Questions for Pirates of Drinax campaign

[PsiTraveller]

Almost all my players have made characters and created backstories as to how and why they are in the Drinax system.

As I read over the material I keep hitting questions from the written material and the material available online.

Population of Drinax: About 70,000 people live in the floating City. I do not see how this can support a large war effort, or create a Navy to conquer anything.
Has anyone tweaked this number? Given a few Belt based assets that survived the war? Or have expanded in the last 200 years?

Asim: Population in adventure intro is given as 5 million people at TL 6. Travellermap.com has 200,000 people at tech level 6. That is a big difference. Anyone have an opinion on what it should be?

 

[Murphy]

I thought the whole premise of the campaign is that Drinax cannot support a war effort. If you mean the conquest of Asim, that's not a large effort because of technology gap. In fact, I suspect Asim's population was changed to 5 million in the adventure just so we can highlight the fact how Drinax conquered them despite being outnumbered 100 to 1.

 

[salochin999]

Almost all my players have made characters and created backstories as to how and why they are in the Drinax system.

As I read over the material I keep hitting questions from the written material and the material available online.

Population of Drinax: About 70,000 people live in the floating City. I do not see how this can support a large war effort, or create a Navy to conquer anything.
Has anyone tweaked this number? Given a few Belt based assets that survived the war? Or have expanded in the last 200 years?

Asim: Population in adventure intro is given as 5 million people at TL 6. Travellermap.com has 200,000 people at tech level 6. That is a big difference. Anyone have an opinion on what it should be?

Small hitech planets can have a hitech solution to that problem: lots of robots, cyborg soldiers, cloned war beasts, grav bombers dropping fuel air bombs, hired mercenary companies etc.

 

[DickNervous]

Almost all my players have made characters and created backstories as to how and why they are in the Drinax system.

As I read over the material I keep hitting questions from the written material and the material available online.

Population of Drinax: About 70,000 people live in the floating City. I do not see how this can support a large war effort, or create a Navy to conquer anything.
Has anyone tweaked this number? Given a few Belt based assets that survived the war? Or have expanded in the last 200 years?

Actually only about 40,000 live on the Floating Palace of Drinax. The rest are the on the surface, the Vespexer.

Asim: Population in adventure intro is given as 5 million people at TL 6. Travellermap.com has 200,000 people at tech level 6. That is a big difference. Anyone have an opinion on what it should be?

As for the population of Asim, I don't see how it really matters much. Either way Drinax is still TL13 or so, and Asim is TL6. That would be like attacking the a Roman legion with a M1A2 Abrams tank....

 

[Dagrill]

Actually only about 40,000 live on the Floating Palace of Drinax. The rest are the on the surface, the Vespexer.

Hi,

I was drawing up plans for this campaign and gave a myself 250,000 Vespexer, split into a dozen tribes (IMTU). Does it actually say there are only 30,000 in the background material somewhere?

Thanks

David

 

[Dagrill]

Has anyone tweaked this number? Given a few Belt based assets that survived the war? Or have expanded in the last 200 years?

Asim: Population in adventure intro is given as 5 million people at TL 6. Travellermap.com has 200,000 people at tech level 6. That is a big difference. Anyone have an opinion on what it should be?

Hi,

The traveller map data is based on the second survey of 1065. Given a 40 year gap and space travel, population and planetary governments could vary enormously by the time of your game (assuming it is set in 1105 and not 1065). IMTU I have given Drinax a population of 320,000 (including Vespexer)
and Asim 600,000 (both 99% human).

Kind Regards

David

 

[Mytholder]

Drink doesn't have a navy at the start of the campaign. It might have a few very old and barely maintainable SDBs for Lord Wrax to boss around, but that's it. The Floating Palace may be TL15, but it doesn't have much in the way of large-scale manufacturing capabilities. After the bombing, Drinax was like a wizard's tower in some D&D campaign - crammed full of junk and wonders, and they can enchant you a mean TL15 astrogation program or cure your obscure diseases with their magic science, but they had no ability to expand or build.

The "invasion" of Asim gets discussed in the current adventure I'm writing, but yeah, it was all based around having a few troops in flying battledress with PGMPs. They hired free traders and tramp ships to carry their invasion force over, and co-opted the existing government of Asim by the simple expedient of going "hey, remember us? We're the guys whose ancestors beat up your ancestors. And look, we still got it." (Also, Asim's an agricultural planet - those five million are spread out across the face of a continent, and the capital city is only a few hundred thousand.)

Doing anything beyond conquering Asim is beyond Drinax - and even that invasion happened only because Prince Harrick and King Oleg drove it. Drinaxian "civilisation", these days, is somewhere between Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time and the Golgafrincham Type B Ark, and about as functional as you'd expect.

 

[Dagrill]

Drink doesn't have a navy at the start of the campaign. It might have a few very old and barely maintainable SDBs for Lord Wrax to boss around, but that's it.

The "invasion" of Asim gets discussed in the current adventure I'm writing, but yeah, it was all based around having a few troops in flying battledress with PGMPs. They hired free traders and tramp ships to carry their invasion force over, and co-opted the existing government of Asim by the simple expedient of going "hey, remember us? We're the guys whose ancestors beat up your ancestors. And look, we still got it." (Also, Asim's an agricultural planet - those five million are spread out across the face of a continent, and the capital city is only a few hundred thousand.)

