Jump 1 ships are pretty useless

[Whipsnade]

Thing is, a lot of lower tech worlds will be sending bodies into the military, too... And those folk are likely to balk about vat-meat and artificial veggies... as much as the hive-worlders will balk at eggs with, "That came out of a chicken's butt? Ewww...."

I can imagine the Imperium taking several measure with regards to rations. The first is one we see already; developing an "institutional cuisine" which is (hopefully) the least objectionable to (hopefully) the most number of people.

Second is another measure we already see; taking care to ensure "cultural treats" are available on certain occasions. I'll point to the great effort made every year to provide turkey dinners around a certain Thursday in November. Another example was my ship providing a steak and lobster tail dinner once a month for each crew member whose birthday occurred that month.

Finally, "boot camp" may automatically involve specific training with regards to food; i.e. Eat what's in front of you/Hunger is the best relish", as much as it automatically involves Gun Combat-1 for the army/marines, Pilot-1 for the scouts, and so forth.

 

[aramis]

Finally, "boot camp" may automatically involve specific training with regards to food; i.e. Eat what's in front of you/Hunger is the best relish", as much as it automatically involves Gun Combat-1 for the army/marines, Pilot-1 for the scouts, and so forth.

Taken to a certain parody-extreme of the UK RA... every regiment is it's own culture, unique and different from not just civilian life, but every other regiment, and the first part of training is inculturation to the regimental culture, not basic military training.

To a much larger extent, it's actually true of France's Legion Etrangier...(AKA, the French Foreign Legion).

Truth is the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) openly admitted in a 1980's paper that US Army Culture was out of step with, and alien to, US civilian culture... and that basic training was more about inculturation than basic soldiery; the latter was taught mainly in combat arms AIT schools, while the BT versions were mostly building the common language for the Army Culture via shared experience.

 

[Whipsnade]

Truth is the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) openly admitted in a 1980's paper that US Army Culture was out of step with, and alien to, US civilian culture... and that basic training was more about inculturation than basic soldiery; the latter was taught mainly in combat arms AIT schools, while the BT versions were mostly building the common language for the Army Culture via shared experience.

That was one of the better arguments against ending the draft and moving to an all volunteer force. If anything, the cultural drift has only increased since the '80s.

This particular topic is now sliding towards Pit status and I'm afraid that the Usual Suspect will soon weigh in. Accordingly, I'll be stepping out and my apologies to all for derailing yet another thread.

 

[mike wightman]

Let me get it back on track by suggesting a 95t type S/jump shuttle.

It is a 95t shuttle designed so that a type S can slot into it. It costs more than a standard shuttle due to the need for a jump grid.

The benefit is that coupled with a type S you now have a 195t jump 1 'ship'

Dispense with the shuttle capability and just build a jump pod that can be attached to a type S and you get 95t to play with in your 196t package.

 

[Condottiere]

You can always have car ferries shuttling multiple forty tonne pinnaces between gravity wells.

 

[Murph]

Again, I stand by my original premise; that the Jump one ship is pretty much completely useless and that to have any sort of an impact/do anything worthwhile you have to have at least a J-2 merchant. But keeping with Canon, anything over J-1 is economically unfeasable. A useless artifact of the rules.

I "fixed" this by making fuel 5% rather than 10% per Jump number, and reducing the prices anywhere from 10 to 50 percent. The 5% rule actually made J-1 ships feasable by keeping the designs, you just got J-2 out of the ship.

 

[mike wightman]

It's perfectly possible to make a shed load of money with nothing but a free trader and speculative trade - that is what the game was designed for

 

[boomslang]

But keeping with Canon, anything over J-1 is economically unfeasable. A useless artifact of the rules.

I "fixed" this by making fuel 5% rather than 10% per Jump number, and reducing the prices anywhere from 10 to 50 percent.

I have always seen this as an artifact of the trade rules (which to my eye, exist as a designed game element specifically to force Traders to take on "side jobs" of varying legality in order to make ends meet), so I just "fixed" the trade rules instead IMTU.

