Evening Ian,I wanted to make sure that you really met Book 5.Thank you for the economics lesson and I very sure that I'll stick with the design and construction system.Tom Rux
From: "Ian Whitchurch" <ian.whitchurch@gmail.com>
To: tml@simplelists.com
Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2014 3:23:00 PM
Subject: Re: [TML] Original CT LBB's scoutship vs CT HG scoutship?
The mention of book 4 means I typo'd book 5 :)Having pre-built components that can be plugged together is a great idea, but having them have their own "special cases" is where problems come in.An example of economics being important is what the 20 dton minimum bridge size does to the size of merchant ships. Briefly, a starship needs about 13% of volume per jump number for j-drive, fuel and power plant. Add 7% of total volume for miscellaneous crap like crew staterooms, turrets, computer, maneuver drive and the rest of it, and thats more-or-less what a merchant ship looks like.A 200 dton merchant ship is 10% bridge. A 2000 dton merchant ship is 1% bridge. Therefore, ten 200 dton merchant ships cannot carry as much cargo as one 2000 dton merchant ship, because they are collectively lugging around ten times as much Bridge.The 200 dton Far Trader isnt going to happen, in short. Trade will be done by bigger ships.A second example is what gets built where. The 3I is defined by a massive range of tech levels in it's member worlds, but a TL15 merchant ship is only a bit more efficient than a TL12 merchant. On the other hand, a TL15 warship is ~10 times more efficient than a TL12 warship. Therefore, you'd expect a lot of merchant ships to be built at lower TLs - who wants to pay Imperial credits for some tub thats going to be jumping back and forth between frontier worlds ?
On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 8:17 AM, <tmr0195@comcast.net> wrote:
Hello Ian,No comments on non-gearheads.The Book 2 "special cases" are basically home brew rules or manipulating them to make the design work in my opinion. Looking at Book 2 1st edition my impression was that all hulls needed a power plant could be any letter to generate enough internal power to run ship's computer and life support. Additionally, in order for the power plant to generate power for the maneuver drive and provide internal their letters had to at least match each other. Of course having a high lettered power plant was okay too.Whoever built the "special cases" using Book 2 1st edition manipulated the rules to make the designs work without bothering to pass the manipulation up the editorial chain for approval and inclusion into the rules.I can't comment on economics since I never got that far in the rules, my interest is the design and construction processes. Personally, my knowledge of economics is just enough for me to keep my checkbook up to date and complain about the high cost of stuff.Book 2, in my opinion, tried to pull together a very simple design and construction system that used limited math to quickly build additional ships. In order to do that the game designers decided to set up a table that had modules that plugged into a list of hull tonnages.What does CT Book 4 Mercenary have to do with CT Book 2?To everyone I'm apologizing here because I am so far behind in reading through the TML I'm skipping to the newest posts that have come in today 10/28. Heck, I spent most of my time trying to reply to this post, I just couldn't and feel I've down a good job a reply.Tom Rux
From: "Ian Whitchurch" <ian.whitchurch@gmail.com>
To: tml@simplelists.com
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 1:53:51 PM
Subject: Re: [TML] Original CT LBB's scoutship vs CT HG scoutship?
Tom,Nahh, as design sequences go, Im pretty happy with High Guard and FFS2 - and in an ideal world, we would have built up a High Guard2 that has every module in it legal and buildable under FFS2, so non-gearheads can just look up numbers on tables and plug modules together.The problem I see are the "special cases" of Book 2, which have stuff you cant otherwise build, and Marc Millers massive blind spots in economics (Cr1000 per dton for freight being the poster child of this, with the Cr2000 "life support costs" coming a close second).It is possible to argue that these "90% discount" Standard Designs are subsisdised by some Imperial Bureaucracy or other, but that requires a model of the Imperium where the Imperium does that sort of thing, and the background is silent on who would do it, how it would be regulated and so on.Then you get things like 'OK, so a Book 2 ship is limited to 50 dtons of drives. OK, lets build ten 200 dton cargo and fuel shuttles under Book 2 for the cheap hulls, and then have them carried by a Book 4 open frame jump tender'. Back of the envelope numbers says that should shave a couple of points off the whole system cost, as opposed to building it all under book 4.Main tank/secondary tank systems have the issue of why do you need to carry Hydrogen in the tanks in liquid form (I'll handwave a lot when it comes to jumpspace, but not "jumpspace is allergic to metallic hydrides held in the cargo bay'), and then we need some rules for scaling up stuff we can do at TL7 (especially considering we have a many-megawatt fusion plant thats able to run refrigerators and whatnot).I can handwaves much of the crap design of existing IN ships as 'The Imperium is built on who you know, not what you know, so dont be surprised at the level of corruption' ... assume that, and it fits with the background and the rules set, and then the crap meson screens on the Plankwell class make sense.Ian
On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 3:39 AM, <tmr0195@comcast.net> wrote:
Howdy Ian,My zero dark thirty hours attempt at answering the TML was not a good idea, sorry about not catching the typing goofs, for example "I am guess" should have been "I am guessing".You are right the designers probably could have done things more to your liking when Traveller came out, however they created the rules their way.In YTU drop tanks can be made unavailable and using other types of fuel storage can be used. My problem is that I probably would not be able to recreate a design from YTU following the OTU process. I already have enough trouble trying to recreate the OTU designs using the OTU design and construction process.I do like the alternates that have been suggested and would like to see them added to the existing system as authorized options. Unfortunately, I've discovered my talents are not up to the challenge.Thank you Ian for the alternate ideas and keep them rolling out.Tom Rux
From: "Ian Whitchurch" <ian.whitchurch@gmail.com>
To: tml@simplelists.com
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 12:23:34 AM
Subject: Re: [TML] Original CT LBB's scoutship vs CT HG scoutship?
