What is to be done with the Kinunir?

[rancke]

I'd disagree, though not strenuously. I think it was pretty well defined as a small ship universe, an area of frontiers, where one man (or one ship) could make a difference.

You call that well defined?!?

Then things changed. I guess someone realized just what the industrial potential of high-tech worlds with billions of inhabitants was. The biggest ships are now 1,000,000T. Cruisers range from 20,000T to 100,000T and they are built by the score and deployed in squadrons.

And said someone(s) didn't fully appreciate (so the "update" failed to reflect) the physics and economics required to support that.

I think you're dead wrong there. There's nothing physically or economic that prevents states with trillions of inhabitants from fielding big cruisers (and battleships) by the thousands.

Or small cruisers and 5000T battleships by the hundreds of thousands... :devil:

In my opinion a (the?) big reason for High Guard was much simpler. Said someone(s) saw Star Wars and reacted "KEWL! Traveller MUST have HUGE star destroyers!!"

...damn the consequences and full speed ahead.

Could be, but if they didn't realize what they were doing, they certainly managed to hit inside the ballpark. The canonical figures are a bit on the low side and it's necessary to assume that a truly huge slice of the budget goes to logistics, but they'll do.

Mind you, that ship sailed long ago. The OTU is a big ship universe and has been for thrity years.


Hans

 

[DaveChase]

...

Then things changed. I guess someone realized just what the industrial potential of high-tech worlds with billions of inhabitants was. The biggest ships are now 1,000,000T. Cruisers range from 20,000T to 100,000T and they are built by the score and deployed in squadrons. 1,250T vessels are escorts, and not very big escorts either. There are escorts (like the Sloans) that can go toe to toe with four Kinunirs at once. And a production run of 24 is NOT impressive.

...

Comments?


Hans

Only 1 MTons is the biggest ships. IMTU that is the largest normally found warships ships, but some transport Mega Corps have some in the 10 MTons. Takes a while to fuel them up, but it takes just as long to load them.

But I agree that a prodcution run of 24 is not impressive. I think you stated, it was a concept that some Admiral in some distant region from regular Imperial control decide that they liked and ordered them. Of course the time it took for them to be made, some other Admiral or Imperial politics changed the funding and they got dropped.

Since communication is not instant between worlds let alone sectors, I assume that sector Admirals (?) can run things as they want for most parts.

Plans, orders and tech bulletins arrive encoded in the various Jump ships so that people can keep up to date by weeks instead of years on current information but the decisions are all local until over ridden. Or the guy in charge moves on (dies, promoted out, or retires).

Hence the Kinunir was made until till the funding ran out and the Navy moved on to other designs.

Dave Chase

 

[far-trader]

You call that well defined?!?

There is obviously much more, this was but a small bit germane to the discussion.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I remember the first Traveller game I ever played was in High School maybe in 1981 or 82. We did one of the "situations' from "The Kinunir." wherein we found ourselves in the abandoned Kinunir, desparately dealing with the insane computer, and eventually blowing the computer up with a hand grenade. Then, I can't honestly remember what we did with the ship itself.

Now, I'm about to start a new campaign, and actually have my own copy of adventure 1, and am really quite intrigued. What is to be done with the Kinunir once it is recovered? I realize that every campaign will be different, but I'm still interested.

Are the players to be imagined as re-furbishing and using it? Are they just supposed to turn it in to the Navy for a reward? Are they to sell it on the black market?

I supposed I'm interested in how other have seen the aftermath develop. What has happened that you've seen?

Against the advice of both ref and book we kept ours. I can't remember what finally became of it ... it skipped and went out of control on some ocean a-la the six million dollar man's lifting body x-plane.

All in all it's not a very cruiser-like cruiser. It's just an artifact of the game in that it was designed and meant as one thing, but was essentially outclassed by virtue of the game's evolving content.

Thus you have a "frontier cruiser" that isn't very cruiser like at all. It's more or less a tranny with some weapons.

 

[Shonner]

Do something like the movie "The Gauntlet" where Clint Eastwood is returning in a bus while it's being shot to pieces. But you'll be returning in a Kinunir and being shot to pieces.

 

[DeltaX15]

Jump out of Imperial Space, sell to the highest bidder.

 

[Whipsnade]

Jump out of Imperial Space, sell to the highest bidder.

Good luck.

You had to either frag the main computer or "scram" it with a safety code word before it killed you, remember?

There's the issue of those empty fuel tanks too. And you'll need a crew. And who's to say the people you think you're going to sell it to won't simple take it away from you?

 

[selunatic2397]

If I am remembering correctly...my players returned it for a reward...used the money to

trick out an ancient soviet block scout ship (that my bad penmanship had at 105 tons).

It took all their money and any favors they had built up over the campaign.

They were SOOOO PROUD!

