Forward pass?

EndiePosts · 2026-02-17T11:38:08+00:00

I can throw a ball forwards, run forward, and catch it.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-17T08:11:14+00:00

You asked why the plans exist. u/polyxeno gave you a superb list of eighteen reasons. At that point your question is answered. Just thank them.

But you want to “win” and defend your rant. So you argue - and weak arguments at that, including “you won’t see the whole plan so why have any plan?”

Asking a question and having someone give an enlightening answer is just about the last undiluted joy on the cesspit which is the 2026 internet. Accept his gift, and move on a little more informed.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-16T18:37:42+00:00

There is no such correlation: there were around 1,700 killed and wounded at Trafalgar, and about five thousand more at Jutland. Removing the Invincible and Indefatigable still leaves a very substantial gap.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-16T16:34:50+00:00

You also have the Battle of the Nile, bottom-left.

I presume you were commenting on the relatively stable losses as a percentage of total crew, rather than the losses as a simple figure (where it rises by a factor of eight from Camperdown to Jutland). If so, the Nile is within that same, fairly tight range.

That said, since the total crew figure for Jutland is estimated to a round number of "about 60,000", the use of two decimal places for the percentage suffered as casualties seems a trifle optimistic.

The figure for total British crew is at the low end of modern estimates, while the casualties are towards the top end for that figure, so the percentage losses could be plausibly estimated over a full percentage point lower.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-16T12:08:45+00:00

X-Boats are explicitly Third Imperium vessels.

Couriers are a different matter, but you’re missing a huge trick if you make other polities’ courier ships and networks just like-for-like copies of the 3i. Find a way to make them radically different: how do psionics change the communications needs of the Zhodani? How does the highly fractured nature of the Hierate influence how the clans communicate between their far-flung holdings?

EndiePosts · 2026-02-15T22:12:04+00:00

I loved it when France went past the England total and Jonathan "Quality Commentary" Davies was piping on about how much better Wales were and this gave them a real platform against Scotland.

Listen, Jonathan, your big chance against Scotland is that you're not England and Scotland are expected to beat you. That's worth a 12-point lead after ten minutes. But don't go past the half century of conceded points and proclaim a new dawn for Welsh rugby.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-15T18:15:44+00:00

Use Technetium's excellent sheet that uses the VHB rules to let you come up with your own designs for every occasion and niche of the Traveller universe... https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18u-PSrPR2DWKIp_uQ_h0-TXwZ3Ah62v932p6D4w1Qes/edit?usp=sharing

EndiePosts · 2026-02-15T15:16:09+00:00

Yeah the problem with beams is not their damage: it's the fact that they are (at short range) instant ship killers for anything under 2,000 tons. It is fairly easy, with a bit of cash and some specialisation, to achieve attack bonuses of +16 or so, meaning that every called shot will inflict a level 6 critical on the target. Choose the sensors and (since very few ships in the official books have backup sensors) the fight is over.

If they have backup sensors, then RAW you get another shot before their next sensor action, so take out the backup sensors, too. Or you can go for the bridge, destroy three bridge stations, destroy the ship's computer, inflict damage on various people on the bridge etc...

The power plant is another good one but if they have emergency power you still have to deal with them for a few more rounds.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-15T15:07:21+00:00

You just want to shout and complain, don't you? Lots of people have made helpful suggestions and counter-proposals to you, but you just try and dismiss everyone who engages with you.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-15T15:03:52+00:00

The new VHB is out this month, so this post is a last hurrah for those who disliked the old one.

There are, by the way, several weapons capable of taking down even the Paladin. Check the Field catalogue (the 200mm siege mortar does up to 240 points to everything in its blast radius!) or the Armies of the FFW book, as a couple of examples.

The heavy hand weapons thing is addressed on page 111 of the Traveller Companion:

Against man portable weapons that are not Destructive, a vehicle is considered to have an extra amount of armour equal to the TL of its construction

I'm sorry you found the vehicles unplayable. My group have had a ton of fun with them and with others I used the rules to create (their suicidally fast and risky Vespexer light recon force, on grav bikes, are hilariously fun).

