Alathan

Re: Traveller Hero... What's Next?

It might be worth it to see if ComStar can hook up with a POD (print-on-demand) service like LuLu (like what RPGNow uses) for their PDF-only products. It doesn't cost a lot more to use a POD service from what I understand, and the quality is on par with other professionally printed products. You might want to pursue this as an option with ComStar as well. I'll also bring it up with them as a suggestion (since I'm working with them on some ship deckplans).

Re: Urban Fantasy Recommendations

I haven't seen it mentioned in this thread yet, but I think it was in some other "urban fantasy" threads...

The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump by Harry Turtledove

And if you want to include movies, you could consider M. Night Shyamalan's movies like The Village and Lady in the Water. (My apologies if these were already mentioned, if so then I missed it.) Admittedly, The Village isn't "fantasy" in the "wizards and dragons" sense, but if that kind of scenario were played out in an urban fantasy world with magic, imagine how much more you could do with it...

Re: Star Hero/Traveller Hero star map request:

The following pages show and list all stars within 20LY and 50LY of Sol:

http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/20lys.html

http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/nearstar.html

http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/50lys.html

Use these rather than the 2300AD Near Star List if you want accuracy, as the 2300AD list is pretty outdated.

In fact, I recommend browsing the whole site (http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com) when you have time... the different views from solar system to galaxy to universe are truly awesome as well as very handy for interstellar sci-fi games.

Re: Interesting Tech

Here's a chilling thought...

Imagine an advanced alien species with a megascale RF transmitter aimed at the entire Earth... with all that seawater covering it... suddenly... POOF!!!

Re: Character: LV-426 Life Form

A truly awesome job, Mike, I love it! Now I just gotta hope Steve doesn't find this thread and decide to give us a little "surprise" in our Traveller Hero game!

Rep comin' as soon as I can spread some more rep around...

Re: Suleiman-class Type-S Scout/Courier Deckplans

That's one option' date=' yes, although unless a 333% blown up piece of letter paper will fit on a sheet of A3 I don't know how they would be able to do it either...[/quote']

I'm pretty sure Kinko's can print on paper larger than A3, I know I've seen huge rolls of paper there which they can print on and crop to spec -- unless things have changed since I was there last. Might cost a pretty penny too, I don't know... I'll have to drop by my local Kinko's tonight and find out.

 

I'll still see about making a 1" scale multi-page version for standard desktop printers that you can crop & tape together (for those who can't afford the Kinko's treatment).

Re: Suleiman-class Type-S Scout/Courier Deckplans

I have no problem conceptually with printing multiple sheets and trimming them/sticking them together' date=' but I am having problems finding a way to print them at 333%.....doesn't seem to be anywhere to state on the print menus that you want to print them across multiple sheets at 333% size - am I missing something? Should I be using something other that Acrobat Reader to open the files?[/quote']

Hmmm, I see what you mean. I think I'll try to create an enlarged multi-page version of the Scout/Courier deckplans as a test. That's the only other solution I can think of at the moment.

Re: Suleiman-class Type-S Scout/Courier Deckplans

Is there any way to blow these things up so I can use them with minis or 'cardboard heroes' ?

Well, with the CT 1.5-meter square grid maps, if you print them at 444% scale, you should get close to a 1" scale grid. With the TH 2-meter hex grid maps, you'll need to print them at 333% to get roughly 1" hexes.

Of course, you'll need to either print them on multiple sheets, crop the edges and tape them all together, or if you have a few bucks to spare, you could take the PDFs down to your local FedEx/Kinko's or equivalent print shop and have them print them out on some large poster paper or something (at the above scales).

If someone tries this, please let us know how it worked out.

Re: Suleiman-class Type-S Scout/Courier Deckplans

I'll throw in another vote for the Far Trader - always got a 'Millenium Falcon - Traveller Style' vibe from that bad boy....I think it was the cockpit arrangement that did it. Any thoughts about other ships from the original books' date=' like the Safari Ship or the Missile Defense Boat?[/quote']

Ideally, as I have time, I plan to do all of the ships in Traveller Hero Book 2 as well as those from CT Supplement 07: Traders & Gunboats... so those two will eventually be covered as well. And I agree with the Falconesque feel to the Empress Marava class... I'm sure that was intentional.

Re: Suleiman-class Type-S Scout/Courier Deckplans

You have done a great job at capturing the feel of the Traveller style. I have done a good number of deckplans' date=' but I never can get it right for this style. One of the "blindspots" I have as a cartographer is that I like to have things nice and square, circles and angly bits never look right to my eye. Those angles on nearly all of the cabins along the exterior walls always make me discard these designs well before I am finished. Yours however look very good, I'm a bit envious.[/quote']

Yeah, if you're referring to the Beowulf deckplans, I know what you mean. While I don't mind the outer hull getting all curvy or diagonal, I too prefer my interiors to have nice right angles (with maybe the occasional 45-degree angle here or there)... but not all Traveller ships are built that way. I'm glad you like how I've worked with it, though.

Traveller Hero Book 2 Clarification

This could be considered errata for the Traveller Hero Book 2, but it's really more of a clarification, and since it has to do with this ship, I'm posting it here...

