The TRAVELLER space combat experience

[The Oz]

Many SF writers have stories where the seats warship crews use are also survival pods.

Using HG, at TL15 it only takes 0.08 dtons to add factor-15 armor to a 0.5 dton small craft couch. I'd bet you could add some life support, a rescue beacon, an ejection charge, and some batteries to that and keep it at 1 dton. Of course, you'd also need to provide some way for that survival pod to get outside the ship from way inside a 500,000 dton dreadnought.

That, I think, might be the real trouble. Smaller ships could make use of ejection seats/escape pods or even detachable bridge-lifepods, but larger ships would have to make do with (very) heavily armored citadels deep inside to protect their core crew.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Going back to the citadel idea, what if staterooms are also short duration lifepods, as could be the bridge...

Actually IMTU the "fresher" closet of each stateroom is a mini citidal. Armored and with life support independant of the ship. Good for about 24 person hours and protection against most hits to the ship. Some versions I've even made as escape pods that launch automatically in the case of critical damage or under direct command after bridge command unlock (abandon ship). These have limited maneuver and may make planet fall if lucky. If not there is either a dose or two of Fast Drug or a built in emergency low berth for 1 or 2, to stretch out the life support until someone (friendly) answers the emergency beacon.

 

[mike wightman]

So the safest place to be during a space battle is <ahem> reading the Sunday newspapers

Seriously for a moment, should the refuge/citadel be a design component, or is it something for the flavour text and deckplan?

 

[Whipsnade]

IMHO the ship's citadel should be of a descriptive nature. Adding yet another set of design steps and yet another set of damage rolls isn't worth it. Designate a few citadels within the ship or - better yet - let your PCs design, gather components, and build them. Sounds like a nice mid-term campaign goal, yes?

More ideas viz Oz' essay:

- Explosive decompression is neither. It's a Hollywood artifact. The math boffins on the TML occasionally run the numbers to disabuse some poor fellow about people being 'sucked out' into space and all the other nonsense. As with so many other Traveller topics in which it tried to inject some reality, TNE had this one right too. If your ship is holed, your crew has a relatively good amount of time to 1) get to a safe compartment or B) suit up. If a compartment is damaged enough to lose pressurization rapidly enough to matter, the PCs have more important things to worry about; i.e. were they slagged along with the compartment. Everything else is cinematic b.s. and some campaigns rest on cinematic b.s. so the call is up to the GM.

- Atmospheric shockwaves are not an issue. You'll have powerful and dangerous shockwaves travelling through solid structures like decks and bulkheads well before any shockwaves transmitted by your vessel's gaseous atmosphere are worrying.

- Atmospheric transmission of 'plasma' and 'fire' is a non-issue. Weapon strikes will create their own plasma, plasma that will travel just as easily through vacuum as through an atmosphere. In fact, an atmosphere can slow a plasma burst by absorbing energy from it. Fire is an issue but is also one that is easily handled. Submarines don't fill compartments with water to 'prevent' fires and starships won't fill compartments with 'vaccum' to do that either.

- How passengers are treated depend on who is carrying them. Large, corporate liners will not be harm's way in the first place. They will even have private escorts for those extremely rare occurances trouble does find them. A real liner will surrender immediately. PC owned and perated vessels are another case. They will not have large numbers of passengers and they will not have large numbers of passenger-coddling stewards. Passengers will be informed, helped into vacc suits if they own one, herded into a citadel if they don't, and pretty much left to their own devices. The steward(s) is/are needed for more important things like damage control than hand holding.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Piper]

Leaving a ship pressurized is a bad idea from the damage control standpoint. If the hull is breached, iris valves sutomatically seal, impeding the rapid movement of damage control parties. Also, secondary fires are a real issue. Unless your vision of a high passage cabin includes bare steel bulkheads there will be a lot of things that will burn, or at least smoulder, when subjected to the heat produced by weapon strikes. De-pressurizing will discourage the spread of secondary fires and eliminate smoke.

