What real use are escape pods?

[Condottiere]

I can speak from the High Guardesque aspect, and additions to such.

And, apparently, deep dive submersibles, as well as what's happening in Ukraine.

This depends on the complexity of the machinery involved, and I'd guess, reaction time/latency.

You probably could simplify the interface/controls to a games controller, assuming that the pilot understands the feedback he's given, and the controller delivers instructions exactly as the pilot understands how the *craft involved interacts with it's environment.

For Traveller, we have a cut off, currently, at fifty tonne hulls, for cockpits, so anything sized upto that, in accordance to the rules, should be permittable.

 

[agentwigggles]

when the small craft undocks it has the same velocity as its mothership. So it can just scoot in front of it. The crew may not have means to repair the m drive but they have the means to make temporary struts. Even if they have to cannibalize part of the ship. And any amount of retro thrust will reduce the mothership speed. They have a 2 week time frame to slow down the ship. SO they wont need to apply high thrust, risk the struts breaking.

 

[agentwigggles]

Ok, you made your point. No need to respond.

So, essentially you can have O2 with fire or you can have no fire and no O2,. We're getting somewhere. If you have fire, you're having stuff melting (plastics, insulators, control surfaces). If you vent to get rid of the meltiness (that's also consuming your O2), you have an O2 free environment. Winning.

At some point, a life raft starts to look better than the out of control, and eother on fire or vented mass. That's maybe not the hardest science out there but we're talking about games with jump drives and psionics

I would also guess that none of this is being done in a safe, orderly controlled environment. And may involve dice rolls (so something may go wrong).

As for attitude adjustment, I'm sure I could work out the distance for a 5 degree change over 2 days at 16,000km/s but I'll keep that for myTraveller. You don't need to respond.

You can evacuate the air as part of fire suppression without the air being lost. And if you didnt have the atmosphere to repopulate the fire damage room. Then you just leave it sealed off and dont worry about it.
This is where how movie dramatic YTU is about holes in space.
In real life, its not that dramatic. It can be very deadly. Just visually boring and short lived. Air is restricted from leaving a volume based on tis diameter. Small holes, small leaks. Even if the leak is to vacuum. Big holes will have that hurricane effect we see in media, but only for a few moments. Its unlikely to move an adult size person with force out into space unless you got unlikely and where at at the hole when it was formed. Though if you were at the hole when it was formed, you're probably dead anyway.
Its totally valid to run it like Aliens 3 where a hole in the hull has sustain infinite force, and will suck anything through it. Just make sure everyone at the table knows. This is a thing the characters would know, as well they lived, or worked in space all their life.

 

[swordtart]

Some of this thread appears to be an assertion that nothing sufficiently bad can happen on a ship that can't be resolved with a vacc-suit or rescue bubble.

Now if YTU runs on rails and there are never incidents and everything is deterministic then you don't need insurance in any form and any discussion is moot. No escape pods won't have any use in your game as nothing can happen that requires them. It's like the game only focusses on when you get to the dungeon and there are no wilderness encounters.

I on the other hand play a game where things do happen unexpectedly... because that is what happens in real life and is kind of the point of playing the game. Every transit runs a reasonable chance of some minor hiccup that requires a little effort by the players to resolve and to exercise some of their non-combat skills. rarely are they life threatening, but poor decisions can escalate.

But even in the plain vanilla game there are chances things can go wrong. Lets say you run a 200 Dton free trader and because of funds skip a maintenance event. One of the possible outcomes is a fuel leak where you loose 10-60% of your fuel capacity. Now you might decide that these things only happen when you are on the pan in the star port or on the 1st of the month, but logic dictates these things happen when you are not expecting it. So lets roll a d30 and see the day it occurs after that missed maintenance check.

If the is area so well populated with a healthy traffic then help might be only a call away. But then again so might someone who sees a ship that is dead in space as an opportunity. How many ships are within range.

Lets say however that you are off the beaten track a bit (because that is where the trade and adventures are).

I can fix it you say. Sure if you have spares (and if you could afford them, you could have afforded the maintenance), tools, a vacc suit and 1d6 hours and a successful engineering check you can repair the leak, but you don't get the lost fuel back. I am going to presume that until you get that leak fixed you have to isolate the fuel system and cannot operate the power plant (or the critical has no impact other than a few credits fuel and you might as well keep rolling and that is not how fuel leaks work or criticals should work). With no power you have no life support, ships systems (including the computer or comms) or m-drive. Life pods if you had them could launch under their own power. Still never mind, you won't asphyxiate in a few hours and you can always climb into a bubble right?