I've given Drinax two 300 ton SDB's and a 'militarised' Type R, nothing like a few missile launchers for fire support. I've taken the Guard to be 400 Nobles with antique Battledress, Grav Belts and PGMP's (family heirlooms).

I've set the Asim garrison at 100 troops with Combat Armour, Gauss Rifles and half a dozen G-Sleds, plus 500 local Militia as there's always someone willing to beat someone up for money.

I toyed with adding a couple of antique fighters, but decided that as Asim is on a major trade route they would be totally ineffective.

Kind Regards

David

 

[rancke]

Population of Drinax: About 70,000 people live in the floating City. I do not see how this can support a large war effort, or create a Navy to conquer anything.

Based on Striker and TCS:

70,000 people at TL14 has a GWP of MCr1400 (modified by trade classifications; I haven't checked if there are any).

A world can have a peacetime military budget of 10% of GWP.

The military budget is divided between the army and the navy in whatever proportion seems good to to the government.

A world can maintain 10 times its naval budget in ships and orbital fortresses.​

The big joker is the floating city, or rather the floating platform (known as a laputa) on which the city is built. IMO the maintenance of that would have to come out of the military budget. That is to say, the money spent on maintaining it would reduce the money available for the military budget. I have no idea how big and how expensive that platform is.


Hans

 

[Mytholder]

"Maintenance" was something the peasants did, before the Aslan vapourised them.

 

[rancke]

Maintenance is something technological devices need to keep them functioning. You don't want to skimp on that for grav platforms.


Hans

 

[Mytholder]

You don't want to, no. But present-day Drinax isn't a viable civilisation. It's the twitching head of a decapitated little pocket empire.

 

[Dagrill]

Based on Striker and TCS:

70,000 people at TL14 has a GWP of MCr1400 (modified by trade classifications; I haven't checked if there are any).

The big joker is the floating city, or rather the floating platform (known as a laputa) on which the city is built. IMO the maintenance of that would have to come out of the military budget. That is to say, the money spent on maintaining it would reduce the money available for the military budget. I have no idea how big and how expensive that platform is. Hans​

I gave Drinax multipliers of 0.8 for non-industrial and 1.2 for Capital with a GWP of 2,611 MCr (I'm not sure the percentages I assigned for the Vespexer and Asim, as I didn't keep a note). The Asim garrison comes in under 15 MCr per year; I may have made a mistake designing the SDB's at TL14 and squeezing in a Meson Bay as the Navy costs 106 MCr just for maintenance and excluding the Harrier.

The Hawk Guard I took to be unpaid Nobles, maintaining their own equipment, whose training consists of hunting expeditions, keeping the mutants/ wildlife under control. On another note I've given some of the guards titles like fourth lord of the wardrobe and lord of the rose garden, rather than names as I don't know about Drinaxi/Sindalin naming customs.

I would love to know the dtons of the Floating City, I gave it 4 triple turrets for self defence, but I'm hoping it's a lot bigger than 400 dtons, since it supports a class A starport. As I haven't a 'cost' I didn't worry about maintenance, I'm assuming there is no preventative maintenance and only anything 'essential' gets replaced.

Regards

David​

 

[rancke]

I gave Drinax multipliers of 0.8 for non-industrial and 1.2 for Capital with a GWP of 2,611 MCr.

That's almost twice the figure I get from Striker. Where died you get the per capita income?

The Hawk Guard I took to be unpaid Nobles, maintaining their own equipment, whose training consists of hunting expeditions, keeping the mutants/ wildlife under control.

World economics doesn't really work like that. If the nobles maintain their own troops, their taxes would be that much less. Which sounds plausible enough, but means that the government's tax income would be that much smaller. The population produces an average of [per capita income] each and a society can manage a yearly expenditure of 10% of that on defense. How the expenditures are worked out doesn't make any difference.

I would love to know the dtons of the Floating City...

Assuming a tonnage similar to ships, it would be 280,000 dT. At a guestimated MCr0.5 per dT it would cost Cr140,000 from new and require MCr14,000 per year maintenance. The analogy is somewhat strained, so you could probably justify a cost somewhat lower, though not, IMO, a full factor 10. A factor 5, perhaps? That's still more than the GWP will bear. Then again, perhaps a lack of ship-sized drives and power plants would make the cost less that those MCr0.5 per dT. But wouldn't it need maneuver drives equal to Drinax' gravity?

As I haven't a 'cost' I didn't worry about maintenance, I'm assuming there is no preventative maintenance and only anything 'essential' gets replaced.

In that case I would park the damn thing pdq. if I was in charge.


Hans

 

[Dagrill]

That's almost twice the figure I get from Striker. Where died you get the per capita income?


World economics doesn't really work like that. If the nobles maintain their own troops, their taxes would be that much less. Which sounds plausible enough, but means that the government's tax income would be that much smaller. The population produces an average of [per capita income] each and a society can manage a yearly expenditure of 10% of that on defense. How the expenditures are worked out doesn't make any difference.


