Traveller General

There are rules for asteroid-hulled vessels in MgT's High Guard book, but they're presented in tandem with the capital ship section.

Think they could be used with smaller vessels without breaking something important in terms of mechanics?

I don't see why not. Smaller asteroid ships have been around a long time in Traveller, so I would hope they made the rules capable of supporting them.

Agreed

At least the first edition MgT planetoid hulls work just fine with non-capital ships.

>I guess whoever runs the Mega should stick this stuff in there

Here's our brand new MongTrav 2E folder:

mega.nz/#F!KtkWHR5Y!bYVB9302_YfEc4qGiyp5fw

I think I'll finally have the chance to have the Traveller books since a friend of mine is travelling to the US...so, /traveller/...

Mongoose 1st ed or 2 ed?

If price isn't an object I'd be inclined to say 2e.
There isn't a world of difference, it's just the rules are a bit sharper in 2e

For 2e I'd have to buy both the Core Rules and the Catalog, right?

You don't really need the catalogue, it's just equipment and shit, which you could make up yourself or just use the PDF version linked up-thread.

If you want to build ships you will need High Guard though, which is just out. That said, it's not really the sort of thing you're going to be leafing through during the game, so you could again, just use the PDF version

Really all you need is the corebook, it's just whether you mind using a mixture of PDFs and physical books or not

Is the Referee Screen available on physical?

>After skipping High Guard.
Mang, some of those ships are ugly as shit. The Tigress and nearly all the destroyers. I really like some of the retro ones but so much ugly in the capitals.

So as someone new to traveler, is the newest edition the best jumping off point for new gm/players?

Mongoose 2e? Probably.

What are you prefered third party Traveller expansions/variations m8's?

Mercator is Classic Traveller redesigned to do sailing vessels in the ancient Mediterranean. It's great, even if I'll never get to run it, much less play it.

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Slow, conversational style books, not action porn at all, but interesting as potential setting material.

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Looks like the "real alien aliens" thread is sucking all the oxygen out of the room.

Maybe so. I bet some Hivers will help!

>implying hivers will help

Only if they knew you were going to ask before you did.

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Do you think spacecraft in Traveller would have visual nav lights?

I would think so. Comms jamming is a thing, so looking out the window for other ships is a valid fallback over a busy port.

I'm not trying to troll or anything, but why would someone use Traveller over a system like Savage Worlds? I've never given Traveller a read, but I've always been curious. I run a campy/gonzo space opera game using Savage Worlds, but I'm curious if Traveller would somehow do it better.

Campy and gonzo? Yeah, you're probably better suited with Savage Worlds. Traveller tends to be more gritty and lethal. It's a little more Space Opera noir than most systems.

I like it because of that, and because it's very modular and has a ton of rules modules published over the decades that I can plug in for different levels of tactical detail, from abstract range bands to tabletop wargames with 15mm minis.
I like that it seamlessly handles tech levels from stone age to superscience. I like the lifepath generation system, which is fun on a bun.
I also like the setting, which is all my favorite SF lit from the 50s through the 80s, all rolled up into a patchwork quilt of stars where I can smack down just about any kind of adventure and have it fit in the universe somewhere.

Because JTAS.

How useful would the hull of spacecraft--built to resist a huge dearth of pressure outside--be against the environment of an ocean, which represents a huge excess of pressure outside? Could one use a Traveller spaceship as a poor submersible, to some degree?

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Unless it is specifically designed to withstand the pressure of being underwater, you can only use a spacecraft as a submersible once.

youtube.com/watch?v=O4RLOo6bchU

Okay, now that I've posted the Futurama link, I guess I'll answer seriously.
In Traveller canon, starship hulls don't just hold pressure in, they're also designed to seal the ship against the jump bubble and its associated radiation. They are massive and strong, as are the airlocks.
This means a well-built Traveller ship can survive underwater for quite a long time. I seem to recall there being a lost ship in one of the old JTAS adventures, sitting underwater, which the players can repair, refit and fly, provided they discover it.
I can't find that adventure, though, and it's getting late, so I'm going to have to give up. It's gonna bug me, though, so I may look tomorrow.

Ha! Ahhhh. I wish I'd kept up with it when it was still around.

The thing is, Traveller, or at least MgT, seems to take it for granted that ships can land in a lot of different environments that seem like they would be highly pressurized, such as places with weird atmospheres and stuff, which made me wonder. It also kinda made me wonder how deep into the atmosphere of gas giants ships go to skim fuel, and if the pressures there would still be below 1 standard atmosphere. What do you guys think?

Hello travelfriends. Is it alright if I shill my d10 space dog-fighting homebrew in here?

That sounds interesting! Maybe I'll go sifting around the old JTAS stuff for it.

Where do you think they fall in terms of bonuses/penalties for atmospheric flight? Standard? Dispersed? Streamlined?

It depends on whether you're flying a streamlined brick or a normal brick I guess

So what do you guys think about the Cerpheus System?

