You guys can describe yourselves to one another, I'm going to put some details in here to help things along.
Headless- Came out of an oversized Pod meant for an eight foot tall Aslan (and looking very like Aslan technology), and was more or less standing on a spacer-trunk inside the pod. He is dressed in fine robes with clear Aslan influence, with a hook bladed knife strapped to his wrist on a fancy bracer and a large signet ring on his finger.
Opoapajr- Came out of a pod almost equally large, though looking like human designed military tech, though in very battered and terrible shape, making it almost impossible to tell where it came from. He appears almost to be a creature from storybook legends, a Khanate Supersoldier from ancient past, complete with crude but effective looking combat armor. A strange scar circles his neck above the collar of his armor.
Ffliz- Came out of a normal human sized pod, clearly military tech, though unfamiliar to anyone else present. He is wearing form fitting combat armor with uniform insignia. He otherwise appears to be a normal human.
Ras Algethi- Came out of a pod of strange design, almost as if it were grown around him. He is human, skinny and shave headed, wearing a form fitting jumpsuit of silver. There are ugly scars on his scalp and neck, and a shiny new plug of metal and ceramic on the back of his neck. He looks distinctly lost and uncomfortable even compared to the rest of you.
The four pods appear to be arranged in the center of a small chamber, crudely wired into the ship's systems almost as an afterthought. You are unmistakeably on a starship, and can see clear signs that this is some sort of repurposed storage room, possible once holding ammunition of some sort.
Opoapajr- This couldn't possibly be a star ship, or else its on a planet, because you are clearly experiencing Gravity.
Ffilz, Ras Algethi- the construction of this ship seems clearly crude and primitive, with steel bracing on the bulkheads and so forth. Flilz, you might think 'fringer', while Ras would be more 'Outsider', but the idea is the same... not made by Your People.
Gravity is light, .2g, probably due to a lack of power. There is a hatchway on one wall that is currently closed.
Edit: I forgot to add. Whatever shape you were in when you went into cold sleep you feel great now... except for a blinding headache.
Moved to IC.
Minor note. Monkey knives are attached to the bracer to force you to use it like a claw... Unless you have altered it of course!
Mine comes off and has a handle if needed.
No problem. Also you are addressing 'The big one'... Unless I've gotten confused!
How do you want us to keep character sheets?
Quote from: Spike;1000019No problem. Also you are addressing 'The big one'... Unless I've gotten confused!
Oh! I see. I got confused. Is wearing the power armor? Please describe it. I am concerned about getting my hand crushed.
I've got character sheets for each of you, but I'm going to have to redo them for the proper edition.. there were more changes between 1 and 2 in skills than I thought, and the 2nd sheets are very, very grey so hard to read and probably will scan like shit for google-docs uploads.
Fimion, the big one, is wearing combat armor, just much cruder and bulkier than the combat armor that Corporal Ramierez is wearing... not powered. On the other hand he could look an Aslan in the eye... seven and a half feet tall. His combat armor looks to be mostly metal and ballistic plastic sheets layered and riveted to a sturdy leather jumpsuit. It looks uncomfortable and heavy, but doesn't seem to bother him.
As for fixing stuff, you are all in an empty room except for your now empty stasis coffins. I'm willing to speed up stuff due to format, but there isn't anything to look at in here except each other (also... I can stall some so everyone has a chance for input...)
What time zone is everyone in? Just so I know when to expect updates. I'm in Atlantic.
Quote from: Headless;1000059What time zone is everyone in? Just so I know when to expect updates. I'm in Atlantic.
Pacific for me
Mountain zone, about half an hour from Central, but I work nights, so I'm backwards.
Ras- You are clearly in some form of Avatar Server, though from your experience as a Merchant you had come to believe the various Avatar-servers were far more closely linked than anyone suspected. That was one of the forbidden thoughts that eventually led you to Annunaki. Everyone present is in some form of Flesh-form avatar, but not surprisingly you aren't picking up any Data-signatures from them. Of course, they act a bit like Outsiders, so you don't expect much.
Eastern @ Headless
Please tell me my trunk floats.
Its space worthy so yes.
Hmm.. I sent an IC post via tablet hours ago but I see it didn't take... I'll recreate it, I guess. Annoying.
Ffliz: An engineering check (M-Drive) reveals a likely answer for the high temperatures (110 Deg F.). Space is a very good insulator, so to keep ships from getting too hot (rather than too cold as people tend to expect), the Gravity Drive is used as a heat sink, flushing the extra heat away from the ship. That the ship is so very hot means that the Heat-Sink function, and probably the entire drive, is down and has been for several hours... a more exact estimate would require knowing how big the ship is, how big the power plant is and if there are any additional sources of heat (such as nearby suns).
Pacific Standard Time here.
Spike, I will attempt three rolls to speed this process up: Leadership to establish squad positions as I see best so far; Tactics on how to reach the bridge -- and life support? -- ASAP as a unit; and Stealth so I can scout point.
It looks like a straight shot to the bridge, but I'll take these precautions regardless. The roll results can then help me in IC description.
Want to do the honors of the skill rolls? Or do you have a designated roll room? :)
The main delay is in letting every player have a shot. At the moment I'm handling rolls, but I"m not adverse to moving to an online roller or something... I'm just somewhat incompetent at that sort of thing.
In Traveller the main use of Leadership and Tactics are initiative boosts for combat, though I'm not adverse to expanding their roles as skills in common sense usage. However, getting the other PCs to act according to your direction is... well... sort of between you and them.
As for Stealth (rolls dice, looks suspiciously smug...) you... are sneaky. :cool:
I'm always sneaky! :cool: :p
Ras Algethi- The flying drone appears to you to be a simple mek-form Avatar, and it does appear to be emitting data of some sort, though frustratingly you can't seem to actually 'see' it, though you are aware that the Avatar controlling it does so with a small hand held device, along with simple voice commands.
Opaopajr- how DOES that flying ball stay up in the air? It doesn't seem to have any jets or rockets, much less wings or rotors.
Hmm.. I've REALLY got to get on top of scanning stuff in, since I'm absolutely sure I"m having a hard time describing floor-plans properly and I'm certain I don't have an adequet paint program on any of the three computers I've got running... and even if I did I probably couldn't do a proper grid... I R luddite?
Quote from: Spike;1000340The main delay is in letting every player have a shot. At the moment I'm handling rolls, but I"m not adverse to moving to an online roller or something... I'm just somewhat incompetent at that sort of thing.
I'm comfortable with you making the rolls, in my PbP experience (about 10 years), GM rolling dice can definitely speed things up.
So we all have combat armor of a sort already on through description. What about combat guns? Am I wielding a rifle, or would picking up those shotguns be a good idea?
Regardless, shotguns w/ ammo & stretchy vacc suits are a useful find.
You and Ffliz have combat armor on. Headless is wearing fancy robes and Ras Algethi is wearing some sort of thin silvery jumpsuit.
You've got a monsterous huge battle rifle, very familiar to you (you've had this gun all your life), that fires 12mm slugs of nickle-iron, designed to punch through light armor and split into curved wedges inside the body. Commonly known as a slugger (stats to follow hopefully before you decide to shoot someone...). Its not terribly accurate and kicks like a mule but its very, very reliable.
