Black Vulmea
SOC-12
I'm looking for a good starship encounter table, preferably CT-friendly; what should I be looking at?
Starship encounter tables: whaddya like?
- Thread starter Black Vulmea
- Start date
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
The originals?
It’s instructional to study the difference between 1977 and 1980/TTB encounter tables. The former shows the working up getting armed for profitable but dangerous systems vs the latter being more simulation oriented.
LBB2, but figuratively rather than literally. A free trader could ba a far trader if that's a better fit for the region, and a "pirate" patrol cruiser could be a Corsair. Regular patrol cruisers could be Gazelle, and so fourth.
The two other things to keep in mind in a "big-ship universe" setting is that the LBB2 encounter table is like the cargo table -- it's not everything there is, just everything the PCs will be dealing with; and, that the meaning of the ships changes with scale. In a small-ship universe, a mercenary cruiser could tip the balance of power on a balkanized world, but in a big-ship one it's just someone hiring a well-equipped team of bodyguards.
Black Vulmea
SOC-12
Yeah, that's pretty much what I've been doing for decades, with an assist from Traders & Gunboats.
Just wondering what else folks are using.
So, being a curmudgeon, "space is big", what does "starship encounter" mean?
Couple of traders jabbering on the CB on the way to/from 100D? A "who dat" blip on the sensors?
Do airliners have "encounters" during routine flight? I mean, besides LGM and collisions around airports. When they're in busy airspace, like around a major airport, yea, it's all encounters. But they're not really facilitating them, traffic control is managing it all. Do airline pilots talk to each other during long haul flights?
Do container ships see much of each other in the deep ocean? "We've been following the "Star of China" for 3 days." Is traffic that dense? Are trade routes that close going east/west and west/east? And, again, if they're just a blip on a RADAR and voice over a radio, is that an encounter?
I guess there can be customs inspections in space, with a patrol cruiser trying to dock and board. But, unless there's an imminent threat to the starport, why not just wait until the ships dock and have agents board there. Why goes through the risks and complexities of deep space docking and boarding.
Couple of traders jabbering on the CB on the way to/from 100D? A "who dat" blip on the sensors?
Do airliners have "encounters" during routine flight? I mean, besides LGM and collisions around airports. When they're in busy airspace, like around a major airport, yea, it's all encounters. But they're not really facilitating them, traffic control is managing it all. Do airline pilots talk to each other during long haul flights?
Do container ships see much of each other in the deep ocean? "We've been following the "Star of China" for 3 days." Is traffic that dense? Are trade routes that close going east/west and west/east? And, again, if they're just a blip on a RADAR and voice over a radio, is that an encounter?
I guess there can be customs inspections in space, with a patrol cruiser trying to dock and board. But, unless there's an imminent threat to the starport, why not just wait until the ships dock and have agents board there. Why goes through the risks and complexities of deep space docking and boarding.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
I would define encounter as ships close enough to realistically shoot and/or merge with each other.
As to background traffic, IMTU there are several blips going around starport A/B types due to IFF beacons transmitting constantly. If a ship is quiet or invalid IFF they stick out and are going to get special attention.
Starport C and below, most ships are not transmitting except for tightbeam IFF as the lack of supporting defense/rescue means constant IFF is a dinner invitation for pirates. So a close watch on who can merge is critical.
Gives a narrative and environment cue for drama and a sense of danger space.
Black Vulmea
SOC-12
Yes.
Sometimes it's traders talking about which brokers are connected or which startown dives don't water their drinks. Sometimes it's a skipper announcing a hazardous cargo and a patrol cruiser giving instructions on approach or yes, matching vectors and boarding to inspect. Sometimes it's a ship overtaking another, like a 2G detached duty scout passing a 1G subbie on the way to LPO. Sometimes it's a merc cruiser target-locking a free trader just for giggles, and because who's gonna stop 'em if the navy's not around? Sometimes it's two ex-servicemates shooting the shit. Sometimes it's a fast boat shadowing a merchant ship, waiting for the hijackers aboard to do their thing. Sometimes it's a squadron on maneuvers, or a rescue in progress, or close escorts engaging a corsair racing to get beyond 100 diameters and seriously considering spinning up the J-drive and trusting Fate.
It's all of these things and more.
