escape pods

[Andrew Boulton]

"don't know what you mean by "standard". leviathan does, but I don't know if you'd consider that to be "standard"."

Any non-unique officially-published design will do. (eg Subsidised Liner, Tigress BB, but not Annic Nova or YTU ships). Leviathan is a little dodgy, but I'll let you have it.

"1) everyone dying before they can evacuate. this will be rare."

Catastrophic misjump or drive/hull failure during fuel-skimming or landing would do it.

"an engineering malfunction (badly maintained equipment) or accident(fire in the ship's control systems) or disaster (such as a meteor strike on engineering) could easily cripple a ship while leaving it mostly intact."

And wouldn't necessarily require immediate evacuation.

"2) stranding in deep space. I suppose you mean interstellar space. this is common? if it is then I'd say that such vessels definitely carry jump boats"

Not really practical in most cases.

 

[JustinThyme]

Let's not forget, along with the vacc suit and rescue ball brought up by Savage, the mandatory "Survival Kit" provided for each passenger (and I would say crewmember) onboard a ship. Refer to "Marooned".

 

[flykiller]

Leviathan is a little dodgy, but I'll let you have it.

thanks.

Catastrophic misjump or drive/hull failure during fuel-skimming or landing would do it.

now that is true. but would fuel skimming failure always be immediately catastrophic, with no possible response time?

And wouldn't necessarily require immediate evacuation.

very true. but it might, and that's the whole point. suppose you're jumping into a system with vector towards the destination (very common) and that on arrival the power plant fails. lifeboats enable evacuation before impact. or you're adding vector while maneuvering out to jump (very common) when engineering fails, and it turns out you need a spare part. lifeboats would enable independent evacuation if no-one else is around to assist.

Not really practical in most cases.

for total evacuation, true. but for emergency response, sure they're practical. in CT ships have twenty-eight days of power plant fuel at full power. one day out, one week jump, problem develops, reduce to power plant one, one day to evaluate, one week for jump craft to jump, one day for rescue team to respond, one day to maneuver out, one week to jump, one day to locate stranded vessel - twenty-six days, plenty of time even without power plant reduction.

one may easily envision common scenarios where lifeboats are useless. one may also easily envision common scenarios where lifeboats are useful. the one does not preclude the other.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

"now that is true. but would fuel skimming failure always be immediately catastrophic, with no possible response time?"

A structural failure would probably rip the ship apart within seconds. A simple drive failure probably wouldn't, but launching boats at high speed deep in a gas giant would be hazardous to say the least.

I'm not saying there are *no* situations where lifeboats would be useful, just that there aren't many, and they're fairly uncommon.

 

[far-trader]

I had a thought at one time of just saying that all full size "freshers" (one included in every stateroom) were in fact individual escape pods that can be jettisoned in emergencies. I already have them as individual (or two cramped) "safe compartments" such that in the event of trouble all a person has to do is get in and seal the door and they are in a hard shelled equivalent of a rescue ball. The problem is of course that I don't think unpowered escape pods offer much, as has been noted.

For true lifeboats I prefer my versions, adapted through each incarnation of the game over the years. While not mandatory it is a passage selling feature that can attract more ticket sales. If all staterooms (crew and passenger) have rated capacity assigned lifeboat capacity there is a +1 DM for rolling High and Middle passages. The bonus is that they are designed to be dropped into any empty hardpoint and can be just as easily swapped out if you later want a weapon there. They can also be installed anywhere else adjacent to the hull or even carried in a cargo hold or craft or vehicle hanger and launched from there, though more slowly.

For T20 (simply guesstimated from previous versions and a little work with the design system):

The Journeyman Design Bureau lifeboat comes in three standard varieties, 1 ton, 2 ton and 3 ton. There are also 5 ton versions for barbette installation available on special order. First available at TL9 they cost Mcr0.25 per ton and provide 2 seats per ton. Additional features include a single use emergency low berth function for the whole craft and one week of 1 gee manuvering and life support. This is the manually piloted version requiring a skilled Small Craft pilot to operate the drive and electronics. It includes a model 0 computer, avionics, sensors and radio, also all manually operated. Conditions are primitive with minimal life support and 1 small interior light per seat. Two bright external beacon lights per ton on the exterior provide visual reference for search teams after tracking down the radio beacon. The lights and lowberths will operate indefinately on built in solar panels if in the habitable zone of a star.

