Durzan Malakim

I personally find travellermap.com to be an excellent resource as a GM, especially since it will give me the book reference for more details.
 
Since I’ve seen books reference that it exists “in universe” as a database players can look at, it also helps them determine where they’d like to go and what kind of planet to expect when they arrive. This is helpful if they prefer to skim a gas giant and process their own fuel, for example.

Without superpowers, a reach melee weapon, modern firearms, or terrain features to exploit, one person doesn't hold a breach. You can always say that the brave hero makes a PRE attack and forces opponents to freeze or engage. Perhaps getting the result of strongly consider what you say is enough to make your opponents challenge you one-on-one.

(several nuns shuffle by piously)

Welcome to Mechanon Debate Club. The first rule of Mechanon Debate Club is: you do not talk about Mechanon Debate Club. The second rule of Mechanon Debate Club is: you DO NOT talk about Mechanon Debate Club! Third rule of Mechanon Debate Club: if someone asks why they got a downvote and you don't reply, the debate is over. Fourth rule: only two posters to a debate. Fifth rule: one debate at a time. Sixth rule: debates are civil. No doxing, no profanity, and no ad hominem attacks. Seventh rule: debates go on as long as they have to. And the eight and final rule: if this your first time at Mechanon Debate Club, you have to debate.
 
Posting about Mechanon's latest efforts at world domination via AI-chatbots is not a violation of rules one or two. The unexplained downvote likely means that the debate is over though.

Just asking this question got me a downvote?
 
EDIT: And again? What is this? Could I at least know why I’m being repetitively downvoted?

In my Pirates of Drinax campaign, some of the characters are fighter pilots, so I came up with some ranged martial arts maneuvers they could use.
 
Fighter Pilot Skills
3  Defensive Shot:  1/2 Phase, -1 OCV, +2 DCV, Range +0, Weapon  Strike
5  Dodge/Jink:  1/2 Phase, -- OCV, +4 DCV, Dodge All Attacks, Abort; FMove
4  Trained Shot:  1/2 Phase, +2 OCV, +0 DCV, Range +0, Weapon  Strike
0  Weapon Element:  Vehicle Weapons
 
What might be some other maneuvers a skilled fighter pilot would have, like Maverick from the Top Gun movies?

The Meatgrinder was rechristened with a new name to honor the Princess of Drinax during the voyage to Hilfer, and the travel time allowed repairs and healing to occur.
 
The Imperium Treasure Ship had made a poor landing in the wastelands of Hilfer, and the remaining crew readied what defense they could while awaiting rescue, knowing it might take months to arrive, if ever.
 
@Durzan Malakim summarized the challenges facing the PCs pretty well. Here is some additional commentary.
 
The captain of the treasure ship is a martinet a bit reminiscent of the one from the movie Mr. Roberts, mixed with the British officer from Bridge on the River Kwai. He’s currently unconscious courtesy of his First Officer, Commander Mari Jagat, after I did my best to portray him as the insufferable prig he was.
 
She’s described in the module as the slightly Mary Sue-ish protagonist of a series of science fiction military action-adventure novels occurring parallel to the PCs activities, apparently an Honor Harrington homage. Further complicating things, she hero worships Brigadier Meson thanks to his “war hero” Positive Reputation but didn’t at first believe the “pirate captain” she was talking to was him even after he revealed his true identity, throwing quotes from his own biography in his face as to why her crew was not going to meekly surrender and letting the PCs know about the armed nuclear device.
 
Further complicating matters is the surviving Marine Commander Harc, who is paranoid that the ship was infiltrated by one or more Zhodani spies (apparently true from what the PCs later discovered) and refuses to accept the commands of any Navy officers, thinking they are all compromised puppets, and he’s not too sure about his fellow marines either. He and an unknown number of surviving marines are in full battledress and ready to fight pirates to the bitter end.
 
There is also a spy from the megacorp General Development Company (GeDeCo), running a scheme as well, but the PCs don’t know who it is. As one of the PCs also works for GeDeCo, he received some text messages from the spy on his personal comm device as a professional courtesy (and perhaps worried they would be killed if the PCs weren’t aware of their presence).

Player decisions are the bane of every GM everywhere. Having just given us a mission in Aslan space, we wiley PCs decided to forego adventures in Aslan territory and instead further plunder the Trojan Reach for crew, equipment, and targets of opportunity. Granted, as we understood it our Aslan mission is a fetch quest where we bring the stuff to the place. If the place already had the stuff within easy reach, they wouldn't need expendable outside contractors such as ourselves. We were hoping to plunder more from our favorite megacorp PRQ (Pretty Rotten Quality?), when one of the PCs spotted the name Techworld on the system map. His eyes lit up like a kid at a candy store, and it didn't take much to convince the rest of the crew that we needed a world's worth of tech.
 
