So I bought traveller to my play group the other day, and said I wanted to run *something* that wasnt another high fantasy romp through DnD. And they agreed. After some discussion, my group agreed that they'd like to do something like voyager or lost in space. However, I couldn't really find rules for resupplying and things like food and materials consumption in the rules. Am I just missing this information, or are there decent house rules available?
Need some help with houseruling some things
- Thread starter kaleotter
- Start date
What are you looking for? Costs associated with living per week? How much tonnage of food/water is consumer per week by a person?
Materials consumption is not covered in any rule that I'm aware of. The core rulebook has costs associated with living per week. The amount you pay in life support costs has basic food/water built into it.
Materials consumption is not covered in any rule that I'm aware of. The core rulebook has costs associated with living per week. The amount you pay in life support costs has basic food/water built into it.
G:T had the cost and tonnages for provisions and though I don't have those precise numbers committed to memory, I do recall that it was trivial: something on the order of 100+ man-weeks fitting into one dton. As for resupply in the Wild, you probably want to look at the task descriptions for the Survival skill ie how many people you can feed for how long with x effect; assign four or five skilled crew to the task and they can probably provision the ship during the time that the technical crew is refining fuel, charging the LiOH canisters, etc.
CosmicGamer
Mongoose
First, how much detail do you want to put into this. Measuring out the daily nutritional needs of each crew member... We have plenty of protein but no fruits, how are our veggies? Got milk?kaleotter said:
Or do you just want a basic glossing over - but still important. We have 1 day of supplies left for the crew and just took on another weeks worth. That gives us 11 days of supplies.
Same goes for storage. How much detail is needed? I'd say that supplies for normal operation can be stored in the food dispensers and common area storage and don't take up any cargo space.
Normal operation might be a resupply once a month as per the life support rules.
Perhaps normal operation for some people might be based on the specs on the standard ship, like: One jump and 2 weeks of operation.
Basic superficail handling of costs might be just using the rules as is for life support:
So 500cr/week of supplies.
Additional storage, as others indicated, might be minimal enough to not worry about. This, obviously, can vary based on the source. Got a heard of cow you slaughter as needed vs dehydrated scout rations.
Second, how important is the role playing of supplies and storage vs other adventures planned? Lots of possibilities that some might enjoy, others not so much. Crates of supplies in the passageway and other spaces (been there done that on a real life Navy ship and when on a six day sailboat trip). Playing out keeping cows and chickens in the cargo bay because there isn't enough cold storage? Are they hunting and gathering supplies or just buying them?
I'm thinking of keeping the whole thing pretty abstract, Just so that we don't have to deal with the ins and outs of working out the Dietary needs of the crew, but just so we can know how much we have when and if it becomes important (if the crew spend a long period of time where they cant get resupply from people they meet).
I did just get done statting a ship out for the adventure, It needs tweaking for its role a little, but I imagined it as a fairly capable salvage ship, initially designed to bring wreckage back to a breakers yard from remote sites, but with the capacity to perform rescue operations as well:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Oo8Y4oKezdr5176MtdzwDosBvHLWz_BQTGDY9oDljUk/edit?usp=sharing
I did just get done statting a ship out for the adventure, It needs tweaking for its role a little, but I imagined it as a fairly capable salvage ship, initially designed to bring wreckage back to a breakers yard from remote sites, but with the capacity to perform rescue operations as well:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Oo8Y4oKezdr5176MtdzwDosBvHLWz_BQTGDY9oDljUk/edit?usp=sharing
CosmicGamer
Mongoose
Don't know how necessary, but you might need to think up the details for a shortage. Ok, we have 6 days of supplies but it will be one week in jump and two days travel time to our next destination. That's 3 days full rations and 6 days half rations. How does half rations, or even starvation effect the crew over time? Similiar to fatigue - DM to skill checks until back on full rations? How quickly does one recover? Does ones endurance have a factor?
I'd think some of this is detailed somewhere, perhaps in a former Traveller survival adventure?
I'd think some of this is detailed somewhere, perhaps in a former Traveller survival adventure?
DickTurpin
Banded Mongoose
That looks like a pretty good ship design. There are a few adjustments needed and I have a couple suggestions as well.
I don't know what tech level the ship is but if it is at least TL 10 I would recommend using Crystaliron armor instead of Titanium Steel. It would cost MCr. 4.8 more but free up 30 tons of cargo space.
Power Plant F would suffice, it would free up 3 tons and MCr. 8.
I would expect that you would need to upgrade to Jump Control/2 (Warp Control?) to get full performance out of the warp drive when not carrying a docked ship.
Do you really need 16 crew staterooms? Each one you can reduce saves 4 tons and MCr. 0.5.
Weapons: by my calculations hard point #3 should be 1 ton and MCr. 1, HP #4 1 ton and MCr. 2.5.
Using three fuel processors instead of one will decrease fuel processing from 6 days to 2 days.
Remember that when the warp drive is active fuel is burned at double the normal rate. For a full ten weeks of warp travel you would need 140 tons of fuel (or 120 if you go with PP F). You also need to allocate storage for sand barrels and missiles. Those can go in the cargo bay but it is far more efficient to have them located adjacent to the weapons.