If you consider deckplans to be at all accurate, the compartmentalization on most commercial ships will allow large areas to be evacuated in a hull breach. Punching a half-meter hole in the passenger compartment of a subsidized merchant will evacuate the entire passenger section very rapidly and, since standard sliding doors on staterooms are not pressure tight ... How fast can a confused and frightened passenger put a toddler into a rescue ball? Assuming s/he realizes what's happening at all?

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
How passengers are treated depend on who is carrying them. Large, corporate liners will not be harm's way in the first place. They will even have private escorts for those extremely rare occurances trouble does find them. A real liner will surrender immediately

Surrender to whom? Setting aside the whole issue of: "Avast matey! We be space pie-rats! Arrr!" will a 600 ton liner surrender to an armed cutter full of terrorists?
As for escorting every ship ... some bright accountant is going to figure out that it's a lot more cost effective to arm the merchants than to waste an escort vessel. Increased threat will increase naval activity and high threat will no doubt require convoys, but low threat areas might have no permanent naval presence at all, relying on patrols to sweep the area. The trick comes in determining what the threat level is in advance. Not always possible.

Granted, this last bit depends on how naval operations are envisaged in any particular universe, but most of the merchant designs I've seen are armed, so it would follow that most designers consider them a necessity.

On another point from an earlier post; circuit breakers aren't fast enough to prevent damage from induced voltage transients. We may still get the occasional spark shower or two.
edit: I overlooked an "always"; my apologies.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Piper:
Leaving a ship pressurized is a bad idea from the damage control standpoint. If the hull is breached, iris valves sutomatically seal, impeding the rapid movement of damage control parties.

If you're at GQ or Battle Stations or Red Alert or whatever term you use, all those iris valves are already sealed. Take it from someone who has actually served in and led damage control parties, dealing with closed hatches while moving through a vessel is the easy part.

Also, secondary fires are a real issue. Unless your vision of a high passage cabin includes bare steel bulkheads there will be a lot of things that will burn, or at least smoulder, when subjected to the heat produced by weapon strikes. De-pressurizing will discourage the spread of secondary fires and eliminate smoke.

I didn't say fires weren't an issue. I said fires weren't as big an issue as people like to make them out to be. They can be handled without removing all of the gases you breathe from the compartments you breathe in. Breathing is much more important.

Take a closer look at de-pressurizing and answer these questions. How fast can you do it? How many times can you do it? Where do you store the gases? What if that location is hit? How much back-up breathing air do you have? How much will you lose in a de-pressurize/re-pressurize cycle?

If you consider deckplans to be at all accurate, the compartmentalization on most commercial ships will allow large areas to be evacuated in a hull breach.

Nearly all our canonical deckplans are of small PC vessels. Other than the ancient King Richard plans, none are of megacorp liners and frieghters.

How fast can a confused and frightened passenger put a toddler into a rescue ball? Assuming s/he realizes what's happening at all?

How fast can you get s/he and the toddler into a rescue ball when you're de-pressurizing the cabin 'just in case'? And who's to say they are not already in a citadel, rescue ball, or other device that will automatically become pressure tight when it senses a pressure drop. I'd much rather have my passengers in rescue gear AND in a breathable atmosphere AND in a safe location when the balloon goes up. That means there is one less thing to go wrong. You want them suited up with death waiting outside, a death you arranged to be there. Spilling all your air because a weapon strike may spill some of it is not a very bright idea.

Surrender to whom? Setting aside the whole issue of: "Avast matey! We be space pie-rats! Arrr!" will a 600 ton liner surrender to an armed cutter full of terrorists?

I'm not saying that merchant ships will go unarmed or that megacorp liners will automatically surrender to 50dTon cutters. I am saying that the big ships with lots of passengers will not normally be flying in those areas where attacks happen. This will not be the case with the PCs however.

