Aging ships

[Greyscale]

Hello, I'm new to traveller and plan on running a game sometime in the future. In order to get accustomed to the rules I have been going through each system and trying it out.

So far I have only hit one thing that is confusing me.

When you are aging ships to decrease their cost, you roll on a table for whatever the ship did for those 10 years.

I chose trade and 100 years old and rolled:
4,7,7,7,8,8,8,8,11,12

4: Smuggling compartments (awesome!)
7: 1 DM to repair attempts
8: +50% maintenance costs
11: Respected trade vessel
12: Free computer upgrade!

Okay, now for my questions:

1) Do the multiples stack? Would it have +3 DM to repair attempts and cost +200% to maintain?

2) Does the +3 DM to repair attempts make the ship easier to repair or harder? I would imagine easier, but that doesn't make sense, does it?


Thanks for helping a traveller newcomer out!

 

[GypsyComet]

Welcome to Traveller and to the forum!

1) Do the multiples stack? Would it have +3 DM to repair attempts and cost +200% to maintain?

You can be fairly creative with how the repair DMs stack, but they do stack by default.

Two examples:
Apply the first DM to the whole ship, but all later DMs to specific components or departments. This could lead to a +3 on something specific, but most of the ship will be +1 or +2.

Alternately, apply the DM not as a success mod, but as a Quality mod. This gives a Milennium Falcon feel, as repairs, no matter how involved, are likely going to be only temporary (Success but with a negative Quality).

The maintenance costs could be added then multiplied (+150%) or multipled in series (1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 = 327%). This can also be applied differently across the ship, depending on how much disposable income you want to remove from PCs.

2) Does the +3 DM to repair attempts make the ship easier to repair or harder? I would imagine easier, but that doesn't make sense, does it?

Should be harder.

 

[BP]

Though steep - the maintenance and repair mods do make a certain kind of sense -

A replacement part may cost many times a new part since it lacks mass market economics and has to be custom built from a 100 year+ design - not to mention the mistakes/failures due to assumptions and ignorance about how the older stuff worked.

Another issue - fix one thing and another breaks 'cause it was 'touched' (collorary of the 'If it ain't broke don't fix it' axiom)

I like GypsyComet's take on it.

You could also apply the DM after a base successful role to see if another part was broken or degraded. (i.e. they made the role, but with the DM wouldn't have)

I would apply only the difference (what the role missed by) as a DM to the repair attempt on the newly broken part (if they decided to fix it right away). Hope that's not to confusing.

 

[EDG]

100 years old? That seems a bit ancient... think about the machinery we use today - how old are passenger planes? Or ships? Or train carriages? or space shuttles? I've seen dates imprinted on London Underground subway floors from around 1970 so I guess those at least can be about 30-40 years old... but a century old seems rather decrepit.

Surely there's diminishing returns here - you may be able to keep a ship going for about 50 years at most, but sooner or later it's going to conk out. Even if you replace all the stuff within it, the actual framework and internal structure will be falling to bits after more than about 50 years. Not to mention advances in technology should leave the systems on such an old ship way behind (they were probably at least 1 TL behind what is common now).

 

[BP]

Yeh - hence the steep DMs seem reasonable. The USS Enterprise is 50 years old and scheduled for decommission in 2014/15 (according to Wikipedia) and the oldest USN ship was the USS Prairie (New York Times) at 53 years...

Not to say in the Traveller future things can't be expected to age better...

It does provide for an interesting backdrop though - and lots of fun for the GM. 'Ok, who's gonna go down and crank the landing gear down...

 

[BP]

'You're all out of WD-40 and Duct Tape...

'Now what are you gonna do...

 

[rust]

100 years old? That seems a bit ancient...

On the other hand, in David Brin's Uplift Universe many ships (or at least
their hulls and structural parts) are thousands of years old and still in ve-
ry good shape.

It would most probably depend on the construction materials available,
but I could well imagine that the materials used above TL 10 will conti-
nue to remain functional for a much longer time than our current real
world materials.

