Amenities and Perks...

[Zutroi]

Right now I'm sipping a martini in the Observation Lounge bar on the (former ocean liner) RMS Queen Mary, and wondering... What would we expect to see aboard a premium liner in Imperial space? Jump space makes the Observation Lounge problematic for a good portion of any trip, of course, and you clearly can't do skeet shooting off of the starboard rail...

So, what do we offer the Impeial citizen who is traveling in style?

 

[LeperColony]

It would have to be some pretty swanky stuff. According to TNE (pg 222), each occupied stateroom has an overhead cost of Cr2000 "per trip (two weeks)." This is separate from crew salaries, fuel, and other expenses, which are described in different sections. It's merely the cost associated with having someone in the stateroom.

That means the food and entertainment must be pretty nice.

 

[flykiller]

potentially the biggest attraction will be the other passengers. space travel will be for significant people who are doing significant things, and others might be interested. scientists giving lectures, musicians providing concerts, game experts giving demonstrations, great travellers telling stories about other worlds, business executives discussing economic policies, generals drumming up support for military issues, sports stars being challenged by wannabe's, preachers who can pitch great sermons, and conversation in general with interesting people in general.

likely the second biggest (and best stand-by old-reliable) would be standard entertainment such as banquets and alcohol, vids (2-3d), and just plain-old lounging.

the third biggest might be conventions of one interest or another.

fourth might be gambling and/or exhibition fighting.

and there's no reason why all of this can't occur simultaneously.

in my ships passengers and crew are provided with holobooths - sort of mini-holodecks - which allow individuals to pursue individual interests on their own time.

I really must post my passenger liner deckplan. the exterior shape is boring but the internal lay-out is great.

 

[Timerover51]

Right now I'm sipping a martini in the Observation Lounge bar on the (former ocean liner) RMS Queen Mary, and wondering... What would we expect to see aboard a premium liner in Imperial space? Jump space makes the Observation Lounge problematic for a good portion of any trip, of course, and you clearly can't do skeet shooting off of the starboard rail...

So, what do we offer the Impeial citizen who is traveling in style?

If you have ever been on a cruise ship, assume that your lowest cost cabin is equivalent to the standard stateroom. For traveling in "style" as you put it, you would need to drastically modify the stateroom size and arrangement, lounge areas, number of crew attending to passengers, and feeding set-up.

I would suggest taking a look at some of the current cruise ship staterooms online for the various prices, the add things like exercise rooms, exclusive bar areas, staterooms for entire families, maybe even a swimming pool with the water being considered a reserve fuel supply. Figure a personal stateroom attendant waiting on every beck and call, separate cooking and dining set-up, with cooked to order meals of "haute cuisine", and isolation of the higher class area from the plebeians traveling in steerage and eating microwave meals. Assume that they clear customs first, have priority on landing shuttles if on an un-streamlined ship, and have a much larger baggage allowance. They are also personally greeted by the ship captain upon boarding and have a direct line to the chief purser for any needs or complaints. A crew member who displeases them in any way is immediately terminated at the next space port.

 

[flykiller]

exercise rooms, exclusive bar areas, staterooms for entire families

the ics jefferson davis has that.

maybe even a swimming pool

absolutely not no how no way. lose gravity and everyone in the space is in terrible danger of drowning.

Figure a personal stateroom attendant waiting on every beck and call

tried that, it's really hard to shoe-horn in all the extra attendants. they can't be on call 24/7, you need at least 3/day and preferably 4 in case one gets sick. robots really help here, they need little pay or space, but they're just bots and not so good at relating.

separate cooking and dining set-up, with cooked to order meals of "haute cuisine"

cooking in an enclosed space is very difficult and very hazardous, and food and grease is very difficult to clean in a timely manner. imtu ALL food is pre-prepared and is kept in the dining area for ALL passengers.

and isolation of the higher class area from the plebeians traveling in steerage ... Assume that they clear customs first, have priority on landing shuttles if on an un-streamlined ship, and have a much larger baggage allowance.

the jd has all that too, and even dedicated shuttles to collect passengers and their luggage from anywhere on planet and not just at the starport.

A crew member who displeases them in any way is immediately terminated at the next space port.

no.

 

[Enoki]

I have always assumed that both naval and commercial vessels followed a sort of Victorian level of accommodation. That is perks that rank has its privileges and that there is a definite social class structure given the nobility in Traveller.