Ras Algethi- watching the other guy directing his drone it occurs to you that you can use the Drone's power supply to power up a door panel or some other device, though without tools it might be difficult. You have the skills.
Opoapajr and Ffliz: The ration pack opened by Headless reminds you of commonly issued field food, though clearly not the same as you are used to its close enough to be almost... appatizing. Almost. Maybe if you get a little more hungry.
Headless: your remote chimes softly, letting you know that your drone has completed its orders and has interfaced with a ship's system. It wants to know what to do next. Glancing at the remote you can see it appears to be on the bridge, which is softly lit by red warning indicators flashing on the various boards.
Stats for Probe Drone: STR 3 Dex 7 Hull 3 Structure 3
Armor 5 Integral system (Comm Audio/Visual), Integral system (Grav Belt), Integral System (Holgraphic Projector), Integral System, Sensors (gieger counter, IR/LI goggles, motion sensor, Electromagnetic probe)
The only motion it detects is the four of you, the only electromagnetic energy it detects is the weak trickle of power from the emergency lights and a stronger signal from the bridge.
Ships logs!
Name. Date. Location. Class. Status and location of the crew. When did we get loaded? This doesn't look like the ship I was traveling on, at least not the part I saw.
Hit me with exposition!
(Checks character sheet... rolls... rolls...)
I'll follow to the bridge or engineering or where ever when we go. It's getting towards my bed time but don't delay waiting for me to respond.
You're trunk is a drone too? I don't recall discussing that, but what the heck... I'll allow it, you certainly can afford it.
Of course, its going to be much, much stupider than the probe droid, which isn't exactly smart....
I saw the post last night, but I'm trying to give everyone a chance to 'act'.... setting and keeping a pace may be one of the hardest adjustments to the format I have to deal with!
In 2017 my dish washer has a computer and my next fridge will make the grocery list. I don't know if its a drone but voice command and the senses and software to keep from crashing into things seems like something a human would put in a cargo unit. How else do I steer it?
This is an old game right? Does everything have a machine spirt? Sorry wrong game, a computer in it?
Quote from: Headless;1000637In 2017 my dish washer has a computer and my next fridge will make the grocery list. I don't know if its a drone but voice command and the senses and software to keep from crashing into things seems like something a human would put in a cargo unit. How else do I steer it?
This is an old game right? Does everything have a machine spirt? Sorry wrong game, a computer in it?
I didn't say it was clumsy...
But no, you're thinking of Warhammer 40k, sort of. Actually there are some rules for adding computers to guns and pretty much anything else, that... and a generally good nature... is why I'm not actually objecting.
I just had the painful insight that you earlier asked if your trunk floats. I assumed you meant in the tradtional fashion... if you tossed it into water. No wonder it seemed such a weird question.
So to properly answer: Adding one device (such as a grav belt, or a computer) to another unrelated device (such as a footlocker) is as simple as just paying the price for both. Normally a Grav Belt is 100,000, which is a bit odd, since your probe drone (I went with the cooler version btw, you can thank me later) only costs 15,000 and yet has a 'grav belt', and the cheap version is 2000 and STILL has a grav belt. So discounting a Grav Belt built into an object seems... more than fair. Presumably the cost of the belt is proportional to how much it has to carry and how mobile it is (a personal grav belt can carry more than your body-weight and lets you fly around the sky like a weirdly non-aerodynamic plane... your trunk, presumably, simply hovers gently and moves at a fast walking pace, hence... cheap.)
Supposedly a gun with a computer and the right software can shoot people for you (er.... okay), and even improve your own shooting (er... not so okay! Bad TOUCH!!!), etc...
Where things start getting wonky is when you start making all these drones 'smart', as the Core rules don't really handle that at all, the default setting assumes low-robotics, and the Robot supplement seems to assume Emergent AI and full sentience to include robot-religions and other cray-cray. Since I LIKE the lack of hordes of rules, its pretty easy for me to default to 'what is playable' and let it ride from there... I can assume at least some people know how to program fake-smart robots for users who don't want to spend all day playing 'remote control' or worrying about being turned into a duracell battery.
Ok. That's very helpful to dial into the setting. The future from the 70s is a bit wonky when it comes to computers and comunications.
Just so I am clear the trunk floats gently along behind me? And it cost less than the probe drone? And it's not planning to enslave me for my body heat?
I now have to fight back the urge to buy a floating refrigerator drone to ride into battle. That way my ride can keep my beer cold for after battle. :cool: Fight it! :mad: This is not that type of sci-fi game!
Oh... oh god no. Not the stupid player tricks trend! I WILL NOT have my game degenerate into flying box riding mongol warriors conquering the airless steppes of some asteroid hab...
Now: What is your Character doing? I've got Headless's character, but he said he was following, and I'm starting to fear I've killed my first PbP campaign before it even begun. Save me, Opoapajr, you're my only hope!
Quote from: ffilz;1000389I'm comfortable with you making the rolls, in my PbP experience (about 10 years), GM rolling dice can definitely speed things up.
Same, that works for me.
you lack the experience or skills to accurately estimate that. (from IC thread). Not only that, but the primary reactor fuel sensors indicate that there is no fuel at all, meaning that the internal sensors have already reached their limit. It is safe to say that the ship is literally running on fumes.
You DO know that it is exceptionally hard to re-ignite a fusion reactor that has gone cold, without access to another, working reactor. The power requirements are significant... though again, you lack the skills to know exactly how hard that might be.
Is it fair to say the bridge crew is staying in contact with the engineering team? Does the figure show up on crew manifest, internal sensors? Can the drone see her? Do we have access to internal sensors? Can we tell the atmosphere and radiation levels on the otherside of the hatches before the away team opens them?
What kind of physical tech are we dealing with? Submarine or star treck?
It is fair to say, yes, as I believe most of you have comms of some sort and, more importantly, you can project a hologram through your drone to 'remote'. Yes, that is in fact something you can do.... so for conversations and what not, you are effectively there.
The ship does not have 'life sensors', too high tech, and most internal sensors not related to systems are, in fact, down so no, you aren't detecting her from the bridge, nor is she listed as crew... per se.
. With your Admin skill you determine that there is one 'M. Robertson, Mercenary For Hire' listed on the ship's manifest, occupying Cabin 10. No other details are listed.
Without power it is difficult and time consuming to check hatches before opening them, though an emergency indicator should light up (battery powered) if vaccuum is detected. Under normal power the hatch access panel provides more details and will refuse to open automatically if an 'unsafe' condition is detected. The stairwell serves as a crude airlock between decks, preventing multiple doors from opening simultaniously as a standard safety precaution.
Physical Tech: Somewhere between. The ship is a lot more spacious and capable than a modern submarine, though in some respects the aesthetics are the same (perforated metal grating for decks, metal bracing in the passageways), rather than the futuristic flying hotels of Star Trek. This ship is clearly a modified military ship, so while some areas have been 'dressed' with decorative panels to hide the purely functional design of the ship, its incomplete.
you don't think this was your absolute sneakiest, but you also don't make a horrible racket as you approach.
