Traditions aboard ship?

[DangerousThing]

You lose...
In CT, it is 5+ to survive, DM+2 if medic in attendance.
In MT, being uninjured is 7+, DM+(end/5) DM+(Medic's skill), then roll 15+ on the mishap... which is 2d6, +1d6 if natural 2 on the injury avoid task or no medic. In other words, about 1/10 the lethality for healthy folk.
Also, in either case, you roll at thaw, not at jump.

I've always played that with free traders, at least, low riders were thawed at docking time. I can't picture a free trader that would allow one of their low berths to be taken out of the ship and replaced with an unknown one.

Unless, of course, the passenger had brought along his own personal low berth.

So IMTU (at that time, when I was in college and dinosaurs ruled the Earth) low berth survival was 1/12th chance or around an 8.3% chance of dying each thaw (which happened once a jump, unless that was the destination.

In MT, then, assuming a passenger with End=8 and a Medic with skill=3, then being injured has only a 1/36th of happening (only on 2-); death happens only on a 15+ on a roll of three dice, which is 9% *if* you get an injury roll which is about half a percent. The chance of making both these rolls and dying is 9/100 * 1/200 = 36/20000 = 18/10000 = 0.18/100 = 0.18 percent. So it's quite a bit less than CT. However, lets see the results after 10 times, which I'll take up on another posting because I have to program something.

The chance of surviving a single thaw is equal to the chance of Psurvive which is equal to 1 - Pdeath. For CT that equals 1 - 0.083 = 0.917. for MT this is 0.9982.

Basically the chance of dying on N thaws is equal to 1 - (Psurvive)^N.

I'll try to work out the percentages as soon as I can, for 10 and 100 trips.

 

[aramis]

I've always played that with free traders, at least, low riders were thawed at docking time. I can't picture a free trader that would allow one of their low berths to be taken out of the ship and replaced with an unknown one.

You don't thaw people who have booked for 2 jumps. And people going 10+ are likely on a line's hauler

Then again, most people won't go more than a jump or two.

The exemplar merchant ships in CT adventures are on fixed routes. (TTA's March Harrier and the SubLiner in another.) When not off-route, one can expect to book passage on a subby for several jumps in advance if needed.

For reference, the numbers work out to, assuming End 5-9, medic skill 1, and no rushing, 1/36 chance of 3d mishap, and 20/216 of those die. So 1/7776 chance of death. 0.12% chance of death on 10 thaws, or about 1/778.
About 1.3% chance of death on 100 thaws, or about 4/313.

Note that the 11+ mishaps can be debilitating, tho.

 

[DangerousThing]

The chance of surviving a single thaw is equal to the chance of Psurvive which is equal to 1 - Pdeath. For CT that equals 1 - 0.083 = 0.917. for MT this is 0.9982.

Basically the chance of dying on N thaws is equal to 1 - (Psurvive)^N.

I'll try to work out the percentages as soon as I can, for 10 and 100 trips.

OK, for MegaTraveller the numbers are:

10 thaws, chance of survival = 98.2%
100 thaws, chance of survival = 83.51%

The odds are fairly good even for 100 trips, though it's getting low. Currently surviving Melanoma (the worst type of skin cancer, often fatal) when caught extremely early is around 90%.

For CT, the numbers are:

10 thaws, chance of survival = 42%
100 thaws, chance of survival = .00017%

I wouldn't even want to go through 10 thaws in CT. Heck, I wouldn't even want to try 2!

So, you're right. MT has much better survival rates.

IMTU (my current one, mind you), the chances for survival are much higher still as long as you don't have the allergy to the prep solution.

 

[leo knight]

I might be wrong, but I think Marc and friends based Low Passage on the Dumarest books by E.C. Tubb. I have one that I found at a used bookstore, "The Quillian Sector: Dumarest of Terra #19". Dumarest talks his way into a working passage as a steward on a free trader. One of his duties is maintaining the "caskets", as they're called. It's made clear that they are meant for animals, not humans, but desperate people will take the 15% chance of death.

"We don't use them often now. On most worlds we visit, it's easy enough for anyone to earn the cost of High passage. And few are interested in traveling Low."

"But they wouldn't be refused if they asked?"

"Of course not. Why turn down a profit?"

At one port, a boy tries to buy Low Passage, and Dumarest turns him away. His companion, the ship's engineer, asks him why he refused achance at profit. Dumarest explains that the boy is skinny and malnourished, and would never survive the trip. The engineer replies that the boy's life is his own, and his own to risk.

"Have you ever ridden Low?" The flicker of her eyes gave him the answer. "No. Have you ever opened a casket and seen somone lying dead? I thought not. You wouldn't like it if you did. You'd like it a lot less if you knew, when you put him in the box, that you were putting him into a coffin. Believe me girl, I'm trying to save that boy's life."

 

[DangerousThing]

I might be wrong, but I think Marc and friends based Low Passage on the Dumarest books by E.C. Tubb. I have one that I found at a used bookstore, "The Quillian Sector: Dumarest of Terra #19". Dumarest talks his way into a working passage as a steward on a free trader. One of his duties is maintaining the "caskets", as they're called. It's made clear that they are meant for animals, not humans, but desperate people will take the 15% chance of death.

