Small Ship Universe

[JustinInOz]

I am interested in finding out what people mean by a “Small Ship Universe” (SSU). I have seen the term used in a few posts. I want to know how this affects their games.

I have just finished reading H Beam Piper’s Space Vikings. On the face of it, they seem to be living in an SSU. This could be because they are just coming out of the equivalent of the “Long Night”. The “Enterprise” and the “Nemesis” seem to be regarded as big ships. For size comparisons, they have crews of 800. Of the total 500 are ground troops. The hulls of the ships are spheres. These spheres have a radius of approximately 303 metres. This gives them a displacement 8631 dTons. If I was to draw a comparison between the Piper ships and the Broadsword class Mercenary Cruisers, it is hard not to, they would displace 13,333 dTons if I scale up their troop component.

I realise that there is a shift between Book 2 (Bk2) and High Guard (HG). The book 2 ceiling is 5k dTons. There does not seem to be any limit in HG. I have seen arguments that realistically ships need more internal structure/armouring to get large and be able to resist the forces of their own acceleration. Is the SSU simply retaining the Bk2 limits and ignoring the publication of HG? No spinal mounts? The Kinunir is not that bad after all?

I take as given that the volume of shipping to and from planets is governed by tech level and population. This volume may be slightly affected by SSU. However I posit that the requirements are not radically changed. If you want to use economical terms, cargo needs do not display much elasticity to SSU/LSU differences. I would have to see some pretty good arguments to dislodge me from this view.

Therefore are there swarms of ships in port? Are the battles between a few ships or great armadas?

One of the things that is appealing in a SSU seems to me to be the fact that individuals are more important. If the players manage to get a hold of a 1000 dTon ship, they are not inconsequential. 1k dTon next to 1M dTon is not even worth discussing. The scale difference is mind numbing.

 

[mike wightman]

I prefer MTU to be a SSU - by this I mean I only use LBB2 ship designs + house rules.

In a SSU then ships like the merc cruiser and the kinunir are to be feared, but then so are missile armed smallcraft.

In a SSU the megacorp bulk transports are 3-5k in size - making the existence of tramp traders filling in the gaps a bit more believable.

 

[Whipsnade]

I am interested in finding out what people mean by a “Small Ship Universe” (SSU). I have seen the term used in a few posts. I want to know how this affects their games.

Justin,

This is always a fruitful topic and your post contains lots of things to discuss, so here we go!

I have just finished reading H Beam Piper’s Space Vikings. On the face of it, they seem to be living in an SSU. This could be because they are just coming out of the equivalent of the “Long Night”.

That's a good, if rough, analogy. The region of space in the former Federation is definitely coming out of a "Long Night" of sorts. The Sword Worlds and the Space Vikings on the other hand have not suffered any such collapse. Their efforts have been directed towards settling their worlds and finding new worlds to settle. In fact, Trask early on complains that raiding the former Federation has diverted the Sword Worlds away from any actual economic growth.

The “Enterprise” and the “Nemesis” seem to be regarded as big ships. For size comparisons, they have crews of 800. Of the total 500 are ground troops. The hulls of the ships are spheres. These spheres have a radius of approximately 303 metres.

Close enough. They're routinely described as being "1000 foot" sphere and that converts to a 609.6 meter diameter.

This gives them a displacement 8631 dTons. If I was to draw a comparison between the Piper ships and the Broadsword class Mercenary Cruisers, it is hard not to, they would displace 13,333 dTons if I scale up their troop component.

The comparison is not hard to do, but you're comparing apples and oranges I'm afraid. Let's take fuel and engineering first.

Piper's ships run on "batteries" of a sort that directly convert nuclear energy to electricity. A pair of batteries the size of "beer kegs" keep Nemesis and ships like her flying for years. Compare that to Traveller's jump, maneuver, and power plant fuel requirements and you'll notice a lot of free volume. Piper's engineering plants aren't very large physically either. The Abbott "lift & drive" for STL and Dillingham FTL/jump drives are tiny compared to Traveller drives, one passage in the book refers to them being installed inside a 10 foot sphere in the center of a ship, and, thanks to those nuclear batteries, Piper's ships have no power plants at all. Again, lots of volume freed up.