As for escorting every ship ... some bright accountant is going to figure out that it's a lot more cost effective to arm the merchants than to waste an escort vessel.

Thanks. I'll pass the information along to the Al Morai accounting division so that they can sell off the squadron of Gazelle-class close escorts they canonically own and use as route protectors. That should help with next year's stock dividend.

Increased threat will increase naval activity and high threat will no doubt require convoys, but low threat areas might have no permanent naval presence at all, relying on patrols to sweep the area.

Again, I'm talking about megacorp passenger liners and not the PCs' fly-by-night tramp starship operation.

The trick comes in determining what the threat level is in advance. Not always possible.

No. The trick comes in actually reading what I wrote.

... but most of the merchant designs I've seen are armed, so it would follow that most designers consider them a necessity.

All of the merchant designs you've seen are for PCs and none are megacorp ships. Megacorp ships are what I am talking about.

On another point from an earlier post; circuit breakers aren't fast enough to prevent damage from induced voltage transients. We may still get the occasional spark shower or two.

And an occasional spark shower is not what occurs in nearly every episode of 'Star Dreck'.

I've served in damage control teams, I've led damage control teams, I've attended too many damage control schools to count, and I've taught at nearly as many. I've been the first to re-enter a boiler room after a blowback, I've pulled people out of partially flooded spaces, and I've walked through an oil fire that would have made you piss your pants because I pissed mine. I've worn too many types of breathing equipment to list and suited up in too many types of protective gear, up to and including something that acted quite a bit like a vacc suit. I've even broken bones fighting fires.

I've built ships, served aboard ships, repaired ships, and decommissioned ships. My entire adult life has been spent in heavy industrial settings that require special equipment and damage control know-how. I'm not some armchair theoretician making a list from stuff that looked 'kewl' in a clutch half-assed sci-fi movies and TV shows.

If your campaign is cinematic, go right ahead and get glitzy. If you want at least a smidgen of reality, take a few ideas from my posts.

And, again, PC vessels will not be run anything like megacorp vessels.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Piper]

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
If you're at GQ or Battle Stations or Red Alert or whatever term you use, all those iris valves are already sealed. Take it from someone who has actually served in and led damage control parties, dealing with closed hatches while moving through a vessel is the easy part.

Sure they're closed, but if you override the lockout control you open another compartment to vaccuum.

Take a closer look at de-pressurizing and answer these questions. How fast can you do it? How many times can you do it? Where do you store the gases? What if that location is hit? How much back-up breathing air do you have? How much will you lose in a de-pressurize/re-pressurize cycle?

No one can answer this, but consider that ships are capable of processing water and producing and storing liquid hydrogen. Pumping down and storing the ship atmosphere may be routine.
A lot of this argument revolves around this point. If you think that a ship can't store and recharge it's atmosphere easily, holding onto it for as long as possible makes sense but you're still going to lose a lot when the hull breaches and you open iris valves.

How fast can you get he(r) and the toddler into a rescue ball when you're de-pressurizing the cabin 'just in case'? And who's to say they are not already in a citadel, rescue ball, or other device that will automatically become pressure tight when it senses a pressure drop. I'd much rather have my passengers in rescue gear AND in a breathable atmosphere AND in a safe location when the balloon goes up. That means there is one less thing to go wrong. You want them suited up with death waiting outside, a death you arranged to be there. Spilling all your air because a weapon strike may spill some of it is not a very bright idea.

As was pointed out earlier the time between contact and engagement can be quite long and a lot of this argument also depends on the ability to store and re-use atmosphere. You're right about the toddler example. Passengers would be suited up in advance (with steward assistance).

I'm not saying that merchant ships will go unarmed or that megacorp liners will automatically surrender to 50dTon cutters. I am saying that the big ships with lots of passengers will not normally be flying in those areas where attacks happen. This will not be the case with the PCs however.

A lot of the Escort argument is dependant on any particular universe. You know enough about commerce raiding that I don't need to go into the details. Safe is a relative term. If we're considering a war scenario merchants will go where they need to.

