[Random Campaign Idea]One-Alpha-Charlie, One-Alpha-Charlie...

[Greylond]

I've been watching a lot of Adam-12 on episodes on NetFlix lately and had a random thought for a Traveller Campaign, or at least for some NPCs...

"One-Alpha-Charlie" is the call sign for a System Patrol Ship and the Pilot and Co-Pilot lead officers. The Officers patrol their home system dealing with various citizens and visitors to every place from the primary Starport to minor colonies on outer planets and/or moons. Belters' disputes and dealing with those pesky, uppity Free Traders who jump into the system looking to dump some cargo that they bought on speculation.

Comm System suddenly comes to life, "One Alpha Charlie, One Alpha Charlie - see the belter at GG-Trailing Trojan #362 about a claim jumper... Code Two..."

"One Alpha Charlie, One Alpha Charlie, possible smuggler has just entered system at Jump Point AACN25..."

"One Alpha Charlie, One Alpha Charlie, Free Trader hijacked by escaped prisoners doing a hard burn for jump limit. Handle Code Three..."

I think I'm going to at least work this up as a thought exercise as a way to come up with some ideas for Customs/Police Ship Crewman that my players may encounter...

 

[whartung]

"One-Alpha-Charlie" is the call sign for a System Patrol Ship and the Pilot and Co-Pilot lead officers. The Officers patrol their home system dealing with various citizens and visitors to every place from the primary Starport to minor colonies on outer planets and/or moons. Belters' disputes and dealing with those pesky, uppity Free Traders who jump into the system looking to dump some cargo that they bought on speculation.

This actually a great meme for a particularly episodic campaign. Something where each play session is pretty much stand alone and complete (and even forgiving and compensating for missing or additional players).

You might have an occasional recurring character (like a smuggler that gets away, or the crazy rich lady who seems to always be on these cruise ships you need to board for random customs inspections, etc.).

But you can make it really lightweight as a recurring hook to keep players engaged.

One scenario idea is where the crew is split up, and the patrol cruiser is jumped and blown to bits with one half of the crew on board, the other half get to mount the rescue mission. The first crew can only talk through sparking the radio to try and get a fix on the location of the derelict cruiser. (Inspired by a (IMHO) notable Adam-12 episode)

 

[madmike]

Gerry Anderson did a show like Adam12 in the early 90's...

Space Precinct

 

[Greylond]

Gerry Anderson did a show like Adam12 in the early 90's...

Space Precinct

Interesting. I'd never heard of it before. Thanks!

 

[Enoki]

I've been watching a lot of Adam-12 on episodes on NetFlix lately and had a random thought for a Traveller Campaign, or at least for some NPCs...

"One-Alpha-Charlie" is the call sign for a System Patrol Ship and the Pilot and Co-Pilot lead officers. The Officers patrol their home system dealing with various citizens and visitors to every place from the primary Starport to minor colonies on outer planets and/or moons. Belters' disputes and dealing with those pesky, uppity Free Traders who jump into the system looking to dump some cargo that they bought on speculation.

Comm System suddenly comes to life, "One Alpha Charlie, One Alpha Charlie - see the belter at GG-Trailing Trojan #362 about a claim jumper... Code Two..."

"One Alpha Charlie, One Alpha Charlie, possible smuggler has just entered system at Jump Point AACN25..."

"One Alpha Charlie, One Alpha Charlie, Free Trader hijacked by escaped prisoners doing a hard burn for jump limit. Handle Code Three..."

I think I'm going to at least work this up as a thought exercise as a way to come up with some ideas for Customs/Police Ship Crewman that my players may encounter...

How exactly would they know the ship is smuggling or hijacked versus some legitimate activity?

Now I could see the customs / defense forces in a system saying a ship just jumped in and then calling it (with appropriate delays for radio / comm time for the distance to it) and demanding it stop and wait for them to arrive and do a customs check, etc. If it doesn't then....

Or, I could see the same bunch demanding that the ship identify itself and give the proper codes to be in that system and if they don't have them stop power down their systems and sit motionless until the authorities arrive.

One thing about Traveller is that star systems are usually fairly to very large and it takes alot of time to move from one end to the other. It even takes a fair amount of time to traverse from one planet to another within one due to no easy FTL travel means and maneuver drives limited to 6G or less with acceleration taken into account. This means moving from one orbit to the next takes hours or even days to accomplish.

