IMTU needing some assistance

[chaoswarp]

Hi everyone,

First time posting for me so bare with my newbie format and questions. I am a new to Traveller but want to run a homebrew Traveller universe.

I wanted to see what everyone thinks about replacing the Major races minus Humans. I was thinking of using the current Travellermap.com borders but changing the races.

I also was wondering, I read that there are five Imperiums and that the last one is like 5000 AD or something. What is the TL in the most recent Imperium?

For my universe I was going to have Mankind basically all from Earth but make it so that Mankind left Earth through Generation ships or Sleeper ships. Although I was not sure what caused them to leave Earth. They all left for different planets that can sustain life. What you think? I also was thinking that over time Earth's location was lost.

So if you could, reviews(good or bad) and suggestions are welcome.

Chaoswarp

 

[aramis]

Politics, Religious freedom, religious government, ethnic purity, alternate sociodynamic structures, alternate economic models... all of these are viable reasons for people to flee earth.

And don't forget involuntary colonists...criminals, ethnic undesirables, religious undesirables, political liabilities....

 

[chaoswarp]

Hey Aramis,

Thanks for those suggestions, I kinda didn't think of internal or forced reasons. Whoops, I was only thinking nuclear war, invasion or biological virus.

Chaoswarp

 

[Rigel Stardin]

Over population is a generic solution along with with general expansionist of the human races.

The nice thing about your idea is you could have some of these colonization ships miss their intended targets and by the time Earth discovers Jump Drives, these lost colonies could have set up their own cultures adding to an internal political/cultural struggle among Humans in general. This of course depends on your time line.

 

[chaoswarp]

Thanks for the reply Rigel Stardin,

I never thought to let one of the Generation ships miss their target. Great way to have different Humans have different cultures.

 

[DangerousThing]

This is from MTU, and I don't have a Third Imperium (or even a first one), though I do have the Phoenix Empire which was inspired by Traveller.

I created MTU to be different from the Imperium. The humans left Earth through a natural wormhole in four Arc Ships. Unfortunately something happened to the last one, probably it ran into the side of the wormhole, causing the wormhole to "spasm". The three surviving Arc Ships came out in an unknown location in an area where for some unknown* reason one of the forerunner races terraformed planets for about a million years (starting about 1.5 million years before the humans arrived to about 0.5 million years before arrival).

The Arc Ships were large enough to replicate human civilization and indeed improve on the technology.

At one point, the genetic engineering was good enough that they modified humans so that there were many that looked like aliens. There were the Aslan (a mistaken attempt to create a race of warriors/sex slaves from cats), the Heavy Worlders, the Olympians (imagine taking psionics as far as it would go and then go even further), the Ducks (I've always had a weakness for the RuneQuest Ducks), and the Growlers (Vargr, though less wolf and more dog).

I also had the human race's genes modified so that Int and End were higher (6 + 1d6 for player characters) so that humans were more survivable. And this happened *before* the other races were modified out of humans.

No need for Grandfather at all.

*I know the reason, and it was partially religious. Also they had high enough technology to do this without making it take too much of their budget.

 

[Amber Chancer]

Chaoswarp ... good luck with it! I admire those who branch off on their own ... and the rules were clearly designed to enable players to do just this. It's a lot more work than slavishly following "canon" - but a lot more rewarding. And your creative energies will be FAR better directed than they would be if all you had to do was try to resolve the many contradictions in "canon" and come here to argue with others who think your resolutions don't work.

I would suggest that you start with the proposition that the original exodus was for voluntary reasons ... a bit like the pilgrim fathers ... in J-1 days. Give your world of origin three or four J-1 neighbours, and have four different communities with different philosophies head off to one apiece, where they establish new communities more congenial to their own particular prejudices. The world of origin, meanwhile, turns its back on them and becomes more introspective. All interstellar trade and exploration is carried out between these new communities, which gradually expand outwards. The star-map, however, doesn't allow for simple straight-projection borders, and so there is inevitable strife and conflict as each tries to expand its area of influence in the new worlds to the detriment of the others. Have "low races" or not to be co-operated with or conquered as you wish ... and you now have a custom-built opportunity for all sorts of scenarios inspired by the colonial era and the great age of exploration.

