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General Help in adding color to IMTU spacer/marine culture

willtron3030

willtron3030

SOC-12
Peer of the Realm
IMTU, artificial gravity at low-to-mid-stellar TLs is uncomfortable and prolonged use (more then 6 hours) has deleterious health effects. Such effects typically wear off in less than thrice the time spent in AG. The point of it being that while the tech exists, the ubiquitous use of AG on ships is a hallmark of high-stellar tech.

By custom, the mess hall and ward room only turn on AG for meals and special occasions.

The gym turns on AG every other watch period. Since the number of watches and watch periods are both odd and mutually prime (3 and 7), every crew member, soldier, and supernumerary has access to AG in the gym on alternating watch cycles.

I'm trying to come up with a mantra that space-borne infantry are taught on their first exposure to shipboard life; one that emphasizes physical training when AG is available, while using zero-G time for education, planning, and maintenance of quarters and equipment.

So far, the best I have is, "Body, Brains, Belligerence, and Beauty." Respectively: physical fitness, classes and simulations, combat training, and maintenance of barracks, personal gear, and the armory.

If it stays as is, there will definitely be sardonic variants for ground-side base security and shore leave (the latter ending in "Booty").

I'd started out with the fourth term being "Berth", "Barracks", or "Bunk", but it could be too easily misinterpreted by recruits as a rest period. Then again, NCOs might *enjoy* catching that misconception in progress...

Ideas?
 
"Work out while you walk, think while you float. "

"Any fool can lift weights in zero G"

"Every muscle needs exercise, including the one in your head!"

That the sort of thing you looking for?
 
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Yup, that's definitely the right direction. I especially like the second, as it might be a subtle dig against spacers that prefer resistance training in 0G.

I want to retain some kind of alliteration/rhyming/scansion, making it easy to remember and repeat, such as:

* "spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch"
(eyeglasses, keys & pocketknife, wallet, and cell phone -- my morning EDC checklist; originally from Austin Powers movies)

* "armpits, %$$#*le, crotch and teeth"
(from George Carlin's stand-up routine about basic hygiene)

* "Drop it, Defer it, Delegate it, or Do it"
(Task Management)

* "Define, Design, Document, and Deliver"
(Service Delivery)
 
Sweat in G so you can fly in zero.

Don't let the Army see you sweat in the mud.

A Marine fights anywhere, any gravity. 20 more kilos and 2 more kilometers, that will give you something to bellyache about.

Spacer, your ship may go to 4G without compensators and you are going to have to be able to reach the scram lever just on your strength and you magboots. Yes you aren't a leatherneck, but the whole ship can die if you can't reach the control panel. You WILL exercise in G, that's an order.
 
And if you enforce a general zero-G environment, be prepared for doing temporary physical aging checks on at least STR if they don't exercise, permanent if it goes say two years without correction.
 
kilemall said:
And if you enforce a general zero-G environment, be prepared for doing temporary physical aging checks on at least STR if they don't exercise, permanent if it goes say two years without correction.
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This should definitely be a risk for adventurers that cut corners.

IMTU, TLs below high-stellar (and the polities where player characters originate certainly aren't there yet), the norm in J-space is Zero-G punctuated by mildly uncomfortable and (potentially harmful) crude AG. The ship decks are perpendicular to thrust (think Broadsword class), and in-system transits at 1G provide "normal" gravity for much of the time in N-Space between landfalls. Physical training is enforced among Fleet and Space-borne Infantry; I expect that *someone* codified the equivalent of "Pilates for Zero-G", using resistance bands, standard crewspace fixtures and body mass (not weight) to offset effects of Zero-G environments.
 
wbuthod said:
This should definitely be a risk for adventurers that cut corners.

IMTU, TLs below high-stellar (and the polities where player characters originate certainly aren't there yet), the norm in J-space is Zero-G punctuated by mildly uncomfortable and (potentially harmful) crude AG. The ship decks are perpendicular to thrust (think Broadsword class), and in-system transits at 1G provide "normal" gravity for much of the time in N-Space between landfalls. Physical training is enforced among Fleet and Space-borne Infantry; I expect that *someone* codified the equivalent of "Pilates for Zero-G", using resistance bands, standard crewspace fixtures and body mass (not weight) to offset effects of Zero-G environments.
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What is your overall setting like? Is it human-only or humanity is but one species among a number of alien race's or what?

Is there a local, ancient polity that is high-stellar and everyone else are the younger, newer groups in comparison to it?

Are there certain pieces of tech used widely in the OTU that aren't really used, or are even non-existent, IYTU?
 
