Classic Traveller: Mayday!

Previously in this series reading the rules of the Classic Traveller boxed-set games: Snapshot, Azhanti High Lightning.

Summary:

Mayday! is an alternate starship combat system for Classic Traveller.  It hews very close to CT Book 2's starship combat system; some pieces seem identical to me.  Where things differ, they are mostly simplifications.  There are some simplifications in the damage model and hit tables and in the starship stats, but the biggest change is that movement, time, and space are managed with hex-grid and counters rather than minis on a tabletop with tape measures.  The way that vector movement is tracked with just counters on the grid, requiring no paper notes, is very clever.  I suspect it might not scale very well up to large numbers of ships, but this is a system that seems quite targeted at engagements between small numbers of small ships; the sort of fights and escapes that a Free Trader might find itself in.

One oddity among these mostly-simplifying changes is the addition of missile design rules, with a design space of about 4300 possible missiles.  I'm not really sure why this is here but it does look fun to fiddle with.

Like Snapshot, though, Mayday neglects human factors like morale and fatigue.  I don't know how many turns a typical Mayday combat lasts, but with 100-minute turns, fatigue and crew rest seem like they might be worth considering.  Almost no consideration is given to crew matters here; you should know what part of the ship your Traveller characters are in when damage is being allocated, and Gunnery can give a bonus to hit, but that's about it.  Certainly this system doesn't even begin to address the niche protection / social problem of starship combat in RPGs - the party seldom has more than one ship, which means a small set of decisions to make per round and huge stakes for everyone (all eggs in one basket, so to speak) but no real way for many characters to contribute.

But for such an early work, and for a lower-complexity system aimed at being a standalone boardgame and supplement to Book 2, I think that's pretty forgivable.  I think the movement rules alone are good enough to justify this book (maybe not at $20 on DriveThru, but as part of one of FFE's CDs, definitely).

Minis-and-tapemeasure was never going to fly with my groups, and Mongoose's maneuvering system was a bit too abstract and never really clicked for us.  But I think this hexgrid system looks much closer to the platonic happy medium.  I only found one or two rules that I would feel compelled to change or ignore outright (like running into planets); this looks good enough to me to give a serious run with very little modification.

Raw notes:

The whole rules pdf is only 20 pages, including front and back covers, hex sheet, and some counters

I like the subtle dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot Morse-code "mayday" signal worked into the cover's design

Copyright 1978 - so this predates Snapshot, even.

"Book 2 of Traveller details the resolution of starship combat using miniature figures; Mwday utilizes many of the same concepts to present a board game with a hex map and die-cut counters. Thus, in addition to the scenarios provided in this game, many adventures in Traveller can also be played out using the system provided here."  So like Snapshot, pretty explicitly integrated with Traveller.

"The nature of the vector movement system requires three counters for each ship (one for each of the past, present, and future positions). which are then differentiated by color codes."  I do love me some vector movement systems, and this sounds like an interesting tracking scheme in the absence of a note-sheet per ship.

Even small craft and missiles have this three-counter past-present-future thing going on.  No wonder the game came with 120 counters!

"Randomizer counters feature a large number from 1 to 6. The twelve counters serve as a substitute for dice when necessary."  Kinda curious how the math works on drawing twice from two copies of 1-6, versus rolling two independent d6s.

"Blank counters are provided without any markings or color. They are used primarily t o indicates the presence of protective sand clouds around ships."  Interesting.  I had been thinking of sandcasters as like micro-grapeshot fired directionally at incoming missiles, rather than clouding.  Do sand clouds make sense in a vacuum, without an atmosphere...  ?

"Four geomorphic (or perhaps astrornorphic) game map sheets are provided as the surface on which Mayday is played. Each map sheet (approximately 5% by 8% inches) represents a two-dimensional expanse of interplanetary space."  Cool, so you don't need a whole 6' x 10' or whatever table like you did for CT Book 2 combat.

