So many ATVs in high tech places, when they're just bad air/rafts?

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Today I looked in detail at the Type-Y standard yacht. It has an ATV as standard. For those trips to the mall to get the new Gucci shoes, or for swimming across the sea to land on that secluded beach where your private party will be hosted by a celebrity DJ, also ATV'ed in by these unbiquitous amphibous vehicles.

And the modular cutter ATV module, for those times when you can build space ships and anti-grav, but you just have to use a tracked vehicle?

Is there something about the air/raft that I don't know?

Do they fall apart after 2 weeks, or can they not be armored or enclosed? G-tanks exist so there's a ban in Imperial law on civilian armored g-craft?
 
Is there a difference in cost or carrying capacity?

I suppose there could be difficulty in getting a flying permit on some worlds. Or that an ATV is simply more durable.
 
I'm no fan of ATVs on starships, but if our world is representative flying craft attracts a lot more regulation. An air/raft may require a current specialised local license to operate on planet.

I would assume standard Imperial ATVs and GCarriers are reasonably similar size and can use the same garages, hence an ATV module can just as well house a CGarrier or a couple of air/rafts.
 
Imposing an altitude limit somewhere lower than a meter would address any regulation issues.

I guess it's just another of these "Traveller WTFs" unless air/rafts really do break every 2 weeks. On second thoughts, 2 weeks between failures would also be a WTF.

I've never seen a civilian g-carrier in any published adventure.
 
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I'll speculate one reason was that having an entry in the rulebook, the author needs to give it relevance; Chekov's car?

Besides the default open top, feels more like a Vespa, something a dilettante would use for a joyride.

The All Terrain Vehicle would indicate that considerable time would be spent away from the yacht, like a recreational vehicle with all the comforts of home.
 
Air/rafts are expensive, low capacity, open-top, very little protection from the elements or hostile actions and no ability to carry firepower. It is build to be a runabout to get you from here to there while an ATV is meant for exploration. The ATV also is less effected by weather conditions especially wind and turbulence. A wheeled or tracked ATV will take longer to get there but it won't be 'grounded'.

Both useful. Depends on your needs.
 
Reynard said:
Air/rafts are expensive, low capacity, open-top, very little protection from the elements or hostile actions and no ability to carry firepower. It is build to be a runabout to get you from here to there while an ATV is meant for exploration. The ATV also is less effected by weather conditions especially wind and turbulence. A wheeled or tracked ATV will take longer to get there but it won't be 'grounded'.

Both useful. Depends on your needs.
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Where is the heavy air/raft then?

They must have g-trucks for cargo?
 
They are ubiquitous in all sizes wherever g-vehicles are. Take your pick of cargo size which are legion from minivans to pickups with an open flatbed to step up delivery vans to 10 meter haulers to tractor trailers rigs with grav modules. I'd say a good PC cargo hauler would be akin to a package delivery step up which can have it's interior modified for a variety of uses. I'll find the dimensions and use my break time at work to go through Vehicle Handbook but anyone can build any variety quickly. G-truck designs are not rocket science.

Once again we need to remember a g-vehicle is a flying vehicle subject to weather that ground vehicles face less severely. When a land tractor trailer gets pushed and toppled from wind storms, a flying craft is out of control and about to make disastrous contact with the ground. This is why you hear aircraft being grounded in bad weather while cars and trucks are still (often stupidly) on the road. Can you imagine hundreds of freight haulers flying throughout a city during bad weather?
 
And for something to start with, "as for trailers the standard delivery trailer is 45 foot long 12 foot 9 inches high from the ground and 8 foot 5 inches high on the inside, 98 inch wide inside, we also use a larger trailer which is 48 foot long 13'6" high from the ground and 9'3" high on the inside.".

An F150 pick up is 209.3″ L x 79.9″ W x 75.5″ H and can have from 12 to 52 cubic feet of cargo space.

There's your Vehicle Handbook 'spaces' to start with.
 
Reynard said:
Once again we need to remember a g-vehicle is a flying vehicle subject to weather that ground vehicles face less severely. When a land tractor trailer gets pushed and toppled from wind storms, a flying craft is out of control and about to make disastrous contact with the ground. This is why you hear aircraft being grounded in bad weather while cars and trucks are still (often stupidly) on the road. Can you imagine hundreds of freight haulers flying throughout a city during bad weather?
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Weather control is TL 12.