Meanwhile, have the world of origin suffer a great disaster. Plague, famine, war, climate change ... who cares what? It doesn't matter. Make the main planet uninhabitable, and the few small colonies established on other worlds and moons too small to sustain the remaining population. So they take to the stars ... but the four new stellar empires don't want to accept them. Think Vietnamese Boat People or Cuban refugees here. Or Aeneas if you are of a Classical bent.

What you end up is four stellar empires, each with whatever differing philosophies you want, with four frontiers along which frontier action is possible, meeting at the centre where there is a dying world belonging to none of them and which none of them wants, with a race of space gypsies roaming the stars looking for a place to settle (if you don't like the racial connotations of "space gypsies", then by all means think of them as "space Mormons of the pre-Salt Lake City era" ... the same issues arise) but being welcomed by nobody.

The planets towards the centre should be more heavily populated and more developed; those further out should be less hevily populated and less developed. But these are only rules of thumb.

How far from the centre to the outer rim and the totally unexplored? Well, that's up to you.

I'd suggest only 10 parsecs or so in the first century after the initial migrations; 20 parsecs or so in the second through fifth centuries; 30 parsecs or so in the sixth through tenth centuries; 50 parsecs or so in the second millennium; 100 parsecs or so in the third millennium; 250 parsecs or so in the third millennium. I wouldn't suggest going any bigger than this. A 250 parsec radius chunk of space is a pretty big place!

As for your worlds, use the random world generator, but roll up a whole host of worlds without locations. And I mean a LOT. And sort them by size.

Then go and sort out your world locations (I'd use deliberate placement in the first 5-parsec radius and then random generation thereafter) and simply roll for the planet SIZE of the worlds in each location. Then pick a world from your random list that is that size, but which has a population and a tech level and a government type that make sense for the location in question in your milieu. (Or pick one that DOESN'T make sense, and come up with a plausible explanation for it. But don't do this TOO often, especially close to the centre, or you'll end up breaking your own milieu ... which isn't a very clever thing to do! :rofl: )

Have fun with it ... and don't forget to come back and tell us what your universe is looking like, will you?

 

[Rigel Stardin]

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/www/wwwfull.html

Someone either posted this or I found it somewhere. It's a general guide for writing stories, however it's useful for creating other things as well such a scenarios for a campaign.

Another quick thought here, Earth doesn't have to be the center of your new universe. Like nations, earth's power base may have wained during their expansistic period and new worlds have taken it's place. Rivalry could stem from interactions of these new political and economic powers,while maintaining a central government. Also jump drives could have been created on one of the colonies instead of the Homeworld, thus causing a shift in power as well.

 

[Carlobrand]

Generation ships, the next generation born to the ship and its mission, and the generation after that, and ...

You know, some of those folk won't want to leave the known security of the ship to fulfill great-granddaddy's mission on a strange and unknown world. You're going to end up with one or more cultures of gypsies who go from system to system, harvesting resources from asteroids, moonlets and cometary clouds to build more generation ships that do the same thing. If any of them get hold of jump technology, they're likely to settle in the relative safety of deep space and collect their resource and growth needs from there.

Your empires are going to be troubled by two persistent threats:

First, raiders - sometimes in fleet strength - using jump to appear from nowhere to pillage and collect slaves and new tech, then returning to their hidden deep-space city-ships, with any raider ships or individuals that get left behind suiciding in order to protect their clans' secrets. You'd have scenes of stranded raider soldiers dying for no obvious reason, damaged boats erupting in a nuclear flash, retreating raider warships ruthlessly nuking their cripples as they left.

