Ship Upgrades?
- Thread starter vertigo25
- Start date
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
Not particularly, no. Junkyard engineering can be fun, though.
One of the reasons the rats nest deckplans seen in Traders and Gunboats are aethetically displeasing is that they give a junkyard engineer nowhere to go ergonomically. If new designs don't convey a proper sense of "everything in its place" then it becomes difficult for me as a referee to convey that the old wreck the PCs just boarded was obviously rearranged by a nutjob with a cutting torch and the gleam of inspiration in his one good eye.
Since deckplans are ubiquitous in MGT, you have the opportunity to put some color into your remodelling. Start with the original deckplan and a list of the component volumes that are changing due to refit. Start by penciling in moved bulkheads, new hatch locations, and removed staterooms etc. This is a first pass, but its worth keeping. Now do it again, but with an eye toward the first one and the things that don't look right. Effectively you are fixing the fixes.
With two or three iterations available, you now have several scenarios available to inflict on the PCs. If they want a refit quick and dirty (and cheap), pull out the 1st pass ergonomic nightmare. If they want to let a naval architect redesign their ship to look like the refit is the original fit, then they get to spend more time and money getting it done, but they won't be doing the steeplechase to get from one end of the ship to the other...
One of the reasons the rats nest deckplans seen in Traders and Gunboats are aethetically displeasing is that they give a junkyard engineer nowhere to go ergonomically. If new designs don't convey a proper sense of "everything in its place" then it becomes difficult for me as a referee to convey that the old wreck the PCs just boarded was obviously rearranged by a nutjob with a cutting torch and the gleam of inspiration in his one good eye.
Since deckplans are ubiquitous in MGT, you have the opportunity to put some color into your remodelling. Start with the original deckplan and a list of the component volumes that are changing due to refit. Start by penciling in moved bulkheads, new hatch locations, and removed staterooms etc. This is a first pass, but its worth keeping. Now do it again, but with an eye toward the first one and the things that don't look right. Effectively you are fixing the fixes.
With two or three iterations available, you now have several scenarios available to inflict on the PCs. If they want a refit quick and dirty (and cheap), pull out the 1st pass ergonomic nightmare. If they want to let a naval architect redesign their ship to look like the refit is the original fit, then they get to spend more time and money getting it done, but they won't be doing the steeplechase to get from one end of the ship to the other...
I was thinking more along the lines guidelines for costs and time. Should have been more clear. Sorry about that.
West End Games had this great little supplement for Star Wars called Tramp Freighters. I'd love to see something similar for MgT. It had an entire chapter on modifying ships.
TBH, I'm kind of hoping my players will come up with their own "look" of the ship. IMTU there's a *hell* of a lot more designs for, say, a Free Trader than the A and the Far Trader.
West End Games had this great little supplement for Star Wars called Tramp Freighters. I'd love to see something similar for MgT. It had an entire chapter on modifying ships.
TBH, I'm kind of hoping my players will come up with their own "look" of the ship. IMTU there's a *hell* of a lot more designs for, say, a Free Trader than the A and the Far Trader.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
vertigo25 said:
I've always taken "Type A" to be a performance and equipment spec, not a class the way we normally think of them.
Classic Traveller had, in its various official and licensed products, at least three distinct Imperial Type S classes in two hulls. There were also some half-dozen Type A hulls, including the one normally depicted as the A2. MT and TNE expanded on the idea by taking the most iconic hulls through classes related to TL of construction.
To draw a parallel to automobiles, "Type A" is the equivalent of "Extended cab 1/2-ton pickup truck" instead of being the equivalent of "2004 Ford F150".
