How does your Ship look?

Rolling Quirks
Everyone needs to roll on the Quirks Table (page 188). Pedrop has already done so and got an 8, I believe.

Once we have all the rolls we can look at the various options. While this is a Trading Ship it was owned by the Military, so we can use those options from the table if they fit. We can pick the one that looks like it will provide the most interesting elements in play.

The person who rolled the result gets first say, then we can all talk about it and possibly vote. The GM gets final say. If we want --or if we can not decide-- we might leave it ambiguous as to which result we have... if it make sense for you not to know.

Building the Ship
Technically you got a Free Trader, but we don't have to stick to the exact Ship in the book if we don't want to. We can make it from scratch, or use the book's Ship as a base and adjust.

We can use a the Deckplan from the book, or we can play it 'theater of the mind' style and go with a more freeform layout. It is up to you all.

Landing Craft (Small Craft)
Working on the assumption that we are still TL9/10, your ship is only Partially Streamlined. This means that you can take it into atmosphere and land in on a planet (or the friendlier ones, maybe), but that it is not the best idea. Taking 200 Ton ships --the size of skyscrapers-- down onto a planet is a bit fanciful in my mind.

You therefore need a way to get down to planets that don't have a Highport. You also need a way to get to your Ship in the Depot. These can be the same thing for simplicity, and you could replace it, later.

I would recommend either the Launch (page 220), which is cheap and small, or the Slow Boat (page 222), or (possibly my first choice?) the Slow Pinnace (page 224).

You would add the cost of this Small Craft to the cost of the Ship and pay it off with the rest... unless you steal the Small Craft, which would bring its own 'costs' or risks.

You need to decide how you store the Small/Landing Craft.

You can just put any of the options I mentioned above into your Cargo Bay. It will take up however many Tons it lists, but you can still store Cargo in the Craft (which is why I like the Slow Pinance, you lose the least Cargo Space relative to how much it can carry, but it does take up half your (current) Cargo Space).

The downside of putting it in your Cargo Bay is that you have to open the Cargo Bay to let it in/out, thus exposing the whole thing to space/vacuum (better not have cows in there:). The next simplest option is to install a Docking Space for the Craft (page 185). Docking Space needs to be specced for your Craft, costs money per Ton of the Craft, and also costs and extra 10% Tons on top of the Craft's tonnage, but allows you to only open that space to Dock the Craft. You can always add this later.

Another option, from High Guard, is to Clamp the Craft to the outside of your Hull with Docking Clamps (HG page 57). The upside of this is that the Craft does not cost you any Cargo Space --and, in fact adds its Cargo Space to yours. The downsides are complicated... actually 'complication' is one of the downsides: You increase the total Tons of your Ship by the amount of the Craft plus, probably, 5 Tons and MCr1 for Clamps, this extra 'weight' will affect everything from M- and J-Dives, to maneuvering and other; and the Craft is directly vulnerable to attacks since it is outside the Hull. Clamping a Craft to the outside unStreamlines your Ship, but we have done that already, so we can ignore that part.

Facilities
I assume that Lio will want a Medbay, and that both Lio and Raf will want a Cybernetics Laboratory? You tell me if those are --coincidentally-- already part of the Ship, or if you have to add them later. If they are part of the Ship, add their Cost to the Ship's Cost and say where they are (replace a Stateroom?). If you add them later you will need to pay for them then (or remortgage).

Weapons
Decide --if any-- what armaments the Ship has when you get it. Add them to the Cost. Decide if they are in Fixed Mounts or in Turrets. If in Turrets, add the Cost, Tons, and Power of the Turrets to the Ship. You can add or upgrade these later.

If you want Popup Turrets (from High Guard, page 28) add an extra +1 Ton and +MCr1 to the cost of each Turret. Else you can discover these TL10 items later in the story and work to add them to your Ship.

Other
If there is anything else you want to change about- or add to- your Ship before you get it, we can work out the details.