As to Jump-1 contexts within gameplay, in addition to the oft-maligned Free Trader we should not overlook the fact that at TL11 you can build a 2000-dton J-1 "galleon" (MTU parlance) that has around 80% of its displacement available as payload capacity. Such hulls will be the backbone of next-hex-over homeworld-and-colony scenarios, as well as make fantastic corsair motherships, troop transports, fighter carriers, Q-ships, and so on for local operations at the sub-subsector level. Privately- or corporate-owned, government-subsidized Type XTs on steroids, as it were.

Jump-1 can be frustrating for adventuring purposes (as read), but for infrastructure purposes it would seem to be pretty much essential.

 

[kilemall]

J-1- think coastal traffic rather then deep sea/space tramp steamer.

 

[aramis]

That was one of the better arguments against ending the draft and moving to an all volunteer force. If anything, the cultural drift has only increased since the '80s.

This particular topic is now sliding towards Pit status and I'm afraid that the Usual Suspect will soon weigh in. Accordingly, I'll be stepping out and my apologies to all for derailing yet another thread.

I had to fight my own urge to be more explicit in my answer; Don't need to piss off Cryton on the last day of the year.

But it does lead to another obTrav...

How many different subcultures are there in the OTU? We see, in Agent, that the IN and IM cultures in Core sector are pretty darned psychotic... not quite to worship of the emperor, but definitely brainwashed.

I used to wonder why CT/MT had 1 year of basic... especially when most modern MOS's only take 6-10 weeks, and the IET is 8 to 13 weeks. And Bk 4 shows you can train a group of men in far shorter times to full combat readiness than a year.

I just put it together today... it's the Legion Etrangier mode. That year is spent learning not just the basic soldiery skills, but being brainwashed and inculturated.

 

[aramis]

I have always seen this as an artifact of the trade rules (which to my eye, exist as a designed game element specifically to force Traders to take on "side jobs" of varying legality in order to make ends meet), so I just "fixed" the trade rules instead IMTU.

As to Jump-1 contexts within gameplay, in addition to the oft-maligned Free Trader we should not overlook the fact that at TL11 you can build a 2000-dton J-1 "galleon" (MTU parlance) that has around 80% of its displacement available as payload capacity. Such hulls will be the backbone of next-hex-over homeworld-and-colony scenarios, as well as make fantastic corsair motherships, troop transports, fighter carriers, Q-ships, and so on for local operations at the sub-subsector level. Privately- or corporate-owned, government-subsidized Type XTs on steroids, as it were.

Jump-1 can be frustrating for adventuring purposes (as read), but for infrastructure purposes it would seem to be pretty much essential.

If you run the numbers in detail, as I've done, Bk2 trade in the 1977 edition, there are designs that can profit at the listed KCr1 per Td of Cargo without any speculative trade, for J1 and J2. For J1, pure cargo designs for J1, if full, make a profit on 200+Td. J2, 2000+ and 800 ton designs. For J3, it's a small loss.

Switch to per parsec, and profit at 200Td & up for J1-3, 400 & up for j4, 800 & up for J5, and 2000 Td for J6. (Because 2000 Td is the biggest J6 ship you can build under Bk2-77 RAW.

 

[flykiller]

ObTrav: Will fresh food of any type still be prized by ship crews?

could supply many adventure leads.

"chef, where you going?"

"gonna get me some mangos."

"chef, stay on the boat!"

"I want some mangos."

"hi tiger! bye tiger!"

never get out of the boat ....

 

[nobby-w]

It's a game balance mechanism - the underlying theory being that you can have a campaign set in just one or two subsectors if your ship isn't going to fly off the map at a moment's notice.

Having said that, even in my TL12 universe essentially all ships I've used in game are at least jump-2. Many are jump-3 or I relax the multi-jump rule for ships that can do 4 parsecs in two jumps. However, that's to fit a campaign setting covering much of the Reaver's deep and spinward parts of the Daibei.