 

[Greylond]

How exactly would they know the ship is smuggling or hijacked versus some legitimate activity?

That is something that the characters would have to figure out. It was fairly common in Adam 12 episodes for the original radio call to be inaccurate or completely wrong.

 

[CosmicGamer]

How exactly would they know the ship is smuggling or hijacked versus some legitimate activity?

Perhaps sensors detect that it is the Millenium Falcon or Serenity or some other nefarious ship?

 

[flykiller]

some ideas for Customs/Police Ship Crewman that my players may encounter...

as pointed out elsewhere the time delay in reaching various in-system regions will be prohibitive. response times will resemble those of an alaskan sheriff.

more reasonable would be the concept of standard routes. most traffic would be confined to the local starport and the nearest point outside of 100d. customs/response patrol ships would be pre-positioned near these routes, both to regulate outgoing traffic and to respond to any in-jumping problems.

other standard routes would be the shortest path between prominent features in-system, such as the local starport and the local moon base. patrol ships would cruise these point-to-point features like highway patrol officers cruise freeways, generally responding to any problems they see. and they would look for speeders too - a ship moving at high velocity directly towards an inhabited location is a tremendous concern at all times.

ships would have little reason to be outside of these lanes. variances from the standard lanes may require permits. a ship outside of the lanes and without a valid permit id would be cause for immediate boarding and inspection.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

How exactly would they know the ship is smuggling or hijacked versus some legitimate activity?

Well, primarily by those means you note. The authorities called it and it didn't respond, or it appears to have a bogus transponder (identical to one already in-system), or it's on a certain route (out away from "legitimate" space lanes) commonly used for smuggling. It's why 1AC got the call - to go check it out.

 

[aramis]

as pointed out elsewhere the time delay in reaching various in-system regions will be prohibitive. response times will resemble those of an alaskan sheriff.

No they won't. There are no sheriffs in Alaska.

 

[LiamKerrington]

No they won't. There are no sheriffs in Alaska.

Making response time infinite ... :rofl:

flykiller: I agree with you.

About recognizing ships, consider a certain "telemetric system". Maybe the ships of dealers or known suspects may be bugged - either by real hardware or by implemented software-sabotage (trojan-like). In-system police forces or specialized police-personell might react to these things accordingly. But they don't necessarily interfere with those ships and their crew, because they are more interested in "the big picture" - who is pulling what lines, who are the Big Players ... This would give the whole 'campaign' a new swing, like what you know from "The Wire" for example.

As for Space Precinct: On YouTube you'll finde some stuff about this show. Looks entertaining.

All the best!
Liam

 

[Greylond]

as pointed out elsewhere the time delay in reaching various in-system regions will be prohibitive. response times will resemble those of an alaskan sheriff.

Not if you do it the same way as any other police force. You split up your zone of enforcement into smaller areas and preposition stations and substations in each and dispatch from there. Just like how in Adam-12 they were from Los Angeles Central Division and only covered a part of the city instead of the whole thing.

Same thing applies to military units, ground, naval and air, you run local patrols from forward deployed units.

It's not really a hard concept and when I posted that I thought it was an easy to understand and it didn't occur to me that anyone would think that 1-A-C would be based on the mainworld and be expected to cover the whole system. But just like the show Adam-12, they could be temporarily transferred to other areas but then later transferred back to their home area.

 

[madmike]

Space Precinct is not a bad show really, given the lower budget SFX, strange alien cops and crims etc.

I am not sure a police service would be dealing with issues beyond the orbit of any of the habited worlds in a system. Would that not be the responsibility of a system navy?

 

[flykiller]

I am not sure a police service would be dealing with issues beyond the orbit of any of the habited worlds in a system. Would that not be the responsibility of a system navy?

many human cultures make no particular distinction between "police" and "military".

one may consider the u.s. coast guard a model here - it performs dispatched rescue work and patrol-based code enforcement using a quasi-military organization.

 

[Greylond]

one may consider the u.s. coast guard a model here - it performs dispatched rescue work and patrol-based code enforcement using a quasi-military organization.

Yes, the USCG is a Law Enforcement Organization. Friends of mine in the USCG years ago told me that they have a saying, "Time to break out the gray paint" meaning that they think they are about to be called up to serve with the US Navy due to War.

The idea of this concept came to me while watching Adam-12 and looking over ship stats and seeing the "Serpent Police Cutter."

 

[aramis]

many human cultures make no particular distinction between "police" and "military".

one may consider the u.s. coast guard a model here - it performs dispatched rescue work and patrol-based code enforcement using a quasi-military organization.

drop the "quasi-" ... they are a uniformed military service with armed surface combattant warships. They ALSO are a uniformed Federal law enforcement agency.

They are the "subsector navy" to the USN (the USN being the "Imperial Navy").

 

[Greylond]

They are the "subsector navy" to the USN (the USN being the "Imperial Navy").

I like that!

 

[Enoki]

as pointed out elsewhere the time delay in reaching various in-system regions will be prohibitive. response times will resemble those of an alaskan sheriff.

more reasonable would be the concept of standard routes. most traffic would be confined to the local starport and the nearest point outside of 100d. customs/response patrol ships would be pre-positioned near these routes, both to regulate outgoing traffic and to respond to any in-jumping problems.

other standard routes would be the shortest path between prominent features in-system, such as the local starport and the local moon base. patrol ships would cruise these point-to-point features like highway patrol officers cruise freeways, generally responding to any problems they see. and they would look for speeders too - a ship moving at high velocity directly towards an inhabited location is a tremendous concern at all times.

ships would have little reason to be outside of these lanes. variances from the standard lanes may require permits. a ship outside of the lanes and without a valid permit id would be cause for immediate boarding and inspection.

The way I'd do a scenario sort of like this is you have some anal-retentive system that is high law level 8-9+ with a matching government that is likely to be intrusive in everyone's business. The system has a number of what used to be called "Revenue Cutters" (Coast Guard, Customs, etc., you can come up with a name) that sit in orbit of the likely places a ship entering the system will go:

The main world
Gas Giants
Satellites and secondary worlds that have potential for mischief on them

They basically are there for:

Collecting a fee from every ship trying to refuel off a gas giant (why let people do that for free if you can charge for the privilage?).
Stop smuggling
Stop criminals
Extract a bribe
Find a reason to take the ship
Hassle the crew to no end
Find a reason to seize the cargo
etc.

So, a ship jumps in and one of these revenue cutters starts asking you to "heave to" and let them come aboard and inspect. The cutter I'd think wouldn't be some serious threat but rather a minimally armed and small system (non-Jump) vessel that is intended as the front line in keeping the law in the system.

So, if the players are the ship jumping in and they are criminals, smugglers, wanting to refuel for free, etc., then they have to deal with the revenue cutter(s) backed up by the system defense force. Can they out maneuver the cutter drop into the gas giant deep, refuel, and then escape the system? They'd have about a 2 to 3 day window in-system to do that given the transit times into and out of a GG (small or large) and the usual time it takes to process a full load of fuel. They could shorten it by using unrefined fuel of course....

If they are the revenuers.... lots of things there to do.

If they are legit and the ship then you have the revenuers are on the take and demand a bribe, they nit pick the ship looking for a reason to confiscate the ship or fine the snot out of the Captain, etc.
Of course the players could also just shoot up the cutter and then that opens a whole new can of worms for them as the "real" system navy comes to kick their hinnies.

Well, primarily by those means you note. The authorities called it and it didn't respond, or it appears to have a bogus transponder (identical to one already in-system), or it's on a certain route (out away from "legitimate" space lanes) commonly used for smuggling. It's why 1AC got the call - to go check it out.

Problem there is the lag times in detection and communications. A ship jumps in to head to one of the outlying GG in say orbit 9 while the main world, where the "cops" are is in orbit 2 6 to 10 days away....(meaning an in system jump would be as quick or quicker). That is going to cause problems for them responding.

I'd go with the zone defense and small ships scattered through the system. If the system was truly major *#%@@!%%^ s then the ships could be SDB's or even real naval vessels that are not there particularly to ask or answer questions.....

 

[Greylond]

Enoki, thanks for taking a germ of an idea that I had and fleshing it out. I'm going to spring a system like you describe on my players some time...


EDIT: Actually, I just realized that what Enoki describes sounds like the Federation of Arden. My players are SO going to hate this...

 

[flykiller]

they nit pick the ship looking for a reason to confiscate the ship or fine the snot out of the Captain, etc.

at that point they sound more like mexican traffic cops on steroids.

Find a reason to take the ship
Hassle the crew to no end
Find a reason to seize the cargo

imtu if this went on too often the imperium itself would take notice, as effectively it would be a trade restriction.