Low berth = Suicide Run?

[JF Baston]

Hi,
I read in Traveller Core, p142, in Low Passage, that a medic check, with Endurance DM of the passager, is required or the passager die! :shock:

Heck, if it's an average task, with and average Medic 0, you only have 41.67% chance of surviving the trip.

Tell me it's an easy task (+4) => 91.67% of survival or a routine task (+2) => 72.22% of survival.

It's madness, the risk is to high for the cost.

I mean, you will be better to share a middle passage cabin with eight or ten other people, in hamac and under Fast Drug.

 

[Cleon the Mad]

Hi,
I read in Traveller Core, p142, in Low Passage, that a medic check, with Endurance DM of the passager, is required or the passager die! :shock:

Heck, if it's an average task, with and average Medic 0, you only have 41.67% chance of surviving the trip.

Tell me it's an easy task (+4) => 91.67% of survival or a routine task (+2) => 72.22% of survival.

It's madness, the risk is to high for the cost.

I mean, you will be better to share a middle passage cabin with eight or ten other people, in hamac and under Fast Drug.

I forget if the MGT core book mentions this, but other editions of Traveller actually mention that it's common enough on ships to institute a "Low Lottery". Otherwise the a lottery done among the low berth passengers and the captain/owner of the ship on if everyone survived, or if people felt someone may not, how many may not. Don't remember the exact numbers but the winner if a passenger got some percentage of the total profits from the low passage tickets, captain getting the rest.

Having said that, I think I will go to an easy task to survive. I always got the idea that one generally didn't expect deaths with low berths, but it was possible with someone who was less then a qualified doctor operating the equipment. Otherwise, roughly 90 percent if the ship is actually letting a medic 0 operate them isn't absurd.

 

[Baeron Gredlocke]

I seem to recall something about the medical skill of the person putting the passengers down/bringing them back.

I haven't played in the new system yet, but I would be inclined to do something like take the effect of the medic roll for putting low passengers down and applying it to the roll for bringing them back.

 

[Jame Rowe]

My house rules for low berths, as modified from Golan's on CotI:

-2 if the berth's TL is 8-9
-1 if the berth's TL is 10-11
+1 if the berth's TL is 12-13
+2 if the berth's TL is 14-16 (this is where they figure out nanostasis)
+3 if the berth's TL is 17+
+1 if berth is fully maintained between passengers
+1 cumulative per level of medical skill
-2 if ship is overdue for maintainance by up to a year
-4 if ship is overdue for maintainace by more than a year
+2 if passenger is fully prepped (takes a few hours)
-1 if passenger is not prepared but is frozen using the standard procedure (takes 30 minutes)
-2 if emergency-frozen (takes less than a minute)
-4 if no Medic is present

 

[AKAmra]

E.T. Smith started a Subject called "Low Passage & Low Berth" a while back. It includes his (rather good) house rules for Low Berth travel. It was also mentioned by far-trader that if you run it as an Easy task that the percentages are nearly the same as in Classic Traveller.

I'd link to the Subject, but I missed my forum skill roll. If you do a search using E.T. Smith and/or the Subject title you should be able to pull it up.

 

[Golan2072]

E.T. Smith started a Subject called "Low Passage & Low Berth" a while back. It includes his (rather good) house rules for Low Berth travel. It was also mentioned by far-trader that if you run it as an Easy task that the percentages are nearly the same as in Classic Traveller.

I'd link to the Subject, but I missed my forum skill roll. If you do a search using E.T. Smith and/or the Subject title you should be able to pull it up.

There you go

 

[EDG]

I never got the risks of using Low Berth. Nobody's going to use it to travel if there's a significant chance that they're going to die (unless perhaps they know they're going to die if they don't use it to go somewhere else). But if no ship would carry them unless they had a medic qualified enough to guarantee survival then why have the risk in the first place?

And a "Low Lottery" is just depraved, IMO.

I can't see what it adds to any game - it just gives a random risk of someone dying for no good reason (and any I think any GM who runs with "oh sorry, your PC failed his survival roll for the low berth passage, roll up a new one" needs to be taken out back and shot. It's a really stupid way to lose a character).

At worst I'd say that you may have some temporary ill effects from low berth travel - reduced reactions and wooziness (think Han Solo after coming out from Carbonite in RotJ), maybe being bed-bound for a day or two, but that's it. IMO death or major damage should be possible only in very unusual circumstances (e.g. someone seriously wounded or very infirm who is placed in stasis may not have a good chance of recovery).

