Game in the Brain

In this thread alone:
Ammo. Ammo variety have to be re-balanced. In the thread discussing HEMP (High Explosive Multi Purpouse) rounds, lead to discussion to TL8 Armor Piercing Discard Sabot Depleted Fin Stabalized Uranium (APDSFSDU) being much more powerful than TL9 Armor Piercing Enhanced Penetrator (APEP) with a surprising price difference of the TL8 at x5 while the TL9 at x10.
Ground Doctrine. The thread also touches on how ground forces doctrine is supposed to be with regard to the enhanced power of chemical slug throwers are able to dish out and the age old Sci-Fi geek debate over Battlesuits. I guess I can cover this in the future, step by step, by analyzing the economic implication moving towards the technological possiblities.
Although, my stance is that given economic limitations Load Bearing Exo-Skeletons and Sealed Stealthed Tactical Suits will be what would dominate the Infantryman Battle Field (which is important for occupation purposes).
Traveller ISW Naval Doctrine. Mark Gellis will cover this part by part in JTAS but if you don’t have a JTAS subsciption and you need a hard fast rule now, I’m happy to oblige. This is my current annoyance right now and my curiousities is bussied by the question as I’m reading through At All Costs by David Weber (Honor Harrington series).

GURPS Traveller: Space Ships
There seems to be aneed for a several templates for missile variety
– High Endurance Missiles
– Penetration Aids (they create large amounts of false signals that give Point defense more to shoot at)
– Dazzlers
– Counter Missiles
– EW Drones – They slightly displace ship signals and emmisions (in the scale of a miles) to give a false trajectory to targetting calculations and sensors.
– Heavier Missiles since the Default Missiles is based on “Jet Fighter” and Anti Aircraft missiles. Missiles like Cruise Missiles are more likely to be used in Military engagements.
– Better Sensor Rules! There is a better way to do this that doesnt have to be more complicated.
– Better Bridge Crew Rules! 2 sensor officers vs 1, having 1 dedicated EW officer, or having a Tactical officer, etc. The impact of bridge crew dedicated roles are huge. The system should better reflect it.

This is all great but too much for a single GM? It is thats why a fleet and squadron should be cooperatively made using an established doctrine. The idea is to create enough ships and simple ways to generate variety that a GM will take very little time to compile his fleet. This might turn into a War game, and I have no problem with that. If a bunch of players want to play Traveller as a war game, why not?

Fixed Orbital Infrastructure. Interestingly Fixed Orbital Infrastructure may be a pre-mature TL9 remnant. Because of wars, all orbital infrastructure may probably be on very slow ships which are strategically placed on defensible terrain, like rings, belts, or gass giants. Only very well defended systems will have near-fixed Orbital structures. Other systems will have orbital structures that can completely stealth in rings with layer of EW, ECM drones, and Supplies to last long enough.

The existance of Defensible terrain in a system makes the chances of survival of slow structures. Especially when there are more places to hide EW/ ECM drones, missile pods, sensor platforms, and Fighter Bays.

In some systems you can actually have the equivalent of Trench Warfare, given the limitations of Sensor data in the RAW Traveller 3e Books (which are better than the 4e book).

There becomes a need to have Variable Cargo Space: that can be used as a hangar, or to carry Jump fuel. Maybe making some rules for this should be in order. Once I have that, I’ll apply such rules on the ships I’ve made.

Find my preliminary Ship Creation Rules Modifications in the Stuff I made section. This should help make the ship creation job a bit easier.