alex_greene
Guest
This morning, I found myself imagining another Traveller, where the Free Trader was a far more powerful ship than the current official rules allow.
I had this vision of Free Traders being this workhorse type of ship, able to cross any distance between the stars, albeit very slowly: its rating of Jump-1 meant that it traversed the gulfs of space at a rate of one parsec a week, so that it could make a trip of four parsecs in a single Jump - one which lasted for four weeks.
I also envisaged Free Traders being designed to be able to haul much larger cargos - up to an additional 800 dt, meaning that the same Free Trader could haul up to 1000 dt at Jump-1. In fact, the ship is designed to accept external modules of 100dt, up to eight of them, each providing different functions depending on what they were designed for, e.g. long-range living modules for passengers or families of passengers, reefer cargo modules for refrigerated cargos, laboratory modules, prison modules, cold sleep modules, sickbay modules, colony-in-a-can modules ... if it can be squeezed into a 100 dt can, a Free Trader can haul it. And they go everywhere.
The one drawback to the arrangement would be that the Free Trader would only be partially streamlined in atmo as long as it was hauling its daisy chain of modules. Fortunately, the ship could be detached from the daisy chain to give it the full manoeuvrability of full streamlining, and the modules are designed with grav propulsion to allow them to continue on their way to their destination when they hit atmo, on autopilot. They wouldn't just fall to the surface if the ship abandoned them; though nothing would stop another Free Trader sneaking in and attaching itself to the front of the abandoned daisy chain to hijack it in mid-flight, and in fact jackers probably set up ambushes in high atmo to pull off just that sort of trick, attacking the incoming trader to force it to abandon its daisy chain so that the bad guys could come in with their own Free Trader and steal the whole daisy chain all at once.
The last two parts of this vision had trains of Free Traders, each straining to the limits of their engines' power, to haul massive behemoths like 250,000-ton capital ships out of the shipyard facility (before they are recommissioned as Free Traders, the ships were built as tugs) and the Free Trader's big cousin, a thousand-ton trader capable of hauling much larger daisy chains of kiloton external cargo modules, up to nine of them at a time, traversing Jump space at the same slow pace as Free Traders.
A pity that High Guard rules and Traveller's RAW don't allow for that. Of course trade would be altered. That's the whole point.
I had this vision of Free Traders being this workhorse type of ship, able to cross any distance between the stars, albeit very slowly: its rating of Jump-1 meant that it traversed the gulfs of space at a rate of one parsec a week, so that it could make a trip of four parsecs in a single Jump - one which lasted for four weeks.
I also envisaged Free Traders being designed to be able to haul much larger cargos - up to an additional 800 dt, meaning that the same Free Trader could haul up to 1000 dt at Jump-1. In fact, the ship is designed to accept external modules of 100dt, up to eight of them, each providing different functions depending on what they were designed for, e.g. long-range living modules for passengers or families of passengers, reefer cargo modules for refrigerated cargos, laboratory modules, prison modules, cold sleep modules, sickbay modules, colony-in-a-can modules ... if it can be squeezed into a 100 dt can, a Free Trader can haul it. And they go everywhere.
The one drawback to the arrangement would be that the Free Trader would only be partially streamlined in atmo as long as it was hauling its daisy chain of modules. Fortunately, the ship could be detached from the daisy chain to give it the full manoeuvrability of full streamlining, and the modules are designed with grav propulsion to allow them to continue on their way to their destination when they hit atmo, on autopilot. They wouldn't just fall to the surface if the ship abandoned them; though nothing would stop another Free Trader sneaking in and attaching itself to the front of the abandoned daisy chain to hijack it in mid-flight, and in fact jackers probably set up ambushes in high atmo to pull off just that sort of trick, attacking the incoming trader to force it to abandon its daisy chain so that the bad guys could come in with their own Free Trader and steal the whole daisy chain all at once.
The last two parts of this vision had trains of Free Traders, each straining to the limits of their engines' power, to haul massive behemoths like 250,000-ton capital ships out of the shipyard facility (before they are recommissioned as Free Traders, the ships were built as tugs) and the Free Trader's big cousin, a thousand-ton trader capable of hauling much larger daisy chains of kiloton external cargo modules, up to nine of them at a time, traversing Jump space at the same slow pace as Free Traders.
A pity that High Guard rules and Traveller's RAW don't allow for that. Of course trade would be altered. That's the whole point.
(looks ashamed) I mean if ya want to see how I set the design up...
