Quote from: DavetheLost;856076I'd be concerned about the computers. Given the tonage requirements those things must run on vacuum tubes and paper punch tape.

You seem not to know what you're talking about.

The hand computer in the original equipment list is close enough in mass to an Apple iPhone.

Small craft computers are so negligible in volume that it's treated as zero.

The volume requirements for most starship systems are pretty much accounted for by human interface demands: your techs and users having places to sit, keyboards and monitors and room for caffeinated beverages and snacks.

Larger installations are hardly out of line by modern standards, even before considering that in outer space nobody can hear your server farm's fans scream: the only way to dump waste heat is by radiation.

Maybe they have upgraded them in more recent edition, but in CT, even in the early 80s computers seemed overly large for a sic-fi game. Even accounting for workstations etc.

Horses for courses though. If they don't seem overly large to you, that's fine. Many Traveller players disagree.

Quote from: Bren;855865Could be. But "luxblade" is up there with "slugthrowers" for dumbest names ever for a sci-fi weapon.

There's nothing sci-fi about it.

The name for the sixguns, actually, was 'revolvers', which is hardly exotic.

Slug throwers is a broad descriptive category for weapons that hurl missiles typified by pieces of lead, commonly known as 'slugs'.

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.

I only once encountered someone like that. He was a GM at another table reciting the "antique equivalents" weapons text. That was at exactly the same moment that, at another table, I was having my only encounter with a "killer DM" in D&D.

A sense of perspective can spare one a lot.

I have discovered that in Mongoose Traveller "computers" do not have a seperate tonnage requirement but are included as part of the "bridge". This makes sense. More sense than the way Classic Traveller did them.

And yes, "slug thrower" is a perfectly reasonable and descriptive name for any firearm that throws a "slug". Needlers. energy weapons, etc would not be "slug throwers".

Quote from: DavetheLost;856162Maybe they have upgraded them in more recent edition, but in CT, even in the early 80s computers seemed overly large for a sic-fi game. Even accounting for workstations etc.

Horses for courses though. If they don't seem overly large to you, that's fine. Many Traveller players disagree.

I'm talking about the original books.

It's only later that there's any quantified basis -- stipulated Wattage, bytes, etc. -- for such notions.

In the early '80s, people could think the fusion power plants overly inefficient, because they had no notion of what's entailed and expected to have clean nuclear power "too cheap to meter" for their weekend jaunts to Mars well before now.

Quote from: DavetheLost;856073We 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.

That's battle drill. Time to get into your vacc suit as the ships hull is decompressed for battle. Still didn't want to use high velocity , high explosive or armor piercing rounds. We saved that ammo for planetary surface battles.

In space, lasers were popular, shotguns and large caliber weapons using flechette, or stun rounds, as well as general melee weapons. Clubs. Swords, Hammers and thrown bladed weapons for close combat. Like that.

Quote from: David Johansen;856075Not 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.

We always shot up the power plants of ships we would board, and carried spare parts and mechanics who could usually patch up a ship well enough to get it to a starport or space station where repairs could be effective.

No grav pong. Target ship usually needed power, some serious hull patching, and life support in order to even be be operational after a boarding attempt.

A couple times we had to tow shattered hulls in by welding and bolting them them to our starship, and letting the shot up captured hull piggyback becuase we couldn't fix it without facilities that are present at type A or B starports. We just reconfigured our operational jump drives to jump less with more mass, and took the slow way home with our prize.

Quote from: Phillip;856166There's nothing sci-fi about it.

Other than being used in a couple of Sci-Fi RPGs you mean?

QuoteSlug throwers is a broad descriptive category for weapons that hurl missiles typified by pieces of lead, commonly known as 'slugs'.

I know what they are. I don't like what they are called.

The computers have gotten a lot of jaw for as long as I've been playing Traveller. It does appear to be a disconnect between the designers thinking mainframes and most gamers not. It can easily be explained away by thinking of all the extra effort and redundancy for a mission-critical system that must also be capable of working every time (can't scrub a re-entry because you're updating your software) in variable gravity, vacuum or atmosphere, heavy radiation, etc. Heck, doesn't the international space station have 10 year out of date computers because it takes so long to make them space-ready (I know the shuttles had that problem)?

Judging by the GDW deckplans we had access to, our group came to the conclusion that computers were large, bulky, solid objects, burried in the hull.

The workstations, operator chairs, etc were not included in computer tonnage, nor did they appear to be any sort of distributed network.

If it had been clearly stated and/or shown on deckplans that "computers" included in their displacement the operator stations, etc then they would not see so overly large.

The vast amounts of memory slots consumed by teh programs has never bothered me. I remember the days before hard drives in personal computers, and even then programs grew to fill the space available to them. And in Traveller the "cloud" is not going to help a starship. The light speed limit on communications is still in place, with the possible exception of X-boats.

None of this gets in the way of Traveller continuing to hold down a spot in my all time top three RPGs.

Also about Traveller, by way of edition wars, I have the itch to play some Traveller now, and am wondering Classic Traveller or plunk down the twenty bucks to check out the new Mongoose Traveller beta?

Classic Traveller is my favourite of the ones I've seen. I liked the setting updates in MegaTraveller, but didn't really like the system, and T3(?) with Virus Fleets and all that didn't really feel like Traveller. I haven't seen T5, and don't remember T4.

I tend to prefer less rules crunch. Especially since I have to both GM and teach the rules.

So which Traveller would you recommend?

They were thinking of the computers on naval vessels.  But yeah, space worthy computers with multiple redundancies and shielding from radiation are probably pretty bulky.  Also, the hand computer was a wrist mounted device that was as powerful as a model 1 computer.  So, there was a distinct and deliberated separation.

Quote from: David Johansen;856288They were thinking of the computers on naval vessels.  But yeah, space worthy computers with multiple redundancies and shielding from radiation are probably pretty bulky.  Also, the hand computer was a wrist mounted device that was as powerful as a model 1 computer.  So, there was a distinct and deliberated separation.

Since I design similar things for a living I prefer to think of the Traveller computer as the sum of the ship's automation including redundancies and safety interlockings. If anything I would say that the tonnage is low.

Quote from: DavetheLost;856263Also about Traveller, by way of edition wars, I have the itch to play some Traveller now, and am wondering Classic Traveller or plunk down the twenty bucks to check out the new Mongoose Traveller beta?

Classic Traveller is my favourite of the ones I've seen. I liked the setting updates in MegaTraveller, but didn't really like the system, and T3(?) with Virus Fleets and all that didn't really feel like Traveller. I haven't seen T5, and don't remember T4.

I tend to prefer less rules crunch. Especially since I have to both GM and teach the rules.

So which Traveller would you recommend?

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/58279/Book-0-Introduction-to-Traveller?term=book+0



This is a link to a free download of Book 0: An Introduction to Traveller. Traveller is the game that inspired Joss Whedon to create the series Firefly and the movie Serenity.


http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/153065/Introduction-to-Clement-Sector?src=newest&filters=0_0_10134_0_0&manufacturers_id=3565

This is a link to a free download of a sample setting for Traveller, the Clement Sector.

Give the Mongoose version a try before you buy.