Raf got --the equivalent of-- 25% of a Free Trader, so we can deduct that value (MCr12?) from whatever you end up getting, or discuss those details if we end up starting with another type of Ship.

If anyone enjoys creating a ship from scratch, by all means. It's, however, not my jam ;)
If not, I'm happy to go with the free trader ship from the book.

A cybernetics lab sounds useful.

I like the idea of a smaller craft clamped onto the side of our ship. But I'm also fine with any other choice. So I'll follow the majority :)

In terms of armaments; are we expecting space battles? I feel like those things can go wrong very quickly.
I have no idea what's good or needed to survive a battle.

It is an interesting idea, and adds some complications to some future activities, which could be fun. It also increases your Ship's size without needing to fiddle with the Hull.

If you are going to Clamp the Craft to the outside, then you can also look at larger Craft than the ones I mentioned. Maybe a Shuttle (page 226) could be a consideration, though that does add almost another 50% to your overall mass, and could put strain on your engines. You can always unDock if you need to.

Even if you go with Clamps, you can always put smaller Craft in your Cargo Space if you need to do something where they might be in the way.
We can take the Ship the book gives us and just add anything you think you will want.

Everything aside from the Hull can be changed later as well.
They have been specifically requested to be a thing we do from time to time.

If you don't start with weapons then we will not have to fight a Space Battle during this mission. If you do have weapons, then we can have that be an option if it comes up.
There was a special request for an Extra Turret on the ship, Quirk 4 can provide that, free of charge.
Smuggling Compartments could be interesting (and we can discover them later if we don't want to decide now).
If we go with the Erroneous Information in the Ship's Library, then we will turn that into something interesting as we play.

On my to do list for tomorrow!

A medical lab could be nice, but a Navy/Rescue medic should be able to perform without a fancy O.R.
Lio has 40000Cr So I don't see how we could ever buy a 2MCr med bay :-/ later in the game.

I didn't read all of the 'ship creation rules'. Your comment about the ship being as big as a skyscraper made me wonder... I don't think a 200 ton ship is actually that big. It would be more or less the volume of 200 cars. Let's say 1600m3. So 16m X 10m X 10m. But to enter an atmosphere it needs to be streamlined.

I to am ok with using a 'shelf-ship' from the book.
I suspect Pedrop would enjoy creating one to their liking. If I'm correct the ship was mentioned in another thread already last month. Both options are fine by me.

quirk roll incoming:

6: damaged sensors: dm-1 to all electronics checks

With such a high Medic Skill, you are definitely right about that.
If it is part of the Ship then its Cost would be added to the cost of the Ship and you all would have to pay it off over 40 years. If you said that it 'replaced' something that was already on the book's Ship (a Stateroom, possibly?) then you would also refund the Cost of whatever it replaced.
You can make changes to the Ship and add it later. You might be able to remortgage the Ship to change the payments, but would probably need to raise the money and just pay for it, or you might get it as a reward or something.

Or, with Lio's Skill, you may be able to turn an existing room into the equivalent of a Medbay just by installing the equipment you need.

Of course, such a Medical Bay be more useful if someone else needs to do the Medical Procedure on Lio. But we can worry about the bridge when we come to it.

We can wait and see if it is something you guys want later and then work out the details.

---

Yeah. Maybe only a small skyscraper. I think a standard saying was that 4 Tons is about equivalent to a modern 'one car garage', which fits with what the book says about 'cars' (like the Ground Car, and the G-Racer) needing 3 Tons for shipping. You can safely pack 27 'cars' in your 81 Ton Cargo Hold.

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It is still Partially Streamlined, so you can enter atmosphere and land it if you need to. I just did not see that as being a thing you did all the time.

If you all really want to be able to land your Ship all the time, we can just say it is fully Streamlined and forget about this and the need for a landing Craft.

A Partially Streamlined Ship can still land everywhere, it just does not 'fly like an airplane' (page 176). It is mainly that 'airplane' bit that bugs me.

