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Free trader vrs far trader

Jamus

SOC-12
Any logical reason for these two to have different hull designs? I mean to say, why wouldn't someone who wanted/needed J-2 just move some interior walls and upgrade their free trader?



regards
 
Based on a tidbit in GT Interstellar Wars, the difference is that the Beo hull is a Vilani design, while the Marava hull is a Terran design. The Beo hull-form is older than the Third Imperium.
 
Any logical reason for these two to have different hull designs? I mean to say, why wouldn't someone who wanted/needed J-2 just move some interior walls and upgrade their free trader?
I'd say that there must be many, many more ship designs than the small handful that has been detailed in canon. There may well be a jump-2 version of the Beowulf Class and a jump-1 version of the Empress Marava. Just as the Placid Ox, Golden Gryphon, and Soaring Eagle are jump-1, -2, and -3 versions of the same hull (http://jtas.sjgames.com/login/article.cgi?792 (requires a JTAS Online subscription to see)).



Hans
 
I think it's human nature to tinker with things, modify things, etc. Well... at least Solomani human nature, if not Vilani human nature. As rancke says, there are many, many more ships designs.

That's one of the reasons I like the new T&G... any ship in there that bears only vague resemblance to the original will get handwaved as a variation on a theme.
 
Just think of Honda, Mercedes, Toyota, Fiat ...

If the craft you produce and want to sell looks the same and internally is
the same and costs the same as all the craft produced by all the others,
why should a customer decide to buy your product ?
 
Thanks much for the responses all.

That said I am thinking that I will just use a upgraded J-2 Beo for the next campaign I run. thinking of making it a old ship 50-100 years and giving it a bunch of the previous owner quirks.

not sure how i would/will handle psychic echos though...

I intend to find a way to make the ship a recurring NPC.
 
Other Type A hulls that come to mind are FASA's Alexandria-class and the unnamed but similar hull in "Starships & Spacecraft" by Judges Guild. There is also the Type A done for T20, the original Mayday version of the Beo, and the "flying shoe" from T4. Note that several of these are the right size deckplan, unlike the original CT Marava and MT Beo.

There are also adaptions of other class hulls, such as an Animal-class (Safari Ship) hull converted to a Type A spec.
 
Still not sure how to handle psychic echoes. Im not wanting anything crazy like event horizon but wouldnt mind a little bit of personality. So far I have decided that the ship was used for 30 years by a private contractor for blockade running/transport/medical evac for the imperial navy during the imperiums various wars.

After that the ship was used for a few decades as a standard free trader before being sold and left to rust at a C class port on the frontier. Ship has a reputation for being cursed. More than three crews have died in this ship.

Havent decided what the ship was used for or for how long prior to its military actions.

The J-drive is upgraded to 2 but is quirky/sensitive and can flood the ship with deadly radiation if not well taken care of. The ship has an addition turrent in place and both turrent are designed to be pop-up. Ship has improved sensors but has had its hull taped back togather so much it is not as sound as it should be.

Any thoughts or ideas would be very appreciated.
 
Psychic echoes

You could take a leaf out of Walter J. Williams' excellent Angel Station and have the ship 'haunted' by randomly appearing snippets of a previous owner's holo-diary.

Sure the PCs might want to do a complete purge and rebuild to get rid of the 'ghost' but (i) the recertifications for spaceworthiness are a stone bitch (ii) you'll lose a number of 'non-standard' mods that have been made to the ship if you do this and (iii) there's always the chance that you'll pick up a fragment of useful information from one of the 'manifestations'.

Regards
Luke
 
In his articles about TNE Dave Nilsen said that one of the areas TNE would have explored would have been the relationship between psionics and jump space.

Just an idea, but if you have psionics in YTU then there is a possibility thet the jump drive could somehow store psychic echos over time - so the longer a crew mans a ship and the more attached to it they become they can leave an imprint thet manifests when the jump drive is powering up/in operation/powering down.

Truely traumatic events taking place on the crew could have greater echos...
 
How to haunt the ship ...

The computer system is non-imperial (Darrian or Hiver spring to mind) and has been designed as an integral part of all of the ship's non-standard systems. Snippets of odd programming and bits of old files appear from time to time as 'gremlins' in the system - yet the alternative is a purge of all programming (followed by the need to rewrite all ship's custom programs from scratch) or completely replacing all integrated systems with Imperial standard systems (buy new bridge, ship's computer, gunnery controls, 20% of all engineering systems and 10% of all other systems).

These 'gremlins' need not always be bad. Perhaps the turret functions as 'predict-2' most of the time with an occasional 'predict-1' or 'predict-3'.

Imagine the pilot outside the bridge when the ship's computer informs him "you are attempting to enter a restricted area, further attempts at unauthorized access will result in the activation of anti-hijacking security programs" ... but the engineer can open the door just fine ... and the next day, it is working fine again.

You just never know what to expect ...
 
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How to haunt the ship ...

At one time I worked on a ghost story for my players. When the campaign ended, I put it aside, intending to finish it and submit it to JTAS Online one day.

The 'twist' would be that the patron would think that someone was using ultratech devices in an attempt to make him believe that his house was haunted. But he didn't believe in such nonsens and hired the PCs to fing out who was playing tricks on him.

The 'ghost' was a pionic imprint of a strong psionic adept who'd been killed violently. To give it a fig leaf of pseudoscientific verisimilitude, I came up with the concept of the "Disembodied Psionic Construct":

"A disembodied psionic construct (DPC) is a sort of computer program/machine made up entirely of psionic energy. Only the most skilled and powerful psionic adepts can create DPCs deliberately, and the strength and complexity of the construct is usually quite low. In times of unusual stress, however, powerful adepts can occasionally create them subconsciously, and such constructs can be extremely powerful and complex." -- Library Data

Such a DCP could have whatever abilities and behavior patterns that the referee likes.

It just struck me that this could also be a way to introduce an artificial intelligence without recourse to TL 16 technology. Let a psionic adept with machine empathy get killed while in psionic contact with the ship's computer. His subconcious makes a DCP with his personality and memories (or without his memories) that is linked to the computer. The computer may be far too primitive to sustain AI, but the DCP will supply the missing elements.



Hans
 
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