An Adventure Seed from Trying to Design Squadron Strike: Traveller Scenarios

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Ken Burnside writes:

While kvetching about the canonical lack of Meson Screens on certain classes of warships I have to make scenarios around for Squadron Strike: Traveller ... I came up with the idea for a campaign arc. I bounced it off of my Traveller line developer (Michael Llaneza) and...

We got this: Justice by Design

A doctrinal error by the Imperial Navy has led to the death of a scion of a noble family. The gallant young officer went down fighting in the finest traditions of the Imperial navy, but might have survived victorious if their ship had been equipped with a meson screen.

It was supposed to be. Despite the master construction plans and bills of material clearly stating “put a Mk8 Meson Screen in this compartment,” those compartments were used for PO berthing on every single vessel in the class equipped for a humaniti-majority crew (Vegan Confederation destroyers of this class used it for a high-humidity rec area).

Someone made an ungodly sum of money on this deception. Someone highly placed, able to interfere with the distribution of construction blueprints for a major class of Imperial warship to dozens or hundreds of naval yards.

These people will pay in blood and in the destruction of all their works. The contract specifies seven generations worth of damage. Every effort will be made to provide (deniable) assets as required. You have been offered the job. What do you do?

 

[BackworldTraveller]

The issue here is not that there was a doctrinal error (The doctrine said you need a meson screen; the design said you should have a meson screen) but that the ships were built without the meson screen.

Ministry of Justice: An investigation into the Shipyard that didn't fulfil its build contract (Imperial Civil Courts: Shipyard(s) Vs Imperial Navy).

Ministry of Justice: An investigation into the individual that instructed the shipyard to produce a vessel not in accordance with the original design. (Forging of IN Design Documents; Sabotage of IN vessels endangering the security of the Imperium...Imperial Criminal Courts (possibly High Court, Imperium Vs Individual on charges of...Forgery?, Treason?)

Why are deniable assets needed...Are you hushing up a treason? Do the MOJ need to look at your activities too?

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

agreed, Doctrine was fine but doctrine wasn't followed, so its not a error of doctrine.

But unless every single ship of the class came out of one shipyard, their must have been multiple people involved in this, at the very least one or two per shipyard that built these.

my suggestion:

Doctine wasn't followed, but this was a semi-official policy of the Navy.

at the time of building, thier was a significant budget squeeze on destroyers and other ships of that size. In order to keep costs down and hull numbers up, the designers deleted the Meson Screen form the ships design, and the builders built ships to that spec. The original intention was to retrofit a screen into that compartment (hence the plans showing them, and the ships being build with the power cabling and other infrastructure to support their installation), but for a variety of reasons that never happened, amongst them being the outbreak of war and immediate demand for every hull the navy had preventing the ships getting the refits. The meason screen that was supposed to be fitted to the destroyer the noble died on was sat in storage on Depot, Deneb sector, while the naval quartermasters tried to work out which shipyard they needed to ship It too for installation.

So, after the nobles death, their is a investigation at the behest of the nobles family. The investigators uncover the above, and decided that the designers and the admirals that made these decisions may have been wrong, but did not act criminally, and no charges are laid against them

the nobles family feel this is a travesty, and hire the players to exact justice/revenge.

 

[Condottiere]

Fitted for, but not with.

 

[BackworldTraveller]

Who the noble who died is in relation to the noble who was the presiding judge on the investigation in relation to those who made the decisions is going to be an interesting network to follow...Yes you have managed to deal with the decision maker, but that was the lady who is married to the son of the MOJ judge who directed the investigation who was appointed by the Subsector Duke who is your family's liege...And now that the job is complete, your fee has been expended in a one-way passage to Lair.