The deckplans for the Type R Subsidized Merchant are found next to the stats for the Stellar-class Subsidized Liner, but they should be used instead with the stats for the Type A3 Fat Trader, as the Subsidized Merchant is actually a variation of the Fat Trader.

I think I did promise Shadowcat some Stellar-class deckplans, though... I'll have to add them to my list.

Re: Suleiman-class Type-S Scout/Courier Deckplans

Thanks! I was suspecting the Far Trader might be in demand... that and the small ships are currently at the top of my list to do.

BTW, I've added thumbnails to each of my deckplan posts so people can see what they look like before they decide to download. You can check them out in the threads linked below:

Gyro Cadis-class Type-R Subsidized Merchant Deckplans

Beowulf-class Type-A Free Trader Deckplans

Ueknou-class Vargr Corsair Deckplans

Re: Suleiman-class Type-S Scout/Courier Deckplans

For anyone who's been following my deckplans, I'm not sure which ones to work on next. I'm considering drawing up the classic "small ships" (ship's boat, launch, pinnace, modular cutter), or perhaps the Empress Marava class Far Trader, or the Gazelle class Close Escort. Would anyone like to see any of these next? Or does anyone have any special requests? Perhaps for your own TH game, or maybe just your favorite ship you'd like to see some hex-based deckplans for?

Re: Is "Hollywood-style" decompression accurate?

So the the exposive decompression scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey is more accurate then from Aliens?

 

(IF you never saw the film Dave Bowman is forced to do a space walk with out a helment to get back into the main ship. He blows the hatch on his repair capsle and propells himself with explosive decopress into the Discovery's Airlock)

Yes, 2001 was pretty accurate in that regard (as it was with pretty much everything else regarding space travel).

Like Zeropoint said, unless it was sucking the atmosphere from the entire ship, or unless the Sulaco's life support systems were trying to pump air into the cargo bay as an emergency measure to give anyone in the cargo bay some extra breathing time (at the expense of rapidly depleting the ship's reserve air supply), yeah, the decompression in Aliens should not have taken so long.

And then, of course, there's the exploding bodies in the movie Outland... awesome movie, but COMPLETELY UNREALISTIC when it comes to decompression, as is now pretty clear from the above posts.

Re: Gyro Cadis-class Type-R Subsidized Merchant Deckplans

Thanks guys!

I've made a few corrections since yesterday, as well as a few corrections to all of my other deckplans as well. All of the latest versions are available on my deckplans webpage for those who have downloaded any of them in the past.

Re: Short Form Ship Sheet for Traveller Hero

Looks good, shadowcat. With some formatting, it would be perfect. I mentioned this on the Comstar forums too... having the long form is very useful, but the short form is definitely easier on the eyes. Some sort of combination of the two would be ideal.

I just had an idea... perhaps you could make a TAS form out of the short form? (starts working up an example)

Continuing in a hopefully long line of redesigned deckplans for Traveller Hero (as well as some new ship designs in the future), I present the 400-ton Gyro Cadis-class Type-R Subsidized Merchant. For the aspiring merchant not fortunate enough to muster out with a free trader, you can always turn to the Imperium to subsidize you with a Type-R merchant ship (for a 10% cut of everything you sell, of course).

As always, these deckplans come in two flavors: Classic Traveller (1.5m square grid) and Traveller Hero (2m hex grid). Again, as before, I've modified the original Type-R deckplans here and there, sometimes for aesthetic reasons, other times for practical reasons, while preserving as much of the original layout as possible.

Don't forget to check my sig for all of my other deckplans, too!

Re: Traveller Hero... an update from the authors

Book 1 is complete and set to go for final approval along with book 2 this coming week!!!!

 

I will also point folks to the following announcement on the Com-Star site yesterday re: Traveller Hero

http://www.comstar-games.com/

Yikes! I hope there's still time for me to get the Subsidized Merchant deckplans in by Monday! They're about 2/3 done at the moment, but it's 1:20 am and sleep is calling me... mmm sleep.... zzzzz...

Re: Suleiman-class Type-S Scout/Courier Deckplans

My final Beowulf deckplans had multiple exterior views as well, but my Ueknou didn't because I didn't have an external picture of the ship at the time to work from.

It's been a while since I posted my last set of deckplans, but hopefully these are worth the wait. I humbly present my version of the Suleiman-class 100-ton Type-S Scout/Courier deckplans for Traveller HERO. The deckplans are available in PDF format in a 1.5m square grid version (for Classic Traveller) as well as a 2m hex grid version (for Traveller Hero).

I also thought I'd take a moment to point out that these deckplans are my version of the original deckplans found in various Traveller supplements over the years (such as Traders & Gunboats or Vilani & Vargr). As such, I have tweaked things a little bit here and there, while keeping the overall deckplans as well as the look & feel of the ship as close to the original design as possible. These "tweaks" are more noticeable with the Scout/Courier, but while a few subtle ones are purely aesthetic, most of them are for more practical reasons.