As for assessment: Human, Female, Un-aug, though that is implied (in your experience) by gender. Very small, almost childish in stature and build but you don't think she's an actual child. Dressed in a form fitting leather outfit that appears military, perhaps an undersuit for armor, small sidearm holstered, wearing a rebreather mask, probably to avoid carbon dioxide toxicity in the bad air. She doesn't seem appropriately concerned by the lack of power or life support, her manner seems to be someone just going about their day despite the looming disaster.
Whats the proper form of adderess for a civilian?
I'll be honest... I haven't really thought I needed to come up with answers to that question. Names are good, Sir or Ma'am or some variation on that them I guess? Hey You! That works for me in real life... :)
We never established if my combat armor has any internal comms... If not, I don't actually have any comms since my Comm unit is basically a smart phone.
I could retro comms for the combat armor if appropriate.
Did you say she's been entering and leaving her room like clock work for a year? But we've been accelerating out of control for decades?
Are we still accelerating? Might want to stop that probably going fast enough.
The Ball can talk to you if necessary.
The logs only go back one year. That seems to be the buffer for the computer before archiving data. She doesn't scan as a drone, though of course you have never heard of a human looking robot either, so who's to say?
You are not accellerating, no. But neither are you slowing down, at least not to measure.
Yes, if you have comms you have comms. I'm not planning any stupid-GM tricks where you can't use your smartphone because your helmet got in the way. I'm assuming most of your kit came from your previous life and was meant to work together anyway. Modular and all that.
Who owns this ship?
Starts pulling up relevant forms and legal precedents on the drone remote. Or a PDA in the trunk, checks the ships library, its probably not there, nothing else is.
There does not seem to be a ship's library at all, no archives, nothing. The computer is running, poorly, but lists error codes for attempts to update the database from active memory.
You do seem to be on a half dead ship, alone (ish), and flying at an absurd speed to nowhere.
Since I've already posted a mostly accurate working 'ship sheet', would you guys like to speed up the exploring your new home so you can work on the problem solving and get on with adventures... hrrm... ADVENTURES.IN.SPAAACCCEEEEEE!
I can post a fairly descriptive write up before I go to work tonight (giving you all day to yay or nay the idea) that should cover all the details of your explorations. I'm not sure if I'll be able to make this ship sheet work quite the way I want it too, but its not super-bad for all that. I've already done the conversion work (went smoother than I thought, actually!), and have updated the ship sheet including a bunch of notes to cover all the details of a standard exploration, though I've got to lay out the 'floorplan' for you verbally on account of my art, so I can update the sheet as soon as you all are ready for it.
Quote from: Spike;1001198Yes, if you have comms you have comms. I'm not planning any stupid-GM tricks where you can't use your smartphone because your helmet got in the way. I'm assuming most of your kit came from your previous life and was meant to work together anyway. Modular and all that.
Ah, I was just being strict about the reading of what the Comms unit does from the book, and assuming the ship's comms net is not active with the emergency power, but maybe it still is... I'm also fine with a slight redefinition of the comms gear, I'm also fine with adding a short range comm to my gear (I had left some cash for purchasing equipment once we sort of new our missing).
If it's ok, I'll go back to the briefing Ramirez was given before going night night and purchase additional appropriate equipment, I check with you on that.
Speeding up the exploration is fine with me, if there's nothing going to bite us it obviously doesn't make sense to walk it through slowly, and even if there is, you can jump us to the point of where we might find a clue of upcoming biteage...
And so far, I'm enjoying this.
I'll plan on posting an updated sheet and giving you guys a verbal briefing IC when I get up, unless someone screams out that they'd prefer to do it slow.
Let me know you plans regarding the NPC so I can work that in.
Any luck registering our salvage claim?
Quote from: Headless;1001444Any luck registering our salvage claim?
With whom? You've got no comms outside the ship currently, nor any expectation of them.
Quote from: Spike;1001453With whom? You've got no comms outside the ship currently, nor any expectation of them.
With the ship itself. One year of working memory is a bit of a problem but Tech Cooper is going to calculate our jump here shortly and we will rejoin the normal universe.
When that happens our paper work will be inorder and we can sell the ship or not, and split the profits 4 ways.
Should be an easy admin roll.
Well it would be highly unusual for a ship's crew (as you are already listed) to put in a salvage claim on their own ship, but don't let ME stop you!
One Salvage claim filled out and stuck in the active buffer.
Good. One less thing.
yes, so what ARE you 'Engineer Techs' doing to save us? Inquiring GMs want to know.
Also, what are you doing with the NPC you found. You have power now, systems are back online, excepting unusual cases like the compter datastack. You've got... ahem... "food", and you've got a bin full of repair parts and assorted scrap that can be turned into repair parts in the workshop... which some idiot put on the wrong deck. when it should be closer to Cargo, where you store all that heavy stuff...
Could we get some kind of summary of the characters? Following back to see who has what skill sets and stuff will soon get challenging...
Hmm... I sort of intended to have you guys work that sort of thing out between yourselves... I guess I can work up an executive summary in the morning and post it (I try and monitor and post from a tablet at work at night... limits what I can do, but better than nothing. The perils of having the opposite schedule of everyone else!). That reminds me that I've still got to scan clean sheets in for you guys... alas... a GMs work is never done...
If I can get a offical charcter sheet I can let you know what I'm good at. Astrogation and admin mostly.
We're going really fast right? Does the light change from red to blue when we turn around and face forward? Serious question. Should it?
Quote from: Headless;1001700We're going really fast right? Does the light change from red to blue when we turn around and face forward? Serious question. Should it?
You must WANT your character to die horribly! :p. Based on my long experience as a near C test pilot you have two options... Weird and hallucinatory light effects OR chalk it up to Relativity and ignore it?
Well I think I have at least as much experience at c fractional speeds as you do. I am willing to ignore that stuff inside if you are. I expect redshift will be noticeable if we look out the window?
Quote from: Headless;1001751Well I think I have at least as much experience at c fractional speeds as you do. I am willing to ignore that stuff inside if you are. I expect redshift will be noticeable if we look out the window?
Absolutely. If there was anything to see out the windows. I'm assuming you are raising the armored shutters I described (I did describe them? I'm sure I did) now that you have power? Ok. Its black outside. Windows on spaceships are generally pointless, but people gonna people.
And hey, I'm sorry I missed you at the big Near-C Pilot's mixer last year. That drunk karaoke was INSANE!
Really I found it pretty tame. Relatively speaking.
Just as a reminder, if you ask questions In Character, unless you're talking to an NPC, I won't be answering because I, the GM, am not In Character. Though I did think, way back in teh Cartoon Era, that I should be... taller... when I did.
Also I don't assume your characters are doing anything, generally, though I have to admit it might be tempting to do so just to keep everybody up. I'm assuming Finion is still watching Robinson work on the Port Railgun Bay at the moment, that or he wandered off to watch Ramirez throw a switch in Engineering.
