Search and Rescue

[Tawny Owl]

Hi,
I'm new to Traveller so please excuse me if this is a silly question.
I am reading Marches adventure 3 Search and Rescue.
I don't understand how the Amishi or the Garis-Class Rescue Vessel can enter the Gorram atmosphere.
And if not how did the sight seeing tour take place and how do the travellers get to the planet to rescue the survivors?

Thanks

 

[shirgall]

You are right to question this, but the Amaris was not supposed to land in a thick atmosphere and I always assumed it crashed because of the plot points in the adventure.

Neither hull is streamlined for atmospheric operations, but the Amishi is supposed to carry a launch for such things. The rescue vessel has nothing bigger than advanced probes. I thought it was weird that the rescue vessel did not have any vehicles or small craft as something like a tow truck would be critical for such a mission.

 

[Tawny Owl]

So the rescue mission is impossible as written?

 

[shirgall]

Not impossible, you can land anything once. It's taking off again that gets creative. From the Core Rulebook:



I hate constant checks, so I prefer to do one check with one set of DMs until something significantly changes in the environment, but every Referee plays it differently.

 

[hopsnbaer]

The rescue ship has a Forced Linkage, which can tow other ships. They make pilot checks at a minus in atmo as shown above. It also has a second bridge for the remote piloting of other vessels. I am not sure this was intentional, but being partially unstreamlined makes piloting checks for doing things like dragging the liner onto land so it can't sink, out to sea, and dropping it in a trench, or carrying it back to orbit difficult decisions, depending on your pilot.

Depending on the GM, the pilot could also proceed carefully, taking more time rule, or a Task Chain with someone on Sensors watching the weather patterns? to get an easier pilot check

 

[Tawny Owl]

Thank you, I think I understand now, the Amishi did not intend to enter the atmosphere but the problems onboard meant that it did so?
The rescue ship is partially streamlined so it can carefully enter the atmosphere without breaking up?
Then the rescue ship can land / hover at the crash site whilst the travellers heroic mission is played out?

 

[tytalan]

You have to also consider the fact that Mongoose rarely make ships that make sense

 

[rinku]

If the rescue ship is partially streamlined, it's fine. Per the CRB it's just sluggish when it needs to make a Piloting check. No extra checks required like an Unstreamlined ship would have to do.

So that mostly means taking extra time on things to reduce the difficulty if possible, as hopsnbaer mentioned. Weather would be the main danger, but a prudent rescue group would be monitoring the weather from orbit before choosing a descent time (hmm... sounds quite a bit like... taking extra time or a chain task...)

As far as not making sense... giving the players nothing to do because they're over equipped for the mission is what would not make sense, from a storytelling point of view.

 

[tytalan]

As far as not making sense... giving the players nothing to do because they're over equipped for the mission is what would not make sense, from a storytelling point of view.

You do realize about a quarter of all the ships that have been published by mongoose actually don’t add up tonnage wise? And that’s just the most blatant example. Will I agree that over equipping the players can take away from a mission that’s not what we are talking about

 

[rinku]

Gives them a better strike rate than GW then

 

[shirgall]

You do realize about a quarter of all the ships that have been published by mongoose actually don’t add up tonnage wise? And that’s just the most blatant example. Will I agree that over equipping the players can take away from a mission that’s not what we are talking about

You left out that the deck plans don't actually fit the specified required equipment and systems, as well.

 

[hopsnbaer]

It makes no difference to the story if a Corsair's cargo should be three less tons than it says in the sheet. It doesn't hurt the narrative. The only time you need an exact design is if you are having a ship design contest. I get it. 2+2 should equal 4. It just doesn't matter to the story.

The fact that a vocal number of people have complained about it, and with the availability of the ship design sheets.

It has had an effect.

I doubt it will stop MJD, but you can't have everything. Where would you put it?

 

[rinku]

Frankly, I'm far less annoyed by an exact accounting of every last deck square, and am more critical of poor layout choices.

If a deckplan is absolutely impeccable but makes the passengers have to enter the ship through Engineering or the crew quarters... someone didn't think that out. Or if it is set up that way deliberately, discuss the reasons for that (could simply be a legacy of a previous layout, or competing functions). But too often it's adding an airlock as an afterthought, or not paying any attention to interior traffic flow.

Less of a problem for the smallest, most cramped ships, of course. Or those where passengers aren't often expected.

 

[tytalan]

It makes no difference to the story if a Corsair's cargo should be three less tons than it says in the sheet. It doesn't hurt the narrative. The only time you need an exact design is if you are having a ship design contest. I get it. 2+2 should equal 4. It just doesn't matter to the story.

