Vent-Rant MegaTraveller what I hate about it.

[trb456]

>>>Or in essence straight across the board power requirements need to be reduced by at least 66%

No they don't. I just designed a 250 Mw = 1 EP (HG) power plant in MT, and its tonnage is EXACTLY the same as HG. The only difference is fuel usage, and as I noted fuel usage can be fixed by not requiring a month of constant usage plus the reduction in jump fuel. In other words, fuel can be decreased not by decreasing monthly power requirements, but by reducing fuel usage across a month to correspond to actual usage. MT is different from HG, but it is not unworkable.

I don't quite understand your last paragraph. MT handles those differences with CPs, I believe, plus some minimal requirements for all craft (e.g. all air/space craft require one comms and one sensor).

ETA: I just came up with a counterexample to my claims: system defense boats (SDB). MT SBDs will be inferior to HG SDBs. But I'm fine with that.

 

[infojunky]

>>>Or in essence straight across the board power requirements need to be reduced by at least 66%

No they don't. I just designed a 250 Mw = 1 EP (HG) power plant in MT, and its tonnage is EXACTLY the same as HG. The only difference is fuel usage, and as I noted fuel usage can be fixed by not requiring a month of constant usage plus the reduction in jump fuel. In other words, fuel can be decreased not by decreasing monthly power requirements, but by reducing fuel usage across a month to correspond to actual usage. MT is different from HG, but it is not unworkable.

I don't quite understand your last paragraph. MT handles those differences with CPs, I believe, plus some minimal requirements for all caraft (e.g. all air/space craft require one comms and one sensor).

Ok,
1. MT technical details are based off of Striker, in Striker there is the scale efficiency chart from which the the 250mw power point was derived.
2. The same chart is in MT which inflates both the power numbers and fuel use. with that same 250mw mistake...

1a. I sat down with High Guard and Striker and worked out the numbers, the 250mw is what you get from ship scale power with those, using that Power efficiency chart... Also Note Striker uses fuel per MW/hr....

The 250mw per power point doesn't work in Striker, and surely distorts MT.
The other part of the problem is that DGP didn't understand how ginormous the energy numbers they were postulating are. They're a bits and pieces of tiny tech i.e. 1 liter or so that are terminating Multiple Megawatts of power.

 

[trb456]

>>>
1. MT technical details are based off of Striker, in Striker there is the scale efficiency chart from which the the 250mw power point was derived.
2. The same chart is in MT which inflates both the power numbers and fuel use. with that same 250mw mistake.

I don't understand this. Scale efficiency increases power plant output but does NOT increase fuel usage or any equipment power usage. Also, the scale efficiency chart has nothing to do with 250 Mw = 1 EP (HG). That's just the conversion math MT used.

 

[infojunky]

>>>
1. MT technical details are based off of Striker, in Striker there is the scale efficiency chart from which the the 250mw power point was derived.
2. The same chart is in MT which inflates both the power numbers and fuel use. with that same 250mw mistake.

I don't understand this. Scale efficiency increases power plant output but does NOT increase fuel usage or any equipment power usage. Also, the scale efficiency chart has nothing to do with 250 Mw = 1 EP (HG). That's just the conversion math MT used.

Ok, let me try this in simpler terms.
DGP, who wrote MT based on their house rules for their CT game.

Part of it is they were huge fans of the design system for Armored Vehicles in Striker. As such they tried to shoehorn all of their technical choices into those terms.

Now Striker only had the very roughest rules for including previous design systems contained in Traveller.

My problem here is clearly explaining where I see the problem in the chain of design choices that lead to the technical portions of MT.

Which in Striker is in the Scale Efficiency table, in that it informed the number of 250mw per HG energy point. Cascading into what becomes MT.

Couple that to DGP staff being gamers without a lot of experience in things like engineering and hard science, as such they couldn't see how out of whack the Energy numbers they where throwing around were.

Hence my comments

Please note there huge tracts of MT that RPG gold.