At TL13 the cost is Mcr0.25 more to add an automated smart system capable of limited voice commanded operations at no penalty. Range/duration is increased to 2 weeks at no additional cost.

The TL15 version costs Mcr0.75 more than the base TL9 version and includes an automated expert system capable of full voice commanded operations with a +10 on checks. The range/duration is increased to 4 weeks at no additional cost.

Each passenger not carried will allow up to about 100kg of gear to be packed in. There is no artificial gravity so passengers and/or gear must be strapped in or risk floating around when not under acceleration. Some users will sacrifice a single seat or more to add survival equipment or other gear. The lifeboat will float at standard density and gravity if not overloaded.

The 1 ton version is a fully streamlined sphere and has a single hatch at the top with a small view port and a standard view port below it opposite each seat. The bulk of the equipment (thruster and powerplant, lifesupport and batteries, etc.) is mounted in a central half column that can serve as a small table for the passengers when not being used as the control console or entry/exit step. Other models are similar in design. Note that installation in an orientation other than the "floor" of the ship will require some strength and dexterity or zero gee to enter.

Launching of lifeboats may be centrally controlled, locally controlled by override, or automatically controlled by the systems aboard the TL13 and TL15 models. Lifeboats mounted in hardpoints may all be launched in a single turn regardless of ship configuration.

As a side note I have also always imagined standard turrets to have a similar function for the local gunner, if so operated. Bridge/control stations may also be designed at double the cost as similar ejection style lifeboats. Commonly this is only done on a few smaller military craft such as fighters and patrol ships. These escape measures allow a chance of automatic escape in the case of catastrophic damage, including crew hits. Large ships (over 1,000 tons) usually rely on dedicated small craft for evacuation.

 

[flykiller]

"now that is true. but would fuel skimming failure always be immediately catastrophic, with no possible response time?"

A structural failure would probably rip the ship apart within seconds. A simple drive failure probably wouldn't, but launching boats at high speed deep in a gas giant would be hazardous to say the least.

beats sitting around with no options at all. but I'm not too clear on this issue, which is why I only asked a question. just how fast can a ship be moving in an atmosphere, and how deep need it go into a gas giant? it certainly couldn't be all that fast or deep, and small craft, being mostly nearly featureless cylinders, certainly don't have much aerodynamic stress to worry about the way an aircraft with wings would.

I'm not saying there are *no* situations where lifeboats would be useful, just that there aren't many, and they're fairly uncommon.

if failures do occur then I believe I've cited several circumstances that would be fairly common examples of a ship in distress. one may easily think of others. again, accidents and problems are by nature unpredictable and not subject to lists or parameters. recall the titanic, brittannic, and olympic. lifeboats provide one more option for survival, just in case one is wrong.

 

[flykiller]

The Journeyman Design Bureau lifeboat

I like this approach for ships that are too small to have ship's boats.

 

[savage]

Interesting....

Where is the greatest opportunities for system failure when not in a battle.
1. re-entry
2. skimming
3. going to jump space or from jump space

Drop capsules or several other options are good for covering issues in orbit. I don't know about other most captains but IMTU docking with a ship that's failing in a re-fueling process is suicide.
Pick up the lifeboats or drop capsules (they could thrust into orbit instead of down) after they've left the dammaged vessel. Lifeboats offer the opportunity to find life extending re-sources. It
doesn't mean that general subcraft are worst but
when a hi-pop ship needs to evacuate non-spacecrew
its a convenient method designed for survival. I'd
expect the lifeboats would be programmed to improve survival options perhaps even contain emergency low berths, if available. Best used when your purser needs to command a boat of passengers.

Star Wars had drop capsules, firefly didn't, Traveller has a number of options. I didn't really consider ejecting in a toilet/shower as an option but ok.