I've borrowed heavily from David Drake, Nathan Lowell, Peter Grant, S.J. Macdonald, Jack Vance, and Andre Norton for bits of culture. I'm working my way through E.C. Tubb and A. Bertram Chandler now, and I expect to retcon some of their inspiration into things.

It's a sandbox setting, where a NAFAL colony seed ship, the Lambent Valediction, departed rimward during the early Rule of Man, with a hold full of frozen colonists and supplies, and began seeding colonies in a slowly expanding globular cluster. The stars are dense but habitable worlds are few. The "Val" deposited colonists on two worlds, and got leapfrogged by FTL ships built on the first of those landfalls by the time it reached a third habitable world.

It is now about eight hundred years since the Val's first landfall in the cluster. It has yet to be determined how long the Val was in transit, or what has become of the Solomani Empire it left behind.

There are two native sophont races, and hints of three more, all probably long dead.

There is a point in the cluster around which all systems within ten parsecs appear to have been destroyed. Ships attempting to jump more than a parsec into that zone misjump. Ships that survive always precipitate further away from the center. Spacers call that region "The Empty", and the systems surrounding it, the "Black Shore".

There are at present a dozen human polities, all have average TLs between 10 and 12, with TL13 being considered exceptional. Several of the more populous TL 10-11 systems are highly balkanized and fractious. Three interstellar polities are nominally hostile to one another, but are averse to further large scale combat.

On worlds with A or B starports, law levels tend to be high, and able spacers, be they military or civilian, have reputations as fierce brawlers and lousy shots.

There is no TAS, but there are smaller organizations that fulfill similar roles. A spacer guild with a couple of warm meals and a bed for spacers between berths, managed service providers exist for merchant and mercenary companies alike, and a university on one of the more populous and technologically sophisticated systems provides grants and fellowships for researchers and explorers. And several ascetic associations with ties to surviving Solomani religions exist, either isolationist, or benevolent. Two tend to establish hospitals in populous systems and set up small class E frontier ports in remote systems for wayward ships.

The intent of the campaign was Mil-SF and SF-Horror (I have a "Handwavium Manifesto" to keep all my McGuffins in rank and file), but it evolved to exploration and trade around the Black Shore. Some of the Jump mains dip into the edges of the Empty, resulting in misjumps, search and rescue, and salvage. There are habitable (and inhabited), resource-rich worlds on the Black Shore that can only be easily reached by jump-2 mains that dip into The Empty.

Missing tech: man-portable plasma or fusion weapons

Ship combat is usually in zero G and zero cabin pressure.

Quirky tech: hydrogen storage is dangerous (passes through metal , odorless, explosive), so refined fuel is typically ND3 or D2O. Heavy ammonia can be corrosive, but it's easy to tell if you have a leak. Heavy water is benign but has to be kept from freezing. The atmo plant can split out N2 or O2 from the fuel, reducing additional life support consumables needed.
 
Just one (probably side) question: as in YTU (as I understand) artificial gravity is not an option as a usual fact, being only for specific uses, wouldn't ships have spin hábitats (à la 2300AD)?

WIth the constraints I understand you set, I'd envision many ships being what MgT 2300AD would say double hull (a on-spinning core with a spinning outward space), where the core section would have artificial gravity, even if only used in specific moments (as too much using would be harmful for crew). This way you probably could avoid both the harm for being at zero-G and th harm produced (IYTU) by artifical gravity...

I do not know if spinning habitats as the 2300AD the spin capsules (be them fixed or extendable) would allow the jump field to be kept, so most of those ships would not be able to be streamlined (and so to land) or just orbit-to orbit (again as 2300AD)...
 
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I think my main objection to a spinning hab is that, cinema aside, mechanical systems of that size and environmental seals are prone to failure under acceleration or maneuver stresses, and friction is still an ever present threat if regular maintenance isn't performed at a large repair facility. Starship outer hulls lack windows IMTU, too. If you open the outer airlock door, you can look through observation windows in the airlock.

Also, just as artificial gravity is uncomfortable and possibly hazardous until ~TL13, inertial compensation isn't very good at all until early TL14. So, spinning a ship under way at 1G... nope. Large highport stations in orbit can get away with it.

I know it's a huge departure from OTU; I'm unapologetic. I love the Traveller rules, but the 3I kind of lost me in the late 80s. When I began an ATU, I'd envisioned "Starship Troopers", "With the Lightnings" and "Aliens", and have lots of things happen on highport hab rings, planet surfaces, and downport towns. What I wound up with was more "Ports of Call", "Take the Star Road", and "Half Share". I can live with that.
 
