The Long Night Ends (A Traveller T20 Game) (Inactive)

Game Master mdt

Nope, and the Jump Drive was removed a long time ago, Ceres isn't sure where it is. To the best of my knowledge, Traveller doesn't use shield tech.

To the best of my memory, there are 2 types of "Shields" that get used in Traveller.

- Meson Screens that protect against meson guns only. (keep the mesons in their mass-less state so the ship is not affected.
- nuclear dampers that prevent fisson, and protect from nukes.

Both are big, and not common on non-military craft.

Given Lady Annara actions, I have given her GM, the Drawback of Paranoid Noble, it kinds of fits her and the way she's acting.
With Diplomat as a 3ed trait., again it kind of fits her.

She also has as Enemy's as contacts.
The press, Anti noble groups, other houses. I mean you would be Paranoid.
She just put on a Vacc suit in ship. Paranoid!! much.

BTW: For those with the rule books, when you read the ship sections (for those who bought the design sections), multiply the G ratings on ship drives by 100.

I swear nobody who wrote Traveller originally understood orbital mechanics or solar distances. A freighter moving at 2 G's would take forever to move around a solar system.

have a look at the original acceleration speeds for air-rafts, and Grav tanks hehe. We worked out you could walk faster for the 1st 20m.

"ok guys we robbed the bank, now lets push the Air raft and get it to a good speed" :)

But... they only had 6 sided dice... so ships can only go 6 gees.

G only implies acceleration, not speed. They could have techno-magic mumbojumbo and just magically attain a high speed like many other sci-fi settings :P

Also, I'm not sure the crowded bridge wants people walking around in apollo-program era spacesuits : P

A landing seems most fun ^^ If we can manage that. Thoughts people : )?

Sure! And we can go have a picnic in the Fukushima core afterwards ;).

I think our obvious choice is to have 4 mechanically/vac suit/zero g trained folk to take the heavy duty suits and disembark once the landing is accomplished. I imagine that the four will all end up being navy (PCs or NPCs).

I'm in favor of a landing if we can find a safe spot. I'm thinking:

-step 1:
fly in close and use psi power and probes to find a promising docking place.
Looking for:
Survivors
Working computers
Working small craft that we can get off easily

Engine compartment that still has lights looks promising to me.

-step 2
Try to connect to computers by radio to get more info.

-step 3
Attempt landing or docking. Send in PCs as boarding party.

Only 1 heavy suit on the ship. Even with it, a single person will have limited time to go look around, so you'll likely have to send multiple people over time.

As to the 6G, I understand fully it's acceleration not speed. However, acceleration is the important thing. For example, if you were to accelerate at 0.5 G, how long would it take you to approach the speed of light?

Answer, about a year.

Think about that. And it might take half a day for a photon to travel from one side of a solar system to the other. So imagine the fuel required to keep a ship thrusting for a year. :)

Hundreds of G's make it more reasonable. Especially since the warp points can be up several light-hours outside the system. Add in having to avoid gravity wells (or use them to save fuel) and the logistics simply don't work unless your acceleration is in hundreds of gravities. At least, not for anything that's going to be reasonable. :)

For those that haven't twigged, I'm stealing a bit on the ships from David Weber's Honorverse for the gravitics and engines.

Also, don't forget, you have to flip over half way and thrust in reverse to slow down (no reverse gear!), so if it takes you 2 weeks to get from A to B, you're accelerating for a week, and decelerating for a week. Assuming you are using thrust constantly. More likely, to conserve fuel, you're acceellerating at that 150 Gs for an hour to reach a reasonable cruising speed, then coasting and making course corrections.

You probably never want to get above 500,000 kilometers an hour. Want to see that asteroid coming. :) The navigation system uses Lidar (Laser version of radar) that picks up obstacles at 100,000 kilometers, giving the ship 12 minutes to respond to something in it's path at 500,000 kph. The active sensors are only 25,000 km, or 3 minutes if the lidar misses it.

The Dawn was going much faster than 500,000kph, in order to match the runaway. It's going at a dangerously high 800,000kph right now. Which means that if Lidar picks up something, the ship has about 45 seconds to try to avoid hitting it. Obviously, the computer is doing that. That's why it took less than 10 days to match with the ship. The trip back will take longer due to traveling at a safer and more sane speed. :) Plus they'll use orbital breaking to save fuel, using a local gas giant's gravity well to slow down.

Oh, for reference, it takes light about 8.5 minutes to reach earth from the sun.

To make the same trip at 500,000kph takes about 12 days.

At 800,000kph, not quite 8 days.

Which is why most sci-fi (and some more or less grounded real concepts) cheat, bending time-space and all that : P

//

@Fernán - reportedly, wikipedia lists the Fukushima reactor (in its vicinity, I guess as close as one can walk/send probe) as relatively hospital at only 1 Sivert/h.

We're about to eat fuelrods as snacks straight form the reactor ^^

Further trivia:

The fastest man-made craft, Voyager 1, is travelling at about 60000 km/h - a tenth of our speed : )

"You may suit up if it eases your mind - and as long as it wont impair your skill."