 

[Ishvar]

As far as I am concerned, there is no "low lottery" in MTU and under normal circumstances there is no roll to "revive" the low passengers provided the crew is properly trained (which the Imperial law is asking for, this being controlled through the routine inspections made by the Imperial Navy or the System Defense Forces).

If someone die, it would be a NPC as a character's death like this adds nothing to the story, IMO.

 

[Myrm]

I never got the risks of using Low Berth. Nobody's going to use it to travel if there's a significant chance that they're going to die (unless perhaps they know they're going to die if they don't use it to go somewhere else).

Hmmm, the Age of Sail always raises its head in descriptions of the Imperium in Traveller. Travelling long distances in that period was not unhazardous, but people did it. Necessity is a powerful drive. Perhaps low berth risks are the hi-tech version of shoals and storms.

 

[EDG]

Perhaps low berth risks are the hi-tech version of shoals and storms.

I would argue that misjumps are the equivalent of those.

Low Berth death would be more like dying of scurvy (or some other fatal early-Age-of-Sail disease). But while AoS analogies may be fine for some things (like travel time), I think it's taking a bit too far here.

 

[rust]

As I already mentioned in an earlier thread:

Just think of setting up a new colony with 50,000 colonists arriving in cold
sleep and a low berth fatality rate of only 1 %, which would lead to 500
colonists "dead on arrival", and the first construction on the colonists' new
home world being a mass grave.

In my view something like this would be bizarre, and therefore I rarely
use low berths in my setting, and there is no chance at all to die while
in cold sleep.

 

[tneva82]

Good medic(+2), routine operation(+2), take your time(+1?)=+5 to modifier. Person needs to be pretty unhealthy to begin with to have big risk there.

 

[Golan2072]

My current house-rule is that reviving a cryo-frozen character is a Medic, Passenger's End DM, 1-6 hours, Easy (+4) task using the subject's Endurance DM. One medic could simultaneously work on up to 20 low berths, but the medic has to make a separate task roll for each passenger. A failed revival roll results in 3d6 normal damage rather than death - healthy passengers never die, but might need prompt medical attention in rare and extreme circumstances.

As I've mentioned above, standard cryo-revival takes 1 to 6 hours. However, it is possibly to revive a passenger more quickly using the emergency revival procedure, which is a Medic, Passenger's End DM, 1-6 minutes, Average (+0) task. A failed emergency revival roll causes a roll on the Injury table (TMB p.37); damage is permanent unless treated in a TL10+ hospital (using the costs listed on TMB p.37).

The low berth itself has a hard-wired Medic-0 expert program for the sole purpose of reviving passengers. This could be automatically activated by an override failsafe system installed in each berth, or when the berth's system detects damage to the berth.

---

One thing I'd like to find a way to do, however, is to enable long-term survival of low berths even if external (ship) power fails. Is there any long-duration (decades, hopefully) power-source cheap enough to subsume in the cost of a low berth or even of multiple low berths?

 

[rust]

Is there any long-duration (decades, hopefully) power-source cheap enough to subsume in the cost of a low berth or even of multiple low berths?

In my setting I use energy cells based upon superconductor loops (I
hope that is an understandable translation). They are mass-produced
standard items and not expensive, and in most of the cases where a
low berth is "stranded in space" there is not much energy needed to
cool it - space does that pretty well, I think.

 

[Myrm]

Perhaps low berth risks are the hi-tech version of shoals and storms.

I would argue that misjumps are the equivalent of those.

Low Berth death would be more like dying of scurvy (or some other fatal early-Age-of-Sail disease). But while AoS analogies may be fine for some things (like travel time), I think it's taking a bit too far here.

Quite possibly they did go sticking too much to the Age of Sail model. I just was trying to put over that Age of Sail people could reasonably expect they might die for a number of reasons disease, technology failure, poor navigation etc and still they did it. So a low berth risk taker is not inconceivable for the right motivation. Armies of 1000s of low berth liners would seem a bit weird to me, a small low berth freighter catering to the poor, destitute and desperate seems a bit more likely. Add in some of the previously discussed modifiers like a competent medic, and routine tasks and its less of the flip a coin death ride.

I guess Im trying to say rather than considering simply that there is a risk for low berths and thats bad we should consider the risks in context and define how risky a low berth should be to be believable.

