• Welcome to the new COTI server. We've moved the Citizens to a new server. Please let us know in the COTI Website issue forum if you find any problems.
  • We, the systems administration staff, apologize for this unexpected outage of the boards. We have resolved the root cause of the problem and there should be no further disruptions.

Bad Scouts?

Lapthorn

SOC-12
As in sinister, rather than prone to getting lost -

I'm currently reading Norman Davies's big fat history of Europe. I was struck by this from his description of the Roman empire under Constantine:

"A far-flung network of imperial messengers, who acted as official spies, kept potential opponents in fear."

The more I think about it, the more scope I see for the Scouts to assert themselves as a power in the Imperium. If the Scouts are reporting to the Emperor that Archduke X is engaged in some conspiracy, who can credibly contradict them?
 
Marchand,

Exactly. Tha IISS survey team counting asteroids could just be doing that, counting asteroids. Or they could be intercepting all your communications and cracking your encryption codes with the best that TL15+ technology has to offer, or counting ships visiting your starport, or watching a distant Kuiper belt object with their passive array, or completely unaware that one of their crew members is a clandestine courier who always visits a certain joygirl during liberty and receives a data package containing information developed by the other Imperial agents on your world.

Or they could just be counting asteroids.

Welcome to what old time Traveller hands refer to as "wheels within wheels".

Very thought provoking isn't it? It illustrates the depth and nuance of the historical examples GDW called upon when creating the game's setting. That's the "feel", the "style", that we seemingly sour old grognards prattle about when we talk about Traveller. It's one of the aspects that makes Traveller Traveller and something we've strived to maintain for over thirty years now.

Play with the idea on your own and let us know what answers you can come up with.


Regards,
Bill
 
I use the IISS that way in my Beyond campaign. Since the Imperium was commercial & political interests out in the Beyond & Vanguard Reaches, Far Frontiers they need an effective, if economic(the Imperium can easy beat any enemy in the region, but it is very expensive to support a fleet at that distance) presence. The scouts fit that bill, and they are everywhere. I also have a few 'Air America' transport concerns run by scouts or ex-scouts under the covert control of the Ministry of State (which IMTU runs the IISS except in war) or IBIS.

The IISS also does a good business in the sector 'counting asteroids' for local systems where the scouts can do it cheaper than the locals or where the locals don't have the technology to do it for themselves.
 
Melieu 0 from T4 has an extensive (and great!) write up of the scouts, addressing lots of potentials and hooks regarding the bad scouts view. Personally i love the OCC Office of Calender Compliance bit.

That the scouts go by IGS Imperial Grand Survey preferred over ISS Imperial Scout Service has always spoken volumes to me, and the Bk 5 write up has lots of potentials as well.

And counting those asteroids, thems valuable mining claims being staked out, wonder which MegaCorp gets that data? And if a scout happens to aquire a couple dtons of gems in his off time, ... all sorts of fun to be had with scouts!
 
There's no such thing as a bad/sinister scout. We're just bean (er... asteroid) counters and noble explorers.

Nothing to see here.
Move along, move along...

:devil:

:)
 
I have always concieved the scouts as being an intelligence source, especially the detached duty; there was a certain toleration for low-level law breaking by the detached duty folks as both a compensation and a means for intelligence work. Running cargo, mods to the ship, even "battle loss'ing" the Air/Raft could all be methods of compensation.

IMTU: Culturally, the Navy loves pirates, the way the game fisherman loves the gamefish; in almost all cases, the IN is going to have more resources to bring to bear than the pirates, and even in an even fight the IN can suffer losses more easily. And so, culturally, the IISS is almost always outgunned, and a prime target for the pirates: if the type S can be jumped before refueling, he cannot report the pirate spotting to the IN. The pirates, arguably, are a good reason why the scouts' survival is so low. Thus even detached duty, even bent detached duty, will loathe piracy.
 
Funny... I always considered "asteroid counting" the kind of stuff only clueless morons and serial offenders are assigned to do... as in "One more silly stunt like that, and you´re off counting asteroids until mandatory retirement".
 
Funny... I always considered "asteroid counting" the kind of stuff only clueless morons and serial offenders are assigned to do... as in "One more silly stunt like that, and you´re off counting asteroids until mandatory retirement".


Chaos,

What better place to hide secret shenanigans than among a branch of the service that everyone knows is staffed only with clueless morons and serial offenders?


Regards,
Bill
 
So are you saying that the best way to make people think that you're not a spy is to make people think that you're not a spy?

:)
 
There is a certain logic to hiding in plain sight. If the target of your surveillance sees you every day, apparently minding your own business, eventually you become part of the landscape.

Plus, Scouts are harmless, right?!? Mostly?!?
 