A problem 'half now half later', and indeed collapsible tanks, have is there are much more space-efficient ways to store hydrogen than as LHyd - for example, you can store hydrogren attoms into a metallic hydride lattice.At that point, it gets tempting to use half the tankage size, refilling it from the long term storage and then using the new LHyd at the other end - ta da, we just saved a decent chunk of volume.ian
On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 5:39 PM, <tmr0195@comcast.net> wrote:
Evening again Ian (PDT),The action of taking on fuel from a tanker as suggested here is similar to what happens to ships doing underway replenishment or probably closer would in inflight refueling of aircraft today.Per Supplement 7 a Gazelle is 48 meters long x 23 meters wide x 8.5 meters high. I am guessing the 10 diameter jump safety area is going to be 480 meter which is approximately 1,575 feet. The tender has to deploy at least 480 meters of one use flexible hose, and both ships have maintain course, speed, pitch, and yaw during the process. My guess is that Murphy will show up more often than not to foul up the whole thing, especially if I'm the one rolling the dice. Of course I am probably out to lunch as usual.Since how exactly the jump drive works, even with the JTAS article written by Marc Miller, is very vague your concept is just as plausible as converting the fuel in to some sort of energy that rips open a hole in space. By the same token they are both out to lunch and there is another explanation.Based on the 168 hours plus/minus 16.8 hours I am guess that half the fuel is used to enter jump space at the point departure and the remainder is used to get out of jump space at the arrival point. How the ship gets into and out of jump space is beyond me without more information.Do you have objections to using collapsible tanks or the external/internal demountable tanks introduced in TCS?The only OTU ship that uses drop tanks that I know of is the Gazelle and from at least one source they rarely jettison their drop tanks, which really makes the exterior demountable tanks.For my part if I was in a game you refereed and you excluded the use of drop tanks there wouldn't be any problems.On another note cutting out drop tanks would create issues with an established design in a similar fashion to the changes make when LBB 1, 2, 3, and 5 came out with a 2nd edition.Thank you for your thoughts and putting up with me.Tom Rux
From: "Ian Whitchurch" <ian.whitchurch@gmail.com>
To: tml@simplelists.com
Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 8:49:35 PM
Subject: Re: [TML] Original CT LBB's scoutship vs CT HG scoutship?
Tom,.If you allow remote tankage, it's really not that difficult to arrange a easily-vaporised hose to be used that keeps the tanks further than 10 diameters away, thus allowing a jump-5 transport that isnt 50% empty fuel tankage.As an aside, Ive never believed jump fuel is burned to power a jump drive - bluntly, it's too much to be fuel. My belief is that for a jump to work, there needs to be a cloud of liquid hydrogen ejected around the ship, and unrefined fuel has tritium and deuterium in there that jump space doesnt like.But yeah. although I can abuse them better than most, I dont like drop tanks at all, and would be happy if they got de-canonised.