Thus on a warship you'd find:
An Admiral's mess and associated spaces like an executive suite.
A Captain's mess and suite.
Wardrooms where seating is by rank.
A CPO mess for senior enlisted.
A crew's mess, possibly even broken down by division and even by rank to some degree.

On a passenger ship something like:

Private suites for the wealthy and privileged with all the luxuries.
Frist class accommodations in luxury (akin to High passage with upgrades) This includes the gourmet buffet and such. You don't have this on a lowly far trader or subsidized merchant.
Second class / business class accommodations (High passage) The food is decent to good, the accommodations are clean and comfortable. This is the best on small merchants.
Third class is akin to mid-passage. So-so accommodations and food. Sort of like the "cattle" section in an airliner today...
Then there's "steerage" or low passage.

 

[Timerover51]

the ics jefferson davis has that.

absolutely not no how no way. lose gravity and everyone in the space is in terrible danger of drowning.

So?

tried that, it's really hard to shoe-horn in all the extra attendants. they can't be on call 24/7, you need at least 3/day and preferably 4 in case one gets sick. robots really help here, they need little pay or space, but they're just bots and not so good at relating.

I believe that I did say that you would have to drastically modify the ship living arrangements and crewing. The original poster wanted to know what would traveling in "style" look like. I believe that the idea desired is traveling in "high style".

cooking in an enclosed space is very difficult and very hazardous, and food and grease is very difficult to clean in a timely manner. imtu ALL food is pre-prepared and is kept in the dining area for ALL passengers.

Interesting, you are feeding all of the ship passengers the same pre-prepared food. That is supposed to be "traveling in style"?

 

[Spinward Scout]

Zero-G activities for those who have never been in space before

An offer from the Captain to 'fire the ship's guns' or 'pilot the ship'

A low-G swimming area for wicked high dives (an idea from Ben Bova's Millenium/Kinsman Saga)

 

[mike wightman]

I can do skeet shooting in my living room - well a computer simulated version using the wii.

I'm pretty sure a lot of people have used the x-box kinect do do the same thing.

Advance that technology by 3000years.

The observation lounge can be equipped with high tech view screens for use during jump, They cover the observation windows and instead project totally perfect images of whatever you want.

 

[flykiller]

you are feeding all of the ship passengers the same pre-prepared food. That is supposed to be "traveling in style"?

yeah, I'm realistic like that. can't help it. anyone who can afford to pay the costs of open cooking in an enclosed hull can afford their own ship.

I believe that I did say that you would have to drastically modify the ship living arrangements and crewing.

indeed, I believe you would have to drastically modify the ship living arrangements and crewing to the point where the ship is no longer a passenger liner but a private yacht. and I believe he was talking about liners, not yachts.

by the way, in my sig below I have a version of the erin-class that is a private yacht. maybe not a good one, but it's getting better ....

lose gravity and everyone in the space is in terrible danger of drowning.

So?

uh ... well, ok.

 

[McPerth]

maybe even a swimming pool with the water being considered a reserve fuel supply.

absolutely not no how no way. lose gravity and everyone in the space is in terrible danger of drowning.

I guess redundant grav and emergency water removing systems (with independent batteries for power, as we're talking about emergency systems) could allow it. After all, this could only be posible in the larger cruisers, due to its sheer volume...

The observation lounge can be equipped with high tech view screens for use during jump, They cover the observation windows and instead project totally perfect images of whatever you want.

IIRC in MT:SOM was said that most staterooms (not only observation areas) were usually equiped with holographyc projectors to allow the passengers to decorate it at their taste.

As for the observation area, I'd think a good idea would be some kind of panoramics from the destination planet, just to allow the passengers to know a little about their destination.

Another ammenity that uses t obe in most cruisers today is steticien care (massages, hairdresser, etc.) that could also be used to adapt your look to the destination planet.

Remember that you will leave the ship on a different planet (not only country) tan the one you took the ship in, with not only different culture, but also probably different gravity, atmosphere, and even sunlight wavelengths, and I also think that the time in jumpspace could be also used to adapt people to all that (by gradually altering all those factors). In fact, in MT:SOM this adaptation was given as standard practice for gravity.

And I'd expect videogames (or hologames) in a passenger ship to be state of the art, as boredoom might be a true problema when you're enclosed in such small space for several days.

Even so, I'd expect most of the entertainment would be social interaction (dinners, dances, etc...).