Savage

 

[aramis]

Savage: Life boats depend entirely upon the nature of their drives to determine just HOW they can be thrust.

Dan: not likely that turrets will have those kind of facilities... mostly due to drive costs...

Everybody:
If you fail on re-entry, or on skimming, you are thusting sideways into a high-multi-mach (mach 8+) slipstream, from a much reduced flow shockwave. EVEN IF YOU COULD EJECT SAFELY, you're still going to have an exceedingly rough go abaord. I'll conceed that some Traveller designs probably could handle the sudden translation from inside the shockwave to outside... but that's going to be a massive slam upon the passengers... and GComps are limited by TL... so it will be rough EVEN WITH GCompensation.

Skimming, also add the various Mach 5+ current bands you;ll transition through.

For argument's sake, lets assume (for a moment), a gravitic life pod... unlike the thruster based one shown in the JTAS issue, this one CAN land safely...

Now I just sat down (Using MT) and tried to crank out a TL 9 Gravitic Battery Powered Lifeboat. It is doable for 1 hour of gravitics... and 1 person, at 1 ton.

Starship level armor, 40E, puts final mass around 20 tons... TL 9 is 2 MW/H ... Life support and sensors brng another 1 MWH for 25 hours...at TL 10, it drops to a reasonable 0.4MW/H. At TL 12, it trops again to 0.2MW/H... Kock off (TL9: 0.4 KL, TL 10 1KL, TL 12 0.6KL) volume for it.

Now, it's got 1.5 KL of Junk... Mod 0, LS (BEnv, BLS only), half a dozen control panels, etc, and needs roughly 24 hours life time... and this stuff is pretty much TL independant. plus it needs 10 hours gravitics to assure safe landing on any habitable world. (TTB).
So at tl9, we get 12.5 KL for batts and people, needing 21KWH... Nope. Ain't happening, at the measly 0.6 KWH per KL. So, compromise. 2 people, 4 KL. 8.5 kl Bats... 4.1 hours of flight time. Ouch! So, we'll assume a parachute, too. Either size 4 with any atmosphere, or 5 with VThin, 6 with thin, 7 with Std, 8 wiht Dense... roughly SWAG'd... Rough cost is under a million. Just barely.

at TL 10. we get 0.8 KWH per KL for bats, and have 12 KL to split. Needing 5KWH, we can do 6.25 KL of bats,... heck, go with 7 KL... and we now get three people safely down on ANY standard traveller rocky world. (Two cramped, one no access... esentially, this is the guy in the far end...) Rough cost is 1.5 million

At TL 12, batteries go up to 1 KWH/KL. Sooo... with the reduction in size again, we get about 12.5 again. we need 3 MWH for safety, and we'll give plenty of spare: 3.4KL battries, and thus 3.4 KWH... 12 hours thurst. 9KL for people. One with no access space, 4 more with cramped. So we get a 5 man for 1 ton design. Rough cost is 6.5 million... Or, for the more budget minded, 3 cramped and 3 at none... (in short, 3 people need to crawl over other seats, and 3 people have a narrow space to move.)

BTW, for people in non-tailored vacc-suits, Access space for seating in the mercury would be cramped... race cars vary from craamped to none... the TL12 6 man would be essentially limited to 3 in vaccsuits, and 3 not... and no room for the latter to get into them.

The viability of the TL 12 as pert of SR designs is possible; assume 1 per 3 SR, and the cost (and space, 1 Td) disappear into the SR's.
The TL12, at much less space, provide 1 per 4, and you add nearly MCr 1 per SR above the above costs.

Now, as for viability... well, gravitic descents are NOT happy in hostility. If you're out past 100 Diameters, don't count on maneuvering. Past 10, you'll get less than 1/10 G.... but, you simply kick, and wait... then elock when you are about to hit atmosphere.

Now, if you want one-man pods, the TL9, as a one man already, is pretty dicey. The TL 10, replace the extra seats with more batteries and long term LS (but still no sleeping space).
the TL 12 is MUCH better for a 1 man... he's got a day's maneuver, and 2 days LS... plus unused maneuver will be more LS. also, at Tl 10 and 12, you add Inertial Comp. No A/G, needed, but the IC makes the mid-entry eject survivaable (but still not pleasant.