What if it takes more than 2 hours (the average is 3.5 hours) or the engineer fails the roll or you don't have the spares? Your passengers could be dead.

Let's say you fix it and can now assess the impact.

If it is just after emergence so you burned all the jump fuel which left you with 1DTon. You left the previous planet over a week ago and maybe almost 2 weeks previously. You ran the m-drive all the way out to the jump-point so your power plant has been running all the while. You are burning 1/4 DTon per week. Lets say the journey so far has been. Normally you would have a decent reserve at this point (lets say 20 days fuel left).

But if you were unlucky and suffer fuel loss and roll a 60% for the amount that reserve is now reduced to much lower. If we are generous and say it is 60% of your non-jump fuel so would loose 18 days of fuel. That leaves you with 2 days fuel. You now have to choose between between a few days life support or using your m-drive to try to make it to the main world. You could eke it out with a boost coast, but you might not have enough to land (and maybe there is no orbital refuelling).

Maybe there is a moon a bit closer that has a small mining base on it. If you had escape pods you could drop the passengers and all but essential crew there and reduce the life support burden and be able to limp in to the main. You could maybe land there instead, but risk being stuck there until a supply ship comes out.

Life pods give you options, that is all.

 

[WHULorigan]

. . .
This is where how movie dramatic YTU is about holes in space.
. . . Big holes will have that hurricane effect we see in media, but only for a few moments. Its unlikely to move an adult size person with force out into space unless you got unlikely and where at at the hole when it was formed. Though if you were at the hole when it was formed, you're probably dead anyway.
Its totally valid to run it like Aliens 3 where a hole in the hull has sustain infinite force, and will suck anything through it. Just make sure everyone at the table knows. This is a thing the characters would know, as well they lived, or worked in space all their life.

Don't you ever WATCH those movies? The hole isn't venting and BLOWING you out into the vacuum as the pressure drops, it is SUCKING you into space from OUTSIDE and will continue to do so until you lose your grip, or your adversary does (however long that takes) and the person finally flies thru the hole. Only then does the hurricane-force windstorm begin to drop off and let up so that whoever is left can pull themselves to safety with difficulty (regardless of the interior volume of the room, size of the hole, or how much atmosphere it could possibly have held at 1.0 atm pressure to begin with).

 

[WHULorigan]

Some of this thread appears to be an assertion that nothing sufficiently bad can happen on a ship that can't be resolved with a vacc-suit or rescue bubble.

I think it is more of an "actuarial" cost/benefit issue, from an in-game perspective:

Sure we can all engage our imagination and come up with a scenario with a particular set of special conditions in which either a "Lifepod" or "Lifeboat" would be both useful and desirable. But the people who live in this Universe (like us) will be constrained by the same factors of "What would I like to have in my perfect world" vs. "What is reasonable to have concerning the costs, resources, and sacrifices involved in making this happen as compared to the likelihood of actually needing it, and the severity of the need should such circumstances arise?" In other words, are the naval architects who build vessels (civilian or otherwise) going to include it in the design if it is going to significantly inflate the cost for something that is merely a contingency plan against a long-shot or freak unlikely occurrence? (Especially when there are already rescue systems such as Rescue Balls, Vacc-Suits, and Emergency Re-entry Kits that are cheaply available and are standardly mandated emergency equipment - Or when it is advisable in many cases to simply stay with the disabled ship?)

Alternatively, if you can make the "Escape Vehicle" useful for other purposes by making it a "multi-mission" component, you increase its value and the justification for having it on board . . .

 

[Condottiere]

Starting at TL9, all hulls are self-sealing. A self-sealing hull automatically repairs minor breaches, such as micrometeoroid impacts, and prevents hull hits from causing explosive decompression.

 

[Sigtrygg]

In the Third Imperium setting of the 57th century space travel has been routine and trivial for 10,000 years depending on the world in question.

Did Sylea ever drop to less than TL9 during the long night? Earth certainly didn't, so within the Earth sphere of influemce space travel has been trivially routine for thirty six centuries. In that time TL9+ spacecraft have become so safe lifepods are simply not necessary, stay with the ship until help arrives... any situation that causes you to want to take to life pods has likely killed you already.