 

[rust]

I guess Im trying to say rather than considering simply that there is a risk for low berths and thats bad we should consider the risks in context and define how risky a low berth should be to be believable.

The answer I use in my setting would be: Moderate risk of short-term da-
mage, very low risk of long-term damage, negligible risk of death (less
than 1 in 100,000).

Transporting an army division in cold sleep should cause no more casual-
ties than other kinds of transporting it (e.g., an occasional freak accident).

 

[JF Baston]

Wow, Tx for the answers guys!

I love Golan2072 method, remind me of Space Opera Coldsleep.

But is there any regulation about skill of Medic?
Could legaly a Free trader buy a batch of low berth and let them operate in auto mode?
Or must he have a certified medic aboard (i.e. Medic 0 minimum)?

Looks like Sleepships (colony ships, troop ships, etc.) would have a sickbay, autotdoc an a medical squad ready for complication in defrost.

But what about clandestine emmigration? I'm thinking space "boat people" here. They will use low berth, really economic, no risk with angry/difficult passagers. But will they have medic team for defrost?

And a last thing, in Space Opera, Star Atlas 11 (Hi Phil! :wink: ) the Korellian Imperium have FIXED by law low berth death ratea t at 10% (instead of 1% complication witch can be fatal) for discouraging POOR travellers.
Is it possible that the Imperium want a big low berth death rate?
If poor and oppressed people can't flee their planet, except the more desesperate or the more couragous, then isn't a stability factor?

 

[Myrm]

As I already mentioned in an earlier thread:
Just think of setting up a new colony with 50,000 colonists arriving in cold
sleep and a low berth fatality rate of only 1 %, which would lead to 500
colonists "dead on arrival", and the first construction on the colonists' new
home world being a mass grave.

In my view something like this would be bizarre

Hmmm. Well the Mayflower lost half its personnel by the end of the first overwinter on the coast of the USA. OK they had completed the voyage but they still lived on the ships, and the disease outbreaks they suffered could have struck at any time - so thats significant losses on a new colony...although probably thats a reasonable description of catastrophic losses.

As to 500 dead people on the ship - well if the ship can land you could just re-freeze the dead or cremate them, if its in space, then burial in space is an option. Neither of which divert too many resources from a new colony.

More relevant and reasonable an example is the First Fleet to Australia, which took 1500 people and lost 50 dead on the way - a 3% loss. Now my knowledge of the time is a little scanty but thats to my knowledge considered good. This suggests an expectation of potential death existed.

OK these are Age of Sail so its different technology and different failures of technology, but the new advanced technology may simply be needed to face the new advanced dangers of interstellar colonisation and have their own issues with technical failure - so Id suggest its not unreasonable to posit that hi-tech colonisation might have a similar set of deathrates (as provided by low berths) albeit their losses are from different issues faced by early colonists in our real history.

If you prefer a cleaner view of hi-technology, or the low berths problem is not a techological failure you want, and the old issues of disease etc are dispensed with by better tech, then just ditch the low berth rolls. Go with what works for you.

 

[Myrm]

Transporting an army division in cold sleep should cause no more casual-
ties than other kinds of transporting it (e.g., an occasional freak accident).

Well you add in graded damage to your fail rolls - which frankly seems like a good idea to me - its likely I'd do that rather than fail=dead in my campaign, it seems more real to me.

To the military - they'll have good medics present if that is cheaper than buying good kit - if you use the right modifiers then transporting those troops does become pretty trivial even under the basic system. +3 medics, troops with good END, careful procedures (ie taking time), and routine or easy operations and losses will be tiny. So long as its below the level of losses from misjumps

 

[Ishvar]

Wow, Tx for the answers guys!

But what about clandestine emmigration? I'm thinking space "boat people" here. They will use low berth, really economic, no risk with angry/difficult passagers. But will they have medic team for defrost?

I don't think that there can be a hard and fast rule for that one.

Think about your NPCs :

Do you want your criminals to be of the "petty and unscrupulous" kind? Why bother then with a medic with whom you will have to share a part of the profit, hu?

Do you want those criminals to have a line they have decided not to cross ? These ones would perhaps have at least someone with a basic Medic skill.

In both cases ask yourself why and what is the best for the story.

IMO, there should be some imperial regulations about passenger transport and low berths.

But as Myrm said it already : Go with what works for you. This is always the best solution.