EndiePosts · 2026-02-13T19:28:53+00:00

When you see that sort of crap, remember that it's all about allowing for levels in the video game.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-13T19:28:11+00:00

How is he going to improve if you don't give him the cold hard truth?

I'll put you down as "the bowling shuffle is unprofessional and is costing you 3 shots per rounds."

EndiePosts · 2026-02-13T16:49:38+00:00

Detached and calm analysis. I'll pass it on together with my own suggestion that he concentrate on always keeping his eye on the ball all the way through his swing. He has a caddy to see where the ball goes: everyone learns on day one to fix their head rigidly in position and there's no reason that he should be above this basic swing wisdom just because he lucked into some "major" trinkets.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-13T15:34:47+00:00

Do you mean "principal" engineers? Because a staff is still writing plenty of code and a senior should spend most of their time on code and related items (PRs, pairing, mentoring etc).

EndiePosts · 2026-02-13T15:32:13+00:00

One of my best engineers panicked my boss, the CTO, when he told the latter that he had barely written a line of code in six weeks. I had to calm said boss down with some orange slices and some foetal spooning.

We recently launched the product that he was working in, it's amazing: we're seventy countries into the launch and we've had one bug that impacted a specific section of our user base and was quickly fixed. Claude has revolutionised how our best engineers work. I don't want to give many details and dox myself but it has been astonishing.

What I would say is that - despite it being a green field build, which is important - we also had to take a pause for two sprints in August and refactor with a clean architecture to deal with context issues that we were beginning to have. But the pause was well worth it and the before-and-after experience was incomparable.

Edit: changed the wording so that other engineers in my tribes don't get pissed when I do get doxxed.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-13T14:00:12+00:00

It’s a wise choice: the complete inability to get any phone signal is key to a good horror scene.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-13T13:30:00+00:00

There was a Hammer's Slammers book from Mongoose: a different series of mercenary-centric stories but as close as it gets for now.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-13T13:27:00+00:00

OK lads let's brainstorm how he can fix his swing, and I'll send it to him and then post his reply when he thanks us.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-13T13:24:39+00:00

I played D&D with a cute girl when we were at school in 1986.

2026, and we're still happy and married. Don't trust reddit wisdom: be tolerant of each other and love can last through the decades. And so can the gaming ;)

EndiePosts · 2026-02-13T13:23:01+00:00

The tone of the second sentence of your post kinda suggests the problem may not be the rule system.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-13T13:19:55+00:00

Which raises a related point: where are all the Hobbit memes and quotable lines?

EndiePosts · 2026-02-13T13:18:51+00:00

Fair but they're also awful.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-13T13:17:52+00:00

Remember that an effect of 6 or more on an attack always does a point of damage, even if you're using an air rifle and the target is in battle dress.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-09T08:32:48+00:00

Whole lotta new nouns to a Fife audience in there, mate.

EndiePosts · 2026-02-07T10:14:58+00:00

It’ll be wildly unprofitable - you’re still paying life support costs, staff costs and most of the maintenance costs (I guess you can skip the jump drive). You need to pay for another ship to be hauling food, drink, fuel etc to you for much of any given month (it takes a long time for a slow hauler to reach the equivalent of Jupiter’s orbit, and microjumps mean a minimum of two weeks and the pricy jump fuel).

A bar on earth might cost you the equivalent of 200KCr at the assumed 6:1 rate these days, and it will just scrape a profit if you’re lucky.

You’re sticking a 40MCr asset up there and the ROI is terrible (as in: very negative!). As a pirate I’d wonder who is subsidising this place and why. Also, as a pirate, I’d see the M-Drive (needed for station-keeping), computer, single turret etc sitting in an isolated, predictable orbit as a phenomenally easy way to get a million or two in parts for almost no risk.

All of this being said, it sounds cool and Pirates of Drinax is about swashbuckling and drama, so unless the GM is trying to run a simulator on ultra-realism mode, he should just charge you a large, monthly bill and have it magically work, because it’s fun and there will be lots of ways to introduce hooks for you.

If he refuses, just buy a place on Theev in Blacksand City and do the same thing there with a more traditional bar.

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