I have used Path of Tears to roughly generate the starships and spacecraft used by various post virus polities. This seems to generate the military shipping. (Though in some cases this is probably all there is.) Has anyone come up with a way of creating the relic civilian shipping which could exist. The RC certainly has civilian shipping (possibly subject to mobilisation?) Other groups may have too. Any ideas?
Civilian Shipping
- Thread starter Antony
- Start date
I've never had a truly satisfactory model, but here are some thoughts...
I usually used fairly Wilds-like settings - "pocket empires" of two or three worlds and half a dozen ships.
In these settings, military and civilian shipping are indistinguishable.
Except, of course, for Free Traders. I generally preferred to scatter these around fairly sparsely - maybe one or two a subsector, but it seems that canon suggested that they were more common than this.
Clearly, there were ports that supported them, so there must have been enough to keep these functioning.
Which reminds me of The Guilded Lily adventure. This provided a decent description of a port in the Wilds. I would consider taking the number of ships there, multiplying it by an arbitrary number, and saying that that is roughly the number of ships operating around that neck of the woods.
What I wouldn't generally do is calculate the amount of shipping off economic figures - unless the polity in question is able to build ships and has been doing so for some time. Generally, I would give them a collection of any old junk that flies, and ensure that there is never enough tonnage to haul everything that people want to haul.
'Cos it's more fun that way.
I usually used fairly Wilds-like settings - "pocket empires" of two or three worlds and half a dozen ships.
In these settings, military and civilian shipping are indistinguishable.
Except, of course, for Free Traders. I generally preferred to scatter these around fairly sparsely - maybe one or two a subsector, but it seems that canon suggested that they were more common than this.
Clearly, there were ports that supported them, so there must have been enough to keep these functioning.
Which reminds me of The Guilded Lily adventure. This provided a decent description of a port in the Wilds. I would consider taking the number of ships there, multiplying it by an arbitrary number, and saying that that is roughly the number of ships operating around that neck of the woods.
What I wouldn't generally do is calculate the amount of shipping off economic figures - unless the polity in question is able to build ships and has been doing so for some time. Generally, I would give them a collection of any old junk that flies, and ensure that there is never enough tonnage to haul everything that people want to haul.
'Cos it's more fun that way.
Hi Antony
Mostly I say "Ditto" to Alanbs' assessment.
I too use a small pocket empires, or even emerging pocket empire setting. As such there is no destinction "in service" between military and civilian shipping though there still is in "Type" of shipping. In my current campaign (that's having a 6 week hiatus) the PE consists, at the moment, of really only one world, which has trade and assistance aggreements with two others. By impounding and confiscating three Guild ships at their starport they just more than doubled their fleet. However it still only consists of A Patrol cruiser, a Shukugan SDB, a Bastien Liner, a Petty Fat trader and a Jayhawk along with a handfull of fighters and a few orbital defence platforms. So really only Two military ships there.
Having said all that there is precedent for there being more ships than Path o Tears suggests. Dave Nilsons writeup of the Covenant of Sufren Challenge 76 ends with "The Covenant's privately owned merchant service includes a variety of standard types in the 100- to 600-ton range." He'd previously listed all their Military ships and the numbers roughly matched what PoT would have suggested. I'd say, depending on your viewpoint of whether civilian ships are more likely to survive the collapse & vamps due to them plying safe areas and running from trouble, or, less likely to survive the collapse & vamps due to lack of weapons, poor sensors, and generally thin hulls, that their numbers will either be twice the military numbers if the former, or half the military numbers if the latter. Having perused your website and your posts here and knowing you use large ships your PE's probably have well patrolled safe zones so that merchants could jump from 100D limmits to 100D limmits fairly safely so IMHO of your PE you ought to have atleast similar numbers of civilian traffic if it's allowed by the governing body.
Mostly I say "Ditto" to Alanbs' assessment.
I too use a small pocket empires, or even emerging pocket empire setting. As such there is no destinction "in service" between military and civilian shipping though there still is in "Type" of shipping. In my current campaign (that's having a 6 week hiatus) the PE consists, at the moment, of really only one world, which has trade and assistance aggreements with two others. By impounding and confiscating three Guild ships at their starport they just more than doubled their fleet. However it still only consists of A Patrol cruiser, a Shukugan SDB, a Bastien Liner, a Petty Fat trader and a Jayhawk along with a handfull of fighters and a few orbital defence platforms. So really only Two military ships there.
