Jetrock
SOC-8
The Wind class 150-ton Scout/Courier (not to be confused with the CT light carrier of the same name) was first published in Paranoia Press' Merchants & Merchandise, as a "stretch" version of the earlier Serpent class, a scout/courier variant designed around a swing-wing airframe instead of the traditional Suleiman-class wedge. For reasons detailed below, I decided that I needed a ship of this class, but no Mongoose version seemed to exist (I may be wrong about this), but there was a Mongoose version of the Serpent in High Guard. So I extrapolated the design, compared with a couple other versions of the class for other Traveller versions I found online. I discovered that descriptions of the craft's performance varied. The USP for the ship in the original article suggested it had 3-G drives and Jump-3, but the description said 2-G and Jump-3, while other references indicated that performance was similar to the Serpent. I also couldn't reconcile enough fuel for Jump-3 with a 13-passenger capacity, and the description only referenced an additional 4 staterooms (for a total of 8). The other references I found suggested that the "stretch" version was based on simply extending the Serpent hull, rather than a larger but new design, and others referenced swappable 30-ton mission-specific modules--and that gave me an idea, since Traveller already has a standard cargo module of that size--the nearly-universal Modular Cutter module, which, per GURPS Traveller: Modular Cutter includes several Scout-specific modules. So the Wind class, in the interest of standardization, uses as many components as possible from the Serpent design, plus a modular hull that fits a standard LSP 30-ton cutter module, which has roughly the same dimensions and shape, and generally has entrances at either end. The design is nominally TL 14 but except for the LSAS, all components are TL-12 or lower, presumably for easier maintenance/resupply purposes. Jump-2 and 2-G performance lets the ship operate with the same performance as a standard 100-ton scout. Following the traditional pattern of the Modular Cutter, the module drops out of the dorsal side of the hull, like a big "bomb bay" and lowering the module to the ground. This differs with existing fan-produced deck plans for the class, which have fuel on the lower deck and mission package on the upper deck, but I'll deal with that later.
As to the reason why I wanted to port a Wind class to MgT, I'm running a solo MgT campaign using the Solo campaign supplement for Cepheus Engine. The group is based around a partnership between a retired scout and a merchant/minor noble and their crew, who initially used a detached-duty Sulie-class scout ship. However, a scout/courier doesn't have much appeal for a trader who doesn't want to focus entirely on smuggling, while the scout didn't mind detached duty but wanted even more freedom of action. Plus, I wanted to solve an even bigger problem: in an earlier part of my solo campaign, I got some lucky rolls and they struck it rich doing some asteroid mining, and had MCr75 or so burning a hole in their vacc suits. Rather than make them the target of thieves or otherwise arbitrarily remove this burden from the characters, I figured the best way to lighten their wallets was to solve their other problems by buying their own ship on the used market.
Instead of just deciding they could buy whatever ships they wanted while travelling out in District 268, I decided to use the Solo ship encounter charts to randomly select a few ships at major (Class A or B) starports that were for sale. The initial idea was to wait until a used Far Trader, either A2 or Empress Marava, came along, and use the remaining cash to upgrade the sensors to Scout standard or higher, as the Scout's requirement was something that could be used for survey exploration or Belter mining, and at the insistence of their pilot, upgrade the engines to at least 2-G (the caper that led to their big paydirt asteroid included a chase that required keeping a laser-armed Seeker out of firing range long enough for the PCs' totally-not-armed Scout to get close enough to the local scout base to convince the Seeker to break off.)
After a few unsuccessful ship-shopping trips, one of the results was for a 150-ton Scout, which immediately reminded me of the Wind. While it wasn't what I as a player was looking for, I thought about it from the perspective of the characters, the ex-Scout, who deeply covets the rare Serpent class (presumably including its variants) and wants something with advanced sensors, the merchant, who sees potential profit in a 30-ton cargo bay that's owned outright, and the pilot, who likes to fly fast, she also has Mechanic-3 and is almost certainly a gearhead with a fondness for old ships.
Oh yeah, old ships. A roll on the MgT used-ships table indicated that this ship was at least 100 years old, which meant 10 rolls on the "quirks table" for potential repair problems, in return for 50% off the purchase price, but I wouldn't know what those quirks were unless they bought the ship. And that's the thing about starships: as the old saying goes, a starship is just a black hole in space where you throw credits. Especially a cool-looking, classic ship coveted among Scouts everywhere. The final selling point for the merchant, enough to overcome the potential for an extra 30 tons of cargo in a Far Trader, was that his arch-nemesis, another noble, was unduly proud of his own ship, a 50 year old safari ship of high design style but notoriously difficult to fly, and having a ship like this would drive the stuffy bastard up a wall.