Now for my main suggestion: Building the ship on a 500 ton hull, with Crystaliron armor, will allow you to use E drives and reduce fuel usage for the same performance. It will reduce your cargo capacity by almost half, but save nearly MCr. 45 in construction costs. Reducing the number of staterooms or going with 50 tons of fuel instead of 100 tons will nearly eliminate the cargo hold reduction while saving even more money. Trust me, keeping a cargo hold larger than 100 tons filled with decent paying cargo is a daunting task, I doubt that the reduced capacity will have much effect on monthly income.
I don't know what tech level the ship is but if it is at least TL 10 I would recommend using Crystaliron armor instead of Titanium Steel. It would cost MCr. 4.8 more but free up 30 tons of cargo space.
Power Plant F would suffice, it would free up 3 tons and MCr. 8.
I would expect that you would need to upgrade to Jump Control/2 (Warp Control?) to get full performance out of the warp drive when not carrying a docked ship.
Do you really need 16 crew staterooms? Each one you can reduce saves 4 tons and MCr. 0.5.
Weapons: by my calculations hard point #3 should be 1 ton and MCr. 1, HP #4 1 ton and MCr. 2.5.
Using three fuel processors instead of one will decrease fuel processing from 6 days to 2 days.
Remember that when the warp drive is active fuel is burned at double the normal rate. For a full ten weeks of warp travel you would need 140 tons of fuel (or 120 if you go with PP F). You also need to allocate storage for sand barrels and missiles. Those can go in the cargo bay but it is far more efficient to have them located adjacent to the weapons.
Now for my main suggestion: Building the ship on a 500 ton hull, with Crystaliron armor, will allow you to use E drives and reduce fuel usage for the same performance. It will reduce your cargo capacity by almost half, but save nearly MCr. 45 in construction costs. Reducing the number of staterooms or going with 50 tons of fuel instead of 100 tons will nearly eliminate the cargo hold reduction while saving even more money. Trust me, keeping a cargo hold larger than 100 tons filled with decent paying cargo is a daunting task, I doubt that the reduced capacity will have much effect on monthly income.
nats
Banded Mongoose
Regarding world survival etc some of the old adventures might have the information you need, for example the Classic traveller adventure Marooned covers world survival and there are old supplements that you can often find on Ebay like Mountain Environment and Desert Environment that will also have good info. Perhaps also adventures like Leviathan might provide some good ideas for a Lost in Space type theme. You can get all the Classic traveller books on CD from Far Future as well as in print from Ebay.
Also survival is covered in Mongoose Scout expansion book and maybe covered in the new incoming Adventure 4 as well (dont know).
And as others have said the normal on board ship activities are covered in the core rulebook. But you might need to prepare a list if these things are going to be repeated daily in detail. But Traveller is better when more about adventure and excitement than just the matter of living from day to day. If you treat the game like Star Trek where you forget a bit about the routine day to day stuff and concentrate on the exciting out of the ordinary stuff you cant go far wrong. Players wont be enthralled by working out every day how much food they have used and have left but more want to know what is that new ship that has just appeared on the scanner.
Maybe Stargate Universe could also be a good basis for the sort of adventures they could have as well where the campaign is one of continuing episodes and each episode is a new weeks' jump which may require sussing out some important supplies, visiting a new planet or meeting another ship etc. So rather than going through the routine stuff every time just present them with the situation for the session and let them take it from there. Then sum up at the end of the session as to how the fuel and supplies issue is. Could provide for tricky situations where the expensive ammo starts running out and the players have to resort to using old weapons or blades if they cant find high tech worlds that can supply them. Trading and bartering on alien worlds could also play an important role in such a game - see Merchant Prince & Scoundrel books for that.
Also survival is covered in Mongoose Scout expansion book and maybe covered in the new incoming Adventure 4 as well (dont know).
And as others have said the normal on board ship activities are covered in the core rulebook. But you might need to prepare a list if these things are going to be repeated daily in detail. But Traveller is better when more about adventure and excitement than just the matter of living from day to day. If you treat the game like Star Trek where you forget a bit about the routine day to day stuff and concentrate on the exciting out of the ordinary stuff you cant go far wrong. Players wont be enthralled by working out every day how much food they have used and have left but more want to know what is that new ship that has just appeared on the scanner.
Maybe Stargate Universe could also be a good basis for the sort of adventures they could have as well where the campaign is one of continuing episodes and each episode is a new weeks' jump which may require sussing out some important supplies, visiting a new planet or meeting another ship etc. So rather than going through the routine stuff every time just present them with the situation for the session and let them take it from there. Then sum up at the end of the session as to how the fuel and supplies issue is. Could provide for tricky situations where the expensive ammo starts running out and the players have to resort to using old weapons or blades if they cant find high tech worlds that can supply them. Trading and bartering on alien worlds could also play an important role in such a game - see Merchant Prince & Scoundrel books for that.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
Voyager and Lost in Space don't go into specifics about where food comes from.
