Quote from: Werekoala;855925Not sure where all this "Traveller had "slug throwers"" is coming from. Looking at my Book One (copyright 1977), the relevant weapon skills are: Body Pistol, Automatic Pistol, Revolver, Carbine, Rifle, Automatic Rifle, Submachine Gun, and Shotgun. No "slug throwers" listed. None in the equipment table either.

Mercenary Book 4
Page 36
Equipment: Small Arms
Slug Throwers

Slug Throwers are also listed extensively in the Striker Rules... GDWs 15mm Miniatures game for Traveller and Mercenary.

Quote from: Werekoala;855925Not sure where all this "Traveller had "slug throwers"" is coming from. Looking at my Book One (copyright 1977), the relevant weapon skills are: Body Pistol, Automatic Pistol, Revolver, Carbine, Rifle, Automatic Rifle, Submachine Gun, and Shotgun. No "slug throwers" listed. None in the equipment table either.

All the weapons you just listed are slug throwers, no? It's just a generic term for a gun that uses a physical projectile, whether a body pistol, gauss rifle, or accelerator rifle.  

Now that I try, I can't remember where I first heard the term, but it was certainly in use by the time of my first Traveller game.

Tyranid Bioweapons?

Quote from: Natty Bodak;856019All the weapons you just listed are slug throwers, no? It's just a generic term for a gun that uses a physical projectile, whether a body pistol, gauss rifle, or accelerator rifle.  

Now that I try, I can't remember where I first heard the term, but it was certainly in use by the time of my first Traveller game.

Yes, its a generic term for a firearm, but the impression I got was that someone thought the game itself only had "slug throwers" as a weapon, as the only weapon,  and not simply as a category heading for firearms of various types. Yes, it is a silly name. (to BD) didn't know about the Book 4 calling firearms "Slug Throwers", which is not used generically in the book (upon review), but as a header for the section on firearms.

Firearms in space is far from silly unless you posit some huge leap in power generation/storage miniaturization. Traveller has Laser Rifles etc. but they generally require heavy backpacks and have limited shots, which is more "realistic".

Quote from: Simlasa;855967I've always liked Traveller, specifically the setting-agnostic game presented in the original LBBs.
For some reason though, maybe just luck of the draw, I've found there is a certain species of oddball that seems attracted to the game... I'm not sure how to describe them... OCD military fantasists, maybe? Way too many guys telling me they were in Special Forces and waving guns around (literally)... most of whom seem to have ONLY played Traveller and eschew fantasy RPGs.
Games that break down into discussions of real world military practices and how tech works.

Not always, of course, but enough that I'm a bit wary when joining Traveller groups these days.

If it was on the Citizens of the Imperium official Traveller forum, and it was one specific guy, I think I know who you might be talking about (extremely obsessed with realism, dropped tangentially relevant factoids about real world/historical ships and battles?). He's considered an oddball there too.

Quote from: Werekoala;856041Yes, its a generic term for a firearm, but the impression I got was that someone thought the game itself only had "slug throwers" as a weapon, as the only weapon,  and not simply as a category heading for firearms of various types. Yes, it is a silly name. (to BD) didn't know about the Book 4 calling firearms "Slug Throwers", which is not used generically in the book (upon review), but as a header for the section on firearms.

Firearms in space is far from silly unless you posit some huge leap in power generation/storage miniaturization. Traveller has Laser Rifles etc. but they generally require heavy backpacks and have limited shots, which is more "realistic".

It's a state of mind.

No one wants firearms aboard a starship. The problem with high velocity rounds is that they blow holes into walls, bulkheads, and other important things like maybe the ships skin, jump drives, maneuver drives, fuel tanks. Stuff like that. Explosive decompression is just about the worst thing a starship crew can experience, as they get unceremoniously sucked into a very small hole, or completely through, and then out into the void of open space. That's no place to be if your ship is doing 3G of acceleration, and is also making high speed evasive maneuvers to dodge fire and missiles from other nearby (relatively speaking) starships.

