New players had an intersting lesson...

[F33D]

Your idea above might work better if its part of an asteroid belt or something that's already there so would register as normal to a ship's sensors automated or not.

So are there any other sub plots involved?

Yes, belts make for better cover. This is just some some sandbox sessions to bring them up to speed on Trav.


Having them find the "holes in the fences" themselves is usually faster than feeding them reams of data about the game mechanics. Especially for these particular players who unfortunately were inflicted with a modern education...

 

[simonh]

Sounds like a fungame, it's a great way to get the feel of the setting. It seems like your striking a good ballance between allowing a bit of leeway with strict reality while ensuring things are grounded in common sense.

To be honest, a perfectly valid approach is to just ask the navigator to make a skill roll to see if they come up with a way to match velocities with a suitable target, and have the pilot make a skill roll to get close without spooking them. The basic physics can be used as context without necessarily getting in the way too much. This is the great thing about RPGs, the characters know more than the players do about this stuff, so let them solve the routine administrative stuff like plotting courses.

The ship is crossing space at a right angle at mid-point. With a digital camera I bought yesterday I could spot the ship leaving orbit at that range.

I think you're being a bit optimistic. Let's say it's 25 MP with a square field of view, so 5k pixels on each side of the image. Let's say you attach it to a telescope. The orriginating planet is earth sized, so including a bit of LEO the image of the world and near space is around 14,000 km across. Each pixel is 2.8 km across. Actually that's not bad, I was expecting much more.

Let's say you need 10m resolution to pick up a ship (2 to 4 pixels across for small ships). you would need to up the linear resolution by 280x. The total image size would need to be 1.96 Terrapixels. I suppose you could do composite imaging, but you'd probably not want to go below multi-gigapixel resolution per tile.

Once the mine blows though, assuming it disables the ship you still need to match velocities with the it. Presumably now it's going to fly by the destination world. That means you will need to fly by the destination world as well. If there are cops there, that might not be a good idea.

Simon Hibbs

Edit - I think a simpler approach is to just check the flight plans for a suitable traget and 'happen' to file similar plans. Plot and fly a course that doesn't bring you very close to the target, until your well away from the orriginating planet, then converge courses and do your piratical type stuff.

A similar option would be to leave the orriginating planet early, then after the trader has taken off claim engine trouble and stop accelerating. Let them catch up, then 'fix' the engine and converge courses.

 

[locarno24]

I have a suggestion, gas giants often have rings, a pirate ship could hide within the rings of a gas giant, they are said to be 100 meters thick. It should be safe to hide in a gas giants rings, the ring particles are all moving in the same direction in circular orbits around the planet, the relative velocity between them and them and the pirate ship shouldn't be that great. The ring particles would bounce off the hull of the pirate ship just like hail in a hail storm, it shouldn't be too much trouble. If they are inside the rings, their potential victims wouldn't see them when they went to refuel at the gas giant. Perhaps they could refuel in the rings themselves if the ring particles are made of ice.

Yes, anything which is a complex environment supports hiding far better than lurking in deep space - where you're a single hot 'blip' on IR sensors. Ring systems, gas giant upper atmospheres, hell, just park on a convenient uninhabited moon. The problem is catching someone - because not everyone necessarily visits a gas giant - on a 1-2G civilian ship, a mainworld-to-gas-giant trip can easily take several days, plus an additional day or more for the fuelling 'dive' and fuel processor running time - yes, paying for refined fuel is annoying but it can save you a week - which means that by the time the 'skinflint' is ready to jump, you've already dropped out of jump at the other end and collected the paycheck for that cargo.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I have a suggestion, gas giants often have rings, a pirate ship could hide within the rings of a gas giant, they are said to be 100 meters thick. It should be safe to hide in a gas giants rings, the ring particles are all moving in the same direction in circular orbits around the planet, the relative velocity between them and them and the pirate ship shouldn't be that great. The ring particles would bounce off the hull of the pirate ship just like hail in a hail storm, it shouldn't be too much trouble. If they are inside the rings, their potential victims wouldn't see them when they went to refuel at the gas giant. Perhaps they could refuel in the rings themselves if the ring particles are made of ice.

Yes, anything which is a complex environment supports hiding far better than lurking in deep space - where you're a single hot 'blip' on IR sensors. Ring systems, gas giant upper atmospheres, hell, just park on a convenient uninhabited moon. The problem is catching someone - because not everyone necessarily visits a gas giant - on a 1-2G civilian ship, a mainworld-to-gas-giant trip can easily take several days, plus an additional day or more for the fuelling 'dive' and fuel processor running time - yes, paying for refined fuel is annoying but it can save you a week - which means that by the time the 'skinflint' is ready to jump, you've already dropped out of jump at the other end and collected the paycheck for that cargo.

