Simple question about Jumps and fuel

[CosmicGamer]

Stolen obviously has the tie that you will have police chasing after the ship(you don't steal multi million ship without police getting interested).

The Imperium itself isn't likely to care at all (a single ship is beneath its notice and isn't worth the time, unless the ship actually belonged to the Imperium, such as a warship or scout vessel). The law enforcement on a single world might get involved, but its likely their jurisdiction ends once you leave the system. They may hire a bounty hunter, but once you leave that system the local law enforcement is most likely helpless to do anything. Should you ever go back there, though...

You're joking, right?

This matches my vision of "The Imperium". No joking.

What law enforcement does "The Imperium" have? Are they going to send Navy vessels after someone who skips on a 200T freighter? Beyond sending out a "keep an eye out for this vessel" notice Id like to here what people think might be done by Imperium authorities.

Stealing millions of credits worth of ship will lead to a long pursuit, once you take it out of the first system the message will quickly spread along the x-boat routes that the stolen ship is to be stopped and held whereever found.

I agree and disagree.

While ships are expensive, so is the crew salaries, fuel, and other costs of a long pursuit.

Lenders capable of financing ships and large insurance companies would be used to these issues. In my view, Imperial and local authorities (local authorities within numerous parsecs) would be notified but not relied upon for much more than the late on payment but not trying to steel the ship types. The large corps with interest in the ship would likely take care of this with personal resources. Put out their own notices for bounty hunters to follow up on or possibly hire bounty hunters themselves. I think Bounty hunters wouldn't "chase after" a ship without intel that makes them believe there is a very good chance the ship will be somewhere when they get there (maybe its in for repairs or there is only one black market in the subsector for selling ships). In my opinion, bounty hunters would mostly just check all the latest wanted bulletins and keep an eye out in their system. Perhaps local officials may try to cash in by assigning ships to hang out at a likely location that people staying "off the beaten path" might take (like a gas giant refueling stop) checking each ship.

I've postulated that ships would be imbeded with security which would prevent it's operation if codes, provided when payments are made, are not inputted. Yes, of course there are still ways around this but security just needs to be timely and/or costly to circumvent and/or make it obvious (disabled transponder) that something is "off".

 

[Rick]

I see a fair bit of potential in this. Even without an extradition treaty - planet A could ask the judiciary of planet B to issue an arrest warrant for the perpetrator - downside of this would be that planet B might require any trial to be held in it's jurisdiction and have planet A foot the bill for any court costs and probably a hefty 'release fee' for the impounded starship.

 

[tneva82]

While ships are expensive, so is the crew salaries, fuel, and other costs of a long pursuit.

Pennies compared to the ship itself...

Lenders capable of financing ships and large insurance companies would be used to these issues.

If stealing was really so easy(btw check the rules on stealing...You'll note you get noticed real fast, real soon) yeah. They would get used to everybody simply stealing the ship. And wouldn't lend money anymore. Because nobody would actually bother to pay them back...

"Jump to next system, okay this is our ship now for free".

Yeah right.

OBVIOUSLY it's not that easy to just steal the ship and get away from it. Duh! Jumping to other system in ship designed to do that(indeed on ship that is useless if you don't intend to jump to other system) is so ridiculously easy that if that's all it takes to steal only idiots would actually lend money to...Well anybody really Not just in ships but lending on anything period would be majorly -ev decision. You want money to set up planet side company? Sorry. Can't risk it.

Rules don't btw support your view at all. You'll need to be pretty much on the run to avoid being captured heading away from the original planet all the time. And even then you likely end up caught by pursuers sooner or later...

 

[dzanis]

Thanks for all the answers.

I'm not gonna cancel their mortgage payments. I like the idea, of ship representing both the opportunity to make money for PCs and also liability that needs to be taken care of...

I probably just suggest that they may switch to quartety (or rarely to semiannual) payments with half of sum to be paid in advance..

 

[Captain Jonah]

Payments.

The 3rd Imp and every other stellar power that has banks will have long ago made changes to accommodate the lag caused by Jumps being the only way to communicate.

Look back to pre telegraph. An investor pays for a trade run, months later it returns with his money (or not as the case may be). A bank makes a loan of a starship, after carefully checking the background, references, business plan and potential trustworthiness of the ship buyer. For ships that are not on regular runs they expect to be paid but it may be every three months or more that the credits arrive.

