"Traveller Spaceship Combat Rules and QRS?" Topic

Just curious if any of you are playing out any spaceship battles with the smaller vessels from the Traveller universe, e.g. Traders, Ships' Boats, Close Escorts, System Defense Boats, Fighters, etc.?

I'm interested in possibly doing some small spaceship encounters battles, either as stand-alone games, and/or as part of a RPG campaign.

Being able to do a little blockade running, escape and evasion, gun battles, or missile fights, etc., with some of the smaller ships should be fun.

Looking for something fairly quick to play, and not to tedious, though with some tactical nuances to it.

So, I was wondering if people are using Classic Traveller, or other Traveller rules variants for this, and if there are any Quick Reference Sheets, or Flowcharts to aid that?

Other alternatives I'm considering are using Full Thrust, and converting over some of the Trav ships to it.

Anyone done that already?

Another out there option I'm considering is using David Manley's modern naval combat rules, Bulldogs Away. Shipwreck might work too.

Both are decent for fairly quick, small skirmishes, with missiles, and guns, with various sized vessels, so should work for space too, I suspect.

I may give Classic Traveller a try first though, since no need to re-invent the wheel, if it works, unless Full Thrust, Bulldogs, Shipwreck, etc., are considerably quicker to use for game play.

Also, while I'm asking, are there any decent spreadsheets, or lists that provide the ship stats for the various small, Traveller universe vessels, on a single page, or two?

That'd make referencing them a lot easier, when trying to set up games.

My connection sucks and I'm not home… my memory is gone but GDW did a small boat set of rules. Can't for the life of me to recall it. Had a fighter style boat on the cover…

I was leaning towards Silent Death for smaller scale CT spaceship gaming, but I haven't thought that through yet. And I may be leaning more towards the fighter end of it than you are.

I think the GDW game was Mayday…

Probably thinking of Mayday link wiki.travellerrpg.com/Mayday

Not the most exciting system, IMO. Some folks quite like it, though.

Brilliant Lances link link is a lot more detailed--I do complex games, but my eyes were glazing over, way back when.

GURPS Traveller space combat can be done in a fair amount of detail, and Mongoose Traveller space combat can be adapted to a vector movement system without too much hassle.

Full Thrust

Indeed, Full Thrust works well in the Traveller milieu, and several adaptations have been made for using Traveller and FT together – the Power Projection rules for one, plus some others that I believe can be found at aramis.hostman.us/trav/ftt.html and bitsuk.net for example.

I'll second the power projection rules. Does a nice job at handling the traveler universe within a full thrust framework.

Power projection isn't really intended for use with the teeny little Adventure Class Ships like the scout, ship's boat, Gazelle, and so forth. The smallest ship in Escort is a 200 ton SDB. It has three points of armor and then it dies from one hull hit …

I thought Classic Traveller used a really abstract system: ships at range bands, duking it out.

Power Projection: Escort is for larger ships than described, but I think 'shifting classes' would work well in this case.

Not that I've actually tried, mind you.

Mayday was used in variations in Trav board games; I thought color in those could be good.

Now that I think on it, the mechanics were simple enough, might be doable as a plotted game.

Doug

I thought Classic Traveller used a really abstract system: ships at range bands, duking it out.

Varied with edition. Started out with vector movement. The range band system carefully eliminated any semblance of tactics.

I have used Book2 both 1st and 2nd, (Vector in miles then Kilometers) but not the version in Starter or the Traveller book. I have also toyed with Mayday (hex based vector, with a much larger scale (i.e. 1 light second hex size).

In Book2 Missiles are the Big Dog of the weapons choices, more so if y'all use the Special Supplement 3 to roll your own. (Or honestly it looks a lot like Modern Naval Combat)

Right now I am pondering using fusion of CT's Book2, Mayday and Mongoose. Using CT for base ship design then converting the finished ship's in to Mongoose's terms for damage (Honestly this is more a cherry picking process of using the bits I like from CT and later editions with their final expression in MgT terms). From Mayday I am using the hex based vector system but rescaling it to MgT's terms (1250 km hexes and 6 minute turns). And finally using MgT's damage system.