Unless of course the mainworld is orbiting the Gas Giant, such as the case in Regina

 

[F33D]

Sounds like a fungame, it's a great way to get the feel of the setting. It seems like your striking a good ballance between allowing a bit of leeway with strict reality while ensuring things are grounded in common sense.

To be honest, a perfectly valid approach is to just ask the navigator to make a skill roll to see if they come up with a way to match velocities with a suitable target, and have the pilot make a skill roll to get close without spooking them. The basic physics can be used as context without necessarily getting in the way too much. This is the great thing about RPGs, the characters know more than the players do about this stuff, so let them solve the routine administrative stuff like plotting courses.

The ship is crossing space at a right angle at mid-point. With a digital camera I bought yesterday I could spot the ship leaving orbit at that range.

I think you're being a bit optimistic. Let's say it's 25 MP with a square field of view, so 5k pixels on each side of the image. Let's say you attach it to a telescope. The orriginating planet is earth sized, so including a bit of LEO the image of the world and near space is around 14,000 km across. Each pixel is 2.8 km across. Actually that's not bad, I was expecting much more.

Let's say you need 10m resolution to pick up a ship (2 to 4 pixels across for small ships). you would need to up the linear resolution by 280x. The total image size would need to be 1.96 Terrapixels. I suppose you could do composite imaging, but you'd probably not want to go below multi-gigapixel resolution per tile.

Once the mine blows though, assuming it disables the ship you still need to match velocities with the it. Presumably now it's going to fly by the destination world. That means you will need to fly by the destination world as well. If there are cops there, that might not be a good idea.

Simon Hibbs

Edit - I think a simpler approach is to just check the flight plans for a suitable traget and 'happen' to file similar plans. Plot and fly a course that doesn't bring you very close to the target, until your well away from the orriginating planet, then converge courses and do your piratical type stuff.

A similar option would be to leave the orriginating planet early, then after the trader has taken off claim engine trouble and stop accelerating. Let them catch up, then 'fix' the engine and converge courses.

Yes, doing the, "we happen to be going the same way" thing is the best way to go.

The camera data I gave is actually ~7-8 yrs old. I found it on a site a while ago. My son had it side checked by a friend he works with at JPL who is a scientist on their deep space probe pjts. You can probably still find the material here: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/ Granted, Trav ships will have detectors that are FAR more sensitive than TL 7 equipment a person can buy at the local electronics shop unless they are using the lowest set in the rule book I believe.

 

[Hopeless]

How much detail did you go into designing your game's star system?

Just a thought but how about they encounter a rogue moon sized planetoid with a (barely) working base.
Landing and getting inside find it was abandoned maybe a century ago after a freak munitions disposal storage area ignited on the far side propelling it out of orbit of your second world.

Why hasn't anything been said about this place?

What happened to the survivors?

More importantly why is it now on an orbital plot between both inhabited worlds and pretty much ignored by the navy?

This and more are questions you and your group can answer, but for that to happen you need to play!

 

[F33D]

How much detail did you go into designing your game's star system?

Just a thought but how about they encounter a rogue moon sized planetoid with a (barely) working base.
Landing and getting inside find it was abandoned maybe a century ago after a freak munitions disposal storage area ignited on the far side propelling it out of orbit of your second world.

Why hasn't anything been said about this place?

What happened to the survivors?

More importantly why is it now on an orbital plot between both inhabited worlds and pretty much ignored by the navy?

This and more are questions you and your group can answer, but for that to happen you need to play!

Sounds cool. I just threw this system together as a small sandbox for the players to learn the Trav rule set in. It's a throw away. I can add this in with no discontinuity.

 

[alex_greene]

A good point was made here. Ships in space travel at speed. Very rapid speed.

A mine, or even an inconvenient cloud of sand, in the way is going to hit that ship as if it were the obstacle, not the ship, that was travelling at speed.

That would count as a Collision! event for the moving ship, and if it struck in the wrong place - such as, oh, the Bridge - the ship would be wrecked by the collision, and possibly a very rapidly moving obstacle that may even still be accelerating, depending on where the obstacle and the ship collide (namely, before, during or after turnaround).

The aim of piracy is to snatch the other guy's cargo. Not to obliterate the ship, or render it impossible to actually catch.

So just lurking in space waiting for the ship, with or without the optional minefield, is counterproductive. Pirates need to attack ships where they are vulnerable and comparatively slow - which means either catching them at the start or end of their journeys, or alternatively forcing them to break their journeys somehow to enter a baited trap.

Another alternative would be to hijack the ship, which carries its own risks.

But the best alternative would have to be to hack the delivery codes on the cargo containers, such that when they are offloaded they are automatically sent on straight to the players' pirate ship, which will be sitting there in the port with its cargo bays wide open.

Technology. Wonderful when you get it to work for you.

 

[dragoner]

As ref I'd probably make it range close or adjacent, pilot check plus using a reaction and a thrust number. Longer distances the ship's anti-collision programming would take care of it.