Then their engineer lost it in a poker game.

(Maybe I should have one of my mummified bodies in my murder mystery be his.)

 

[The Oz]

I've always imagined the Kinunir as an experimental test-bed that was called a "cruiser" to disguise the fact that the Navy didn't know what to do with it. But they figured it out (or maybe somebody knew what to do with it all along); the Kinunir is a Special Ops ship that specialized in dropping her Marines (Commandoes) without being noticed, thanks to the black globe.

She arrives far out-system, launches her non-standard (stealthy?) pinnace on a seperate trajectory and then sneaks in under her BG. At a predetermined time, she flickers the BG to launch her Marines via the drop capsules and then hides under the BG again. The jarheads go down and do whatever they came to do. When they're finished the pinnace (which has crept in under steath) picks them up and then (the hard part) meets up with the Kinunir at a pre-arranged rendevous.

It's not perfect, but it does (somewhat) explain the combination of BG, Marines, drop capsules, non-standard pinnace, and a small production run.

 

[aramis]

I've always imagined the Kinunir as an experimental test-bed that was called a "cruiser" to disguise the fact that the Navy didn't know what to do with it. But they figured it out (or maybe somebody knew what to do with it all along); the Kinunir is a Special Ops ship that specialized in dropping her Marines (Commandoes) without being noticed, thanks to the black globe.

at 1250 Td, she's perfectly in-line with Bk2 derived cruisers...

Face it, she's an artifact of the change in design paradigms which happened between 1980 and 1984... between the release of HG and the formalizing upon the big ship OTU.

 

[The Oz]

Face it, she's an artifact of the change in design paradigms which happened between 1980 and 1984... between the release of HG and the formalizing upon the big ship OTU.

I know that, you know that, every TRAVELLER player knows that; what we're trying to do is come up with an "in-game" reason for the Kinunir.

 

[DaveChase]

A little know secert blunder by a well known noble and some newbie recurits in the Navy at the time cause the Kinunir to be as small as it is.

The noble who had the specs (how fast, large, number of armaments and such) was reading the file on a trip while having a few too many drinks. Worse, they were reading as an open document and not as read only file.

While flipping through the document, the noble accidently removed a 0 (zero) from one of the figures.

Later when the spec sheet got uploaded to X-boat service and authinicated it became an official document of the Navy for the record.

Seeing the document with the hard specs listed and the tonnage not being 1,250 not 12,500 the ship yards assumed that must be an error. But since the document was official and they could not make changes nor take the time to wait an official reply on what was wrong with the document, they made their bids.

Once these bids and official spec sheet made it back to the Navy procurement section, it ended up in in the hands of an outgoing (manidatory retirement) Captain who just got a whole section of new recurits for his last year of service. Being a bit disgruntled and knowing that the documents that they receive are just awaiting the final stamp of approval after being reviewed by many many other eyes, he told his section of new recurits to just process and approve all the requests.

The Kinunir was one of those many requests that got approved, along with some very large and unusal orders of armaments, supplies, luxury goods and other things that at times is put in to the supply request line, as a joke or even as a 'let's see if they will approve this one.'

With in a short time (several months) the Captain was let go early in his retirement, but many of the requests had been fullfilled and paid for.

Not wanting to expose their blunder in the Kinunir and other such issues from that office, the Navy did one of the things that they do best, they ignored it and a let it go.

Hence the Kinunir was born.

(This is also one of the reasons that the Kinunir actual went a bit crazy, it found out it was a mistake and it's limited AI logic could not handle that. It was the straw that broke it's back per say.)


Dave Chase

 

[Blue Ghost]

So the Kinunir in YTU asked its parents how it came into being, eh? Wow, they always say never tell your kid "you were a mistake".

 

[Darkwing]

Well, coming in a bit late. I just recently ran this one. My players robbed the armory (which they sold on the black market, rather than tried to keep), but left the ship. Only the captain got onto the bridge of the Kinunir, and he was disturbed by what he saw.
He also needed an excuse to leave the Kinunir behind so he could report it to his Zhodani masters, who have since recovered it.