Life support is another point between the two settings that simply cannot be compared. Traveller is pretty vague on the mechanics of the subject apart purchasing life support supplies. The stateroom volume requirement is pretty clear; two sophonts need 4 dTons. Piper is equally as vague and his volme requirements can only be guessed at. Piper's ships practice some sort of recycling along with hydroponics and carniculture, but he puts hundreds of people aboard his ships for trips that take an order of magnitude longer than a Traveller jump. Trask & Co. are routinely in hyperspace for thousands of hours, so Piper's ships have fantastic life support capabilities in Traveller terms and the people aboard them must not need anything like the volumes Traveller assumes.

Given those and the many other differences between Piper's Terro-Human Future History setting and Traveller, I don't think any comparisons of starships beyond the broadest brush strokes are either useful or possible.

Is the SSU simply retaining the Bk2 limits and ignoring the publication of HG? No spinal mounts? The Kinunir is not that bad after all?

Some peoples' versions of SSU is LBB:2 only and others use HG2 up to a certain hull size. Spinals are another question. The usual cut-off mentioned with SSU settings is LBB:2's 5,000 dTons but you can't really install and power a spinal mount within that displacement. So, it isn't a matter of not allowing spinals, it's a matter of there not being any room.

FWIW, the Kinunir is a godawful design no matter what system you examine her with. She's woefully undergunned for her size, has no agility, no armor, and her black globe requires only awaiting a single 100 dTon nuclear missile bay hit before failing and destroying the ship. A 1,250 dTon "battlecruiser" in a 5,000 dTon capped SSU setting would be a dangerous ship. Kinunir isn't that ship sadly.

I take as given that the volume of shipping to and from planets is governed by tech level and population. This volume may be slightly affected by SSU. However I posit that the requirements are not radically changed. If you want to use economical terms, cargo needs do not display much elasticity to SSU/LSU differences. I would have to see some pretty good arguments to dislodge me from this view.

That is a very important point in any SSU setting and your next question...

Therefore are there swarms of ships in port? Are the battles between a few ships or great armadas?

... illustrates why.

If trade is strongly linked to population and tech level, the number of dTons that need to be shipped won't change in a SSU setting. Therefore, instead of having a few megafreighters, there are a swarm of smaller ships carrying the same trade and making the same money.

Just as importantly, instead of there being a few large warships, there are a swarm of smaller ones.

One of the things that is appealing in a SSU seems to me to be the fact that individuals are more important.

Why would you think that? The economics haven't changed one whit. Size has dropped, but numbers have ballooned.

If the players manage to get a hold of a 1000 dTon ship, they are not inconsequential. 1k dTon next to 1M dTon is not even worth discussing. The scale difference is mind numbing.

Sure, a one K dTon ship next to a one M dTon ship isn't even worth discussing. And a one K dTon ship next to one hundred one K dTon ships isn't worth discussing either.

So, the corporate freighters and naval warships your players face in a SSU won't be bigger than 5,000 dTons? So what? You've scaled back hull sizes and forgot to scale back the money. If those corporations and navies can't build big, they'll build numerous instead.

Your players' corporate competitors real advantage lays in having factors on each planet and a reputation known to all. It doesn't matter whether they use those advantages to fill one 10K dTon freighter each week or ten 1K dTon freighter each week, your players will still be competing with the same carrying capacity spread out over several hulls. They may no longer be a small fish but they're still a single fish.

Your players' naval adversaries prior advantage lay in carrying spinal mounts. They no longer have spinal mounts now, but they have many more ships instead. A fifty single K dTon "sloops" can kick the players' ass just as hard as that single 50K dTon cruiser and those fifty sloops can be in man more places in larger numbers too. Again, they may be close in size to those warships, but they're still a single ship.

A SSU setting is fun to play around with. Getting the full effects of such a setting depends on it being a SSE setting too: Small Scale Economics. Otherwise your players will simply be swamped where they used to be stomped.


