ATU Library Data

[BwapTED]

I'm knocking around ideas for an ATU.

CT rules
high guard/big ship(EDIT ship rules still under consideration-may use something closer to Book 2)
''used future'' aesthetic for a lot of stuff
kind of gritty 70s/80s starfaring sci fi

Not diamond hard sci fi, but a bit harder than the OTU.

I may swipe stuff from 2300 AD, but I'm only going to borrow elements I can glean from wikis and other free sources. I'm not planning on buying the 2300 AD books.

The entries that follow aren't all set in stone but they should give a good idea of some of the differences between this ATU and the OTU:



Arks
• J-1 sleeper ships sent from Terra in the 22nd and 23rd centuries AD, after the last global war. Each ark carried many humans in cold-sleep, preserved livestock, seeds, other animal and plant samples, tool kits, labs, atmospheric convertors, medical stores, hard rations, analog libraries, and so on. Ran with skeleton crews, just a few men awake/revived for each jump.

Army
• Most inhabited human worlds maintain some sort of surface-based military or paramilitary force: planetary defense corps, colonial guard, army, etc.
Some worlds maintain separate naval (wet) and air forces.


Artificial gravity
• Simulated by thrust or spin.
See jump space, below for additional information on gravity in jump space travel



Cold Sleep
• Suspended animation achieved by a combination of drugs and cryogenics.
(More reliable than standard Traveller low berth, but still not foolproof)


Cyberware
• Used mainly for medical purposes, prosthetics and implants.
• Jump-space properties limits the types of cyberware rated as safe for jump travel. See Jump Space, below.


Draft
• in-game world: any of various systems of conscription, indenture, recruitment for contracts (as in pro sports today)
• metagame: failure to enlist in service of choice= roll on career service chart at age 18


Drugs *
Three cheap medications for spacefarers:
• Gravanol – helps human bodies adapt to higher gravity and high acceleration.
• Anti-rad—provides limited protection against radiation sickness and other ill effects of exposure
• Ursaline—prevents bone density loss and other health problems in microgravity conditions
Drugs like fast, slow, medical, combat, etc. described in Book 2 also exist.



Elite citizens
• AKA Nobility, aristos, plutocrats, oligarchs, directors, electors, patrician families, and so on. The ruling classes.
(Corresponds to nobility in standard Traveller; a variety of titles are used.)


Geneering
• Genetic engineering. Used most often for medical and agronomic purposes. Radical modifications of humans have been outlawed on most worlds.

Jump Drive
• Tech first developed to J-1 level by late 21st Century Terrans.
See Jump Space, below


Jump Space
• Hyper-dimensional realm, perceived by real space intelligences and sensors as a 2-D plane. Entry into/prolonged observation of jump space without a protective field results in acute psychological distress or death.
Entering and exiting jump space requires a pilot linked with the jump drive initiator. Navigating in jump space requires a navigator. Computers may assist in both cases, but without the input of a human mind (some aliens can jump, some can't) jump travel is either impossible or very dangerous. Intuition, imagination, and subjectivity matter.

•Ships entering jump seem to fall onto the matrix, from the point of view of those inside.

Ships exiting jump seem to fall through the matrix, ''dropping" back into real space.

•While in jump, objects on ships act as if under 1G, with ''down" being towards the exit direction of the matrix. Thus, those inside the ship may walk about on decks as if walking on the floor of a house. Unsecured free falling objects will hit the deck when the ships falls onto the jump space matrix. Some people feel acute jump-sickness coming into and out of jump.


Merchant Service
• Spacefaring merchants registered to an independent world, an interstellar state, or a mega-corporation.
(Use Merchant career from Book 1)

Provolutionary Democracy
• An ideology of pre-catastrophic Terra, centered in Western nations. Provolutionist parties gained political power in several states in the late 21st century. These regimes conducted horrific experiments on human subjects, waged aggressive wars, and committed genocide. The other nations smashed the Provolutionists in a global war that left the planet devastated.

Scouts
• Professional explorers of space and alien worlds, many work as megacorporate contractors or freelance colonial agents.
(No IISS)

Space Force
• Space-based military forces
(Identical to Navy in standard Traveller, but more likely to use air force or army terminology than naval; nomenclature varies by service/star nation)




Starport
• Higher quality ports use a beanstalk or similar ground to orbit device. Often encompass extra-territorial concessions and embassies.

Terra
• AKA Earth or Old Earth
• Human home world, devastated by war and plagues. Has become habitable once more but remains a harsh, poor, anarchic world.




Terraforming
• Industrial and biochemical processes used to make semi-habitable worlds more like pre-catastrophic Terra; expensive to the degree that many colonies must collect heavy terraforming taxes.