Your right 3 dt is not a big deal but when a ship has 80dt extra for cargo it is a big deal and does effect game play. You make it sound like these ships are only a few dt off which is not the case there are ships that are literally half again the size it’s supposed to be. That’s a major difference when it comes to weaponry and cargo space.

 

[CordwainerFish]

"Give me enough thrust and I can fly a brick." - Old Terran pilots' saying

A semi-competent pilot should be able to set a Thrust-1 ship down on a 0.63g world without killing everyone aboard.

 

[phavoc]

Hi,
I'm new to Traveller so please excuse me if this is a silly question.
I am reading Marches adventure 3 Search and Rescue.
I don't understand how the Amishi or the Garis-Class Rescue Vessel can enter the Gorram atmosphere.
And if not how did the sight seeing tour take place and how do the travellers get to the planet to rescue the survivors?

Thanks

Any ship with anti-grav (and pretty much all do) can enter an atmosphere. Nearly every Traveller ship would not be able to sustain atmospheric flight via normal flight characteristics for a simple reason - they are too heavy.

With anti-grav lifters it can ignore aerodynamic laws and easily maneuver to the ground (using thrusters is a bit of a silly idea) regardless of the atmospheric density. They just need to worry about the planetary grav rating.

Distributed ships are the most at risk to failures due to how they are built. Being under a grav field changes how their structure works and that could easily cause a problem.

Streamlined ships are able to go faster and have less handling issues than non-streamlined ships. But any ship doing 100-200km/hr will be able to easily overcome flight limitations and land on a planet (or even just "land" without any gear). Anti-grav is the greatest cheat of aerodynamics ever posited.

 

[shirgall]

"Give me enough thrust and I can fly a brick." - Old Terran pilots' saying

A semi-competent pilot should be able to set a Thrust-1 ship down on a 0.63g world without killing everyone aboard.

Indeed, a M-drive with a Thrust rating of "1" can dampen the inertia for any impulse up to 1G.

However, if the hull is not designed for atmo, it ain't gonna be trivial to keep it stable, alert, and oriented at the same time as traversing some significant distance because the shape of the hull affects the drag and therefore skin temperature of an object. The more streamlined the less you heat up but every shape experiences some drag at some point.

Yes, you ignore one set of aerodynamic laws for lift and maybe some of the thrust and drag, but you don't get to ignore the heat imparted by travelling very fast through air.

 

[CordwainerFish]

Any ship with anti-grav (and pretty much all do) can enter an atmosphere. Nearly every Traveller ship would not be able to sustain atmospheric flight via normal flight characteristics for a simple reason - they are too heavy.

Aerodynamics is one hell of a force multiplier (pun intentional) - unless I'm physicsing it wrong, a typical passenger airplane's engines only produce an acceleration of about 0.3g.

However, if the hull is not designed for atmo, it ain't gonna be trivial to keep it stable, alert, and oriented at the same time as traversing some significant distance because the shape of the hull affects the drag and therefore skin temperature of an object. The more streamlined the less you heat up but every shape experiences some drag at some point.

If you're starting direct from orbital speed, sure - but you don't have to. Even from a radius above surface you've cut the planet's gravity by three quarters, so you can kill your orbital velocity then choose a descent rate more to your liking. Take you a while, perhaps.

 

[shirgall]

Aerodynamics is one hell of a force multiplier (pun intentional) - unless I'm physicsing it wrong, a typical passenger airplane's engines only produce an acceleration of about 0.3g.

If you're starting direct from orbital speed, sure - but you don't have to. Even from a radius above surface you've cut the planet's gravity by three quarters, so you can kill your orbital velocity then choose a descent rate more to your liking. Take you a while, perhaps.

Even moving a brick along at Thrust-1 at sea level is an industrial disaster to the landscape. Streamlined shapes don't just help the pilot, they also help the beach not become a volcano of sand and shells when doing a flyby. 35 seconds from standstill to Mach 1 if you don't allow drag to eat your velocity. No upper limit from gravity at least, but if you have 50 square meters of "brick face" that's 1.5 GIGAwatts of hot air. If you allow the air to slow your roll that's still 70 seconds to Mach 1 and it's still a disaster to anyone nearby.

 

[Condottiere]

I design bricks.

While not optimal, and most Traveller designs are bellylanders, if you're trying to land a default manoeuvre factor/one driven spacecraft on Terra, you change spacecraft orientation to vertical, and try to do a tail landing.