Traveller IW or Spaceships Rules?

[JMason]

So, I've gotten a bit burned out on my current campaign (very DF-ish) and have started flipping through IW again. I think my next campaign will be the "default" IW Terran Free-Traders game (I went a bit wild with my last IW game).

But I'm wondering if I should use the rules in IW for spaceships. Design, Combat, etc.

I know that Spaceships simplified the design a bit... does this make the example ships in IW unusable? Also, isn't there a new combat system in the Spaceship book(s)? Is it more detailed, less, easier to run, or not?

Has anyone here has experience with the two sets of rules, and what do the recommend?

PS. I'm pretty sure this has been discussed before, but it looks like the threads are gone. Sorry if I'm asking folks to repeat themselves.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by JMason

I know that Spaceships simplified the design a bit... does this make the example ships in IW unusable? Also, isn't there a new combat system in the Spaceship book(s)? Is it more detailed, less, easier to run, or not?
.

Spaceships is vastly simpler and the IW ships don't fit into the Spaceships format.

I've never tried to run IW combat but Spaceships should be a good bit simpler.

[Rupert]

You'd need to redesign IW ships to fit into Spaceships. For my Traveller campaign, which uses Spaceships, I multiply Traveller displacement tons by 4 to 4.5 (this 'slop' makes it easier to see which way to round for ships right between two hull sizes), and then round to the nearest Spaceships hull size. I then design a ship that does roughly what the Traveller one that it represents does.

For house rules, I use the following:

Spinal weapons are usually large weapons fixed forward. Battle riders are the exception, as they're trying to mount battleship sized weapons on an under-sized hull.

Jump Drives always take up one space. They cost the cost of a Spaceships stardrive times [Jump number + 1]/2. The TL requirements are: TL9: Jump 1-2, TL10: Jump 3-4, TL11: Jump 5-6.

Jump fuel: One space per parsec of liquid hydrogen. I found that requiring more than that did bad things to attempts to design J-4 warships.

Tech level correspondences:

Traveller TL    GURPS TL
0 stone age     0 stone age
1 middle ages	1   3500BC+
1               2   1200BC+
1		3    600+
2       ~1600	4   1450+
3       ~1800	5   1730+
4       ~1900	6   1880+
5       ~1930	6  (1910+) 
6       ~1950	7   1940+
7       ~1970	7  (1960+)
8       ~1990	8   1980+
9        2000+	9   2025+
10		9
11		9	
12		10  2070+	
13		10
14		11
15		11
16		11
17+		12

If I were doing all the ships over again, I'd use Eric B. Smith's 'half size' rule to give a smoother size progression, at least for ships in the 100-1000 DTon range.

[JMason]

Hm, I just found RPK's house rules on using Spaceships with Traveller. I'm going to dig into that some.

I'm not as concerned about designing ships... I'm probably going to go with the Hero-class ship... so I may need to "convert" it to Spaceships design.

I'm more concerned with if the combat and trading rules will be compatible with data in the Traveller IW book? Am I going to be creating too much work for myself if I don't use what's in IW? Will I some how lose the Traveller "feel"?

[thrash]

Originally Posted by JMason

I'm more concerned with if the combat and trading rules will be compatible with data in the Traveller IW book? Am I going to be creating too much work for myself if I don't use what's in IW? Will I some how lose the Traveller "feel"?

The IW trade system is pertty specialized for the details of the setting. You could achieve the same results with Spaceships 2 -- the underlying philosophy is the same -- but you'd have to do the tweaking yourself. On the other hand, you may have to do this if you wind up using the Spaceships design system: different assumptions lead to different results.

For the combat system, I think you're fine using Spaceships instead as long as you pay attention to what weapons systems are commonly used in IW.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by JMason

the rules in IW for spaceships... I know that Spaceships simplified the design a bit...

Completely different systems, unrelated to each other, and producing similar results only by coincidence (if at all).