That's exactly the problem. It's been a problem in Traveller for a long while.
Simply put, Fast Drug would open the gates to modern-day style "coach-class" interstellar travel. They would combine a lot of the benefits of Low Berths without that pesky problem of "dying when they try and revive you" thing which is another heinous leftover of Traveller's 1976 roots. Mind you I call it heinous because it doesn't feel very Traveller - Fast Drug would work perfectly fine in a more 'transhuman' style sci-fi game -- the writers of Traveller have never really thought of the implications of this stuff, which is understandable, but they've never updated their game in future editions to reflect the implications of this stuff either, which is
bad. It's like a software company being aware of a bug but not fixing it.
There are differences of course, Fast Drug users still require life support, just very, very little (as opposed to just a bit of electrical power to power the berth for Low Berths). (You'd think that with the metabolism slowed drastically you'd probably need to leave them in a room heated to human body temperature but even if you did, it's still a small cost compared to normal life support.) Amusingly Fast Drug becomes available at TL9 and Cold Berths at TL11 (iirc).
Even if you go by the rather arbitrary dosage and antidote formula in the rules it's still less than half of the cost of a middle passage. If you start allowing for fractional doses (the standard dose is basically two months), say, a dose for a week costing 250Cr or something, it becomes even more economical (and there's no reason not to - there is no health risk associated with using the antidote, which means they can bring you out sooner without ill effect or just reduce the dosage). Really, you should be seeing the Fast Drug everywhere in Traveller:
Space Suits: Get stranded in space? Pull the tab which injects you with a sleeping drug and a dose of the Fast Drug and turns on an emergency beacon and hope for the best. It'll make the oxygen supply on a suit last much longer when you're using it at 1/60th of the rate (that two hour oxygen supply now lasts five days). This should be required by law in Traveller.
Life Support Limited Situations in General: In fact, it works pretty well in any situation where there is life support but things like food, water, and oxygen will run out. It requires no fiddly preparation or heavy/bulky/expensive equipment unlike low berths. It's available at TL9! Just pop a pill or inject or whatever they do. Guys in mining work would carry a dose of Fast Drug on them. So would crew on submarines. Lifeboats. Probably all kinds of situations I haven't thought of. Of course chances of survival might be slim in these situations but any increased chance of survival is good for such people.
Travel: Fast Drug would be more common than Dranamine, even on terrestrial trips especially if it's possible to formulate a version that isn't as good as the standard 1:60 Fast Drug but is cheaper; 12 hour airplane flights would feel like 15 minutes (or even an hour for that matter) and they wouldn't need to put toilets in the plane anymore. Passengers could be kept in pretty cramped conditions (like modern coach on cheap airlines) pretty much indefinitely. Passage for interstellar trips should be a lot cheaper (because you can pack in a ton of passengers and they don't require much) and look more like airline travel today.
Economic Depression: It's entirely possible they might have unemployed segments of the population voluntarily go into fast drug stupor until economic conditions improve in return for being exempt from taxes and possibly the government paying for rent or something.
The Fast Drug I think the best reason why Cold Berths rules should be modified to eliminate the chance of death upon revival provided the person is put into the cold berth by a properly trained technician. Then we could also eliminate the Fast Drug, which is a little silly (IMO).
wbnc said:
Who just discovered the meals consist of Military MREs all of them Chicken A la King.( oh lord just remembering those things make me throw up a little)
Oh, if we're talking about
that era of MREs, nothing was worse than the ham slice. Though admittedly, the ham slice was more useful than Chicken a la King. After all, the Ham Slice could be used to replace the inserts in your ballistic vest, retreading your boots, patching holes in tires. Possibly even as applique armor for vehicles against RPGs. But not as food.
