The Mylthani didn't seem eager to die off. From what Annarra has said, they are basically wanting an orbital habitat for the Mylthani that go, and they'll send down adults who are genetically enhanced to live on the surface.
Don't we have a huge ship that we're not really using? It's sort of traveling with us for cargo. Doesn't it also have detachable modules? Could one or a couple of those modules provide enough space for the aliens?
cheers
I think we considered moving people in that ship earlier - the modules didn't have any sort of life support. But with some mods ... :D
There was a mining station in the colonies solar system - I can't recall if it was crashed or not? Additionally, didn't we find a station on one of the earlier jump routes that now was a dead end?
Nope, you decided to leave the giant processing ship (with all the pods) back in the home system. You have instead a utility freight (300 ton) and a second utility freighter (also 300 ton, same model) converted over into a fuel tanker.
The freighter (not tanker) is where your supplies and extra crew are.
You have used up quite a bit of supplies and such during the now nine months you've been out, so you have plenty of room on the supply freighter. You also have space freed up on the McTavish for the same reason. You had 18 months of supplies, and have used half of them so far.
You did find an abandoned station, it would need repair, but you could transfer the entire existing population to it if it were fully repaired. And yes, it's on the route back to the blown up star.
How hard would it be to repair? Do we have materials and skills to repair it?
I assume the Mylthani could provide huge assistance in repairing the place for them to live?
Well, you'd (A) Have to get them there, and (B) build them some enviro-suits and (C) train them on everything other than computers.
You didn't really do a full survey of the station, given it was long abandoned and without power, so how much repair it needs isn't on your records.
There was talk of sending some ships to salvage it, however, so it's possible the home system has been doing that. If they have, they would likely know how long it would take to repair. On the other hand, they've also likely been stripping it for the last six months of every usable part.
The Belter station on the colony world was totally kaput, right?
Some of them were usable, some were smashed up.
The ones that were usable were put back into service.
How automated are the probes? Could one have made it back home on it's own? It just seems like it would have been a good idea to send a message back, if at all possible.
It could, but it has very short range sensors. So it wouldn't know if something was following it or in sensor range to detect it transiting.
Yeah, I figured it wouldn't be able to detect that. It's more a question of acceptable risk. Up until this planet, space has been pretty dead, both literally and metaphorically.
I'll leave it up to the Captain. : )
Urp please don't do that. OOC is a democratic process :P
Now, personally, I'd go against a probe since it carries some risk. I mean, we did vent our uniforms on the off chance ... (*sob*)
I don't have a great feel for what has happened so far - reading the posts to catch up (lots of pages!) doesn't really give the same feel for me as playing it.
And, as the junior member (new guy), I will abstain from commitment either way.
However, I did vote over on gameplay.
LOL, let's assume that vote was out of character. :)
The way it works is, the captain makes all decisions...
in character. Actual decisions are democratic votes OOC. :) Just IC chain of command is followed.
I vote that we do. It seems an awesome chance to catch up on technology, as well as to give ourselves some extra defense if the weird/evil alien things show up.
If asked, Holt would suggest that ultimately, they either end up on one of our lost colonies, or a new space station (they can use the old one temporarily).
(on a completely different note, this game [the little I have played] has woken a long dormant interest in Traveller. Would be cool to play some face to face at GenCon this year - so that is on my list of games to try to get into).
voting "Aye"
A majority of "Aye" has been reached!
I'm struggling to find something to say IC other than Aye, aye, Captain
I would suggest that we bring two groups of aliens with us, one to take all the way home. A second group to occupy that abandoned space station. Worst case, they could help in the repair/stripping. Best case, they can prepare for their population's new home.
cheers
Aye - I know that feeling :P Hopefully we can finish up plotting this and continue with new, beautiful chaos and adventure : )
Also - good thinking. But, I think the abandoned space station isn't on the way home? Hmm - we could really use some sort of jump map or something ... I'll see what I can do tomorrow ... =)
google docs works well for maps and such, I have found.
