Traveller Tuesday: Tech Level Spectra

"Tech Level Spectra" is me trying to use fewer words to say "Just because meson technology is TL 11, it doesn't mean that ALL meson guns ought to be TL 11. TL should go up as size goes down."

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

Reference last week's post about meson barbettes. In Mongoose Traveller, ALL meson guns are TL 11, which is just silly. Yes, there are ways to increase performance or reduce the tonnage as TL goes up, but per rules as written all you're doing is making a destructive weapon slightly more destructive, or turning a 50 dton bay into a 30 dton bay. There are no rules for when miniaturization kicks in enough that your bay can be turned into a barbette and your barbette into a turret weapon.

To be fair, I don't have rules for this either. I do however have some guidelines, and perhaps rules can be derived from them with some work.

My process can be summarized as "Establish the baseline, and then work from there." Example:

Meson technology is established in Classic Traveller High Guard as TL 11 for Spinal Mounts, TL 13 for 100 dton bays and TL 15 for 50 dton bays. Let's use these as rough guidelines.

TL 10: Prototype meson weapons.
TL 11: Meson spinal mounts.
TL 12: 100 dton meson bays.
TL 13: 50 dton meson bays.
TL 14: Meson barbettes.
TL 15: Vehicle mounts, making the barbettes portable. This gives us the Meson Sled of Striker fame. Fun fact: the Terrapin meson sled in GURPS Traveller: Ground Forces is GURPS TL, which corresponds to Traveller TL of 15. 

Each of these weapons can still gain improvements to performance and/or reduction in tonnage per the "Advanced Technology" chapter.

After this, things get a bit speculative:

TL 16: One meson gun per triple turret. (Oh, hi there, Darrians!)
TL 17: One meson gun per double turret.
TL 18: One meson gun per single turret
TL 19: Crew-served meson weapons. Think an energy version of the Ma Deuce.
TL 20: Meson Gun Man Portable (MGMP) with Battledress.

All of this seems reasonable to me, so let's try it with Particle Accelerators. Weirdly, both 100 dton bays and spinal mounts are listed in CT: HG as TL 8. This just goes to show that odd decisions about TLs have lasted as long as the game.

TL 7: Prototype particle beam weapons.
TL 8: Particle spinal mounts.
TL 9: 100 dton bays.
TL 10: 50 dton bays.
TL 11: Particle barbettes.
TL 12: Vehicle weapons (particle sleds).
TL 13: One per triple turret. Notice how this lines up with the current 1e Mongoose diktat regarding PAs.
TL 14: One per double turret.
TL 15: One per single turret. Now the Imperial Navy can truly kick ass and you don't need to edit the stats from your Fighting Ships supplement. 

I think that looks pretty good, actually.

Will I use this system in my game? I'm not sure, as I've introduced particle quad turrets into my game and I'm not ready to give them up. But I will say that this spectrum is a sight more logical and fair than the arbitrary "No triple particle turrets EVAR" and 1e High Guard gave us.

If you use this, please let me know.

Gun Blog Variety Podcast #73

http://tinyurl.com/nmwoenx

Adam and Sean bring you another fine episode of The GunBlog VarietyCast.

• Erin Palette decided that she didn't want to spend New Year's Day with the amateur drinkers, so she took her Bug-Out Bag camping. Today she tells you what she learned.
• Nicki Kenyon tells you why the US is seeking the extradition of the former VP of Honduras on drug kingpin charges.
• Our Special Guest this week is Beth Alcazar of Pacifiers and Peacemakers. Beth reminds us men that we should buy a gun WITH the ladies, not FOR the ladies. This is a great segment, don't miss it.
• Barron B gives us a quick primer on what to do if we dump our drink into our laptop. Plus how to avoid doing that in the first place. 
• And while we're trying to figure out what kind of a soup sandwich the President's "Executive Actions" are, Weer'd does a Patented Weer'd Audio Fisk™ on some of the news coverage out of Minnesota.

Thanks for downloading, listening, and subscribing. Please like and share The GunBlog VarietyCast on Facebook, and if you use iTunes, give us a review!

