Rules Only: Travelling without a starship: finding space flights between systems

[harunmushod]

Travelling without a starship: finding space flights between systems

Are there any rules in any version of Traveller or Cepheus Engine for finding flights from one system to another if your Travellers don’t have a starship? Failing that, does anyone have home brew rules for that?

I couldn’t find anything in MGT1 or 2, CT, or MT. They all appear to assume that Travellers have ready access to starships or that travel between systems is assumed to be available instantly if the Travellers can pay the fare (but I may simply have missed the relevant set of rules). I’m not convinced that’s realistic enough for my liking, particularly when the travel is between two worlds with poor starports, low tech levels, low populations, poor economies or not on a trade route.

Thanks, and if there are none, then I will devise and publish some draft rules on here.

 

[mike wightman]

You go to the starport and buy a ticket.
You go to the starport and charter a ship.
You go to the starport and try to get a working passage.
You go to the starport and try to stowaway.

 

[Baroun Tardis]

I think the presumption is that most worlds will have somebody going to nearby Jump-1 destinations, and a few others going to the Jump-2's.

Personally, I like http://travellertools.azurewebsites.net/
Put in the place the players are at in the Trade Calculator, the max distance ships can jump from there (GM's call, 2 is good) and hit generate

 

[Spinward Flow]

I couldn’t find anything in MGT1 or 2, CT, or MT.

LBB2.81, p35
Starship Encounters

This table could EASILY be repurposed for use as a "who is coming to the starport today?" random chance generator table on a house rule basis.
Population: 5- worlds roll once per (7-Population) days.
Population: 6 worlds roll once per day.
Population: 7+ worlds roll (Population-5) times per day.

So a Population: 0 world ... roll once per 7 days/week.
For a Population: A world ... roll 5 times per day.

The beauty of such a house rule is that it not only determines IF a starship shows up, but also WHAT KIND of ship it would be (in a Small Ship Universe kind of way). After that, it's mostly a matter of Referee "modulation" of the results.

 

[gchuck]

There was an article on this exact topic. JTAS 18 p32

 

[kilemall]

The CT tables and descendants are for determining how many passengers and freight are available.

You could repurpose them- roll as you would for high and medium passengers. High passage number result is number of passenger carrying ships going to that destination, medium is number of freight/working passage ships.

 

[mike wightman]

In LBB:0, The Traveller Book and Starter edition it says:

Welcome to the universe of Traveller! In the distant future, when humanity has made the leap to the stars, interstellar
travel will be as common as international travel is today. Traveller is set against that background drawn from adventure
oriented science fiction. The scope and breadth of this game are limited only by the imagination and skill of the players and
theirireferee. Traveller is an entire universe to be explored, where almost any situation which occurs in a science fiction
novel, movie, or short story can be recreated with only a little work on the part of the referee.
Traveller postulates that mankind has conquered the stars, and that travel from one stellar system to another is commonplace.
However, the tremendous distances involved dictate that interstellar voyages can take weeks, months, and sometimes
even years. A situation similar to Earth in the eighteenth century is created, where communication is limited to the speed of
travel, and the stage is set for adventure in a grand fashion, with all the trappings of classic science fiction: giant, starspanning
empires (good, evil, or both), huge starfleets, wily interstellar merchants (or pirates, depending upon your point of
view), complex diplomatic maneuvers, larger-than-life heroes, heroines, and villains.

 

[Condottiere]

At ten kilostarbux per passage, on an annual income of forty kilostarbux, I kinda doubt that interstellar travel is as common, demographically speaking, as international travel is currently.

 

[Spinward Flow]

At ten kilostarbux per passage, on an annual income of forty kilostarbux, I kinda doubt that interstellar travel is as common, demographically speaking, as international travel is currently.

SOMEONE is traveling internationally almost all the time.
It just doesn't have to be YOU.

Also, in terms of demographics, we're talking about populations of TENS/HUNDREDS (if not thousands or tens of thousands!) of worlds ... not just a single world. So on average there is going to be a lot of interstellar travel happening at any given time (in absolute number terms), but relative to the total population of a subsector or a sector, the number of travelers in transit at any given time is going to be less than a rouding error relative to world populations while still being above zero.

