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Traveller Is 45 Years Old Today!
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8718418" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Yeah, I don't recall that we had much use for that combat system, as it is heavily geared towards running battles with dozens or 100's of ships on each side. As I remember though, the system IS kind of interesting in that a 1000 T ship, or 100 of them, will be like flies to a 1 megaton Imperial Dreadnought, but 10 100k T ships will eat that dreadnought's lunch in a trice (It will fry one with a spinal mount shot, and the 10 return shots will turn the big boy into scrap). This dynamic continues down the size scale, 10 of those 1000 T ships will rip a 100k T ship to bits too. So there's a weird kind of dynamic there. What you need to do is VASTLY outsize your enemies, and then they're helpless, but if you only outclass them by a marginal amount, you're better off building a whole lot of mid-sized ships. IIRC the winning formula was pretty much to build a carrier that carried 5 ships of 1/10th of its own tonnage each, plus a spinal mount. That gave you 6 spinal mounts for your tonnage, and the carried vessels, being short-ranged and without jump, can be pretty bad-assed. </p><p></p><p>Honestly, it was never meant to be a system that would really work well for doing anything but offscreen adjudication of battles happening in the backdrop of standard RP. As a standalone space combat system NONE of the ones that Traveller ever created were really much good. Mayday was about as good as it got, and even that was hamstrung by being constrained to match up with the RPG. </p><p></p><p>We built our own system, which we called 'Fleet Command' (the name has long since been used by a couple of commercial titles). It was actually quite awesome, basically 'ironclads in outer space' but it sits in a sweet spot between the awkwardness of Traveller's official combat systems and the incredible complexity of Star Fleet Battles. You can run battles with upwards of 100's of ships on each side and it is quite fun. Never quite managed to get the thing published, sadly.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8718418, member: 82106"] Yeah, I don't recall that we had much use for that combat system, as it is heavily geared towards running battles with dozens or 100's of ships on each side. As I remember though, the system IS kind of interesting in that a 1000 T ship, or 100 of them, will be like flies to a 1 megaton Imperial Dreadnought, but 10 100k T ships will eat that dreadnought's lunch in a trice (It will fry one with a spinal mount shot, and the 10 return shots will turn the big boy into scrap). This dynamic continues down the size scale, 10 of those 1000 T ships will rip a 100k T ship to bits too. So there's a weird kind of dynamic there. What you need to do is VASTLY outsize your enemies, and then they're helpless, but if you only outclass them by a marginal amount, you're better off building a whole lot of mid-sized ships. IIRC the winning formula was pretty much to build a carrier that carried 5 ships of 1/10th of its own tonnage each, plus a spinal mount. That gave you 6 spinal mounts for your tonnage, and the carried vessels, being short-ranged and without jump, can be pretty bad-assed. Honestly, it was never meant to be a system that would really work well for doing anything but offscreen adjudication of battles happening in the backdrop of standard RP. As a standalone space combat system NONE of the ones that Traveller ever created were really much good. Mayday was about as good as it got, and even that was hamstrung by being constrained to match up with the RPG. We built our own system, which we called 'Fleet Command' (the name has long since been used by a couple of commercial titles). It was actually quite awesome, basically 'ironclads in outer space' but it sits in a sweet spot between the awkwardness of Traveller's official combat systems and the incredible complexity of Star Fleet Battles. You can run battles with upwards of 100's of ships on each side and it is quite fun. Never quite managed to get the thing published, sadly. [/QUOTE]
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