Regards,
Bill

 

[sabredog]

I run a SSU in the area where my players spend the vast majority of thier time: out on the frontier edges of my non-OTU. HG gets used for military ships and special designs over 5000 tons, but player ships and everything out on the fringe is LBB2 5k(-).

So the local patrol ships run from a 400 ton corvette up to a 5000 ton "battlecruiser" sporting 4 100 ton - bay PAW turrets making it fearsome indeed, while megacorps sail bulk carriers and freighters running from 1000 tons up to 5000.

All the spaces in between get filled by the free traders and such running between 200-600 tons - perfect adventure-class ship size. Commerce raiders are typically 200-300 tons, and pirates can be in anything. 800 ton merc cruisers in private hands are not common, and most merchants are running unarmed unless in the more dangerous routes.

But all the behemoths (the 500kt battlecarriers, 40kt destroyers, etc..) of the Empire are off over the horizon. Once in a while the players might see one cruising over a world on the frontier but it always means something more than just a battle. It's an event and I like it that way.

Like Whipsnade said, the advantages of keeping things small is that it keeps the players players instead of just witnesses and scrapping for crumbs. A megacorp running the big carriers in my campaign need little operators to run cargoes up and down the side "feeder" routes, to worlds that can't service, or don't have the demand for the big freighter loads. That's Free Trader and other player territory.

I also don't allow ships over 1000 tons to land. So the smaller craft can offer faster and more convenient service sometimes, especially to passengers. It can also take a long time to load/off load the big carriers, so again, the little guys (players) can offer faster turnaround times.

 

[Whipsnade]

Like Whipsnade said, the advantages of keeping things small is that it keeps the players players instead of just witnesses and scrapping for crumbs.

Sabredog,

That's very true. one of the primary attractions of a SSU setting is that the players can make a difference without also being "princes, popes, and potentates".

However, in order to provide that option, the GM needs to remember to reduce both hull sizes and available budgets. While smaller ships will prevent the players from being "stomped", untouched budgets only means they'll be swamped instead.

Finagling the budget end of things doesn't mean polities suddenly have to be small and/or poor, although that could certainly help. As your SSU setting nicely illustrate, budgets can be finagled by having those big budget items off somewhere else doing other things.


Regards,
Bill

 

[BeRKA]

Huh?

These spheres have a radius of approximately 303 metres. This gives them a displacement 8631 dTons.

Huh?

V=(4/3)*πr³ and a ton is 13.5 m³ i deckplans or about 14 m³ in L-Hyd.

 

[aramis]

SSU generally means 5000Td or less. Mostly due to the 5000Td limit in CT Bk2. A second, smaller, option naturally presents in MGT: 2000 Td. This because the TMB caps at 2000Td.

Most passenger Bk2 5000Td is Drives WWW (265Td) for J1 M1 P1 , 100Td of bridge, and 1 of computer, plus 550Td fuel = 4084 tons useful space = 1021 staterooms. Crew is 50. If you double them up (non-commercial) that's 1992 passengers.

Most Passenger Bk 5/T20 J1 M1 P1 is JD 100T MD 100T PP 50T, 100Td of bridge, and 1 of computer, plus 510Td fuel = 4139 tons... or 1036 SR... tho' in T20, you can give them all small SR's, and possibly double up again.

MGT TMB is a 2000Td max hull... 105Td drives KKK J1 M1 P1, 200Td fuel, 60Td Bridge, 0 computer tons, leaving 1635 Tons... with a crew between 3 and 7 for a cargo-only, and a passenger tote being 328 passengers and 66 stewards, plus 7 more officers.

So, For "SSU" in CT, you're looking at no more than 2000 aboard, and that for crammed in like sardines on a cattle car; alternatively, crew 50 and 4000 popsicles

A MGT TMB-only would be a Small Ship universe With no more than 818 aboard unfrozen, and crews around 100-200, or popsicles in the 1600 range.

So if you're dealing with full up warships, no, you're looking at what some call "mid-ship universes"... too big for CT Bk2, but well below the "Big Ship Universe" which caps at about 1,000,000Td, tho lower at lower TL's due to computer requirements. TL 6 can build about 500 ton ships, but can't fly them... TL9 puts a limit of about 4,000 Tons, and 10 is 10,000, TL11 is 50,000, and TL12 is 100,000, and TL13+ is 1,000,000.