"Each game-turn represents an elapsed time of approximately one hundred (100) minutes."  A lot can happen in an hour and a half.

It's been a while since I looked at CT Book 2, but the turn sequence here (Movement, laser fire, counter-laser / anti-missile fire by other player, ordinance launch and impact, computer programming) feels pretty familiar.

This vector movement procedure / implementation is delightfully simple.

"Any ship may land on a world by moving onto the wortd counter at
one hex speed. Entering a world counter a t a speed of greater than one hex results
in an impact which destroys the ship." lolol.  But since you accelerate from gravity for passing through a hex adjacent to a planet...  you'd basically have to stop / stall in an adjacent hex, right?  Is there another way to set this up?

"At the end of every movement phase, if two present position counters occupy the same hex, the vessels have intercepted each other. Missiles may detonate; ships may collide.
At the end of the movement phase, i f two future position counters occupy the same hex, Ithe two vessels will intercept each other in the next player-turn. The interception is unavoidable, and consideration should be given to the launching of lifeboats or other protective measures."  Oh come on, they're 1 light-second hexes, you aren't going to run into anything by accident.  Honestly even running into Earth-sided planets accidentally seems rather unlikely; Earth has a radius of like 6400 km, so a cross-sectional area of pi * r^2 = 129 million km^2, whereas a square light-second is like...  almost 10^11 km^2.  So your odds of hitting Earth while traversing a random line through a cubic light-second volume containing it are like...  1 in 1,000 ?

"When both the present position counters and the future position counters of ma ships share the same hexes, courses have been matched, and boarding operations are possible."  That is slick, though.

By page 5 we're through the turn sequence and movement, and now getting to firing sequences.

What is this missile design system.  4 options for guidance type, 4 options for propulsion type, 4 options for detonation type...  plus, presumably, options for payload and max acceleration rating?

"Homing: The missiles homes on a target specified at launch, constantly altering its future position at least one hex per turn in the direction of the present position of the target."  But...  if you aim where they are, how are you going to hit where they will be?

Interesting, sandcasting is primarily an anti-laser defense with a small benefit against missiles.

"Any ship which receives four or more hits in a single player-turn has been destroyed. A hit is considered a consultation of the damage table; laser hits count as 1 each, proximity missile hits count as 2 each..."  So there's no "hull damage" track or equivalent!  It's like Chainmail HD, where you needed 4 hits in the same turn to kill a Hero!

Optional simplified computers rule - program-shuffling not mandatory.

Computers only go up to rating 3?  I guess this really is focused on small starship engagements.  None of these big fancy navy ships with their big computers.

Similarly, only jump-1 and jump-2 computer programs at listed, nothing higher.

Interestingly, small craft do not take to-hit penalties for their lack of computers here; they do take -1 in CT Book 2.

By page 11, we've gotten through all phases of the combat turn, the list of programs, and are now into special rules like damage control and missile design.  Missiles have another stat which I did not anticipate - number of turns of thrust.

A note that High Guard's combat system can be adapted to use Mayday's movement system.  I don't think I've read CT High Guard's combat system; maybe that's next on the docket.  Mongoose's High Guard combat system was a bit...  abstract, if I recollect rightly?

Page 13 has the list of available ships for Mayday; it goes up to the 400-800 ton range (corsair, colonial cruiser).  So definitely not intended for the dreadnoughts.

Small craft also have limited turns of thrust!

One of the scenarios is a yacht race, to learn the movement system.  Clever!

Several of these scenarios have interesting things going on and are very much not just stand-up fights.  Smuggling has an iterated component within a single scenario.

The attack and damage tables on page 15 are better-documented than in eg Azhanti High Lightning

Overall I like this a lot.  I think the use of color to indicate past/present/future markers was a questionable decision vs having past/present/future text or something on the markets, but maybe there were manufacturing constraints.

Do lasers have a max range?  Ah, they take a penalty to the hit roll per hex of range, limiting their max effective range.