What these will not do:
keep you alive long enough for non-orbital evac to be resuced.
Keep you alive in a GG unless there are orbital craft to come in and snag you right off.
Make it to orbit with any safety margin.
Be comfortable. Think of it like the space aboard one of the mini-subs, like alvyn. Cramped, functonal, and one guy is in spot that requires someone else to get unseated for him to move. No privy. (Use a diaper, dude...) Nowhere to move to if there is no habitable atmosphere outside. Ever driven 800 miles in a subcompact? Now, think about doing it without stretch breaks....

What they will do:
autopilot is likely, and a dumb-bot pilot brain can be added at cost but negligible volume and weight (for our purposes, at least).
It probably will have an entertainment package in the computer... just to keep you occupied.
Call for help.
Let you know if the atmosphere is breathable.
Find you a planet to land on in the orbital environment.
Let ou transfer to a ship or staation also in orbit.

They could be made airframe for little extra cost....
solar panels as an option add considerable expense, and the conditions will drive you batty anyway before you'll drain the batts on minimum ops (0.0275KW draw for LS, Mod 0, and 1 control panel... and the three square meters of optional solar panel will be enough for that...)
Not terribly useful. In most cases, recue balls will be adequate; if you're close enough for
And recue balls are FAR cheaper.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

"recall the titanic, brittannic, and olympic."

Ah, but the big difference, of course, is that starships don't sink. In many cases, once whatever it is has happened, things aren't going to get any worse, so you're better off staying aboard and fixing the ship or waiting for rescue.

"If you fail on re-entry, or on skimming, you are thusting sideways into a high-multi-mach (mach 8+) slipstream, from a much reduced flow shockwave. EVEN IF YOU COULD EJECT SAFELY, you're still going to have an exceedingly rough go abaord."

Exactly. Splat.

 

[savage]

Andrew,
I agree that the safest place is aboard the vessel if possible. But moving parts break, broken reactors
radiate, and suicide is rarely the best option. Lifeboats with the ability to hold emergency low berths or crash couches are a much better option. I would suspect that higher ranked officials and nobles would insist of some form of escape.

As for jumping out while refueling...no reason that gravitics of the lifeboat, drop capsule could manuever out of the gas giant. Lifeboats would be able to find resources for survival and wait for rescue.

Savage

 

[flykiller]

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />"recall the titanic, brittannic, and olympic."

Ah, but the big difference, of course, is that starships don't sink.</font>[/QUOTE]uh, yes, we all know that. I cite them not because two sank, but because certain general lessons should have been learned from their sinkings.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Aramis:
Dan: not likely that turrets will have those kind of facilities... mostly due to drive costs...

Right you are, my goof/imprecision. While similar they lack any drives or even lowberth capability. They are basically just ejection cans for a last ditch slim chance to get clear of an impending disaster, as when the ship is about to be catastrophically destroyed. They contain the standard built in life support suitable to the TL but that's about it. Most crew will have a single dose of Fast drug that they can take to await rescue if it will be a while (extends life support duration by 60x but the real worry is going to be temperature if you want to get picky).

Even the lifeboats I described are pretty much that, one last chance to live when all else fails, with an option for a chance to make safe planetfall if there is a marginal or better world in the system.

I believe in providing the option for my players to have a chance to live even if the ship they are on is facing doom. Now if they decide not to install a lifeboat or a small craft then they have sealed their own fate if I can't find a way to reasonably pluck them from the fire. Being that the design is largely a PC/story driven element I don't mind fudging the nuts and bolts of the design a bit. The T20 example above was built preliminarily using the vehicle design rules and came out to about the specified numbers with a couple assumptions, the biggest being coming up with a space thruster that would fit. If you wanted to be less generous there just reduce the gees to 0.1 or the duration to days instead of weeks.