Just about the only time you're going to have a "mass migration event" on world population scales is either going to be for a colonization effort and/or a catastrophe. The rest of the time, the VAST OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF PEOPLE "stay put" and do not travel interstellar distances (or even interplanetary distances in most cases).

 

[Condottiere]

We'd be using megatonne star cruisers, not tramp steamers.

 

[mike wightman]

The majority of passenger traffic is handled by the megacorporation liners that follow the trade lane/xboat routes, for example we have the 1000t Long-Liner (type RT) in The Traveller Adventure, even the venerable 600t Subsidized Liner (type M).

The LBB:2 trade game and passenger numbers are what are available at the PC scale of a tramp ethically challenged merchant.

 

[Condottiere]

In 2021 Heathrow served 19.4 millions passengers, that's an average of 128,178 every day. Last year (2021), 87.6% of our passengers were international (17.0 million) versus 12.4% of passengers who were domestic (2.4 million). Most of these passengers were travelling for leisure (62%, 12.0 million) versus for business (28%, 7.4 million).

The busiest year ever recorded was 2019 when 80.9 million passengers travelled through our airport.

 

[Spinward Flow]

The busiest year ever recorded was 2019 when 80.9 million passengers travelled through our airport.

The estimated population of the UK in 2019 was ... 66.84 million.

In other words ... 80.9 / 66.84 = 121% of the population of the UK traveled through Heathrow (one way) during 2019, in 1 year.
Round trips would cut that estimate to 60.5% of the population of the UK ... but still ...

Then again, London (and Heathrow) is a MAJOR air travel connection hub (US to EU), so in a lot a ways, that's not all that surprising a figure when adding "connecting flights" to the calculation (1 in, 1 out) for people don't leave the airport at all.

 

[Baroun Tardis]

At ten kilostarbux per passage, on an annual income of forty kilostarbux, I kinda doubt that interstellar travel is as common, demographically speaking, as international travel is currently.

Average annual income. Average....
So for every 2 homeless people wandering about Startown, there's someone who spends half the year on cruises

 

[Condottiere]

The median money income of households in the United States was $16,530 in 1979, an increase of 10 percent over the 1978 median of $15,060. However, after adjusting for the 11.3-percent increase in prices between 1978 and 1979,1 the 1979 median was slightly lower than the 1978 median.


I was being generous.

Our starship mechanic earns a thousand starbux per month, plus likely board and lodging; an administrator fifteen hundred.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Average annual income. Average....
So for every 2 homeless people wandering about Startown, there's someone who spends half the year on cruises

The median money income of households in the United States was $16,530 in 1979, an increase of 10 percent over the 1978 median of $15,060. However, after adjusting for the 11.3-percent increase in prices between 1978 and 1979,1 the 1979 median was slightly lower than the 1978 median.


I was being generous.

Our starship mechanic earns a thousand starbux per month, plus likely board and lodging; an administrator fifteen hundred.

Median =/= Mean.

 

[kilemall]

It’s air liner travel time that makes it cheap, far less crew time and ability to make several runs per day.

If airplanes didn’t exist and we just had boats for the equivalent of interstellar travel, tickets would cost more.

 

[Condottiere]

I could probably replicate the airliner experience and costs.

The problem is that Mongosian life support costs aren't clearcut, so that I could definitively do so.

Also, cost, and duration person/days of an oxygen candle would provide some further guidance.

 

[frankm]

Freelance Traveller had an article on passengers based on starport type and population, but I can't find it now. I think a cruise ship is a better analogy than an airline- out for a week (OK, no ports of call in jump space, but still), lots of activities and passengers, the cruise line and con artists looking to separate passengers from their credits... yea, pretty much the same. As for how many people want to go to low tech, low population worlds even near a sector capital, how many people travel to backwoods Montana in a given month? Some do, sure, but you don't have daily jetliners landing on grass fields. Just like people drive (or rent) private vehicles to get out in the country, tramp freighters and small liners are the only way to really get off the major routes. The economics don't justify a daily passenger service.

 

[Spinward Flow]

I think a cruise ship is a better analogy than an airline- out for a week (OK, no ports of call in jump space, but still), lots of activities and passengers, the cruise line and con artists looking to separate passengers from their credits... yea, pretty much the same.

Train tickets for traveling across continents.

Istanbul to Paris.
New York to San Francisco.
Sydney to Perth.

And then you've got all the branch lines sprawling out into the countryside away from the main lines.