Assuming a tonnage similar to ships, it would be 280,000 dT. At a guestimated MCr0.5 per dT it would cost Cr140,000 from new and require MCr14,000 per year maintenance. The analogy is somewhat strained, so you could probably justify a cost somewhat lower, though not, IMO, a full factor 10. A factor 5, perhaps? That's still more than the GWP will bear. Then again, perhaps a lack of ship-sized drives and power plants would make the cost less that those MCr0.5 per dT. But wouldn't it need maneuver drives equal to Drinax' gravity?

In that case I would park the damn thing pdq. if I was in charge.
Hans

Hi Hans,

I added in 240,000 Vespexer at TL12 and 600,000 Asim at TL6 into the GWP figures, I might have added a bonus 1.2x for selling artwork. I was thinking of the palace as a large vehicle rather than a capital ship, assuming 70,000 is the maximum population that's 280,000 dtons of Luxury Staterooms alone and you need at least one power plant, armouries, libraries, entertainment and medical facilities and presumably it can have weapon bays and a spinal mount?

I think the whole point is the thing is unworkable in the setting, even my GWP doesn't cover a tenth of the maintenance, is Mythholder an alias of Gareth Hanrahan?

Regards

David

 

[simonh]

I think the whole point is the thing is unworkable in the setting, even my GWP doesn't cover a tenth of the maintenance, is Mythholder an alias of Gareth Hanrahan?

It's not supposed to be workable. Its an unsustainable, deteriorating relic of a ruined civilisation that is doomed. It's just a matter of how long that's going to take. Presumably the City was equipped with massively redundant backup systems that are progressively failing.

Yes.

Simon Hibbs

 

[rancke]

It's not supposed to be workable. Its an unsustainable, deteriorating relic of a ruined civilisation that is doomed. It's just a matter of how long that's going to take. Presumably the City was equipped with massively redundant backup systems that are progressively failing.

But why should it be unsustainable? The flying city, yes. As I said, I would park it somewhere and forget about flying around in it. But if the TL actually is 14, 70,000 people should be able to survive just fine. I'm doubtful about them being able to keep the shipyard going (due to lack of labor), but if they can keep it going then they most definitely would also have the TL for hydroponics and carniculture. In the Traveller universe you can have sealed habitats at TL 8. At TL14 it should be no problem at all.

And even if the ruler was sufficiently divorced from reality to keep the city flying (perfectly possible), that would be an accident waiting to happen some time in the future, so in one sense it would be unsustainable. But until the accident happens there's no reason why the rest of the city shouldn't be sustainable.

It probably is best to do as Dagrill and ignore maintenance for the flying city.

After you park it, of course...


Hans

 

[PsiTraveller]

There is always the option of a Computer running Auto Repair and having a fleet of robots and drones doing all the maintenance. A few such systems could keep the lights on. Expert systems could operate things as well, and you have the scholars Tower to provide the technical expertise to set such systems up.

I am looking at the same issues for my campaign. The number of people make it difficult to find the extra crew they need to board ships and fight, or take prize crews with them to bring captured ships home, or even to other systems to donate them to curry favour.

Or you go with an automated factory in an asteroid as raw materials and producing some high tech spare parts for a ship ( http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Automated_fabrication_facility )

Building new ships will likely need to be done at other systems, the city lacks the manpower or the heavy industry. It al depends on whether you want an army of robots building enough robots to staff a production system. If you are not worried about a Terminator or Virus scenario then it could explain the ability to produce equipment in enough volume to maintain stability and even improve upon things.

The opportunity to develop a self sufficient military is there with a lot of hand waving and computer controlled output. A massive training and recruitment program would need to be developed if they wanted a real navy and not a privately operated pirate raiding fleet. Boots on the deck, but do you try and recruit and train Drinaxians, or recruit out of system and risk loyalty issues.

 

[rancke]

The available evidence suggests that self-repairing automatic factories are not available in Traveller universes. If they were, there would be a sharp jump in per capita income at whatever tech level such facilities become available, and the tables we have show a uniform increase of Cr2000 per tech level from 5 to 15.

Now, you can ignore that, of course. But is that a good idea? Yes, it enables quirky low-population societies, which is a good thing, but if the small fry can use this technology to improve their productivity then the big worlds can too, and those high-tech, high-population worlds become much richer and more powerful. Which I, for one, don't think is such a good thing.

Unless for some reason automated factories are limited to small populations. Frankly, I can't think of a believable explanation for that.

And if only some worlds (with the requisite tech level) employ automated factories, we'll need another trade code: 'af#' for 'automated factories'. The # would be a number that indicated the multiple for GWP, e.g. 'af3' indicates the GWP is 3 times bigger.


Hans

 

[Dagrill]

You don't want to, no. But present-day Drinax isn't a viable civilisation. It's the twitching head of a decapitated little pocket empire.

Hi Gareth,

Congratulations on designing an excellent Travelelr campaign, my players are drooling at the prospect of playing it.

With the Sun and Shadow how did it work for you, with the palyers playing the pirates and the hunters?

Kind Regards

David