Idea for Change to Book 2 Designs

[daryen]

I done two changes to how Book 2 designs work. The first is to adopt the HG fuel usage. The second was to rework the drive tables to stop giving big ships such a huge advantage.

I am now contemplating making a third change. In Book 2, the maneuver drives are tiny and the jump drives are large. In Book 5, that is very much reversed; the jump drives are small and the maneuver drives are larger. So ... would it work out to just swap the drive sizes between maneuver drives and jump drives. The prices don't swap. It is just the drive sizes, so now jump drives are small and maneuver drives are larger. Obviously, this doesn't matter with ships that have the same size drives, but for ships with different drive ratings, this would encourage low-maneuver, high-jump ships.

I don't think it is a huge change, but wanted to know if I am missing anything.

 

[kilemall]

Some standard hull mdrive/power only combos won’t work anymore, others might.

Cramps up LBB2 SDBs.

Gives xboats more space?

 

[daryen]

I've never seen an LBB2 SDB, but the loss of space shouldn't matter as it is completely overwhelmed by the lack of jump fuel.

And if xboats get more space, that is a *good* thing as it might let them be street-legal instead of a horrific one-off exception.

 

[Grav_Moped]

And if xboats get more space, that is a *good* thing as it might let them be street-legal instead of a horrific one-off exception.

Xboats are intentionally a design-system edge case -- if they have any room left over, you then have to justify the lack of a maneuver drive.

And you can in fact construct a 100Td ship under LBB'81 that does one J4 (-or lower) and literally nothing else. No payload, no maneuver, and just enough powerplant fuel (12 tons, at most) to get through a jump. It just can't carry the other 28 tons of fuel that the rules as written say it must, despite having absolutely no use for the excess.

There's also no room for data storage facilities, but reasonable arguments can be made for at least 1Td being available.

 

[Spinward Flow]

The second was to rework the drive tables to stop giving big ships such a huge advantage.

That's EASY.

All you have to do is decide that "every 200 tons displacement, there's a new standard drive" ... after which everything works on multiples of 200. You can see this behavior VERY CLEARLY in the 100-1000 ton ships on the table.

Where the table "goes wrong" is when it tries to shoehorn increasingly large starships into the paradigm (and fails, kind of).

Z-drives, for example, ought to be Z=24*200=code 1 @ 4800 tons (not 5000 tons).
It's why the LBB A1 Kinunir has J4/4G in a 1200 ton form factor ... because 4800/1200=4 ... because LBB A1 was a starship design created using LBB2.77/81 with some "impossible to obtain" tech bits pirated from LBB5.79/80 thrown in to make the Kinunir "special" rather than being something the PCs could "craft for themselves" (if they could ever scrape together the funding for it).

 

[atpollard]

I done two changes to how Book 2 designs work. The first is to adopt the HG fuel usage. The second was to rework the drive tables to stop giving big ships such a huge advantage.

I am now contemplating making a third change. In Book 2, the maneuver drives are tiny and the jump drives are large. In Book 5, that is very much reversed; the jump drives are small and the maneuver drives are larger. So ... would it work out to just swap the drive sizes between maneuver drives and jump drives. The prices don't swap. It is just the drive sizes, so now jump drives are small and maneuver drives are larger. Obviously, this doesn't matter with ships that have the same size drives, but for ships with different drive ratings, this would encourage low-maneuver, high-jump ships.

I don't think it is a huge change, but wanted to know if I am missing anything.

Isn’t this basically heading towards building LBB5 ships in LBB2 table form?
(If that is the goal, then why not just recreate a LBB2 table of Hull vs Performance with LBB5 values?)

[Making LBB5 PP prices “per EP” instead of “per dTon” will fix the LBB5 TL price issue compared with LBB2 flat pricing.]

 

[Spinward Flow]

[Making LBB5 PP prices “per EP” instead of “per dTon” will fix the LBB5 TL price issue compared with LBB2 flat pricing.]

Considering that "per EP" is the simplest way to calculate fuel requirements (1 ton of fuel = 1 EP for 28 days), that definitely solves a whole host of problems with LBB5 power plant prices. The power plants are "merely just BIG" ... as opposed to being "big and STUPIDLY EXPENSIVE" into the bargain.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Where the table "goes wrong" is when it tries to shoehorn increasingly large starships into the paradigm (and fails, kind of).

It's not a paradigm misfit, it's literally a table misfit. They ran out of room (and letters) for the table for what they wanted to accomplish, so then had to shift the desired performance values onto smaller drives.

 

[infojunky]

I done two changes to how Book 2 designs work. The first is to adopt the HG fuel usage.

Heh, now it's not like that hasn't been brought up before... That is a point of view I have been pushing for a while now.

The second was to rework the drive tables to stop giving big ships such a huge advantage.

You could adopt the 200 tons per letter model, which tops out at 4800 tons.

Couple that with the doubling up of identical drives to get higher performances.

I am now contemplating making a third change. In Book 2, the maneuver drives are tiny and the jump drives are large. In Book 5, that is very much reversed; the jump drives are small and the maneuver drives are larger. So ... would it work out to just swap the drive sizes between maneuver drives and jump drives. The prices don't swap. It is just the drive sizes, so now jump drives are small and maneuver drives are larger. Obviously, this doesn't matter with ships that have the same size drives, but for ships with different drive ratings, this would encourage low-maneuver, high-jump ships.

