XCongress-Bonehead bastards

XCongress-Bonehead bastards
To: FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
From: mllaneza@sfsu.edu (Michael Carter Llaneza)
Subject: Re: FT Excel Spreadsheets

> Mike, I sent you an Excel 5.0 workbook for designing Full Thrust

Actually, I can read Excel 4, not 5. (Claris Works isn't /perfect/). I'd
love an earlier copy. I'm sorry I forgot to reply when it arrived; thanks a
lot.

XCongress-Bonehead bastards
To: FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
From: mllaneza@sfsu.edu (Michael Carter Llaneza)
Subject: Re:Campaign settings

I'm very interested in this. I've been unhappy with both Battle Rider and
Brilliant Lances. I agree completely with the design
theory/philosophy of both games, I just think the rules development
needed a lot of work. Since I like Full Thrust a lot, I think a conversion is
the right solution. I haven't touched this project yet. My current work
involves restarting my old science fiction gaming magazine, Imperial
Dispatches, as a web 'zine. I am interested in working with you on this, and
electronically anyway, I can guarantee publication of the final result. My
approach for this would be to design FT equivalents for the
'stock' Traveller items such as point-defense lasers, meson guns,
missiles and so forth. Then create parallel designs. One potential problem is
that a linear conversion of tonnage to mass gives very small ships and ships
of
incredible mass. If a scoutship is mass 2, a Kinunir-class cruiser is
24. Then from there an Azhanti High Lightning class cruiser is mass 1200. A
Tigress is mass 10,000... Perhaps a logarithmic scale would be best. A Tigress
should be relatively huge in any scale. We can either create a set of stock
weaponry (replacing the standard weapons and just use the FT rules) or make a
really light version of FFS to allow some customization of weapons (perhaps
just saying that so many dice of meson gun has mass
X).
Anyone else have a thought?

> At 12:33 PM 7/8/96, kosta kalogeropoulos 956-6476 wrote:

XCongress-Bonehead bastards
To: FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
From: mllaneza@sfsu.edu (Michael Carter Llaneza)
Subject: Re:Traveller conversions

> At 10:03 AM 7/9/96, Mike Miserendino wrote:
I
> started with some ideas for using battle riders and jump tenders in a

OK, I'll work with anybody... :-)

What approach would work best?

A) Build something big with lots of A-batteries and a Nova Gun and call
it a Tigress-class DN.

B) Create new weaponry and equipment and rebuild Traveller ships as necessary.
If so, how do we allow for the flexibility of FF&S without going nuts?

C) Do B) above and instead keep an emphasis on converting rather than
redesigning Traveller designs.

D) Make a careful analysis of either High Guard, Battle Rider or both and try
and maintain the spirit of the source material.

E) other.

Just to help keep perspective on things... Supplement 9 Fighting Ships
Kokirrak-class Dreadnaught
200,000 tons 330 Particle accelerators 50 medium missile bays 200 laser
turrets

Thats an awful lot of dice to roll... High Guard allows individual weapons to
be combined into batteries of considerable power, even so this ship has 33
particle accelerator batteries. Thats not as many dice, but still a lot. And
its not the largest ship the Imperium has.

Should there be a FT rule for combining similar weapons or should a large
battery just be a single large weapon in FT designs?

Tech levels from Traveller could also be a sticky issue. I won't get into
those yet.

Any other thoughts?

XCongress-Bonehead bastards
To: FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
From: mllaneza@sfsu.edu (Michael Carter Llaneza)
Subject: FT traveller *long*

> At 10:37 AM 7/9/96, kosta kalogeropoulos 956-6476 wrote:

Welcome aboard!

> KOSTA@texas.dseg.ti.com

Right. The 'feel' of Traveller is what we're after here (I think...). Ok
everyone, 100 words or less: Space combat in Traveller is like...

For myself, I'm going to mull it over before answering.

> I basically want a system that allows for quick and simple combat like

My reference work is currently Suuplement 9: Fighting Ships. I suspect that
both the CT and MT designs need to be considered. Since Full Thrust works with
(much) less detail than Megatraveller did, I think
the Classic/High Guard designs from Supp. 9 will make the best starting
point.

