Contents of a typical ship's locker

[kilemall]

A pop of 6 is in the millions. FAR more than enough to pay for a few techs.

Agreed. And as I mentioned in the post bringing this up, it's not just physical craters but biohazards unwittingly let loose in an uncontrolled way. Of the two, it's probably the more serious one.

??? Spaceships are FAR easier to land than current day jumbo jets. They set down gently. Even if one came straight down there wouldn't be any major explosion of any significant radius. What ARE you talking about?

Yes if the ship is under control coming in. We're talking about ships that are uninspected, not maintained and potentially having a catastrophic approach/deorbit. That's QUITE different from a whisper quiet low speed/kinetic impact gravitic approach.


And even dropping an object weighing several hundred/thousand tons from a mere 1km is going to hurt whatever is under it.

 

[Enoki]

A pop of 6 is in the millions. FAR more than enough to pay for a few techs.

That is an entire world with the population of one large city on Earth. The largest cities on Earth represent less than 1% of the population each. That would mean that the largest population center is say about 50,000 people at the most, probably much less. That doesn't leave much of a tax base to be putting in a really top notch spaceport and hiring even a small number of people that are gainfully employed say once a week or less to run it.
A world like that isn't likely to see very many starships very often. There simply wouldn't be enough demand for interstellar travel and goods movement to or from a place like that.
How busy could such a port be? Even if a dozen ships a week landed there, it amounts to one or two a day arriving and departing. The place would be idle most of the time. Can a small tax base afford to pay a bunch of people to just sit around say 90% of the time doing nothing but drawing a paycheck? I doubt it.
Worse, once they got a reputation for being hard @44ed about it, they might find that few if any small ship crews were even willing to go there. Then what? Your connection to the rest of the universe just ended...

??? Spaceships are FAR easier to land than current day jumbo jets. They set down gently. Even if one came straight down there wouldn't be any major explosion of any significant radius. What ARE you talking about?

I'm talking about one with issues. That is it's the sort that isn't well maintained and could very well crash on entry or landing. It could be something relatively minor like the landing gear collapsing, to loss of control at some point during descent and a full out crash.
I'd think the locals would be smart enough to just make the approach and landing area free of people not involved in the operation of the port as a safety measure.
With that small a population, it'd be easy to put the port on the outskirts of a city away from the general population and nobody'd really care.

 

[Proneutron]

That is an entire world with the population of one large city on Earth.

Right which means no problem paying for a few techs. Add a few Cr per ton of cargo inbound and you are covered w/o any dipping into tax base otherwise.

Can a small tax base afford to pay a bunch of people to just sit around say 90% of the time doing nothing but drawing a paycheck?

Yes, easily. Much of gov't of any size is like that

I'm talking about one with issues. That is it's the sort that isn't well maintained and could very well crash on entry or landing.

Yes? A ship pancaking at a port isn't going to do much damage. No explosion of any major size. It would just vertically crash. What's the big deal?

 

[whartung]

We're talking about two different things.

There's nothing stopping someone from a TL6 world in a universe of ubiquitous interstellar travel, from going off world to a TL15 trade school to learn about starship maintenance, and bringing back a set of tools and equipment to facilitate such work to their TL6 world.

All it takes is money, and not even that much money. 1000's of CRs, not millions, even with bad exchange rates.

Whether there's a market for such expertise on a TL6 world is a different story. Do they really need a tech on world to do this? Isn't this something the engineer can handle?

What they may well need, is parts, and, well, those are perhaps unlikely.

But there's that ubiquitous trade thing again.

Ever popular "O, Brother where art thou" quote.