Basically, for anything 1000Td plus and not Bk2/MGT, maximum passenger ship people aboard is apprximately 20% of tonnage. (In other words, for a passenger ship, if it has X people aboard, it will be at least 5x X, more if it carries cargo as well. If you know cargo mass, a safe hedge is displacement tons equal to about 1/5 tonnage. and cargo tonnage x1.25 added to passeger tonnage... for J1 M1 ships.)

 

[Jame]

When I finally figured out the Bk 2 ship construction process, I was kind of irked by the ship construction process - not by the 5000 ton limit (though that seemed small to me), but by the fact that the 5000 ton ships couldn't do jump 6.

I am in favor of a small ship universe where (1.) ships can be build up to 12000 tons* and (2.) larger ships can do jump 6 and manuever 4. That way ships are more like they are today, but still are PC-scale (okay, near PC-scale). And IMNHO, ships in the Shivva to Kinunir range (600 tons to 1400 tons) should be equivalent to the Fletcher class destroyer in WW2, and the DDG today: i.e. ubiquitous, and still able to damage dreadnoughts.

*This is after I saw a couple of 10000 ton ships at the Freelance Traveller site.

 

[tbeard1999]

I am interested in finding out what people mean by a “Small Ship Universe” (SSU). I have seen the term used in a few posts. I want to know how this affects their games.

If you use the guidelines in Trillion Credit Squadron, then a Pop 7 TL 12 planet would be able to afford ~200 billion credits worth of fleet (the “Support Amount”). In my own Commonwealth Campaign, a large capital ship like the “Indy” class fleet carrier will cost about Cr2.3 billion (with fighter wing). Allowing a single planet to possess a fleet of 90 of these ships is a huge departure from my conception. I want such a planet to be able to afford maybe one or two such ships.

So, I fiddled with the underlying assumptions.

At the outset, I decided not to make starships 100 times more expensive. It’s an easy fix, but the effect would be to make mega-millionaires out of player character starship owners.
So, I looked at the baseline assumption in TCS – each person contributes Cr500 per year to direct naval construction and a system could maintain about ten times this amount in ships. Assuming that the Navy gets about 50% of the total defense budget and that half the Navy’s budget is spent on personnel and infrastructure, this means that the total defense budget works out to Cr2000 per person. The US defense budget IIRC is about 6% of GDP. Using the same percentage yields an average per capita GDP of Cr33.3K on our planet.

Assuming half the population is unemployed (young, retired, unemployed, etc.), then each worker earns *roughly* Cr66K per year.

So here’s how I changed the assumptions.

1. The Navy gets only about 25% of the overall defense budget. This reduces the planet’s “Support Amount” from ~Cr200b to Cr100b.

2. Due to the fact that the Commonwealth is a thinly populated colonial power, the Navy operates over much more primitive areas than the 3I’s Imperial Navy. Maintenance costs are therefore much higher. This halves the Support Amount from Cr100b to Cr50b.

3. I assume that starship crew – even lowly gunners and stewards – are highly compensated. So I reduced the average annual salary of planetary workers from Cr63K to Cr16K. This reduces the Support Amount from Cr50b to Cr12.5b.

4. The Commonwealth is a free-market democratic government whose primary enemy is far larger population-wise, but economically and technologically inferior. The Commonwealth understands that it must maintain and increase its technological and economic lead and it correctly sees military spending as an economic “black hole”. So the Commonwealth spends about half of what the 3I does (as a percentage of GDP). This reduces the Support Amount from Cr12.5b to Cr6.25b.

5. The Commonwealth Navy spends a significantly higher percentage of funds on logistical ships than the 3I Imperial Navy does. This effectively reduces the Support Amount from Cr6.25b to Cr4b (the remaining Cr2.25b is spent on ships like the Neptune class stores ship or the Conveyer class fleet tanker).
Now, this planet can maintain about 1-2 “Indy” class fleet carriers, which is much more in line with my concept of the universe.