I've never ran Traveller, and I'm still hesitating between Classic and this retroclone.

So I know all of you are busy reading through High Guard, but here's an annotated list of differences between Mong 1e and 2e ship construction:
- Hull Tonnage aren't arbitrarily restricted to certain decimals, so you can build your 25 dton bomber or your 85 dton shuttle now.
- Capital ship and small craft use the same schema now
- radiation shielding no longer provides armor vs. nuclear dmg
- armor tonnage is 1/10th what it was in 1e and significantly cheaper as well.
- a few new interesting hull modifier options and configurations
- The thrust/jump potential charts use a similar concept to the High Guard capital ship chart, but modified. Grav maneuver ratings go up to 11g and Jump drives up to 9 parsecs now!
- Power plants require a bit more math now, but it's fairly straightforward.
- Computers aren't stupid now.
- Rules for common areas and living spaces! Yay!
- A few new weapons (purists may be annoyed, but meh, more options is always better).
- alternatively, no mounting barbettes on tiny small craft. Railguns are no longer an option for small craft, though there's a sidebar for carrying ground-scale weaponry.
- The powerful Gravitic drive + reaction drive combo is given its own paragraph. The authors knew.
- Lots of the disparate equipment found in 1e alien races and supplements have been put in one place here.
- Full Hangers now take up 200% hull space rather than 130%.
- High Tech options allow players to min-max their ship to their dirty heart's desires (it's cheaper, too).

- The High Tech chapter allows Traveller to be used to simulate much better Star Wars or Star Trek levels of tech than it could previously. TL 26 Hyperdrives! And Time Travel Drives. Quad Turrets! Tractor Beams! ENERGY SHIELDS. A literally named Super Laser.

And that's... 1/3 of the book.

So far it looks to be pretty good stuff.

>- Computers aren't stupid now.
W-what?

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I'm stupid and can't read. Armor tonnage rules are per point of armor now.

Streamlining is under High Guard ship construction rules in Classic, and it's a straight yes or no, either you can enter atmospheres or not. I dunno about MGT.
(The Rock was a stealth ship designed to look like an asteroid, so it was not streamlined in any way, and was dependent on its ship's boat, Pebble, to scoop fuel or reach planetary surfaces.)

>So far it looks to be pretty good stuff.
Keeping in mind that the book is still part of Mongoose's approach to Traveller, and isn't all applicable to the default setting of the Third Imperium.
Of course, if you don't use that, feel free to carry on.

Well, yeah, as I mentioned, purists may be up in arms (though I have to question their being upset about, say, 'space fighters' when 'non-robotic human space travel' is equally as outlandish).

Personally, I'm more interested in a solid, flexible toolbox of options, and this book provides just that.

Who's upset about space fighters now? They've been around since Classic.

As a newbie to Traveller, I'm not a massive fan of the Third Imperium. Not that it's bad, it's just Imperial sci-fi really isn't my cup-of-tea (except the first Dune, but it's different)

I'm kinda glad that they're including different options instead of just sticking to the implied setting.
As long as they spell out whether or not something is canon in the OTU, surely everyone should be happy, right?

>As long as they spell out whether or not something is canon in the OTU

They don't.

>Who's upset about space fighters now?
Just... don't go over to the forums. It's a curious blend of really bad autism meeting high-school level of pseudo-intellectualism.

That being said, I've been playing around with the new space fighter rules, and the small gravitic drive + reaction drive is more powerful than ever, thanks to the advanced spacecraft options.

Reaction are already lower TL than gravitic maneuver drives so taking +3 TL to take -3x20% fuel requirement is enormous. Just for funsies, take a 20 dton hull, add a TL 12+3 reaction drive and fill up 40% of the hull with fuel. That gives you thrust 16 (16!) for 2.5 hours, which is a monstrous 400 thrust points to use in combat (you get a +1 modifier in dogfighting for each 1 thrust point used).

Pick up a small thrust 1,2,or 3 gravitic drive and it can do normal groceries as well. I'd... probably not allow this in most games though.

Ah, so they're upset about them being broken now? I guess I can see that.
The Classic fighter was pretty simple. Handy to have if you could spare the 10 dTons, but not exactly terrifying.

>so they're upset about them being broken now?
Ah, no, that wasn't my intention. They're upset that dogfighting isn't in the spirit of how they interpreted space combat to be (when it most certainly was), and how it "doesn't make sense" for weapons that are rolled for once every 10 minutes of space combat to magically roll per round when fighting against vehicles (when it's obviously just a mechanical abstraction).

The fact that the mechanics for fighter rules can be broken was just my observation. Most of the spacecraft in the 2e manuals are more straightforward, and fairly in line with what they were in Classic.

Okay, so spergs gonna sperg.
I always figured fighters played a supporting role in standard Traveller military scenarios. Not enough oomph to take on ships of any real size, but good for harassing the smaller ones and shooting down incoming missiles.