If the bank knows you are jumping to some flea pit 10 parsecs of the main they will not worry about a missing payment for six months, if they know you are doing runs to the next world on the main and back every month they will pay attention after a single missing month.

PCs are an odd case in that the players may decide that their upstanding Imperial noble naval officer twice decorated for valour bearer of a sword awarded by the arch duke in person for loyalty character is going to skip out and steal his expensive ship regardless of his trustworthy reputation.

How hard or easy it is to get away has been covered many times on old topics here and elsewhere, in the end its up to the ref. However if its so easy that everyone does it this needs to be reflected in YTU being a crime ridden hellhole since if you can steal a 100Mcr ship so easily then smaller thefts, murders, piracy etc become commonplace.

The 3rd Imp navy will not go hunting for a stolen ship, but if it comes up on sensors they are going to react. They need to in order to prove their authority.

Banks likewise are not going to ignore skips, it makes them look bad and makes more loan skips likely.

If your loan is with the 1st Stellar bank of Hardball and Shark who have a reputation for hunting down and executing people who skip then you are going to think long and hard before you try.

If you loan is with Mr nice guys and soon to be broke and out of business bank who have lost 5 ships so far this week and don’t hire skip chasers or put bounties on the ships and thieves or have agreements with the Doggy clans across the border to send your heads back then you will be fairly relaxed about stealing the ship

Over the life of the Imperium Darwin is in action, the nasty bas…types prosper, the nice fools fall by the wayside. Imperial law keeps the nastiness covert most of the time but its still there. Otherwise the entire economy collapses and you may as well be playing TNE


Maintenance.

Again this is a ref thing but to me the idea that you need to visit a space port, dock in a repair bay and carry out maintenance every month is insane.

Yes there is maintenance, its what your engineer does every day replacing worn or damaged parts, fixing blown lights and shorted breakers. The maintenance costs monthly goes to buy specific parts and raw materials for your workshop 3D printer. The annual overhaul is two weeks in a repair bay, a bit like your cars annual service.

But monthly your engineer does it. Going to be off the beaten track for a while, stock up on several months worth of spares and stores first and you are fine. Miss jump and spend two months getting home when you only had a weeks worth of maintenance stores left on board and things are going to stop working.

 

[tneva82]

I probably just suggest that they may switch to quartety (or rarely to semiannual) payments with half of sum to be paid in advance..

Would be my solution too.

Problem then comes from having enough liquid cash...That's pretty steep sum and then need for some cash to do speculative trading...I often find after generating 4-5 characters that they will be REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY desperate to get any kind of decent paying job.

(well unless you happen to get broker-4 or broker-5 character with say 80k+ start up cash...Then you need some serious issues to ruin the cashflow )

 

[rust]

What law enforcement does "The Imperium" have? Are they going to send Navy vessels after someone who skips on a 200T freighter? Beyond sending out a "keep an eye out for this vessel" notice Id like to here what people think might be done by Imperium authorities.

According to the rules as written, a ship needs monthly maintenance at a shipyard, shipyards are
found at starports, and almost all starports within the Imperium are operated by the Imperium
and have Imperial forces for protection.
Once the information about the theft has arrived at the Imperial starports, a stolen ship can no
longer visit any Imperial starport for monthly maintenance, and since the Imperial Starport Au-
thority will certainly keep an eye on the non-Imperial starports (few of which will have a shipyard)
in the same systems, for example to suppress smuggling, the stolen ship can no longer get its
monthly maintenance at any legal starport within the Imperium - and I doubt that there is a suf-
ficient network of illegal starports with shipyards to keep the ship mobile for long. Of course, there
certainly are illegal, well hidden starports, but they will hardly announce their location to anyone
who intends to steal a ship.
Add to this the system defence forces and the navy patrols looking for pirates, smugglers and sto-
len ships, and the thieves have a serious problem, while the Imperium does not have to spend a
single additional credit beyond its normal operations to search for the ship.

 

[tneva82]

Add to this the system defence forces and the navy patrols looking for pirates, smugglers and sto-
len ships, and the thieves have a serious problem, while the Imperium does not have to spend a
single additional credit beyond its normal operations to search for the ship.

Logistics. You either got to love them or hate them depending on which side of the fence you are on

 

[dzanis]

If I may threadjack my own thread, I have another question (probably simple for you guys, and not worth its own thread): No explanation for some travel codes - the great map site www.travellermap.com contains planets with travel codes (for example Pa, Pi, Ph), which are not explained neither in rulebook nor on that site...