Having said all that there is precedent for there being more ships than Path o Tears suggests. Dave Nilsons writeup of the Covenant of Sufren Challenge 76 ends with "The Covenant's privately owned merchant service includes a variety of standard types in the 100- to 600-ton range." He'd previously listed all their Military ships and the numbers roughly matched what PoT would have suggested. I'd say, depending on your viewpoint of whether civilian ships are more likely to survive the collapse & vamps due to them plying safe areas and running from trouble, or, less likely to survive the collapse & vamps due to lack of weapons, poor sensors, and generally thin hulls, that their numbers will either be twice the military numbers if the former, or half the military numbers if the latter. Having perused your website and your posts here and knowing you use large ships your PE's probably have well patrolled safe zones so that merchants could jump from 100D limmits to 100D limmits fairly safely so IMHO of your PE you ought to have atleast similar numbers of civilian traffic if it's allowed by the governing body.
Think I'll go with twice the tonnage. The Alston League (excluding the old Regal class BC used as a highport) has a navy with a current total displacement of 30,700 tons (invested in 48 vessels 10 of which are SDBs). So this gives me about 61,400 dt of civilian shipping divided amongst about a hundred hulls. Incidently the largest operating starships in the Alston League navy are 3 3,000dt TL13 ex-solomani destroyers. Each one serving as a flagship for one of the Leagues three fleets.
Interesting. So what happened to "Bard Refuge" or whatever the name of that AHL was? Your PC's somehow kept it out of the hands of the Alston League?
Only Three 3000DT ships no-wonder they're scared of that 50,000DT warship the Delsuns "might" have
P.S. I tried to get saturdays off but not looking good.
Only Three 3000DT ships no-wonder they're scared of that 50,000DT warship the Delsuns "might" have
P.S. I tried to get saturdays off but not looking good.
The Cause Rampant is in Alston space and is being used by the Alston League navy (it has a skeleton crew and they are reliant on the AI Sigrid to operate most systems - they're not happy about that!) It is not included in the total fleet tonnage as the Alston League navy does not expect the Cause to survive an encounter with the Delsun Czarates armoured cruiser. Then of course the Cause recently encountered a solomani dreadnought "Ultimate Victory" fired every missile she had (280 with 500kt warheads) in the general direction of the dreadnought and jumped out.
I have come up with this as the current civilian fleet for the Alston League (Note all are subject to mobilisation)
ALSTON LEAGUE
CIVILIAN SHIPS
Total Number of Civilian Hull 161
Total Tonnage of Civilian Hulls 61,500 displacement tons
Classes currently in service
Ship Type
8 Jade Prospector class prospector (100dt-TL11-J2 2G)
4 Pioneer class armoured scout (150dt-TL11-J2 2G
15 Moraine class free trader (200dt-TL10-J1 1G)33 Gyro class far trader (200dt-TL11-J2 1G)
1 Jayhawk class far trader (200dt-TL12-J2 1G)
12 Nimbus class yacht (200dt-TL11-J2 2G)
4 Slipstream class yacht (200dt-TL11-J2 2G)
35 Argosy class far trader (300dt-TL11-J2 2G)
14 Regulus class merchant (400dt-TL13-J1 1G)
3 Eakhau class traders (400dt-TL14-J2 1G)
9 Lavoisier class laboratory ship (400dt-TL11-J2 1G)
2 Shikhtyei class merchant (500dt-TL11-J2 2G)
8 Manxman class merchant (600dt-TL13-J3 1G)
4 Bastien class liner (600dt-TL12-J3 1G)
3 Mogil class merchant (1,000dt-TL12-J2 1G)
2 Nova Hellenic class liner (1,000dt-TL13-J2 1G)2 Constance class bulk carrier (1,500dt-TL11-J2 1G)
2 Maldon class bulk carriers (5,000dt-TL13-J2 2G)
I have come up with this as the current civilian fleet for the Alston League (Note all are subject to mobilisation)
ALSTON LEAGUE
CIVILIAN SHIPS
Total Number of Civilian Hull 161
Total Tonnage of Civilian Hulls 61,500 displacement tons