I have just finished reading H Beam Piper’s Space Vikings. On the face of it, they seem to be living in an SSU. This could be because they are just coming out of the equivalent of the “Long Night”. The “Enterprise” and the “Nemesis” seem to be regarded as big ships. For size comparisons, they have crews of 800. Of the total 500 are ground troops. The hulls of the ships are spheres. These spheres have a radius of approximately 303 metres. This gives them a displacement 8631 dTons. If I was to draw a comparison between the Piper ships and the Broadsword class Mercenary Cruisers, it is hard not to, they would displace 13,333 dTons if I scale up their troop component.

A key difference between CT and most sci-fi universes (including H. Beam Piper’s universe) is that ships require HUGE amounts of jump fuel. When 10% of a ship’s tonnage is expended per parsec, you cannot have the kind of months-long voyages depicted in Space Viking. These constraints were, IMHO, the result of careful consideration by GDW (and reflect the wargame heritage of CT). They have two major implications:

1. Since no ship can jump more than six hexes, definite “frontiers” exist. Grand strategy in CT looks much like land Grand Strategy for most of the last 2000 years. Covering forces guard the frontier, while strategic reserves are retained to reinforce threatened areas. A continual debate goes on about what the appropriate division of resources should be between covering forces and reserves.

2. Commercial transportation is limited to Jump-1 “mains”. Even if you depart from canon and assume that folks will pay more to jump further, the cost for higher jumps (fuel tonnage, money spent on bigger drives, salary of more engineers) will be high.

If you reduce the % of fuel required per jump, you seriously damage these implications. You can preserve #1 by disallowing jumps into empty hexes. Of course, the lower the jump fuel cost, the less critical “mains” become. You might want to simply assess a “high jump surcharge” on ships so that high jump ships are much more expensive. Maybe Cr100,000 per ton per jump number (no charge for Jump-1). That would double the cost of a Jump-4 ship on average. This would ensure that most commercial ships stay at Jump-1.

I chose to approach the matter by using Really Big Hexes.

I realise that there is a shift between Book 2 (Bk2) and High Guard (HG). The book 2 ceiling is 5k dTons. There does not seem to be any limit in HG. I have seen arguments that realistically ships need more internal structure/armouring to get large and be able to resist the forces of their own acceleration. Is the SSU simply retaining the Bk2 limits and ignoring the publication of HG? No spinal mounts? The Kinunir is not that bad after all?

You could, I suppose, use HG and simply limit the size of ships. However, HG doesn't really do a better job than Book 2 with smaller ships. And the spinal mounts require 20kton+ ships.

I take as given that the volume of shipping to and from planets is governed by tech level and population. This volume may be slightly affected by SSU. However I posit that the requirements are not radically changed. If you want to use economical terms, cargo needs do not display much elasticity to SSU/LSU differences. I would have to see some pretty good arguments to dislodge me from this view.

Therefore are there swarms of ships in port? Are the battles between a few ships or great armadas?

See above.

As noted, an advantage of Book 2 is that civilian and military craft use the same systems and weaponry. And there’s no armor. This means that the players’ ship might be able to handle a small military ship, which is a good thing.

Unfortunately, there’s a major problem with Book 2 when it comes to military starships. The problem is that a Book 2 starship cannot dedicate *any* tonnage to weaponry other than fighters. This means that there’s really very little reason not to put fighters on *every* military ship. Lack of pilots might be a tempting excuse to limit fighters, but it doesn’t satisfy me. The USA, with a population of 300 million and a modest military budget has several thousand Navy and Marine combat pilots (and the Air Force has thousands more). Given that a 3000 ton carrier can carry about 60 fighters, it’s clear to me that a pilot shortage won’t be much of a problem. An exception might be a massive wartime expansion ala the US Navy in WWII. But even there, the US turned out many thousands of trained combat pilots.

This also means that a 5000 ton merchant ship, at very little additional cost, can have the same weaponry as a 5000 ton dreadnought. In fact, the dreadnought is a silly concept, since it will have thousands of tons of empty space. The carrier is the queen of battle in Book 2 IMHO.