Ceres

IMHO, this type of statement would not fly from the commander of a military vessel. Either we are in danger enough to suit up, or we are not in danger.

Your question about impairing skills is a good one, and I don't think a vac suit would. However, the time the good doctor is away from the console putting on his vac suit would be the issue.

my two credits

cheers

But the person qualified to judge if we are in danger was the one asking.

Honestly, Ceres is more concerned about the success of the mission then enforcing the navy dress code. You can wear a pink bathingsuit if you want, as long as you do your job and don't screw up because nervosity or paranoia : )

Spending time away from is task qualifies as 'impairing his skill'.

edit: IIRC vac suits at low TL have rather hefty Armour Check Penalties. If one is proficient, that should only include skills we are not going to use while monitoring a computer screen.

Also note - to add to the topic of shields, black globule generators also (theoretically) exist!

TL 9 suit don't have to be Apollo era suits they can just as easily suits of today.
The news ones from NASA for Mar are cool.

Honestly, Ceres is more concerned about the success of the mission then enforcing the navy dress code. You can wear a pink bathingsuit if you want, as long as you do your job and don't screw up because nervosity or paranoia : )

Spending time away from is task qualifies as 'impairing his skill'.

edit: IIRC vac suits at low TL have rather hefty Armour Check Penalties. If one is proficient, that should only include skills we are not going to use while monitoring a computer screen.

Also note - to add to the topic of shields, black globule generators also (theoretically) exist!

[snark]maybe Sci Fi military has no discipline, and the position of captain is more of guidance counselor...[/snark]

The ones that exist today and are used for spacewalks/outside the craft still doesn't look very agile to me. One of the suit designs used on ISS was introduced '82 and the other in '85.

//

The ships mission is to survey the wreck. All else is secondary. The Captains job is to make sure the ship completes its mission, not picking clothing for the crew.

Besides, the game would be awfully boring if only one person gets to decide everything ...

The ones that exist today and are used for spacewalks/outside the craft still doesn't look very agile to me. One of the suit designs used on ISS was introduced '82 and the other in '85.

//

The ships mission is to survey the wreck. All else is secondary. The Captains job is to make sure the ship completes its mission, not picking clothing for the crew.

Besides, the game would be awfully boring if only one person gets to decide everything ...

That's why MDT specified out-of-character we decide, but in-character you decide.

In fact, survival of the crew was the commodore's first mandate. If radiation puts the crew at risk, and vac suits can protect the crew, "picking clothing for the crew" actually takes precedence over the survey.

That's why we're having this conversation OOC in the Discussion.

cheers

Doctor Z isn't going to be helpful with prudence. He is a classic mad scientist who is more interested in interesting science than safety.
Out of character I agree vac suits are a good idea for the whole crew. Doctor Z would never tear himself away from the work to take safety precautions.

IMHO, this type of statement would not fly from the commander of a military vessel. Either we are in danger enough to suit up, or we are not in danger.

//

[snark]maybe Sci Fi military has no discipline, and the position of captain is more of guidance counselor...[/snark]

Neither of these seems to be discussing whenever or not we should suit up ...

//

Vac suits protect the crew against radiation about 1/3 of what the shuttle is rated at. Anything strong enough to 'burn' the shuttle is likely to be strong enough to carry a fatal dose, suit or not.

Thus the suits being more of a 'feelgood' option rather then actual protection. And their absence or presence is then unlikely to affect the crew, leaving only the question about their work-efficiency left.

My view on the matters anyway : )

Oh yeah! I totally forgot about the black globes. And the theoretical "white" globes.

Just to note, the way radiation works, whatever the shuttle stops is weakened by the shuttle.

So wearing the vacuum suits would provide additional protection (adding another 1000 sieverts to what the people can handle). The down side is, if you get ANY radiation through the shuttle shielding, then EVERYONE is either dead, or wearing suits the rest of the trip, because the radiation will take time to work it's way back out of the ship (think of it like an insulated thermos, takes a lot to get heat through a thermos, but once you do, if you take it into a cooler environment, it retains the heat inside).

But yes, the idea is, you make group decisions in OOC discussion, but then Ceres makes the decisions in character on what the group does, to simulate command structure.

So another thought to float, although this is strictly OOC: is there a way to redirect the ship, perhaps into a more stable orbit? Or is its inertia just too off the scale for any reasonable method to work?

Well, you've got about 30,000 tons of metal racing along at 800,000kph with dead engines, and 8 hours.

Your shuttle is about 250 tons.

:)

Hey mdt, assuming the radiation is coming from the engines, would it be possible to separate the engines from the rest of the ship? If someone could get there, place some charges (or if the shuttle has some weaponry) and separate the two pieces? I would assume not, but if the ship is that badly damaged...

Also, hello everyone! And Ceres, I hope you don't mind that I piggybacked your backstory just a smidge at the end of mine. : )

So assuming we are dealing with a star of 1 solar mass, we need to move it to ~1/25 the distance of Mercury at its current speed.

