Game in the Brain

[GURPS traveller] HT is Redundancy and Fail-safe

Im brain storming for a game and would like your input (crowd sourcing).

I have an idea to make HT, like in traveler ships, affect redundancies and fail-safe. I got the idea at work, clients being so protective of their accounts that they have triple to quadruple the number of fail-safe and redundancies. I realize these measure of value in technology. 

So HT8 has almost no redundancies, to make up for it the practice is not to push it to the red zone ever. Going up the HT chain, we have greater and greater degrees of redundancies. Some redundancies start being designed for enemy action at HT11. Backups in-case someone tries to intentionally penetrate or break the system. 

It makes sense for ships, vehicles, power armor, and technology that can be dangerous to its user.

As for red zoning equipment performance, safe is at half level… I wonder at what level should i start having checks? Can apply to ships, guns, vehicles? So high HT means you can get max performance? Does that mean an HT8 hero class ship with a max acceleration of 1.3g has to roll HT every time it escapes 1G world?

6 responses to “[GURPS traveller] HT is Redundancy and Fail-safe”

  1. faoladh Avatar
    faoladh

    I'd make the redline at least 75% of nominal (to allow for Engineering skill use to exceed design specs), so your 1.3G vessel might have to redline, but just barely, to escape a 1G world (75% of 1.3G would be 0.975G, which could be even higher if you made it 80%). As a Referee, you could handwave that small amount (0.025G!) away, too, by noting that gravity decreases by that amount at an altitude of about 51 miles on Earth, which is pretty much still in the atmosphere. You could attribute flight to that altitude to the craft's lifting body attributes or something.

  2. faoladh Avatar
    faoladh

    Actually, it might be even better to assume that the design spec is at the margin of safety, so that the full capability of the drive would be 2.6G, but it requires Engineering skill to safely increase the power output above the design spec.

  3. faoladh Avatar
    faoladh

    Er, Engineering skill and a vehicle HT roll.

  4. justin aquino Avatar
    justin aquino

    You right, assuming the default stat is Safe line. the Warships also start out at HT10. So The higher the HT, the price doubles or quin-tipples. Its like paying for additional maneuver drives.

    50% no roll = +10TDM
    65% at a +4TDM check?
    75% at +0TDM check (how about every 5%, a -2TDM penalty to HT roll?)
    85, at -2TDM*
    95, at -4TDM*
    100, at -5TDM*
    110, at -7
    125, at -10!

    since the ranges are from 8-12, even a -4 90% engine malfunction. Maybe the margin of failure will determine how soon. a combat turn is 20mins. So a Marigin of failure can be % of the turn. critical failure is immediate problem, while marginal failure in to the last minutes of the turn?

    Stability Rating is the Margin of Failure allowable or the Failure tolerance for only competency checks, but never HT checks?

  5. justin aquino Avatar
    justin aquino

    Oooooh! Just realized this makes Combat more interesting, when people try to redline to escape a pirate or a target. With a Variable Speed rating, People can't just guess the max speed so easily (based on their scans of mass, and current accelerations).
    People might make a spoofing layer to Hide the quality of their engines, making enemies appear to early when they think they can catch up, when in fact they can red line for a while at a greater duration.

  6. faoladh Avatar
    faoladh

    Yeah, SR is specifically for actual stability. So, a unicycle has a low SR (it can turn on a dime, but a failure is catastrophic) while a tank has a higher SR (the wider base makes it more forgiving of mistakes).

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