I think your orders are good, and Fendar will do what he needs to do to "make is so". He has engineering skills as well as some piloting skills so he will do what he can.
Red alert!
GM Wall of Text incoming - all hands: BRACE FOR IMPACT!!
:P
I think we've lost Annarra again, no posts in two weeks. *le sigh*
I feared as much. I included her in the brief for the off chance, but I kinda felt that she hadn't said much lately.
That said, Annara, if you are out there - feel free to bounce back :P
On another note, the hour over here is too late for me to manage a fitting and coherent post right now. I'll read it up, but I won't have anything to add IC until tomorrow : )
I'm thinking of resupplying with some extra gear, I'll just need to chase down the pdf again : )
It is a google doc spreadsheet were each sheet represents one system.
The first sheet is a reference intended to be duplicated so one can add more systems to the database.
I added every system we visited and every jump-point we found (I think!). I also added a entry for every star and planet (except those in our own home-system, couldn't find the data on them!). Some are very bare.
My plan is to use this to keep track of where we have been and which routes we can take. The data on the systems is secondary, but certainly fun : ) If anyone has some time to kill, feel free to add stuff!
I plan on having a link to the "map" from my profile, but it could also be useful to have in the campaign tabs.
Cheers!
Nice, I'll add it to the tab. If you can make it editable, I can add other things of interest going forward. Also, Mylthana (the sister colony) was retconned to Masterson when I realized I'd used the same made up name for both the aliens and the colony. :)
There, on it : )
And it's on the top of the page, and a graphical starmap to give an idea of locations. Note it's not 'accurate' in a spatial sense, but it's accurate in a 'warp point' sense. Accurate spatial would look like an insane spider's nightmare.
Lookin' good : )
Thanks for the spreadsheet thing. Its handy. I am still getting up to speed with the info that is out there.
@mdt - no worries on the promotion. I didn't expect one.
Hey Fig
Vathan's an action movie star. He starred between gigs as an astronaut.
There's a disconnect between Masterton (Excel data) and Masterson (map).
Reviewing the data, I think there are only two jump nodes with unknown connections. One in Unnamed 2 and the other in Unnamed 3. Am I reading this data right?
If yes, a proposed plan would be to start from Unnamed 2 and explore first jump unknown connection. Then, Unnamed 3, if a dead end.
cheers
Unnamed 3 would be the system we quickly stoved away a part of our fleet on, the only known node there would be the one leading back to Unnamed 2. The Unknown 2 was merely an error on my end!
But Vathan's plan is sound : )
And we should find better names for them :P
MWP01, MWP02, MWP03, etc. Unless there's a base or something in them, most warp points were given universal names. Since you don't have access to the central registry, Milthani Warp Point ## works, MWP##.
Obviously if it leads to something important or valuable, then you'd want to give it a name name.
Just waiting on Hig or Holt to make it the 75% vote for the suggested exploration order, or to spout another option.
Sorry about that. I keep forgetting it's just us. I can agree with Vathan's plan too. At this point either is as good as the other.
Resplendent Commerce statted up (See campaign info page)
It's a 50K ton bulk freighter. It has four 300 ton cargo shuttles that dock at the rear of the ship. Freight cranes take pallets of up to 100 tons each down the center of the ship and store them in the cargo bays (01 to 05 on each side).
The front section which looks small is actually the size of the McTavish.
Any of the smaller freighters in the fleet, and the McTavish, can land on the cargo ship, making it a hub for the fleet if need be, and also making taking on cargo and storing it much easier.
The ship has been loaded up with a years worth of probe production (1200 probes), enough supplies for 5 years (food, spare parts, etc), and raw materials for trade (iron, steel, copper, base nutrients, farm equipment, furniture), basically anything they could get in bulk.
The major issue is refueling, which will take the McTavish a week or two to do if it gets to empty, considering she's only got a 50ton fuel tank on her. 150ish hours to fully refuel the behemoth.