I don't find --in the current books-- any mention of at what TL we expect Fully Streamlined 'airplane like' Spaceships, and that assumption was based on adjusting this TL12 ship to the TL9 setting.

Personally I think there is more fun to be had when Ships need to engage with Starports and Shuttle or Elevator down to the surface, than if you just take you Spaceship right into the local village. There are plenty of other reasons to want to do it that way, though, so I still expect such operations to be the norm unless you guys decide otherwise.

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Interesting.

Remember that this sort of Quirk (damage) could be fixed, but --since it is a Quirk of the Ship-- might be hard to do, and might require that you replace the whole Sensor Array (and maybe more) to do it.

I agree.

About the medi-bay. It feels like too much of a coincidence that such a small ship would have something very (can't find the right word) specific on board.
Maybe if it was a bigger ship or a dedicated battle ship... So let's leave it out for now.

Thanks for the overall clarifications.

Agreed. Though a Med Bay is not as large a coincidence as a Cybernetics Laboratory would be. Both are still options if we want, as is anything else.

Correct.
I would like to save some time for us and base on existing "parameters" of the ship, and adjust it if needed. I don't think it have to be our last ship. So let's see how this old one is doing, and IF we will need something better/different - it will be a nice aim to have.

I prefer deck plans - to have good idea where everything is located.

But... as I'm for not changing the basic parameters of the ship to much, for now... I think we can go quite free form for the look of the ship and it deck plan - as long as the size and "number/kind" of rooms will be similar, no?

I will get back to the ship looks and plans in my next post:)
I really like those remarks! They are really interesting and very needed to be preferred for this.
My preferences from the core book:
- Slow Boat - as it is still quite small and elegant, but still have some cargo space. Pinnaces feels too big for ship of size of Free Trader in my eyes.
- The Gig - seems a very good fit for our story as it is vessel of the Imperial Navy:) What is important it has some Fuel Scoops. From the deck plan it looks that it has his didcated area for air lock, no? Turret. Small, but very multi-purpose in my opinion. And I even like the looks of it:)

If we will not take the Gig - then: I think it is what Bob is flying doing his work:)

For storing I think we should take Docking Space - if we will choose Gig it's docking space shouldn't be to big and cumbersome.

Clamping option seems to complicated and forced to me. Even unthematic - for a sealed ship. Interesting for later.
Yes. Raf will want to make some Cybernetics Laboratory or some other place for thinking with mechanical staff... but it would be a really BIG coincidence to have it on sealed ship - that how I see it. But Medbay on military adjusted version of Free Trader - seems completely legit in my eyes:) And we could by at least some gear for cybernetics to it in the beginning.

Where Medbay? Maybe it should take out two adjacent rooms of Deck 2? (Where is Stateroom?)
My feeling for this is: that this ship certainly have some weapons in turrets... but activating them will take some more time, so much that it will be possible to use them after we will manage to get away with the ship. So we will discover what it is later.
I think we will not have enough time at the depot to do the proper inspection then, so maybe we will discover some new things later? :)

Of course I don't have problem with that. Just stated my preferences, but it can go that way.
+1 - my preferred way for now.
I really hope so that we will have some space battles! As it is the most interesting aspect of Traveller rules I would like to see in practice.
But maybe not in the first mission - let's get to speed with other rules first.
I agree! And the ship is partially streamlined so we always have an option of "emergency landing" what is even more interesting:)

Still I see this depot as military kind - somehow - so having ship adjusted with weapons capabilities and medbay isn't without logic IMHO:)

As really, really like how those deck plans from core and other books from Traveller are very well thought out and detailed - they can really provide some spark for imagination. I'm not so keen on those ship external looks... they seem quite outdated. So I wanted to share my favorite space ship designs I collected for my campaign with my sons. Maybe you will like them, and we will take it as our ship looks or even plans?
But we can go with a Free Trader too. Doing this post mostly for fun.

