The Traveller5 Safari Ship

[robject]

Here's where things get strange.

I typed a lot of words on the Safari Ship in Traveller in general. It started out as a mustering out benefit specifically for the Hunter career in 1979, it got dropped for the Yacht in 1993, then the Safari Ship came back in 1996 but the Hunter career was jettisoned. Hunter returned as a type of Scout with Traveller5, and ship shares are granted through careers, instead of actual ships.

So here I am, wondering why the Safari Ship exists as a class separate from the Yacht.

I am convinced that the ship's design and payload define the ship, and are in accord with the ship's mission. Thus, a Safari Ship should be designed with different criteria than a Yacht, or any other ship for that matter.

Traveller5 gives me tools to do this.


First, the hull is a Lifting Body. In fact we've all seen its manta ray shape, and what's clear in the picture is now clear in the design. P647 of the Big Black Book shows a big color picture of it.

We also have a re-imagined Yacht in the Big Black Book:

Yacht (y-eu42)
Built on a 500-ton TL14 unstreamlined hull, the yacht is a noble’s plaything for entertaining friends and undertaking political or commercial missions. It mounts drives giving it jump-2 and 4-G. Fuel tankage supports five months of power plant operations and allows two successive jump-2; it incorporates fuel intakes for refueling from a water source. Adjacent to the bridge is a Model/3 computer. Added to a basic sensor suite is a neutrino detector, stealth mask, and a standard proximeter.
...

They're different frames... in fact the Safari is its own frame.
They're different performance. They're different range. Different size.



Now you can turn just about any ship into a Safari Ship. But, it's clear that there is plenty of room for an actual Safari that's not a subset of anything else -- and it was intended to be that way, and is still intended to be that way.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

So here I am, wondering why the Safari Ship exists as a class separate from the Yacht.

At a guess, because someone thought it was cool?


I would guess a lot of early ship design came out of peoples campaigns. They were just some cool ships (among many others), they were never intended to be the only available, or even the most common ships.

 

[robject]

At a guess, because someone thought it was cool?

I think that's exactly right.

And I can make three guesses who that someone might be.

Exhibit A. Citizens' author is in the infobox here: https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Citizens_of_the_Imperium

Exhibit B. And the author of Adventure 10 is here:



Exhibit C. Just because a ship is in T5 doesn't indicate who created it. However, I think the previous two PLUS this one shows that not only was it thought cool, but it is still thought to be cool by the same person. Despite the hasty design errata (note the incorrect QSP, copied from page 34, versus the actual hull type that was chosen to better fit the hull shape), I present Exhibit C from T5 Book 2 p38.



P.S. a similar error was made in the hull configuration in the T5 1.0 Big Black Book on page 647 (propagated to T5.09 p731 and T5.10 p700): it's a picture with an even more manta-ray-like Safari Ship, but the QSP is still airframe as KS-BA12.

 

[Condottiere]

I think it suffers from the same malady from when you customize character classes.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Yes, this A Safari Ship, not the only Safari Ship:

CT A10, p17:
Safari ships come in many shapes and sizes, and under many names; the one described here is typical.

Should it be 200 Dt or 500 Dt? The answer is "Yes!"

 

[McPerth]

Exhibit A. Citizens' author is in the infobox here: https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Citizens_of_the_Imperium

It's curious, though ,that when clicking at the hunters section in the link you give us, the only reference is:

In Vargr society, the Hunter (Vaghzkourr in Gvegh) is an important and revered role

Nonetheless, there's no hunter in CT AM3:Vargr, while it is in the S4:CotI...

As an aside, I guess it has also importance in Aslan society, but neither is there the career of hunter in CT AM1:Aslan, depite having more careers than AM3

There's a Hunter career in Varg section of MT:V&V, though, but not in the Aslan section of MT:S&A...

 

[robject]

I think it suffers from the same malady from when you customize character classes.

Just this morning I was realizing that starship design is Traveller's "point buy generation system".

 

[kilemall]

Just this morning I was realizing that starship design is Traveller's "point buy generation system".

Always was, and the expensive money sink of upgrading subgame particularly for traders was/is experience level powering up.

How many gold pieces until I can level up my Safari ship to a level 5 Ranger?

 

[Condottiere]

Stealth hull coating, and upgraded sensors.

Also, you're, or your ship is, really good at fighting a specific interstellar political entity.