Troopers
• Space-based soldiers, may train in vacc suit/micrograv combat, boarding actions, drop assaults, close-in weapons.
(Same as what standard Traveller calls Marines)


Xenos
• technical/scientific term for intelligent life not of Terran origins
plural: xenoi
(none of the Major Races of the OTU exist, besides Humans/Solomani)
''Alien" is a common term for the same thing.






















Credit where credit is due, I took these from GURPS Space.

 

[Golan2072]

I like this! Seems like an anarchic, somewhat post-apocalyptic setting. And are there post-human Provolutionists lurking in the shadows and conspiring?

 

[BwapTED]

I like this! Seems like an anarchic, somewhat post-apocalyptic setting. And are there post-human Provolutionists lurking in the shadows and conspiring?

Cool beans.




There might be some Provolutionist holdouts, sure.
I'm considering ditching psionics; forbidden biotech alterations on humans may take its place as an underground science.
This setting leans towards grittiness, so don't expect shiny happy oh-so-pretty posthumans. More like creepy experiments...


I could also combine forbidden human alteration with psionics, as per a certain TV show.


Thoughts?

--------------------


Side note on miracles and tech

I'm cutting down on technological miracles and super science, but without spending too much time worrying about technical details nearly all my likely players will cheerfully ignore.

Jump space and the jump drive are the obvious physics busting miracles here. Without some sort of FTL, there's no multisystem civilization and travel. Not the sort I find interesting for a Traveller game, anyway.
And I do want this to be interstellar, not confined to the Solar System.

 

[Jason M Durkish]

I like as well .
I am using some of the same ideas my gaming universe .

 

[Ulsyus]

Nasty Provolutionist experiments affect infected humans in a research lab and a few intrepid PCs have to fight their way out or meet their Doom?

WRT:

Jump Space
• Hyper-dimensional realm, perceived by real space intelligences and sensors as a 2-D plane. Entry into/prolonged observation of jump space without a protective field results in acute psychological distress or death. Passage through jump space wreaks havoc on microelectronics and digital media; destroying components, erasing stored information, and so on.

How do ships have working computers if they're effectively reduced to ballast after jumps?

 

[BwapTED]

Nasty Provolutionist experiments affect infected humans in a research lab and a few intrepid PCs have to fight their way out or meet their Doom?

WRT:


How do ships have working computers if they're effectively reduced to ballast after jumps?

Excellent question
Answer:
They use computers that don't incorporate vulnerable microelectronics.
Mechanical computers aren't affected in the least by Jump.
Vacuum tubes should be okay, too.

I was tempted to allow discrete circuits to work, but not integrated circuits.

The goal is to limit ship computers and keep them bulky, just as described in the CT rulebooks. Exactly how that works is still open for tweaking.




What do you think?


RE Doom/creepy lab escape

Awwwww, yeah!

The adventure idea would fit.

 

[BwapTED]

drugs


I will probably use three drugs from GURPS Space (GURPS 3E)

• ursaline
• anti-rad
• gravanol

The first prevents bone degeneration in microgravity. The second grants improved ability to survive harmful radiation exposure.
The last helps negate some physiological problems caused by high gravity, but can become addictive.

 

[BwapTED]

Another question:

To make physically large ships, do you guys think I should use High Guard rules or just take Book 2 and scale things up?

I have High Guard. That doesn't necessarily mean I have to use every rule in it.


I do like limiting the computers and electronics on ships, though.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

one thing to consider is that, depending on how long the colonised planets have been settled, theres nothing that would stop them creating their own microchip industry, and thus SDBs might have access to much more advanced/effective computer and ECM systems.

just food for thought.

 

[rancke]

one thing to consider is that, depending on how long the colonised planets have been settled, theres nothing that would stop them creating their own microchip industry, and thus SDBs might have access to much more advanced/effective computer and ECM systems.

just food for thought.

Would a 37th generation vaccum tube computer necessesarily be less effective? Wouldn't it just take up more space?

<Munch, munch>.


Hans

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

maybe, maybe not.

But since space is, in the traveller design system, the major limiting factor, arguably more so that cost, anything that saves space should not be discarded out of hand.

 

[tjoneslo]

Vacuum tubes should be okay, too.

I was tempted to allow discrete circuits to work, but not integrated circuits.

The goal is to limit ship computers and keep them bulky, just as described in the CT rulebooks. Exactly how that works is still open for tweaking.

Keep in mind you don't need "tubes" to build a vacuum tube computer. You just build the computer without the glass tubes, then evacuate the computer compartment to space. The vacuum at 100km altitude is better than the vacuum in any tube.

And you can make the "vacuum tube" components at nano-scale too.

Once you get rid of the tube, you can scale the components down to any size. So it'll be an interesting balance of size vs destruction in j-space.