I hope this kinda explains my chain of thoughts, which are based of forensic readings of the various rules set to identify what choices where and when.

 

[mike wightman]

@mike wightman: Several questions/comments:
1) MT basically modularizes jump drives, maneuver drives, and power plants to be additive. That seems mostly sound. It does result in lower jump fuel and higher power plant fuel, but this mostly cancels at a practical level. Also...

Why not just use the HG formulae?

2) The solution to the higher fuel of power plants was eventually solved (too late, like a lot of MT), by realizing that much starship equipment isn't constantly running and doesn't need 24 hour fuel, So manuever drives are probably running 50% of the time (i.e. when not in jump), and weapons and screens MUCH less than this (maybe only a day of fuel is needed at a time). Yes, this is more complicated than High Guard, but by allocating power plants to sections (maneuver 50% usage, comms/sensors/bridge/accoms 100%, weapons/screens 3%), fuel can be managed.

This fudge was never intended but was the only practical solution, One of the good things about DGP having their own dedicated magazine was that they could put out official errata like this. But that is no longer available.
If you buy a second hand MT or an electronic version you will not know about the massive fudge required.

3) When I re-read the HG Agility rules, I forgot they did not include craft tonnage. This seems like an obvious mistake: larger craft should have lower agility. MT is a better implementation.

No it isn't. CT and MT craft design use volume for simplicity. The reason you could have high agility in GH is that you could have much bigger power plants to provide the energy necessary for that agility.

4) Re. Armor, did you mean "volumeless" rather than "weightless"? Armor is the single biggest contributor to hull weight in MT. But I like Armor as an addition to the outside of the hull, adding weight but not volume.

Hence the use of quotation marks "weightless". If you add several metres of armour to the outside you make the ship bigger. Armour volume should be subtracted from available volume.
Its another fudge and one that I detested on first reading.

5) Ship movement: Isn't MT movement a variation on Book 2 vector movement but with even more flexibility? What do you not like?

No, MT ship movement is most certainly not like LBB2. I don't like it because it is totally non-Newtonian

 

[McPerth]

No they don't. I just designed a 250 Mw = 1 EP (HG) power plant in MT, and its tonnage is EXACTLY the same as HG.

Yes, but the power needs are not the same... Just life support (more so if you have grav plates) take an awful lot of power. In a TD Q&A it was said because as power becoes cheaper, people did not care about it any more, but if you try to build just a home for 4 persons at TL 7-8, you'll how power does it need only for basic life support. The ncompare it with the counter of your home...

This also meant agility was a rare commodity in MT, while quite common in CT:HG. Add to this the faulty use of Ship Tactics skill, and combat was simply suicidal.

Ship movement: Isn't MT movement a variation on Book 2 vector movement but with even more flexibility? What do you not like?

From MT;RM, page 92:

(...)however, the unit may move any number of squares less then the maximum, or it may even remain stationary (25000 km per square is a lot of space - in effect, the unit is circling in the square)

I guess that's what Mike mwans when it says

I don't like it because it is totally non-Newtonian

 

[Swiftbrook]

MT is the system I've played the most and I have designed a lot of starships, but I'm a math/computer guy who has created a custom spreadsheet for the design process. The main problem I've seen with MT's starship design system is that the game designers couldn't use it efficiently and didn't publish many ships, and their only dedicated ship book (Fighting Ships) was a disaster.

 

[trb456]

Thanks very much for the thoughtful replies! It will take me awhile to respond to them all.

@Swiftbrook: No question that they did notplaytest their own system enough. Towards the end, they started figuring out stuff (like not needing a full month of fuel), but by then it was too late.

MT movement: It IS Newtonian but more flexible given the large size of hexes (as they note, you can just circle in place). I reconciled movement as follows: 1) You select a starting speed in G spaces and a direction in hex faces; 2) Each turn, you may modify speed by +/- G spaces; 3) Each turn, you may alternate between a) moving any number of spaces up to current speed in current direction, or b) spending 1 space to circle in place and change direction in any facing. This gives a cost to turning and retains some of the old vector feel.

