Okay , Here's my problem - I mis-remembered something and want to know if any of you guys can help fix it ...or at least adapt my improvisation to GURPS 4/e.

About 4 or 5 game sessions ago, a new player character joined the group. I thought she was only go to show up occassionally -so I gave her a choice of pre-gen characters that I had already made with the GCA. She chose one that owned a starship - so I decided that she needed a ride to Biter to transport a vital part of Jump Drive equipment that her grounded ship needed. (Amanda Marie Owen, a generic GURPS: SPACE character I once posted on the SJG Forums).

What I didn't expect : She has made EVERY game session since then, so I now had to figure out ways to have the storyline and plot affect TWO ship's worth of characters.

Here's the problem that maybe you some of you gearheads can help me out with: I didn't want to use yet another Empress Marava as her ship ....and I vaguely remembered an altered version of the Type R Merchant from canon/classic TRAVELLER that could do a Jump 2 and had equipment or something taking up a big chunk of the regular cargo bay.

SO...I find my FFE reprint of Chamax Plague and its the Shaarin Challenger design that I had remembered and based her ship on.

Is there a way to do that shape and deckplan design with a Jump 2 capability? Those Scientific Labs would be gone on this version- just normal cargo space in those areas.

Anyone pretty good at doing stats for this sort of thing??


Oh, and the player named her ship: Night's Beautiful Daughter.


- Ed C.

Quote from: KoltarIs there a way to do that shape and deckplan design with a Jump 2 capability? Those Scientific Labs would be gone on this version- just normal cargo space in those areas.

If you read the description of the standard Type R Subsidized Merchant in Supplement 7: Traders and Gunboats, at the end it describes:

   Variants: The low jump potential of the ship's drives has prompted the production of demountable fuel tanks for this ship. A modular 40-ton fuel tank can be installed in the cargo bay. Installation cuts off the rear doors and makes them unusable. Using these tanks, the ship can make a second one parsec jump with only a twenty hour delay. The delay is required because of standard safety checks required on the ship, and to allow pumping the fuel from the demountable tanks to the wing tanks. Fuel must be in the wing tanks for proper feed to the drives. Cargo  capacity of the ship is reduced to 160 tons. The demountable tanks cost MCr.5.  It is important to remember that these demountable tanks are not collapsible. When removed or not in use, they still take up 40 tons of space, and must be stored or warehoused in some manner.

So the way you get Jump-2 out of a Type R is with those extra 40-ton tanks and a Jump-1 followed by another Jump-1.  This is included in the modifications for The Shaarin Challenger in The Chamax Plague.

eh... two weeks plus inter jump downtime...

What about the R2 "Stretched" Subsidized Merchant?

Quote from: dareh... two weeks plus inter jump downtime...

Traveller originally defaulted the merchant ships to Jump-1 to make "tramp steamer" trade difficult and interesting, hence the quirky rules about pumping fuel around.  Remember, the Marava is considered a jump-optimized variant of the standard Free Trader, which is only Jump-1.  If that sort of quirky detail is really not desirable, there are certainly more optimized designs around, including the 300 ton Type AA Armored Merchant that appeared in FASA's High Passage #3, which has Jump-3 capabilities or the option that you provided.

Oh no... don't get me wrong. I should have added that the other was jump-2 so they would be out of sync...