Best way to give my players a ship

[BruceEdwinMorrow]

Hi, I'm new to the board and I'm looking for advice from some fellow Traveller Referees.

I've got a group of six players who have just finished character generation last week. The module I'm planning to run this coming week requires them to have a starship and I'd like to figure out what the best way to give them the ship is.

It's around the time of the 5th frontier war, so ships are in great demand. Complicating the matter, I'm trying to give them a merc cruiser. I'm thinking along the lines of having it be a derelict, and making the PCs mount a mission to recover and repair it. Since extra ships are at a premium, I'll force them to get to the system where the derelict is located by using all those high/mid/low passages they mustered out with. Once there, they can take a cutter, or some other in-system only space ship out to the derelict and start repairs.

I’m wondering how much should repairs cost along with renting a cutter for several week?? I'm thinking about putting them in the hole for 20-50% of the ship's original costs (the repair bill). They can cart out enough parts to get the maneuver drive working. After that it’s several weeks and millions of credits in drydock to get it repaired.

There's a noble in the party, so I can use his estates as collateral with the banks.

I having a hard time figuring out why the characters would know about this derelict and not other parties. Why is hasn’t been salvaged till now??

Anyway, I wanted to find out how other refs would handle this situation. Thanks in advance for any comments! Cheers,

 

[aramis]

If you have CT, there are rules for charters. Use those for cutter rental.

I'd instead simply have it be dropped in their laps; an inheritance, sitting in the quays, at a backwater private port on the mainworld. Now, they have to make it worthy. Too bad uncle Jed liked to hang paintings on the outside...

Another good way is to just have a patron who needs a crew, and the players are the only persons ethically challenged enough to take him up on it.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

You could have them captured by pirates, fight back, and end up in control of the ship. Now they just have to convince the authorities that they aren't pirates...

 

[mike wightman]

How about trying tio tie the characters' back stories into the tale of the shipwreck?

Any ex-army or ex-navy personel may have been involved in either:

the abandoning of the ship due to heavy damage sustained during a covert mission

they may have been part of the force that had to intercept the merc cruiser (perhaps it was opperated by Sword World merc or the like).

 

[tewhill]

ageless problem

I've never once heard of a way to accomplish this without being either very implausible or highly arbitrary. My solution has always been to specify during character generation that all characters must have skills that makes their presence on a ship plausible. Then I simply gift the party with a pre-existing ship (and a fairly massive loan to pay). My games always begin in media res.

And forget about that hackneyed strangers in a bar meetup, too.

 

[flykiller]

if you have a noble in the party then it's simple. the imperium's resources are stressed and there is no funding to recover the ship. the noble has been tasked with 1) keeping the derelict ship out of the wrong hands, 2) restoring and reactivating the cruiser if possible, and 3) hiring up a merc unit to supplement imperial military goals (which will be decided at a later date). some imperial funding and NPC's may be available, but mostly the noble has to make it happen himself. it'll break him financially, but if he succeeds he'll become a major and well-regarded player in the affairs of the imperium, and then who knows what opportunities will open up for him and his staff?

as for no-one else knowing about the derelict, of course someone else does. drive off scavenging looters looking for parts (initial combat action), find chase and defeat scavengers that have run off with a critical part (street and combat action planetside whereever you want), repel a zho commando team tasked with taking the derelict as a prize (formal shipboard combat action), repel a zho commerce raider frigate tasked with destroying the recovering cruiser (naval action). all at the proper times of course. lots of game opportunities there.

good luck with the game!

 

[BlackBat242]

Its been floating out there, with no emergency beacon, since your grandfather was part of its crew (50-75 years).

The ship was damaged in a botched mission, and has not been seen since.

He was the sole survivor, evacuated in a lifeboat... the ship was last seen drifting off out-system at a high rate of speed.

He was recovered after several days in the lifeboat, too late for anyone to recover the ship, even if he had talked. Since he was recovered by those he was fighting, he withheld the info on the ship's course.

He was convicted of "war crimes" and imprisoned. He has recently been released, but is too old and in too poor health to recover it himself.

It will have now drifted close enough to another system to be reachable, and rendezvous will be achievable with your rescue craft, but just barely. They will have little maneuver drive fuel left when they dock, and will have to refuel from the derelict.

So, what has it picked up during its intersteller drift? :smirk:

 

[far-trader]

It's always a fun challenge and there's lots of ideas to pick from here.

