Traveller Hero: Jump Drive Causal Influence Diagram

[Ternaugh]

Thruster plates were removed from the game after MegaTraveller. Something about infinite thrust implications or something. So that part of SOM isn't correct anymore. They now use a Gravitic Thruster that depends on being in a gravity well to work properly.

Having said that, I don't think that anyone thought of using GravPlate Tech to reduce the inertia of a mass then use Fusion Torches to actually move the Ship. Though in Serenity's case it seems like the pods are actually Jet Engines for Atmospheric movement, and they use the Grav field (the glowie sphere at the tail of the ship) to move in Vac.

As a Traveller ship, assuming those huge pods are Atmosphere only. Then they are a bunch of dead weight most of the time. In Traveller Ship design, most of your displacement is take up with fuel tankage for the Jump Drives. So there isn't really any space for Atmo only engines. That alone is probably why you don't see Pods on Trav ships. Also, early Traveller Ship design was highly influenced by Star Wars, so ships moved from the Airplane look to the Star Wars Empire Wedge look. Hell, the far trader even kind of looks like the Millennium Falcon in a general way. Since Firefly/Serenity, you see other SciFi games using the Serenity Layout for ships. So it's also an influence kind of thing.

T:NE had alternate rules for Thrusters in Fire, Fusion & Steel, but all official designs used HePlaR. The problem was, most ships would have to tap into their jump fuel reserves with just a little maneuvering. Gravitic lifters (contragrav) were only to cancel out most of the mass while very close to a world, meaning that all grav vehicles needed some sort of secondary thrust to move. Usually, that was HePlaR again, which meant that there were severe danger zones in back of air/rafts and the like. Not the best for city traffic!

Thrusters were added back in T4, with the limitation that they didn't function if you were over 1000 diameters from a large object (planet, moon, star). In our solar system, that means that thruster plates would work normally off of the Sun's gravitational field almost out to Saturn. Ships commonly operating in deep space would have additional engines that used reaction mass under T4 rules. Contragrav worked within 1 planetary diameter, and, unlike T:NE, excess thrust (over that needed to cancel out gravity) could be used to move the vehicle.

JoeG

[Nolgroth]

Thruster plates were removed from the game after MegaTraveller. Something about infinite thrust implications or something. So that part of SOM isn't correct anymore. They now use a Gravitic Thruster that depends on being in a gravity well to work properly.

Having said that, I don't think that anyone thought of using GravPlate Tech to reduce the inertia of a mass then use Fusion Torches to actually move the Ship. Though in Serenity's case it seems like the pods are actually Jet Engines for Atmospheric movement, and they use the Grav field (the glowie sphere at the tail of the ship) to move in Vac.

As a Traveller ship, assuming those huge pods are Atmosphere only. Then they are a bunch of dead weight most of the time. In Traveller Ship design, most of your displacement is take up with fuel tankage for the Jump Drives. So there isn't really any space for Atmo only engines. That alone is probably why you don't see Pods on Trav ships. Also, early Traveller Ship design was highly influenced by Star Wars, so ships moved from the Airplane look to the Star Wars Empire Wedge look. Hell, the far trader even kind of looks like the Millennium Falcon in a general way. Since Firefly/Serenity, you see other SciFi games using the Serenity Layout for ships. So it's also an influence kind of thing.

Well I was mostly referring to Serenity in terms of how the ships are designed and where to put the thruster plates. If they have been removed from the game, then it doesn't truly matter. My idea also revolves around the idea that you can limit the arc of gravitic "thrust." Otherwise, the ship itself would be torn apart.

I really think the whole concept would work better in a space opera game and, as I've heard tell, Traveller is based a little more firmly in science. I wouldn't know, as I once owned a copy of Traveller: The New Era and cracked it open just once.

[shadowcat1313]

I got a chance to read over some basic outline material for the game DGP was working on after Traveller... it really wasnt that great, the guy who owned the DGP IP wanted as part of a sale of the Traveller stuff to have his own game project published too...
not really sure if thats ever changed. Traveller Hero was an unfortunate victim of Marc Miller deciding to go with consolidating the number of RPG licenses... Frank Chadwick and Dave Nilsen came up with TNE and the whole Virus ID as a way of restarting Traveller and porting the rules over to the second edition Twilight 2000 or "House Rules" I think both were big mistakes. I was never a big fan of Frank or Dave, Frank has done some great work in the boardgame and minatures fields, Dave Nilsen however came out with an incredibly arrogant statement in the forward to Keepers of the Flame that really pissed some people off. the initial press release from Mongoose concerning the Traveller license was even more arrogant, and I took that up with Marc in person a couple of days later[its nice living in the same neighborhood sometimes]

[shadowcat1313]

then again, being another really old traveller person, I wondered about the wisdom of the title "Traveller 2300", Megatraveller had some good ideas although my least favorite was trying to combine Striker and High Guard into one system.
Digest Group did some great work on MT, Starship Operators Manual, World Builders Handbook, 101 Vehicles, 101 Robots.

Can we please not talk about Traveller 4th Edition... mostly junk, although there were a couple of useful books... Pocket Empires and Imperial Squadrons should have been published long before

[AlHazred]

Heck, as far as I can tell, the Starship Operator's Manual is pretty system-agnostic. I'm still processing the flowcharts - while I like the level of detail for myself, I have a feeling it's going to be too much for my player. Plus, my group has a different starship which they've customized, so the specifics in the manual are not very useful. A pity, too, as I think the idea had a lot of merit. Would have been nice to see the same treatment for a number of different ships, with deckplans and a separate stats section.

[shadowcat1313]

for starship deck plans, you might see about finding a copy of the Naval Architects book for Traveller 4th Edition, it had some possibly useful deckplans, not sure how hard it is to find. fair warning its in squares instead of hexes, but if figure 1 traveller square is about equal to 2 hero hexes