> Michael Llaneza:

Weapons in Traveller tend to be scalable. If a naval architect wants a bigger
spinal mount, a bigger weapon is built. The standard list of
spinal mounts in High Guard spans a _wide_ range. Some weapons are only
found in smaller sizes. These are the more specialized weapons such as lasers,
fusion guns and the like. To make things worse, 10,000 tons
worth of meson gun may be designed for short ranged, high-energy use
and another weapon the same mass might be designed for longer range and higher
rates of fire. When GDW created TNE, Fire Fusion&Steel and BattleRider they
created a set of design and combat rules for spacecraft that completely broke
with 'canon' Traveller. (count how many missiles a Tigress can launch
and guide from 430 50-ton missile bays) They recreated their MT designs
for BattleRider in such a fashion that the rules give every advantage
to player-created ships rather than the 'stock' ships. Unfortunately,
the stock ships are the ones that defended 11,000 worlds. I am going to insist
on a point right here. Our designs need to reflect the classic ships, as
originally presented. A factor T meson gun will simply be redefined as the
nastiest thing you can build within the same design parameters. Imperium Games
seems to agree with me. As I recall from the Traveller mailing list (feel free
to correct me), the 4th ed of Traveller will be essentially an updated Classic
Traveller. This includes High Guard, with some MegaTraveller influence. I say
we make the Full Thrust system maintain compatibility of spirit with High
Guard.

> Allan Goodall:

You want a copy of Striker II then. It includes TOEs and equipment designs for
the Imperium, the Zhodani, and some low tech stuff. The Impies and the Zhos
both use almost entirely grav vehicles. The Solomani are of a similar tech
level with the Zhodani. The main differences are in missile doctrine and in
tank armament.

> Everyone:

S'okay, I quoted it :-)

And a note on weapon groupings:

> 200,000 tons

SF> You could always try the system I use when playing in the
SF> Robotech/Macross universe. I devide all weapon systems counts by
SF> 10, rounding up to the nearest whole number. There are some real SF>
monster ships in this genre and this was the only way I could think SF> of
doing this effectivly, and still have a ship that you could fit SF> on paper!
:) SF> SF> Don't worry about the mass or cost, just build it according to the
SF> true design of the ship. SF> SF> Stuart Ford

CT> Ok, the last traveller system I played was "classic" traveller, so CT>
forgive my ignorance if this idea is totally out of line with the CT> source
material. But what if partical accelerators were only
CT> single-arc weapons? Then you could divide your 33 batteries into 11
CT> batteries each of right arc, left arc, forward arc. That way you'd CT>
only be rolling eleven dice per attack. Still probably too many, CT> but at
least a little more manageable. And definitely intimidating. CT> Of course
drawing all 33 batteries on the ship diagram would be a
CT> pain in the -ss.
CT> Chster Ford

Ok if we divide by 10 as Stuart suggests and be restrictive about firing arcs
as Chester suggests we have a workable monster ship. And thats about the top
of the line for the Imperium and everyone else too. Note that High Guard (and
later rules) made a distinction between the number of batteries and the number
that can fire at any given target.

And a more reasonable example from Supplement 9:

Atlantic class Heavy Cruiser 75,000 tons 1 Spinal mount meson gun (factor N) 6
heavy particle accelerators 30 missile bays 210 laser turrets misc. defenses

suggestions: turrets: divide total by 10
any turreted beam becomes a C-battery, with lasers having the PDAF
capability from More Thrust
fusion guns are short-range weapons, with a punch. Give them 2 dice
with 12"? particle accelerators have a longer range, 1 die out to 18"?

bays:
50-ton bays are B-batteries
100-ton bays are A-batteries
extend the special effects from turrets to reflect an increase in size
? Hmmm, 100-ton fusion gun bay- 6 dice out to 12", nothing beyond that.

missiles: divide total tonnage of missiles by 500, use that many missiles in
Full Thrust. I always thought a FT missile represented a swarm anyway. Give
missiles 3 turns of fuel, but allow them to coast.

spinal mounts: roll lots of dice.

defenses: coming soon

anyone want me to write these suggestions up as formal systems and rules
?

sorry this is such a loooong message