Marc was influenced by different things than I was. MTU reflects my views rather than Marc's.

I don't remember much about those books except that I read many of them.

 

[Selandia]

I might be wrong, but I think Marc and friends based Low Passage on the Dumarest books by E.C. Tubb. I have one that I found at a used bookstore,

I agree, as is much of the traveller universe. I got most of those Dumarest books and feel that Tubbs/Dumarest is to Traveller what Tolkein/Bilbo is to D&D. That is likely to be a different thread if we want to start this debate

Actually, I felt the connection between those stats and the global coherence of the OTU universe to be so true (for that is the coherence of the Tubbs universe) that when those stats became incompatible with a campaign, I kept the basic stats but increased technical constraints to improve survival for passengers aboard ships in the low passage trade. The reckless disregard for life demonstrated by the anecdote you quote is of the essence of that universe.

If Free Trader get the crumbs of the startrade, that is because somebody eat the toast. The toast eater is the guy that care for its business reputation and preserve it in such a way that he could operate large scale. He select passengers, monitor berth for technical failure and recover passenger out of any defective low berth not fixed by expert tech when problems are detected. I prefer that marketing approach to a technical rewritting of low passage, where safety improve for all.

Selandia

 

[aramis]

Hey, guys, *I've* done a working passage in real life. Small Container steamer. Swabbing the decks and cleaning heads. A buddy arranged it, and he was cooking.

Working passage has mostly died out due to airlines (where it's essentially prohibited), shipboard automation, and lack of routine merchant shipping with passengers. In a pinch, I suspect I could score a working passage again... but only by hanging out in the right places, and being very patient. It might entail working onboard for a season, and then being aboard as they return to homeport from work port.

(Example of this: Several of the crabbing ships working out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska, actually home port off-season in Seattle, Washington... at least one is homeported Craig, Alaska, hires in Seward, Alaska, and fishes out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska... Their registry port may not actually be their home port, either. There are some tax reasons behind this, as well as permit reasons.)

I'll note that, since I started without Bk5, MTU has always been 5000Td is the limit of civil shipping. So there are a lot more ships, and thus more working passages.

 

[DangerousThing]

For reference, the numbers work out to, assuming End 5-9, medic skill 1, and no rushing, 1/36 chance of 3d mishap, and 20/216 of those die. So 1/7776 chance of death. 0.12% chance of death on 10 thaws, or about 1/778.
About 1.3% chance of death on 100 thaws, or about 4/313.

Note that the 11+ mishaps can be debilitating, tho.

Aramis,

You'll note that I got very different numbers though we started from the same values.

How did you get the value for 10 survivals?

 

[aramis]

aramis,

you'll note that i got very different numbers though we started from the same values.

How did you get the value for 10 survivals?

Pd= Probability of death
((1-Pd)^10)

I just realized a math error on my part: it should be 10/7776... 98.7% surival
100 trips = 87.9% survial

 

[Fritz_Brown]

This will be another tradition aboard ship: argument by mathematics. Engineers will argue with the stewards and use math to prove their point, whereby one steward will notice a simple math error on the part of an engineer. Then they will laugh at the engineers, who will get grumpy and retire to read sci-fi in their bunks, while the stewards will get increasingly worried about being in jump generated by machines maintained and programmed by engineers who make a simple math error.

 

[DangerousThing]

This will be another tradition aboard ship: argument by mathematics. Engineers will argue with the stewards and use math to prove their point, whereby one steward will notice a simple math error on the part of an engineer. Then they will laugh at the engineers, who will get grumpy and retire to read sci-fi in their bunks, while the stewards will get increasingly worried about being in jump generated by machines maintained and programmed by engineers who make a simple math error.

Watch it or I'll get my slide rule!

Let's hope that the people who made your jump tape specified all units were to be in metric.

Survival in low berth has been the subject of many arguments, and the survival chances effect the probability of having the lottery. In CT at least the chances of all 10 out of 10 surviving a trip with the best odds is less than 50%. MT has much better odds, so there probably wouldn't be a lottery *unless* it was an entrenched tradition. In Ct, though, the lottery makes more sense.

 

[Enoki]

This will be another tradition aboard ship: argument by mathematics. Engineers will argue with the stewards and use math to prove their point, whereby one steward will notice a simple math error on the part of an engineer. Then they will laugh at the engineers, who will get grumpy and retire to read sci-fi in their bunks, while the stewards will get increasingly worried about being in jump generated by machines maintained and programmed by engineers who make a simple math error.

No, the engineers simply shut off the air conditioning, turn on the heat full blast, and then disconnect all the power to the steward's staterooms. Been there done that in the Navy. Never, ever, p!$$ off the engineers. They know where you get your power, water, air conditioning, and other ammenities that make life bearable. They also know d@mn well how to turn it all off forever if necessary.....

 

[Ishmael]

No, the engineers simply shut off the air conditioning, turn on the heat full blast, and then disconnect all the power to the steward's staterooms. Been there done that in the Navy. Never, ever, p!$$ off the engineers. They know where you get your power, water, air conditioning, and other ammenities that make life bearable. They also know d@mn well how to turn it all off forever if necessary.....

QFT
been there....done that (CV-63)