I keep re-reading this, and will need to borrow a copy of 2300 to skim. Just because it hasn't been done this way up to now doesn't mean the idea can't be borrowed and RETCON'ed in.
 
wbuthod said:
I know it's a huge departure from OTU; I'm unapologetic. I love the Traveller rules, but the 3I kind of lost me in the late 80s. When I began an ATU, I'd envisioned "Starship Troopers", "With the Lightnings" and "Aliens", and have lots of things happen on highport hab rings, planet surfaces, and downport towns. What I wound up with was more "Ports of Call", "Take the Star Road", and "Half Share". I can live with that.
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of all the RPG communities know, the COTI lot are one of the least bothered by departures form canon. hell, the whole OTU/ATU/IMTU terminology is a sign of that acceptance. A lot of traveller players starting playing traveller before the OTU was even written, and didn't see any reason to change their setting to better match Mr Millers version.

no need to apologise here.
 
wbuthod said:
I've borrowed heavily from David Drake, Nathan Lowell, Peter Grant, S.J. Macdonald, Jack Vance, and Andre Norton for bits of culture. I'm working my way through E.C. Tubb and A. Bertram Chandler now, and I expect to retcon some of their inspiration into things.

It's a sandbox setting, where a NAFAL colony seed ship, the Lambent Valediction, departed rimward during the early Rule of Man, with a hold full of frozen colonists and supplies, and began seeding colonies in a slowly expanding globular cluster. The stars are dense but habitable worlds are few. The "Val" deposited colonists on two worlds, and got leapfrogged by FTL ships built on the first of those landfalls by the time it reached a third habitable world.

It is now about eight hundred years since the Val's first landfall in the cluster. It has yet to be determined how long the Val was in transit, or what has become of the Solomani Empire it left behind.
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Interesting~. Were there differences in YTU's history prior to the Rule of Man or is it that it essentially diverges with your colony ship?

Also, how come it was a NAFAL colony ship when humanity would've already had access to FTL drives through the jump drive?
wbuthod said:
Quirky tech: hydrogen storage is dangerous (passes through metal , odorless, explosive), so refined fuel is typically ND3 or D2O. Heavy ammonia can be corrosive, but it's easy to tell if you have a leak. Heavy water is benign but has to be kept from freezing. The atmo plant can split out N2 or O2 from the fuel, reducing additional life support consumables needed.
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I learned recently that palladium can absorb 900 times its own volume in hydrogen.
 
Were there differences in YTU's history prior to the Rule of Man or is it that it essentially diverges with your colony ship?
Click to expand...

The divergence was an "alien invasion from Galactic South" (read: "not originally of this galaxy") scenario -- the prelude to the SF-Horror theme I'd wanted to follow, and I had two justifications for NAFAL, both fighting for primacy in my head: (1) the seed ship was too massive for contemporary jump drives, and (2) the invaders were somehow aware of FTL jumps, and were using that awareness to systematically identify/consume/destroy systems where Humaniti was making jump transits. Humaniti was intent on hiding the Valediction's exit from charted space as an insurance policy to preserve the species.

I learned recently that palladium can absorb 900 times its own volume in hydrogen.
Click to expand...

I was really chuffed about that back in the "cold fusion" excitement of the 80s, before they even proved the cycle could be repeated thousands of times.

With apologies in advance for rounding errors and things I forgot or never learned:

1dT of Pa masses about 12 metric tons, and can absorb 900dT of D2 *gas* at STP, or 22kg. A metal hydride is excellent stability-wise, but is 0.18% deuterium, and requires over half a metric ton of Pa per kilogram of stored D2. And that Pa would need to be more than a dTon of displacement in order to have the surface area to volume ratio needed to accommodate rapid storage/extraction of D2 from hydride storage.

* 1dT of solid Pa Hydride weighs about 12 metric tons, and yields 0.18% D2, 22kg.
* 1dT of liquid D2O weighs about 15.5 metric tons, and contains 10% D2, 1.55 metric tons.
* 1dT of liquid D2 weighs (S.W.A.G. - liquid LD2 is probably slightly denser than simply double that LH2) about 2 metric tons and is 100% D2.
* 1dT of liquid ND3 weighs about 11.2 metric tons, and contains 30% D2, 3.4 metric tons.

So, heavy ammonia is yields half again the deuterium as the same volume of liquefied D2, twice as much as heavy water, and ~150 times as much as Pa Hydride.

DISCLAIMER - I was going strictly with D2O until I ran across a blog post by Erin Pallette extolling ND3.
 
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