Kudos to @Steve for improvising our visit to left field so that Popeye could continue his quest to acquire more robotic or replicant minions followers and ship's crew. Fortunately he'd read ahead and knew the basics of the Hilfer system. We also gave him some extra time by having a side discussion about our ship's mixed stances on slavery and slavers. We are one robot revolution away from "ALL FLESH MUST DIE!" and yet Captain Nemos is vehemently anti-slavery. I'm sure this is fine, and nothing bad will happen.
 
This session had a lot of story told by the dice. For example:
A GM roll produced an enemy ace fighter pilot. GM combat rolls for Hroal Irontooth were consistently deadly (both deadly hit locations and high damage rolls) PC luck roles where we earned 5 counts of luck on 6 dice. PC critical success on a constitution roll. We also managed to use our entire supply of HAP. It turns out that deadly combat is deadly. All in all a great session with lots of complications and avenues for further development. I'm sure inheriting a pirate crew of Aslan will be fine. I'm sure the obstacles between us and the Treasure ship are few and manageable.
 

I was responsible for some PC dithering as we encountered obstacle after obstacle between us and a vault full of treasure.
Obstacle 1: Missile launchers shooting at our starship. We did manage to take out two missile launchers, but are there more? Obstacle 2: Imperial Navy and Marines guarding the vault. There are three factions aboard to contend with. Obstacle 3: A dead man's switch on a nuclear device that prevents us from just killing everyone from afar with starship weapons. Obstacle 4: Two groups of imperial marines in battle dress (basically Ironman armor). Obstacle 5: A Zhodoni psionic agent somewhere in mix scanning us from afar. Obstacle 6: My PC's psychological complication against killing Imperial military forces who he still has a sense of duty to. It's an interesting situation we find ourselves in.

Our first session of the year was mostly roleplaying as new NPCs were introduced to the players, including their first meeting with a psionic in the campaign, one of the Aslan females who came to negotiate their new role after the PCs victory. She is now acting as an advisor to the PCs.
 
The remaining male Aslans had their toughest fighter, the ace fighter pilot the PCs dealt with in the last session, nearly killed in a fistfight with PC Harrison, a boxer built a bit like Rocky Balboa in his abilities. Despite the Aslan having a four SPD and a higher DEX, Harrison blocked several blows and then unleashed an uppercut that struck his foe’s head, nearly killing the Aslan after hit location modifiers were figured in.
 
After a bit of travel time, they made it to Hilfer, where the next steps in the current adventure happened.
 
More to follow…

The crew of the PC’s ship is remarkably diverse. At a rough count…
 
Seven male humans (two are PCs)
Three female humans (NPCs)
One male human with cybernetics (PC)
One male flesh-covered android (NPC)
One female flesh-covered android (NPC)
One uplifted gorilla (NPC)
One male Vargr (NPC)
One female Aslan (NPC)
Five robots of varying levels of sentience
 
They’ve now managed to conquer an all Aslan-crewed pirate ship with around ten female Aslan techs and a few surviving males.
 
Forging this motley band of pirates into a unified fighting force will take every ounce of Captain Nemos’ leadership ability and a considerable amount of luck.

Yes, there should be few difficulties. Raiding the treasure ship will be a piece of cake.

Player decisions are the bane of every GM everywhere. Having just given us a mission in Aslan space, we wiley PCs decided to forego adventures in Aslan territory and instead further plunder the Trojan Reach for crew, equipment, and targets of opportunity. Granted, as we understood it our Aslan mission is a fetch quest where we bring the stuff to the place. If the place already had the stuff within easy reach, they wouldn't need expendable outside contractors such as ourselves. We were hoping to plunder more from our favorite megacorp PRQ (Pretty Rotten Quality?), when one of the PCs spotted the name Techworld on the system map. His eyes lit up like a kid at a candy store, and it didn't take much to convince the rest of the crew that we needed a world's worth of tech.
 
Kudos to @Steve for improvising our visit to left field so that Popeye could continue his quest to acquire more robotic or replicant minions followers and ship's crew. Fortunately he'd read ahead and knew the basics of the Hilfer system. We also gave him some extra time by having a side discussion about our ship's mixed stances on slavery and slavers. We are one robot revolution away from "ALL FLESH MUST DIE!" and yet Captain Nemos is vehemently anti-slavery. I'm sure this is fine, and nothing bad will happen.
 