If you have a vacc suit on, you just might  survive long enough to be picked up by the victors of the current battle, whoever that may be. If you have a vacc suit with a jetpack, you might even be able to make it back to your ship. The odds are against you.

That is firearms in space. So instead we have slugthrowers.

To ensure safe travel aboard star ships, the slug throwers were introduced. While they are standard firearms that are being issued, they feature much less recoil than regular wepaons, and ammunition rounds with much less powder, or other combustibles. The result is a very slow moving rounds that will knock you into a wall, and do stun damage, but that will not breach a wall, bulkhead, fuel tank or sensitive electronics bay.

Slug throwers.

Available on any TL8 and above world.

High velocity armour piercing firearms rounds on a starship traveling through vacuum, using hydrogen as fuel, said fuel stored between teh inner and outer skin of the vessel, what could possibly go wrong?

We usually decompressed the ship and fought space combat in van-suits to avoid explosive decompression. It also had the advantage of not providing an oxygen atmosphere for leaking hydrogen fuel to explosively interact with.

Shotgun full of rock salt is a nice round against unarmoured personel on a starship. Shreds meat, won't blow the bulkhead.

Did have a fellow fire a fusion gun at boarders once. Once. Saddly they were in the central corridor, between him and the bridge...

Quote from: Willie the Duck;856066If it was on the Citizens of the Imperium official Traveller forum, and it was one specific guy, I think I know who you might be talking about (extremely obsessed with realism, dropped tangentially relevant factoids about real world/historical ships and battles?). He's considered an oddball there too.

It wasn't one guy. This class of gamer was more common back in the day though. When I got into gaming in the early '80s, you had two major factions: the mostly school-age nerd who got into the hobby by way of fantasy and sci-fi and the older grognards* who played mostly miniature and wargames. Traveller and Star Fleet Battle were the limit of fantastical games for them. They mostly viewed RPGs with the same attitude my generation would view CCGs a decade later. Maybe they played them, but they were sullying the purity of their hobby.

It's no coincidence that Traveller came from a company that also made a lot minature and wargames.

It's the main reason none of us kids ever touched Traveller back then despite our science-fiction obsession. It belonged to those cranky assholes who were always rude to us when they weren't busy yelling at each other while waving three-ring binders containing 500 pages of rules. How could we guessed those guys actually played an RPG that was clean and simple?

Ironically, I did end up getting T:2000, which ended up being exactly like what we though an RPG these guys would play would look like.

*I've never been quite able to take seriously calling old school D&D players "grognards". I remember the real grognards playing their Napoleanic games and the contempt they had for D&D. "D&D-playing grognard" was an oxymoron back then.

Well, the hull and tanks are "bonded superdense" material so , I'm not hugely concerned about anything other than the light fixtures and control panels.  

Still, the snub pistols from Mercenary were Traveller's solution to a low gee weapon.  A low velocity high caliber weapon firing a variety of rounds including high explosive armor piercing ones.

Not that you can successfully board a ship with a functional power plant and grav plates in the floor.  They'll just keep the crew to a few rooms and gravpong the hell out of the borders.  Most boarding happens under the threat of destruction by superior firepower.

I'd be concerned about the computers. Given the tonage requirements those things must run on vacuum tubes and paper punch tape.

As for the hydrogen fuel, without oxygen or something else to react with it isn't all that dangerous. But it can be a fun thing to threten players with...

A low velocity high caliber weapon is still going to have problems in zero-G. Inertia is inertia. A gyroget is a good zero-G weapon though.

Flipping the grav plates on and off is a great way to deal with unwanted guests on a starship, as is turning the gravity up, way up...

We didn't have an issue with wargames grognards where I lived, so the geeky high schoolers felt free to play Traveller, and then modify it to play high fantasy with Traveller. It actually was more fun than playing high fantasy with D&D. We did career paths and the works.