An OTU example could be the starships of the ancient Darrians, which al-
so survived a very long time exceptionally well. They were built at TL 16,
so at TL 12 - half way between the real world and the Darrians - a ship
might well be able to survive in good condition for 100 years.

 

[Greyscale]

I appreciate the responses guys!

Yeah 100 years is pretty old but the book says that ships may be even older, doesn't it? Anyway the desired effect was a ship that was totally coming apart at the seams, that the players would fix over time. Its a home brewed ship if anyone wouldn't mind taking a look at it.

Another question: Are there rules to fix these elderly ship problems in game?

If not, my guess would be to record the amount of shipshares that that the 10 year period that caused the problem granted. Then, if the players wanted to remove one of the +1 DM caused by a roll of seven, and that roll also gleaned 3 shipshares, they would have to pay the value of 3 shipshares to remove the detriment.

I don't know if that was clear or not.


What are your thoughts on this? Also: wanna critique my first ship?

 

[GypsyComet]

I could easily see "Standard Interstellar" ships (TL11-13) still being useful at a century *if maintained*. Mothballing is probably not going to help a lot, but being in use and under regular maintenance scrutiny should get a ship up to that age. It'll be old feeling and a bit creaky, to be sure, and every gas giant dip and hot downport landing will shorten its lifespan, but I'd consider it possible.

That same Darrian reference mentions that the lower TL ships the Solomani arrived in were unusable after about 200 years of orbital storage, while the properly mothballed TL16 ships from a few centuries later survived the Maghiz Night of 250 or so years so well that they were almost immediately flying when reactivated.

Armored warships in the smaller range are going to be a different matter. Barring a nasty critical hit in its past, I'd expect an SDB to be space-worthy for a very long time with maintenance. "Civilian tough" and "Military tough" are two different critters.

 

[GypsyComet]

Anyway the desired effect was a ship that was totally coming apart at the seams, that the players would fix over time.

A +3 DM on repairs should provide that impression to the PCs, yes.

Another question: Are there rules to fix these elderly ship problems in game?

Rules? Not as such. You can certainly keep track of the "age discount" the PCs got and take it back out of them in repair costs if you like. Or you can simply reverse the process and not bother with the long-term record-keeping. Since you get another 1d6 ship shares per decade (and roll), to correct that roll's problem is going to take 1d6% of the new price to fix, provided its done at a honest-to-Strephon shipyard and not piecemeal by the PCs. Go to 2d6% if they try to do it themselves, but make it plain to the party Engineer that the frame is tweaked, the bulkheads questionable, and the wiring runs original and inaccessible unless they have a trained monkey, and not a large monkey, either.

Also: wanna critique my first ship?

Bring it on!

 

[Greyscale]

My first ship:

200ton hull streamlined, both drives and plant class A, no armor
Basic computer (with improved jump technology) and radar/lidar
5 staterooms (one is the lounge).
54 tons of fuel storage (2 jumps and 14 weeks of power)
100 tons cargo

The hatch on level 1 opens to a large flat deck on level 2. This deck can be walked on when the ship is landed, or with magnetic boots in space. The Level 2 cargo hold also serves as the ships locker. Both cargo holds can be serve as massive airlocks, so that they can either be walked around in in flight or left without air so salvage can be loaded in space.

 

[GamerDude]

One of the things I think would affect the "Top possible age" of a ship is whether or not it makes planetfalls.

A ship able (and used to) land on planets (and thus also launch from them) means they do have to go through the varying gravitational stresses and such. Plus there is the effects of Oxygen on the surfaces of the ship.

A ship that stays in orbit doesn't have to go through all this.

What do y'all think?

 

[BP]

Great point GamerDude!

The extra spacetime exposure (space dust, thermal and ionizing radiation, etc.) could hardly compare to the extreme stresses of re-entry, changing Gs and aerodynamic pressures.

Also no exposure to caustic environments and solvents (water) - just the extremes of temperature and vacuum which they all have to deal with.

And the engines and such would be constantly going excepting space docked maintenance (probably a good thing given few moving parts).

 

[BP]

Nice plans Greyscale!

I particularly like the practical layout - what with the Lounge immediately adjacent to the Bridge. Give your pilots easy access to the booze...

