Traveller 5.10: Book 2 Part 3

Book 2 Part 1, Part 2

Book 1 is reviewed here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10

Of course, the big news is that Marc Miller sold the rights to Traveller to Mongoose Publishing. On the one hand, I am glad that there is a "succession" of sorts laid out so there won't be a lot of confusion when the inevitable happens. On the other hand, while I really like the 1st edition of Mongoose. I'm not really happy with where they are taking it for a few reasons. But in the end, it really does not make a lot of difference to me: I have most of the old stuff, and I am no longer the target audience of the new stuff. And while I do pick and choose some of the new stuff, my rare play is still mostly CT.

And while I am still doing an overview of the T5.10 books here, pretty sure they are a dead end for a number of reasons as well at this point (okay, pretty much since 5.10 came out). I still think there is a game in there somewhere, but the editing, organization and sheer volume make finding that game more complicated than it should be. But, as per my signature over on COTI, I will continue to pick and choose the rules I like. As pretty much all RPGs are homebrew in some sense as groups tend to gravitate to their own interpretation of things. 

And moving on to my continued and somewhat opinionated review of T5.10.

Starship Design and Construction

We start off with a lot of useful definitions of the things we are going to use for our ACS (Adventure Class ships, 100 to 2400 displacement tons) and, harkening back to LBB2, uses "drag and drop" components from tables rather than percentage based as per the as-yet-to-be-written BCS (Battle Class Ships). We have the same components as most editions of Traveller: hull, armor, drives, sensors, weapons, defenses, operations, controls and crew and payload. Yes, we do get a bit more detailed than LBB2. And we also put to rest the whole quandary of building ships of a higher tech level than is available:

The Building World’s base Tech Level constrains the capabilities of the shipyard constructing the ship. Unless otherwise specified, all mechanisms on the ship will be at the base tech level. 

Imported Components

Some components and mechanisms can be imported from neighboring shipyards with the appropriate tech level. Standard mechanisms at TL +1 are available and can be imported at their standard cost plus 10%. Early, Prototype, and Experimental mechanisms are available locally.

In a mapped situation (where the local subsector or sector is mapped), player characters can import any higher tech level mechanisms they find in the course of play. 

Tech Level Limits 

Within the Imperium, the maximum shipyard Tech Level is 15. Within this ship design system, the maximum available Tech Level is 21.

And we have more Fillform things. Which I've yet to really try and test: I think I tried before but got confused (and as I can figure out dependency injection in xunit tests for work, think I just did not try hard enough!). But the overall process consists of the checklist to design the ship, the missions or purpose of this ship, and oddly an "understanding starship missions" is yet another chart. 

Moving along to sections 4 through 6, we choose the hull. Hulls are available in 100 -on increments (apparently you cannot trick the system with a 149-ton ship). This also closes off some loopholes that a lot of people over on COTI exploit, sticking to the letter of the law but not really (in my opinion) paying heed to what the rules are trying to do. But then, I've never been a min-maxer type of player, nor a rules lawyer. However - there are notes on over-tonnage and under-tonnage, so that you may end up with a 343-ton hull. There is a little chart indicating how this affects agility, stability and the impact on power plant fuel suage. Which is pretty high for over-tonnage, so you can see the rules do NOT want you to do this sort of thing. It is also noted that over-tonnage does not allow more hardpoints. Sorry, Gazelle class! Letters designate the hull size, and I assume without checking that these are the same codes from 1977. 

We have our 7 types of letter-based hulls, a bit of variation from LBB2 but not a whole lot. Costs are based on tonnage, configuration and structure. Wait - what is structure? Ahh, a sentence later we discover we now can have organic and charged structures for the hulls. So, our alien living hulls are now canon!

And while poking later in the chapter to find the hull costs, it turns out that the section I am reading through is a summary or preview of the sections later on. I must have missed this all along, and it does make reading through the rules a bit easier to understand. 

Moving on, we cover pods (< 100 tons) and subhulls (>= 100 tons). Which also puts into the rules things that the very verbose Spinward Flow on COTI mostly home rules or has a creative interpretation of the rules. We also describe the various configurations and what charged and organic mean. And we also have even more structures: frame and plate, shell, polymer, FeNi (aka asteroid), organic and charged. And cover the difference between a hardpoint and a firmpoint (which are available for small craft). And we have a lot of room for major customization: any gun < 500kg created in the GunMaker can be added to a firmpoint. 