Quick note here, in the "77 edition Jump drives didn't need Power Plants. As such per Letter code Jump drives are 5 tons larger than the combined Power and Maneuver tonnage. Honestly the only reason for a larger power than maneuver rating was to support Double fire.

As for switching the numbers around I would start with the above flipping the jump vs other drives numbers.

I don't think it is a huge change, but wanted to know if I am missing anything.

As I said earlier I have been playing with these numbers for a while, in the end the biggest issue is the fuel load rather than the specifics of the drives. In that changing to the High Guard model has the biggest effect.

As mentioned before a little deconstruction of the Book5 model might give more bang for your buck. In that Jump drives are 1% of ship hull plus 1% per jump number. Maneuver drives are 2% per G rating, plus G rating minus 1 for compensation. And power plants are straight linear.

With the above both the Jump base percentage and Compensation could be added as part of the basic hull, making the drive a straight linear progression.

The remaining question is wether you want to use EP or not.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Couple that with the doubling up of identical drives to get higher performances

The trouble with that is it breaks the LBB2 "bigger is better, and TL is the only way to build bigger" paradigm. If you're adopting the LBB5 "Higher TL is always better at any size" paradigm instead, this is not an issue.

ETA: LBB5 only makes power plants better by TL. The other drives become possible by TL but do not improve after the TL of introduction.

 

[infojunky]

The trouble with that is it breaks the LBB2 "bigger is better, and TL is the only way to build bigger" paradigm. If you're adopting the LBB5 "Higher TL is always better at any size" paradigm instead, this is not an issue.

I don't disagree with you there.

ETA: LBB5 only makes power plants better by TL. The other drives become possible by TL but do not improve after the TL of introduction.

Note, the Book5 model makes Maneuver and Jump add ons to the Power Plant

 

[daryen]

To be clear, I have already redone the basic tables to account for larger hulls. Go read here to see what I did and why I did it that way: https://www.travellerrpg.com/index.php?threads/correct-book-2-drive-tables.42784/

The main point of these two changes (fixing the larger hulls, but keeping the drive letters; swapping jump and maneuver sizes) is the following:
1) Make things a little more inline with HG. Not match it, but also not violently conflict with it.
2) Keep the utter simplicity of the Bk2 designs. Only 24 letters. Simple calculations.

The point of the change in this topic is to make maneuver drive more costly (in volume, not credits) so it makes more sense to have M1J2, M1J3, and M2J3 ships.

 

[infojunky]

The real question is what are you building ships for?

Meaning you are designing them just for the sheer joy of design, or for Role play or wargaming? With that do you have a ruleset in mind?

For example right now I am playing with converting Power Projection for a flavor of Mayday/Book2 as a ruleset.

I am also a small ship universe sorta guy, as such Book2 is kinda core, but I see the utility of Book5 for flexibility. Really the question for me comes wether to use EP or not.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Really the question for me comes wether to use EP or not.

EP "isn't that difficult" to keep track of and does a better job of "keeping the designer honest" with respect to power usage.

LBB2 (with no EP) does not care about power budgets at all ... while LBB5 (with EP) DOES care about power budgets and encourages (naval) architects to design accordingly with the ship's power budget in mind.

In that respect, keeping track of EP is more of a "No Free Lunch" policy when it comes to starship (and small craft) design principles, constraints and philosophy. Hence why I prefer the solution of backporting the EP concept into LBB2 so as to (better) make ships with LBB2 components more seamlessly compatible with LBB5 abstracted combat (which requires no maps to adjudicate).

 

[kilemall]

EP all the way for me, as a means of power allocation during stress/battle.

 

[Dragoner]

Really the question for me comes wether to use EP or not.

Probably the fault of being an engineer, I despise EP.

 

[mike wightman]

EP all the way for me, as a means of power allocation during stress/battle.

If they were a dynamic resource and played an active part in the ship combat turn - allocating power, trying to generate a bit more - I would agree.
EP as presented in HG80 are just a needless - and a bit ridiculous - book keeping mechanism.

 

[Spinward Flow]

EP as presented in HG80 are just a needless - and a bit ridiculous - book keeping mechanism.

Yes EP = finite power resources, allocate them wisely (because you're going to need them in combat)
No EP = infinite power resources ... and lots of hand waving away detail

 

[Ulsyus]

Yes EP = finite power resources, allocate them wisely (because you're going to need them in combat)
No EP = infinite power resources ... and lots of hand waving away detail

But that'd come down, like a lot of things, to the type of game people want to play. If it's a matter of doing a simulation of sorts, then EPs would be pretty important so you can manage those fine details. If it's a narrative engagement where the Ref is going to skim on a lot of the NPC details so as to focus on the PCs and their environment and experiences, maybe not so much. YTWV.

 

[Dragoner]

It's bad game design, because nobody will engage with it and it will slow down combat, plus adding to GM duties; nevertheless LBB5 does not do that anyways. Ships are already magic carpets, adding magic beans to count do not make them better, plus one gets the side effect of 3,000MW computers at TL F. It is a lot of nonsense, ultimately.