Classes currently in service
Ship Type
8 Jade Prospector class prospector (100dt-TL11-J2 2G)
4 Pioneer class armoured scout (150dt-TL11-J2 2G
15 Moraine class free trader (200dt-TL10-J1 1G)33 Gyro class far trader (200dt-TL11-J2 1G)
1 Jayhawk class far trader (200dt-TL12-J2 1G)
12 Nimbus class yacht (200dt-TL11-J2 2G)
4 Slipstream class yacht (200dt-TL11-J2 2G)
35 Argosy class far trader (300dt-TL11-J2 2G)
14 Regulus class merchant (400dt-TL13-J1 1G)
3 Eakhau class traders (400dt-TL14-J2 1G)
9 Lavoisier class laboratory ship (400dt-TL11-J2 1G)
2 Shikhtyei class merchant (500dt-TL11-J2 2G)
8 Manxman class merchant (600dt-TL13-J3 1G)
4 Bastien class liner (600dt-TL12-J3 1G)
3 Mogil class merchant (1,000dt-TL12-J2 1G)
2 Nova Hellenic class liner (1,000dt-TL13-J2 1G)2 Constance class bulk carrier (1,500dt-TL11-J2 1G)
2 Maldon class bulk carriers (5,000dt-TL13-J2 2G)
Anthony
You might want to throw in some one offs, captured corsairs, safari ships, TL8 sub light ships with Jump drives added, Xboat tenders (should be a lot of these lying around somewhere), the odd high jump commercial courier,may be the odd alien vessel (aslan etc.)
Cheers
Richard
You might want to throw in some one offs, captured corsairs, safari ships, TL8 sub light ships with Jump drives added, Xboat tenders (should be a lot of these lying around somewhere), the odd high jump commercial courier,may be the odd alien vessel (aslan etc.)
Cheers
Richard
280 500kt warhead missiles eh? At over 1million credits each and they don't even know the result of their actions if they jumped out... is someone getting dragged over the coals over this??
Or am I being too harsh? maybe too much an administrator or GM?
P.S. He did add some Aslan ships. The Eakhau Traders are Aslan 400DT Traders.
Or am I being too harsh? maybe too much an administrator or GM?
P.S. He did add some Aslan ships. The Eakhau Traders are Aslan 400DT Traders.
The Shikytei class vessels are also Aslan, being from the Aoftu Roakh.
The problem with the warheads came down to this. Sigrid (the Cause Rampants AI) is programmed to survive. She launched all the missiles herself. This is the second time that the Cause Rampant has faced the Ultimate Victory and escaped. (Hope the virus entity on Ultimate Victory is not obsessed about the one that got away, twice!)
The problem with the warheads came down to this. Sigrid (the Cause Rampants AI) is programmed to survive. She launched all the missiles herself. This is the second time that the Cause Rampant has faced the Ultimate Victory and escaped. (Hope the virus entity on Ultimate Victory is not obsessed about the one that got away, twice!)
Sigrids days have got to be numbered? 280million has to represent a significant dent in the Alston League Navy's yearly opperating budget and no-one knows if they even got any value for money if they jumped away? If she maintains controll of weapons who's to say who's ships she may suddenly feel are threatening? Some bureaucrat in the ALN has got to be thinking this way surely.
Is the Shikytei a published design or one of your's? and if the latter is it going on your website as I don't recall it being there and a TL 11 500dt j2 g2 would go nicely in my campaign
Is the Shikytei a published design or one of your's? and if the latter is it going on your website as I don't recall it being there and a TL 11 500dt j2 g2 would go nicely in my campaign
Some more thoughts... As before, these are general rather than campaign specific.
Check out all the ports in and around your campaign area. The theory behind this is that _most_ ships, aside from "wanderers" and those trapped in a single system, will visit a starport at least occasionally.
I say "around" your campaign area too, because vessels don't always stay nicely within the confines of a single subsector. You will always have edge effects to worry about.
Find out what ports are present, and explain them. The results of these explanations will help you decide what is around.
