Quote from: Spike;858695If I'm following the argument correctly, Traveller positing a means of thrust that translates energy directly into motion, rather than thrust as material ejection, is more of a problem than FTL jump drives for considering Traveller remotely 'Hard'.

The problem is that while Travellerhas reactionless maneuver drives. It also Traveller also has orbital mechanics still apply. So if you want to be realistic using Traveller's premise a Time, Distance, Acceleration formula for straight line travel doesn't get it.

It is not that hard to learn the tricks to incorporate the effects of orbital mechanics into a game. For example if you are in orbit around a planet and you are trying to catch a target. What you do is slow down.

Slow Down? Yup! By slowing down you drop to a lower orbit which makes you move faster relative to the target higher than you. When you reach the right angle offset you speed up and you will wind intercepting the target.

Now for a game you don't need to go as far to computer the right angle offset or the how low of an orbit you need in order to catch in the desired time. It is enough that they make their navigation rolls. If the actual time is important then just look at what was the initial offset and decide how many orbits it would take to catch up. In general with the reactionless drives you can do between one and four orbits.

To be fair it wasn't exactly easy to find out how to describe space navigation in layman terms. For me it came about because of the hours i put into developing add-on simulating the Mercury Spacecraft and the Gemini Spacecraft for the Orbiter Space Simulator.

Most books and text on Space go so far and stop leaving only the math heavy academic books. When Orbiter Space Simulator came out in the early 00s and the Kerbal Space Program a lot more recently there is now a wealth of how-tos explaining how it work and how people can do it themselves without learning calculus and the like.

And because these program are moddable you can program in Traveller style reactionless drives with Traveller ship performing and see how they do.

And as it turns out, you are still have some of the issues with reaction rockets as you can only change your delta-vee by so much in a given time.

Quote from: 5 Stone Games;858836Just for the record I love this, Its the perfect scientific veneer for Traveller's Jump Drive.

Thanks, I like it because it explains everything written about Traveller Jump Drives without having some magical hyperspace. And reduces the handwave down to the fact the Traveller Universe has gravity control.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;857944Traveller never explains how the crew can survive the superheated jumpspace bubble being created in the engine room.

That may be because Traveller never posits the creation of a superheated jumpspace bubble in the engine room.

Before you set out to argue the science of the game, you should at least know the game.

As it happens I've seen attempts to put orbital mechanics into games. I'll be damned if I can remember where, but I do remember that it seemed shockingly fiddly.

Of course, given my eclectic memory, I could have just been reading about orbital mechanics in a theoretical space combat scenario and simply ported game mechanic ideas onto the physics.

I'm not really sure, however, that Traveller needs orbital combat. I always got the impression that most space fights would happen farther out from planets, and I'm not sure Solar scale orbits really apply.  I mean, you've got that hundred diameters thing going on, and people powering out to scoop fuel from gas giants or dig rocks.  Given that most traveller games are operating well under the Naval/High Guard scale, who wants to pick a space fight near the space station (Capital Scale object, surely!), where all the system defense assets (boats, picket patrols, police cutters, etc) are likely to be?

I have trouble rationalizing space fights anywhere too far from the resource points of a system or the most efficient routes between them. Space, even just interplanetary space is just too big for combat to be likely unless both sides want it otherwise.

Even trying to patrol the space around a single gas giant is a tall order.

Jump drive raises the question of where the incoming ships exit jump space. There is afik no way to accurately predict either when or where an in-jumping ship will appear. No FTL communication so no way to know when or from where someone is coming, and no requirement that ships exit jump space at something like Starfire's "warp points".

Warp points or jump gates when they exist form a great chokepoint to base syetem defense around. They are the one point in a system that all interstellar traffic must pass through. Set a watch there and you will get at least one shot at them.

Otherwise ships are tiny and space is big. A situation not unlike trying to hunt down that one mosquito in your bedroom at night.

I like the ruleset of Traveller, but I never liked the background or the setting.  This might sound strange coming from the guy with the catgirl avatar, but the fact that almost all of Traveller's default races are variations of "funny animal people."  In my opinion, you're allowed to do that ONCE any more is just overdoing it.  The fact that almost all of the default Traveller races fall into this category is just too Saturday Morning for my taste.

The Aslan I liked because they remind me of the Kilrathi, and anything that reminds me of Wing Commander is awesome by default.  The Vargyr and the K'Kree on the other hand I can do without.

The other thing that killed the game for me was the the vast majority of human ship designs were just hideous.

I've tried a few times to create my own campaign setting, but it never got anywhere.  

2300 AD looks promising, however.

Quote from: DavetheLost;858985I have trouble rationalizing space fights anywhere too far from the resource points of a system or the most efficient routes between them. Space, even just interplanetary space is just too big for combat to be likely unless both sides want it otherwise.

Even trying to patrol the space around a single gas giant is a tall order.

Jump drive raises the question of where the incoming ships exit jump space. There is afik no way to accurately predict either when or where an in-jumping ship will appear. No FTL communication so no way to know when or from where someone is coming, and no requirement that ships exit jump space at something like Starfire's "warp points".


Otherwise ships are tiny and space is big. A situation not unlike trying to hunt down that one mosquito in your bedroom at night.

In MongTrav, the vague default method of piracy is 'jumpcussing', which is to hit them just as they hit the 100 diameter limit and get ready to jump. I don't know if it was new to MongTrav, but they also had special missiles that were designed to delay or prevent jump calculations long enough to do some damage/steal some cargo, and they discuss getting the pirate ship within 100 diameters (its own) and staying there will also prevent jump.