Traveller was GURPS for our group before there was a GURPS.

Grav plate pong sounds fun - if you have grav plates in the ceiling as well.

Also, one of the requirements of boarding would preferably be that the power plant be taken out first (in High Guard, "ability to maneuver" is one of the prerequisites), which would de-power things like drives and, one would think, grav plates.

As to the bullets holing the hull or vital components - typically, if weapons were used on a ship they were shotguns and body pistols. Admittedly that wouldn't apply to pirates or something, but I guess that is part of the risk they would take in trying to storm a ship - damaging it. Most likely, they'd be after the cargo anyway, and whatever they could salvage after the ship-to-ship and boarding actions.

Not sure energy weapons would be safer in that regard, but whatever. Guess that's why there are stats for cutlasses and other melee weapons.

Quote from: DavetheLost;855097I specifically said three or more bodies require more than three points. Three or fewer will define a plane, more than three will not.  Facing and inertia do not change the fact that any three objects will define a plane. The plane may change (relative to a fixed arbitrary X,Y,Z axis system), but its existence will not.

So seeking weapons, shuttles, spacewalkers, debris, et al. are covered in my original post.

I still remain unconvinced that tracking 3D motion is worth the extra work for game play. And, yes, I have played table top miniatures games with several systems of 3 dimensional movement.

I'm not trying to convince you that 3D motion is worth the extra work for game play.

But I do maintain that, for those players who do care about modelling a situation, that something of potential tactical significance is being omitted by leaving out the third dimension, even with only two ships. This is because an actual ship has more spatial information than just its location, unless the game system omits those. So even though yes, any three points can be reduced to a triangle on the plane between them, an actual ship can't be described as just a point unless you're leaving out some information. An actual ship has not just a location in space, but also an inertial vector which involves a direction (and so, another point, unless it's unmoving or uses fantasy inertial propulsion), and a facing, and a rotation about the facing axis - that's actually four pieces of spatial information per ship. Now, your movement and combat systems may ignore the effects of some or all of those, but then you're leaving something out, which is what I was trying to say.

Quote from: Baulderstone;856074*I've never been quite able to take seriously calling old school D&D players "grognards". I remember the real grognards playing their Napoleanic games and the contempt they had for D&D. "D&D-playing grognard" was an oxymoron back then.

No one living at any point when you were living gets to claim original meaning to that term so now it just means "the old guard" regardless of what group they are the old guard of.

I believe "grognard" is French for "old grumbler" and was popularized by Napoleon's Old Guard.  I hope none of us are *that* old.

I liked CT spaceship combat for having vectored movement. I disliked ship attitude, rotation, etc not really being much of a factor.  High Guard was nice for big fleets, or playing in small spaces.

We had a couple of long space battles where ships aquired vectors measuring several meters of floor. Made us realize just how big space is... Also caused us to rethink the rationale behind space battles. We ultimately decided that most would take place near planets, space stations and other must visit locations. It was just too easy to avoid contact anywhere else in a system.

Ships jumping into systems also raised the question of traffic control. Space is mostly empty, but jumping in too close to something could be a disaster. Do systems have standard in and out jump locations? Or is it just avoid the gravity well and hope for the best?

Quote from: Willie the Duck;856115No one living at any point when you were living gets to claim original meaning to that term so now it just means "the old guard" regardless of what group they are the old guard of.

The bothersome Traveller players I mentioned weren't necessarily the guys I'd call 'grognards'... just guys who seemed like they would rather sit around and argue about technicalities of physics/computers/military rather than actually play the game. It can end up feeling less like an RPG and more like a bunch of guys trying to assemble furniture using different instruction manuals.
Something I seldom if ever run into with pure fantasy games... but anything attempting historical, modern or futuristic and out come the bean counters.
 
It's one of the reasons I won't run anything 'harder' than 40K-ish scifi... though I'm happily playing in a Traveller game (and yeah, there's one of 'those guys' in it).