One small point stands out in the last one, I have to correct it, a ship won't be making an interstellar trip even at a high rate of drift in 50-75 years. Maybe 50-75 centuries Giving the players such an antique could be fun

A small twist on BlackBat's scenario, how about the grandfather scuttled the ship by plotting a jump and bailing in the small craft just before it went.

Same story otherwise but he knows the coordinates he sent it to. Jump drive was working with just enough fuel, but the maneuver was shot so the only way to avoid capture of the ship was jumping. Post war the IN really wasn't interested in recovering a damaged and marginal ship (probably a Subsidized Merchant drafted into the war and minimally upgraded with weapons, the Subsidized Liner would work well) and wrote it off the books so it's open salvage for anyone who can find it and get it back to a port for repairs. The players will have to charter a starship to run them out to it with enough fuel and spare parts to jump it back to port. Fun ensues.

 

[Supplement Four]

I like the idea of using the CT rules as written. If the players don't receive a ship during the Muster process, then they don't have one.

They're going to have to pool their money and adventure without a ship. Those 8,000Cr Middle Passages will get old, quick. And, once they get a ship, after having to save and risk their lives, and get the downpayment, they'll certainly respect the ship, won't they? You won't see them taking it for granted, even if its a used clunker.

But...

I understand from the OP that your scenario requires the PCs to have a ship--or the first adventure is about getting a ship. Well, I've got some options for you.



1) Players have to earn their ship....

Just what I say at the start of this post. It takes some time but can lead to some fun role playing. Might require you to change your scenario. Neat in that there will be a real "change" in the game, giving a feeling of momentum to the campaign, once the PCs actually earn the ship. Plus, the profit motive is really there in the game. The players are working towards something...buying a ship. This is a great "pull" for adventures as the players really will want to take on those dangerous assignments in order to make some credits. You won't have to artificially push them into scenarios as the thirst for owning their own vessel is real.



2) Players steal a ship....

It's hard to steal a ship, especially if there is a crew aboard her. But, that might make for a heck of a first adventure. Having to run to a shadow port. Getting the transponder fixed would be a big pull for future adventures. Finding correct forged "ships papers" would be another adventure. Provides a great reason to move to a new area of space for which the PC would not be familiar for exploring/adventure purposes. A whole campaign can be written up around actually stealing the ship and having to go through all the hoops needed to keep the ship from being discovered. Plus, there's a built-in recurring bad-guy as the ship's last owners/the law/a criminal syndicate continually find and chase the crew. There may be limits on where the ship can acutally put in at port, due to the risk of serial numbers and such tracing the ship. How neat would it be if there was only one port in the subsector that the ship could actually use? The rest of the time, the ship is wilderness refueling and staying in orbit as the shuttle is used.



3) Players buy a used ship...

I'm not sure about later rule editions, but CT rules are about buying a new ship. There's custom designs and standard designs, but they're all "new", and they're all very expensive. What about buying a used ship? This is what I did in my campaign. Alter the ship buying rules a bit and buy a ship that's 40 years old. Like an older home, those typically sell for less than new ships. Therefore, the PCs will need less money than they would with a new ship. Plus, for game reasons, the ship has a "history" that the players can discover as the campaign progresses. "Oh, you're kidding. This was THAT ship!" I've even had players find things in secret compartments they discover while doing some maintenance and clean up, "Hey, I was in engineering today and saw an access hatch on the drive that shouldn't be there. To the untrained eye, it looked like a simple control unit access, but I know this model. I opened it, and look what I found..." Another neat thing about an older ship is that the GM has a great excuse to keep the ship breaking down. Like Han Solo's Falcon, this type of ship, in the hands of a good GM, can give the ship a lot of character...and keep spending the players time and money on upkeep. "Damn, the friggin' jump governor is down again. We can't jump. Find a planet in the system to put down. I'm going to need some parts." And, the GM tries not to let his smile show.



4) Players get a backer....

Another favorite of mine is for the players, always strapped for cash, to find a backer. A Noble. Some industry type. A syndicate. A union. The government of a world. Whatever. This type of situation provides some great "strings" for the GM to pull. A noble may subsidize a vessel on the condition that half the ship's profits are forwarded to him and the ship is free for his personal use from time to time. Maybe the government of a world off the main trade routes starts a program where by tramp freights are subsidized if they spend four months out of the year servicing the mail and freight lanes with neighbor worlds. A crime syndicate might subsidize ships for a number of reasons, smuggling chief among them. A company might subsidize a ship if the ship's new owners agree to carry freight for the company for free from time to time, making a good deal for the company because the total subsidy is actually less than the agreeed freight runs. "We'll subsidize your ship for 10 million Cr, but you will be giving us 20 million Cr in free freight runs, making it a good deal for us in the long run."



