alex_greene
Guest
I'm reminded of the legendary JTAS adventure, "A Dagger At Efate."rust2 said:
Ships Drives
- Thread starter phavoc
- Start date
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Frank Herbert's The White Plague: you could manufacture a tailor made disease in your garage, and certainly be better equipped now to do that.
rust2 said:
Which, a technological solution? (e.g. a velocity limiter). Well, I guess those would still exist, but someone would probably find a way to circumvent them. I think it's more a case that technological and social/legal solutions would combine to make it really really really hard to do that.
I mean, motor vehicles are potential WMDs - as recent events have shown. What's stopping anyone from driving their cars on the pavement/sidewalk and killing lots of pedestrians? There's no speed limiters on cars, or sensors that stop the car if it's off the road - but with automated cars and intelligent sensors etc that could be a reality soon. But there's also a lot of legal reasons not to (you'd be done for murder and thrown in a deep dark hole for the rest of your life). There's the social "it's a horrible thing to do and no sane person would do it" thing. There's also the "if someone does that then it'd make it harder for everyone - including terrorists - to use those things" which works against everyone's interests. And so on.
People in the world can do horrible things, but it seems that there are limits. As I said though, there's always going to be one or two nuts that get through and manage to do it, and when it happens it's rightfully declared an atrocity and the consequences usually make it much harder for it to happen again.
So in this case I'd say "yes, people have used spaceships as WMDs, and there were Consequences". And now it's so hard to do (and so unthinkable to contemplate, and with such calamitous consequences/retribution) that the vast majority of people don't and won't even think of doing it anymore. Much like in the real world. I think that's sufficient reason, myself.
The example I was thinking of was the German co-pilot who committed suicide by flying his passenger airliner into a mountainside, which he could only do because the pilot had left the cockpit to go to the toilet and was then unable to open the cockpit door from outside - the result of a technological solution to the problem that terrorists could enter a cockpit in previous cases.fusor said:
In the end one has to rely on the ethical and social and legal elements you mentioned, not on technological solutions, which can be circumvented, or can even be used to help the perpetrator (see above). Starship drives, like all potentially dangerous technologies, cannot be made safer than the people who use them.
. (and "ethical", I blanked on that word. That's what I meant by "social restrictions" 
I didn't really want to dive into this thread, but I just had to here.
Not really. If a player in my game wanted to do this, I'd have them make an engineering roll, possibly with DMs or boons/banes based on the situation. If successful, the idea worked, at least to an extent. The hard part is assigning the difficulty of the task, but I think there are enough examples in the book to choose something appropriate. The effect of the roll can be your gauge of cockamamie to stroke of genius. Or maybe it's "that's so crazy, it just might work!"
I and those I play with are ok with high tech being abstract. Players have ideas, sometimes they work, sometimes not. Roll the dice, see what happens and move on - the result is part of the story and people have fun. Thats why we're playing this game.
Tenacious-Techhunter said:
Not really. If a player in my game wanted to do this, I'd have them make an engineering roll, possibly with DMs or boons/banes based on the situation. If successful, the idea worked, at least to an extent. The hard part is assigning the difficulty of the task, but I think there are enough examples in the book to choose something appropriate. The effect of the roll can be your gauge of cockamamie to stroke of genius. Or maybe it's "that's so crazy, it just might work!"
I and those I play with are ok with high tech being abstract. Players have ideas, sometimes they work, sometimes not. Roll the dice, see what happens and move on - the result is part of the story and people have fun. Thats why we're playing this game.
alex_greene
Guest
The best benchmark is when it's a science of which the players have neither knowledge nor interest - History or Sociology, for instance, or Mathematics. If you have a task which requires a check against those skills, just abstract it down to "Difficult roll against Science (History), with your EDU DM, and you can either take a Bane on the roll or an Untrained penalty. Timeframe 1d6 hours, including online searches."allanimal said:
And why I want to keep writing stuff to give you guys loads of new and fun things to enjoy, in corners of the Traveller universe where you wouldn't think to look.allanimal said:
alex_greene said:
Detail is awesome when it is of interest to the group as a whole. The various bits of crunchy science fiction goodness is definitely a subject a lot of people get into...others just want to know if there are any girls at the bar...