...furthermore, making sure they have to fall down the stairs to accidentally trip out the airlock or a cargo door is indicative of a superb attention to detail and safety!

Might want to consider a bay door at the back of the cargo space to add a little more flexibility!

 

[GypsyComet]

My first ship:

200ton hull streamlined, both drives and plant class A, no armor
Basic computer (with improved jump technology) and radar/lidar
5 staterooms (one is the lounge).
54 tons of fuel storage (2 jumps and 14 weeks of power)
100 tons cargo

The hatch on level 1 opens to a large flat deck on level 2. This deck can be walked on when the ship is landed, or with magnetic boots in space. The Level 2 cargo hold also serves as the ships locker. Both cargo holds can be serve as massive airlocks, so that they can either be walked around in in flight or left without air so salvage can be loaded in space.

So that's a ceiling hatch? Since the ship is streamlined and landing friendly in shape, you might also want to put fore and aft hatches on the main cargo bay, allowing what the modern shipping biz refers to as RORO (Roll On, Roll Off) cargo handling. You could also achieve the same thing by moving the fuel around to leave a solid nose and have a cargo door on each side.

I'd consider putting a formal people airlock on Deck One, perhaps at one of the stair drops. You are otherwise climbing down a ladder or exiting through one of the big cargo doors I mentioned.

Other suggestions:

Develop separate symbols for non-pressure doors (like stateroom doors generally can be) and pressure hatches (like airlock doors).

Use different wall thicknesses for non-pressure bearing walls vs bulkheads.

Put a grid down. Traveller generally uses a 1.5m grid that helps with deckplan scaling. It can be a nice pale grey if you don't want it dominating the plans, but some idea of scale and distance is a good idea.

When using color for non-habitable areas like instrument spaces and fuel, use colors that will show as different shades when printed monotone, since some of us don't do color printing. (I used to sell inkjet printers, and I own a laser printer as a result). You have this one down already, but it pays to be aware of it.

 

[towerwarlock]

If you are willing to have an old ship and take the risks it brings, well anything goes. I had one ship that was older, and did quite well in the rolls. Of course the sensors were upgraded, it had so many smuggling compartments that we were still finding new ones (you never knew where they were going to turn up), and the sensors were heavily upgraded, and more.

 

[Dave Chase]

I agree with using different thickness of lines for bulkheads and interior walls.

But you don't have to have the grid lines. Your diagram would work for most RPGing and is a good example of what they might see on a sensor screen or visual pull of of plans on the computer.

And BTW good job on the deckplans.

Dave Chase

 

[Greyscale]

Thanks for the input guys! A couple of responses:

Not sure why I didn't say this: I picture the bottom having a very boat-like roundness. The ship was originally designed to facilitate freight shipping and loading on water worlds, where it would be easiest to land in the water and lower cargo in. Because of this, the first level does not have any cargo doors on the sides.

Doors that are airlocks: Any doors that lead to a cargo area. The rest are normal doors.

There is enough room around the drives and plants for an engineer to slide under them to work, or to stand sideways between them.

The lounge has two couches facing a table/storage unit in the middle (Good for magazines, wafers with movies on them, booze, maps, extra gun, etc).

Sorry for lack of grid, I'll put one on tomorrow. The stairs take up 1 grid square if you want to approximate. Most hallways are 5 feet wide. The halls by the stateroom are very cramped, 3 feet wide. Anyone in battledress would find it nigh impossible to walk around in this ship (though I assume this is true for most ships).


I've got some fun flavortext for the aged version of this ship, I'll post that tomorrow as well.

 

[GypsyComet]

You can minimize the grid by simply using a dot at each corner, or setting a scale out with the rest of the map key. Dave is correct in that a "grid" isn't absolutely needed, but without a scale somewhere it becomes less useful.

Boat-like lower hull, eh? Knew that shape reminded me of something...

 

[Gee4orce]

They just decommissioned the QE2 and she was 50 years old.

I'm not sure if that supports the idea of very old Traveller ships, or counters it, but it's there as a benchmark anyway !