Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Size and presence of warships tends to depend on the perceived threat(s) to either empire, it's interests, and/or commercial shipping.
I see the Imperial Navy, or any other navy of some polity as being much like navies have historically been. That is, there are a relative handful of really large and powerful ships that are kept at a few strategic points for major wars and the like. They may move around in a small squadron (2 or 3) or singularly in peacetime to show the flag, transport some VIP or the head of state, that sort of thing. They're very expensive to build, maintain, and crew, and money even in Traveller is not unlimited.That has always been an issue, is the Imperial Navy BIG? Or is it small with pockets of ships such as a squadron or two in an area? Or is it a massive fleet capable of whatever it wants? Again are ships rare, scarce, common, or everywhere? I think ships are more common just for commerce purposes, think interstate trucking companies and shipping lines.
Your smaller LBB2 ships are the ones that service the class C/D/E/X starports and the big High Guard ships are the ones that service the A/B starports. Your smaller LBB2 ships are the ones that meet at the Class A/B ports, load cargo, and then move on to the smaller ports. HOWEVER: I do not see ships of under 1,000 tons as economically viable in terms of costs/prices shown in the books. Speculative Trading can only get you so far, as a couple of my players discovered. But ships in the 1,000 to 3,000 ton range CAN make a living of it, especially if they have J-2+ drives. Your Deus Ex Machina ships are the larger warships and cargo vessels, at least IMHO.
That's a reasonable example for the Imperium. The needs of other polities will vary. I'd think, for example, the Vargr have very few, if any, major warships because of the tribal nature of their society. Instead, every pack / tribe / faction builds what they can with an eye first to dealing with their immediate rival factions.Colonial cruisers and gunboat diplomacy.
Usually, you send cheap operational costing third class cruisers to the peripheries, as well as obsolete warships, to do local presence, which worked for a century for the Royal Navy.
Once you run up against near peer competition, the quality of the warships start to improve.
Something like that is almost an inevitable product of the trade rules, even if tweaked to make the A2 profitable.You can operate something like an Empress Marava far trader at a profit, but it often turns into a boring exercise in going between the same few worlds each trip moving cargo and passengers between them. If you (the players) try to do it as they more or less randomly move across the universe they're going to lose bigtime on money. Neither is something that really makes for an exciting or interesting game.
I use neither.Classic Traveller seemed to envision a small ship universe since those were the ships that the players could possibly afford, or be able to crew. High Guard added to that by adding the big ships which players could never afford. I mean how many players could pay for/own a 250k Battleship? So how do we address the seeming contradiction? I propose that there is no contradiction as such, but merely a affordable vs non-affordable type of ship.
Do we have "small ship" universes where the biggest ship is the 5,000 ton ship from the classic books? Absolutely! Do we have "big ship" universes from High Guard, Trillion Credit Squadron? Absolutely! For the adventuring class, they will tend to live in the small ship universe, with the big ships acting as patrons, antagonists, or enemies.
If you are bee-bopping around in your 800 ton Mercenary Cruiser that you won in a dabo game, and suddenly that Ceasar class destroyer of 6,500 tons shows up to do a "customs inspection", you might have a really bad day, or a good one. So, do you have a small ship universe, or a big ship universe, or a combination of the two?
Me, I have both
Truthfully speaking, the way the J-5 Shugushaag would be operated would be on a purely speculative tramp freighter basis. It would be all about the buy low/sell high speculation in order to make things work, rather than operating on passenger and cargo transport revenues (which it will never survive on, even under subsidy). As a speculative tramp though, that 30 tons of cargo space could be used to transport "high value cargoes" on speculation from pickup to distant locations where you are most likely to make a profit sale on a rapid turnaround.IMTU (for my 600Td J-5 Shugushaag freighter/courier, which so far hasn't actually carried any cargo in-game yet...) I assume that someone will pay that much. But the quantity of cargo is inversely proportional to the cost... Everybody is happy to pay Cr1000/ton. Some are willing to pay a lot more to get halfway across the subsector in a week, but there aren't a whole bunch of them. Works kind of like a charter in that respect -- but, again, not at standard charter rates.
The Traveller Adventure is a small ship setting with the big stuff in the background. All the ships we "see" and can interact with are LBB2 designs, but the central mystery involves a pair of spinal meson guns...
What doesn't make sense setting wise is that there is any illegal activity in any system in the Spinward Marches. The description of the Imperium in LBB4 and 5 does not match with later developments with regards to the scale of the Imperial Navy and the number fs ships it has available for patrol.
The Kinunir was part haunted house/part dungeon crawl, thanks to those deck plans.The Kinunir's deck plans are used for the player's to crawl around and explore. (And in this particular adventure, whether they want to, or not.)![]()
S7 gave you multiple settings (ship deck plans) to play with and visualize in your head, with the prospect of "someday, this could be MINE!"Which is why, IMHO, products like Supplement 7, Traders and Gunboats was so much better than Supplement 9, Fighting Ships. Traders and Gunboats provided a number of settings to have adventures in.
Let's put it this way.But I believe, in Traveller, a starship should be more than just a USP.
If you play Traveller as a wargame, then big ships do make sense. That is, you are playing some sort of strategic / operational game using counters (or equivalent) using something like the Traveller system map. For role playing, they make a difficult setting most of the time.When you ask about big ships verses little ships in Traveller, I would suggest that that answer depends somewhat on how you play Traveller. Personally I'm more of a role-playing kinda' guy, than I'm a Trillion Credit Squadron kinda' guy. And because of that, I think mike wightman hit the nail on the head from what he said above. As far as role-playing goes, I believe ships, big or little, serve as a setting for a game. Several examples have already been mentioned -- Adventure 1, The Kinunir, Adventure 4, Leviathan, and Supplement 5, Azhanti High Lightning. The list goes on.
But what these Adventures and Supplements have in common is the idea of using these ships as a place to have an adventure. In Adventure 1, The Kinunir, the players don't actually jump into a Kinunir-class Colonial Cruiser to fly around to get into space battles with. The Kinunir's deck plans are used for the player's to crawl around and explore. (And in this particular adventure, whether they want to, or not.)Which is why, IMHO, products like Supplement 7, Traders and Gunboats was so much better than Supplement 9, Fighting Ships. Traders and Gunboats provided a number of settings to have adventures in.
Now, if I were playing Trillion Credit Squadron, then I could see how the Tigress-class (Pac-Man) Dreadnought would be nice to have around. But seriously, who has used the Tigress as a setting for a role-playing game? I guess the Tigress is nice to talk about to add some sort of background color to a narrative. But other than something like Trillion Credit Squadron, what good is that list of letters and numbers that make up its USP?
Especially in comparison to Supplement 5, Azhanti High Lightning, which is an awesome setting! One of the best Traveller adventures I ever ran was when our players were the command crew of the Azhanti High Lightning, a' la Star Trek.
So, I guess what I'm saying is, in my opinion, the question really isn't big ships verses little ships in Traveller. Size is irrelevant. Big ships can make great settings. And while GDW did detail a few settings like this, I believe they were far between. I am sorry that after five editions, they haven't detailed more. And I understand why. That's a lot of work! Especially for a big ship.
But I believe, in Traveller, a starship should be more than just a USP.