Critical Hits with multiple locations/systems

[rinku]

Cargo lost from critical hits isn't necessarily destroyed in all cases. It's conceivable that cargo that was contained in specifically armoured and secure containers might have survived, maybe sent drifting away from the ship in the debris.

Haven't we all played Elite?

For that matter, short of a 100% cargo loss, it's up to the Referee exactly what survived. Fragile cargo such as livestock might all have been lost, even with minor criticals. Robust, bulk cargo like ore may have mostly survived being sent into space, but might be hard to gather back up.

 

[Vormaerin]

Huh. I never noticed that MgT2e eliminated the requirement for mail ships to be armed.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I am going to be cruel to be kind.

So next session, having read all your complaints on these boards and discord the referee comes to the table and says:

"it was all a dream"

how do you continue with a game where the events of a session can be overruled by players not liking what has happened to them?

If you don't like the game, the referee, or the plot, move on. Find a new group, start your own game.

So next session, having read all your complaints on these boards and discord the referee comes to the table and says:

"you all wake from the Sim capsule where IN has been testing your responses to situations"

how do you continue with a game where the events of a session can be overruled by players not liking what has happened to them?

If you don't like the game, the referee, or the plot, move on. Find a new group, start your own game.

So next session, having read all your complaints on these boards and discord the referee comes to the table and says:

"ok so we know where we are at following last session, what do you do next"

Do you continue to play the game...

did you ever as a group stop to think that being able to find a metric fuckton of high price stuff at 50% that you could sell for 150% was too good to be true and likely a set up? And you have been working for IN you say... make any influential enemies I wonder?

Give the game a session or two more, if you still don't like it, play something else. It is a game, we are meant to be having fun, if you are not having fun then it needs to change.

 

[phavoc]

Ok, this is the first of two posts based on events that happened in last night's game.

We responded to a distress call that turned out to be pirates sending a false signal. They attacked, did almost nothing and then got hit hard by us. 2nd round, we crippled their reactor with a massive crit, but in return they got a cargo critical hit. We rolled a 5 and disabled their reactor, they rolled a 6 and destroyed all our cargo, which included a nearly half a megacredit of spec trade we purchased with a loan. But, we have 2 cargo bays, the standard bay and a fuel/cargo container we were using as cargo. The GM declared ALL cargo was destroyed, regardless of where it was. We argued it should have only destroyed one or the other bay, like if the opponent had had a backup maneuver driver and if we had critted the maneuver drive it would have killed the main drive but not the backup. He said no go so we moved on, but I wanted to know if there was anything that clarified this sort of situation? It's especially galling because it was a measly dual beam laser turret that did the damage.

Note, we're a 200 ton Survey Yacht (an Animal class Safari ship refitted for system survey work) that's slumming as a free trader as we make our way out to our survey field. We had 14 passengers and 35 tons of cargo aboard in the Lunion system. Piracy was not on our minds when responding to the distress call cause the system was swarming with naval ships with the visit of the Duchess of Mora.

Well, it sounds like you had a single cargo bay, and within that cargo bay you had a cargo container (think of it like a nesting doll, one inside the other).

Ships hulls are notoriously tough in Traveller. A container, unless it's specifically an armored one or designed to be hauled externally (and thus equivalent of starship hull plating toughness) is decidedly NOT meant to resist starship laser weapons fire. So it's not unreasonable to declare anything unarmored in the hold to also have been impacted by the fire that punched through the hull in a critical hit.

Now, if your cargo capacity was literally TWO or more cargo holds, then, in theory at least, a critical hit would only affect a single hold and the bulkheads between them could have kept the cargo intact. Yacht's aren't really designed for either combat or safe cargo carrying, so the ruling is not entirely unreasonable.

But yeah... lawyer up!

 

[Terry Mixon]

Well, it sounds like you had a single cargo bay, and within that cargo bay you had a cargo container (think of it like a nesting doll, one inside the other).

Ships hulls are notoriously tough in Traveller. A container, unless it's specifically an armored one or designed to be hauled externally (and thus equivalent of starship hull plating toughness) is decidedly NOT meant to resist starship laser weapons fire. So it's not unreasonable to declare anything unarmored in the hold to also have been impacted by the fire that punched through the hull in a critical hit.

Now, if your cargo capacity was literally TWO or more cargo holds, then, in theory at least, a critical hit would only affect a single hold and the bulkheads between them could have kept the cargo intact. Yacht's aren't really designed for either combat or safe cargo carrying, so the ruling is not entirely unreasonable.

But yeah... lawyer up!

Call the Lunion Hammer!

 

[rinku]

As the players investigate the total cargo hold loss that has put them in deep financial straits, it seems more and more likely that some things do not add up.

Yes, there was a breach, but logs show it shouldn't have caused anywhere near that much damage.

There appears to have been a major explosion that was centred at the opposite end of the cargo bay from where the laser fire penetrated...

Where the passenger luggage was stored.

 

[mavikfelna]

Ok, just to state the point, while we players are grumbling and even complaining a bit, we're all still playing the game and accepted the GM's decision and moved on. We'll leave the game and find another if we stop having fun because the GM is a tyrant but that is definitely not where we're at. It's been a fun game over the last few months and we'll see where it goes from here.
In the future we'll use the correct rules for critical hits. I think they are a little too easy to get and overly deadly or penalizing but we'll see now we know what we did wrong.
For the game, where we stand at the moment is, the pirates have unexpectedly powerful lawyers and are looking at walking away Scott free, maybe even not losing their ship.
We've sued them and everyone we can find associated with them and started a social media campaign to expose and shame them because media has been blacked out about it.
Which has lead to the revelation that the head pirate is the Duke of Lunion's chief of staff and may have been sent to hit us because of work we did previously for NavInt that disrupted some of the Duke's plans.
So now we're being invited to meet with the Duke and we'll see what happens.
But none of that is relevant to critical hits, unless it's the Duke getting one on our future earnings and taking us out of play.

 

[rinku]

Sometimes, even if you have plotted things out closely, emergent events do push things in an unexpected direction and a bit of creative retconning is called for. At the very least, ad libbing may be required.

There's also a Refereeing style where you just develop scenes without them being rigidly locked into planning, which may be in play here. Some people don't like that method, others thrive on it. As long as things are as seamless as possible for the players, the theatre of it all is maintained.

 

[MasterGwydion]

No (Referee's) plan survives first contact with PCs.

 

[Sigtrygg]

For the game, where we stand at the moment is, the pirates have unexpectedly powerful lawyers and are looking at walking away Scott free, maybe even not losing their ship.
We've sued them and everyone we can find associated with them and started a social media campaign to expose and shame them because media has been blacked out about it.

Oh the youth of today. Your law suits and social media...

Back in my day the PCs would have gone to the offices with a bag full of guns and go Neo John Wick on them...

they were simpler times.