Pomade Vendor: I can get the part from Bristol. It'll take two weeks, here's your pomade.
Ulysses Everett McGill: Two weeks? That don't do me no good.
Pomade Vendor: Nearest Ford auto man's Bristol.
Ulysses Everett McGill: Hold on, I don't want this pomade. I want Dapper Dan.
Pomade Vendor: I don't carry Dapper Dan, I carry Fop.
Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, I don't want Fop, ▮▮▮▮▮▮n it! I'm a Dapper Dan man!
Pomade Vendor: Watch your language, young feller, this is a public market. Now if you want Dapper Dan, I can order it for you, have it in a couple of weeks.
Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, ain't this place a geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere!

And, if you can import parts, you may well import a tech with them at the same time. You have millions of CRs of starship stuck here, dropping a few 10,000s of CR to get it flying again, while painful, isn't unreasonable.

There's an adventure seed. "Tom Stock, the traveling starship mechanic. Have core modulator, will travel."

So, there can be a TL15 trained tech on a TL6 world, it's just unlikely to be a fruitful use of his time and expertise.

 

[kilemall]

Thought of another simple rule.


Ship's Lockers constitute 10% of the bridge tonnage.


So that is 2 dtons in the case of most CT ACS ships.


Since each ship locker is 1 dton, you can have two lockers, one General, and one more role oriented.


For small craft bridges, that would be a small few cubic meter lockers/cubby holes storing needful items.


As for item count of anything successfully rolled, it's


6 (common/specific) 1d6
8 (not common/general) 1d6/2 round down
A (rare) 1 only

 

[Fovean]

Thought of another simple rule.

I really like this, very in the spirit of CT.

 

[Enoki]

The bigger problem for worlds mostly on their own, or ones with little economic clout is reputation. Much like the fabled small town "speed trap," once your reputation gets around among ship captains, you're likely to find yourself not getting much in the way of interstellar business.

Why? If the cost of the trip to that world and back to somewhere else exceeds the value of the passengers and cargo, why go to begin with? Some marginal ships might see value in getting at least some cargo and passengers as better than nothing, but why would a ship that's paying full costs of operation bother?

Then there's the hassle.
(SSC = Starship Captain)

A bar or other gathering place at some starport:

SSC#1: Yea, I just got out of system X. Those jerks gave my ship the once over and demanded I make 50,000 credits in repairs with their people before they'd let me leave. Never going there again!

SSC#2: Dude, didn't you know about that place? Nobody goes there because they do that to every ship that lands...

Doesn't matter if what SSC#2 says is completely true or not, it's what he thinks is going on, confirmed by SSC#1's experience, and both are going to spread that version everywhere they go. Pretty soon system X is a pariah location that everybody refuses to go...

Now, if the system were an economic engine and powerhouse, they have some clout because the value of the cargo exceeds the cost of operating fully within the law. That's going to be as true within the 3rd Imperium as outside it.

 

[Condottiere]

Well, going by some historical examples, it usually comes down to push and pull.

If you want something from your customer, let's call it herbal infusions, but he doesn't want something from you, you have to find something that you can push on him.

 

[Proneutron]

The bigger problem for worlds mostly on their own, or ones with little economic clout is reputation.

Yes, if the cost to a ship is too high to bring in the cargo then the price to bring in the cargo will go up until it exceeds the value (to the buyer) of the product and then if it is vital product the "problems" will be eliminated by those in power and it will become a viable proposition again. Or, it won't and the economy will degrade because the the Market is ALWAYS right.

 

[mega-striker]

Well this is going all kinds of fun places! I am loving it. Awesome ideas and please don't be intimidated by others calling you out on your thoughts. This is Traveller, we may have had ideas for a lot of this but not all is written down or just doesn't apply here. I know I started this ball of yarn and wax but am having a wild ride just watching where we are going now. Please keep it up.

 

[coliver988]

There is also a list in the Starship Geomorphs that lists locker contents by where the locker is located (p12 or so). An excellent source for more than just geomorphs!

Link to Beerfume's Blog post with the release: http://travellerrpgblog.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-starship-geomorphs-book-if-finally.html

 

[mega-striker]

Wow, what an awesome resource. Thank you for pointing it out.