They also did not provide enough examples for the changes they made. So for example, the linear approach to drive and power plant units is coherent, but is different from HG. And so to @mike wightman's "Why not use HG"? Because MT is different and that's OK, and frankly it's more coherent. But it was not adequately explained, and that has been a major problem throughout MT.

@McPerth: "This also meant agility was a rare commodity in MT, while quite common in CT:HG. Add to this the faulty use of Ship Tactics skill, and combat was simply suicidal." If you care to, I'd love more detail on this comment. Some examples would be helpful. I still contend that large ships should have lower agility, and if this is what you mean by "rare" then I guess we just disagree.

@mike wightman: I'm afraid I just disagree with most of your comments. What you call "fudge" is just "rule change", and frankly I agree with most of the MT rule changes. It's fine that you don't, we just don't agree. There was no requirement for complete fidelity to HG. My beef is that the rule changes were not adequately explained, which is the real problem.

Again, thanks so much for the replies! Even if I disagree, I do appreciate it.

 

[mike wightman]

There is no preserved momentum in MT ship movement and you most certainly can not circle in space as they describe under Newtonian movement.

This is just total drivel:

Movement: Movement speed is specified based on the unit’s
maneuver drive value For example, a unit with a maneuver
drive of 1 can start out from a standing start with a movement
speed of 1 for the turn The unit can move a maximum of one
square at movement speed 1.
Each unit must specify a movement speed to be used for
the turn. The movement speed represents the maximum
number of squares the unit can move that turn, however, the
unit may move any number of squares less than the maximum,
or it may even remain stationary (25,000 km per square is a
lot of space-in effect, the unit is circling in the square)
A unit may change speed each combat round by up to its
maneuver drive value Thus if a unit with a maneuver drive6
is moving at speed 10, the next time it takes a turn, it may
reduce its speed to as low as speed 4, or it may increase its
speed to as high as speed 16 or any value in between. Or it
may leave its speed unchanged at 10.

Note this is a "vent rant" thread, not a "sing the praises of thread" - there is a lot in MT I like, but their ship construction rules and ship combat rules are possibly the worst in the whole Traveller corpus - and they are have some stiff competition to win that award.

 

[McPerth]

@McPerth: "This also meant agility was a rare commodity in MT, while quite common in CT:HG. Add to this the faulty use of Ship Tactics skill, and combat was simply suicidal." If you care to, I'd love more detail on this comment. Some examples would be helpful. I still contend that large ships should have lower agility, and if this is what you mean by "rare" then I guess we just disagree.

In CT:HG, a ship with PP6 would have agility 6 if no power was used for anything (weapons, computer, etc). As some power is needed at least for computer, giving it PP7 used to be enough, unless it needed many EPs to geed weaponry, but even if so, PP8-10 used to be more than enough. At TL 15, PP8 meant 8% of the ship, plues 8% more for fuel to give it 4 weeks autonomy. Of course it needed MD 6 too (so 17%more), but fact is Main Battle Ships wit hagility 6 were not rare, though you need a total of 33% your tonnage for it.

In MT, a 100 dtons unarmored ship masses about 460 ton just for the hull. Adding other components, it would probably mass over 750 ton. MD 6 would take 17 dtons, and would also need (if grav) about 1100 Mw. Life support (baisc env, basic and advanced life support, grav plates and inertial compesors) would need another 10 Mw (if applying the errata that reduced it by a factor of 10), so, as you'd need about 1110 mw only for this. That means (at 18 Mw/kl) about 62 kl PP (about 5 dtons), that would in turn need about a dton fuel/day (so 28 dtons if you want the 28 days endurance usual in CT:HG).

To give it agility 1 (assuming 540 ton mass, to make nubers easy as the divisor in the agility formula was 5.4, but it will probably be higher)) you'd need 100 Mw. That means about 5.5 kl of PP and about 1.2 kl fuel per day (so about 2.5 dton per 28 days).