So, they plunked down their credits, and took a look under the hood. Now, the MgT ship quirks table includes some good and some bad, and the result was a bit of both: -2 to all sensor rolls, add MCr2 worth of weapons, 4x maintenance costs, -10% hull damage, -1 to all repair attempts, sensors upgraded to next-highest level, damaged thrusters, -1 to pilot rolls, a extra turret, and apparently the ship was involved in a notorious battle and has enemies who wish to destroy it. Based on the ship's age and my game's setting in Imperial 1101, I assumed the damage happened during the Fourth Frontier War. Much of this damage could be attributed to weapon hits--the sensor, thruster, and hull damage seemed equivalent to Level 1 critical hits, while much of the rest could be attributed to poor maintenance. The MCr2 in weapons I figured meant the ship had retained its Scout-standard dual lasers in the turret, and while a second turret was out of the question on a 150 ton hull, MgT has the option for adding small non-starship weapons without needing a hardpoint, so I figured a small pop-out "remote weapons station" mini turret with a VRF Gauss Gun and tac missile was appropriate. Because the two quirks equivalent to critical hit results suggested at least two critical hits, I figured the hull actually had -20% damage.
I figured that a repair plan could fix some of these issues: use MgT ship repair rules and costs to fix the thrusters, sensors, and hull, and a full ship overhaul (equivalent to 10x the cost of annual maintenance) would remove the penalties for maneuver and sensors, and bring the hull points back to maximum, and reduce maintenance costs from 4x to 2x. But it's still a century-old ship, with a lot of nonstandard parts and weird quirks, that will draw sideways glances from starport maintenance crews wherever it travels. So, they're stuck with the 2x maintenance cost and the -1 to repair rolls even after the refit and overhaul is done. And that is turning into an adventure in itself--they've got it limping along, but are jumping from system to system chasing down spare parts and maintenance facilities on the Imperial fringe (they traveled to Collace to purchase TL 12-13 ship parts, only to discover that Collace's shipyard facilities are off-limits to civilians, necessitating another jump), and burning a lot of money in the process, plus based on the luck of the die, there are other bugs to worry about: a fire in the hold resulted in the total loss of their cargo, KCr190 in Tarkinian wine. But, at least theoretically, they can add whatever 30-ton LSP module they want to the ship, reconfiguring for cargo, passengers, low berths, or exploration/survey, and it has enough flexible space to add a few other items on their wish list, like a laboratory (another member of the crew is a doctor/scientist) and a mineral detection suite and other sensor enhancement for the already-improved sensor package.
And the old enemies who want to destroy the ship? I'll let the characters figure out that part the next time they travel too close to the Sword Worlds.
Code:
Tons Component MCr Notes
---- --------------------- --- -------------------
150 hull, streamlined 9
30 Modular hull, 20% 1.8
7.5 Aerofins .75
7.5 Armor-4, crystaliron 1.8
3 M-2 thrusters 6
12.5 Jump-2 drive 18.75
6 Fusion PP, 90 points 6
32 Fuel, J-2&8 wks 1 Includes fuel scoops
10 Bridge .75
Computer/5bis .045
3 Military sensors+LSAS 8.1 (Live Scanner Analysis Suite)
16 4 staterooms 2
1 Double turret .5
2 Fuel processor, 40t/day .1
2 Probe drones, advanced 1.6 (10 drones)
5 Air/raft docking space 1.5 (Includes air/raft)
6 Workshop .9
6 Cargo spaceAs to the reason why I wanted to port a Wind class to MgT, I'm running a solo MgT campaign using the Solo campaign supplement for Cepheus Engine. The group is based around a partnership between a retired scout and a merchant/minor noble and their crew, who initially used a detached-duty Sulie-class scout ship. However, a scout/courier doesn't have much appeal for a trader who doesn't want to focus entirely on smuggling, while the scout didn't mind detached duty but wanted even more freedom of action. Plus, I wanted to solve an even bigger problem: in an earlier part of my solo campaign, I got some lucky rolls and they struck it rich doing some asteroid mining, and had MCr75 or so burning a hole in their vacc suits. Rather than make them the target of thieves or otherwise arbitrarily remove this burden from the characters, I figured the best way to lighten their wallets was to solve their other problems by buying their own ship on the used market.