 

[robject]

Once you get rid of the tube, you can scale the components down to any size. So it'll be an interesting balance of size vs destruction in j-space.

THAT is a neat idea. So it's not vacuum tubes, it's vacuum computers!

 

[aramis]

Would a 37th generation vaccum tube computer necessesarily be less effective? Wouldn't it just take up more space?

<Munch, munch>.


Hans

Depends on if you need analogue output...

VTC's can do analogue computations as well as digital. And Micro Vacuum Tubes do exist real world. You can get slice sizes down to 50 micron, use the same etching methods as microchips, and get computers only 10000x the size of a current microprocessor, but that only hiccup at radiation spikes, and can do true analogue computing. And can handle speeds up to about 10x that of semiconductors.

How does 480GHz for a processor sound? It's only about 20x the volume, runs on 10v, and won't fry on a 50v spike from radiation. They're power hogs, but can be, at current tech, more than 10x faster - once warmed up.

NASA is looking at them again for that very reason.

http://www.newelectronics.co.uk/ele...ogy-is-being-deployed-at-the-nanoscale/45695/

 

[BwapTED]

one thing to consider is that, depending on how long the colonised planets have been settled, theres nothing that would stop them creating their own microchip industry, and thus SDBs might have access to much more advanced/effective computer and ECM systems.

just food for thought.

Indeed.

I'll have also to consider the ideas shared by Hans, Aramis, tjonelso, and others.


My design goals with tech:

• include some intentional zeerust (could be achieved in some cases simply by using 70s style futuristic looks for things)
  
• allow fairly large ships to operate with small crews and cruise with people in cold sleep (see Alien)
  
• keep ratings like gunner, navigator, and pilot important
  
• prevent the computer tech from being so good that humans become sidekicks to the machine
  
• no transhuman ubermensch (That doesn't mean illegal experiments might not be going on someplace, but don't expect nice results...)
  
• aging rolls at 34+, but some kind of anagathics do exist...
  
• cyberware mostly medical/theurapeutic and low-key, good stuff is not cheap

 

[tjoneslo]

• allow fairly large ships to operate with small crews and cruise with people in cold sleep (see Alien)
  
• keep ratings like gunner, navigator, and pilot important
  
• prevent the computer tech from being so good that humans become sidekicks to the machine

The first one is in conflict with the third one. To operate a large ship requires either lots of people or a high level of automation. The latter implies near- or beyond- human capable computer systems. This makes the middle one difficult to justify except by fiat.

That's not to say you can't do it, and there may be real justification for setting the limits on computer capability. It's just difficult to explain easily and will generally come across as because I said so.

 

[BwapTED]

The first one is in conflict with the third one. To operate a large ship requires either lots of people or a high level of automation. The latter implies near- or beyond- human capable computer systems. This makes the middle one difficult to justify except by fiat.

That's not to say you can't do it, and there may be real justification for setting the limits on computer capability. It's just difficult to explain easily and will generally come across as because I said so.

Good points.

Let's see how to reconcile everything...

We can run pretty large vessels today with relatively small crews. But I wouldn't say humans are sidekicks to machines.

I suspect my wording was too vague. Let me clarify. When I write about people "playing sidekicks" to a computer I mean sidekicks to an AI. The machine intelligence does the heavy thinking and big decision making. It's plucky human buddies help it, or go along for the ride. That's what I'm set on avoiding. The easiest way to do this, it seems to me, is to limit AI. It may not even be an issue with CT, given how high a TL the core rules suggest for Artificial Intelligence.

Thoughts?

As for the middle one, the need for a human crew...


What about humans+ machines being objectively better than machines alone? Computers boost human abilities. They are tools.

Jump space navigation may require a human being to make sense of the weirdness of jump space. Computers help with math, but they lack the necessary imagination and subjectivity to understand how to move through jump. A navigator is pretty much necessary. Try it without one and you risk a much higher chance of misjump.
It may not even be possible to enter jump without a human navigator (or pilot, perhaps).
That's an option I could use.


Gunner is trickier. It may be that the skill mostly involves programming and servicing weapon systems. Manual mode for cases of computer failure would be part of the training. Overrides on everything in case the computer is destroyed, hacked, whatever.

Or maybe some kind of gestalt with drugs, hologrids, whatever that uses the computer to enchance the human gunner's abilities?

Same thing for pilots.




As far as automation goes, I do expect a lot of jobs have been automated, and it's normal on a merchant vessel for crewmen to wear more than one hat.

 

[aramis]

Actually, at present, we can run pretty large vessels without ops deck crew at all. We don't need the helmsman, the navigator, nor the captain for practical reasons. We still need them for legal reasons. Between GPS and collision radar and collision sonar, we could totally automate everything but the engine maintenance. Including automation of the hall sweeping, the window washing, and the cargo handling. A shipboard automated crane would actually be faster and safer than the shore cranes we currently use, but it's not allowed for contractual and legal reasons.