*looks over his shoulder to see who's listening, whispers*
Sppp... There's been this long running and very quiet spat between the Imperial Navy and the ISS. The Navy infiltrated the Scouts and used their assets for "dirty jobs". In many case the ISS never found out, in some cases the assets were Scouts, unaware that their sensitive mission orders were not coming from their own command structure...
Things have kept quiet about the whole thing because the Navy ensures that the ISS doesn't experience any problems with maintaining its budget.

IMTU anyways...
 
"It illustrates the depth and nuance of the historical examples GDW called upon when creating the game's setting." - Whipsnade

Indeed. This topic highlights the importance of personal honour in the 3I. The Scouts are the main conduit for information between the centre and the provinces. The temptation to "spin" that information for personal and/or political gain is immense.

Could be economic e.g. in my Milieu 0 like setting, the sector scout service head is first to learn about a major new Pop A+, high-tech world that's been discovered beyond the tail-end of a minor route. He books as many forward options on freight haulage on that route as he can. When news of the discovery goes public, chief scout makes killing as the value of his freight options goes into orbit...

Perhaps because I'm a Brit, I am leaning towards a version of the Service that would be a cross between the 19thC Royal Geographical Society (the exploration stuff), and British intelligence in its early days when it was a bolt-hole for right-thinking chaps (to simplify grossly), to keep an eye on things.
 
Perhaps because I'm a Brit, I am leaning towards a version of the Service that would be a cross between the 19thC Royal Geographical Society (the exploration stuff), and British intelligence in its early days when it was a bolt-hole for right-thinking chaps (to simplify grossly), to keep an eye on things.
That sounds like an excellent model, and one you ought to write up for JTAS Online, but because I like the Imperium to be very mallable for inmdividual referees, I prefer a version of the Scouts (as of every other Imperial institution) that is very dependent on local history and personalities. There will be some Imperium-wide overall characteristics, but within very broad parameters, the Scouts can effectively be all sorts of different organizations. In one duchy[*] they work as you just described; in another duchy they're as corrupt as any referee in need of a bunch of Bad Guys could ask for; in a third duchy they are a fusty, hidebound, by-the-book outfit; in a fourth duchy they are devil-may-care mavericks, etc. etc.

That way, a referee can simply choose a hitherto undescribed duchy and make the Imperium "work" the way he prefers it. Benevolently hands-off, benevolently meddling, indifferently hands-off, malevolently micro-managing (well, trying to, anyway ;)), etc. etc. A different flavor for every duchy.


[*] Or in one quadrant or sector or along a particular stretch of border.



Hans
 
The Scouts are the main conduit for information between the centre and the provinces. The temptation to "spin" that information for personal and/or political gain is immense.
Actually, by the Classic Era this is no longer the case and hasn't been for centuries. While the vaunted X-boat network remains limited to jump-4, the Imperial Navy employs jump-6 couriers. Given the choice between sending reports and orders by jump-4 and by jump-6, I think the Imperial nobles and bureaucrats will prefer the faster alternative.

Though no doubt they also send duplicates by the X-boats (or rather, originals by X-boat and duplicates by 'NavyNet').


Hans
 
Actually, by the Classic Era this is no longer the case and hasn't been for centuries. While the vaunted X-boat network remains limited to jump-4, the Imperial Navy employs jump-6 couriers. Given the choice between sending reports and orders by jump-4 and by jump-6, I think the Imperial nobles and bureaucrats will prefer the faster alternative.

Though no doubt they also send duplicates by the X-boats (or rather, originals by X-boat and duplicates by 'NavyNet').

Hans

That's just about how they describe it in MT's Rebellion Sourcebook in the chapter about spreading the word of Strephon's assassination. The Navy Couriers contacted all of the Navy Bases, and the Imperiallines type TJs (also jump-6)contacted all of it's own 'operators' <-- that's what the book says. And it was weeks and in some cases months before the x-boat service caught up.
 
X-Boats are for the public, peons, and common citizens :D The Navy has it's J6 couriers as noted. The Mega-Corps have theirs as also noted. Every Noble of status gets info from the Navy. And...

"...the Scouts have their own J36 Misjump Network that beats them all. OK, not really. Forget I said that, it's not real. Just the drinks talking, and I could use another..."

Overheard in a bar.

Anyway, can anyone offer a way to keep "Bad Scouts Bad Scouts, what ya gonna do, what ya gonna do when they come for you... " from looping in my head every time I see this thread :nonono:

;)
 
X-Boats are for the public, peons, and common citizens :D The Navy has it's J6 couriers as noted. The Mega-Corps have theirs as also noted. Every Noble of status gets info from the Navy. And...
And the public, peons, and common citizens have the news reports that arrive by jump-6 passenger liners...

What?

The rules allow PCs with enough money to buy jump-6 ships. Why shouldn't NPCs be allowed to do that too? And if they can, and if there's money in it, someone will do so. It only remains to decide if worlds with billions of people will have enough millionaires, government envoys, etc. who are willing to pay four times the going rate to get to their destinations twice as fast (It would be about four times as expensive to travel by jump-6 than by jump-3).


Hans
 
Back
Top