We have the expanded list of hull fittings that have been detailed in other versions: landing skids, wheels, wings, flotation hulls, that sort of thing. Some more detailed summaries of airframe vs streamlined vs lifting body with notes on how that affects things like flying in an atmosphere of 2+, so they do take into account at least a little the density of the atmosphere. Though oddly enough, years ago I was talking to a helicopter pilot (I was replacing my wife in an adventure race and we had found out she was pregnant, and this was hot August in Atlanta, so I became the 3rd wheel to replace her). Anyway - temperature also affects agility: apparently cold air is easier to maneuver in as it is denser. If I remember that correctly. But that is probably below the resolution of the game. 

Then a quick overview of armor and drives. Armor can be layered, generates AV values against various threats, and may affect agility. Nicely enough, polymer is self-healing. Way back I had the eternity chip in my 200 ton Scout ship... And also, apparently the fission plant is safe to be around in a short-sleeve environment, but the maneuver drive is not (though to be fair, could be in the middle of battle and it is safer to depressurize a ship in that instance).

We cover the various drives and power systems, and whether the systems are centralized or dispersed. And centralized has a backup emergency power for TL minutes so that if you lose your power plant, a TL-12 ship has 12 minutes of emergency power available. Which is a nice touch. Dispersed systems may be self-powered: hello Mr. Fusion! Or at least fusion+ which is the same thing: compact cold fusion modules. We also cover types of power plants - collectors are now defined so we can recreate Annic Nova by the rules. We have 3 types of m-drives which have been covered in various iterations previously. But we also now have more jump drives: the traditional jump drive for 1-6 parsecs (possibly 1-9), the Hop drive starting at TL-17 and can cover 10-90 parsecs, the Skip drive at TL 20 100-900 parsecs, and the NAFAL drive which, see you next century old Not As Fast As Light drive. Think colony arcs or perhaps even the ship from Silent Running, just coasting along. Other than NAFAL, all drives take 168 hours +/- 10%, and also have relative accuracy. Using a hop or skip drive better bring along the next lower jump drives as you could end up parsecs away from where you want to go! And I appreciate that we finally have technologies above TL-15 that really don't break the Traveller universe. 

the Valley Forge from Silent Running

A quick overview of fuel requirements, sensors, weapons, defenses, operations, controls, payload, crew (somehow not rolled into operations), and evaluating the ship and giving a definition to the QSP, or quick ship profile, which is very reminiscent of LBB5's USP, Universal Ship Profile. And is basically what I used for the first part of the Imperium's ship ID that gives the basic info about the ship. 

And before we get into the very detailed explanations and usage of all the stuff we covered in the last dozen+ pages, there is a chart for performance based on letter of the component and the letter of the hull size. There is a stage effects table as well, though IMTU I'll probably do the "you really cannot get this higher-TL ship maintained at this lower TL world" which does put a limit on some things. But not all things as I also have Makers so that the ship can manufacture a lot of the smaller parts, and the computers would have the complete catalog of those parts. Depending on the ship, it may even have the complete guide to repair and maintain the ship in the library. In which case, it may be possible to have a lower TL fix your ship, but the costs go way up!

Then we have 3 ship fillforms that in theory help you design your ship. And they are begging for an automated process to do all that. Hmm, if only I had copious free time!

Page 67 gives a 1-page checklist of everything you need to do, all 27 steps. Then pages 68-93 give 1 or two pages per section to get into the nitty-gritty of that particular ship aspect. There are also a LOT of icons, which while pretty, also seem to be begging for a computer or board game to use all those icons. 

In the end, for me this is a lot like the old LBB5: I may create a lot of ships that make no real sense because I like to do that sort of thing. And the sensors and all that do play into the (to me at least) complicated rules around all that. Most RPG players, at least in my experience, really do not want to get into this level of detail. They want to know if they can see that ship out in the dark and can they shoot it. And while the rules do give that, it takes a lot of reading and calculations to figure all that out. Though I think, as per the personal cards and things. that can all get summarized down fairly easily but it just takes work to get from the rules to a final "roll this many dice and roll below this number to succeed". Which is what all these rules really boil down to. It just takes a lot to boil down to that end result!