For example, ports may be of a number of different types. They may be associated with the "good guy" pocket empire(s), the "bad guys", pirates, vampire fleets, local governments (friendly or otherwise), or may simply be places where Free Traders drop in regularly, or even base themselves.
There is no automatic way to generate most of these - some will be obvious - but using the Paranoia/Xenophobia characteristic from Path of Tears should give you some hints. For example, a low tech world with a high paranoia rating and a starport may well be a vampire or pirate base, or may be associated with "the bad guys". In the latter case, you could assume that their paranoia is lower when dealing with their "own" people.
From all this, you could start to deduce traffic patterns. High quality starports would tend to attract traffic, but if it is a vampire port, most -to-all such traffic would be vampire ships. Free Traders would usually work some kind of route, which may be a "loop", or may be centred on a particular base world. Pirates would generally raid an area around their base(s), but might trade with other starfarers, and mostly only raid soft targets. Traders may trade with both the "good guys" and the "bad guys", since such disputes aren't necessarily really their problem.
Traders will often know the worlds on their routes quite well, and be valuable contacts for wouldbe pocket empires - including the bad guys. On the other hand, they might also tend to flock towards "safe" areas, so as your PE expands, your merchant fleet would also tend to expand, almost irrespective of your attempts at recovering technology and upgrading your starports.
They will also tend to flock together for mutual support and protection, as well as mutual trade. So ports may very well attract relatively significant numbers of ships, or may just be bases for one or two vessels.
Of course, a "port" owned by a paranoid government may simply be a naval base supporting the vessels that will try to smoke any other vessel that sticks its nose into their system. This may even be true if the government is one you could eventually make friendly contact with.
And, of course, a world might well trade with well established partners, but be extremely suspicious of everyone else. You might want to have someone to vouch for you before you make contact. And there is a plot seed...
Check out all the ports in and around your campaign area. The theory behind this is that _most_ ships, aside from "wanderers" and those trapped in a single system, will visit a starport at least occasionally.
I say "around" your campaign area too, because vessels don't always stay nicely within the confines of a single subsector. You will always have edge effects to worry about.
Find out what ports are present, and explain them. The results of these explanations will help you decide what is around.
For example, ports may be of a number of different types. They may be associated with the "good guy" pocket empire(s), the "bad guys", pirates, vampire fleets, local governments (friendly or otherwise), or may simply be places where Free Traders drop in regularly, or even base themselves.
There is no automatic way to generate most of these - some will be obvious - but using the Paranoia/Xenophobia characteristic from Path of Tears should give you some hints. For example, a low tech world with a high paranoia rating and a starport may well be a vampire or pirate base, or may be associated with "the bad guys". In the latter case, you could assume that their paranoia is lower when dealing with their "own" people.
From all this, you could start to deduce traffic patterns. High quality starports would tend to attract traffic, but if it is a vampire port, most -to-all such traffic would be vampire ships. Free Traders would usually work some kind of route, which may be a "loop", or may be centred on a particular base world. Pirates would generally raid an area around their base(s), but might trade with other starfarers, and mostly only raid soft targets. Traders may trade with both the "good guys" and the "bad guys", since such disputes aren't necessarily really their problem.
Traders will often know the worlds on their routes quite well, and be valuable contacts for wouldbe pocket empires - including the bad guys. On the other hand, they might also tend to flock towards "safe" areas, so as your PE expands, your merchant fleet would also tend to expand, almost irrespective of your attempts at recovering technology and upgrading your starports.
They will also tend to flock together for mutual support and protection, as well as mutual trade. So ports may very well attract relatively significant numbers of ships, or may just be bases for one or two vessels.
Of course, a "port" owned by a paranoid government may simply be a naval base supporting the vessels that will try to smoke any other vessel that sticks its nose into their system. This may even be true if the government is one you could eventually make friendly contact with.
And, of course, a world might well trade with well established partners, but be extremely suspicious of everyone else. You might want to have someone to vouch for you before you make contact. And there is a plot seed...
The Shikytei class trader is one of my designs. It can be found at
www.skaran.net/Banners/equipment/Craft/Aoiftu/shikhtyei.html
The ideas about ports are good. On my site is a map showing the surviving A and B class starports post virus in the Banners sector. Comparing this with the pre-collapse rating is quite sobering.
