Other ways to fix the Type S Funk

[Sir Brad]

OK in the fluff for the Type S we are told it starts to smell after a few weeks I assume at full occupancy, I also make the assumption that it starts to get Funky for the more veteran ships (30-40+ years of service) as stuff starts to accumulate in the ducts and vents and cycle back upon itself due to the small size of the Type S and getting caught up by the at times odd angles in the design.

now the listed fixes include more regular flushing of the Atmo systems at additional cost to the life-support maintenance, or weekly changing of the filters, also at additional cost to the life support maintenance costs. then there is the big one, fitting an after market system for a notable cost and the loss of a displacement ton of cargo space that more or less fixes it permanently.

how about an other option, pull the entire life support system, not just the machinery but the Ducts, Vents, Insulation and the whole Enchilada and replace it with an original spech system to get an other 20,30 or even 40 years out of it and keep the Ton of Cargo, heck you could even fit dummy panels for the after-market system and give yourself a nice little Covert Opps/Smugglers hold. call the cost 250 Kcr and a months work (that can be carried out alongside annual maintenance)

What do folks think?

 

[Enoki]

I'd let the crew take several weeks and disassemble, clean, and reassemble the duct work and what-not assuming they have access to copious quantities of water and cleaning solutions etc. The same goes with the ship in general. Good housekeeping would reduce the problem so if they spend more time keeping things clean the funk isn't as bad.

 

[Ulsyus]

My ex-wife at one point used to work for a company that did eviro system duct cleaning for hospitals and businesses that used high-end filters to suit their lab-work. They had a device that fitted to the end of a high-pressure hose, used a series of mechanisms to whiz all around the duct (circular or square, didn't seem to matter to this little sucker) and it cleaned them. I mean, it Really Cleaned Them. Sparkling new metal clean look. Those guys had clients for life after the first job and then ran a camera on a little car down the ducting to show them what it looked like. They did that beforehand as well so they could do a before-&-after comparison.

If that's TL8 gear, what would they have for cleaning those sorts of systems by TL9 or 10, let alone TL12.

If you're thinking of frontier cleaning at a C class TL9 starport, a specialist would be able to do exactly as my ex did, and the funk/smell wouldn't come from the lines/ducts. Filters? They're replaceable. Bio-systems? They can be flushed and re-topped up.

It'd take a bit of work, but nothing major to do a complete clean once every 52 weeks or so on an annual maintenance effort.

 

[Sir Brad]

I assume that's already part of the annual maintenance, but I also assume that because of some of the dead air pockets that may accumulate on a Type S due to it's comparatively small size and it's wedge shape Bio and Chem contaminates build up, also where the duct work corrodes throw and lets contaminates to get in to the insulation to ferment and peculate, hence the smell and why every couple of decades you may need to do something a bit more high level than the yearly maintenance. on a larger commercial (or luxury personal) ship with a more liner set-out that would be handled when it gets refurbished every 5-10 years.

 

[Lycanorukke]

Buy a shipboard cleaning robot - a high tech roomba which you switch on, and forget about.

It's crawling inside ducts to clean crap out, scooping fluff from those odd corners, and maybe even emitting it's own smells by a scent emitter to cover less pleasant ones.

 

[Spinward Scout]

How about a bio-engineered airborne bacterium that eats the smelly stuff? That should be doable in the 57th Century - TL-15 Imperium.

Of course, some planets will ban it as a biological weapon. And as it's a recent development, the ship's Library data isn't up to date.

So your crew isn't aware of the ban.

Loads of fun.

Buy a shipboard cleaning robot - a high tech roomba which you switch on, and forget about.

I was thinking that, too. But more like nanites - and that's a little taboo with Traveller.

 

[Vargas]

Buy a shipboard cleaning robot - a high tech roomba which you switch on, and forget about.

It's crawling inside ducts to clean crap out, scooping fluff from those odd corners, and maybe even emitting it's own smells by a scent emitter to cover less pleasant ones.

This.

 

[Ulsyus]

Buy a shipboard cleaning robot - a high tech roomba which you switch on, and forget about.