Alternatively, if we assume we are at 1 AU, we would need to provide a delta v of (very) roughly 200,000 m/s.

We could in theory do 150 gees I guess, given the magic of inertial dampers?

At 150 gees, it would take about 4.35 hours to slow the heavier ship's velocity (150*9.8*250/30000). Of course, I have no idea if we have that much fuel. The bigger problem would be the stresses on the hull. It would be 2% deformation assuming steel - probably buckle the hull.

Edit: right forgot a zeros place in the bigger ships mass. Not likely achievable.

It's not the engines that are radioactive, they're actually less radioactive than the rest of the ship. The entire hull seems to have been rendered highly radioactive.

As to changing the course, the shuttle isn't equipped with a tractor cable. You could try pushing it hull to hull, but it's not structurally built for that. The battle hull of the target ship could likely stand up to that, but the 500 year old hull of the Hawk would no doubt do a good impression of aluminum foil. Assuming you had the fuel. As it is, the ship is going to do an orbital breaking slingshot around a nearby gas giant after leaving this ship then cost back home (thus the 2.5 more weeks of travel).

Hmm, what about overriding the engine controls and getting it to reverse thrust until it stops?

I believe its engines are not active.

Boarding sounds like the only viable option at the moment.

Maybe not, but it sounds like the rear of the ship is the least damaged, so maybe they could be re-activated.

My bet is on a main reactor melt-down - which would explain the radioactivity. And then there probably be precious little power left, save some poor backup generator somewhere.

The ACP of a vacsuit is -5. Initially I thought it actually applied to Piloting, but that does not seem to be the case. Marking 'suit up' as slightly likelier in my book.

However, anyone not trained in vacsuit usage and that has an important task is very unlikely to get the permission. They are more likely to endanger the crew by missing something important (thanks to the -5 ACP) then die from a radiation dosage of exactly between ~3200-4200 S

I'm pretty sure that everyone on the bridge has someone who can take over for the time it takes to suit up. We can change on the bridge to minimize time away from station... I assume I'm not the only one monitoring sensors...

And... telling Ziirkaa that he is too important to suit up will only feed his megalomania. :)

What do we need to know before we move closer to the safe part of the big ship guys.

Tell the GM you're done planning and plotting and are ready to go closer. :)

Lady Annara ready.

Ready

I'm hoping the radioactivity was from an exterior source, like a nuke, so that the surviving portions are reasonably radiation free and investigatable.

Ready!

Also ready!

Ready, but it is too late for me to post anything thoughtful - just assume Ceres gives the order and I'll write something up tomorrow :)

Ready, if the boards will stop eating my posts...

Yeah, I've had that happen a few times. What I've started doing is writing my posts in a google doc, and not clearing it out until I go to write my next post. That way I always have my last post saved back, just in case.

This is different then the normal timout issue; rather earlier it was not allowing me to post at all.

But yes, I do tend to at least Ctrl-C anything over a sentence.

GM I wanted to do an action as we got close, is that still possible.

also lady Annara being spooky again, putting her suit before other knew they had to. It's odd how her gifts kick in or is it plane logic and she's not spooky at all. Hehe

Annara, I figured you would. Trying to do it during the scrape would have been rather difficult. :) I had assumed you'd want to do it as you got up close to the docking ring. Even up close, it's going to probably drain your psi abilities for the day. So you probably only have one shot at it.

EDIT->
I think she will be OK with detect life once docked or very close range [5km] with the bigger ship being in that range. That would not cost her any where near as much as all her PSI goodness for the day.

I was thinking "detect life"* GM, not affected by matter or radiation,
Once docked She would take 1 shot of booster +5 PSI [One hour] then she Detect life PSI cost 5pp [conscious or unconscious, Range Radius 5km on whole ship / Time 60 mins] + [2pp Talent Cost] 7PSI [5 boosted 2 inherent] and still have PSI 12 [inherent] left for later in the game. [Really 11 as she will always keep 1PSI point]

*Life Detection: Radius Detect the presence of other minds, conscious or unconscious, Number of minds, general type of mind, Human, Animal, other and their general location relative to the Psionicist.

In this way she can try and get a life Ping, seeing if any one is alive over there. And still have some PSI left for later GM.

If it comes to another super important Pilot roll, Ceres will make use of her trait and roll twice on the check : )

And whom wants the hardsuit and secure our landing zone ?

Life detect done, cut down the distance because she's doing it after they docked

Vathan does not have the vac suit feat, so what are the game mechanics of wearing one?

He does have +3 T/Mech for the repair but would he the absolute last to volunteer to space-walk to fix the clamp assuming Navy guys, including the PCs, would be better (ie have a higher bonus).

It is basically just an armour, but the ACP of -5 does apply to everything if one is not proficient. Plus there might be low-grav penalties tacked on too.

Ceres is good at engineering, and does have Low-Grav Adaptation but the job should probably go to one of the Navy crew-members.