But a few details:
I wondered how a ship out of fuel for decades had power to run the computer. I don't see a month or two supply of fuel for the power plant sustaining even reduced power ops for years. And if it had that fuel, transfer enough to engines to skim the gas giant, then go.
So I added backstory. I figured an Ancient Vilani android, dating back to the Ancient war had infiltrated the crew to deal with the AI. After hacking systems to sabotage the AI and strand the ship in the Shionthy belt, she needed to contact her ship in order to escape. So she hooked up an Ancient tech power supply to the radio to call her ship. Not realizing the AI was smarter than she'd thought, she missed it rerouting to leech power while she killed the few bridge crew in spacesuits. In the fight, she took bullets and healed or partially healed from them. She also took a cutlass through her brain (in the chest). This is what the PC playing the captain found. It explained why the computer had power, to my satisfaction. It also meant that when the Zhodani recovered the ship, they got an Ancient power supply and an android. She healed when exposed to atmosphere and the cutlass was removed, but her memory was gone. They also, of course, had the Kinunir itself.
The android, btw, was once one of the highest human assistants to the Droyne. At some point, whether before or after the war ended and the Vilani were forced out of the labs, she and her fellows had been downloaded into the android bodies. They've been tampering ever since. The few who remain are still trying to protect Vland and enhance it's position while waiting for the return of their former master, except for a few who went renegade and decided 300,000 years was too long to wait, and it was time for them to become the masters outright. This is a potential plot hook for later. But in the meantime, the Zhodani now have an Ancient melee weapon similar to Captain America's photon shield that morphed, an Ancient android with no memory, and other toys, some out of date military hardware and old secret data of some minor value, and a prototype AI to play with. All easy fodder for other plot hooks, of course.
I also told the players, when they asked, that yes, they could salvage the Kinunir. The military would have to either pay for the ship back, or if they wanted to keep it, they'd have to let the navy remove the military grade weapons and AI. They'd have to sell their ship for whatever they could get, because they didn't have the margin to try to run two ships (fuel, maintenance, salaries of NPCs, port fees, Husbanding Agents, etc), and since they only have a license for civvie-grade weapons, they couldn't keep any of the installed weapons (especially the nukes, though they never discovered those). But with the AI trying to hack their ship, they decided to bug out and come back later. Of course, their black box makes multiple trips to a red zone problematic...
Add in the captain reporting it to his spymasters, and now they'll never see it again. I also pointed out that it would be recognizable enough that they'd have to remain honest merchants. Smugglers today can use freighters and yachts, but a decommissioned Coastie cutter would be too easily noticed.
So, what did I miss, and what else can be spun out of this?

 

[Carlobrand]

...I wondered how a ship out of fuel for decades had power to run the computer ...

I don't recall what the adventure itself said, but in my TU the ships always have some solar panels integral to the hull. Doesn't amount to much: powers emergency lighting, doors, emergency communications, minimal life support for a few key retreats (bridge and sickbay) but not the whole ship. Ships also have batteries used to start up the reactor. A savvy computer, using those two, could accumulate power over a long period and have power available for when someone came visiting. The trick would be whether there was enough light where the ship was to keep the "tripwires" active and the batteries charged while the computer is powered down.

 

[Dragoner]

So, what did I miss, and what else can be spun out of this?

The Zho's would have got a black globe as well (the really valuable component).


Welcome to the board, Darkwing.

 

[Darkwing]

Thanks for the welcome. I knew about the BG, but didn't think about it when listing the things they got, as I was trying to think about what I could bring back to haunt the players with. Got any suggestions?
This is actually the first time I've run Traveller, and only the 2nd time I've played it. I started with AD&D and Star Frontiers, so I'm still learning things about this universe as I'm actually running things, not just reading books or skimming supplements.

 

[selunatic2397]

The black globe was what my players realized they SHOULD have grabbed before turning it in...

Now in the midst of my campaign, and long after they turned it in, all they can do are epic smacks to their heads!

"The black globe generator was worth WHAT???"

"!@#$%^&*()!!!"

 

[samuelvss]

Mind you, that ship sailed long ago. The OTU is a big ship universe and has been for thrity years.


Hans

IMTU, Books 2 and 5 still share. From the player's standpoint, and the standpoint of many planetary and even subsector navies, the patrol cruiser is still a cruiser. Whether one calls it a "cruiser" or a "frigate," or a "patrol boat." Sometimes they are cruisers, in the same universe that an AHL is a cruiser.

It's a big ship navy to fight the FFW, but there exist small ship navies to enforce customs, find pirates, and deter interstellar deviance. That the Kinunir is an odd duck in a bureaucracy as large as the IN can call for a colorful backstory, but it should cause for no puzzlement. Bureaucracies are effective where nothing else can be, but efficiency and rationality in the discrete case are usually happy accidents for them. Worked for at least one my entire adult life...using the term "adult" somewhat loosely.

Bureaucracies also involve actors from many different schools of thought, all fighting for turf. This is particularly true in military and naval organizations. This was somebody's baby, but he was from a fringe school of thought, and it got strangled in the cradle.

 

[Baron]

Well, in my style of play anyway, the Navy is whatever the player characters happen to note as they pass by. In the interest of story, they get told, "There is a Navy ship in orbit, it outguns you 12 to 1," or "It's about 1200 tons." In my style of play, it will never be relevant to know how many Navy ships are in a particular system, and what their various classifications are. They all out-gun the player's Free Trader anyway.