5) Players already have a ship....

And, don't forget, you can always start the adventure "in the middle of things". Many Traveller adventures start this way. The Traveller Adventure starts this way. When we first meet Han Solo, he already owns the Falcon, right? I really think this method is overused, and I've seen some players take their ship for granted (You want them squinting with pain every time the ship is hit in space combat, seeing Credit signs float out the airlock). But, it is the fastest method to "get on with a story", if your story requires the players to have a ship. You might want to look at character generation. Did any of the players serve on a vessel during their last term of chargen? Well, then THIS is the ship they served on. Chargen stops. Play begins. Same ship used.



I'm sure there are other ideas. These are just the five that come to mind at the moment.

 

[Scott Martin]

Covert Ops recovery

Or if you're feeling particulary evil, the ship was landed in damaged condition by a covert ops team who then hiked off for pick-up somewhere else on the planet.

The ship is recoverable, but landed somewhere on a low tech backwater where it can't be reached easily, and has destruct codes set to go off (and slag the remainder of the drives) if it detects a starship powerplant landing within 100 km, or gravitics within 30 km.

The problem of course is that the damaged drive component which must be replaced is large, bulky and inappropriate to move overland in anything smaller than a crawler, and that scrub that it was in 50 years ago is now old growth rainforest making moving a crawler in almost impossible.

The ship name is "Lucinda" and if there's anyone looking from Free Trader Beowulf, consider this a bit of foreshadowing

Did I mention that she's equipped with Experimental drives, and there was a reason (or three) why the Imperium didn't follow up that line of research?

Scott Martin

 

[Captain Midnight]

Forget drifting; let's haul butt instead!

One small point stands out in the last one, I have to correct it, a ship won't be making an interstellar trip even at a high rate of drift in 50-75 years. Maybe 50-75 centuries

Let's run the numbers. We'll assume a 3G drive; that might be a little bit overpowered for basic ships in some rulesets (such as GT), or a little underpowered for others, but it'll work for back-of-the-envelope figuring.

Systems are located in hexes, each of which is 1 parsec (3.26 light-years) across. Let's assume that someone is starting from a system 1 parsec away, and wants to send his ship there via sublight travel, for whatever reason exists in his fevered brain -- maybe the Flying Space Bats are speaking to him through his breakfast cereal and telling him what to do. The FSBs also tell him that the ship must boost at full speed for exactly 21 days (achievable in just about all rulesets that allow reactionless drives), no more and no less, whereupon the ship must coast the rest of the way to its destination.

1 G of acceleration = 9.8 m/sec/sec. 3 Gs means the ship accelerates at 29.4 m/sec/sec. 21 days is (21 days * 24 hours/day * 60 minutes/hour * 60 seconds/minute) = 1,814,400 seconds. Since speed = acceleration * time, the ship's speed at the moment the FSBs have specified it must start coasting is (29.4 * 1,814,400) = 53,343,360 m/sec.

My physics textbook tells me that the speed of light is 300,000,000 m/sec, which means that (neglecting relativistic effects) the ship is up to about one-sixth of the speed of light. Since a light-year is defined as the distance that light will cover in a year, it's pretty clear that our hypothetical one-parsec trip will have taken the ship about 20 years to accomplish -- well within the parameters originally specified. If you want to fiddle with the original parameters, acceleration is the most important one, although you shouldn't be afraid to stretch out the time by a few decades.

It's a great gaming opportunity, too. Sure, nobody's going to be sending a ship from Capital to Regina that way, but it's a great way to introduce a ship to the PCs. Anyone taking orders from Flying Space Bats probably isn't going to file a flight plan, so maybe they just heard some crazy story from someone who got it from somewhere after buying someone his eighth Gargleblaster, and maybe he's right, or maybe he's actually still drunk. You can assign any weirdness you want to the ship, and explain it either by saying the previous owner refitted it that way, or that the radiation from the extended trip has produced some odd results. Catching up to it could be difficult, as you're going to have to figure out exactly where it's coming from, and be ready to go fast to catch up with it. How will you slow it down? How will you get title to it? Will you tell anyone about it? Are the other disciples of the FSBs going to know or care about what you've done?

 

[flykiller]

One small point stands out in the last one, I have to correct it, a ship won't be making an interstellar trip even at a high rate of drift in 50-75 years. Maybe 50-75 centuries ....

