Dumarest was fun. People would get frozen for space travel or took drugs to slow down their metabolism. Just be careful holding that glass of wine! You are holding it for three months now!

One of the first posts mentions Traveller being very narrow in focus. You were a soldier, a scout or a merchant. Doesn't this make it very broad in focus?

Babel-17 is one of the best. If you can run a Traveller game like that, you got it made.

Quote from: ChrisGunter;854811This^^^. I want a we have to deal with hydroponics issues and thrust fuel ratios and space walking to repair something feeling.

Comparing the 1970s versions I know, Traveller is like D&D: a starting-point framework for exploration of a wide range of situations, reflecting the flavor of a body of literary inspirations. Neither is very detailed even in most of the areas specifically treated.

Some examples of inspirational referents were the interstellar-adventure series of Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Gordon Dickson, Harry Harrison, Frank Herbert, Keith Laumer, Larry Niven, Andre Norton and H. Beam Piper. Those are generally concerned with larger, social-scale matters rather than quotidian aspects of space travel (which in most stories is hand-waved with space warps and artificial gravity and cheap power from nuclear reactions).

Quote from: Bren;854908The sector maps were 2D. I honestly don't recall what localized movement was like, but the smaller maps I recall seeing for Traveller were also 2D.

Yes, and the Solomani Rim necessarily squashes in some stars compared with a real map of local space. Leaving out the majority (whatever nominal depth we assume) is pretty natural if you're dealing with any great volume, else the few of interest vanish in clutter.

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 existance 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.

For most situations -- especially the usual "player-characters in one ship, foes in one or two" -- I find 3D is not worth the extra work.

Quote from: Phillip;855416For most situations -- especially the usual "player-characters in one ship, foes in one or two" -- I find 3D is not worth the extra work.

Given that facing doesn't matter, I'm not convinced two dimensions are even necessary. The only factor that matters is range, after all.

Quote from: Bren;855238Nope. Never did that. How did you deal with jump routes from higher to lower maps?

If you mean drawing them on maps, I'll say that's something I never got into even without the 3rd dimension. What lines are selling tickets to where is something I'll note in world write-ups if anywhere.

FTL 2448 had a supplement that gave stacked-layer hex coordinates for a sphere of 50 LY or so around Sol derived from the Gliese catalog.

Tracking relative vectors and delta-v, as Estar suggests, was the basis for a very simple interception system in GDW's Dark Conspiracy rules set.

Quote from: Brad J. Murray;855417Given that facing doesn't matter, I'm not convinced two dimensions are even necessary. The only factor that matters is range, after all.

Which is the only factor treated in Book 5 High Guard for Classic Traveller. The vector system from Triplanetary was put into Book 2 not from any "necessity" but rather because it's fun.

Quote from: estar;855317Yes but what are talking about here in terms of time scales? Most starship combats games the turns are in terms of units like 15 minutes, 1 hours, etc. Not seconds like melee combat.

As I said, it depends.

I can't speak about most games. But Space Quest used seconds. WEG Star Wars used seconds. Certainly one can treat the ships as point sources for all weapons. It simplifies things and makes the location of weapon systems or the presence of turrets irrelevant. Which then raises the question why games like Traveller included turrets and located weapon systems as dorsal, ventral, etc.

I have played games that treated ships as point sources for all weapons, assuming that a ship would change roll, pitch, and yaw sufficiently during a turn to bring all weapons to bear.

Traveller ships seem to have dorsal/ventral weapons mostly for role playing. Turrets seem to matter a bit more in terms of firing arcs.

Brilliant Lances, the Traveller The New Era ship to ship duel game (as opposed to Battle Rider, the fleet action game) actually dealt with such matters in detail.  I think it even included a 3d option.

The big issue is that you can only rotate around your short axis when firing the engines at full thrust.  Turrets can track multiple targets and have a shorter axis and thus a faster tracking rate and are much better at the crucial role of antimissile fire.

It does bear consideration that Traveller's capital ships are all built around massive spinal particle accelerators.  But then, Traveller fleet actions have been described, somewhat uncharitably as big games of Irish Knockdown.  The ships line up and pound each other till one line falls apart, then the reserve steps up and tries to hold the line.  Thus it was in High Guard and thus it ever shall be.

Incidentally, the folks at AdAstra Games are working on a Traveller based Attack Vector Tactical variant.  For solidly hard physics and three dimensional combat.

Quote from: GameDaddy;855338That's interesting, becuase I have always thought of Traveller as more Hard Sci-Fi, rather than Golden Age Sci-Fi.

Lots of these were inspirational for my earlier games, but so was plenty of hard Sci-Fi stories and artwork from Analog magazine and Isaac Asimov magazine as well as Terran Trade Authority illustrated starship books.

The meaning of "hard" in Hard SF has changed in the last thirty years. None of these books would be considered Hard SF now. At best (Hal Clement for example) they would be considered "firm". Using this term has been the source of a shitload of on-line arguments, along with another phrase what has radically changed meaning several times - "Space Opera". Two people using the same word or phrase with different meanings makes communication a mite difficult.

I'm not saying anyone is wrong, mind you, but please be wary, and understand the difference.

Re: Traveller as strictly "hard sci-fi"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the 1st edition of LBBs had stats for "lightswords" and even Darth Vader et.al. unless I'm very much mistaken. That's just the 1st 3 LBBs, with no inherent setting. I think they were removed, of course, for obvious reasons.

I don't recall that.