Three Models for Starports and their worlds

[kilemall]

I do not pay bribes in foreign countries. Have you ever had a friend or someone you know have to pay a bribe to simply bring in household goods and clothes following a fire? You are basically arguing that paying bribes are perfectly okay. I would suggest that you move to Chicago and find out how much they actually cost. How about having to pay a bribe just to get your mail delivered?

You are sugarcoating criminal activity. Period.

You are beating on people for having the potential to support different stories then Pollyanna Does Moral Stuff In Space. Period.


It's an entertainment choice, not a moral RL action that hurts people.


For crying out loud, bribery is BUILT into the game, with skills and law level and such.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

I do not pay bribes in foreign countries. Have you ever had a friend or someone you know have to pay a bribe to simply bring in household goods and clothes following a fire? You are basically arguing that paying bribes are perfectly okay. I would suggest that you move to Chicago and find out how much they actually cost. How about having to pay a bribe just to get your mail delivered?

You are sugarcoating criminal activity. Period.

their have been times and places where you pretty much did have to pay bribes to get anything done, and that some level of corruption was effectively inherit in the system. plently of places where the officials were not paid very much (if they were even paid), places where government official were expected to make a little on the side, and it was tolerated if they weren't too greedy.


places like 18th century England, For example, where the public offices were mostly unpaid or badly paid, and the officials would abuse their positions to make a profit on the side.

Or republican Rome, where the fire brigade would only put out your fire if you sold them your house at a knock down price.



to state that these places, times and cultures have existed, and that they may exist again in the future, is not an endorsement of those activities.

 

[Timerover51]

their have been times and places where you pretty much did have to pay bribes to get anything done, and that some level of corruption was effectively inherit in the system. plently of places where the officials were not paid very much (if they were even paid), places where government official were expected to make a little on the side, and it was tolerated if they weren't too greedy.

places like 18th century England, For example, where the public offices were mostly unpaid or badly paid, and the officials would abuse their positions to make a profit on the side.

Or republican Rome, where the fire brigade would only put out your fire if you sold them your house at a knock down price.

to state that these places, times and cultures have existed, and that they may exist again in the future, is not an endorsement of those activities.

So what happens if your players do not play the game and refuse to pay? Are you going to hammer them for being honest? Spend the entire evening trying to get them to pay the bribes, or do what you are demanding that they do?

I have read Samuel Pepys's Diary. Would you like to have the Royal Navy being run in that manner now?

 

[Condottiere]

Bribery is a game mechanism, which works better ad hoc in a medieval fantasy setting, or third world country, not to say when paying off some some rural county law enforcement official in a speed trap, where there is an expectation of baksheesh.

It requires more groundwork and sophisticated approach in a developed country, or higher up the food chain.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

So what happens if your players to not play the game and refuse to pay? Are you going to hammer them for being honest? Spend the entire evening trying to get them to pay the bribes, or do what you are demanding that they do?

I have read Samuel Pepys's Diary. Would you like to have the Royal Navy being run in that manner now?

Force them to pay a bribe? No, in game I'd use a bribe as a obstacle to be overcome. For example, a official who getting paid by a rival to slow or obstruct the players, or an official who won't sign off on his paperwork without a bribe. The players can use whatever means they have available to overcome these obstacles, form just paying the man off, to finding a way to conduct business without going through the official, to exposing his corruption to a honest official higher up.

Do I want the royal navy run like that now? No, obviously not. But that doesn't change the fact that it was run like that, and dealing with such a corrupt institution may be a problem when travelling outside of the 3i where their isn't a higher power to keep them in Check. A rpg set in, say, the Caribbean in the age of sail, these sort of things would be around and players would need to deal with them. The same is true in traveller.


In short, they make good villains, and something the players may encounter and have to deal with. This is not the same as saying it's perfect or inevitable, just that it's possible and that it's an element a Gm may wish to include or exclude as they desire

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Just keep it civil...

So, let me get the correct. You are supporting criminal activity on the part of your players. Yes or no?

Are you badgering people yes or no? Look TR if your mad the game allows for criminal act that's personal to you and not everyone is you. Some people perfer to pretend they're something there not n real life like smooth space bribery experts who live on the sketchy side of life.

I, myself try and run a noblebright empire but my players straght up robbed some refugees. Did I like it, no, but they seemed to so in the interests of player agency and fun I let them. Because it is a game, and not real life.

You are beating on people for having the potential to support different stories then Pollyanna Does Moral Stuff In Space. Period.


It's an entertainment choice, not a moral RL action that hurts people.


For crying out loud, bribery is BUILT into the game, with skills and law level and such.

Also there is this.

Just reminder to keep it civil. No one is in trouble but this looks like it go sideways so let's stay civil.