Listen to the podcast here.

Read the show notes here.

Next weekend, the 16th of January, our sponsor Law of Self Defense will be holding one of their in-person legal seminars in Orlando, Florida. As a special bonus, in addition to the legal expertise of Attorney Andrew Branca, there will be a presentation by Attorney Don West, the co-counsel for George Zimmerman. There is NO EXTRA COST for this. If you can get to Orlando to take this Florida specific class, it is $150. But if you use discount code "Variety" at checkout, you get 10% off.

I (Erin) will be attending... will you?

SHTFriday: Shaking Out my Bug-Out Bag

Every prepper needs to take their gear camping at least once a year to test it out. Here are some of the lessons I learned from a trip I took over New Year's.

Salem Reviews Sherlock: The Abominable Bride

Who cares about decent? The spoilers are ON!

And so, a full 20 years (or so it feels) after we learned that Moriarty had somehow returned, Sherlock's plane has finally turned around and landed, and with it the first Christmas Special of BBC's Sherlock. It is a testament to how well Moffat and Gatiss have translated the show into the modern day that when they translate it back to its original time period, the story beats and characterizations are easily recognizable both as as modern and vintage Holmes: Sherlock is still an erratic and abrasive asshole, Watson still served in Afghanistan, and Mycroft... well, poor Mycroft.

The costumes are different, the language more formal, but this is unmistakably still Moffat and Gatiss's modern Sherlock, just double-translated back into its original vintage veneer. Some things are different, such as Mary's character (at least at first, until she's revealed to still be a spy, working for no less than Mycroft himself – I'm particularly glad that survived. I like Mary as part of the team, and Amanda Abbingdon is fun to watch). Lestrade's hair... is a riot.

The Abominable Bride takes full advantage of its setting, too, with little in-jokes and references to goings-on at the time, such as Mary mentioning to Lestrade that she's part of the campaign for votes for women, and Lestrade replies with “For or against?” as many people forget that there actually was a Women's National Anti-Suffrage League that campaigned against women voting in parliamentary elections.

Also of note: Molly Hooper, in male drag, running the morgue. This is a classic character trope in Victorian-era storytelling, a woman doing a 'man's job' in a period of history where that wouldn't have otherwise been possible (or at least looked down on). Amusingly, Watson notices this when Sherlock does not. 

Jeremy Brett could not have been recast better. 

Mycroft, while traditionally overweight, crosses the line from overweight here to comically fat, even having a running joke with his little brother about the time of his death constantly shifting due to what (and what massive amount) he eats for his breakfast. 

I did like the “It's the 19^th Century” joke, though. I mean, it's 2015, right? ...right?

Sometimes I hate being me. 

Not everything works in the cross-time translation, though, as Modern Moriarty is hilariously out of place. So much so that I couldn't help but think that the previous episode's villain, the blackmailer Magnusson, would have been right at home as a vintage Moriarty. Modern Moriarty benefits so much from the modern setting, much like Elementary's Adler/Moriarty dynamic benefits from its setting as well.

Then the story twists with an earthquake during a showdown between Holmes and Moriarty in Holmes's drawing room and, as we flash forward to the plane, we realize that three series and a special into the show, Holmes does actually have a substance abuse problem. It's been hinted at, with his “on assignment' heroin usage and the nicotine patches and occasional cigarette, but this is finally him coming clean. And the aforementioned earthquake, coupled with the faithful recreation of the Victorian era, calls into question whether Vintage Holmes is a memory exercise for Modern Holmes or Modern Holmes is a delusion of Vintage Holmes.

The resolution of the episode, involving a conspiracy of female murderers coupled with the suffrage reference earlier, explains why Vox hates this episode so badly. Last week, I spoke about how holiday specials work in the great world of British television, and I think Vox spectacularly missed the point: this episode is packed to the brim with completely bonkers, not-necessarily canon moments, but only the broad strokes matter.