That gives, for our unarmored 100 dtons ship about 50 dtons (half its tonnage) to give MD6 and 28 days endurance, and about 3 more dtons per agility point. So, to give ut agilty 6, you'd need about 68% of your tonnage. And this does not account for increased armor (and so mass), power hungry weaponry, computer and controls, or staterooms...

 

[trb456]

@mike wightman: "There is no preserved momentum in MT ship movement and you most certainly can not circle in space as they describe under Newtonian movement."

Your assertion is just "total drivel": Uniform Circular Motion

So yes, a ship most certainly CAN circle in a 10k km space and obey Newtonian physics by applying the correct angular acceleration. And I choose to implement that fact by costing 1 speed point and allowing any change in direction without any movement. Seems like a reasonable implementation.

 

[trb456]

@McPerth: Thanks for your thorough reply. But I think it reflects a paradigm that does not apply to MT, though this was not realized until sometime later. Specifically, you don't need 30 days of fuel for all systems. This isn't even desirable. Rather, fuel should be divided into 3 sections: 1) 1 month fuel for "always on systems" (comms, sensors, bridge, accommodations); 2) 2 weeks fuel for the maneuver drive (1 week jump, 1 week port); 3) a selected number of days for the weapons/screens (72 combat rounds per day). Further, you could dedicate a seperate power plant ONLY for the weapons/screens. This would allow the Emergency Agility rules to always kick in, and so Agility would always be at least the G rating of the maneuver drive. If you were also not using the weapons/screens, they would be excess power and could add to Agility. In other words, not enough time and thought was dedicated to how the MT rules are different from the CT rules, and as a result many suboptimal conclusions were reached.

 

[infojunky]

@mike wightman: "There is no preserved momentum in MT ship movement and you most certainly can not circle in space as they describe under Newtonian movement."

Your assertion is just "total drivel": Uniform Circular Motion

So yes, a ship most certainly CAN circle in a 10k km space and obey Newtonian physics by applying the correct angular acceleration. And I choose to implement that fact by costing 1 speed point and allowing any change in direction without any movement. Seems like a reasonable implementation.

You might want to rethink that argument. Hint draw out the vector diagram.

In that if you have a speed of 10 but only an acceleration of 1 there is no way to stay within the envelope as discribed.

 

[trb456]

You might want to rethink that argument. Hint draw out the vector diagram.

In that if you have a speed of 10 but only an acceleration of 1 there is no way to stay within the envelope as discribed.

This one example does not negate the example I posted. You most certainly can circle in place in a 10k km space. There may be edge cases that do not fit, but they are edge cases. And if the edge case is that you no longer fit in a 10k km space, that's really not a problem.

 

[infojunky]

This one example does not negate the example I posted. You most certainly can circle in place in a 10k km space. There may be edge cases that do not fit, but they are edge cases. And if the edge case is that you no longer fit in a 10k km space, that's really not a problem.

No the going around in a circle limits to "speeds" less than or equal to your acceleration. Hence that is the edge case.

 

[RogerD]

Megatraveller starship combat scale was 25000km, 20 minutes.

The formula for centripetal acceleration required to maintain a circlular motion is v^2/r. r to stay in a 25,000,000m space is 12,500,000m. Solving for v, you get v = sqrt(a*r). I computed the maximum speed to stay in a space for the various g ratings (approximating as 10m/s^2) and the turns of straight line acceleration that represents:
1g - 11,180 m/s (0.93 turns)
2g - 15,811 m/s (0.66 turns)
3g - 19,365 m/s (0.54 turns)
4g - 22,361 m/s (0.47 turns)
5g - 25,000 m/s (0.42 turns)
6g - 27,386 m/s (0.38 turns)

Note that in no case can you burn in one direction for an entire turn and then circle in the hex you get to.

The bad physics is one thing, but the bad gameplay is also a major issue for me. It encourages you to accelerate in every turn and then you can move as you will. You would only slow down when combat is over. It's easy enough as a mechanic, but it has no real strategy to it.