It's crawling inside ducts to clean crap out, scooping fluff from those odd corners, and maybe even emitting it's own smells by a scent emitter to cover less pleasant ones.

That's the one. Even a combo of robots, synthetics, and other bits and pieces. I'm imagining a modified version of Naasirka-Regina's NR1000 on p125 of the BBB.

 

[Lycanorukke]

That's the one. Even a combo of robots, synthetics, and other bits and pieces. I'm imagining a modified version of Naasirka-Regina's NR1000 on p125 of the BBB.

There was an amusing one I read in somewhere related to Trav (though I cant remember where)

It was a bioengineered life form named a "Schloobie" or the like. It looked like a Terry Towling Towel and crawled around eating certain organic residues - loose hair, grease, skin flakes and the like (nothing living though) in the ship.

The downside was you had to be very careful if a Vargr was around. As it ate hair, the vargr might go to sleep at night and then find the Schloobie ate all his fur.

 

[wbyrd]

:file_21:Guys... bad news.... On a small vessel there is NO getting rid of the lived in smell. Raw stink can be dealt with easily enough, but any enclosed space you live in for weeks or months at a time picks up a distinctive and inescapable aroma.
My brother in law ran a work boat in the gulf of mexico for years. After ten or fifteen years the ships aroma was noticeable at the best of times.

And he was good about keeping it as clean as possible. which is a trick when four or five people live in a space not much larger than a good sized Recreational vehicle. Of course the work boat also had the down side of extremely physical labor in near tropical conditions, sea spray, bilge and my brother in laws cooking to deal with...so I am going to say a well cleaned star ship would be less fragrant.

A friend served on an older Fast attack sub..and he commented on the aroma of a sub at the end of a patrol. And that with cleaning being a standard part of your day.

Flushing the air, scrubbing every service you can reach, and clearing the duct work helps but it's a completely sealed environment with people living in it. When you first step on a boat you notice it, after a while it becomes background noise. But unless you use some sort of deodorizer in copious amounts anyone coming on board will at least notice the smell.

 

[phavoc]

If I were a Scout quartermaster I'd just hand the crew a case of febreeze and maybe one of those pine-scented air freshners they could hang from the ceiling on the bridge and call it a day.

The reality would be that if the design had a fundamental flaw in the enviro system it would have been fixed long ago. Ask submariners how they'd feel having to be in funky atmosphere for months on end.

But from a gaming sense it gives the ship character in the short run. It would be fixed, I assume, once the ship came in for it's annual maintenance check (which is the equivalent of a "B" or "C" that commercial aircraft have today. There's nothing in the rules that has the equivalent of a "D" check (i.e. everything is torn down to the frame and inspected/repaired/replaced).

 

[sabredog]

Ever since that little bit of chrome was mentioned in canon my older players have always claimed to have dozens of little pine tree air fresheners flapping away in front of the various vents on the ship. Along with the mandatory mustard stains on the pilot's seat they also give me a hard time about because I once mentioned them in a description of a ship, (the Chromium Rodent, they were looking to buy.

I would think that something similarly low-tech and "Scout-ish" ought to be available by now. Some kind of injectable air freshener you just attach to the vent or master outflow duct from the primary filters? There can't be filters on every vent so it can't be that hard to fix the problem.

My parents once had this thing in their house that did the same thing for when my dad had a special air conditioning system installed when my mom needed that sort of extra clean environment for cancer treatments. It kept the air at all sorts of degrees of humidity, temp, etc.. so it was pretty much like some kind of life support system for a house that was sealed pretty tight. The primary outflow duct had this device for adding fragrance to the air as it was distributed through the various vents. Once in a while, depending on how much you wanted added to the air, the thing injected a puff of aerosol into the flow.

I would think that by the time the Scouts notice a problem with the filters in a Type S some guy would be hawking this kind of machine in an overloud voice on late-night TV.

 

[Spinward Scout]

I would think that by the time the Scouts notice a problem with the filters in a Type S some guy would be hawking this kind of machine in an overloud voice on late-night TV.