If you take a look at the other extreme - Star Wars, or ICE's Space Master, where a ship can cross the known universe in a few days then it becomes more of a fiddle to do sandbox gaming. In the case of Space Master, the known universe prepared by the vendor was far smaller than the range of a starship prepared using their design system.

Star Wars sort of gets away with it through the expedient of having a large published canon¹ and anciliary fan sites like Wookiepedia that you can crib from. You could do this with the Third Imperium as it has the Traveller Map and (at least) the Spinward Marches and Solomani Rim are documented in enough detail to do this if you do your homework. However, it would be a lot of work to build out a homebrew setting big enough for long range shipping, and much of the OTU material assumes most shipping sits in the J1-4 range.

¹ Although, sadly they could have done a better job of choosing what to bin. AFAIK Gungans survived the chop and remained in the official SW canon. No accounting for taste, I suppose ...

 

[Condottiere]

It seems a given that you'll always end up on Hoth and/or Tatooine; you might as well put them in adjoining parsecs.

 

[Whipsnade]

could supply many adventure leads.

Yup, and that's why I wanted so much for my players to take Steward skill seriously instead of blowing it off or "subcontracting" it.

I figured I could easily set up all sorts of fun/maddening "Want of a nail..." style side adventures surrounding the care and feeding of pax, VIPs, and patrons. You know the kind, you need to do/get something to do/get something to do/get something etc. etc. etc. to do/get whatever you really want. There's a MASH episode some of you might remember in which Pierce has to set up an interlocking chain of favors and gifts in order to get a new pair of boots only see the whole thing collapse like a row of dominoes.

IMTU you'll find one-man import/export types in some regions. They understand the markets on a handful of neighboring worlds, work for purchasing co-ops, know all the officials, can navigate all the paperwork hurdles, and so forth. They purchase goods for themselves or others by themselves or with others and then arrange to ship the goods where they need to go. Because they need to keep their knowledge of markets and people current, they often travel with their freight.

All this means building and maintaining a good relationship with them will give the players both an inside track on big freight contracts and a chance at speculative goods.

"Chef, where you going?"

"Gonna get me some mangos."

"Chef, stay on the boat!"

"You remember Porky Grout?"

"Yeah..."

"He's got 30 tons of freight waiting in a warehouse and a deal on 10 tons of machine tools he'll let us in on. He loves mangos."

"Chef, we'll both go get the mangos!"

 

[GypsyComet]

"Chef, we'll both go get the mangos!"[/i]

"Just remember, kid. Denebian Mangoes are not from Deneb, and they aren't actually mangoes."

 

[Willie Dewitt]

Again, I stand by my original premise; that the Jump one ship is pretty much completely useless .

Well, you've turned my opinion around on all this. My players and I couldn't possibly be having all the fun we thought we were having with a jump 1 ship as transpo

 

[pendragonman]

could supply many adventure leads.

"chef, where you going?"

"gonna get me some mangos."

"chef, stay on the boat!"

"I want some mangos."

"hi tiger! bye tiger!"

never get out of the boat ....

One of my favorite scenes from that movie

 

[flykiller]

I wanted so much for my players to take Steward skill seriously instead of blowing it off or "subcontracting" it.

I doubt they're alone, seems steward is unpopular as a player character.

in my pbp game a player ran an ex-con as a steward. I was able to lead him up to all kinds of possibilities. "that naval officer is addicted to shang." "that's a prison tatoo."

 

[Whipsnade]

I doubt they're alone, seems steward is unpopular as a player character.

Yup. That's my experience too. Steward is somewhat akin to Cleric. People don't want to play what they see as a one-trick-pony. Medic (not doctor) is much the same too.

in my pbp game a player ran an ex-con as a steward. I was able to lead him up to all kinds of possibilities. "that naval officer is addicted to shang." "that's a prison tatoo."

That's the kind of stuff I wanted to do.