This session had a lot of story told by the dice. For example:
A GM roll produced an enemy ace fighter pilot. GM combat rolls for Hroal Irontooth were consistently deadly (both deadly hit locations and high damage rolls) PC luck roles where we earned 5 counts of luck on 6 dice. PC critical success on a constitution roll. We also managed to use our entire supply of HAP. It turns out that deadly combat is deadly. All in all a great session with lots of complications and avenues for further development. I'm sure inheriting a pirate crew of Aslan will be fine. I'm sure the obstacles between us and the Treasure ship are few and manageable.
 

Player decisions are the bane of every GM everywhere. Having just given us a mission in Aslan space, we wiley PCs decided to forego adventures in Aslan territory and instead further plunder the Trojan Reach for crew, equipment, and targets of opportunity. Granted, as we understood it our Aslan mission is a fetch quest where we bring the stuff to the place. If the place already had the stuff within easy reach, they wouldn't need expendable outside contractors such as ourselves. We were hoping to plunder more from our favorite megacorp PRQ (Pretty Rotten Quality?), when one of the PCs spotted the name Techworld on the system map. His eyes lit up like a kid at a candy store, and it didn't take much to convince the rest of the crew that we needed a world's worth of tech.
 
Kudos to @Steve for improvising our visit to left field so that Popeye could continue his quest to acquire more robotic or replicant minions followers and ship's crew. Fortunately he'd read ahead and knew the basics of the Hilfer system. We also gave him some extra time by having a side discussion about our ship's mixed stances on slavery and slavers. We are one robot revolution away from "ALL FLESH MUST DIE!" and yet Captain Nemos is vehemently anti-slavery. I'm sure this is fine, and nothing bad will happen.
 
This session had a lot of story told by the dice. For example:
A GM roll produced an enemy ace fighter pilot. GM combat rolls for Hroal Irontooth were consistently deadly (both deadly hit locations and high damage rolls) PC luck roles where we earned 5 counts of luck on 6 dice. PC critical success on a constitution roll. We also managed to use our entire supply of HAP. It turns out that deadly combat is deadly. All in all a great session with lots of complications and avenues for further development. I'm sure inheriting a pirate crew of Aslan will be fine. I'm sure the obstacles between us and the Treasure ship are few and manageable.
 

You make a Security Systems roll.   The first sentence of the description of the skill states it allows you to locate, recognize, evade and build various types of alarms and traps.  It even lists retina scanners and tripwires in the examples of what it covers. Finding and Disarming traps is what the skill does.
 
Background skills cannot be used for things that are covered by other skills. If you want to fly a plane you need the skill combat piloting, not professional skill pilot. Background skills are designed to cover things that rarely affect combat, but a character by concept should be able to do.  If what the character does is covered by a full skill you need to have that skill to be able to do the task.  The background skill may be as complementary skill, but without the actual skill your character cannot do the task.  
 
The complementary skill rules allow you to use another skill that may be related to the task to boost the chance of success in the primary skill.  So, if a character with both security systems and electronics is trying to disarm a trap that is using electronics, he rolls first makes the electronics roll.  If he makes the electronics roll it gives him a bonus to his security systems roll to disarm the trap.  The bonus is +2 for making the roll and for every 2 points he makes the roll he gets an additional +1 to the roll.  You can have multiple complimentary skills.  So, if the trap also involved a computer, computer programing would also be complementary.  It is the GM’s call as what is complementary.     
 
The rules for skills are actually very well done in the Hero System and does not really need any modification.  Most people who try and make them better don’t really understand them and usually end up trying to solve a problem that does not exist.  About the only thing that may need to be done is to create a new skill for something that is specific to the game you are running. 

As a player, I like HAP when the dice don't agree with a narrative element I've almost achieved. I resist the temptation to negate all my failed rolls. Good stories are not made by an endless succession of successes. Some of the best stories are in fact stories of overcoming setback or failure. In my opinion, HAP work well as a finishing move to complete a trend. That is you're most of the way there, but the dice generate a random number at odds with the trend. For example, you've almost convinced an NPC to accept your harebrained scheme or the fight is almost over. Ideally I would only use my HAP to complete a scene.
 
