Questions About Cross-Country Movement

[creativehum]

I've been lurking, mostly down the CT sub-forum, and wanted to say how much I've gotten out of reading post upon post already.

In a few weeks I'll be running Across the Bright Face at a retro-rpg Game Day with my local RPG folks.

I haven't played Traveller for years (though going through CT now I see it in whole new light and am very excited.)

I'm sure I'm just missing it somewhere in the rules, but...

1) How far can a small group of adventures travel on foot cross-country?
2) Also: how does Gravity and/or Terrain affect the movement rate.
3) Also: What if the adventurers are in vacc suits on a zero-atmosphere world?

(Technically, the PCs will stay in the ATV during AtBP -- but who knows!!!)

Thanks!

 

[aramis]

I can't find it in TTB. However, I do know that a walking pace is 25m per 15 second combat round (TTB 34, 47). This is 100m per minute, or 6kmh -close enough to an unencumbered human's walking speed as I know at 4 MPH (encumbered should be somewhat less - an 8 hour hike is usually about 10 miles at a casual pace, or 20 miles at force march.

Note that striker gives a movement rate of 2.5cm at 1:1000 scale - 1mm:1m - and a 30 second turn. So it's half the speed of Bk2. And a much more reasonable 3 kph.

DA2:ATBF does include the movement rates (on page 10)... but those are for the ATV in 0.2G's... (150 kph overland on planes? 90 MPH? talk about rooster tails! Especially with that gravity.)

DA4:Marooned has overland movement rates on foot - plains are .25 hexes per week... with 1043 km/hex, or about 37 km/d and 10 travel hours per day - about 4 kmh.

What I'd suggest: 6kph for unencumbered characters to End Hours. Each encumbrance level reduces by 1 kph (and, of course, reduces End, as well). half-speed after that until collapse - from lack of sleep - or halving again for another End hours. (This means a normal hiker, end 7, with double load is at -1, and gets 6 hours at 5 kmh, then 6 more at 2.5 kmh. A 10 hour day this way would be 30+10=40 km... close enough to ATBF's 37.

It also fits nicely with the 6 kmh derived from the speed rules in TTB, and the movement mechanics of striker can be presumed to be for troops with gear and/or on not quite good hiking trails.

 

[aramis]

CT's movement rules that I can find are entirely tactical - 25m in 15 sec. 6 km/h

ATBF presumes ATV movement.

Marooned, however, gives us 1049*0.25 km/week on plains... with 7 days and 10 hours each for travel. That works out to 262.25 km/week, or 37.46/day, or 3.75/hour.

So... reverse engineering the numbers.
Double load, End 6 (the lowest of the included characters).
Let's reduce the km/h by load just like we reduce Str & End. So, typical hiker, double load, 5 km/h, end reduced to 5. This looks like a good point to use End for hours of hiking before it "fatigues" one to half speed. So that's 25 km over 5 hours. we need 12 more over the next 5... and half speed looks like 2.5kmh, so that's 12.5. Nearly perfect fit to the 37.5 km/d.

 

[creativehum]

Thank you for this!

You laid out the pieces for me to come up with a solution. Much appreciated!