Re:Full Thrust Traveller

Boy, after reading this, Irealized how poorly I phrased this.

What I mean is that, using similar mechanics, you could play battles
with
starships 50 tons through (say) 1,250 tons (the Kinunir - an arbitrary
cutoff point) OR you could play battles between ships 1,250 tons up
through
the 100,000-ton-plus Superships. As an individual ship-to-ship game, the
two scales would be incompatible.

Fighters in the "Normal" scale would represent individual fighters as
per
Full Thrust, for example. Fighters in "Super Scale" would probably
represent fighter WINGS, since a hundred or more individual fighters
could
be carried by a single carrier. Instead of one stand of six figures
representing six fighters, it would represent (for example) 36 fighters.

Scouts, Couriers, SDBs etc. would be grouped in the Super Scale as well
-
this time six SDBs on one base would represent six SDBs. These would
operate as fighters do in the Normal scale, but could not dogfight, and
would have greater weapon range.

>Battle Rider would provide for the easiest conversions. Unfortunately,
it
>no longer reflecte current thinking in Traveller, starship-wise.
>
>Book 9 (Fighting ships) is of moderate use, since it mixes several
small
>ships (1,000 tons and below) with several larger ones (50,000 and
above),
>with few falling inbetween.

Though Book 9 (and, to a lesser extent, Mayday) no longer reflect
current
thinking in Traveller, they're a lot closer than any Traveller: the New
Era
designs are.

>I've been thinking about two different scales of play - Small Ships and
>Super Ships,, with squads of small ships acting like fighters in the
latter
>group. This seems to me to have two advantages:
>
>A) Being able to play System Defence Boats (for example) against Free
>Traders without losing TOO much from dinky under-gunning you'd need if
the
>two scales were to be mixed. IE, keeping both the flavor of Traveller
AND
>Full Thrust.

At this scale of play you'd be able to fight out small battles, ala
BattleRider.

>B) Not having to equip Super Ships with (for example) 200 "C" Batteries
by
>grouping Weapons Systems together in an abstraction.

In the SuperScale, that is. One big difference between the scales would
be
the inclusion of shields in the Super Scale. Small Traveller ships just
wouldn't have shield capability. This would alter the "feel" of the game
so
one scale wouldn't be just a larger version of the other.

>Tech levels have to be addressed if Traveller Flavor is to be
maintained,
>but I believe "Mayday" had an easy system that shouldn't be too hard to
>duplicate. However, Tech Level 12 missiles attacking a Tech Level 16
ship
>would be like a Sopwith Camel taking on a Tomcat. So some tinkering
between
>different TLs has to be taken into account other than just with
detection
>and scanning.

To keep Full Thrust's flavor, this would probably be a simple die roll
(or
a modifier to attacks).

Sorry for making one of my first posts so incoherent. :-I

John Kovalic

********************************************************
	   "This must be Thursday. I never COULD get the hang of
Thursdays"
						     - Arthur Dent
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*				  "Wild Life": a Web comic --
*
*	       MUSKRAT CENTRAL: http://www.msn.fullfeed.com/muskrat/
*
********************************************************