All of the merchant designs you've seen are for PCs and none are megacorp ships. Megacorp ships are what I am talking about.

Again, this is universe dependant. If you're talking multi-kiloton liners and freighters and your raiders are on the same scale than the same rules apply; if caught by a warship, they will most likely surrender on demand, assuming the raider is interested in capture rather than just destroying it.
But there will be situations when a merchie will fight.

I've fought fires, too. Mine were all dry land which is a much more forgiving environment than shipboard. I have a great deal of respect for your skills and experience but this "is" armchair analysis by definition.

Consider: assuming the ship has a jump grid integral to the hull which is super-cooled by L-Hyd (not my idea but it has been presented elsewhere). This implies piping L-Hyd through the ship as a coolant. Shock breaks a pipe coupling and hydrogen is leaking into a compartment containig air. What's a likely scenario if this compartment takes a hit?

Again, my apologies for misreading the sparkie bit.

 

[flykiller]

Take a closer look at de-pressurizing and answer these questions. How fast can you do it? How many times can you do it? Where do you store the gases? What if that location is hit? How much back-up breathing air do you have? How much will you lose in a de-pressurize/re-pressurize cycle?

(smile) great questions. another issue is that of high-pressure air in a low-volume environment. if the system is broken or malfunctions or is mis-operated, what happens if, say, the bridge is rapidly pressurized to 4atm?

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by flykiller:
(smile) great questions. another issue is that of high-pressure air in a low-volume environment. if the system is broken or malfunctions or is mis-operated, what happens if, say, the bridge is rapidly pressurized to 4atm?

Fly,

They never take any of that into account.

Merchant vessels always equate military and paramilitary vessels in design, construction, equipment aboard, manning levels, training, etc. And that despite centuries of real world examples to the contrary.

The game is at fault somewhat. Other than armor levels, which are rarely found on civilian designs, there is no in-game difference between merchant and military ship construction. Crew requirments are even more egregious. LBB:2, HG2 and all the rest would have you believe a Plankwell is manned according to the same requirements as a Beowulf.

You and I have hashed that bit out before. Military manning levels are off by at least 100%, if not 200% or more.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Originally posted by Piper:
Consider: assuming the ship has a jump grid integral to the hull which is super-cooled by L-Hyd (not my idea but it has been presented elsewhere). This implies piping L-Hyd through the ship as a coolant. Shock breaks a pipe coupling and hydrogen is leaking into a compartment containig air. What's a likely scenario if this compartment takes a hit?

It rains? I mean, shouldn't that be what happens when the L-Hyd begins coming into the ship's atmosphere? Of course, that might make the atmosphere lacking in O2, but hey....

Yes, all this depends on YTU. In OTU, I tend to agree with Bill that megacorps liners will avoid most troublesome spots, or will be escorted. You don't find folks paying big bucks to travel through bad guy land, and not have the company protect them.

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
If you're at GQ or Battle Stations or Red Alert or whatever term you use, all those iris valves are already sealed. Take it from someone who has actually served in and led damage control parties, dealing with closed hatches while moving through a vessel is the easy part.

Now, Bill, what about if you had to traverse a space that was filled with water (IRL)? That's not likely on a maritime ship, as there are (usually) plenty of ways around, but Traveller ships don't have a lot of Jeffries tubes. On a maritime ship, you wouldn't want to flood a compartment with integrity just to cross the next compartment (that is compromised). Since your interior hatches don't have airlocks, you would have the same scenario in space. Thoughts?

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Fritz88:
...what about if you had to traverse a space that was filled with water (IRL)? That's not likely on a maritime ship, as there are (usually) plenty of ways around, but Traveller ships don't have a lot of Jeffries tubes. On a maritime ship, you wouldn't want to flood a compartment with integrity just to cross the next compartment (that is compromised). Since your interior hatches don't have airlocks, you would have the same scenario in space. Thoughts?