Making it an option the PCs (read Players) and NPCs might select requires the cost to be kept low and I think the Mcr0.25 manages that. The extra DM's for passengers helps sell the idea too. Let's face it if you have a choice of travelling on two different ships and one Captain says the odds of catastrophe are astronomically low so we don't need lifeboats and the next one says the same thing but adds that he does have one just in case the unthinkable happens, all other things being equal, which ship are you going to book passage on.

Sure that Free-Trader might only have one lifeboat, or two, for up to 50 souls but most of the time the survivors left to get to it (or them) will be the PCs and maybe a special NPC. I like lifeboat scenarios for a game once in a while. Will the Captain give up their place to the passenger? Will the passengers panic and punch out early leaving the PCs up the creek? Like I said, its more about story for me.

My first design years ago for CT (before HG) was just a speculative interpolation based on the survival bubble and some other stuff.

In MT I'm sure I tried to design it, but like you probably came up against the same problems. I don't think you'd need starship level armor for a single use desperation lifeboat though and I probably had a design fudged up to work.

In TNE I was able to pretty much duplicate my basic principles, largely because the turrets there are 3 tons. That design did suffer from a reduced thruster design, much like all ships in that system.

Finally I've come full circle to a T20 copy of my CT design, with the added wrinkle of the larger turret options.

I'm happy with it for mtu and shared it for those that feel the same.

As for the likelyhood of needing it, that too is story driven for me. If I conceive of a scenario where I want the players marooned or forced to bail on some world then its going to happen. I won't be waiting for the dice to tell me the ship is going down, and I certainly won't be limiting myself to some simplified checklist of "standard in system operations" to find a critical failure to blame. I often space the results of maintenance checks out over the period for one example. So you do your weekly maintainence and I make a check, you won't know that you missed (i.e. failed the check) the loose flux coupler till it blows flooding engineering with LH while you're boosting towards the planet. Oh my, you have no way to alter course and will miss the planet by lots and go on into the void... Unless! You abandon ship and hope somebody comes to service the class E starport marker next to the puddle you were going to refuel at before you starve to death. Finally, after the "adventure" and eventual rescue the PCs can charter a ship and go track down the crippled ship to salvage it. I hope somebody took a reading of its course to make the search easier.

As for the solar panel issue I recall checking the stats in I think FF&S1 against real life way back and finding them low, while ALL the other power systems including batteries were high, some even bordering on magic/miracle. That seemed prejudiced and stupid to me so I changed them some. What? We can't have solar breakthroughs equal to the other tech?

Indeed rescue balls are far cheaper. And they seem to be the default minimum and included requirement by the Imperium. They also offer absolutely no help that I can see in any of your scenarios, and only marginally so in what I would likely play up. They are better than nothing I guess and that's probably why they are the standard.

 

[BrennanHawkwood]

It seems to me that one major angle in this discussion has been mostly ignored, particularly by the "its not worth the cost given the possible benefit" camp... In my experience, most people aren't that coldly logical and as a result ships aren't going to always be absolutely perfect money making or killing machines simply because they are designed by people (or ...shudder... committees of people).

I would imagine that many people are going to like the idea of having an 'escape pod' to get off a ship in trouble whether it is a dedicated craft or simply enough multi-use craft to cover. There is a certain "human" or emotional angle that should be taken into account here, like Far-Trader's modifier for gettting passengers if your ship has lifeboats.

Sure, the odds of needing that escape pod may be slim and the odds of it actually saving your life if you actually need to use it may be even smaller, but wouldn't you like knowing you could take that chance rather than knoing you were going to die because you wanted to hall an extra couple of tons of cargo?

Its an emotional thing...I could easily see career spacers laughing to themselves over passengers wanting to know that there is a working lifeboat because they intellectually know the odds of it making a difference, while those same spacers threaten to quit when the captain announces that he is considering getting rid of it in order to haul a measily couple extra tons of cargo.

Same thing goes with escape craft on a military or para-military ship. If you ever need one, the odds of surviving may be slim, but it still might give you a chance you didn't otherwise have...