Where can I find them?

 

[Jeraa]

If I may threadjack my own thread, I have another question (probably simple for you guys, and not worth its own thread): No explanation for some travel codes - the great map site http://www.travellermap.com contains planets with travel codes (for example Pa, Pi, Ph), which are not explained neither in rulebook nor on that site...

Where can I find them?

Can you say where you found those? Its a big map...

 

[drkem99]

Do you mean allegiance codes? This is the best list I know and I don't see those codes. You can try looking up the sector in the wiki as well; the data file may have a list of the allegiance codes in the comments.

http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Allegiance_Code:_Alphabetical

Good luck!

 

[Jeraa]

I meant the location on the map. It was asked what 3 specific codes mean (Pa, Pi, Ph). Seeing where they are may give a clue to what the mean. I've looked through the data for several sectors, and never encountered those three codes.

And he specified travel codes, not allegience codes.

 

[InexorableTash]

If I may threadjack my own thread, I have another question (probably simple for you guys, and not worth its own thread): No explanation for some travel codes - the great map site http://www.travellermap.com contains planets with travel codes (for example Pa, Pi, Ph), which are not explained neither in rulebook nor on that site...

Where can I find them?

You should ask over on the map's support blog - travellermap.blogspot.com

 

[smiths121]

Ph = Pre Hi population
Pa = Pre Agricultural
Pi = Pre Industrial

These are from the yet to be released Traveller 5. In general - worlds that meat the physical characteristics for the trade classification but not the social profile (for example Pre-industrial ins an industrial world with a population of only 7-8).

The only place I know where these are listed is the pre-release Traveller 5 CD-ROM (and then acces to the private part of the forum over at travellerrpg.com).

A fairly complete list without the Traveller 5 additions can be found at http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Trade_classification . Some of the world on travellermap.com will use the additional comments trade classifications from the wiki page.

I would ignore any trade classification you do not understand it is probably from another edition of the game used to seed the travellermap.com site. So not relevant to MGT.

If I may threadjack my own thread, I have another question (probably simple for you guys, and not worth its own thread): No explanation for some travel codes - the great map site http://www.travellermap.com contains planets with travel codes (for example Pa, Pi, Ph), which are not explained neither in rulebook nor on that site...

Where can I find them?

 

[dzanis]

Ph = Pre Hi population
Pa = Pre Agricultural
Pi = Pre Industrial

These are from the yet to be released Traveller 5. In general - worlds that meat the physical characteristics for the trade classification but not the social profile (for example Pre-industrial ins an industrial world with a population of only 7-8).

The only place I know where these are listed is the pre-release Traveller 5 CD-ROM (and then acces to the private part of the forum over at travellerrpg.com).

A fairly complete list without the Traveller 5 additions can be found at http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Trade_classification . Some of the world on travellermap.com will use the additional comments trade classifications from the wiki page.

I would ignore any trade classification you do not understand it is probably from another edition of the game used to seed the travellermap.com site. So not relevant to MGT.

Ok, thanks. A pity that they are not available publicly. I know these (http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Trade_classification) are the same as in main rulebook.


The world where I saw these was Musayid (Sabine subsector, Deneb sector). But there are more of these confusing trade codes. I guess I'll go on ignoring them

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

I have incorporated a "bank box" into my players ship. It's basically a black box owned by the lender. It keeps track of payments the players make at non-affiliated institutions outside the Imperium, where the record of a payment may sometimes take months to make it back through non-xboat routes to the lender. The as long as a payment is made, the "bank box" keeps track of such payment, and "reports" all payments to the appropriate branch or lender once the players return to "civilization". If the players miss a certain number of payments, the "bank box" will only allow the astrogator to set a course toward the closest official bank or branch which holds the ships note. At that time this ship will be impounded unless payments are made. The bank-box is incredibly hard to hack, and is triple redundant. Any "failed hacking rolls" will be detected by the bank-box software, which will immediately lock out all course settings except for the one leading to the closest affiliated lending institution.
.

I like this idea :lol:

In MTU have fallen back on the much more prosaic "Clause 231b of General Ship Mortgage Contract" which, of course, "requires the owners of ships with a mortgage to register their operating routes, and take responsibility for paying the mortagage on time, or in advance, at any starport with an appropriate broker [all A, B and C class ports, some others], unless a prior arrangement to pay late has been made, based on the credit worthiness of the owner [i.e the GM's whim]".

Egil