And while I want carriers to be the major combatants, I also want there to be a reason for non-carrier military starships. In my campaign, carriers and battleships are roughly equal in combat efficiency (similar to the situation in the 1930s). So I had to come up with a way for “surface ships” to use tonnage to improve firepower. This thread is what I came up with.

 

[tbeard1999]

I should add that SSUs using Book 2 only have another limitation -- the maximum hull size is 3000 tons for J/M/P-4. It should be easy to extend the drive table so that larger hull sizes can achieve acceptably high ratings. One idea would be to allow a larger hull to select multiple drives of the same size and double the rating. In combat, take hits on one drive until it is rated at 0. Then shift to the next drive.

For instance, a 5000 ton ship wants Jump-6. So it takes 3 Z-rated Jump Drives and 3 Z-rated power plants.

The first hit on the jump drive will reduce Z jump drive #1 to a Y drive (potential 1). This reduces the ship's Jump rating to 5. The second and third jump drive hits have no further effect, since an X and W drive have a potential of 1. The fourth hit reduces Jump Drive #1 to V, which has a potential of 0. The ship's jump rating is now 4. No more hits can be scored against Jump Drive #1. The fifth hit is scored against Jump Drive #2. This drops its potential from 2 to 1 and lowers the ship's Jump rating to 3. And so on.

However, I chose to make this aspect of Book 2 a "feature". The largest ships are only capable of Jump and Maneuver 2. An experimental ship (ICS Monitor) that had an experimental Jump and Maneuver 4 in a 5000 ton hull was a failure.

If the teething troubles are ever resolved in the campaign, I'll probably use the above rules.

Until then, Commonwealth naval strategists are bitterly split over the transition to J4 ships, since the J4 ships max out at 3000 tons:

Due to the Commonwealth's decision to transition the fleet to Jump-4 and 4-G acceleration, the 5000 ton Jump-2 Virginias are now too slow for modern naval doctrine. Yet due to their considerable cost and firepower, as well as the fact that there is no Jump-4 replacement currently available, the Virginias remain in the Commonwealth battle line.

Originally, the Virginias were to be replaced by the projected BB-4 class of 5000 ton Jump-4 dreadnoughts. Since deployment of the BB-4 was dependent on development of drives capable of producing Jump-4 and 4-G acceleration, the replacement would not be ready for several years after the implementation of the "4+4 Plan".

Meanwhile, the Navy rushed the smaller Jump-4 3000 ton Royal Oak class light battleships into service, to provide the new carriers and assault ships with appropriate escorts. To stretch available funds, the Navy decided to retire the expensive Virginias early and rely on the Royal Oaks to fill the gap until the BB-4s entered service. As the new Royal Oaks came online, the Navy began transferring the Virginias to colonial and reserve fleets.

Unfortunately, ten years of development work failed to produce a deployable Jump-4 drive for the BB-4 class. The only BB-4 prototype, Monitor, was nearly lost when her Jump drives overloaded on her initial jump and exploded, killing most of the ship's Engineering section. And her new maneuver drives nearly "shook the ship to pieces" at more than 2-G acceleration. Futile tinkering by Navy engineers failed to resolve the problem and finally, to someone's credit, the class was cancelled.

After the failure of the Monitor program, the Commonwealth Navy has a problem -- it has no replacement for the 5000 ton Jump-2 Virginias. The 3000 ton jump-4 Royal Oaks are excellent warships, but each mounts less firepower than a Virginia. Worse, precious shipyard space is being used mostly for the Indefatigable and Tarawa class ships. This has slowed procurement of the Royal Oak class considerably.

The Navy's solution has been to return the Virginias to service until a suitable replacement could be deployed. Meanwhile, naval doctrine has been hastily revised (or "ret-conned" as some younger officers derisively sneered).