Second, the occasional appearance of great ships, miles across and protected by escorts in fleet strength, coming in at sublight speeds from deep space to harvest resources from your system's asteroids and gas giants. Some may be friendly and interested in trade. Some may be strange and reclusive, wanting nothing to do with the locals but violently defensive and perhaps dangerous to anyone who happened to be located at a resource they wanted. Some may be hostile, pillaging your less well-protected worlds and leaving death and smoking ruin in their path. These would only be vulnerable while they're actually in a system; a few weeks exiting a system at thrust would make them very difficult for a retaliating fleet to match speed with and attack while maintaining enough fuel to decelerate and jump home. They're likely to have technology borne of their interstellar existence that is unknown to star-huggers - fields to harvest hydrogen and other chemicals from deep space, perhaps extreme or instantaneous acceleration drives - but some starhugger technology might be a surprise to them.

 

[DangerousThing]

Generation ships, the next generation born to the ship and its mission, and the generation after that, and ...

You know, some of those folk won't want to leave the known security of the ship to fulfill great-granddaddy's mission on a strange and unknown world. You're going to end up with one or more cultures of gypsies who go from system to system, harvesting resources from asteroids, moonlets and cometary clouds to build more generation ships that do the same thing. If any of them get hold of jump technology, they're likely to settle in the relative safety of deep space and collect their resource and growth needs from there.

Your empires are going to be troubled by two persistent threats:

First, raiders - sometimes in fleet strength - using jump to appear from nowhere to pillage and collect slaves and new tech, then returning to their hidden deep-space city-ships, with any raider ships or individuals that get left behind suiciding in order to protect their clans' secrets. You'd have scenes of stranded raider soldiers dying for no obvious reason, damaged boats erupting in a nuclear flash, retreating raider warships ruthlessly nuking their cripples as they left.

Second, the occasional appearance of great ships, miles across and protected by escorts in fleet strength, coming in at sublight speeds from deep space to harvest resources from your system's asteroids and gas giants. Some may be friendly and interested in trade. Some may be strange and reclusive, wanting nothing to do with the locals but violently defensive and perhaps dangerous to anyone who happened to be located at a resource they wanted. Some may be hostile, pillaging your less well-protected worlds and leaving death and smoking ruin in their path. These would only be vulnerable while they're actually in a system; a few weeks exiting a system at thrust would make them very difficult for a retaliating fleet to match speed with and attack while maintaining enough fuel to decelerate and jump home. They're likely to have technology borne of their interstellar existence that is unknown to star-huggers - fields to harvest hydrogen and other chemicals from deep space, perhaps extreme or instantaneous acceleration drives - but some starhugger technology might be a surprise to them.

You have a couple of violent alternatives, with trade only a small possibility.

I think trade between the gypsies and the star huggers (great name!) is a great possibility. The gypsies may have much better life support and recycling tech, and they may be able to sell long-term astronomical observations. They may have a workforce that is skilled at zero-g work.

I also don't think that if they come in violently they would risk the ship-cities.

 

[Carlobrand]

You have a couple of violent alternatives, with trade only a small possibility.

I think trade between the gypsies and the star huggers (great name!) is a great possibility. The gypsies may have much better life support and recycling tech, and they may be able to sell long-term astronomical observations. They may have a workforce that is skilled at zero-g work.

I also don't think that if they come in violently they would risk the ship-cities.

It's more a question of what kind of adventures you want to see than what they might or might not realistically do. Trade is certainly a possibility, and some interesting first-contact adventures open up that way, but a little violence adds some exciting options.

 

[77topaz]

Another quick thought here, Earth doesn't have to be the center of your new universe. Like nations, earth's power base may have wained during their expansistic period and new worlds have taken it's place. Rivalry could stem from interactions of these new political and economic powers,while maintaining a central government. Also jump drives could have been created on one of the colonies instead of the Homeworld, thus causing a shift in power as well.

I did something similar to that with this TU: http://millionstars.wikia.com.

 

[Amber Chancer]

Generation ships, the next generation born to the ship and its mission, and the generation after that, and ...

You know, some of those folk won't want to leave the known security of the ship to fulfill great-granddaddy's mission on a strange and unknown world. You're going to end up with one or more cultures of gypsies who go from system to system, harvesting resources from asteroids, moonlets and cometary clouds to build more generation ships that do the same thing. If any of them get hold of jump technology, they're likely to settle in the relative safety of deep space and collect their resource and growth needs from there.