• Holmes was called back, and in the time it took his plane to turn around and land, he ran a simulation of a similar death in his mind to try and find out what Moriarty did. 
• Vox misses the point that it wasn't really the solution, and these women weren't really murderers; it was simply a representation of women that Sherlock and company may have overlooked over the years, as well as a throwback to Vintage Holmes, who genuinely did have a low opinion of women for the most part, typical of the time. 
• In other words, Vox literally mistook an overdose-fueled fever dream for a propaganda piece, and I can't imagine why they did that. 
• Not at all. 
• They certainly weren't projecting. 

Anyway: A great deal of fluff, but fun fluff. I look forward to the story actually continuing when Sherlock returns for series 4, in approximately 17 years.  

About those resolutions...

Don't know about you, but I'm having a hard time getting back into the swing of blogging after my Christmas vacation. Perhaps it's because I didn't make any resolutions for this year.

Speaking of resolutions, have you broken yours yet? Thinking about breaking them? Just having trouble keeping them?  If so, do not fret; John Oliver is here with some wisdom for you.




And speaking of going to the gym, here's "What if Sir David Attenborough narrated a film about gym rats?"



Hang in there, folks! The week is half over!

Traveller Tuesday: Meson Barbettes

One of the interesting things about 2e Mongoose High Guard is that they've made barbettes interesting again by giving them several new flavors. Torpedoes and missiles have gotten a much-needed upgrade, and so torp barbs are no longer useless; missile barbs can shoot 5 missiles at once, making them much more dangerous. Particle beams have been removed from turrets and relegated to barbettes, which is annoying, but fusion and plasma barbs have been added to the mix as well.

Then there are the exotics, Ion Cannons and Gravimetric Distorters, which I don't care for because the former feels too much like Star Wars and the latter is just silly (make it a Schlock Mercenary-style gravy gun and I'll consider it).

And then there's the Tachyon Cannon. Put simply, meson guns in 2e HG are spinal-mount only (boo! hiss!), and so as a replacement we've been given tachyon guns which are sorta-kinda like meson guns only not as useful -- it does less damage, but is armor-piercing. What's funny, though, is that while meson guns were bay-only weapons, tachyon guns also come in a barbette flavor.

You know where this is going.

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

Meson Barbette

TL 11
Range Long
Power 12
Damage 6D*
Cost 15 MCr
Traits AP special, Radiation

* In the Alternate/High Tech chapter of 2e HG, 50 ton meson bays have had their damage increased to 8d6 (from 1e's 5d6). Since tachyon guns start at 2D for barbs and increase by 2 for small/medium/large bays, and 2e's meson bays are 8D/10D/20D, I just continued the progression.

What? Why are you looking at me like that?

Look, in 2e everything that can be a bay weapon can also be a barbette, and there are rules for meson bays for those of us who don't want to give them up. I'd say it's perfectly logical, and well within the rules, to derive a meson barbette.

If anything, I think that the Tech Level of meson guns is too low, but they've been TL 11 since Classic Traveller. 

That sound you're hearing? Those are the Close Escort ships becoming a hell of a lot more useful.

(System Defense Boats are also scarier with this mod, but let's be honest: they were scary anyway.)

Gun Blog Variety Podcast #72

http://tinyurl.com/nmwoenx

Come ring in the New Year with the crew of The GunBlog VarietyCast Episode 72!

• Erin Palette gives us some strategies on managing chronic pain during a disaster.
• In our Foreign Policy for Grownups segment, Nicki Kenyon tells us why she thinks that Russia is becoming more like the old Soviet Union.
• Our Special Guest, Benjamin Turner of the Personal Defense Talk podcast, explains to us how to avoid a fight in the first place.
• In his triumphant return, Barron B explains how $100 worth of dash camera can make the difference when a bad driver claims an accident is all your fault.
• And in another Patented Weer'd Audio Fisk™, Weer'd watches the Democrat debate so that you don't have to.

Thanks for downloading, listening, and subscribing. Please like and share The GunBlog VarietyCast on Facebook, and if you use iTunes, give us a review!

Listen to the podcast here.

Read the show notes here.

A special thanks both to Firearms Policy Coalition for their support and to our sponsor, Law of Self Defense. Use discount code "Variety" at checkout and get 10% off.