I'm sure the guy that came up with that faulty system on every Scout/Courier was found shot a record 42 times in an apparent suicide.

MegaCorps would be fighting over the contract to fix it too, I'm sure.

 

[Ulsyus]

...but any enclosed space you live in for weeks or months at a time picks up a distinctive and inescapable aroma.

You're spot-on. Have you noticed that even houses by the end of winter have their own smell? Each family lives, eats and cleans differently, so each place smells unique, it's just that most differences are subtle enough not to notice. With work I have to go into a lot of different people's homes, so I probably get to experience that more than most others.

Anyone else noticed that?

 

[GypsyComet]

I'm sure the guy that came up with that faulty system on every Scout/Courier was found shot a record 42 times in an apparent suicide.

MegaCorps would be fighting over the contract to fix it too, I'm sure.

Which is why I assume that the described issue is specific to the "Economic Assistance" TL9 model that the IISS farms out to those little backwater A ports. They aren't as common as it might seem, since most are over a century old and have either been scrapped, sold off to Seeker refitters, or sit in the reserves waiting for assignment to some poor Detached Duty sucker. The Actives use ships that don't have the problem.

 

[selunatic2397]

That's my opinion too, I never mention the issue to my players if the ship is recently constructed.

Now that ancient sovblock scout they have refitted and are tooling around in? That's another thing entirely.

 

[wbyrd]

You're spot-on. Have you noticed that even houses by the end of winter have their own smell? Each family lives, eats and cleans differently, so each place smells unique, it's just that most differences are subtle enough not to notice. With work I have to go into a lot of different people's homes, so I probably get to experience that more than most others.

Anyone else noticed that?

yeah a friend loves Thai, and Indian curry dishes..by the end of winter you can tell it.

you can also tell the difference between just unavoidable mustiness, and I ain't cleaned this place in a month....till I heard I had company coming....you might very well be able to tell which ship had a crew that stayed on top of the cleaning and which ones slacked off when the owners/client/passengers weren't around.

 

[Ulsyus]

...you might very well be able to tell which ship had a crew that stayed on top of the cleaning and which ones slacked off when the owners/client/passengers weren't around.

Great idea. It may manifest in T5-ishness by way of the sanity check that a crew has to make at various times. Failure to maintain and clean, due to money or complexity or laziness or crew limitations or whatever, could lead to a negative mod to their san check.

 

[pendragonman]

Great idea. It may manifest in T5-ishness by way of the sanity check that a crew has to make at various times. Failure to maintain and clean, due to money or complexity or laziness or crew limitations or whatever, could lead to a negative mod to their san check.

And the failure rate of the food maker for the non gruel dishes.

Coffee comes out brownish-clear and cold. You ask for tea-Earl Grey-hot and it gives you a pile of loose tea and a glass of cold water with a note from the ship's AI- "Heat it yourself"

Or are those reactions figments of your fevered imagination?

 

[simonh]

Ach, what’s that stink!
Well lookee here, what’s all them little green things stuck on all the vents, ponging the place up with that sickly sweet, fake flowery smell?
What? Trying to cover the stink of your Type-S? Now, what the heck darn’it d’yer want to do that fer? I’ve been flying these things for 46 years an it never bothered me.

Oh sure, you can waste your leave money on clean-o-bots, ‘n new scrubbers, ‘n even rip out the whole system and replace it with a fancy new one, but it don’t matter. Stick half a dozen people in a box this size 'n pretty soon it'll be right back the way it was, except you'll be light a few creds.

Mark my words, I’ve seen ‘em try everything, even a full chemical flush, but thing is it’s not the ducts an vents that’s the problem. It’s the bedding, the freshers, the carpets, the walls, the floors, the microkitchen, the crash couches. Even the bridge consoles and computer terminals. The structure of the ship itself absorbs the organic essence of the people in it.

After a tour or two you never even notice it. ‘Cept when it ‘aint there and then you know you’ve got a green crew on your hands, like you lot. Fresh out of the academy are you? Yep? Heh, see? But you’ll learn, either the easy way or the hard way. Makes no odds to me.

Simon Hibbs