Hmm... that almost seems harsh to me, so to help smooth over and ruffled feathers, how about some Slow Jams.... ooooohhhh yeah... Best GM-DJ evah!
Quote from: Spike;1001789Just as a reminder, if you ask questions In Character, unless you're talking to an NPC, I won't be answering because I, the GM, am not In Character. Though I did think, way back in teh Cartoon Era, that I should be... taller... when I did.
Also I don't assume your characters are doing anything, generally, though I have to admit it might be tempting to do so just to keep everybody up. I'm assuming Finion is still watching Robinson work on the Port Railgun Bay at the moment, that or he wandered off to watch Ramirez throw a switch in Engineering.
Hmm... that almost seems harsh to me, so to help smooth over and ruffled feathers, how about some Slow Jams.... ooooohhhh yeah... Best GM-DJ evah!
For play by post, I find it best to assume the characters of non-responding players are doing things reasonable to accomplish the goals of the more active players. If it feels like you DO need input from someone before proceeding, make it clear what input you need or at least that you are waiting (sometimes you want to be careful about prompting).
Frank
Quote from: Spike;1001789Just as a reminder, if you ask questions In Character, unless you're talking to an NPC, I won't be answering because I, the GM, am not In Character. Though I did think, way back in teh Cartoon Era, that I should be... taller... when I did.
Also I don't assume your characters are doing anything, generally, though I have to admit it might be tempting to do so just to keep everybody up. I'm assuming Finion is still watching Robinson work on the Port Railgun Bay at the moment, that or he wandered off to watch Ramirez throw a switch in Engineering.
Hmm... that almost seems harsh to me, so to help smooth over and ruffled feathers, how about some Slow Jams.... ooooohhhh yeah... Best GM-DJ evah!
By question was to the group, not you. :)
Is there a specific format to signify we are taking an acting rather than just thinking about it?
Since we don't (won't? for secrecy! :p) have PC sheets up, Player = PC Name Reference:
opaopajr = Fimion
Headless = Ailjandro
ffitz = Ernesto
Ras Algethi = Cooper
Quote from: Opaopajr;1002057Since we don't (won't? for secrecy! :p) have PC sheets up, Player = PC Name Reference:
opaopajr = Fimion
Headless = Ailjandro
ffitz = Ernesto
Ras Algethi = Cooper
Not secrecy, just lazy... and busy. With terrible handwriting...
I got two more days until another weekend, so if they aren't up by then, they'll definitely be up on the weekend! Swear!
As for exploring, whaddya wanna find? I've pretty much given you the ship's entire layout (minus art, and trust me, you don't wanna see my art!)
Quote from: Ras Algethi;1001825By question was to the group, not you. :)
I know, but your last three or four posts were one line IC questions for the group, so I was worried you were getting left out of the game, since no one was responding. I TRY to be a conscientious GM... sometimes.
Quote from: Spike;1002079Not secrecy, just lazy... and busy. With terrible handwriting...
I got two more days until another weekend, so if they aren't up by then, they'll definitely be up on the weekend! Swear!
As for exploring, whaddya wanna find? I've pretty much given you the ship's entire layout (minus art, and trust me, you don't wanna see my art!)
But I liked your art from before! :)
Exploring for more clues would be what my character occupies his time with. I am perfectly fine waiting in the wings while other players shine and accomplish things that move the adventure forward. I see current ship troubles like a Thief with a Trap/Lock; gotta wait for the specialist to solve the puzzle before we move along. Just biding time with characterization.
Don't worry too much about making more color, flavor, hooks, & layers when I go explore characterization. It's a GM opportunity for you to flesh out and seed your world. I don't expect every nook & cranny to be productive.
What skill(s) would be needed to facilitate a jump?
Astrogation mainly. Engineering skills in support to smooth things out.
Quote from: Spike;1002205Astrogation mainly. Engineering skills in support to smooth things out.
Oh. Thats me.
Just an FYI, I'll probably won't be able to post again until Sunday evening. Busy weekend.
Quote from: Ras Algethi;1002320Just an FYI, I'll probably won't be able to post again until Sunday evening. Busy weekend.
My availability on weekends is always suspect, depending on things, Sunday evening sometimes works...
Frank
If not for smart-phones I wouldn't know what day of the week it is at all. Too many years working in jobs where Saturday was just another day, and now again with a six day week, so my weekends keep shifting.
Anyway: THings for the party to mull over (The big post I promised this morning):
You've got a fully stocked 'shuttle' craft docked in a dedicated hanger/bay off the cargo-bay. You can't use it at your current speed (well, you can, but the risk/reward ratio simply isn't there...).
You have a Big Locked Door (Ship's Vault) that you can't access.
You can fight over who gets that sweet, sweet Captain's Cabin.
Robertson is, as far as I know, still wandering around freely doing mostly pointless maintenance.
At some point she, or someone, started milling new railgun rounds out of the scrap metal, but at 100kg apiece she apparently was unable to move them into the loading bays, so they're littering the workshop.
You're all still speaking in a language none of you have ever learned
There are locked metal crates in the Cargo Bay
Alijandro's visit to the Med Bay reveals a fully stocked but somewhat neglected high tech medical bay... more high tech than the rest of the ship (TL 15 vs TL 12). Assuming assistance from a character with Medic, scan's reveal no signs of disease or significant medical conditions aside from a little light dehydration. Prescribe drinking water to cure.
Regarding Jumping: Who's handling the Engineering: Jump Drive check? There is a star a 'short jump' away, as noted earlier if you wait a year or so you'll be passing near, but not through, the system. You have enough fuel (Barely) to make the jump, which means you'll be desperate to refuel in system when you get there.
Traditionally (in traveller) that means scooping atmosphere from a Gas Giant or water from a more terrestrial world, though in emergencies mining ice from asteroids is possible. The Frozen Elegy is not designed for atmosphere and has no scoops, the shuttle (a 30 Launch in Trav terms) is configured for fuel hauling, requiring several trips, the raw material being fed through Fuel Processors to refine liquid Hydrogen.
Or, of course, docking at a star-port and simply buying Fuel, though in your current state it would be most likely 'bartering' for fuel, and something other than pressed protein bars for food.
Ramirez has Engineering - Jump Drive - 0, if no other PC has it, we could ask Robertson.
... :confused: ... :eek: I attack the gazebo! :mad:
Everyone said they wouldn't be on this weekend.
I've done the roles for the Jump, assuming that is what you will be doing (to be honest I feel like I accidentally feel like I set up a railroad. I keep hoping you'll come up with a clever idea I can use to assuage my guilt? No? Damn!).
But you guys will be in Jump for a week because Traveller, so you've got time to interact and explore the ship.
So in our complex and exacting jump calculations what do we find out. I feel like the lost chinaman tribe. Wheredafucarwee!
Is the system we are jumping too in any kind of data base? Can I find the base star? Navigators must have land marks to orient themselves? Sirius is a fuck off huge blue giant right? Ploting a straight line (straight when you factor in how gravity wells curve space) path backwards, where did we come from? We know our acceleration, if we can find the distance we should be able to figure out how long we have been travling.
What kind of star are we going to?