We must think that in those ships, unlike today's cruisers, the goal is to reach the destination (something now usually done by airplane), not to enjoy the trip. In this sense I'd expect them to be more alike from the Titanic times than to nowdays pleasure cruises.

 

[martletsquire]

A very good reference and good plot tips for luxury liners is David Drake's Starliner, which consists of a series of adventures involving the crew and key passengers aboard a mega-liner run by a mega-corporation (with the quiet approval and control of the main government) during a potential frontier war. Excellent read. Covers actions both on the ship during real space and transit (Drake's version of star drive) and actions on planets during landings.

This excellent book is available free from Baen.com. Go to the free library and snag it.

The mega-liner has a virtual shooting gallery, with guns equipped to provide pseudo-recoil, a chapel, many bars and restaurants, and other delights unknown. It also deals with the dynamics of the bridge and engineering crew vs the steward crew.

As to whatever else, you would find everything you could expect from a really decent modern cruise ship, like Celebrity or Disney. Or maybe with even more esoteric tastes, such as concubines, drugs (virtual or real), low grav flying in the air circulation tanks (as in John Ringo's Live Free or Die Hard series, various variable gravity entertainment or exercise areas (gotta work out at those upper gravs to be able to live on Planet X).


Another good source of how liners work, maybe for more austere or less luxurious ships, is Robert Heinlein's Starman Jones. This excellent book has a ship run like a 1920's or '30's ocean liner (the type you go on a 3-4 month world cruise.) It even has a mis-jump episode. There isn't as much information on what worldly or un-worldly pleasures are found on-board, but you get a very good idea for the crew and passenger dynamics. Though there are dances and fine dining with seating at the captain's table and so forth.

And back to John Ringo's Live Free or Die Hard series. His citadel asteroids have all sorts of stuff stuck away for people to try. Good series. Hope he figures out how to continue it.

 

[Spinward Scout]

We must think that in those ships, unlike today's cruisers, the goal is to reach the destination

Not necessarily. Although highly expensive, you could have a year long round-trip tour of a subsector and end up right back at your starting world. One week on a World and one week in Jump Space would let you visit 26 worlds in a year. Of course, skipping Red Zoned worlds and any 'uninteresting' worlds along the way. It would have a lot of down time that would need entertainment when not on World.

 

[McPerth]

Not necessarily. Although highly expensive, you could have a year long round-trip tour of a subsector and end up right back at your starting world. One week on a World and one week in Jump Space would let you visit 26 worlds in a year. Of course, skipping Red Zoned worlds and any 'uninteresting' worlds along the way.

Sure you can, but most of the ships that carry passengers will be mainly as a means to reach the destination, not for the pleasure of the trip, as it was on Earth before the air travel was widespread.

Today, you'll have trouble to cross the Atlantic by passenger ship (if you could at all), as most those cruising ships are dedicated to pleasure cruises, not to really carrying passengers from one place to another, so I keep my point that they are not comparable with the Traveller passanger's ships.

 

[Enoki]

You'd definitely want a zero G bowling alley for entertainment I'd think...

 

[Timerover51]

yeah, I'm realistic like that. can't help it. anyone who can afford to pay the costs of open cooking in an enclosed hull can afford their own ship.

I was at the Pacific Aviation Museum at Pearl Harbor on August 7th. They have a good display of material from the former Pan-American Airline concerning the China Clipper flights across the Pacific. Included was a menu from one of the flights. It listed a 5 course dinner, with 6 different entrees. That was in 1939. I have an extremely hard to believing that what was fully possible in 1939, cannot be done in the context of Traveller. The China Clipper flight from San Francisco to Manila and Hong Kong took several days, and the aircraft were equipped as sleepers. In many respects, it would be similar to a Jump in Traveller.

The original post was "traveling in style". The China Clippers represented the top of airline travel in their period.

 

[Timerover51]

Sure you can, but most of the ships that carry passengers will be mainly as a means to reach the destination, not for the pleasure of the trip, as it was on Earth before the air travel was widespread.

Today, you'll have trouble to cross the Atlantic by passenger ship (if you could at all), as most those cruising ships are dedicated to pleasure cruises, not to really carrying passengers from one place to another, so I keep my point that they are not comparable with the Traveller passanger's ships.

Actually, there are regular trans-Atlantic trips available on cruise ships, some being dependent on re-positioning voyages from the North Atlantic in the fall to the more sedate Mediterranean, and then back to the North Atlantic in the spring. Ships also sail from the Eastern Med to the Western Med and back, supplying transportation between ports, and not doing a simply round-robin voyage.