IMTU each bulkhead hatch* has a portable emergency airlock stored adjacent to it, on both sides of the hatch. So if you need to you can create a temporary airlock there from either side, or use it elsewhere if needed. Just one of many standard safety items. Like fire-fighting gear throughout the ship, which includes protective suits. The old "In case of fire, break glass." joke on the porthole looking onto vacuum is cute but not realistic.

* My merchies are more compartmentalized than canon, partly since space is so unforgiving and partly as noted that the design of civilian and military ships are the same. On the crewing issue mentioned I agree, military ships would probably at least double the crew and/or civilian ships can get away with double assignments.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Piper:
Sure they're closed, but if you override the lockout control you open another compartment to vaccuum.

Leak rates may not be that great. We can make and have made somewhat accurate guesses as to the total area of the holes encountered and 15 PSID isn't that great a differential. Explosive decompression only occurs when a compartment is really slagged and, at those damage levels, you have more important things to worry about.

No one can answer this, but consider that ships are capable of processing water and producing and storing liquid hydrogen. Pumping down and storing the ship atmosphere may be routine.

Again, yes we can. Back of the envelope caculations have been made on the TML for years now. Knowing the canonical refueling and refining rates gives us a nice 'guess-timate' regarding L-Hyd processing rates, but don't confuse the equipment. Just because our fuel handling system can do X, Y, and Z with L-Hyd it doesn't necessarily follow that the same equipment can do A, B, and C with a ship's atmosphere. The proper equipment may not even be aboard.

Everyone keeps confusing military capabilities with civilian ones. That's apples and oranges territory.

If you think that a ship can't store and recharge it's atmosphere easily...

Can't as in doesn't have the necessary equipment aboard and/or doesn't have the trained personnel to do so.

... holding onto it for as long as possible makes sense but you're still going to lose a lot when the hull breaches and you open iris valves.

Again, not as much as you all seem to believe. Check out TNE's take on the subject.

A lot of the Escort argument is dependant on any particular universe.

Even with strict jump masking in place, the trip between orbit and jump limit is relatively short. High value targets will be better protected, not perfectly protected but better. High value targets will also travel safer routes, again not prefectly safe routes but safer.

If we're considering a war scenario merchants will go where they need to.

If they need to go some place that dangerous, they'll be convoyed or escorted. Trouble will still happen though.

Again, this is universe dependant. If you're talking multi-kiloton liners and freighters and your raiders are on the same scale than the same rules apply; if caught by a warship, they will most likely surrender on demand, assuming the raider is interested in capture rather than just destroying it.

Not exactly. Adventures for the PCs aside, commerce raiding will take the form of 20th Century submarine warfare. Like a sub, the 57th Century raider is in hideous danger, will not waste time boarding any 'captures' except in extremely rare instantances, and will 'settle' for damaging or destroying its targets. Damaging a liner and forcing the diversion of in-system assets to a rescue operation is a big 'win' for a commerce raider. Damaging a vessel and keeping it from leaving is a 'win' too.

Oddly enough considering the whines about the 'uselessness' of fighters in Traveller, commerce raiding is one area where they shine. A tiny fighter can hurt a multi-K dTon frieghter or liner very easily and get a mission kill from a commerce raiding standpoint.

But there will be situations when a merchie will fight.

Yes of course. But that doesn't mean a merchie is built, operated, or manned like a warship. That's the rub.

I have a great deal of respect for your skills and experience but this "is" armchair analysis by definition.

Not as much as you'd like to think. The math has been done on the TML and, unless the compartment is shredded (meaning you've other problems), decompression is much slower than Hollywood has taught you. Other than the issue of artificial gravity there a many real world analogs to performing damage control aboard OTU space craft. Again, TNE covers quite a few in the Player's Handbook, IIRC.