No stars where we are? What does that mean? Are we between arms of the spiral galaxy?
Your ship's computer is crippled, no database, no star charts no nothing. From this distance there isn't much you can tell about where you are going, other than (at a minimum) you should be able to get your mad flight under control and hopefully should be able to get some fuel there from one of the sources I mentioned earlier. If there are people there, ships and all of that you can get more answers.
As for the no stars thing: while it is impossible to guess how it happened, its almost as if something just ripped a chunk out of this sector of space, leaving nothing but emptiness. Its dozens of parsecs wide where you are at and seems to extend lengthwise all the way to the edge of the spiral arm. Its not completely empty, sensors pick up the usual trace gasses and dust, though in smaller proportions than usual, and it seems a few scattered stars did survive.
I may not be using the built in traveller setting, but I'm sure as hell stealing their star maps. You appear to be crossing what is (in the Traveller) known as the Great Rift. Where it came from, how it came to be, none of you know, as it was a normal region of space when you went to sleep.
Regarding character sheets: I'm not entirely sure I've solved all the technical problems on my end, but assuming I do (and its looking like you'll get cheap typed docs rather than pretty sheets... if... nevermind, THAT problem is solved at least. Now, about my chronic procrastination... ) do you want them shared openly or would you rather I send them to each of you individually?
EDIT:::: https://travellermap.com
While the world information and geopolitical information isn't going to line up, this is the starmap for the settled patch of space, as I recall its good for about three hundred light years in any given direction... in radius it looks like. You're in that feature labled the Great Rift, a bit 'north' of that dotted line. The Solomani region is the area around Earth, more or less, and is wild, poorly settled space. Don't worry about the Zhodani Consulate, though thats the direction your heading (again: Not Traveller setting, but I am stealing that wonderful map. Seriously. Play with it, its fucking awesome).
The Aslan area and the Imperium area do more or less line up in my setting, though the history of both is different. Everything else?
Character sheet separately please.
What is the first thing behind us in a straight line? Are the sensors working? With out a data base we won't be able to tell what star itt is, but we will know how far away it is.
Cool thoughts on the setting, look forward to what you make of it.
As to character sheets, I'm fine with it being public. I'm also fine with it being simple, Mongoose Traveller has a bit more to it that the Classic Traveller I am most used to, but I think it still lends itself to a very basic character sheet or even a few lines listing stats, skills, gear, and a few other notes.
Ok, so I've scanned three character sheets in (Problems solved!), but sadly they are JPG files, rather than PDFs or something cool, so I'll send links out. I've still got one to go, but I've got to get to work!
Behind you the Rift extends for dozens of parsecs at least. Assuming you didn't start somewhere inside the Rift you've been flying for upwards of a century, though since no one has ever managed to go this fast in real-space, the relativity effects on the ship are less precise to estimate. While a hilarously bad roll might have been fun, you're knowledge of science suggests its probable that the ship's relative time is less than halved... so perhaps you've been flying from the ship's perspective for sixty or seventy years?
Assuming, again, you didn't start IN the Rift, and estimating from its edge. Since you've never seen or heard of such a Rift, its possible that you've cross a huge swath of the galaxy, in which case you've been flying for many thousands of years, though that would be silly.
EDIT: Your ship sensors are largely 'real world' things like Radar/Lidar. Better than we've got now, but no long range scans of life forms etc. To know what's in a star system someone pretty much has to go and check it out. The computer can filter data pretty well, even crippled, to give you triangulation distances (allowing you to jump reasonably safely) and things like that.
Well as long as our life support is good, it's time for some booze & catching up with the news.
Quote from: Spike;1003047....you're knowledge of science suggests its probable that the ship's relative time is less than halved... so perhaps you've been flying from the ship's perspective for sixty or seventy years?
Assuming, again, you didn't start IN the Rift, and estimating from its edge. Since you've never seen or heard of such a Rift, its possible that you've cross a huge swath of the galaxy, in which case you've been flying for many thousands of years, though that would be silly.
Can I get an upper limit? I'll take 60 years as the lower limit. Deffinatly the lower limit sinice I'm on a ship from a polity that didn't exist when I went into the ice.
Upper limit?
Theoretically: Infinity, though one supposes with powerful enough sensors and accurate star maps you'd find at least one impassible obstacle (star probably) directly in your path SOMEWHERE backwards.
There is the practical matter of fuel consumption, but you are not an expert on fusion power plants, certainly not enough to suggest just how low powered they can be tuned before they just go out.
Of course, sixty years SOUNDS way to long for the fuel to have lasted, and then there is the matter of Robertson, who might be thirty, if she stood on her tip toes and squinted hard. She does seem to be avoiding the lot of you... casual like.
Headless: when you refer to 'The bot' are you talking about Robertson???
Quote from: Spike;1003435Headless: when you refer to 'The bot' are you talking about Robertson???
Yep. In my in character experience a year of clock like precision for meaningless.tasks can only be done by a computer.
Ah, I suspected as much.
Regarding 'blowing' the vault... anyone familiar with starships would know that a Ship's Vault is designed to survive the total destruction of the starship its in. Even if you had anything more potent than the liquid hydrogen fuel (which, honestly, is more of a threat to you than to any part of the ship...), if you DID blow the vault successfully you'd ALSO probably do serious harm to the ship. Literally: The vault is TOUGHER than the ship itself!
That said: nothing is truly impregnable... and now I'm starting to mentally do the math on just how heavy the door must be.... heh.
Also: if you've been looking at the Travellermap, the system you are 'jumping' to is listed there as Falcon. I wouldn't get too caught up in the Wiki link for that system, or the system's around it, but it should give you the bare bones of the local stellar area... especially Alijandro, with his skill at astrogation.
As a reminder your ship is a Jump 2 ship, which means that you can jump two parsecs at a time (two hexes), so you won't be confined to that tight cluster once you get there, though you will need to refuel between jumps, among other things.
Quote from: Spike;1003449Ah, I suspected as much.
Regarding 'blowing' the vault... anyone familiar with starships would know that a Ship's Vault is designed to survive the total destruction of the starship its in. Even if you had anything more potent than the liquid hydrogen fuel (which, honestly, is more of a threat to you than to any part of the ship...), if you DID blow the vault successfully you'd ALSO probably do serious harm to the ship. Literally: The vault is TOUGHER than the ship itself!
That said: nothing is truly impregnable... and now I'm starting to mentally do the math on just how heavy the door must be.... heh.
Thoughts, especially seeing a picture of a friend standing on top of their fire safe with a long crowbar... Their house burned down, looked about the same as the pictures of houses caught in a forest fire, but in their case, it was just their house that burned (along with some trees adjacent to the house...). The safe was one of the few things that survived intact, yet they were able to open it with a crowbar (interestingly, another thing that partially survived was quilting fabric that had been tightly packed into boxes or bins. The edges were charred, but significant portions were salvageable.
While the vault may well be designed to survive almost anything that happens to the ship, that is different than being able to withstand force concentrated precisely on it.
But it's also your call... If force won't work, we'll have to find some way to finesse it. Perhaps once we get to civilization, someone can help us.