Your empires are going to be troubled by two persistent threats:

First, raiders - sometimes in fleet strength - using jump to appear from nowhere to pillage and collect slaves and new tech, then returning to their hidden deep-space city-ships, with any raider ships or individuals that get left behind suiciding in order to protect their clans' secrets. You'd have scenes of stranded raider soldiers dying for no obvious reason, damaged boats erupting in a nuclear flash, retreating raider warships ruthlessly nuking their cripples as they left.

Second, the occasional appearance of great ships, miles across and protected by escorts in fleet strength, coming in at sublight speeds from deep space to harvest resources from your system's asteroids and gas giants. Some may be friendly and interested in trade. Some may be strange and reclusive, wanting nothing to do with the locals but violently defensive and perhaps dangerous to anyone who happened to be located at a resource they wanted. Some may be hostile, pillaging your less well-protected worlds and leaving death and smoking ruin in their path. These would only be vulnerable while they're actually in a system; a few weeks exiting a system at thrust would make them very difficult for a retaliating fleet to match speed with and attack while maintaining enough fuel to decelerate and jump home. They're likely to have technology borne of their interstellar existence that is unknown to star-huggers - fields to harvest hydrogen and other chemicals from deep space, perhaps extreme or instantaneous acceleration drives - but some starhugger technology might be a surprise to them.

If you're taken with Carlobrand's idea (and it sounds to me as if you are) then I think that the effect of the arrival of the Vikings in Saxon England may provide you with a useful analogy for the violent encounters - and the Anglo Saxon Chronicles may prove to be an invaluable reference source for getting the "feel of the age" (my copy of the ASC is ISBN 1-85833-478-0 but I am sure there are plenty of other editions to choose from as well).

Actually, the arrival of the Saxons in late-Roman and sub-Roman Britian is probably every bit as good an analogy ... but we are rather less well supplied with documentary source material for that one!

 

[mike wightman]

In a shameless bit of plagiarism I would call the groups of deep space dwellers Reavers,

thinking here of the border revers from my own local history, but the term was used in the Serenity/Firefly 'verse.

And I love the term star-hugger...

 

[DangerousThing]

It's more a question of what kind of adventures you want to see than what they might or might not realistically do. Trade is certainly a possibility, and some interesting first-contact adventures open up that way, but a little violence adds some exciting options.

I will admit that the image of a seeming unbeatable hoard attacking a border planet is breathtaking, but it is also a bit unbelievable. If the city ship is destroyed, then the gypsies have no home.

If they have that sort of night, I would just have about half the escort fleet attack without risking their home base. This should still be impressive.

On the other hand, I've never liked unbeatable fleets. And once the secret is out that they live in deep space at sub-c speeds, the jig is up.

So I'd either give peace a try, or I'd have them surreptitiously mine resources from the Oort Cloud and have them imitate normal pirate bands. Then the players could slowly figure out the clues...

 

[Amber Chancer]

If you have their fighting ships consist of battle riders, it'll take a cute bit of lateral thinking by the players to compute the possibility that it's not just the riders which are sub-C, but the tenders as well.

If the tenders have agility 5 or 6; are always in reserve; and invariably break off by acceleration before the line of battle is broken, leaving the riders to suffer their fate in the event of a reverse - well, I'll wager you megacredits to peanuts your players will just assume that once they have evaded pursuit they will jump. You will then have them search every known system within J-6 to try to find where they come from, and then start postulating that maybe these guys have an even higher jump capability ... or possibly got here by misjump (Voyager, anyone???) ... but they'll probably still need a bit of prompting by the referee to consider the true explanation.

Show them the top half of a swan ... and most of them will never think to look under the water to check that it isn't sitting on the bottom half of an iceberg


And yeah ... I love "star-huggers", too!

 

[chaoswarp]

Thank you all for the responses,

I am having some problems though breaking down the timeline and the history. It says that in 2050 they sent a Generation ship to Alpha Centauri. However, the one thing they never bring up is how long it took for it to get there and they did not mention what type of engines it used. I know that Prometheus is a jump 2 distance away.