On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 2:38 PM, <tmr0195@comcast.net> wrote:
Hello Ian Whitchurch,I'm not sure if LBB 5 HG or the Gazelle Close Escort article in JTAS 4 introduced drop tanks in to the OTU. However, the Gazelle is a warship and in my opinion High Guard deals primarily with warships. I recall that the mega corporation that has a contract to build drop tanks also has gotten permission to use them on a few of their hulls.As far as I can tell the use of drop tanks is very limited by either the IN or commercial interest. Of course if every Tom, Dick, and Harry could buy drop tanks then Traveller economics and boundaries would be broken as you pointed out.My understanding is that drop tanks are reusable if they can be recovered and be refurbished. Of course the price to build drop tanks during construction or as a retrofit adds to the hulls cost. I have used drop tanks in two designs one was another naval vessel and the other was a scout.My understanding is that the earliest a ship can make a jump is at the 10D limit with a very high risk of a miss-jump occurring. I recall in one of the books that another ship too close to one making a jump can cause the miss-jump. My guess is that the anything within 10D of the ship making a jump can cause a miss-jump. If I'm even close to being right then jettisoned drop tanks or fuel tanker with in 10D of the ship making a jump could have a miss-jump.I could have sworn that either the JTAS 4 article or TCS described that the ship somehow used the fuel in the drop tanks first to charge the jump drive capacitors and then used the ship's fuel tanks to complete the charge to the max jump rating. I've checked both sources and as usual gremlins have hidden the material.Tom Rux
From: "Ian Whitchurch" <ian.whitchurch@gmail.com>
To: tml@simplelists.com
Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2014 3:03:07 PM
Subject: Re: [TML] Original CT LBB's scoutship vs CT HG scoutship?
Drop tanks break the economics of Trav pretty badly - they push commercial traffic up from jump-2 or jump-3 up to about jump-5.Reusable drop tanks are even worse.The only way I can see of not having them shrink the Imperium a lot is to have them increase lethal misjump chances, so that they are an expedient you'd use for raiding squadrons in wartime, but not something Tukera wants to risk lawsuits over.As an aside, TankRons can be used without drop tanks - you simply pump fuel from the tanker into the ship, and then it doesnt need to find a refuelling point. Presumably, the TankRon and attached escorts then stays in system and refuels, and then joins back up with the fleet.
On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 8:49 AM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <nobody@simplelists.com> wrote:This email was sent from yahoo.com which does not allow forwarding of emails via email lists. Therefore the sender's email address (philpugliese@yahoo.com) has been replaced with a dummy one. The original message follows:
--------------------------------------------
Sat, 10/25/14:
[SNIP]
PHIL;
>
I looked at HG 2ed (I didn't see the 1st ed for quite
some years as I came
> into Trav right
after the 2nd ed came out & the 1st ed was superseded
> after > only one year) as similar
to the mil-spec requirements of the US
>
DoD, so I felt that those rules should be followed
slavishly.
> (I still wonder how the
original 'Plankwell' BB design. with that wimpy
> meson screen, was danced past the
Procurement folks. Maybe someone
>
connected to it had high-level contacts/influence? "Hey
we'll just use
> them against foes
with only low-level meson guns, or none at all! Right?)
TOM;
Lucky you I got a good look at
HG 1st edition and did not get past
determining the weapon rating codes. Of course
there are some things that HG
2nd
Edition omitted, fighter squadrons and medical
section are the biggest.
Based on the
number of real world warships that where built my take was
the
builder orally promised that the
Plankwell class would have the meson
screens upgrade at a later time and the later
time or funding never arrived
to do
the job.
========================================================================================
PHIL (new);
Yeah, that'd work.
Or it could've been analogous to various attempts to hold down US defense expenditures, like the way the early Spruance class DD's were initially criticized for having only anti-sub capability & little else but had lot's of spare room for future upgrades. Only, in the end, as in yours, the upgrades never happened.
==========================================================================================
PHIL;
>
With LBB2, & esp after the 'Annic Nova'
adventure indicated that
>
'non-standard' designs *could* get an Imperial
Registry, I tended to allow
> a
> reasonable amount of 'fudging'
(post-commision non-standard refits?), esp
> since I became aware of the diffs tween
the LBB2's when I bought that
>
hardbound Traveller Book, started using it, & noticed
right away some
> diffs w/ the original
LBB's 1-3. (and even some minor diffs w/ the 2nd ed
> LBB's
> 1-3)
TOM;
I have two copies, pamphlet
and in the FFE reprint, of JTAS 1 that as far as
I know is the first place the Annic Nova
appeared, unfortunately I only
skimmed
through the details and never did anything else with the
design.
PHIL;
TOM;
> Still, one
thing that remains 'hard & fast' is the large
volume of fuel
> required for jumping.
(60% for J6!)
> But, there is also the
'Annic Nova' example where large solar
'sails' were
> used to charge
the jump capacitors.