Agreed. I may double check the Drinax adventure, which includes a Ship's Vault 'raid', to see what the official stance is, but these are vaults, so they are meant to be secure... and, as I said, you don't really have proper explosives on board anyway.
By the way: To open a normal electronic lock (this has an electronic lock) is Engineering: Electronics at -2. This lock is more secure, so harder. huh...
So, looking at the keypad, doing your 'thing', you realize that A: The lock, the entire vault probably, is much more advanced than the rest of the ship... though that won't stop you from cracking it, and B: that they keypad does nothing. Its a ruse, designed to waste time. Some sort of special, perhaps custom made, key device, probably with built in encryption, is 'necessary' to unlock this thing. Given time and the proper tools, say in the workshop, you might be able to fabricate a new key, but that leaves the encryption. Otherwise you're cutting through Bonded Superdense to access the guts to short the lock... and the tools in the workshop aren't TL15, they are TL12 like most of the rest of the ship (except, as previously noted, the Medbay)
Ras: I'll need to know your priorities, the linked ship's character sheet has all the damages marked on it, and each repair check takes 1-6 hours and an unknown tonnage of Spare Parts. To sum up:
Jump and Manuever drives are both damaged, the M-drive more than the J-drive. The sensors took a hit, as did several of the weapon's systems, though nothing was outright destroyed. THe hull damage can be fixed, the Structure damage needs a full ship-yard.
In short, almost no major system escaped unscathed, except perhaps the power plant, though that shows some signs of old repairs. Its hard to say when those occurred.
EDIT:::: Eh, no structure damage. Hey, I can't check online documents AND type at the same time!
Heyo! I've been meaning to remind everyone... before it becomes an issue, that the Frozen Elegy is not designed to land on planets, and really sucks to fly in atmosphere. You do have a large cargo airlock in the cargo bay, which can be used on High-port stations, or even in vaccum, and a primary airlock on the mid-deck for, again, docking. There are six total airlocks, the third being access to The Jenny (which is really a double airlock!), and three utility airlocks that are randomly placed (assume one per deck) for emergency and maintenance access to the exterior of the ship. No, I haven't really bothered to think where exactly, because... um... I didn't really think about it when doing my very crude blocky diagram of the ship? And this isn't 'mini combat tactical map roleplaying'?
Mostly though: You can't land. Fly down in the shuttle. Expect that later, so if you tell me you're landing later, I'm going to remind you with an I Told You So look on my face. Watch the pika picture if you don't believe...
I found falcon on the map. It looks like there are 5 other systems with in range of our 2 jump ship from there.
Also. Why would we want to land? We have a runabout for that right? And we can use it to scoop up clouds to feed to our power plant right?
Just getting ahead of any assumptions. Many settings assume landing ships, and many traveller ships can, just not this one.
Ras:
In going through the data to try and build an ad hoc starmap you discover that someone has very expertly... even perhaps perfectly... altered all the data logs to cover for a number of missing periods, clustered around the near end of the logs. Indeed, you are certain that you only noticed yourself because you were physically watching optical sensor recordings on a monitor, had you been scanning the data the usual way, via the Data Space, you might not have noticed the single primary discrepency: A rust spot from a bulkhead screw that visibly grew between logs that were listed as mere days apart.
Once you find that you are able to find two additional discrepencies in the data, the more subtle being an extraordinarily slight shift in the position of stars in, again, the optical sensor recording from various excursions that did not match the elapsed time listed in the logs, though the resolution and astrogation data necessary to determine exactly how long had elapsed is unavailable.
The second additional discrepensy was much easier to find once you realized that the logs were altered. Simply put, the internal sensors of The Jenny never indicate the presence of any Avatar Form crew members, even on flights, despite the fact that flight logs clearly indicate manual piloting in most, if not all, cases. The obvious intention is to indicate the Jenny operated via some form of Eidolon control, which is clearly not the truth even if you can't quite figure how how they would have faked the sensor data that perfectly.
It seems obvious that someone... someone better at computers than you, which seems impossible... has been creating a very elaborate lie, though for what purpose is not obvious.
Who's Liz? Do I know?
Quote from: Headless;1004151Who's Liz? Do I know?
If you ask she'll explain that Liz is short for Lizardi, of Lizardi's Lunatics.
Edit::: Also, the 'Squid Bot' is probably referring to teh Repair Drone that is 'dead' on the floor of the cargo bay, that I've mentioned several times.
So the squid bot isn't an enemy drone of some kind.
I'll head down to check it out any way. I'll call Ball too unless clifton is using it.
And Liz isn't currently on the ship?
Quote from: Headless;1004160So the squid bot isn't an enemy drone of some kind.
I'll head down to check it out any way. I'll call Ball too unless clifton is using it.
Sure. There is a seven hundred kilogram sprawl of memory metal and flex-joint tentacles that is, in fact, a ship-repair drone, on the floor of the cargo bay. It looks like its been there for a while. It is not active and has no power in the internal capacitors, probably because it hasn't been on the charging rack with the other repair drones for some time.
QuoteAnd Liz isn't currently on the ship?
You haven't seen her.
I look through the ship's entertainment stash: games, magazines, videos & music. I want to find out a) any time reference, and b) any racial or cultural lean and/or bias. I want this so as to explain what type of ship this was, how anachronous we are as a group, and such clues.
Also if there's anything arousing that can pass the time.
All of that would have been in the Ship's Library... which would be stored in the Ship's Computer Data Stack... which is a burnt out mass of slag.
So far the most entertaining means of passing the time seems to be Alijandro's backgammon set, or perhaps a spot of ship's maintenance.
But fear not, my players! I will not subject YOU to the same boredom your characters must endure! I'll entertain whatever additional explorations you wish to undertake for the weekend... or less if nothing is being done, then with a wave of my GM Wand (which I totally did not steal, promise!) the time will magically pass, and the ship will arrive out of Jump!
Things go slow because I have to give everyone a chance to post, rather than blowing past the slower players! That would be rude!
I'll aim to recharge and repair the squid bot if it needs it.
If qe get thevrepair drones working the ship will get fixed sooner.
Are we running drills? Who is the poilet of this heap anyway?
Sure. How do you plan on moving 700kg of very flexible robot and hanging it in its cradle?
As for repairing it you kick it several times. It doesn't respond. Yup. Its dead, Jim. (A part of me wants to channel a bored tech-help operator asking if you tried turning it on first, but that would be silly! It doesn't have a switch.)
As far as I know you've been playing backgammon, Cooper(Ras) has been sorting computer data and the two military types have been drinking and searching for porn... without much luck with either endeavor.
I'm an intelegent person from a technology advanced society, I was born and grew up in an artificial environment. I have 2 tours in space. I'll use the tools provided for moving 700 kilo loads and drag it over. Or if those tools aren't moving I'll get an extension cord and plug it in.
I'll push some buttons. Maybe I can't get it running but I can get it plugged in.
I'm not meaning to imply you are incompetent, but a repair drone has more in common with industrial equipment than, say, your probe drone. The repair bay is more like the ammo bays, something meant only to access for maintenance, than the workshop on the other deck.