 

[mike wightman]

@mike wightman: "There is no preserved momentum in MT ship movement and you most certainly can not circle in space as they describe under Newtonian movement."

Your assertion is just "total drivel": Uniform Circular Motion

So yes, a ship most certainly CAN circle in a 10k km space and obey Newtonian physics by applying the correct angular acceleration. And I choose to implement that fact by costing 1 speed point and allowing any change in direction without any movement. Seems like a reasonable implementation.

You may want to read and understand the the link you provided.

How do you apply this angular acceleration to a ship moving at a speed of 4 hexes per turn?

In MT you start with speed 0, say you are in an M=2 ship and accelerate to speed 2, you now move 2 hexes per turn.

According to MT you don't have to move at all, you can just circle round in space but next turn can suddenly move 2 hexes in any direction, or accelerate to 4 but just keep turning in a circle - sorry but it doesn't work like that.

 

[mike wightman]

This one example does not negate the example I posted. You most certainly can circle in place in a 10k km space. There may be edge cases that do not fit, but they are edge cases. And if the edge case is that you no longer fit in a 10k km space, that's really not a problem.

I really do not think you understand. I am not talking about a low velocity, I am talking about being able to instantly go from circular motion to linear motion and visa versa with ships travelling at 25,000km per turn.

 

[McPerth]

@McPerth: Thanks for your thorough reply. But I think it reflects a paradigm that does not apply to MT, though this was not realized until sometime later. Specifically, you don't need 30 days of fuel for all systems. This isn't even desirable. Rather, fuel should be divided into 3 sections: 1) 1 month fuel for "always on systems" (comms, sensors, bridge, accommodations); 2) 2 weeks fuel for the maneuver drive (1 week jump, 1 week port); 3) a selected number of days for the weapons/screens (72 combat rounds per day). Further, you could dedicate a seperate power plant ONLY for the weapons/screens. This would allow the Emergency Agility rules to always kick in, and so Agility would always be at least the G rating of the maneuver drive. If you were also not using the weapons/screens, they would be excess power and could add to Agility. In other words, not enough time and thought was dedicated to how the MT rules are different from the CT rules, and as a result many suboptimal conclusions were reached.

Yes, you can use all those fuel saving tactics you say (you can probably even spare the sensor power when in jump), as long as things go smooth, you have a quick way to refuel once on target and you may jump directly to your target. In resume, as long as you're not a combat ship and combat is only an ocasional possibility.

For a warship, if you depend on having only a week acceleration (barely enough for in system travel, even at 6g) you're asking for trouble (and probably for defeat).

A shame the ships that would most benefit from those tactics are the less adecuate to use it...

Further, you could dedicate a seperate power plant ONLY for the weapons/screens. This would allow the Emergency Agility rules to always kick in, and so Agility would always be at least the G rating of the maneuver drive.

This is clearly cheating the rules, as they say "not to use energy-consuming weapons" to use the emergency agility, as this is the power you dedicate to it. If your main PP is enough, you don't ned this cheat, and if not, you need to forfeit using your weapons to use Emergenci Agility.

 

[RogerD]

I really do not think you understand. I am not talking about a low velocity, I am talking about being able to instantly go from circular motion to linear motion and visa versa with ships travelling at 25,000km per turn.

I haven't yet done this math, but I strongly suspect you will find that there are many problems with translating linear kinetic energy into rotational kinetic energy. Problems I expect include:
* Rotation speeds so fast that that speed of light considerations come into play.
* Necessary configurations that don't conform with typically accepted forms - most spaceships are not hollow flywheels.
* This is effectively a "Dean Drive" motif.
* "Instant" is essentially not a thing in physics above the scale of quantum physics.

If you want to have the Megatraveller rules work as "that's how it works", OK. But dressing it in real world physics will likely fail if you work through the problem.

More importantly, does it help the story to have the physics work in this way, or is it simply a fudge to make game mechanics easier. Are the game mechanics, the ones you really want for your game?

For my taste, the Mayday mechanics work far better overall, despite some relatively minor inaccuracies in the physics.