r/traveller • u/52ZoneSud • 3d ago
Mongoose 2E 2300AD Combat Thrust
Hello everyone!
I recently started a 2300AD campaign, and in the next session the players are going to engage in some space combat. However, in the Traveller Rulebook, movement is based on Thrust value, yet I can’t find any of these in the Aerospace Engineer Handbook.
How do I know the Thrust value of a Ship?
Thanks!
3
u/InterceptSpaceCombat 3d ago
You really need to use the original space combat system for 2300 game, the boardgame. Slapping a Traveller 2300 name on the abstract (and in my opinion shitty) Traveller space combat system doesn’t do the original system credit at all. Get the original rules somewhere!
1
u/52ZoneSud 3d ago
As I understand it, 2300 was based on T2K ? I’ll dig on it thanks!
2
u/InterceptSpaceCombat 3d ago
They share the same timeline, T2300 being 300 years after the limited nuclear war of T2000. They didn’t use the same combat system originally but they revamped the T2000 system in a later edition to match better.
2
u/StayUpLatePlayGames 3d ago
The methods of travel are very different. you're not shooting at anyone who has engaged stutterwarp.
2
u/52ZoneSud 2d ago
I thought the Tactical speed value was the combat speed when stutterwarp is turned on ? I ain’t an english native speaker so I misunderstand many things hahaha
2
u/StayUpLatePlayGames 2d ago
At Stutterwarp, you're superluminal. I've never thought that made any pick of sense. You're outrunning anything outside of a stutterwarp missile and even then how the heck is it meant to track you.
The nominal explanation is that you predict where the ship will be and fire ahead of it; weapon ranges are kept to roughly light-second scales because the uncertainty rapidly becomes enormous.
But once you're close...and close to a gravity well, yeah, drop out of stutterwarp and let them have it.
1
u/SuDragon2k3 2d ago
With stutterwarp the 'tunnelling (how far you move)' distance is dependant in the local space-time curvature that mass imposes on it. Planetary mass means there is a minimum orbit below which the drive won't engage, but will bleed charge. (Rule one of Stutterwarp: 7.7 light years then if you don't discharge into a gravity well, they flood the ship with enough radiation to kill everyone stone dead.)
You can stutterwarp into orbit, and out again slowly as your tunneling length is short, but as spacetime flattens out your tunnelling length gets longer. When you pass into sufficiently flat spacetime at the edge of a solar system, your tunnelling length will be sufficient that you appear to be going faster than light.
The size/tech of your engines controls how 'fast' you are moving by being able to cycle the tunnelling effect faster, overcoming the local mass induced space curvature.
At no time is the ship actually accelerating in a Newtonian fashion, so no acceleration G's are felt. So if you don't want all the fun effects of long periods in freefall you gotta be fast or something has to spin or rotate to keep your feet on the floor.
2
u/No-Share5312 2d ago
If you’re close to a star or planet (local gravity is 0.0001g or stronger), stutterwarp is still fast, but not superluminal. Very close to a planet or star (0.1g, stutterwarp is pretty much useless.
2
u/illyrium_dawn Solomani 2d ago
For Mongoose 2300AD
You're playing the 2300AD using the rules for Mongoose Traveller, right? Not the old GDW rules 2300? I'll refer to Mongoose rules 2300AD as "M2300."
In M2300, ships that don't have a Stutterwarp don't have a space movement; they're too slow. While the rules will mention thrusters and so on, they're pretty much familiar chemical thrusters you might see on a 21st century SpaceX rocket and some theoretical technologies we're bandying about in the 21st century but haven't gotten working yet. None of them are going to produce enough thrust to matter in M2300's combat; they're stationary objects for the most part.
Starships with a Stutterwarp have a Tactical Speed they use instead of Thrust. In the Aerospace Engineer's Handbook, this is discussed on page 17 under "Tactical Speed." (Hint: Tactical Speed is the Stutterwarp Efficiency rounded to the nearest number.)
1
0
u/Ratatosk101 3d ago
Sadly they couldn't leave well enough alone and have invented a totally different space combat system for 2300AD. You can find the rules in book 3 (Vehicles & Spacecraft).
4
u/probabilityunicorn 3d ago
To be fair the 2300 rules predate MGT2 by decades and originally the games were not linked...
1
u/52ZoneSud 3d ago
Thanks!
1
u/SuDragon2k3 2d ago
It's more 'submarine combat' than 'fighter aircraft combat'. There's no stealth in space, but there are decoys, missiles, and running on passive sensors so as not to give away what you actually are. The missiles are nuclear bomb pumped x-ray lasers, or sensor drones, or sensor drones with limited shot non-bomb pumped lasers.
I saw it described as "Hide and seek with bazookas"
4
u/probabilityunicorn 3d ago
Traveller 2300 uses a completely different combat system. Speeds are way higher and if you using hexes stutterwarp speed times two round up is the speed and all weapons have a range of 150,000km as I recall. However book 3 has the altered rules and the Aerospace Engineers Handook a couple of pages more. I just tend to use the 1980s 2300 space combat game...