 

[Bense]

Someone already mentioned that hitting a mine near turnover probably won't leave much of a ship left to rob. I second that notion.

Depending on how a Jump Drive really works you might be able to predict where someone is going to jump out of a system. Some earlier versions of Traveller described a "residual vector" when jumping - that is, your ship keeps it's velocity when it jumps. If that's how it works, then there are predictable jump points at the 100d limit of any mainworld - because those will be the most economic places to jump to a different system such that your "residual vector" will get you to the next mainworld in the most efficient manner. You can predict incoming jump points in the same way. Just pick a likely origin and plot out where a 1G merchant is most likely to jump from and to.
A pirate could hang out at the most likely points, and bushwhack a likely target when it appears. They won't be able to linger too long, or it will look too suspicious, but it might work.

 

[Hopeless]

Some kind of emp or virus in the computer system activated by the disguised transmitter?

Can see a ship head for a supposed safe harbour if it detects one rather than stay out in the open if its radio along with jump drive are disabled.

What if your PC ship finds itself remotely controlled into docking with an asteroid base only to discover its a mothballed base and rather than a pirate base its actually diverting towards such disabled craft to help them rather than pirate them having been long forgotten since you don't normally have ships left disabled and helpless at this part of the system?

How would your players react to finding a Fort Anaxes to use a Star Wars Rebels example?

 

[alex_greene]

I've been assuming that the velocity of the ship - its speed and vector - are going to be the same entering and leaving jump, and that part of the preparations to enter Jump involve the ship approaching the 100D limit, making its final Astrogation calculations, altering its heading and accelerating in the direction it needs to go, then activating the Jump drive as it reaches the appropriate speed.

It seems to me that the best course of action is to nobble the Jump drive somehow.

The ship activates its drive; nothing happens; the ship just becomes a high velocity sitting duck. Then the pirate, which had been stalking the ship using its ECM to appear like a sensor echo, begins its approach.

It doesn't have to be gun ports open and blazing either. Not unless the other ship is armed and tries to take pot shots at it, in which case the pirate ship had better have pretty sharp shooters because the first thing to do would be to take out those weapons.

Or just a quiet word over the comms - "Let's be civilised about this. Just let us take your cargo of medicines and rare woods, and those luxury items, and you can be on your way with almost all of your radioactives. You take a small hit on your profits, and we'll be on our way."

You'd be surprised what cargos pirates find valuable.

 

[alex_greene]

I had an interesting scenario once. The PCs were crew pressed into service on a pirate ship after they'd been captured by them (they'd picked a fight with the ship, their ship had lost and they'd been picked up in a lifeboat). The corsair was attacking a subbie, and it really did not want to start a shooting war.

The reason was that the subbie was a slaver, and its hold was just crammed with low berth cryo tubes stuffed with slaves. And one of the slaves was the pirate captain's daughter.

Sometimes, coming in with guns blazing really is not the way to go when you're off a-pirating.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I've been assuming that the velocity of the ship - its speed and vector - are going to be the same entering and leaving jump

That's how I role.

 

[alex_greene]

You know whom nobody ever notices? Maintenance crew.

Your ship docks, the Shipmaster comes out, pays the docking fees, signs off on the monthly maintenance check, swans off with the crew on their adventure, and the maint crew go in and fix what needs fixing.

Legit maint crew employees who are also employed by the pirates could be their best asset - they could attach something to the Jump drive, install a virus in the computer, put something in the atmo to knock out the crew just before they begin the process of entering Jump ... It's all a matter of timing. Incapacitate the ship at just the right time, and your corsair need not so much as charge up a single pulse laser turret.

If the maint crew do a good, solid, legitimate job of the rest of the repairs, the crew of the target ship might not even notice, unless they have a Security contingent half awake that takes the time to perform security sweeps of the ship to check for things that should not be there - or missing components that should ...

Imagine the pirate Shipmaster as the Patron, and the Travellers being assigned the infiltration mission as maint crew to sabotage something like a classy Starliner or behemoth of a Megacorp cargo vessel. If they do it right, they could take the big ship with an unarmed 200 ton Free Trader.

 

[Reynard]

All very possible in adventure situations, movies and even, much, much less commonly, in real life. I would have little pity for a ship maintenance yard explaining to the authorities about their poor applicant screening policy.

 

[AdrianH]

In real life:
UK Airport security alarm
US airport security overhaul after secret tests reveal lapses

So it's not that far fetched for someone to find an unauthorised way onto a starship. Especially if the starport in question is on some backwater world and not the 3rd Imperium's equivalent of Heathrow.

 

[Reynard]

If a crew of a starship see the port looks like Jeb's repair shop and bait house and think that's fine, they have only themselves to blame.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[alex_greene]

That's what Type C and D Starports are there for.