Of course, I understand that the existence of space piracy is a big flame topic among Traveller grognards.  Of course, if you look at the age of sail, your ability to see another ship was limited to the horizon, a mere three miles or so, with no sensors at all, and 'The Sea' is pretty damn big compared to 'a ship' too, so it still seems feasible.  You hang out near high traffic areas, try to get advanced information from dock-side spies, and get the job done before the military can respond.

The orbital mechanics / delta vee thing refers most significantly to interplanetary travel. However, when you've got at least 1G constant (plus the contragravity or whatever that allows a mere 1G ship to take off from a planet like Earth), I'm expecting fairly 'straight' courses. Once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere as far as delta-vee goes. Energy-conserving paths are beside the point when you have an effectively unlimited supply.

Quote from: Torque2100;858989This might sound strange coming from the guy with the catgirl avatar, but the fact that almost all of Traveller's default races are variations of "funny animal people."  In my opinion, you're allowed to do that ONCE any more is just overdoing it.  The fact that almost all of the default Traveller races fall into this category is just too Saturday Morning for my taste.

Furries tend to see anthropomorphic animal characters with human personalities and characteristics.

Quote from: Bren;854885I do to. For Star Wars. But SW is space opera. You can tell by William's leitmotifs.

Oh, Force, yes.  Hell, "Revenge of the Sith" is constructed like a Bel Canto opera for the same reason; everybody already knows the plot.

Lucas' reach fell short of his grasp on that one and it's too bad; if he'd partnered with a better writer and a really good editor, people would be frothing at the mouth and shitting themselves over that movie.  The basic concept is breathtakingly brilliant.

Yeah, it came close to it.  You can almost see it at times through the bad bits.  I think people need to learn to love Star Wars as a whole rather than in parts.  for those who can't there's always Traveller.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;859002Oh, Force, yes.  Hell, "Revenge of the Sith" is constructed like a Bel Canto opera for the same reason; everybody already knows the plot.

Lucas' reach fell short of his grasp on that one and it's too bad; if he'd partnered with a better writer and a really good editor, people would be frothing at the mouth and shitting themselves over that movie.  The basic concept is breathtakingly brilliant.

A better casting director would have helped. The wooden acting in the purportedly romantic scenes are just about too painful to watch. It reminds me of the time more than 30 years ago, that I spent an entire day watching the rehearsals of an undergraduate theater class. This one girl played the most awful Viola ever.

QuoteI left no ring with her. What means this lady?

Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her!

To this day, the  remembrance causes painful, mental anguish.

Quote from: Phillip;858994The orbital mechanics / delta vee thing refers most significantly to interplanetary travel. However, when you've got at least 1G constant (plus the contragravity or whatever that allows a mere 1G ship to take off from a planet like Earth), I'm expecting fairly 'straight' courses. Once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere as far as delta-vee goes. Energy-conserving paths are beside the point when you have an effectively unlimited supply.

Constant Acceleration drives are still bound by orbital mechanics. The primary limitation factor is not the amount of delta-vee you are carrying on-board as fuel but how fast you can change your delta-vee.

An extreme example are real life ion drive probes. While they have constant thrust it is so low that they have to spiral out over month befores they reach earth's escape velocity.

Traveller reactionless drives have a lot more thrust that NASA ion probes but even 6 G ships have limits on the trajectories they can take.

As far as gaming goes this stuff can be incorporated by incorporate the limitations but foregoing the actual math. For example A group of players have to intercept a station within 15 minutes of lifting off. I would roll a d6 to get a sense of how far out of position the station is. 1-2 they are already within the window, 3-4 they have to wait a half hour , 5 a 45 minutes, and 6 an hour. This based on the fact that spacecraft orbiting below the van Allen belts generally take 90 minutes to orbit the earth.

If the players don't care how long it takes I just roll and see how long again based on what I know how various rendezvous go even when it done with continuous thrust. (it will probably take 2 to 3 hours on average).

Where this has failed in past games is designers trying to get players to do math That kind of accuracy is not needed to make it feel realistic. For example you don't need to know the exact speed of a river to adjudicate a river crossing. It enough to know whether it is calm, swift, or a raging torrent to come up with a ruling that fits the situations.

The same with orbital mechanics. All you need to know that if you want to get off the ground quickly and to a orbiting target, there only a limited periodic window to do so. Otherwise it will take longer.

If you want to catch something in a planetary system you need to slow down to a lower orbit.

If you are within a certain distance you can ignore the effect of orbital mechanics and treat it like a straight line situation. In interplanetary space that can be within 100s of km of the target. In close orbiter it may be only within 1km.

And so forth and so on.

You know, this stuff is the sort of thing that makes a great RPG supplement, basically: Faking Orbital Mechanics, or some such similar title. Practical, in-game solutions and shortcuts for these kinds of questions. Maybe you need to branch out in your writing?

Quote from: Bren;859021A better casting director would have helped. The wooden acting in the purportedly romantic scenes are just about too painful to watch. It reminds me of the time more than 30 years ago, that I spent an entire day watching the rehearsals of an undergraduate theater class. This one girl played the most awful Viola ever.
To this day, the  remembrance causes painful, mental anguish.

Teen romance is always painful to watch. Watching Anakin make an utter fool of himself for Padme hit pretty close to home.

QuoteOh, Force, yes. Hell, "Revenge of the Sith" is constructed like a Bel Canto opera for the same reason; everybody already knows the plot.

You and Camille Paglia are among the few to get this.

QuoteLucas' reach fell short of his grasp on that one and it's too bad; if he'd partnered with a better writer and a really good editor, people would be frothing at the mouth and shitting themselves over that movie. The basic concept is breathtakingly brilliant.

There are screenwriters better than Tom Stoppard out there? Better editors than Roger Barton? Can you name a few? I'm genuinely curious.