Alternative wilderness refueling

Fluffy Bunny Feet

Fluffy Bunny Feet

Banded Mongoose
Why skim a gas giant with all the dangers involved when many moons of gas giants themselves have hydrogen containing compounds in their atmosphere or "hydro"sphere or have plain old ice? Titan and Europa just to name 2.

??
 
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Because the original rules didn't allow you to skim those things. And some versions of the rules make refueling from liquids and solids require different equipment than refueling from gasses. Mongoose lets you refuel from anything, but only makes gas giant refueling actually dangerous.

Also, the "danger" in gas giant skimming used to primarily be 1) the unrefined fuel was bad for you 2) people could ambush you while you were deep in a gravity well. The "you get wrecked doing it" thing is more recent.

Traveller has a lot of legacy tropes that are kind of not really true. Like Lasers being super dangerous personal weapons. Changes to the rules have made that not really true, but law enforcement is still more worried about them than assault rifles. *shrugs*
 
Fun fact - in the boardgames Imperium and Dark Neula tankers refueled by skimming stars themselves.

Back to alternatives for refueling in the wild.

Asteroids, comets, KBOs, the Oort cloud, moons, rocky planets, ice giants, gas giants, brown dwarves - you should be able to get hydrogen from any of them.

Refueling from a body of liquid used to be called 'dipping', gas giant atmosphere is 'skimming', cutting up lumps of ice (methane, other hydrocarbon, ammonia, water, whatever has hydrogen in it) is called... hmm we may have an opportunity to make up a new word for this.

Oddly enough coal contains a lot of hydrogen, so there could be a situation where out brave Travellers find themselves shoveling the stuff into the fuel purifier... the smell from the purification plant would be amazing :)
 
Ice has to involve a lot of cutting and moving around of large blocks. Mining is kind of dangerous and laborious, as are EVAs, and each require skills. These are skills which spacers would have, no doubt, but in Traveller, not necessarily. Going into a gas giant and back out requires a lot of delta vee, but with M drives, it is apparently more efficient to just skim than to go out in vacc suits and chop off blocks of ice.
 
I cannot find the thread but @Geir posted this a while ago about wilderness refueling. {I have it on my site for my players}

"Okay, Geir’s-Total-Unofficial-But-Workable-and-Consistent-with the-Core-Book rules for gas giant refueling:

Refueling at a Gas Giant: Difficult (10+) Pilot check (Special duration, DEX).

Duration: 2 hours for each 10% of total hull volume refueled. Each positive point of Effect reduces time by 5%. For example, to refill 20 tons on a 100 dton ship, or 40 tons on a 200 ton ship, requires 4 hours, with each positive Effect decreasing time by 12 minutes.

This task can be performed carefully, resulting in an Average (8+) check requiring twice the indicated time, or rushed, resulting in a Very Difficult (12+) check requiring half the indicated time.

If the task is successful, the ship emerges from the gas giant and continues on its way.

If the task is failed, the operation is aborted one hour into the operation, with no fuel collected. The pilot must make a Difficult (10+) Pilot check (1 hour, DEX) with a DM equal to the negative Effect of the initial failed check to avoid damage and to allow a second refueling attempt, if desired. Positive Effect on this check will reduce the time interval by 6 minutes to a minimum time of 30 minutes.

If this task is failed, the ship suffers hull damage equal to 1D times the Effect of the failure, times the tonnage of the ship divided by 100. For example, if a pilot of a free trader (200 tons) fails this second check with Effect -2, then the ship takes 2D x 2 points of hull damage, a range of 4 – 24 Hull points. As a free trader has 80 Hull points, critical hits occur when damage exceeds 8, 16, and 24 Hull points – the referee can roll a Severity 1 critical for each 10% interval or may choose to roll once at a higher Severity (for example a single Severity 2 if 16 Hull points of damage occur). This may result in more Hull damage, more criticals and other bad things.

After a failed refueling, the ship remains at the layer of the refueling attempt. By default, a refueling takes place in the Deep (4) layer. Careful refueling occurs at the Shallow (3) layer. A rushed refueling also takes place at the Deep Layer, but is performed at higher velocity, resulting in more fuel gathered, but at greater risk.

Descriptions of gas giant Layers are as in the Traveller Companion (p.163-164), but layer penalties are not applied to the refueling task, only to other Piloting tasks conducted at that layer. For non-refueling operations or the aftermath of a failed refueling, task DMs as indicated in the Companion (for instance DM-1 in the Shallow and DM-2 in the Deep), but only one (Usually, Average (8+)) Pilot task check at the deepest layer (or per day of gas giant operations at that layer) is required. Failures result in the damage indicated above, based on the Effect of the failure, not the Layer. This damage result balances piloting skill and size of the craft, causing less percentage damage to an almost successful check but more absolute damage to larger vessels."
 
Send a trawler.

Slowly circumnavigating the equator takes longer, but should cut down on piloting difficulty.

You lower the net to scoop up wists of gas.

You could even hoist the solar sail.
 
Ok, I usually find your comical interludes annoying as hell.

But this one...

pure genius.

I doff my cap to you sir.

Now imagine marines in battledress shifting the ice blocks they cut up with laser rifles...
 
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CordwainerFish said:
If you're refueling a Tigress, no doubt. For a Beowulf, I'd just say some people go out with sledgehammers to bust ice up into chunks then shovel it into the fuel scoops.
Click to expand...
A Tigress could also probably put hundreds of people on the job, while the Beowulf, maybe a couple? To cut out 280m3 of fuel. If it is 100% water, that's still a lot more than 280m3 (Close to 7x7x7) of ice. I'm not sure how much volume of hydrogen you get from that much water, but given that you'll have to take the o2 out, I assume it is less. (maybe somebody with a physical science background knows the answer) Sledgehammers probably aren't great in microgravity either. I imagine swinging a sledgehammer would be a frustrating, and possibly comical, process. Probably you'll want to rely on laser torches. Obviously, given a couple of days of brutal work, properly skilled individuals could do it. Conditions of the mining would make a lot of difference as to how quick and how dangerous it is, though. This is for a J1 ship, though. High jump ships would multiply the work. Maybe it would be a good idea to automate it with mining drones.

Other kinds of ice, like methane or ammonia, would also work just as well, and at least in our solar system are found in various places. Liquid form would be easier though. Just need a hose and a pump. Ammonia and water both also have the atoms to make air out of, which I guess might find a use on a spaceship.
 
The problem with having rules for asteroid mining is that if you have them, someone will want to use them. And I can't think of anything more boring.
 
So, your travellers are owners of the company, hire rock rats or robots to do the boring part. The GM gets the tedium of figuring out their profits... And providing clues as to who is stealing them.
Having the rules means the GM does not have to guess how long it will take to obtain the resources for Player Project Y.
 
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