Erin's reworking of the Skdkai class makes me notice feel.
Way back in the original Classic Traveller (CT) rules you couldn't mount 4x 50 ton missile bays (why do they only displace 30 tons on the spreadsheet?) and 16 turrets on a 2,000 ton ship. You couldn't mount particle accelerators or fusion guns three to a turret either.
You got one turret hardpoint for every 100 dTon not given over to weapons. You were allowed one bay per 1,000 dTon of ship and that tonnage couldn't be used for hardpoints. In effect, one bay eliminated ten turrets.
So a 2,000 dTon ship could mount two bays and no other weapons. It could mount a single bay and have ten turrets.
Major weaponry (also known as a spinal mount) were limited to one per vessel and eliminated their own tonnage from the equation.
In theory you could mount a Type E meson gun (1,000 dTon) on our 2,000 ton ship and have either one bay or ten turrets. However it would need at least a power plant rating of 35 to fire the spinal mount and that would be 1,400 dTon for the plant and fuel... Illegal for such a small ship to mount.
Then back to turrets...
Book 2 and Book 5 disagree...
Book 2 lists four turret weapons and single, double and triple turrets. You can mix and match to your heart's desire.
Book 5 allows up to three each of Missile, Beam Laser, Pulse Laser or Sandcaster per turret, two each of Plasma Gun or Fusion Gun or one each of Particle Accelerator.
So... On our 2,000 dTon ship we could have 16 turrets. Using Erin's mix of type we'd end up with 4x single particle accelerator, 4x double fusion gun, 4x triple pulse laser and 4x triple sandcaster. We should mount four more turrets because the CT rules don't allow us to mount a bay now.
GURPS: Traveller (GT) preserves the feel of CT with its ship design system (You get 1 hardpoint per 100dTon of ship minus tonnage of spinal mounts. Turrets take up one hard point, bays take up ten.)
Megatraveller (MT) Lost the Traveller feel by being overcomplicated just for complexities sake.
Mongoose Traveller (MgT) tried. I am given to understand that the reason that Erin's ship is so out of whack with the feel of CT is Mongoose screwed up, if you have the errata you have limitations akin to CT imposed on you. By the time Erin gained access to those errata, Murder Hobo Gmbh was loose with a ship that violated them.
She chose to leave it be.
But what's she's deliberately changed is the feel of the game.
This doesn't make me right and her wrong. It doesn't even mean I'd hate playing in her world. It doesn't mean I am a purist who opposes changing the feel, because I have done it more than once myself.
Aside: The original ship had 16x triple missile organized into 16 batteries and 4x triple beam lasers organized into 4 batteries. So 16x FP 2 for the missiles and 4x FP 3 for the lasers. Not really well distributed... I'd put the lasers in two turret batteries so 2x 4 FP instead of 4x 3FP; then I'd break the missile turrets into four batteries of 4 FP.
Ideally I think I'd mount a 50t missile bay (FP 9), 6x triple beam lasers in three batteries (FP 4 each batt) and 4x double fusion guns in two batteries (FP 5 each batt).
GT let's you put the weapons into batteries in an ad hoc manner.
Not sure how Erin has her batteries organized.
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MongTrav doesn't use battery ratings like CT HG. Capital Ships, and I suppose large non-capital ships, are given barrage ratings. I've read over the rules and it seems straightforward, but I haven't put it into play so I have no real experience with it.
ReplyDeleteThe 50 ton bays displace 30 tons because TL advancements are allowed to reduce weapon displacement.
With LBB and GURPS the bays stay 50t and the installed weapons get better. LBB get a higher UPP factor, GURPS more range and damage.
DeleteWhile in MongTrav you can increase range, yield and other things with TL, it seems odd to me (yet mechanically viable given RAW) that improving the launcher affects the effectiveness of its projectiles. So I handwave-houserule it and say that long-range/high-yield/etc ammo is bought at a higher price.
DeleteImproving a particle bay's range and damage makes sense to me. The same for a missile launcher doesn't. It's just how I roll.
The missiles in LBB and GURPS are laser command guidance, the launcher contains the extended range laser comms that let them work farther out. Even if the missiles are physically the same you need the proper launcher for the guidance system to account for the improved performance of the missile, I assume it's backwards compatible with lower TL missiles most of the time.
DeleteA real world example is the AIM-9X. Without the helmet cueing system for high-off-boresight aiming, it's no better than the preceding AIM-9M. The AIM-9M, however can be fired from a rail that's wired for the X without problems.