Organic ships?

[That Blasted Samophlange]

Okay, I'm new to Traveller, but I found a copy cheap picked it up and loved it. Suffice to say, I'm planning on running a game, but taking place in a far flung almost unexplored section of the galaxy - mainly so I can keep my homebrew alien races and such, but have the structure of a pre-established setting. After all, the galaxy is a big place.

Most of the conversions have been pretty easy, but I do have a race that has organic ships - actually, to give a bit of a background, the organic ships are actually the 'adults' of a plant based race I call the Vincondi. As they age, they get larger, to the point that they grow into a ship that can, literally, 'seed' new colonies.

While, I think this is an interesting idea, at least from my own perspective, I am having trouble on how to incorporate this race to Traveller. Perhaps someone can give me some ideas on how to proceed.

 

[BP]

Great that you found Traveller!

As to your Vincondi - as a race they may fit into traveller stats when young - when aged to 'ships' you probably want to consider what aspects of Traveller starships apply - i.e. are they jump capable or do they have their own form of superluminal methods of transportation (Core has a brief bit about Warp drives, etc.). What natural/additional armour equivalency do they have? Maneuver equivalent to gravitic maneuver drives or not? Their native defenses could match the specs of existing weapons/black globe/etc. What feeds them - solar winds, hydrogen, etc?

They obviously won't match existing design systems - but I think if you make equivalencies you can use the bulk of the rules (for combat, etc.). I'd ditch the volume/cost requirements obviously, but try to mesh with performance, range of existing elements where possible.

You may also want to consider how they communicate - psionics, radio wave, etc. and sense their surroundings in reference to comparable existing rules. And give them certain skills and skill levels automatically as they 'mature' (assuming they are sentient I wouldn't equate them with computers). Jump and maneuver and 'weapons' power might also be adjusted with age.

If you attempt to match the rules this way you'll easily maintain balance and can make exceptions as desired.

High Guard and Scouts and Psion may come in handy - also Flynn's guide to aliens (hope I got that close - there are several posts about this - maybe he'll pipe in here) might come in useful.

 

[That Blasted Samophlange]

I guess I was a little vague with the info.

Basically the race starts off as a roughly human sized (though non humanoid) plant after so many years, this is still up in the air, they have the ability to become a 'vessel' of sorts. This is not something every Vincondi does, (just so a player isn't forced out of their character) not to mention the vincondi that become ships in essence lose their sentience. They become akin to animal intelligence, but do sometimes retain small personality quirks.

Technologically wise, I always had them use organic solar sails - picture a plant opening it petals to catch solar wind. However, with traveller I was thinking of using one of the other drive types for the ship warp drive being the most likely. This leads to conflict with races that wish to enslave 'elder vincondi' or study them to create new technology - something the vincondi don't particularly like.

Now, with the ship construction rules, I can make an elder vincondi ship, built the same way as other ships, with a few changes here and there, but the ships are different as they are organic for instance the ship would heal naturally, is this just an analogue to repair drones? For starters, this works, but I do want the ships to have a different 'feel'.

As for communication, with other races, they'd have to have an area on the ship for non-organic technology, such as communication devices. The larger Vincondi ships generally house large numbers of the 'children' of the species making them similar to generational ships. Communication between Vincondi Ships naturally is either through signaling (the ship changes colours/patterns) or by shuttling people over from ship to ship. Long range communication would only be accomplished with 'alien' technology.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Use the rules, especially High Guard, to set the parameters, statistics etc. Your descriptions are the differences.

For example:
HG lets you have Distributed Array Sensors. Give these to your Vincondi, but describe them as cilia located along the skin that wave in the solar winds and change color depending on what type of star they are getting light from. Functionally, they give all the benefits of a Distributed Array.

The Skin of the ship is the hull. Make is Self-Sealing and it gets that "healing" ability due to "sap" filling the hole in the skin. Repair Drones represent the ship's ability to heal as well, in the longer term. Instead of Drones though, the tonnage represents a distributed system of regeneration nodes or nutrient reserves for regrowing damaged systems.

Just some thoughts.

 

[BP]

Samophlange,

Like the 'solar sail petals' - High Guard supports them (pg 43) - though they are useless in combat and are considered sluggish.

If you go with gavitics (natural gravity control) you can match Traveller well and provide internal gravity for the occupants.