My #1:

But could be too small for our group? And haven't found the higher resolution of the image so far:(

#2:



#3:


Others I like:

The Slow Boat is the obvious choice.
The Gig feels to me like it is simulating a modern day 'Tug', with all that thrust for pushing other boats around in the harbourStarport which it does not leave.

It is a cool Craft, but does not have a lot of Cargo space (less than half the Slow Boat), and costs a lot more (nearly double the Slow Boat).

It would be an unusual choice, but you can take it if you want to.
Probably. I don't see you all needing to bring more than 8 Tons with you.

With the lack of any talk about the Craft, and the arrangement for someone else to take you to the Depot, I was thinking you might get to the Ship and find it did not have a Landing Craft, so you would need to take what you could get... even, maybe, taking Bob's (leaving him stranded would help to sell his story of not being involved in the theft). That could explain why you are using an unusual Craft for landing, it might also open up some strange options in other Starports.
Does it? If you don't want it, we don't take it.
Now, I am not sure what you mean by 'sealed'. At first I though you meant that it was a closed Hull (Partially Streamlined) but now I think you might mean that it is mothballed and 'locked away'?

I agree that the lab might be a bit of a coincidental feature for a Ship you 'randomly steal' but there is a reason Raf is after this one, so we can explain it away easily enough if we so choose. But we can add the Cybernetics Laboratory later, possibly even by just taking over a room or two so it does not cost you other than the gear.

Clamping a landing Craft to the outside of your Ship might complicate things when you take it into atmosphere (though detaching the Craft solves that) but seems quite thematic (that is how they do it in Firefly:) especially at first if you don't know what Craft you want/have.

You can always declamp and put it in your Cargo Hold if you need to. You can also build a Docking Space later, that needs to fitted to the Craft you put in it (or at least be 'bigger than' the Craft).
I can offer advice, but find that --while I am still just one opinion-- 'GM opinions' tend to be given more weight than players', so I prefer not to suggest unless people really ask.

We can worry about this later if we don't start with these things. If, later, you convert a room of two you can decide based on where you find you need it most.
Sure. As we discover things we will adjust the Cost and pretend it always cost that much. The characters don't get to see the meta-machinations going on outside their reality, so far as they know, those things were always there and that is why it cost what it did.
Yeah. You might have to activate just enough of the Ship's systems to get it flying, then do the rest once you get somewhere safe, or over time.

I agree. Voting to start with it.
I didn't notice that Gig is more expensive, so it will more
thematic and sensible to start with something less expensive, but with higher cargo hold.
Sounds reasonable... we will see what we can get from the depot... bur Raf wouldn't steel from the man he is doing business with. Corrupted government officials - that's another story... :) So he will insist on paying Bob off if that would ever happen that we "borrow" his ship for the trip. But we will see what will happen.

Maybe... just maybe... we will have to accommodate another person on board of our ship... someone not so welcome this time(in contrast of Abby), maybe annoying, but with excellent pilot skills? (I mean Bob... of course). Maybe no for the eternity but for some time - until we find another landing craft?? But you know... how those "temporary" locators tend to be... Of course the Bob can have completely different personality traits, and Raf was judging him wrong? :)
Yes, sorry. I meant mothballed by "sealed" in this thread.
Ok.
I like to have some "inconveniences" to overcome, so whatever others would like is ok with me. Or whatever our GM :) is seeing as thematic and/or good fit for the story and his ideas:)
+1

There will be options when you get there. We can see how it turns out and you can decide in-character. You might be able to get something for free.
Yep. I gave Bob a bit of a bombastic personality for that exact reason. Your party also does not have much Drive Skill above 0, so I added that to him in case it helped.

He might say otherwise, but he only has Pilot Small Craft at a good level, so he complements our Spaceship Pilot.
Indeed. He may also want to get out of this system once he finds out about the political situation. It will be up to you guys to let him learn details about that, though.
We can also add Clamps later, if we want to get Bob's Gig out of the Cargo Hold, for instance.

For now, having no option other than putting the Craft in the Hold gives us the most flexibility. We can put anything in there till we know for sure, and can change Craft as we need.