Those surviving A/B starports could all become the core of new states giving much potential in future years.
www.skaran.net/Banners/equipment/Craft/Aoiftu/shikhtyei.html
The ideas about ports are good. On my site is a map showing the surviving A and B class starports post virus in the Banners sector. Comparing this with the pre-collapse rating is quite sobering.
Those surviving A/B starports could all become the core of new states giving much potential in future years.
If you can get your grubby mitts on a copy of the "Pocket Empire" book, or whatever the equivilent was in T4, generate/ pick your group of worlds, make sure you have the necessary ships to bridge them (Jump-2 for spread-out worlds & such), then piece together an infrastructure for the worlds that matter & figure a budget... build ships!
Or you can make it up as you go; once you've rolled the cowpie around enough, you get a feel for the numbers, and for what works, and go from there!
It is a game after all, once you know the feel for the science, start having fun!
Or you can make it up as you go; once you've rolled the cowpie around enough, you get a feel for the numbers, and for what works, and go from there!
It is a game after all, once you know the feel for the science, start having fun!
I took a point-based approach to interstellar trade: I average the "trade indices" of a world and its most important neighbor, which becomes the exponent of freight traffic, in tons, per week, through that world's port.
I calculate the trade index by granting a point to good starports, high TL, high pop, Rich, Industrial, or Ag worlds, and capitals of a subsector or pocket empire. Likewise, I subtract points from poor starports, low TL, low pop, and poor worlds... not to mention dangerous worlds.
I calculate the trade index by granting a point to good starports, high TL, high pop, Rich, Industrial, or Ag worlds, and capitals of a subsector or pocket empire. Likewise, I subtract points from poor starports, low TL, low pop, and poor worlds... not to mention dangerous worlds.
One possibility that comes to mind is to base the number of merchant ships off the formula for military ships.
The idea would be that areas with more and better starports, higher TLs and higher populations would tend to attract and support more ships. On the other hand, of course, they would be distributed around a bit differently, since they would be usually working their routes, and may avoid some ports that support navies.
There might be a few issues with vessels that aren't jump-capable - any vessel trapped in a system like that is likely to be pressed into military service in an emergency. That would skew the military numbers undesirably, so you might want to make _most_ of these vessels jump-capable free traders.
You could generate the numbers by treating most vessels like the armed merchants generated by the military formula, with a smaller number of vessels greater than 1000 tons, treated as minor or major combatants.
Aside from the fact that I don't have Path of Tears beside me, you would want to play with the numbers to get an answer that feels right to you, so I won't try to give a detailed formula. In any case, you might want to rationalise the number of vessels present against The Guilded Lily and similar sources like the article on the Covenant of Suffren.
Of course none of this applies to the Regency and other similar civilised areas - you would probably use GT: Far Trader or something similar there.
Amen. What he said.
I would add the following: Just as there are no athiests in a combat zone, so are there no Civilians.
In a case where there is more demand than supply (in this case demand for cargo space/limited ships) the Governmental body WILL get involved and tell you what to take where and when. At best you can hope for a choice of say 1 of 3 cargos.
Just my perspective as a person who sailed for a number of years.
Peace out.
Anthony
If those labships of yours are the classic ring ones from MT, then you would probably be better converting them to space stations. Rip of the PP, M drives, J2 drive and the artifical gravity stuff. Add lower tech PP and some thrusters to spin it up it generates its own gravity. Keep the sensors for traffic control/ earth sciences, you have all that lab space for cargo and passenger transit.
You can then put the PP-2 and the J2 drive is a Type R and get a decent J2 merchant.
Cheers
Richard
If those labships of yours are the classic ring ones from MT, then you would probably be better converting them to space stations. Rip of the PP, M drives, J2 drive and the artifical gravity stuff. Add lower tech PP and some thrusters to spin it up it generates its own gravity. Keep the sensors for traffic control/ earth sciences, you have all that lab space for cargo and passenger transit.
You can then put the PP-2 and the J2 drive is a Type R and get a decent J2 merchant.
Cheers
Richard
Keklas Rekobah
SOC-14 1K
Sure there are! They're just all dead.