Sometimes the trend is going against me, and I just can't roll a success. While I'm tempted to use HAP to buy myself out of trouble, I do my best not to negate failure. Partly this is a metagame decision to trust my GM with the consequences of my failure. Most genres allow you to come back from failures. Even dying can sometimes be nothing but a setback. In this game, I trust that most non-combat failures will not be lethal. Not everyone at our table shares my opinion. Just last session one of our players used almost all of his HAP to overcome a string of failures during a social interaction with an NPC. Personally, I thought failure would have been the more interesting result, but he had the HAP to spend and used them to resist an entanglement.
 
One game mechanic I like is giving everyone a stack of HAP at the beginning of the game. We can in theory earn more during play, but we rarely do because we rarely run out of HAP. This is a good mechanic for tables where not everyone has real life social skills or likes power gaming by earning HAP. Those who prefer roll-play to roleplay don't have to worry about gaining HAP through their amateur acting abilities. How many HAP is a good amount will vary from table to table. I would fine tune it to your PCs playstyle.

I use HAPs in my current Traveller Hero game, and they are mostly used to mitigate rolls at critical points. I home-brewed effects a bit. Neutral Luck (roll 3d6 and count the ones and sixes to see effect) also crops up from time to time. The players like that they have some control over the narrative using them.
 
However, in my Delta Green Hero campaign I run from time to time as an alternate, I specifically don’t use HAPs to enforce the feel of an uncaring universe in that setting. If I ever run a pulp era Cthulhu Hero campaign, I would likely do the same.

From today’s Pirates of Drinax/Traveller Hero session.
 
”A man that can punch a gorilla in the nuts can do anything.”

I'm curious to see how Blackfur develops. He has a new military commission to add to his list of accolades. He also knocked out another PC for being mouthy. President Meson certainly has quite the odd cabinet of cut throats around him.

We’re now six sessions into the campaign, and the PCs have been away from Drinax for a few months now, exploring the nearby systems for loot and adventure.
 
Not much pirating has been getting done, but they’ve successfully fomented two revolutions so far and profited handsomely from them. Captain Nemos and his crew are coming together nicely and picking up oddball NPCs along the way. Here is one of them.
 
Blackfur: An uplifted ape (25 STR and knows a few martial maneuvers) that one of the PCs first came face to face with by defeating him in an MMA match on the pirate world of Theev, then later encountered in another system after having developed a rivalry for that PC over that loss. Two more fistfights in different game sessions ended with the dice giving more defeats for Blackfur, one from an uppercutting punch to the jaw (hit location 5) and a second with a solid shot to the nads (hit location 13). Neither hit was aimed there on purpose, just the luck of the dice.
 
The player is thinking Blackfur wants to murder him, but he’s actually more of a grumpy, honorable rival that is secretly a bit embarrassed at being so soundly beaten three times in a row by a mere human who just so happens to be a trained boxer from his military days. Despite his grumpiness, Blackfur is a good mechanic, fights well on the PC’s side and is fitting in quite well on the crew.

Yeah, your response does make sense. I do remember having good time with my gaming groups in person. But I've been in a really small town for several years, and I haven't managed to drum up a group. So I switched to email games. I guess what I found is that I can have a group of friends that are not gamers, and then I can focus purely on the gaming in the email campaigns.
 
But yeah, maybe I'm kidding myself that play-by-email is better than the camaraderie of a good in-person gaming group.
 
That being said, there is something nice about a "pure" experience where almost every syllable is dedicated to gameplay and furthering the plot. That's one thing that I do appreciate about playing by email: the players are all focused on writing concise responses to keep the game moving forward, where--in my experience--gaming groups in person sometimes get sidetracked by topics.

I prefer in-person games to VTT games and VTT-games over no-games at all. I like telling stories with dice where I can see the effects of our choices in real time, and where I can interact with multiple people simultaneously. Can you have that experience in play-by-mail? Maybe, probably, I just long ago gave up on that method of game play for other more immediate modes that better feed my addiction.

I prefer in-person games to VTT games and VTT-games over no-games at all. I like telling stories with dice where I can see the effects of our choices in real time, and where I can interact with multiple people simultaneously. Can you have that experience in play-by-mail? Maybe, probably, I just long ago gave up on that method of game play for other more immediate modes that better feed my addiction.

I prefer in-person games to VTT games and VTT-games over no-games at all. I like telling stories with dice where I can see the effects of our choices in real time, and where I can interact with multiple people simultaneously. Can you have that experience in play-by-mail? Maybe, probably, I just long ago gave up on that method of game play for other more immediate modes that better feed my addiction.

I guess I’m an old school grognard, but I far prefer interacting with people face to face at a table rather than playing by text/email. I’ve tried it in the past, and it’s glacially slow in getting anything done that way.