 

[Timerover51]

A while back, like in the early 1990s, I attended a dinner meeting where the speaker basically spent roughly an hour explaining how U.S. companies could get around the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in dealing with countries where bribery was a way of life. He did have one problem with one of his examples, where the company, which was a very large one, committed to build a hospital under a no-bid contract, where the government official involved had his family get the contracted, at a somewhat inflated price. Once the company was locked in on this, the official then awarded the contract to a non-US company. Needless to say, the U.S. company was a bit upset, and were even more upset when the official told them that the other company, not troubled by such a thing as a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, had simply made a large deposit in a Swiss bank account that he had. The company was not in a position to do anything, as if they went after the government official in the home country, they would immediately implicate themselves in a Foreign Corrupt Practices action in this country.

The morale of the story is, make sure that when you bribe someone, he stays bribed.

Then there is the account of the Japanese naval attache to Chili who paid the Chilean Naval Minister $50,000 in gold to send a Chilean merchant ship to Japan loaded with nitrates, this after Pearl Harbor, and dare the U.S. Navy to sink the ship. Needless to say, no ship was sent, and the complaints of the Japanese naval attache in the intercept were quite pitiful. There was nothing he could do, as if he complained, the Naval Minister would accuse him of fabricating the story to discredit the Naval Minister, and order the attache home. The English author that I was working with on this and I thought that this was quite funny.

Morale of the story, is the guy bribed actually going to do what he was bribed to do?

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

The morale of the story is, make sure that when you bribe someone, he stays bribed.


Morale of the story, is the guy bribed actually going to do what he was bribed to do?

both excellent points, and something to consider if the players are trying to do a end run around the law and are just blithe about it.

just because its possible to cheat, doesn't mean it should be easy to cheat.

 

[atpollard]

Travelling in parts of Africa, it is a common practice to clip currency to the back of your passport when presenting it at certain checkpoints in order to have your "lightened" passport returned promptly. Your passport is worth more than the annual salary of an underpaid police officer ... creating a lot of "temptation".

Of course you can spend a few days dealing with the questions and irregularities plus having the embassy issue a replacement for the "lost" passport, if you prefer.

 

[Flattened Sphere]

I always thought the LBBs made a HUGE mistake in encouraging referees and players to think of airports as their model for starports, rather than seaports.

I always like to reach for age of sail analogies ... and I think that this works really rather well for all aspects of space travel, including starports.

I have travelled widely in the Scottish islands, where there are no end of ferry terminals serving remote communities which amount to nothing more than an unmanned slipway with an unmanned "bus shelter" type structure for waiting in. Would the starport on a low population world really be so very different? My brother once postulated a Class E starport which comprised just a flat piece of rock with a big white cross on it, and a little portkabin type pre-fab where all the paperwork was completed by a part-time flight controller who hurried to unlock whenever he learned a spaceship was coming in to land. That seems about right to me.

Maybe the airport analogy isn't all bad ... as long as we're not thinking of JFK or London Heathrow. For small communities, try thinking of Barra airport (two flights daily, at low tide only because the runway is submerged at high tide ...). There's a little terminal building, but it's pretty quiet most of the time. Many remote starports get rather fewer visitors than two a day.

The other thing to remember, of course, is that on remote communities, the arrival of "the boat" can be a big event. It will be likewise with the arrival of a starship at a low population world. On the other hand, at a pop 9 or 10 world, with tens or even hundreds of ships coming and going daily, people would take it much more in their stride ...

 

[Carlobrand]

I don't see anything in LBB1-3 encouraging referees and players to think of airports as their model for starports, but there's likely something in the various adventures. At any rate, having lived in New Mexico and seen some of the rural airports there, I'm comfortable with the notion of a C/D/E port being like an airport. I'm sure someone who's been in Australia would have some interesting stories.

 

[mike wightman]

I always thought the LBBs made a HUGE mistake in encouraging referees and players to think of airports as their model for starports, rather than seaports.

I don't see where the LBBs make you think of airports instead of seaports - I have always used the seaport analogy.

I always like to reach for age of sail analogies ... and I think that this works really rather well for all aspects of space travel, including starports.

I agree, but with the caveat that the analogy can only go so far. When people start equating space travel in Traveler with actual historical age of sail the model fails.

I have travelled widely in the Scottish islands, where there are no end of ferry terminals serving remote communities which amount to nothing more than an unmanned slipway with an unmanned "bus shelter" type structure for waiting in. Would the starport on a low population world really be so very different? My brother once postulated a Class E starport which comprised just a flat piece of rock with a big white cross on it, and a little portkabin type pre-fab where all the paperwork was completed by a part-time flight controller who hurried to unlock whenever he learned a spaceship was coming in to land. That seems about right to me.

We may have been on the same ferry lol - and again I agree with your analogy.

The other thing to remember, of course, is that on remote communities, the arrival of "the boat" can be a big event. It will be likewise with the arrival of a starship at a low population world. On the other hand, at a pop 9 or 10 world, with tens or even hundreds of ships coming and going daily, people would take it much more in their stride ...

Go back to basics. In CT unless you had the rather expensive generate programme you were stuck with buying jump cassettes to worlds on trade lanes. Worlds not on trade lanes see a lot less traffic...