In many cases, Virginias have returned to service crewed by a significant percentage of colonial or reservist personnel and older officers. By contrast, the Royal Oaks tend to be crewed by younger, "best and brightest" crews. This has caused a certain amount of tension in the Fleet, as bad blood often develops between the two groups in port. Notably, the Fleet Marine Force seems inclined to ridicule such schisms -- and loudly so when on leave. Bar fights between Virginia and Royal Oak class crews have been known to turn into "Navy vs. Marines" fights. This is probably the only positive morale effect that the BB-4 fiasco has created..."
--Vice Admiral (ret'd) Tiberius Beardren, "Anatomy of a Fiasco: Confidential Assessment of the '4+4 Plan' and the BB-4/Virginia Debacle", Commonwealth Naval Reserve File 001100-A001 Eyes Only.

 

[sabredog]

However, in order to provide that option, the GM needs to remember to reduce both hull sizes and available budgets. While smaller ships will prevent the players from being "stomped", untouched budgets only means they'll be swamped instead.

Finagling the budget end of things doesn't mean polities suddenly have to be small and/or poor, although that could certainly help. As your SSU setting nicely illustrate, budgets can be finagled by having those big budget items off somewhere else doing other things.

As an example of how I've set that up IMTU (non-OTU, but there are probably plenty of places to do this in the Marches, too, just look over the trade classifications of the worlds) I have two subsecotrs next to each other: Jacine and Veldt.

Veldt has less worlds, with higher populations and less heavy industry, but richer worlds and more markets for high tech and luxury goods going in and out of the Empire along a few major trading routes.

Next Veldt is Jacine - it has a lot of worlds clustered in a long string called the Pixie Run that are all the major source of mining heavy metals and other ores which are then processed at Pixie and Grendel for transhipment through Veldt along the main line routes the megacorps use. These bulk carriers are 1000-5000 tons each and operate on a tight schedule like today's container ships do...every day they have to sit in port and wait for cargo to off/on load, or a passenger to show up , or whatever costs thousands of credits which have a ripple effect up and down the line.

So cargo and passengers that absolutely, positively, have to get somewhere like right now are the markets for the player-sized shipping companies. Freelancers who contract with the big companies to help with high priority cargo runs, or do it all on their own - or a combo of the two to make sure the bills get paid while the crew keeps a little space open for speculation.

The Pixie Run strings together 9 worlds (all j-1) ending at Pixie. The main shipping routes for the bulk carriers run up and down the run like clockwork to keep the processing plants running on Pixie and then finished goods or semi-finished raw materials either go straight to Grendel (and into the Empire), or up through Veldt to be processed in the more high tech industries there, or supply the wealthier worlds there. Luxuries come in through the Empire through the same main routes when the liners come back from the Empire. Time is money and the big boys lose a ton more money by delays and side trips than the little guys do. Soooo......

In both of these subsectors there are many worlds off to the sides of these main routes that the big carriers can't afford to operate in. These are the "feeder" routes that players can exploit. Some places are just too far for the bigger ships to get to because the fuel costs/cargo space equation doesn't pencil out, but it would for some small operators just speculating. I've had many really good campaigns at least start with the players developing a regular route of customer worlds where they can service the colonists and pick up rumors, meet friends, make enemies (competitors), and make good money speculating (picking up some cheap farming gear on some industrial world and then selling it for a killing here and there along their regular route out on the edge).

You can also develop reputations as guys who can get it done when the big lines need someone to carry a discrete, or high value cargo somewhere fast. Or someone. This can lead to bigger, more lucrative and regular contracts with the big lines and patrons....the life blood of the game. Play your cards right and the shipping line might be paying your fuel bills, then you might find yourself owner of two Free Traders.... you never know.

There was a poster I saw somewhere that explained perfectly how this kind of thing worked but I can only remember what it said:

FREE TRADERS: Fast, Cheap, Legal.....pick two.

 

[JustinInOz]

Bloody Decimal Places

Huh?

V=(4/3)*πr³ and a ton is 13.5 m³ i deckplans or about 14 m³ in L-Hyd.

I got my Litres and Metres mixed up. The Piper ships are 8,631K dTons. They are huge. Maybe he was using HG after all . . .

 

[BeRKA]

Huge ships

Yes, the ships are huge. But this discussion was interesting anyway.

