You will need at least a little propulsion in the trailers or breaking
will be difficult.
You could also make something that optically looks much like a grav train,
but technically would be more a convoy of grav vehicles. The "locomotive"
would contain the crew station of the driver, the "trailers" are remote
controlled from the "locomotive", there can be "tenders" that contain a
power plant or fuel cells for the rest of the "train". They are connected,
to allow sharing of energy and to prevent the remote control to be jammed.
The advantage of such a setup would be that you need fewer drivers, then
if you have seperate vehicles and you can adjust the endurance by adding
or removing tenders.
For military applications, especially in Traveller such a train setup
could also be the result of an attempt to minimize the number of troops
needed, without coming into conflict with robot weapon laws. You have a
formation of a dozen grav tanks, and still need just one driver and a few
gunners, who supervise the gunnery programs of all the "trailers".
Johannes
On Tue, 30 Dec 2014, Onno Meyer wrote:
Dear GURPSnet,
on the sidelines of my last Traveller game, another player asked if "Grav
Trains" make any sense, and especially armored trains. Someone else mentioned
The Train Job from Firefly.
Do Grav Trains make any sense?
A grav train would be a grav vehicle consisting of an engine and several/many
carriages, with a flexible connection. In GURPS, the contragrav unit for
lift, the thrusters/propulsion, and the power plant are separate. It might
make sense to have a "tug vehicle" with power and propulsion and a variable
number of "trailers" just with a contragrav unit, drawing power from the
"tug". That way you can use the same "tug vehicle" with different sets of
passenger and cargo "trailers" and make best use of the investment in an
expensive power plant. The rules as written in 3E have some problems where it
comes to tow hitches and pins for trains, but published precedent is to
ignore those problems (e.g. the armored train in W:MP).
Wouldn't it make more sense to have unpowered containers on a big grav flyer?
Probably. One advantage of the train is that an express with just one or two
carriages is faster than a slow train with several dozen, a big flyer
couldn't scale that way.
What is an Armored Train and why?
Armored trains had their brief days of glory when/where the state of roads
and automobile technology hampered armored cars or tanks, e.g. the Russian
Civil War or the Chinese warlord era. An armored train combined massive
firepower (dozens of MMGs, often tank-level guns and medium or heavy
artillery with plenty of ammo), a company-sized raiding force, and higher
speed than contemporary cars or tanks. They were vulnerable to attacks on the
tracks e.g. by aircraft, so they're pretty much dead these days.
For a grav AFV with that role, flexible components would more likely use the
articulated body from VXi4. The reason why it is a "grav snake" rather than a
"grav brick" is that the Armored Grav Train is designed to work in cities
with infrastructure for Grav Trains -- that way they can hide in subway
tunnels, etc. The Armored Grav Train would not be a tank-style direct fire
vehicle, it would be armored command/control/medical/resupply for
counterinsurgency.
Any thoughts?
Regards,
Onno
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