 

[jcrocker]

The other thing to remember, of course, is that on remote communities, the arrival of "the boat" can be a big event. It will be likewise with the arrival of a starship at a low population world. On the other hand, at a pop 9 or 10 world, with tens or even hundreds of ships coming and going daily, people would take it much more in their stride ...

I think that's a common perception with Traveller - for the 2013 Traveller Calendar, Tom Peters did a picture named "First Ship This Year". Putting it as the picture of April was a nice touch.

 

[JimMarn]

There used to be two airports in the county I grew up in Texas. One is commercial and had flights every day.

The other was a grass field, a wind sock, and something that might be construed as a control tower, but was mostly the office for people who stored or got their planes repaired there. One 'runway'.

The grass field one is long gone. But it does seem to me to be just like a D or E field in Traveller would be.

The owner had a Piper cub he would take people up in for $25 per person, for about an hour over the area, go out and fly over a nearby lake, etc.

Is there anything in the rules, or maybe you do it in your game sessions, of people being given rides in a small orbital boat, or hover craft ? Particularly in areas that don't see starships often ?

 

[Condottiere]

Within the Imperium, Starports are regulated by the Imperium, and considered extraterritorial.

Spaceports would be regulated by the local authorities, and presumably some accommodation can be made for joyriding, with or without adequate insurance and safety regulations.

 

[MThompson016]

In out of the way places? You could earn some credits barnstorming with a Scout Ship.

Not many, but enough to pay for a berth.

Also, I'm thinking that Radio Thermal Generator powered 'no maintenance needed' communications systems may be at Class E starports. Along with a satellite broadcasting traffic control data, there'd be a bare minimum of equipment that just kind of gets 'dropped off' by who ever built the starport, and each year or so, someone drops by to see if they're still good, and everything works.

 

[Timerover51]

I suspect that the basic idea for a star port resembling an airport is based on the following article that appeared in JTAS No. 7: "Champa Interstellar Starport". by Loren Wiseman

In out of the way places? You could earn some credits barnstorming with a Scout Ship.

Not many, but enough to pay for a berth.

Also, I'm thinking that Radio Thermal Generator powered 'no maintenance needed' communications systems may be at Class E starports. Along with a satellite broadcasting traffic control data, there'd be a bare minimum of equipment that just kind of gets 'dropped off' by who ever built the starport, and each year or so, someone drops by to see if they're still good, and everything works.

Having landed and taken off from a coupe of definitely "E" class landing strips in the Solomon Islands, and a "D" class airfield at Honiara on Guadalcanal, your satellite broadcasting beacon is a bit generous. I go along with the RTG powered radio beacon, but I view a Class "E" star port as simply a beacon indicating that this is a safe place to land without getting killed. The ground is stable and firm enough to take the weight of a not-too-large ship. That is it. The strips at Gizo and Munda were just that, landing strips with refueling from 55 gallon drums via hand-powered pump. Nothing else was there. No landing beacon, landing lights, not even a wind sock as there is only one runway. As there was fuel there, you could call them very, very basic Class "D" strips. At Honiara, there was a small terminal building for ticketing and customs. They did have a refueling truck for the 737 that flew us in and out. It is still called Henderson Field, and it is the same runway that was used during the Solomon Islands campaign The same holds true for Munda, both simply very hard packed coral strips.

 

[MThompson016]

I'm thinking of a fairly 'dumb' satellite here. Little more than a radio beacon that replies when queried and calls home to get the welcome wagon, and some basic power sources. Place it in a Clarke Orbit, and stationkeeping thrusters aren't even required. They guys setting it up get to the right orbit, and release it from the cargo bay, and head back to civilization, leaving some one with the manuals for the ground station.

Also, as usual, it depends on the location. On a trade route with decent traffic, or leading between naval bases, you can get slightly more equipment at a class E.

 

[Carlobrand]

I'm thinking of a fairly 'dumb' satellite here. Little more than a radio beacon that replies when queried and calls home to get the welcome wagon, and some basic power sources. Place it in a Clarke Orbit, and stationkeeping thrusters aren't even required. They guys setting it up get to the right orbit, and release it from the cargo bay, and head back to civilization, leaving some one with the manuals for the ground station.

Also, as usual, it depends on the location. On a trade route with decent traffic, or leading between naval bases, you can get slightly more equipment at a class E.

I suspect some joker would come along, scoop the sat into their cargo bay, and sell the parts at some out of the way place where folk don't ask too many questions. There's nothing at an E to keep that from happening - and it's the kind of thing the less scrupulous players would think of.

 

[coliver988]

I suspect some joker would come along, scoop the sat into their cargo bay, and sell the parts at some out of the way place where folk don't ask too many questions. There's nothing at an E to keep that from happening - and it's the kind of thing the less scrupulous players would think of.

Wrap the dumb satellite in an interdiction satellite...

http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/4-C/D_class_Automated_Interdiction_Satellite