Consider: assuming the ship has a jump grid integral to the hull which is super-cooled by L-Hyd (not my idea but it has been presented elsewhere). This implies piping L-Hyd through the ship as a coolant. Shock breaks a pipe coupling and hydrogen is leaking into a compartment containig air. What's a likely scenario if this compartment takes a hit?

The hull jump grid was a poorly thoughtout idea on DGP's part and the addition of L-Hyd coolant to that idea simply compounded the stupidity. Be that as it may, if you had L-Hyd leaking into a compartment you have a cryonics emergency and not an explosives emergency. Liquid hydrogen at a few degrees Kelvin meeting your 20 DegC living quarters is going to be 'interesting' to say the least. Fire is the least of your worries. I've seen liquid nitrogen accidents and that stuff is plasma hot compared to L-Hyd.

Who knows, you may have enough L-hyd in the compartment to smother any fire. You can easily add too much 'fuel' to a fire and choke it.

Again, my apologies for misreading the sparkie bit.

No need to apologize as I didn't see any gaffe on your part in the first place.

Anyway, all of this depends on the GM's needs. If she's running a cinematic campaign, she should go for as much glitz as possible. If she wants a bit more grit, she can filch a few ideas from my blathering. It's all up to her needs.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Piper]

Originally posted by Fritz88:

It rains? I mean, shouldn't that be what happens when the L-Hyd begins coming into the ship's atmosphere? Of course, that might make the atmosphere lacking in O2, but hey....

Yeah, but it's probably not raining water.
The L-Hyd should vaporize into gas and at a mixture of 4%, hydrogen is flammable and at 9%, explosive.

Think submarine batteries.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Fritz88:

Now, Bill, what about if you had to traverse a space that was filled with water (IRL)? That's not likely on a maritime ship, as there are (usually) plenty of ways around, but Traveller ships don't have a lot of Jeffries tubes.

Fritz,

You either find a way around or make one. Tha could mean deploying the emergencey airlocks Dan wrote about (MT had a good description) or going as far as clambering around the damage on the hull.

The problem is everyone keeps thinking 'military' when they're talking 'merchie' and Our Olde Game isn't very good at differentiating the two.

Try this thought experiment: Hit one real world warship with a torpedo and one real world merchantman a torpedo. Who will have more DC equipment? Who will have more trained bodies aboard? Who will have more compartmentalization? Who will have an easier time handling the effects of the torpedo?

Does this mean the merchantman will sink? No, not exactly. But it does mean the merchantman will have a harder job handling the same amount of damage and that damage may prove crippling in the long run.

The same will hold true for 57th Century space craft except that vacuum is even less forgiving then water.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Piper:
The L-Hyd should vaporize into gas and at a mixture of 4%, hydrogen is flammable and at 9%, explosive. Think submarine batteries.

Except submarine batteries don't operate at a few degrees Kelvin. L-Hyd does.

Your L-Hyd leak may not 'warm up' into a gas rapidly enough. It may instead 'cool down' the effected compartment substantially and pass the 9% explosive mix level so quickly that no explosion happens at all. Instead of a 'boom', you'll have a nice cryonics problem centered around a compartment filled with a nasty slurry consisting of all sorts of things.

For a boom, you need a leak that is small enough not to thermally overwhelm the compartment in question yet fast enough to reach the 9% level before detection/correction can take place. That's a rather narrow window.

I'm not saying it can't happen. I'm just saying it won't happen as often as we think it will.

And this all depends on the silly hull dispersed, L-Hyd coooled, jump grid idea, something that is not in every TU let alone the OTU.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Fritz_Brown]

So, Bill, instead of raining, it snows?

And, the emergency airlocks are a grand idea. They might make for good hull patches, too (for non-combat happenings, etc.).

 

[Piper]

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:

Leak rates may not be that great. We can make and have made somewhat accurate guesses as to the total area of the holes encountered and 15 PSID isn't that great a differential. Explosive decompression only occurs when a compartment is really slagged and, at those damage levels, you have more important things to worry about.