Instead of just deciding they could buy whatever ships they wanted while travelling out in District 268, I decided to use the Solo ship encounter charts to randomly select a few ships at major (Class A or B) starports that were for sale. The initial idea was to wait until a used Far Trader, either A2 or Empress Marava, came along, and use the remaining cash to upgrade the sensors to Scout standard or higher, as the Scout's requirement was something that could be used for survey exploration or Belter mining, and at the insistence of their pilot, upgrade the engines to at least 2-G (the caper that led to their big paydirt asteroid included a chase that required keeping a laser-armed Seeker out of firing range long enough for the PCs' totally-not-armed Scout to get close enough to the local scout base to convince the Seeker to break off.)
After a few unsuccessful ship-shopping trips, one of the results was for a 150-ton Scout, which immediately reminded me of the Wind. While it wasn't what I as a player was looking for, I thought about it from the perspective of the characters, the ex-Scout, who deeply covets the rare Serpent class (presumably including its variants) and wants something with advanced sensors, the merchant, who sees potential profit in a 30-ton cargo bay that's owned outright, and the pilot, who likes to fly fast, she also has Mechanic-3 and is almost certainly a gearhead with a fondness for old ships.
Oh yeah, old ships. A roll on the MgT used-ships table indicated that this ship was at least 100 years old, which meant 10 rolls on the "quirks table" for potential repair problems, in return for 50% off the purchase price, but I wouldn't know what those quirks were unless they bought the ship. And that's the thing about starships: as the old saying goes, a starship is just a black hole in space where you throw credits. Especially a cool-looking, classic ship coveted among Scouts everywhere. The final selling point for the merchant, enough to overcome the potential for an extra 30 tons of cargo in a Far Trader, was that his arch-nemesis, another noble, was unduly proud of his own ship, a 50 year old safari ship of high design style but notoriously difficult to fly, and having a ship like this would drive the stuffy bastard up a wall.
So, they plunked down their credits, and took a look under the hood. Now, the MgT ship quirks table includes some good and some bad, and the result was a bit of both: -2 to all sensor rolls, add MCr2 worth of weapons, 4x maintenance costs, -10% hull damage, -1 to all repair attempts, sensors upgraded to next-highest level, damaged thrusters, -1 to pilot rolls, a extra turret, and apparently the ship was involved in a notorious battle and has enemies who wish to destroy it. Based on the ship's age and my game's setting in Imperial 1101, I assumed the damage happened during the Fourth Frontier War. Much of this damage could be attributed to weapon hits--the sensor, thruster, and hull damage seemed equivalent to Level 1 critical hits, while much of the rest could be attributed to poor maintenance. The MCr2 in weapons I figured meant the ship had retained its Scout-standard dual lasers in the turret, and while a second turret was out of the question on a 150 ton hull, MgT has the option for adding small non-starship weapons without needing a hardpoint, so I figured a small pop-out "remote weapons station" mini turret with a VRF Gauss Gun and tac missile was appropriate. Because the two quirks equivalent to critical hit results suggested at least two critical hits, I figured the hull actually had -20% damage.
I figured that a repair plan could fix some of these issues: use MgT ship repair rules and costs to fix the thrusters, sensors, and hull, and a full ship overhaul (equivalent to 10x the cost of annual maintenance) would remove the penalties for maneuver and sensors, and bring the hull points back to maximum, and reduce maintenance costs from 4x to 2x. But it's still a century-old ship, with a lot of nonstandard parts and weird quirks, that will draw sideways glances from starport maintenance crews wherever it travels. So, they're stuck with the 2x maintenance cost and the -1 to repair rolls even after the refit and overhaul is done. And that is turning into an adventure in itself--they've got it limping along, but are jumping from system to system chasing down spare parts and maintenance facilities on the Imperial fringe (they traveled to Collace to purchase TL 12-13 ship parts, only to discover that Collace's shipyard facilities are off-limits to civilians, necessitating another jump), and burning a lot of money in the process, plus based on the luck of the die, there are other bugs to worry about: a fire in the hold resulted in the total loss of their cargo, KCr190 in Tarkinian wine. But, at least theoretically, they can add whatever 30-ton LSP module they want to the ship, reconfiguring for cargo, passengers, low berths, or exploration/survey, and it has enough flexible space to add a few other items on their wish list, like a laboratory (another member of the crew is a doctor/scientist) and a mineral detection suite and other sensor enhancement for the already-improved sensor package.
And the old enemies who want to destroy the ship? I'll let the characters figure out that part the next time they travel too close to the Sword Worlds.
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