 

[Gaming Glen]

I just don't get why people stick with LBB2. Once I got HG, I've never opened up LBB2 ever again. And I rarely looked at HG once MT's ship design came, although MT was a bit overboard. I like T20 ship design, and once I looked at MGT's design method, I'll go back to T20's with some changes.

MTU is smaller than the Imperium, way smaller, but I'll still have large ships; they'll be just fewer in number.

 

[aramis]

Why bk 2?

1) letter damage is more fun
1a) dislike of "critical hit based damage"
2) 2 axis design (Cost, Td) instead of 3axis (Cost, Power, Td)
3) different design pardigm (big jump drives, small manever; opposite from the small jump drive big maneuver drives of Bk5)
4) Not everyone got Bk5

 

[robject]

Why bk 2?

(4 and a half reasons listed)

That's not to say Book 2 has severe limitations that we Book-2-ers would like to remedy...

 

[flykiller]

I want to know how this affects their games.

I went for a full-on big ship game. I determined sensor ranges, weapons ranges and effects, armor effects, and battlespace depiction, and determined necessary tactics from those. I examined the spinward marches and determined necessary strategies. I then designed ships and squadrons to implement those necessary tactics and strategies. I integrated tcs rules with the spinward marches to determine available yard space, tech levels, funding, and maintenance schedules. I then determined how many squadrons could be built and maintained, organized them into fleets, and deployed them in the spinward marches in a manner to best achieve the strategic objectives.

the result was that the marches are woefully underpatrolled. the largest naval ships are 100k dtons. the largest and/or most advanced shipyards are all occupied by military or scout service or nobility construction. civilian ship construction is largely limited to small low-tech yards scattered all over the marches - this limits ship size and tech level. large and/or high-tech civilian ships are manufactured only when a major yard has a gap in its schedule that needs to be filled.

so, the result was an ssu at the pc level with occasional large and/or high tech civilian ships, and a numerous msu naval presence at strategically important worlds with a scout/patrol presence only everywhere else.

 

[sabredog]

Why bk 2?

1) letter damage is more fun
1a) dislike of "critical hit based damage"
2) 2 axis design (Cost, Td) instead of 3axis (Cost, Power, Td)
3) different design pardigm (big jump drives, small manever; opposite from the small jump drive big maneuver drives of Bk5)
4) Not everyone got Bk5

LBB2 has critical hit damage. Or do you mean all that critical hit overkill arising from having weapons bigger than your own ship drill you stem to stern with meson and particle beams?

 

[aramis]

Neither. the terminology is games theory terminology

Most damage in Bk 2 is cumulative damage, doing a fixed amount. (Jump drive is 1 hit per 5T, Maneuver 1 per 2T, PP 1 per 3 ton cargo and passengers 1 per 10t, etc.) Not every hit causes a loss of function, and multiple sub-funtional-loss hits can cumulate to a loss of function.

HG damage is a type of damage called cumulative critical hit damage; every hit that does damage reduces function. If a hit isn't hard enough to damage function, it doesn't get tracked at all.

MGT is even harsher cumulative critical damage: each system, no matter the size, has 3 hits; 1st imposes penalties, 2nd disables, and 3rd destroys the system.

A true Critical hit system has no cumulation at all; such a system would be any hit marked eliminates that system entirely.

 

[sabredog]

Ok, I get it - yeah I prefer LBB2 for the same reason on the player scale - the HG system also seems so abstract. Less chances for the players to interact with what's going on - damage control, etc. My biggest problem with LBB2 was having to roll separately for hit location for each weapon (and heaven forbid all those multiple rolls for missiles) fired from a single turret or mount.

Although I did houserule the LBB2 combat to where all the weapons in a single mount impact the same component on the hit table. It was either that or a single roll on the hit location table for the entire mount and a positive DM to hit for each weapon firing - missiles would be the exception. But to completely destroy a part you have to hit it at least one point over it's total.

So you can blow a Powerplant A out one side of a Free Trader's hull if you hit it with a triple beam turret, but you don't always need to use all three beams either. I like it this way, too, because it means in a SSU the "warships" will have triple turrets, but most of the others typically only carry single or doubles.