Wind is a problem for aerodynamic lift and for take off and landing. A flying g-vehicle can bounce around without losing lift but those things can do 100+ kph and reach orbit anyway, they can probably fly over the top of a storm.

Elsewhere, you could probably land and wait out a storm, and continue at 100+ kph and still get there quicker than rock-crawling at 5 kph with wheels. Unless it's the uber with my dinner. I'd expect them to send it by walker so it can make it up the stairs.

This assumes g-vehicles are as affected by weather as aircraft, which they shouldn't be due to not needing aerodyanmic lift. They probably are more than ground vehicles (unless fitted with specialised equipment - gtanks would suck otherwise), but should fare better than aircraft.
 
Air is a problem for many things on and off the ground. Ground vehicles on bridges are subject to winds and they're touching pavement to be pushed or tossed. A g-vehicle is not immune to the environment. The g modules manipulate gravity in various ways depending on the edition but simply it created lift and momentum but it's still a flyer and subject to every condition any other aircraft endures. I'm not saying there's some inherent liability to the use of g-vehicles just they have their limitations based on their design.

Back to the topic, you really can't compare an air/raft and the ATV as they often have different function and purpose. Build the ATV as a grav vehicle and you still have a beast that isn't what an air/raft is meant to do.... Wait a minute, a GATV. Hmm.

Oh, I dragged my Vehicle Handbooks 1e and 2e to work and found several examples of both ground and g variant truck types. Just replace the ground motive systems with a g frame.
 
How much does a pickup cost?

Going by my reference of one to five exchange rate, a default no frills air/raft is a one and a quarter million bucks.
 
Condottiere said:
How much does a pickup cost?

Going by my reference of one to five exchange rate, a default no frills air/raft is a one and a quarter million bucks.
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I'm not sure if you're comparing a pickup to an ATV? A heavy ATV today is several hundred thousand USD. You're looking at Unimogs and larger going into mining site vehicles and military off-road trucks. A pickup would be limited 3-4 tons total (real world) weight; the traveller adventure ATV is like a mini-bus or RV.

I was going to mention the Pinzgauer but they're lighter than I thought.
 
Even if an All Terrain Vehicle costs a hundred thousand bucks, that still would be twenty thousand CrImps, per.

This would be an expeditionary vehicle, with long endurance, whereas the air/raft has always come across as something for short hops.
 
Credits to dollars seems close to 1-1 in Mongoose. This is the impression I got from personal equipment prices like boots and rifles, and salary.

Vehicles might be out-of-line due to their crazy design system, or vehicles might just cost different.
 
There are no winners in arguing about economics in Traveller.

However, I will point to the default ground car having a cost of six and a half thousand Credite Imperiale.
 
10 years ago that would have possible for a small car in most parts of Europe. I don't think they sell cars that size in the US.

But I'm not disagreeing with you - I also think Traveller vehicle prices are weird. I was just making the point that the ATV isn't equivalent to a pickup.
 
Wouldn't one expect that anyone who can afford to own/travel in a private yacht would also travel to/from/on a planet in equivalent style? This is a yacht, not a safari ship, so the transportation should reflect the wealth of the user and allow them to travel in expensive comfort.

So we should really be looking for a grav limo, or even a grav car. Maybe something more utilitarian for the help/crew to get supplies in as well. An ATV is not something the average yacht owner would be caught dead in.
 
The standard type Y already has a small craft and an air/raft (which we might assume may be a prestige model). I think the ATV is for the safari/camper trips and might emphasise durability. I'd personally expect a heavy grav but apparently they don't work in universe for "reasons" so they use a tracked ATV. :-) There's also a good chance any encountered type-Y is carrying a completely different set of thing in the ATV space. I can easily imagine a bunch of grav-bikes or a submarine - or as you suggest, a luxury grav-minibus to load your passengers.
 
Mongoose handed us a handbook for building vehicles. There is only so much room in said book for examples so they chose the iconic ones plus some that reflect updated rules and design features. Rather than bemoaning there aren't volumes of premade vehicles for everyone's specific taste BUILD THEM! I kinda remember Traveller was well known for fan built equipment other than just space and starships, some actually became iconic. Seriously, let's take up some forum space with lots of grav based vehicles at the least. Let's see trucks, cars and heavy machinery that need the Flyer skill to operate. Let's see concepts that imagine structures and cities of the future will be three dimensional constructs with ground level for parks and walking.
 
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