> (Still can't
see how that could actually work though, It's such a
large
> energy requirement)
> Now there's a thought, maybe the Scout
Ship could have a J4 engine but
> carry
only enough fuel for J3.
> If J4 was
wanted then drop tanks could be used if avail (note:
I've
> always thought that the IN
Tank-Rons also performed the function of
> 'drop-tank'
>
tenders) or a 'sail' like the 'Annic Nova'
used could be deployed.
> [Note: As I recall the 'Nova had
enough storage capacity to allow for TWO
> jumps. (one J3 & one J2, I think)]
=====================================================================================
During my efforts to go
through and verify the original Traveller designs
I've been thinking about the jump fuel
requirement. Since the time in jump
space is
approximately 168 hours I think that half the fuel opens
jump space
at the outbound jump point and
the remaining half reverses the
process at
the inbound jump point. Per JTAS 1 page 30 the energy
collector
canopy takes between 1 and 6
weeks to charge the accumulators to make
a
jump. The accumulators, I guessing here, change the
collected energy into
right type of
electrical and begins charging the jump capacitors and
power
for the internal systems.
Per the design and
construction rules jump fuel tankage is calculated based
on the maximum jump rating, of course if one is
using the concept that the
if the rules do
specifically forbid not having a full jump fuel load then
the fuel load can be less than that needed
to make a jump four.
I'm not sure what IN Tank-Rons means, but
I'll take a swing at answering. My
guess is that an IN Tank-Ron is a squadron of
tankers used as mobile gas
stations similar
to the KC-135 inflight refueling tanker. In the case of a
drop tank tender I think that the ship
collects the jettisoned tanks
beginning
the refurbishing process while heading to the
port where they can be placed
in storage
until needed for the next run.
PHIL(New);
I first encountered 'tankers' in the original 'Imperium' board game from GDW that covered the period of the 'Interstellar Wars' 'tween the Vilani & Terrans that culminated in the end of the First Imp followed shortly after by the est. of the 2nd.
'Tankers' were needed to be able to follow jump routes thru 'bachelor' star systems.
There are actual tanker squadrons in the 'Fifth Frontier War' board game. They can accompany a fleet & allow it to jump again in situations where the fleet would otherwise have to pause to refuel
I envisioned them staying behind when the rest of the fleet jumped, collecting the d'tanks, & then either following along or going elsewhere, depending on their orders.
======================================================================================
TOM;
The Consolidated CT Errata
mentions that to fill and I think refine
the soup in the fuel tanks takes
about 8
hours when skimming a gas giant and then the time needed to
travel
to the jump point. The Annic Nova
takes between 1 and 6 weeks to have
enough
power to charge the jump capacitors and then travel to the
outbound
jump point.
Several of my characters where Scouts and form
my point of view I would not
want to be in
a possibly unfriendly system for one to six weeks waiting
to charge the jump drive.
=====================================================================================
PHIL(new);
It seems to me that the A'Nova or a similarly equipped vessel, could deploy it's 'sail' while it's inbound, thus it would already have some 'juice' in the j'capacitors before it, or any other vessel, could otherwise begin refueling.
Thus a scout ship equipped w/ something similar could actually be prepared to jump sooner than one w/o a 'sail'.
And then there's also the very real possibility, if there are no gas giants present in the system, that the vessel may actually have to make planetfall in order to refuel . In that situation, having a 'sail' could make a critical difference.
(note; I do believe that there are systems, though very,very few, w/o either GG's or 'water', where the only refuelling option is at a facility. 'A 'sail' could be very handy in such a system)
Also, consumption of fuel for jumping also depends on what version of the rules you are using.
The original rpg rules & the 5thFW boardgame used the original rules that required vessels to use *all* their jump fuel to 'energize' the jump drives, no matter how long the actual jump was. Hence, any time a vessel jumped, it used up all it's jump fuel, no matter what.
CT LBB5 HGv1 introduced the 'jump governor' which allowed a vessel to calculate it's fuel usage as if it's J-drive were the same 'number' as the jump distance. Hence, a vessel w/ a J4 drive could make, w/o refuelling, four J1's, two J2's or any combo that added up to exactly four.
Now that really introduced a whole lot more flexibility into the rpg as well as, if used (I don't believe it was ever actually put into the rules), the above board game.
Personally, I would've preferred to have Trav stick w/ the original rule but by the time I got into it, the jump governor had already been introduced, leaving me to conclude for quite some time that the fuel usage rules in the 5FW boardgame were introduced by the game designer to simplify the game, rather than actually mirroring the earlier rules set.
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