It is also possible to travel from the US East or Gulf Coast to the US West Coast (either San Diego or Los Angeles) via the Panama Canal on a regular basis throughout the year.

My parents-in-law, in the mid-1990s flew to Japan to pick up a cruise ship which did the Pacific Circle route through China, Indonesia, Australia, and Polynesia, finally docking in Los Angeles. They also did a cruise around South America, leaving Los Angeles and docking several weeks later in Miami.

There are also the inter-island ships in Indonesia and the Philippines, combining both cargo and passenger carrying, analogous to the Jump-1 Free Trader traveling in a star cluster. Then there is the Alaskan State Ferry system connecting the communities in the Alaskan Panhandle with the rest of the state. The Solomon Islands also have a small number of inter-island ships.

If you do sufficient research, it is also possible to travel on some of the regularly scheduled cargo ships which have some limited passenger capacity, typically a maximum of 12. The last time I checked, it was relatively easy to get space as a passenger on a container ship from Los Angeles to Brisbane, Australia.

 

[Orr]

Today, you'll have trouble to cross the Atlantic by passenger ship (if you could at all), as most those cruising ships are dedicated to pleasure cruises, not to really carrying passengers from one place to another, so I keep my point that they are not comparable with the Traveller passanger's ships.

While it's true that routine passenger service is a thing of the past, I think current day cruise liners can be used as a rough guide for the amenities aboard Traveller's larger liners. It's all about keeping the passengers occupied during the trip.

Once steamers took over the routes, Atlantic crossings took 3 to 6 days depending on the ports involved and the weather between them. The best liners weren't only just the faster ones, amenities counted too because, as Johnson once quipped, being aboard a ship is like being in jail with the added chance of drowning.

If keeping passengers occupied during a 3 day trip was important, why wouldn't it also be important during a trip which consists of 7 days in jump plus however long is spent in normal space between the ports and jump limits?

I once took a freighter from Charleston, SC to Valparaiso, Chile in the 1990s. A relative of mine was an officer aboard and offered me a travel to travel as a P.A.C; "person in addition to crew". I'd read that Alex Haley, the author of Roots often traveled in freighters as a way of getting work done without distractions so jumped at the chance hoping to get some serious studying done. I originally planned on making it a round trip. However, before the first week was over I was so bored that I flew back to the US from Valparaiso instead.

The food was excellent and each meal's menu extensive, the US Merchant Marine eat like kings. The officers and crew were pleasant, but they all had jobs to do and none of those jobs included acting as a cruise director for me. I found I could only study the materials I'd brought aboard so many hours a day before the law of diminishing returns set in. That left a lot of hours to fill and not much to fill them with. The tedium was broken by a few ports of call on the way to Chile, but I can imagine what 168 hours with no breaks would have been like. o:

Passenger ships in Traveller are going to have as many amenities as practical if only to keep the passengers from killing themselves and each other out of sheer boredom.

 

[whulorigan]

A Luxury Starliner is going to have as many amenities as it is reasonably possible to offer for a given price, simply because they are a business venture in competition with other transportation lines, and they want to have potential customers say: "I would rather go on this liner than that one, because they offer this or that service, compared to that transportation line which doesn't".

It is a simple marketplace-competition issue.

 

[flykiller]

I have an extremely hard to believing that what was fully possible in 1939, cannot be done in the context of Traveller.

and I have no doubt that an airline service in 2999 could do the same. but it's not the dates. it's the circumstances. an aircraft has all the free air it needs, but a space-going ship has a profoundly limited air volume available, and a liner will have very many people relying on that air. filtering out small amounts of unavoidable contaminants is one thing, but oxygen replacement and filtering out extra CO and CO2 and smoke and grease from any kind of large-scale cooking will be another issue altogether. as grease builds up over time the fire hazard alone will become significant.

of course one can always do the voodoo handwave dance and referee-rule that "it's all good", after all it's just a game. but I try to avoid that approach if possible. (notice the ships in my deckplans have reserve air and water, and life support units.) The original question was, "So, what do we offer the Impeial citizen who is traveling [on a liner] in style?" I don't think high cuisine could be one of the things offered.

http://vidmax.com/video/67443-Gas-Explosion-in-Kitchen-Caught-on-Slow-Motion-Camera