I have players with backgrounds ranging from journalism to aviation Engineering, to 20 years as an infantry NCO... Now they can come u with a wide variety of ideas from their backgrounds...but none of the have the sort of skills needed to come up with "practical" or realistic solutions involving repairing a jump drive. and Not enough time to take a refresher course in quantum/starship engineering at the community college.
So I have to play fast and loose with a few things to keep the game moving...we save that time for plotting the logistics of their attempt to corner the Fishgut/Mud/Fertilizer market in their sector, for which they need a ship to carry the goods......Now if I had a group that liked to dig into the minutiae of how the starship works I'd play fast and loose with other parts of the game...such as the logistics of their bid to become agricultural supply magnates to pay for their next ship.
PsiTraveller
Cosmic Mongoose
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-zAbzRx29I
Convert fishwaste into nutrient dense maggots, material left behind is also fertilizer. Excess moisture has been removed. (Lost water feeds the reactor)
http://westernfarmpress.com/miscellaneous/biochar-emerges-soil-amendment-agriculture
Add charcoal to increase adsorbtive surface area for beneficial bacteria and Cation Exchange sites. Mix all that stuff with the mud
Yes I am a nerd.
Convert fishwaste into nutrient dense maggots, material left behind is also fertilizer. Excess moisture has been removed. (Lost water feeds the reactor)
http://westernfarmpress.com/miscellaneous/biochar-emerges-soil-amendment-agriculture
Add charcoal to increase adsorbtive surface area for beneficial bacteria and Cation Exchange sites. Mix all that stuff with the mud
Yes I am a nerd.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Ships tend to have to embark pilots before entering a port; likely any spaceship large enough to make a significant impact would have to let one board as well, before being allowed into go into orbit or dock with the HiPort.
alex_greene
Guest
The Traveller crew who lacked a decent Jump Engineer would probably have to hire one, or get a maintbot with the proper rated software. Maintbots for the drives and the power plant would probably have to be the way forward, if they didn't have organic beings to play engineer.
They don't have to be purchased separately: they could come with the ship, bought and paid for, because the last engineer "could not care for humans pawing over his machines." That would take the thrill out of having to make skill checks, but if your maintbot and engineerbot armies were efficient, you'd automatically succeed in any engineering checks you would need to make.
They don't have to be purchased separately: they could come with the ship, bought and paid for, because the last engineer "could not care for humans pawing over his machines." That would take the thrill out of having to make skill checks, but if your maintbot and engineerbot armies were efficient, you'd automatically succeed in any engineering checks you would need to make.
PsiTraveller said:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-zAbzRx29I
Convert fishwaste into nutrient dense maggots, material left behind is also fertilizer. Excess moisture has been removed. (Lost water feeds the reactor)
http://westernfarmpress.com/miscellaneous/biochar-emerges-soil-amendment-agriculture
Add charcoal to increase adsorbtive surface area for beneficial bacteria and Cation Exchange sites. Mix all that stuff with the mud
Yes I am a nerd.
Yeah that's about how it went. Nutrient rich, has all the microbes and enzymes needed for Bio forming a patch of land to support the crops etc...and basic skills of biology, and planetology were enough to cook up the mix.
The unhallowed trinity of a biologist, planetologist, and merchant figured out how to pack as much organic material into the densest for they could. ...then began to sell it to agro worlds who were pretty much under the thumb of a strongman who taxed everything they needed and used hired mercs to collect taxes...and had buddies who he sold exclusive transport contracts to supply the colonies...
the used their science skilled guys to make a LOT of credits..and the pilot nd marine dealt with the armed thugs....which meant everyone had a part to play, everyone got their time to shine, and they had to really work together...
alex_greene
Guest
Other than that they might have Pilot 5, Astrogator 5, Gunnery 5 or all sorts of other skill sets which keep them in such demand that they would have to travel a lot, or perhaps a driving need to make money through lucrative spec trading ...fusor said:
In my Thalassa water world setting, where a bad pilot could sink the floating downport or seriously damage a seafloor dome with a crash, only orbital shuttles with pilots who have received a special training (like the one required for aircraft carrier landings in the real world) may land at the downport, the starships themselves are never permitted to land.Condottiere said:
