Limited Power Grav-units:

[jason taylor]

One of the main reasons we have grav-power is so we can play the game without thinking about having to eating rocks and frozen goop all day. Or without the actors having to have a much harder special effects job. Once done it makes for a remarkable amount of effects. You can have bigger or deeper dug buildings, portable-pulsars as as sort of grav-claymore, etc.

But a lot of fun can be taken away. There is no difficulty with terrain. Generals will not gravely debate the tactics and logistics of river crossings if you just ride over. You do not even get to sing country music: "Country-Road, take me home, 'What in the world is a road?'"

Might I propose this compromise that grav units without a continual power source, like say, a Starship sized nuclear power plant, will in fact power down like any other device and needs to be juiced. Terrain calculations now have to be made. For instance this would provide a motive to follow old roads (where you would set the new charging stations), or to use wheeled, tracked, or muscle power (they never quite sufficently explained why they do this in the Sword Worlds, although it makes a great "Firefly effect").

In fact the constant need for power for a lot of devices besides grav units will enliven things. You can alternate between wow technology and scrabbling because you are after all in the badlands where only foolish people like PCs go. You can give a small world a working chance of carrying on a resistance for years or effectively indefinitely. There could for instance be planets that the Imperium says it conquered, the local nobles say they are independent and the Imperium secretly does not care because finishing is work and they have such a convenient ready made training facility, don't you know.

[Infojunky]

Consider this, have a couple of different flavors of Grav vehicles.

In general in my games you bog standard Air/Raft loses performance with altitude in the the higher you are lower amount of gravity you have to act against. Meaning the top speed drops with altitude got strictly grav powered craft.

The other sort will have Grav plus another thrust mechanism.

Then there is the economics factor ground vehicles tend to be a tenth the price of Grav vehicles. So ground vehicles are more prevalent.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Infojunky

In general in my games you bog standard Air/Raft loses performance with altitude in the the higher you are lower amount of gravity you have to act against.

The radius of Earth is about 6 375 km. The edge of Space is variously stated as about 90 or 100 km above Earth’s surface; Low Earth Orbit is down to about 200 km altitude. That makes the gravity in Low Earth Orbit equal to 0.94 gee.

Meaning the top speed drops with altitude got strictly grav powered craft.

It also varies very significantly between modestly high-grav and modestly low-grav worlds.

[Infojunky]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

The radius of Earth is about 6 375 km. The edge of Space is variously stated as about 90 or 100 km above Earth’s surface; Low Earth Orbit is down to about 200 km altitude. That makes the gravity in Low Earth Orbit equal to 0.94 gee.

Note in Traveller it takes Planetary Size in Hours to reach orbit...

Also the term Orbit in Traveller is subject to dispute...

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Infojunky

Note in Traveller it takes Planetary Size in Hours to reach orbit...

Also the term Orbit in Traveller is subject to dispute...

It takes me twenty hours to reach San Francisco, but there is still plenty of gravity there.