Starship rules: turrets and thrust

[Morningkiller]

Just ran the first two sessions of a Traveller game. Haven't played any previous incarnation but have been well impressed with this one.

The PCs have an armed far trader and went to the aid of an unarmed vessel being attacked by a corsair. They managed to drive it off with some pretty cheesy rolling (plus the fact that it has no armour) but a couple of rules questions arose.

In the engineer skill under power and m-drive there are sample actions allowing you to pump up the thrust and power output of a ship. I couldn't find these described elsewhere so allowed the engineer to increase each by one for a round with a successful check. Did I miss something?

An NPC gunner was manning a double turret with two sandcasters. If he wants to fire both does he need to take the multiple action penalty (-2 to all checks) or do the turrets count as a single action for firing all weapon skills?

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

My opinion only:

You did the Engineer thing correctly. I would give him a 1 boost EACH ROUND.

Regarding the gunner, I would allow him to fire all weapons within his turret as a single action (even a triple turret). Even if the turret was equipped with multiple weapons (laser, missile and sand) I would not impose the multi-action penalty. That just seems excessive to me. Remember, SHIP combat rounds are a LONG time. They aren't really firing every weapon at the same time, they are firing one weapon, then a couple of minutes later firing another weapon. More than enough time to make it a single action in the personal combat scale.

 

[Morningkiller]

That makes sense alright. The -2 penalty would have been pretty crippling and had me questioning the value of multi-weapon turrets.

Thanks for the help

 

[Megacredit]

An NPC gunner was manning a double turret with two sandcasters. If he wants to fire both does he need to take the multiple action penalty (-2 to all checks) or do the turrets count as a single action for firing all weapon skills?

Each reaction spent on firing sand allows the gunner to make A (emphasis mine) Gunner Turrets roll. If successful the damage of each beam in the incoming attack is reduced by 1d6. (Core p. 149)

Unless you are stacking sand there is no reason for him to fire both sands at one turrets attack. If he was reacting to two turrets, thats a different story. The reaction should only allow one sand shot per reaction unless I am reading the rules incorrectly.

Regarding the engineer check, I think you handled that withing the spirit of the rules.