They're not going to send the tanker back out with you (since the Resplendent can act as a tanker with her fuel tanks).
The ship is heavily armored (she was originally a military collier vessel), and still armed with her spinal mount Particle Accelerator (ripping it out would have torn the ship apart). It's got 3 shots on a full set of batteries. It requires too much energy to fire off the power it can produce, and takes an hour or so to recharge a shot.
The spinal mount could tear a good sized hole in the McTavish though, so it's got some punch.
I'll get the other freighter spec'd up shortly, and then get you a post.
On second thought, the system can't really build jump drives yet. Repairing them is one thing. So there will only be the Folly and the Resplendent being sent out with the McTavish. This is ok, because the Resplendent is more than big enough for a cargo fleet all by itself.
Folly will be carried by the Resplendent as a parasite craft, taking up one of the cargo shuttle spots. No reason to waste fuel by having both jump when the jump engines of the Resplendent can do the job.
This should give you good flexibility going forward. I'll get to posting the next system you find.
Mmm. Are we expected to ferry more Mylthani or will some of the other ships handle that?
Also, will the Mylthani be wanting to send an auxiliary crew with us or something?
Lastly - I finally have a longer bit of coherent time now, enough to dig in to this nice new world. Sadly I've noticed that the quality of my posts have fallen (probably since I had to go up real early this morning!), so I'm afraid I am not fit to impersonate a spaceship Captain at the moment.
I'll get to it the first thing tomorrow.
In the meanwhile, if you need her to say something, just assume she said something suitably heroic and then threw up in her paper bag!
(@Fendar - Ceres suffers from a semi-rare condition called Translation Sickness, which means her stomach disagrees with the ships Jumps)
Hig is good with any sort of exploration. In fact, as a junior member of the team, he doesn't think his opinion matters...
One reason they kept the other freighter back was to use it to go collect the other Mylthani.
The Mylthani are too busy trying to genetically altering and get their offspring up to send along an auxiliary right now. They promised that in a year or so they'll supply some volunteers from the survivors to go along.
Hig is the engineer now. And no matter how he feels in character, OOC you have full say. :)
@mdt and ceres - Thanks for all the work on those systems! I might just see if I can whip something together to create some very rough system diagrams from some properly formed notes...
@Hig - agreed with mdt, you may be new, but your vote still counts! Also, you may be seeing a lot of Holt. She tends to spend a lot of time in engineering.
A basic question:
How do I know on the star map link where we are?
Ship's now added.
Very cool, thanks.
There is a lot of background info to absorb for this campaign but I finally feel I am starting to get up to speed! Thanks for being patient.
Not at all, it's been going pretty well. We're almost up to a 1000 posts in discussion. One ofthe few games where the discussion has more posts than the game play. :) If Ceres doesn't come along soon and order the jump, I'll assume she does, nothing really stopping it.
Derp. *Comming along* Sorry, noticed this morning that I had promised to host a small gathering today and the apartment looked like it usually does - so I had to deal with that one =)
Let's see what I missed *dives into thread*
Err - behold my grand in depth post!
I'll compensate by pestering you a bit extra here instead :P
Now! Questions!
First! The Technological Guide for pathfinder brought along a few new toys - would purchasing/requisitioning Stun Batons for our ship before we leave be possible?
So that when we have to resort to cave-man tactics, we can atleast make use of some form of technological advantage : )
Secondly! Would it be possible for Ceres to retrain some skillpoints from engineering related duties to a bit more Captainy stuff? She has really honestly mainly used the later - and having three engineers out of four PCs seems like overkill (and, if Annara doesn't come back, she can try and cover some of her duties!).
Third! Anyone knows what Ceres actual rank is now - I noted down Lt. Commander in my sheet, but I suspect that is the muster-out rank from the books ...
Remember that Hig has pilot, gunnery, forward observer and astrogation ranks as well as being able to fix propulsion and weapons.
So if there are better engineers, consider Hig a pilot or gunnery officer (or both).