(Note here I am using Special Supplement 3 to design missiles, the basic conversion for damage is one hit is 1d6 of damage. ((Such that the base missile is 5G5 with a warhead that does 2d6 damage)).

Varied with edition. Started out with vector movement. The range band system carefully eliminated any semblance of tactics.

Did kind of turn me off; I'm a role-player as distant second. I can see others not wanting to fiddle with the space ships. 'My character is the pilot.'

I REALLY need to dig out the old books and have another look.

Honestly this is more a cherry picking process…

Sounds a bit like my group playing G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. ;->=

If you feel like sharing details at any time…

Doug

Power Projection's mechanics work fine for small boats, one simply adjusts the tonnage to hit point ratio.

Before Power Projection was released, I used a variant of the original Full Thrust rules called "Fifth Frontier Thrust" or some such. This was specifically for playing 1250 tonne ships and smaller – the largest ship was the 2000-tonne Zho "cruiser".

Best regards,
Keith F.

Thanks for all the replies.

Hadn't heard of 5th Frontier Thrust before, so thanks for that.

I suspect Power Projection may be a bit too large for my small battles, but will consider mods for it too. Does sound like it might be good for larger battles.

Will have to check out CT again, as well, before tossing it to the side.

I ran across a battle account on CotI, when searching for Spaceship Miniatures, that sounded pretty good, using the CT rules. Photos were included with the battle account as well, which was nice.

In it, they used one hull point for each ton of vessel displacement.

Apparently lasers do 1 point of damage. Missiles 1D6.

Therefore, it appears knocking out a vessel could take a very long time, unless one side is heavily outnumbered (good for RPG characters, and their friends, I suspect). Reminds me a bit of Full Thrust (though on steroids, as far as DPs go).

There are provisions for doing critical damage, like knocking out weapons, vessel engines, etc., which might speed things along a little.

Of course, using their system, I suspect the damage models would be pretty easy to tweak to make them more, or less deadly, e.g. perhaps reducing vessel damage points by half, and/or perhaps doubling missile damage to 2D6 hull points.

So, will need to ponder things a bit.

On the modern front, Bulldogs Away looks like a very good, and deadly system for fast, lethal battles, and can probably be used pretty much as is for a variety of vessels. Maybe a few minor tweaks for "missile boats" in space.

I suspect Shipwreck would work equally as well, for a good, quick system too.

Honestly, if I were doing RPG scale Traveller stuff, I'd start with Battlestations.

AdAstraGames that isn't a bad idea, every time I play ore pic up and read the rules I always ponder a Traveller version of those rules.

I am still trying to figure out how to make an RPG-scale Traveller space combat game not run into the Terrible Dilemma.

If it's the GM runs one enemy ship and the PCs jointly run one ship, the PC-captain plays the tactical spaceship game, while everyone else gets to make a skill roll every now and then.

Even worse, the players know that the GM is going to fudge things because "Ooops, your Meson Screen failed and your itty bitty confetti ship is now a scrambled set of muons…" doing a one-die-roll TPK doesn't serve the dramatic or narrative needs of the session.

Might have a look at Delta V, which was in the SPI Unviverse Game. Used it a couple of times for traveller space battles and as a narrative rpg battle it worked quite well.
K

I'm primarily looking to use these for solo play, but perhaps an occasional club scenario, or mini-campaign, so don't want to get down into the weeds like with the Battlestations, or even Traveller rules, where individual characters run the turrets, etc., in most cases.

Just looking for something interesting to have occasionally occur on those off-world trips between planets, and/or star systems.

Of course, for the club games, perhaps having the individual players man the turrets might be a good idea. Certainly worked for Han and Luke after the escape from the Death Star.

I am still trying to figure out how to make an RPG-scale Traveller space combat game not run into the Terrible Dilemma.

I melded three systems together the last time I did RPG space combat: FASA's original Star Trek RPG combat, TSR's XXVc ship combat, and DeadLands' vehicle rules. It played a lot like a game of Artemis, but on the tabletop.

The key for me was balancing the weapons such that they created "damage control challenges" instead of insta-kills. What that means, then, is that the big weapons in Traveller have to be ignored, or limited to plot events (e.g., your patron's ship just got nailed).