My Mongoose traveller game took a nasty turn a couple weeks ago as I decided to give the group a taste of space combat.  We've been playing the wandering merchant type of game and they struck gold the week before after capturing a shuttle (who was pretending to be in distress and tried to pirate them when they investigated it) that was worth something like $30 million.  They took that money, sold off their free trader and bankrolled a fat trader with some serious weaponry (mainly particle beams) and sensors.  So I figured they were ready for some ship to ship stuff....

It turns out if you fight something in Traveller that is roughly your equal, you're fucked pretty much no matter what.  If you lose, you die - everybody dies and that's what happened (it was very close though).   If you win, you're probably still fucked- you might not have any fuel left, your engines might be destroyed, you might have so much radiation damage that your stats go down, and in any case- your ship will have sustained tens of millions of credits in damage.  So at best, you'll go bankrupt trying to get it fixed, but more likely you'll die alone and cold in space as your ship has been disabled.

Oh, and we also learned that only the suicidal would ever fly a fighter in Traveller.  They blow up at the slightest hit.

Aaah...I love Traveller space combat!  

It's horribly brutal and slugfests are to be avoided whenever you can.   A fat trader - even with Particle Beams - should be running and jumping if anything comes their way.

When you get into the 400 ton range with a few skilled gunners aboard, then you can play pirate against the merchantmen.   And even then, you run from system defense boats which are scary.  

I play CT and our house rule was that first hit on a system was disabling damage (which could be repaired) and the second hit was destruction of that system.   I kept the million credit repair bills down to tens of thousands instead...except for the scary critical hits!

That sounds like space combat in any version of Traveller, all right.

To make it a bit less lethal for Mongoose Traveller, try only allowing lasers and sandcasters as weapons. Only include missiles into the mix if you allow for sandcasters to fire defensively against them. Or just allow sandcasters on civilian ships, a duel between civilian ships armed only with sandcasters might be OK.

Well, this is an old beef with space combat in almost any system. It works if you play it as a separate wargame, not so much as an RPG component.

I'd suggest that you can go two ways from here:

1) Decide space combat needs to be fixed and come up with something that, essentially, fudges things in favor of the players/nonlethality.

2) Incorporate what you've learned about space combat as part of the setting. IOW, players ought to be very circumspect about engaging in combat, or continuing a combat that's taken a bad turn, even to the point of considering surrender the best option. Of course opponents ought to view things the same way. And GMs shouldn't force combat on the players.

Option (2) does raise the question of whether you really need much detail, since combat will probably end up being a pretty small part of the game. Potentially the entire system could be ripped out in favor of just a few dimensions (speed, attack value, defense value) and some sort of intimidation chart that looks at the correlation of forces and tells you how an opponent reacts during each turn of combat.

The only way to "win" a space combat is to stack the deck in your favor.

My players in the Maggie Thatcher campaign were pretty good at that . Tho after they hired a part time crewman that was Zhodani capable of teleporting - things got pretty interesting.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Spinachcat;285778Aaah...I love Traveller space combat!

It was a lot of fun to play.  Maybe it would be better to restrict space combat to a campaign set up for it.  Say a Honor Harrington type naval campaign where it's ok to get your ships blown all to hell as you don't have to pay for them.

Quote from: jeff37923;285780Only include missiles into the mix if you allow for sandcasters to fire defensively against them.

They were using their lasers for point defense.  They just didn't have enough.  Of course, their real problem was the enemy's PA bay weapon.  

Even so they were winning up until a hit took out their sensors.  Without sensors, you're doomed.  That's when we learned that every ship built for fighting should have backup sensors.

Quote from: jeff37923;285780Or just allow sandcasters on civilian ships, a duel between civilian ships armed only with sandcasters might be OK.

Nah, that's a pillow fight.

Quote from: Koltar;285784The only way to "win" a space combat is to stack the deck in your favor.

My players in the Maggie Thatcher campaign were pretty good at that . Tho after they hired a part time crewman that was Zhodani capable of teleporting - things got pretty interesting.


- Ed C.

What's the Maggie Thatcher campaign?

I've never played any of the many Traveller incarnations, but what you've described about Space Combat in this thread sounds pretty damn cool! Where your players aware of how deadly space combat is?

Quote from: mhensley;285776My Mongoose traveller game took a nasty turn a couple weeks ago as I decided to give the group a taste of space combat.  We've been playing the wandering merchant type of game and they struck gold the week before after capturing a shuttle (who was pretending to be in distress and tried to pirate them when they investigated it) that was worth something like $30 million.  They took that money, sold off their free trader and bankrolled a fat trader with some serious weaponry (mainly particle beams) and sensors.  So I figured they were ready for some ship to ship stuff....

It turns out if you fight something in Traveller that is roughly your equal, you're fucked pretty much no matter what.  If you lose, you die - everybody dies and that's what happened (it was very close though).   If you win, you're probably still fucked- you might not have any fuel left, your engines might be destroyed, you might have so much radiation damage that your stats go down, and in any case- your ship will have sustained tens of millions of credits in damage.  So at best, you'll go bankrupt trying to get it fixed, but more likely you'll die alone and cold in space as your ship has been disabled.

Oh, and we also learned that only the suicidal would ever fly a fighter in Traveller.  They blow up at the slightest hit.

Traveller: There are No Special Snowflakes in the Dead-Cold of Space.

Quote from: vomitbrown;285795What's the Maggie Thatcher campaign?

I've never played any of the many Traveller incarnations, but what you've described about Space Combat in this thread sounds pretty damn cool! Where your players aware of how deadly space combat is?

My players were the crew and co-owners of an Empress Marava-class freighter name the IMS Margaret Thatcher.

....if youre not familiar with GURPS:TRAVELLER - the 'present year' of the setting is the year 5638 A.D.  SO, all the political baggage that Thtcher's name might have would be gone that far in the futrure. Their history books just note that she was a Prime Minister of a country in the 20th century...and Marava class ships are normally named after female political leaders and rulers.

The campaign went for about 4 years - til just recently. Our various work schedules changed and two of the most active players are now expecting their first child in real life. SO, definitely can't get together like we used to .

We have talked about having a concluding session or two with those characters and setting. I've been kind of in GM withdrawl since the fall because of that.


- Ed C.

Quote from: vomitbrown;285795I've never played any of the many Traveller incarnations, but what you've described about Space Combat in this thread sounds pretty damn cool! Where your players aware of how deadly space combat is?

I wasn't sure how deadly it would be and my players had no idea.  My vague memories of CT ship combat was that ships were very hard to blow up (at least in the core 3 book rules).

Quote from: Koltar;285803My players were the crew and co-owners of an Empress Marava-class freighter name the IMS Margaret Thatcher

Great name for a Marava. Is the "IMS" ship prefix canon? I was just trying to figure out what a far trader prefix would be.

Quote from: Garnfellow;285841Great name for a Marava. Is the "IMS" ship prefix canon? I was just trying to figure out what a far trader prefix would be.

Officially it was suypposed to be "Imperial Merchant Ship"....However a member of the former crew secretly wrote on the back of the name plaque : INDEPENDANT Merchant Ship!! ...with the word Damnit !! scrawled in smaller handwriting.


- Ed C.

So you don't know if it is canon or not, right Koltar?

Quote from: jeff37923;285844So you don't know if it is canon or not, right Koltar?

Atually it IS - sort of.

Look on the cover of SJG's GURPS: TRAVELLER STARPORTS.

There are starship crewmembers wearing vests that say: I.M.V. Lucky Credit. Which I know from the artist's biography was the name of a merchant ship that was used in a Classic TRAVELLER campaign that he was in.


- Ed C.