be argued that 1 pen in MT/Striker is the same as 1/2 d6 damage to people

And I wouldn't argue with you. I started with that chart...

Given that in MT, vehicle damage points are x10 that of personnel, it can be argued that 1 pen for vehicles is x20 the damage for people which is exactly what FF&S2 says it is in the section for building starship lasers... good enough for me

Consider this, an Assault rifle will eat most civilian vehicles, if it hits something vital, which is usually a vital bit of kit or the operator. Also Armor isn't linear as such a weapon that penetrates an armored vehicle hull with do a larger amount of damage with a similar amount of pentraation. While the numbers look similar a 3 pen on a person will look vastly different than a 3 pen on a vehicle.

 

[Condottiere]

I believe the advice is placing the engine block between you and the shooter.

Basically, statistics, and spray and pray.

 

[Captain_Ahab]

Deckplans for a ~500dton ship
I'll finish the actual design details another day
IMTU, I'm ignoring jump-fuel and using energy in capacitors to power the J-drive
capacitor energy is the 'fuel', leaving all 'fuel' as reaction mass
I'll work out details later



toroidal n-paws
2 levels in engineering

maintenance of engines are from spacewalks

 

[Grav_Moped]

Looks good. The "not using fuel" feature drags it a bit far from mainstream Traveller, but that's not terribly important for it as an artwork.

 

[mike wightman]

It doesn't really change very much.

If you have a 200t ship that has 60t of fuel tank it doesn't really change the trade rules if you say it is all used as reaction mass for maneuvering during its journey from planet to planet with a jump in between.

A 500t warship with a 5g maneuver drive and 250t of fuel which it uses as reaction mass for combat maneuvering likewise doesn't affect its combat performance.

 

[Captain_Ahab]

Getting back to this with jump drives...

I've already decided to use jump capacitors instead of fuel, but there is a problem in that T4 says you need much more energy to make jump than can be figured from MT; nearly 20 times more
Using T4 energy values with MT's 650Mw/m^3 jump caps, the caps alone would take up as much volume as the fuel option would, which is not what I want. Using MT's energy values ( based on number of caps assumed by rules * 650Mw ), the energy needed is so low that a dedicated power plant can charge them in mere minutes, also not what I want.
I moved a decimal place in MT's rules for capacitor volume ( kl * J * .05, instead of * .005 ) and found a happy medium. Jump drives + caps still take up a good amount of volume so it doesn't feel like a freebie, but much less than the normal RAW jump fuel and the difference can go towards reaction mass fuel. A 250Mw power plant will take 22 minutes to charge a 3 parsec jump, the same as one turn of MT space combat.

so I will go with this

 

[Condottiere]

Now I'm lost, or misunderstood the above.

You can substitute energy, stored in capacitors in the jump drive, for the default fuel, to jump?

 

[Captain_Ahab]

not in RAW, but this is my OTU stuff which means house rules

 

[Condottiere]

Okay.

Though you could consider the Collection of exotic (jump) particles.