Without any good technical skills trying to figure out what is wrong with the drone, or the standard procedure for a disabled drone, is outside your area.
Still, you can scrounge up some cargo moving equipment and spend most of the day hauling it and shoving it into place.
Unfortunately that doesn't do anything that you can see, it doesn't seem to reactivate the repair drone, there are indicator lights but they don't change.
Fimion will sit patiently with his rifle, waiting for the jump to end and options beyond a 'perfect dead-end for clues' ship opens up. :) He's used to the military's "hurry up and wait!" pacing. He goes eerily calm, staring off into space, waiting for that surprise of mortal terror to break the silence.
So we are very small right. And space is very big. Seems like we ought to be undeceted. But anything that breaks Enstienien space might be noisy.
Can we hide?
Jump is very 'noisy' as a general rule. Your ship is sort of midsized if you exclude ships of the line (capital ships). There are a number of things you can do to 'hide' in space, though at the moment you are in the middle of a big spot of growing exotic radiation. In the future you can, if absolute paranoia is a must, plan your jumps so you land out in the Oort cloud, trading potentially weeks of motoring in system for the privilege of being almost impossible to detect by in-system sensors.
Reasonably speaking anyone who looks 'at' you can see you (warm against the cold of space), but the farther away they are, the less likely they are to be looking 'at' you. Detection outside roughly 50,000 kilometers can be reasonably avoided... though, honestly, I'm tempted to borrow the expanded ranges from a traveller author's blog... but we'll stick with the book for the nonce.
Hmm...
Looks... thoughtful...
Oh, and before i forget, we don't have any FTL comms, so any chatter will generally have lag. Anyone with the Comms skill can easily determine how much lag if they have a reasonable amount of data, which is 'most of the time'. *
*Please don't overuse this... I try to stick to ball parks, looking up radio wave 'speed' vs light speed, and then determining how many light seconds/hours/days you might be, and THEN calculating on point lag times isn't somethign I want to do every time the phone rings!
Regarding fuel:
Normally you'd have a reserve of 'weeks' of operational fuel, in which case getting anywhere doesn't burn fuel in the traditional sense, no. You generate power.
That fuel was exhausted before you 'woke up' at the start of the game and you were tapping the Jump Fuel to power the reactor, and then you had to make a jump, which burned through pretty much all the remaining fuel. It isn't that you don't have 'fuel' to get in system, its that you don't have 'time'. Your ship runs through approximately 1.75 tons of fuel Per Day at full power, and you've got 'dregs' which we can assume runs around 1% of the fuel capacity, or 2.5 tons tops.
Sure, you can point yourself at a planet and go full burn until the lights turn off. You'll arrive (inertia is a helluva drug!), eventually. Unable to manuever, and probably unable to breath! You can gamble that you've got more than 2.5 tons... at full thrust you are roughly 3 days from the inner system. You can play funny games with the power plant (as had been done before you woke up...) to extend fuel. You do have options here. Heck The Jenny carries a ton of fuel (which lasts a week), and can get you into the inner system if you abandon ship.
Ah, right.
Another option to consider, if we don't have enough fuel to reach the gas giant is to set the ship on a course for the gas giant and then take the jenny the rest of the way there, use it to pick up fuel, and then run back to the ship and transfer fuel so we can get it the rest of the way to the gas giant. I.e. use some fuel to accelerate towards the gas giant, ideally leaving enough fuel to not have run dry when we rondezvous back to it in the jenny. We then transfer fuel, possible do more acceleration, and rinse and repeat until we are in orbit of the gas giant with full tanks...
You guys should probably work out some basic crew duties. Who pilots, who handles sensors and/or comms, who is down in the engine compartment, so I won't have to ask for more details.
So its very likely someone knows something jumped into the system.
Are there any other expanding spheres of exotic particles? Do they have much jump traffic in this system?
I'm the medic! Called it! :p
Gunned and astrogation.
Who the fuck is the poilet?
Ah. You are alone in the Universe. Roll against Angst or suffer an existential crisis....
Wait, wrong system...
You do not detect any jumps nor other signs of other ships at the moment.
Also (having done the Google)... using the Comm's board you are able to determine that the 'Radio Lag' is a little over two hours, coming from the Fourth Planet in system as it is (Radio DOES move at lightspeed! WHo knew???), and you being 'out there' some ways.
Fueling: You can reach orbit of the nearest Gas Giant in a handful of hours. The Jenny can be used to scoop unrefined fuel (hydrogen rich gasses from somewhat deeper in the atmosphere) in roughly 20 trips, each taking about an hour, and it takes four days to refine the gasses into liquid hydrogen (which can be done at the same time you are using the Jenny). We've got an abstract gloss here, where there is no loss of volume for refining, and you can manuever etc while refining. In fact, you can use unrefined fuel, but it will penalize many ship operations as the power output fluctuations will cause difficulties.
Unfortunately you only have one pilot at all, Cooper/Ras Algethi, and after 8 hours of continuous flying he'll start suffering fatigue penalities, making an incident more likely. This isn't an issue on a straight burn (flying in-system), where he can rest in the pilot seat while the ship just plows forward, but for scooping/docking/undocking type operations is an issue.
Your GM has the sads because no one is posting... what is not working for you guys? Should I assume more?
I think maybe we are waiting for resolution? Maybe I'm confused, are you waiting for some input?
What tends to be most helpful is for anyone who thinks things have stalled is to post who they think needs to provide input before the game can proceed.
Well: I've provided a fair amount of info on the local system, and while I know your general intent is to fuel up at the nearby gas giant: and I've provided the details of same, no one has since said they were using any of that.
You may not know this but from where I sit we've been playing for 3 weeks and not a single thing has happened.
Our first choice has been whether to head in system or to feul up first. Everyone who has answered agreed it was a no brainer fuel first. Now we are waiting for fuel.
If there were choices before now, sorry I missed 'em.
Yeah... I'm wondering if I botched the setup... and communications. I've been trying to point out options when you ask to do "X", and "X" isn't going to work, pointing you in other directions... but the communication gap seems to simply end all further exploration of an idea, which is frustrating for me too, since that's not what I intend. What would take five minutes at most to 'solve', expectations wise, takes days, by which point everyone wants to drop it and move on.
Hmm... example?
So when you 'want fuel', I tell you how fueling works (20 trips, etc, when fatigue sets in, how long it takes to refine, etc...). When I say that I'm trying to provide details so you can figure out how you want to do it.
It seems instead that you (group) want me to simply hand wave figuring out who is doing what, roll some dice, and tell you that you are all fueled up.
Another example:
Ras said he wanted to fix stuff, so I told him I needed priorities because each attempt takes time and resources (spare parts), and he... wanders off to do computer stuff in the shuttle, and nothing got fixed and I wondered if I missed something?
Normally I'm pretty absolutist on GMs not playing PCs characters, but I'm wondering if the way this format (again: I've never done PbP) means I'm... supposed to? My usual MO is simply to provide the background, the setting and let players do whatever, though I did put you guys into a small box to start with (I did expect a LOT more player-to-player interaction! More than zero, anyway!). Let me repeat that: As a GM I NEVER try to play Player's Characters, and as a player I walk away from games where the GM tries to tell me what my character did/does/is doing. Period. So... am I supposed to do differently here? I'm flexible, I can learn! Swear!