I noticed that several of the comments regarding ejecting in battle seemed to assume that any ejecting or fleeing lifeboat will simply be shot out of space? Is that really the case in the OTU? I would certainly expect it to happen of course, but I didn't think it would be such a given, especially with how much conflict there seems to be within the Third Imperium itself.

--- Blair

 

[flykiller]

In my experience, most people aren't that coldly logical

actually, they are. if the costs of failure are to be paid by someone else, they'll ditch the lifeboat and maximize profits. if they themselves are at risk they'll go with the lifeboat. simple, really, and nothing contradictory about it.

 

[BrennanHawkwood]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />In my experience, most people aren't that coldly logical

actually, they are. if the costs of failure are to be paid by someone else, they'll ditch the lifeboat and maximize profits. if they themselves are at risk they'll go with the lifeboat. simple, really, and nothing contradictory about it. </font>[/QUOTE]Valid Point. Especially in smaller and very wide production run starships (meaning produced all over the place putting more 'distance' between the designers and operators) where the margin of profit is tighter and there is a much lower likelihood that not designing in additional safety features such as escape craft might 'come back to haunt them' in the form of bad reputation, legal action, etc. if there are any accidents that could have been avoided or resolved if the missing equipment was there.

 

[aramis]

Thinking for a minute, the following Bk2 Std Designs carry enough subcraft capacity for a full-crew evac:
Type S (Nominal crew 2, full crew 4, air raft can carry 4)
Type R Subbie: 13 SR, and the launch has 13 tons of cargo space...more than enough for all 35 people aboard (all SR DO, plus 9 LB) to crowd into for a short.
Type M Subbie: Nominally 30 persons awake aboard, 20 frozen. Same size launch. AWFULY crowded, and if you get everyone in like cordwood, you could evac the maximum capacity aboard of 80... but that's literally PACKING them like japanese subway cars...
Yacht: 13 people nominally, 26 peak, carries a ship's boat, but that still only has 13.7 tons for cargo and passengers...
Merc Cruiser: The cargo module for one of the Cutters is enough for even the double occupancy load.
Patrol Cutter: (I refuse to call the Type T a cruiser unless ships cap at 5KTd...)18 people, and a 12 man GCarrier plus a ship's boat.
Lab ship: the pinnace can handle all the passenger and crew load.
Safari Ship: again, a ships' boat and an air raft... so it can unload them all.

Key thing here: ALL the subcraft are multi-role. Cargo/Passenger/Troop. Most, by supp 7, have the subcraft noticeably HARD for passengers to get to. (In fact, on several, it almost would be easier to redock it to the main port hatch to off-load them...)

The most common small merchantmen, the A and A2, do NOT carry sufficient subcraft for even the crew. (At book prices, on FREIGHT, not Spec, one CAN NOT AFFORD 22 tons lost to a launch. Heck, even 1 per 6 passengers (TL 15 Lifeboats... Gee, I'll need to recursively spreadsheet out those designs for full details, won't I?) will cost enough that they will be paying notably more with 4 tons less cargo.

As for the MT lifeboat design: a single use rentry hull requires (wait while I check Hard Times) not answered there... minimum for a one-shot disposable launch vehicle is 8 from there.... It is safe to assume that a gravitic renetry could easily be slow enough that AV 10 is safe... but I wouldn't count on that low for an in-atmosphere bail-out...

And the costs of failure in the OTU are, apparently, paid usually with one's life.... pretty much a buyer-beware kind of situation.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Placing an emergency low berth on a ship can turn the entire vessel (or what's left of it) into a bolt-hole for the crew to await being rescued.

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by Aramis:
Patrol Cutter: (I refuse to call the Type T a cruiser unless ships cap at 5KTd...)

And yet...

Merc Cruiser: The cargo module for one of the Cutters is enough for even the double occupancy load.

So shouldn't the Merc Cruiser become a Merc Cutter as well? Or how about Merc Corvette?

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:
Placing an emergency low berth on a ship can turn the entire vessel (or what's left of it) into a bolt-hole for the crew to await being rescued.

This is a good idea. Have an armoured compartment (bulhead walls on all sides would do) inside of which you can have your e-low berth(s).