What we haven't been able to automate is the maintenance, especially of the engines.

 

[BwapTED]

Actually, at present, we can run pretty large vessels without ops deck crew at all. We don't need the helmsman, the navigator, nor the captain for practical reasons. We still need them for legal reasons. Between GPS and collision radar and collision sonar, we could totally automate everything but the engine maintenance. Including automation of the hall sweeping, the window washing, and the cargo handling. A shipboard automated crane would actually be faster and safer than the shore cranes we currently use, but it's not allowed for contractual and legal reasons.

What we haven't been able to automate is the maintenance, especially of the engines.

Legal reasons may be an important consideration specially when dealing with spaceships.

If terrorists hack an unmanned ship and use it as a weapon in a catastrophic attack...

How long before people start making laws requiring crews and watches and all that?



I think I'll make navigators/pilots necessary for jump travel. Maybe a ship requires a pilot in order to both enter and exit jump, and a navigator while in jump space to prevent a misjump?
That puts at least one or two humans on board. And they should be joined by a few others.
Add a medic because accidents happen, people and/or livestock need to be revived from cold sleep, etc. Medics may be legally mandated or required by insurance companies, too.
Somebody has to be on hand to deal with critical engineering problems if other crew members are otherwise engaged/lack the necessary skill.

Sometimes the job title may be a carry over from old times, while the details differ. It may be like that with the purser.


Robots and automated systems can do a lot, but if they break, who fixes them? I'll have to work out what bots can do, but I might just fall back on Book 8. That's one I don't have, but may buy soon.
Thoughts?

You guys have been discussing some similar stuff in that High Guard/crew size thread. I follow it with interest.

 

[tjoneslo]

I suspect my wording was too vague. Let me clarify. When I write about people "playing sidekicks" to a computer I mean sidekicks to an AI. The machine intelligence does the heavy thinking and big decision making. It's plucky human buddies help it, or go along for the ride. That's what I'm set on avoiding. The easiest way to do this, it seems to me, is to limit AI. It may not even be an issue with CT, given how high a TL the core rules suggest for Artificial Intelligence.

Thoughts?

Define the difference between an AI and a really good expert system. In this case I mean in game terms, and in terms of the practical experience of the players. In real terms the difference may be that an AI has a charming personality, and the expert system does not. In game terms both need to have a level of skill with the operation of the ship (or section thereof).

As for the middle one, the need for a human crew...

What about humans+ machines being objectively better than machines alone? Computers boost human abilities. They are tools.

If you have ever seen the original Alien film, the crew is largely along just for the ride. The computer (which may or may not be an AI) controls everything. I think this is the scenario you're trying to avoid.

Jump space navigation may require a human being to make sense of the weirdness of jump space. Computers help with math, but they lack the necessary imagination and subjectivity to understand how to move through jump. A navigator is pretty much necessary. Try it without one and you risk a much higher chance of misjump.
It may not even be possible to enter jump without a human navigator (or pilot, perhaps).
That's an option I could use.

The only plausible reason I can see this working is that jump requires psionics. The jump works because of some non-physical mental power possessed by the pilot/navigator. This has been explored in several SF stories/games previously, so it's not unknown. For example, StarForce proposes a telekinetic pilot combined with a computer was required for a teleport like jump used by the ships in the game.

See also Frank Herbert's Dune universe and/or Larry Niven's Known Space universe.

As far as automation goes, I do expect a lot of jobs have been automated, and it's normal on a merchant vessel for crewmen to wear more than one hat.

The thing you and I are struggling with here is wanting to have a feel or style to the game, which may or may not be realistic in a hard science universe.

My way of explaining all of this would be to start with Larry Niven's story The Schumann Computer. In this story the protagonist convinces an visiting alien to give him the plans for building an real AI. The AI gets built, comes on line and seems relatively normal and sane. It continually demands more input, but works OK. Then one day, a few months after turning it on, it shut down unexpectedly. They never figure out why, but speculate the AI evolved through the singularity and left.

So assume the same thing happens. Every AI ever built either goes insane or shuts down after a few months to a year. And any computer system built beyond a specific level of complexity becomes self aware.

So you can build a computer that does one thing well (e.g. a piloting computer) or several things poorly (e.g. a steward robot), but not both. Your ship can be controlled by a set of (loosely networked) computers and engineering robots. But you can't build an expert system smart enough to handle every situation because it will (or may) become self aware and shut down, and probably at exactly the wrong time.

So for legal and engineering safety reasons the computer capabilities are capped anywhere you choose. And the crew is required to baby sit the computer(s) to disconnect/reboot them if things go wrong. And deal with problems beyond the capability of the computer(s).