Traveller Player Goals

[Falconer]

In Traveller (i.e. not Trek-specific), do the players tend to set their own goals? What motivates them? Getting rich? Do they tend to own their own ships and try to get ever-better ones? I vaguely remember playing old online (text-based) games where you would go on trading missions, fight other ships in space, and try to keep getting richer so you could buy ever-better systems and hulls. Are space combats a big thing in Traveller? Are the ships “crunchy” enough that you would care to keep upgrading stuff?

[aramis]

In general, there are 4 big types of game that got played by various groups:

Troubleshooter	mission set by some recurrent patron - often in some form of Noble, Government or Corporate service
Mercenary	Active Duty combat - possibly army, possibly a merc unit
Merchant	Have ship, will travel
Aimless	players goal is to get rich by various means other than operation of a merchant ship. Often a series of unrelated patrons.

Given the number of editions, some care needs to be taken in looking at it.
The editions

Abbr	Name	In Print	Character Gen	Ship Rules
CT 1E	Classic Traveller	1977-1981	Random	Bk2 Bk5-79
CT 2E	Classic Traveller	1981-1988	Random	Bk2 Bk5-81
MT	MegaTraveller	1987-1991	Random, but some choices	MT
TNE	Traveller: The New Era	1992-1996	Random atts; skills picked within service allowed	FF&S
T4	Marc Miller's Traveller	1996-1999	Random, roll or pick skills from within career	FF&S & FF&S2
MGT	Mongoose Traveller	2008-present	Random	MGT (Bk2 variant)
T5	T5	in development	Random+some skill picking	T5 ACS T5 BCS
[cs=5]The Conversions
T20	T20 Traveller's Handbook	2001-2008	Random Stats,Buy Skills	T20 (Bk5 variant)
GT	GURPS Traveller	1996-present	Point buy	GT

The ship design systems

System	Td	MCr	Pwr	Mass	SA
Bk2	Y	Y	N	N	N	Simple system, limited drive types
Bk5-79	Y	Y	Y	N	N	Simple system, lots of new weapon types, broken combat rules
Bk5-81	Y	Y	Y	N	N	Minor changes to design, massive to combat rules
MT	Y	Y	Y	(y)	N	Design system includes all the options from Bk5-81, but has a scale issue. Same ratings as Bk5-81. Note volume is both Td and in kiloliters; many items sub-kL. Different jump fuel formula
FF&S	(y)	Y	Y	Y	U	Extremely crunchy, Same scaling as MT, but adds surface area. Uses Bk5 jump drives and fuel. Radiators result in making many CT Bk5 designs impossible
MGT	Y	Y	N	N	N	Close to Bk2 design paradigm, but adding many of the Bk5 weapons. MGT-HG adds many options, but is the same design system overall as core MGT.
T20	Y	Y	Y	N	N	Computers are different, airframe option added, a couple MT options added, but otherwise 100% Bk5-81 design.

Mass is usually irrelevant to ships in MT, but often to vehicles.
Td (Displacement Tonnage) is irrelevant to ships in FF&S most of the time.
PU: abstract power units in Bk5 and T20; Megawatts in MT and FF&S

Note: FF&S2 is an expansion of FF&S1, but all FF&S1 designs are FF&S2 compliant, provided the errata is current... major typos in FF&S1
Note that T20 uses a very close variant of Bk5.
Note that GT is it's own thing derived from G:Vehicles.
I can't speak to ACS nor BCS, as they're still in playtest and I can't really make heads nor tails of them.

You're not going to "tinker" much with a ship in play - it's not like Star Wars d6 where you could easily improve it in play. In fact, there's no provision for tweaking performance long term, other than replacing the drives with bigger ones, in any of them.

Most ship-based games come in one of two flavors:

Have ship, will pay the mortgage.	Usually leads to Merchantile game if ship is merchant ship
Patron loaned us this ship for these missions.	Usually a troubleshooter type game, tho occasionally a merc game or criminal game (barratry)

Many GM's combined the merchant game with the troubleshooter game or the aimless game... creating adventuring merchant games that were the most probable inspiration for Joss Whedon's Firefly.

Most TNE games revolved around either patron-based missions or raiding the virus-destroyed remnants for fun and profit.

T4 was set at the other end of the timeline, and had a very similar mode... but it was instead supposedly unrecontacted worlds from the long night...

CT, T20, and GT are all "classic setting" - mostly troubleshooter mode and merchant mode, tho many GM's also ran "cause me some trouble" mode games. Casual disregard for local laws is common in the published scenarios; PC's are expected to make Mal look pretty much above board...

MT is officially set shortly after CT. Character Generation uses the same mode as CT, but by use of "pick from short list" rolls on the skill tables, one gets a lot more control over character capabilities. The setting is during a civil war in the 3I.

All editions have psionics.
All editions differ in how psionics are treated except for CT 1E/2E.

[aramis]

Trek Tech not implemented in rules:
Shields
phasers
impulse drives
Warp Drives (Actually, variant in FF&S and MGT)
Transporters
hand-held beam weapons without backpacks (except FF&S with Chem-lasers)