Once the Rockets Go Up...

[pyat]

The cheapest hyperdrive capable ship I know of for the old Star Wars RPG is a class of medium freighter that sells for 17,500 credits. Other ships sell from 25,000 to 100,000 up.

The cheapest Jump-equipped ship available in Traveller costs several million credits, and has a monthly upkeep of thousands of credits. The value of a credit is roughly the same in both games. So, in Star Wars ships are sort of like... transport trucks and pleasure boats. In Traveller, they are more like airplanes, so far as I can figure.

Speaking of rockets! sassy_fae got me a Mentos Rocket for my birthday! We launched it today, in the interest of determining the superiority of liquid-fuel launch vehicles over solid state boosters... It was not a complete success. The rocket reached a maximum height of about 2 inches.

Comments

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

I bet it would have gone farther had the fuel volume remained uncompromised ;)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I suspect you are correct!

[athelind.livejournal.com]

"Ten thousand? We could almost buy our own ship for that!"

Traveller also assumes that anyone buying a ship will get a loan from a bank, while in Star Wars, the only people offering loans are loan sharks and crime lords.

I won't argue about which is more realistic, but Star Wars is sure more honest.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Ah, but in Traveller it would be:

1. Less likely for the local mob to be able to loan out that kind of cash...
2. Harder for a city-based or even planet-wide mob to track you down when you decide to head to Trin's Veil.

The amounts of money involved are so large that any criminals big enough to loan out the cash are likely working within the system. And, if they have that kind of cash to lend, even hardcore criminals probably don't want to loan money to shady characters like adventurers, and would just comission a ship for themselves through a shell company or whatever.

Though... one could enter into the realm of really huge zany larcenies and doublecrosses, and stolen ships given out as booby prizes, and intersector criminal organizations and so on. But it seems to be it would be about as common as real world crooks loaning money to someone to buy a tanker.

In my most recent game, the players were offered use of a horrible old wreck with a burned out jump drive. They could only make one jump at a time, and relied on their criminal patron for replacement parts.

[leonard-arlotte.livejournal.com]

SCIENCE!

[pyat.livejournal.com]

FOR THE WIN!

Who cares where they come down?

[rowyn]

That's not my department --

[anidada.livejournal.com]

What language are you learning now, Werner? :D

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Chinese, or maybe Hindi!

[paka.livejournal.com]

But, isn't one of the prevailing design assumptions in Traveller that your characters will start out with a ship, and most of their activities will plug back into it? Such that the designers weren't concerned with characters maybe buying a ship later.

I get the feeling SW is intended to make ships less of a plot widget and more a player character convenience - if characters really really need to get from point A to point B they can always pool resources and buy a ship, which gets them to B and means the GM can continue with his storyline without having to think too much about it.

Does that all sound about right?

[pyat.livejournal.com]

All true! I'm just trying to get a feel for where they fit into the personal economics of the characters. A ship in Star Wars seems to be sort of equivalent (in terms of price) to water craft of similar size and utility. If you crash your houseboat, it might be a serious financial blow, but insurance will cover it. Or you might be able to pay it off with a few good jobs. Crash a transport truck, and the company will probably put you on probation for a while, but figure it as part of the cost of doing business.

Losing even the cheapest ship in Traveller seems to be equivalent to losing an F18 or a 747, or a largish container ship. It's a big enough loss to kill even a good-sized company. Only governments and huge coporations can walk away from it.

[kores-rabbit.livejournal.com]

The Rocket Experiment made me laugh all the way through.
Win!
Also, let the wookie win.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

The Wookie with the Cookie always wins.

[katepufftail.livejournal.com]

People buy their ships in Star Wars? Perhaps it's just that we were more larcenous that most, but my parties always ended up just stealing ships.

Of course, we also went through them at an alarming rate too.

Also! I'm not a rocket scientist, but I play one on the interwebs. But, I bet a turn or two of plumbers tape, judiciously applied, might help to boost operating pressures to more reasonable levels :)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I think the biggest problem was the initial loss of "fuel" when the 2-liter tipped on the first attempt. But... yeah, I maybe should jam the rocket on a bit tighter next time, so it's carried up with the geyser and not just popping off.

[relee.livejournal.com]

I don't know anything about Traveller, but I know that Star Wars has had consitantly stagnant post-jump tech for tens of thousands of years. Their garbage dumps on back-woods planets have workable hyperdrives. Any kid can build an airship on a Star Wars planet as easy as you or I could build a raft or a go-kart.

So, what's Traveller? ^.^



Too bad about your Mentos rocket. Did you look up on the internet tips for maximum height? The guys on Mythbusters did some pretty impressive things.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Traveller strikes me as the sort of game you might really like! It was the first full SF RPG, released in 1977. It has lots of fiddly bits and is jam packed with setting details.

[relee.livejournal.com]

Sounds kinda neat, if old. Is it hard Sci-fi or soft Sci-fi?

[hossblacksilver.livejournal.com]

I second this. Heck, that's one of the things about my Star Wars 3.5 Mon Calamari, Artnor (pictured) was a scout with craft: blaster, craft: droid, craft: starship weapon and craft: starship.