For me, a "starship encounter" implies an interaction between two (or more) ships. I roll to see if a ship is in distress - five exactly on 2D, based on T&G - then let a reaction roll inspire what happens next. Many times it's simply exchanging courtesy hails with another ship within a quarter-light second of one another, which IMTU is a general practice among spacers. Sometimes it's something else altogether.
Does that help?
MegaTraveller had some really good ones in either Imperial Encyclopedia or the Referee's Companion. I don't remember which.
Black Vulmea
SOC-12
Imperial Encyclopedia. They're one of the few things from MT I like.
I don't lean on them very much anymore because in a way I internalized them over the years - they're part of what I call on in my imagination when the CT table spits out "R" as the adventurers emerge at J-1 and make their way to the starport.
I'm worried I'm becoming a bit stale. I have a decent grasp of the game and the setting* but my imagination isn't limitless and I'm afraid of being stuck in a rut. I want to look at this with fresh eyes.
Black Vulmea
SOC-12
Thanks!
I also use these as a template for tables that I make more specific. I have a tendency to run sandboxy games, and rather vague results such as merchant freighter (detailed under common spacecraft) is as much an opportunity for the players to roleplay, such as if one was a merchant, and knows the other on the other end of the comm channel, can get scuttlebutt (rumors) from them. A convenient way to give the players info organically.
punkrabbitt
SOC-9
With apologies to Douglas Adams for the quote, I think starship encounters are very rare outside of planetary orbit. Mostly I wing it, based on the system profile. If there is a avy or Scout base, there will probably be naval and scout service vessels. If it's a Class C starport on a low population world, the player characters might be the only ship coming through for weeks. It's all highly situational.
That's a good take in a small-ship, low-traffic universe (as originally envisioned in the 3 LBBs) and there's nothing wrong with it. It might not line up with later conceptions of the OTU though.
Black Vulmea
SOC-12
As do I, and randomizers are a very big part of that for me.
As I mentioned upthread, that's how I use the CT ship encounter table: "A" is any small independent trader, A, A2, J, and so on: "R" is a mid-size, usually subsidized merchant, R, armored packet, Star-class; "M" is a liner, from M to Magnadon to Tukera long-liner, and so on.
On doubles, I add in a second encounter roll, so there are multiple ships.
After giving this a little thought, what I'm after is more along the lines of happenings; MT gets me part of the way there with its mission roll but I want more options. Take @Dragoner's fun "Space Junk" table for example; right now a CT encounter with an asterisk can be a small craft, debris, something like that, but what I'm looking for is more along the lines of ". . . and here are some ideas for WHAT'S GOING ON."
Mutiny, hijacking, jump-space intrusion, disease, pilot suffering a fatal heart attack, primary buffer panel flying off, crazed passenger holding a hostage, livestock loose in the cargo bay, misfired missile now live in the launcher, orbital cargo transfer gone sideways, extreme space weather event, radiation leak, xenomorph hunting the crew, computer crash, contaminated provisions, just emerged from misjump, out of fuel, cabin fire, conducting research, searching for crewman lost during spacewalk - I've got dozens of these in my head, but I also know other people are thinking of cool stuff that I'm missing, and I want to tap into that.
IMTU traffic patterns are fairly predictable: you jump into a system to spinward of your destination so you can meet it as you approach from J-1 and you depart to trailing, as the planet, asteroid, station or whatever's moving away from you. This tends to concentrate traffic in predictable ways.
If your're jumping into the Oort Cloud, there's only a chance of encounter if you're jumping somewhere where I know in advance you have a chance to meet anything. Otherwise you're on your own.
An encounter doesn't have to be two ships side-by-side or in visual range at all; if you've been accelerating at 2G for five hours, you can't suddenly stop on a dime to assist a 1G ship you're overtaking but you can exchange radio messages; that's just as much of an encounter as boarding.
That's it.
Here's a couple of articles I wrote for making your own 2d6 tables if that is what you are trying to do.
Making Tables for your game
Making Tables for your game Random Tables There's only one kind of table that's truly a random table - and that's a table that only ...
theculturedgoblin.blogspot.com
Making Tables for your game Redux
A few posts back I made an entry for making tables for your game. I left one thing out. How unimportant each slot is. It's really the opposi...
theculturedgoblin.blogspot.com
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