Explosive decompression is not the issue.
Leak rates depend entirely on how much damage the bulkhead has taken so that will vary with each situation.

Just because our fuel handling system can do X, Y, and Z with L-Hyd it doesn't necessarily follow that the same equipment can do A, B, and C with a ship's atmosphere. The proper equipment may not even be aboard.

It may or may not be. You can't prove a negative.

I think we probably agree more than disagree on commerce raiding. A lot depends on the given situation and as it doesn't have a direct effect on the thread topic we might want to let it go or move it to a new thread.

The math has been done on the TML and, unless the compartment is shredded (meaning you've other problems), decompression is much slower than Hollywood has taught you. Other than the issue of artificial gravity there a many real world analogs to performing damage control aboard OTU space craft. Again, TNE covers quite a few in the Player's Handbook, IIRC.

Bill; you're an engineer. How much of that math is based on SWAG'ed assumptions? Sure, we can calculate all kinds of effects on different types of steel, but what about "bonded superdense" and the like? Ultimately we need to find a comfortable mix of playability and scientific "hardness". Without knowing what's in a starship in any detail, it can quickly become a guessing game. Granted, naval damage control procedures are a start, but without detailed knowledge of what kinds of hazards there are there's still a lot of room for thought.

The hull jump grid was a poorly thoughtout idea on DGP's part and the addition of L-Hyd coolant to that idea simply compounded the stupidity.

Agreed

The example was a cracked coupling, not a sheared main so it was assumed to be a small leak. Small amounts of LN seem to vaporize fairly quickly IIRC (it's been a while) Hydrogen would be even more volatile, i believe.

Be that as it may, it does point out that without having detailed knowledge it's hard to make definitive statements on what will or won't be done in starship damage control.

You've made a good case for leaving the ship pressurized. I think there may be reasons to pump it down. Seems like a resonable set of options for players to go either way as they see it.

Anyway, all of this depends on the GM's needs. If she's running a cinematic campaign, she should go for as much glitz as possible. If she wants a bit more grit, she can filch a few ideas from my blathering. It's all up to her needs.

And on this we're in 100% agreement!

Sci-fi opens up areas no other gaming genre can even touch.
Regards;
Joe

 

[Whipsnade]

Piper,

Sorry, I was called away towards the end of this thread and didn't catch your last. I'd like to make one final observation and then let the issue drop.

Yes, we don't know what bonded superdense is, but we do know what bonded superdense does in game terms.

Ever since MT we've had materials tables. On them, all the wacky sci-fi materials of Traveller are listed in comparison to actual, Real World materials like iron, steel, and wood. Thanks to those tables, we know that X damage points will do Y to steel while the same number do Z to bonded superdense.

That's how all the math on the TML was done, via the comparisons embedded in the materials tables. So, it wasn't as much of a WAG as you presume.

What does all this mean? Nothing. You can depressurize your ships willy-nilly, I can think you're being silly, and we all continue to play a game.

One final point...

In an earlier post, you wondered about the flammability of the furnishings in passenger staterooms. Did you ever bother to wonder about the vacuum resistance of the same? What happens to all that luggage? Those food stores? The plants? The pets?

Hope you have a lot of mop-bots aboard...


Have fun,
Bill

P.S. Your continued search for L-Hyd fire mechanisms has begun to reach the Special Pleading catagory. First there's fractures, but that's too fast, so there's cracks, but that's too fast too, so there's slow leaks that the ship's crew and instrumentation somehow don't notice or detect for the amount of time needed, and it somehow ignites upoin reaching the 9% level without freezing the compartment it's leaking into again with non one noticing, and yadda yadda yadda yadda, Tinkerbell puts the fire out with Pippi Longstocking's help.

It can happen. Anything can happen. It won't happen nearly often as you think.

 

[Rossoneill]

Very interesting Thread .
Got me thinking, A Lot .
Thanks