DickTurpin said:
10 weeks operation is not the same as 10 weeks travel. It would probably have been better to word that as 10 weeks system operation. I went with a large crew capacity as the vehicle was intended more for salvage companies requiring a full crew, or a small mercenary outfit looking for a boarding cutter, and even sees some military usage as a post battle rescue and recovery vessel I could re-designate the top pod (currently the passengers quarters) as mostly modular cargo space.
When I picked the tonnage, I wanted a vessel that had room for expansion. Its quite possible that the party could be picking up vehicles, drones and other pieces of technology along the way . Perhaps I should make it smaller, but I really don't want to leave the PC's with minimal crew in a situation where they may be unlikely to recover losses, especially if a PC dies, which could be likely, given that we're all quite new to the system.
DickTurpin
Banded Mongoose
kaleotter said:
OK, the ship as designed does allow for a great deal of flexibility and designating the passenger deck as modular space increases that flexibility even more. Given your requirements for the ship, I have only a couple other suggestions:
Designating a portion of the cargo bay as modular will allow the maximum mission-specific convertibility. Salvage or Repair missions could have workshops, Barracks could be installed for use as a troop transport, Laboratories could turn it into a exploration/research vessel, Medical facilities could turn it into a hospital ship, including one of the hard points in the modular section could even allow the installation of a bay weapon if some serious firepower is ever needed; the possibilities are nearly endless.
My final suggestion is to have a bulkhead with a security door dividing the crew staterooms area when you draw the deck plans. That will give the option of carrying additional passengers if needed. They can also be used to separate flight crew from marines when used as a military ship. It adds additional security and flexibility with no additional cost, so there is no downside.
I had found this on a previous data sniffing expedition. I don't recall if I tweaked this any or not:
Living Expenses
Standard of Living Cost per month
Very poor (Soc-2) Cr 400
Poor (Soc-4) Cr 800
Low (Soc-5) Cr 1,000
Average (Soc-6) Cr 1,200
Good (Soc-7) Cr 1,500
High (Soc-8) Cr 2,000
Very High (Soc-10) Cr 2,500
Rich (Soc-12) Cr 5,000
Very Rich (Soc-14) Cr 12,000
Ludicrously Rich (Soc-15) Cr 20,000
Living expenses assume housing, food, and clothing at basic levels. Obviously ship-board costs would remove the housing aspect and replace it with life-support costs. But it should provide you with a baseline idea.
Example Hotel Costs
Cheap – Cr 10/day
Good – Cr 50/day
Luxury – Cr 100/day (or more)
Living Expenses
Standard of Living Cost per month
Very poor (Soc-2) Cr 400
Poor (Soc-4) Cr 800
Low (Soc-5) Cr 1,000
Average (Soc-6) Cr 1,200
Good (Soc-7) Cr 1,500
High (Soc-8) Cr 2,000
Very High (Soc-10) Cr 2,500
Rich (Soc-12) Cr 5,000
Very Rich (Soc-14) Cr 12,000
Ludicrously Rich (Soc-15) Cr 20,000
Living expenses assume housing, food, and clothing at basic levels. Obviously ship-board costs would remove the housing aspect and replace it with life-support costs. But it should provide you with a baseline idea.
Example Hotel Costs
Cheap – Cr 10/day
Good – Cr 50/day
Luxury – Cr 100/day (or more)
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
You could probably survive on some cheap soyabean derivative packed with vitamins and minerals, but would you want to?
So i rejiggered the ship into a 500 ton hull, which makes the design make a little more sense, and made one or two other small changes. One thing about mongoose traveller that irks me is that there is no system in the game for generating solar systems, just system mainworlds. I looked into traveller 5, and found that system nice and detailed, but simply takes a little too much time to work with. Are there any other decent system creation options in other editions of traveller?
Balfuset790
Mongoose
To a point Book 3: Scout has a system generation method. It generates the number of orbits around a Star and works to place Mainworld and Gas Giants... beyond that it's pretty easy to fill in the blanks by jsut generating a few planets and ignoring things like the Starport class and the like. 
Balfuset790 said:To a point Book 3: Scout has a system generation method. It generates the number of orbits around a Star and works to place Mainworld and Gas Giants... beyond that it's pretty easy to fill in the blanks by jsut generating a few planets and ignoring things like the Starport class and the like.
Oh good. Getting tired with just how fiddly Traveller 5 is. Could be a good system under all of that terrible layout, but I don't have the patience for it.
Balfuset790
Mongoose
kaleotter said:Balfuset790 said:To a point Book 3: Scout has a system generation method. It generates the number of orbits around a Star and works to place Mainworld and Gas Giants... beyond that it's pretty easy to fill in the blanks by jsut generating a few planets and ignoring things like the Starport class and the like.
Oh good. Getting tired with just how fiddly Traveller 5 is. Could be a good system under all of that terrible layout, but I don't have the patience for it.
T5 was a glorious train wreck of a book in my opinion.
As a mathematician I enjoyed reading through the initial few pages, as it read very much like a textbook... then I remembered I was supposed to be reading an RPG rulebook and just put it down in despair.