... it's pretty clear that our hypothetical one-parsec trip will have taken the ship about 20 years to accomplish ....

actually a properly-designed 1G ship can do it in eighty-two months. http://members.aol.com/flykiller/traveller/argo.html

for a drift transit though there are problems.

1) the ship has to accelerate up to the appropriate speed, then decelerate. decel will have to be accounted for because the ship is useless until its vector is reduced.

2) the ship should have some kind of heat source during the trip or its temperature will drop down to two or three kelvin. this may or may not cause damage - personally I wouldn't give two credits for any computer subjected to such a transient.

3) the ship's leading edge may be heavily worn, maybe worn away, by impacts with dust and gas during the journey.

4) after a very long transit ship components that aren't metal or glass or ceramic are likely to have deteriorated very badly. lubricants, plastics, sealants, etc are likely to be gone.

5) after a very long transit the ship will probably have absolutely no fuel, air, water, or anything else that requires a sealed container, remaining.

of course gamers could ignore all this, but it bears consideration.

 

[far-trader]

OK sure I stand corrected IF the throttle is stuck open until the fuel ran out (your 21 days is reasonable enough) the ship will go zooming through a nearby system in decades PRESUMING...

...it doesn't hit a pebble somewhere in all those millions of kilometers at that fantastic speed and go KABOOM. You want to give odds? Space is big, and pretty empty, but we're talking a long time and great distance.

Actually that could play into it. The players have the course and the ship is approaching a system. If they don't get out "there" (say beyond the Oort Cloud) and slow it down before it enters the outer system it WILL hit some space debris and go KABOOM. Destroying the ship and whatever fabled treasure is aboard PC's will have to jump out to an intercept point, crank up the speed, match vectors, and slow down before they get too close to the system.

Could be fun

 

[JAFARR]

Got some Heros in the party? Multiple MCGs or a SEH holder? Some government has some captured pirate ship(s) and will set up repairs in exchange for some anti-pirate work in some spacial backwater. Surely such a decorated hero will be trustworthy to take on this mission. Why they might even "liberate" some more pirate ships if they manage to find some overlooked files in the computer with critical information about the pirates base, etc.

 

[Icosahedron]

Maybe the noble (or someone else) was owed a favour (or back-taxes, or...) and accepted the 'treasure map' as payment of the marker (provided it proves genuine) since the value of the wreck far exceeds the amount owed. The group can carry out a whole batch of investigative work on the probity of the document(s) prior to spending all their passage money on looking for it.

 

[BigBadRon]

... which means that (neglecting relativistic effects) the ship is up to about one-sixth of the speed of light.

Heh... leaving the players with the interesting task of spotting a (relatively) small object, which has no drive output, and is probably pretty close to having no temperature, with only the vaguest idea where it is (a tiny error in the course mounts up over those distances).

That leads to the second task... matching velocity with it.

Which leads to the third task... getting it powered up again, with limited/zero fuel and whatever resources they had in their shuttle, and getting it slowed down and landed before the fuel and resources are used up.

Ah... Happy times.

 

[Spinward Scout]

You could have the Patron be after something 'on' the damaged ship. Rare cargo, incriminating data, rumors of Zhodani battle plans in the data logs, 'the Dope', much needed medical supplies, etc... And have the purpose of the mission be to get the 'thing' - whatever it is - off of the ship. After arriving, they realize that the ship is salvagable and go from there. Nobody claims the ship, so the PCs get salvage rights. Of course, it needs some repairs. And the Patron's cutter - after getting what he was looking for aboard the cutter - is pulling away with the PCs still aboard the derelict.



SS

p.s. watch 2010: Odessey Two for good visuals moving between ships.

 

[ditzie]

If you have CT, there are rules for charters. Use those for cutter rental.

I'd instead simply have it be dropped in their laps; an inheritance, sitting in the quays, at a backwater private port on the mainworld. Now, they have to make it worthy. Too bad uncle Jed liked to hang paintings on the outside...

Another good way is to just have a patron who needs a crew, and the players are the only persons ethically challenged enough to take him up on it.

I like Aramis' take. A ship, if players like/expect to have one, should be a freebie with quirks, regardless of its type.

 

[BruceEdwinMorrow]

There are a lot of awesome ideas here. I really appreciate everyone's opinion. Thanks!

 

[atpollard]

The crew of the ship is in default of the loan. The Navy is too busy with the war. The bank grants your noble ownership of the warship with no downpayment as long as he agrees to take over the payments (about 60% of the original cost of the ship). The only catch, is that the party must reposses the ship themselves (but you do have papers from the bank transfering ownership, so you will not hang for piracy).