For example, in the original Scout/Courier deckplans, the lower cargo bay is located far forward in the ship, but after a quick look at the external layout of the ship, there's no way that cargo bay could fit where it is placed in the deckplans... it would stick out like a massive wart on the ship's underside, or it would be about 50cm high... not much of a cargo bay. So I took the liberty of sliding the bay to the back of the ship, where there's plenty of room under the main deck. (In fact I suspect that's where it originally was meant to be, but for some reason that's not where it was finally placed in the Traveller books.)

Also, while the original Scout/Courier has a very sharp, flat wedge-like shape with no protrusions, my version has the cockpit extended out from the hull (giving the pilot more visibility; I did this with my version of the Free Trader too) and the upper deck is represented with a Quonset hut like structure running up the spine of the ship. This was added because, like with the cargo bay, there's no way most of the upper deck would have enough space for a person to move through it without it projecting out from the hull. I couldn't move the upper deck though, so it had to stick out, and the rounded, sloped structure atop the hull looked the best in my opinion and detracted the least from the ship's original design, while still affording enough room inside for a person to walk (or crawl in the most forward sections) through the upper deck.

Anyway, enough waxing about my design decisions; I'm not sure how many Traveller deckplan nuts like me will even notice these things, but I thought I'd share just in case someone was interested. I hope everyone enjoys the deckplans all the same.

Edit: I thought I'd throw in some thumbnails for anyone who's curious...

Re: Beowulf-class Type-A Free Trader Deckplans

For those who've been following these, I've almost finished my Suleiman-class 100-ton Scout/Courier deckplans. For the moment, you can check out a preview of the deckplans in my signature, but they still need a bit of work and they're only in 1.5m grid format at the moment. I'll post a new thread for them when they're done. I'll probably add a Seeker version soon as well. In the meantime, check the preview out and let me know what you think.

Re: Traveller Hero... an update from the authors

Dont even get me started on the whole press release to begin with...

the whole line about "No new traveller content in 10 years" was somewhere beyond over the top, and just a little wrong. the whole press release has caused a lot of confusion. Ken Burnside from Ad Astra and Dom Mooney from BITS have talked on the Ad Astra forumns about it. it seems to me at least that Mongoose in that press release has ignored the work of Com-Star, Avenger, BITS, Steve Jackson Games, and Quicklink Interactive.

Yeah, that confused me big time as well. Perhaps its possible they weren't aware of all of the above publishers' contributions to Traveller... though it seems to me that missing the whole GURPS Traveller line would be a real stretch for anyone with even the slightest familiarity with Traveller.

Re: Beowulf-class Type-A Free Trader Deckplans

They are awesome! What software are you using to make these?

Thanks! While I often use Adobe Illustrator for these kinds of things, I actually did these deckplans with Inkscape. It's free and it's available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

Re: Stutterwarp Drive

I'm not familiar enough with HERO to work out the details at the moment, but the basics about the stutterwarp drive are as follows:

It has a maximum range of 7.7 light years before its tantalum coils are overloaded and radiation floods the ship, killing everyone aboard. The ship must enter a 0.1g gravity well before reaching this 7.7LY limit to discharge the coils. (I don't know how long it takes to discharge them; 24 hours might be a good guess...)

The stutterwarp drive gets its name because it "teleports" the ship hundreds of meters per jump cycle (through what equates to a upscaled quantum wormhole), but the drive cycles hundreds of thousands of times per second, thereby achieving a "virtual velocity" well above lightspeed.

Stutterwarp drives lose efficiency dramatically when they enter a 0.0001g gravity well; at this range, their "virtual velocity" drops into the sublight range, but is still well above other types of thrusters. (In the Solar System, this limit lies just beyond 2 AU from Sol.) When the ship enters a 0.1g gravity well, efficiency drops again, this time well below that of rocket or MHD thrusters. (This usually requires landing on a planet or moon, or at least entering a low orbit.)

Not sure if all this detail is necessary, but there's most of the facts for someone who wants to build a stutterwarp drive for HERO system.

Re: Traveller Hero: Traders of the Spinward Marches

Broadsword will turn your free or far trader into a pile of scrap in a hurry' date=' also depends on how shes armed, 4 triple laser and 4 triple missile makes it a little easier to hit her with lasers or missiles, the 8 triple missile or laser variant would be quite painful, the standard version and common variants dont have any real defenses. course the broadsword might just try disabling the main drives and send a cutter with a boarding party over.[/quote']

Considering we're just a 200-ton far trader with a couple of triple missile turrets and a sandcaster, while we might get lucky and put a few holes in the Broadsword, I've no doubt any configuration would turn us into a cloud of tinfoil confetti in short order if that were her goal...

 

Shivva isnt nearly as bad' date=' unless she sits off and lets her fighters deal with you instead.... and what if the shivva is carrying a psi commando squad as ships troops? which would be very doubtful unless you stumbled into a special ops gig, although they do carry a telepathic adept who acts as a fighter squadron controller[/quote']

Given the strange events we've been encountering across District 268, and the mess we found on Singer, it might very well be a Zhodani specops gig... that is if it really is the Zhodani.