I'd have less trouble with this if we were playing epic space opera or high sci-fantasy, but Traveller really comes off (albeit not as much as Attack Vector...) as a hard-sci fi setting (or an attempt to be one). It was one of the harder ones for the time it was written too. So, how it was designed had ought to better take that setting into mind which means people will want to understand more of the nuts and bolts.
Well, I suppose there could be a discussion entirely about this point but it's not immediately obvious to me that Traveller's designers have ever been particularly focused on simulating "hard" science-fiction. I mean, the two-dimensional subsector hex grid printed in ~Book 3~ would seem to make it pretty clear that the folks at GDW were balancing a substantial "game play" perspective against "scientific realism." (It is perhaps relevant to note here that GDW shifted to a three-dimensional game space in the arguably "harder sci-fi" ~2300 AD~.)
On the other hand, Traveller portends to be more the sci-fi setting that has a bit more of a hard-sci feeling and DOES have very complex construction, trade, planet design, etc. so it takes itself seriously enough to invest a lot of time (and an assumption of validity and worth) into those systems. That tells me that there should also be a fair bit of thought into the mechanics of major systems used in those systems.
I agree with you: there is often a great deal of "complexity" in many parts of Traveller, but . . .
Why does it matter to calculate the fuel capacity and the mass and other factors for something that you don't even know how it works and it boils down to black magic? Why do you need the precision and complex accounting when you're going to blow off the main operating principles? That's inherently inconsistent.
. . . it seems to me like you're being a bit too quick to jump from "this is difficult to make sense of" (from a scientific perspective) to "it must be 'black magic' or 'inherently inconsistent.'" What seems to be missing in your framing here is a third, "orthogonal" perspective which asks "can we make sense of this from a ~game play~ perspective"?
Taken back even further, if we cannot establish a common framework of understanding, we can't even really develop arguments that have any rigour, comparability, etc. And some of the major frameworks are: mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc. plus logic (in process and in analysis of implications).
So 'engineering' and 'science' and 'math' all help create that common framework.
Agreed we need a common framework of understanding" but I'm suggesting it's mistaken to assume that common framework is "science." The common framework is the ~game play~ intentions of the designers which, admittedly, is more difficult to grasp than is the assumption that it must be, simply "science."
Things with strictly 'magical' nature (no real vaguely satisfactory explanation exists) are going to automatically fall outside that framework and arguments about it are going to all boil down to 'how we think it should be' vs. anything debatable in a worthwhile way.
Just because we may find it difficult to discern the ~game play~ intentions of the designers doesn't mean they're "magic" and just because they may not (appear to) be "scientific," that doesn't make them ~wrong~ (again, from a ~game play~) perspective.
But they may be difficult, perhaps even ~impossible~ to understand.
So if you spent all this time working on the crunch and the detail and supposedly balance and other aspects that justify the accounting in some sense of a logical, balanced, coherent whole.... leaving big gaps where major subsystems are concerned is both inconsistent and frustrating to some extent.
Is if truly frustrating from a ~game play~ perspective? Or is it only frustrating from the perspective of a different sort of "game play" perspective which we might describe as the RPG equivalent of "fan fiction"? Do ~player-characters~ care that jump drive--or world generation, or ~character~ generation, or whatever--is inconsistent or difficult to make sense of? I don't think so. . . .
I think, maybe, the frustration you're talking about here is more the sort that might arise should someone not recognize a Zhodani Strike Force miniature to be a chess pawn.
Now, I'm all for a movement to render a 'PC group centric' version of the game that treats massive battlewagons, inter-polity relations and galactic trade as 'exist in exact proportion to their worth in a scene' vs. stand alone calculation engines.... but Traveller hasn't given us that in oh-so-many-ways... so why does the Jump Drive mechanics get a pass?
Well, I'm not suggesting anything "get a pass"--I'd prefer a refocused perspective which holds ~game play~ central rather than "science"--but I also suspect these larger-scale inconsistencies are largely the product of multiple creators working in different business and game industry contexts over the course of four-plus decades, more so, at least, than due some sort of failure of "scientific simulation."
I'm willing to accept a McGuffin at the center of this, but when behaviours tied to that black box McGuffin aren't specified or seem to not make sense, then the McGuffin exceeds its scope and starts picking at the 'logical, consistent, thought out' aspect of the game that so many pages and errata have been spent on.
Perhaps if we were better able to understand the ~game play~ intentions, some of these apparent discrepancies would seem less troublesome (with the caveats about different creators working in different decades on the same elements)?
That would either be a) our disparate notions or b) something the game designers never explained in sufficient detail (or have explained multiple times in seemingly contradictory ways).
That's the challenge here.
Agreed. And it's a tough one. So no wonder we instead jump to better-understood "yardsticks" like "science" to try to make sense of things. But I'm suggesting that impulse is, at its core, a sort of distraction from the genuine challenge at hand.
YMMV, of course.