Looks pretty nice. I like the mishap table, though I think being injured should have some effect on your stats.
Sadly, there are no rules for not-Vargr, and I can't be having with that..

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>How useful would the hull of spacecraft--built to resist a huge dearth of pressure outside--be against the environment of an ocean, which represents a huge excess of pressure outside? Could one use a Traveller spaceship as a poor submersible, to some degree?

I'm 98% sure that MongTrav has rules specifically for building spaceships with options for hulls that only work in zero-to-one-atmosphere environments, and hulls that work in 0+ atmo environments. Obviously the ones that you can go underwater with are more expensive.

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Say, which printing of the JTAS is this from, anyhow?

It's Adventure #6, Expedition to Zhodane. The one that introduces Professer Riket, who plays a big role in that Slough Feg album.

Thanks!

Would I be a shitter if I started my game with "You're all in an interview with a [company that owns the PCs debt] representative. How did your last job go to shit and how did your ship end up scrap-metal?
(With said rep willing to re-write the books so that the defaulted-upon Free Trader in the docks is their's if they get the rep outta some serious bother)

With said Free Trader, being treated as their original ship with regard to mortgages(as far as their debtors are concerned)

Why did I thynk the name of this game was Freelancer?

By far, one of the best concept albums ever made.

Sound cool to me. I'd be down with that.

The fighter sperg thing started years ago when a part of the fanbase (I hesitate to call them part of the player base because a lot of them don't) became convinced that Traveller was supposed to be Hard SF (it wasn't, and isn't). Things that didn't make sense in that context get attacked frequently. A few are easy fixes, like too small worlds having too much air, but defining elements of the setting still piss off some people as not being SCIENCE!

>Traveller was supposed to be Hard SF

It's like these fine gentlefolk never learned the term "space opera"

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Lel, Traveller is hardish space opera, by which I mean it seems to try to explain as much of it's tech with as few lies (GRAVATICS! etc) as possible.
But like, it's either less hard or similar hardness to Mass Effect (especially when you factor in OTU's Ancients)

The above aside, I am personally a fan of a "Space Fighter" being a glorified gunship, with most having at least 1-3 people on board

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Why does this image get posted so often in these threads?

because it's among the most traveller-related pictures I've got saved

Sorry, it has never been my intention to be shitey

BECAUSE THE ANIMAL-CLASS SAFARI SHIP IS THE GREATEST TRAVELLER VESSEL OF ALL TIME

OF ALL TIME

It is a pretty sexy ride.

Okay, so I've read a bit of the copy of High Guard that got posted and I have to say...
WTF, Mongoose, seriously?
Can someone confirm that it's only a PTD and not the finished product?

Not worth buying, huh?

Adding

>WTF, Mongoose, seriously?

I lost count of how many times I've said that. Remember the cargo loader that had stats for everything but how much cargo it could carry? Good times, man.

I still look in amazement at the csc typos and the retarded bits of the campaign guide

He vir are still cool though

I know there are rules for cybernetics, but are their any rules for biological, nanotechnological, or genetic modification/augmentation (i.e. biosculpting and nanotats?

I really shouldn't be surprised at this point either, but...
WTF, Mongoose, seriously?

I mean, if your group wants to build their own ship using the new rules, sure pick it up, but personally I'm reviewing my old calculus books and going T5 after browsing MgT 2e.

>but personally I'm reviewing my old calculus books and going T5 after browsing MgT 2e.
T5 is fairly straightforward as a system. The book/PDF is a bit clunky, though.

That's a shame, since fighters are so neat. I remember doing a bunch of research, once, on how much and what sorts of G-forces human beings could survive, since if you tinker with MgT's rules you can easily get fighters that can pull ridiculous amounts of acceleration off. I remember trying to contemplate what sorts of janky ways you could try to get around the limitations of a fleshy, squishy pilot, since I'm not sure you could fit the same grav plates that allow for normal conditions inside bigger ships in the tiny cockpit of a fighter where every bit of mass counts.

I remember being tickled when it occurred to me that you could probably store a higher-tech version of the M.O.O.S.E. system in the ejection seat of a space-fighter. Maybe have a little hand-held resistojet thruster or someshit if you're actually stuck in orbit and not on a reentry trajectory.

The Mongoose 1e Cybernetics book (which was pretty much rolled into 2e Central Supply Catalogue) explicitly spells out biotech versions of the same mechanics

>WTF, Mongoose, seriously?
I'm not seeing the issue. It's fairly straightforward (it just expands the capital ship rules in High Guard 1e to all ships, which is much more flexible than using set hull classifications) and combines plenty of options that were strewn between at least half a dozen modules in 1e. I'm not sure how you could be surprised since the rules are basically the same, but slightly more polished.

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I tried making a sector and I encountered a planet generation problem. I was rolling and getting a number higher than scale went for hydrosphere. I don't really understand where I went wrong or if this is a rule error. (MongTrav)

>benis fighter.
Heh.