Payn's Ponderings Traveller Settings

[payn]

The Wiki has issues with a bad actor editing. There are still efforts ongoing to undo said person's damage...

Sure, like any wiki I treat the Traveller wiki as a mere starting point to explore a topic.

I recommend using Mayday for ship combat if you want anything vaguely realistic and yet playable on a typical dining table...

Have not heard of Mayday. I currently use a spreadsheet that I built for both personal and ship combat (TotM). My players seem to really like it, but having a dozen ship combat would test the limits for sure. Though, I have not come to ever needing something for that, yet.

 

[aramis erak]

Sure, like any wiki I treat the Traveller wiki as a mere starting point to explore a topic.

Have not heard of Mayday. I currently use a spreadsheet that I built for both personal and ship combat (TotM). My players seem to really like it, but having a dozen ship combat would test the limits for sure. Though, I have not come to ever needing something for that, yet.

Mayday is a boardgame implementation of Book 2. (later editions, including the PDF, include notes for resolving combat with Bk5, as well.) It is pretty nice for missile heavy engagements.

 

[payn]

Quick question for folks. What is the average starting distance of your space ship combats?

 

[Mezuka]

Quick question for folks. What is the average starting distance of your space ship combats?

Sensor distance. If you can't detect it, you can't shoot it. In other words the longest missile range of one or both ships, if the same.

 

[payn]

Sensor distance. If you can't detect it, you can't shoot it. In other words the longest missile range of one or both ships, if the same.

Always? Do you ever have your NPCs or the Travellers go cold, hide behind moons, etc... to try and get the jump on their target?

 

[pemerton]

Quick question for folks. What is the average starting distance of your space ship combats?

I have only run two or three of these in a campaign of more than 20 sessions. Going on memory: in one, the PCs arrived out of jump space, and were approaching a world, when a hostile vessel - that had good communication with land-based elements on the world - approached them from its position in orbit on the far side of the world. I would have stipulated the initial engagement distance, probably at a few hundred thousand miles.

The other that I can recall involved the PCs arriving out of jump space in the vicinity of the world and encountering a free trader leaving the world. I think the separation was about 100,000 miles. My recollection is that the PCs launched a missile at the opponent, then disabled it via laser fire, and then waited for the missile to hit it.

 

[dragoner]

I have sort of moved it all to about 50k kilometers, even though sensors could pick up things much more distant.

 

[gamerprinter]

I did play Traveller back in the 1980's using the Rimward Marches for the most part, but never spent more than 9 months playing Traveller specifically, having also played other sci-fi games. However, as with most game systems I ever played, I eventually played in homebrews instead of published settings. I even published some custom deck plans using Traveller RPG ship building rules about 6 years ago. And admittedly, I'm designing and publishing for Starfinder RPG now, my most recent publication, The Planet Builder, is rules to create scientifically viable, entire star systems and their stat block. While somewhat inspired by Traveller planet building rules, it's more detailed and covers entire star systems - stars, planets, belts, trojans, orbits, planetary cores, everything. Using those rules, I'm now building the setting for my Starfinder publications. Because I lean harder sci-fi, even as a developer Starfinder, most of my stuff would fit a Traveller setting. Here's the first of many star systems I am developing for my published setting...

Shown below is a star system map I'm currently working on (potentially the first of 47 possible systems)... because two stars systems have collided, 3 of the outer planets, a gas giant from one system and two large rocky worlds in the other systems has collided creating what is now called the Scarlet Belt, though the illuminated gases will last for a millennia before fully disapating.

 

[Mezuka]

Always? Do you ever have your NPCs or the Travellers go cold, hide behind moons, etc... to try and get the jump on their target?

A good plan!

That has never happened, so far. I've played Staf Frontiers, Star Wars, Coriolis and now Traveller. My players are generaly very affraid of space combat and usually avoid it at all cost.

 

[aramis erak]

RPGs did, apparently, have some influence on Firefly - but Whedon never specified exactly which one that I'm aware of. Traveller would be a pretty reasonable candidate though.

He did specify it was a major sci fi RPG he played in College. The most likely candidate is Classic Traveller, since the timeframe was 84-86, and he was in England.

It's worth noting that Traveller can produce an insanely large system - there are 5 stars in the 'Verse. I've had systems up to 6 stars under Bk 6 Scouts.