So my question is, How long did the Europa take to get to Prometheus?

Traveller wiki says The Europa reached Alpha Centauri and the next ship reached it in 2101 AD but had jump drives. so somewhere between 2050-2101 the Europa reached Prometheus.

 

[Carlobrand]

If you have their fighting ships consist of battle riders, it'll take a cute bit of lateral thinking by the players to compute the possibility that it's not just the riders which are sub-C, but the tenders as well.

If the tenders have agility 5 or 6; are always in reserve; and invariably break off by acceleration before the line of battle is broken, leaving the riders to suffer their fate in the event of a reverse - well, I'll wager you megacredits to peanuts your players will just assume that once they have evaded pursuit they will jump. You will then have them search every known system within J-6 to try to find where they come from, and then start postulating that maybe these guys have an even higher jump capability ... or possibly got here by misjump (Voyager, anyone???) ... but they'll probably still need a bit of prompting by teh referee to consider the true explanation.

Show them the top half of a swan ... and most of them will never think to look under the water to check that it isn't sitting on the bottom half of an iceberg ...

Now THAT is nasty!:devil:

I don't particularly have a problem with the mothership going insystem, since I'd have the mothership doing enough long range observation and sending advance reconnoitering parties to know whether or not the system was easy prey - but I like the above scenario much better. Send your escorts in on the above scenario while the mothership busies itself in the Oort region building a daughtership, so to speak.

Thank you all for the responses,

I am having some problems though breaking down the timeline and the history. It says that in 2050 they sent a Generation ship to Alpha Centauri. However, the one thing they never bring up is how long it took for it to get there and they did not mention what type of engines it used. I know that Prometheus is a jump 2 distance away.

So my question is, How long did the Europa take to get to Prometheus?

Traveller wiki says The Europa reached Alpha Centauri and the next ship reached it in 2101 AD but had jump drives. so somewhere between 2050-2101 the Europa reached Prometheus.

Alpha Centauri: 4.366 light years

Depends. The faster they go, the more dangerous the space they fly through becomes. If that is a factor, then they have a top speed and that top speed decides how long it'll take.

If it's not, ... well, in a purely newtonian universe, assuming they have enough fuel or can tap space for fuel in a ramscoop arrangement, then at 1g they can get pretty close to C in about a year, covering a half lightyear in that time, then fly for about 3.4 years, then decelerate for a year, arriving in about 5.4 years all told. BUT, as we've discovered, it's not a purely newtonian universe, and I haven't the foggiest how to calculate for time dilation, so I can't say how many years will pass for them or on earth in that time. My best guess though is that they'd not experience more than a few years subjective during the transit ...

... Which is where that idea breaks down. They refer to it as a generation ship, so I have to assume a lot more than a few years are passing from their point of view, ergo they're travelling a lot slower, ergo there's something limiting their top speed - and without knowing what their top speed is, there's no way to calculate how long it takes them to get there.

 

[chaoswarp]

Hi Carlobrand,

I thought that if they are Generation Ships then it would take at least 50+ years at sublight speed. They said in 2101 they sent a Jump drive ship out to Prometheus. Did that ship beat the Generation Ship and just colonize it before the Generation Ship made it there?

If they used the wrong term, that is fine but have they ignored time dilation in the Traveller universe or explained it with technology?

 

[Timerover51]

When I think of a generation ship, I think of a ship that is taking anywhere from 100 to several hundred years to get to it destination star. Given the amount of energy required to reach near-light speeds, a ship velocity of about 3% or so of the speed of light might be achievable with a ship of manageable size, and remembering that you have to decelerate at the other end. That would give you a travel time to Alpha Centauri of about 146 years, suitable for a generation ship. At that speed, the time dilation effect is pretty minimal, so ship and earth time would be very close to matching.

In Maxwell Hunter's Thrust Into Space, the following formula is given for the time dilation effect.

Ship Time = Earth time X square root of (1 - ((V/c) Squared))

V is ship speed, and c is speed of light.