Hmm... after I post this I'm going to scroll back through the thread and see if I'm simply mistaken, and I didn't leave a decently information full post for you guys on fueling... I'll edit this if I missed stating something important.
EDIT:::: I guess I could have stated 'you are at teh gas giant' and 'this is how you go about fueling'? I can make that leap for you with a clean conscience. Also, given the mix of characters (a bunch of guys who are good at shooting things in the face and not much else) maybe I should concentrate on just... giving you D&D style quests to do and provide some NPC crew for you guys to handle all the boring stuff of flying you from planet to planet? :p
The asynchronous nature of play by post combined with skill gates makes things difficult. For example I wanted to fix that squid bot. You seamed cool with it. But I need fizz or Ras to fix it, and I have to wait a day for them to post. Before we even get to find out if they are going tobdo that or not.
At the gas giant same thing. None of us who answered can fly the shuttle, so we wait.
Well, for many skills you CAN try to do things, but a -3 penalty is huge on 2d6...
... again: I got three Fighters in a game about flying spacey-ships and exploring! Time to stat up some orcs! :D
I keeeed!
I thought I was a paperwork guy?
PbP is notoriously challenging in this respect. Do NOT beat yourself up about this, part of it is the nature of the medium. That said, things are a bit gate-locked to less active PCs, and there is not enough "obvious" lateral solutions (or diversions :p ).
I have done EXACTLY the same issue as a GM here my first foray out, (which you can check out in this very subforum, 5e RAW Livonia's Lament). You are in welcome company, (I won't say I'm good, per se...) /flashes mischievous grin
My best advice, sprinkle more lateral to-do hooks and sandbox meanderings, in an effort to feed those interested AND KEEP MOMENTUM! I cannot stress that enough, momentum is *almost* everything. However, you have the challenge of "a ship," so enclosed spaces makes lateral poking around and tinkering hard. Refer back to Farscape or Trek, etc., (or even Star Wars ship downtime in the original films) for bag of tricks "things to while stuck on the bus/ship."
As for your writing, you are just like me, maybe even moreso, on the oblique hints and open ended nature. I hate "prompting" PCs into funneled choices, too. I think this is all a good thing, but it does not always translate well from table to delay-space PbP. As for solutions? If you find one, please share?! :o
The best I can offer is my own, what I call "PC macros," or automated response string. Basically I feed you my programmed go-to tactics for XYZ situation, and you run them until either I a) die, b) pay attention again and interrupt them, or c) they are such a gross breach of coherency the GM prompts me to get off my ass. Fimion is currently in one, "1000 yard stare: soldier zoning out, while zoning in, ready to snap into action."
We are kinda in a narrowed lock loop, all things considered. That is the biggest problem. It's a murder mystery with no clues, and now we're stuck in a room waiting for someone to open the obviously correct door. You could handwave it, but such is the nature of skill gates in a high tech world.
Yeah. One change I've already started making was to start providing things more openly, so I'm not waiting on players to pass information back to the rest of the group. I've already had that come up once or twice... answers (at least partial answers) that haven't gone to interested players... and yes, I am trying to think of alternate ways to pass that information on in other ways.
Anyway: As far as I'm concerned, you guys just take a couple of days scooping and refining fuel, leaving you topped up and hanging out in orbit around a gas giant in the outer system, listening to one-sided and frankly off-kilter radio chatter from in-system.
There isn't a lot of signs of life out this far, but chances are that one of the others gas giants (There are four, you are out around Uranus orbit so to speak) is the primary fuel stop for the system.
Listening to the chatter while we fuel, how many sources of noise are there? Where an earth sized planet and near orbit counts as one.
There is just the one set of chatter. It seems to be traffic control type talk, but it is entirely one sided.. .that is only one station seems to be talking to itself, and a lot of the words are being mis-used, normal commands you'd expect to hear are being said out of order or context and so forth. It sounds almost like a bad parody of port-side chatter, minus the return chatter from ships you'd expect to hear.
Some of the challenges I see with our setup:
1. yea, none of us are ship crew, I tried to enlist in the Navy and failed... Fortunately Army offers some Engineering, so Ramirez is halfway decent as an Engineer.
2. I'm seeing a significant difference between the Books 1-3 Classic Traveller I've been running in and playing in with the number of engineering specialties (CT Book 1 has Computer, Engineering, Electronics, and Mechanical, Pilot and Navigator round out the minimal skill set to reasonably operate a starship, with a few other not always important skills like Gunner, Medical, Ships Boat, and Steward among maybe a couple others - I also just recently concluded ALL PCs have Gunner-0!).
3. As you are observing, the flow of information is slow, and sometimes the player with the PC who is critical to the next action doesn't respond. Sometimes it's best to just assume the PC will do what was asked, the key is to get some input from the other players so you're not deciding what the group is doing. As I am relatively new to Traveller PbP, this is definitely a trickier thing than the OD&D PbP I've been doing for some 10 years where the most you have to do is wait for a player to decide if they will jump into a fray if they aren't pulled into it, and even then, sometimes you know what a given PC would do based on past history.
4. That last is another point, I don't know if any of us know each other as players, and we're just getting started so we don't know the characters well, so we can't make assumptions based on past actions, or even knowing the player.
5. We're still learning what the play style will be here. I have seen Traveller run everywhere from only make skill rolls when something critical is at stake to rolling Vacc Suit skill several times a day to handle meal times, bodily functions, and such (ok, no I've never actually seen that, but some GMs call for more skill rolls than others). I suspect for PbP it's better to be on the call for fewer rolls than more, and require less detailing of actions rather than more.
That said, I think our situation is interesting...
Quote from: ffilz;1006125Some of the challenges I see with our setup:
1. yea, none of us are ship crew, I tried to enlist in the Navy and failed... Fortunately Army offers some Engineering, so Ramirez is halfway decent as an Engineer.
2. I'm seeing a significant difference between the Books 1-3 Classic Traveller I've been running in and playing in with the number of engineering specialties (CT Book 1 has Computer, Engineering, Electronics, and Mechanical, Pilot and Navigator round out the minimal skill set to reasonably operate a starship, with a few other not always important skills like Gunner, Medical, Ships Boat, and Steward among maybe a couple others - I also just recently concluded ALL PCs have Gunner-0!).
I ran into a similar problem in that I had assumed the 2e books were little more than minor updates to the 1e (with Ships and damage rules being the biggest, most obvious changes), only to find that I couldn't even fill out a character sheet properly because of "minor" adjustments to the skill system... some of which struck me as good ideas. I was sitting here having to fix mistakes I'd created simply trying to use the two editions more or less interchangably.
As for crew: Well, a ship does need an engineer! That's a pretty important crew position, as you need to roll engineering to Jump!
But yes: More pilots would be a very good thing, if nothing else. I should probably put a post up where i list common ship-actions and the skills necessary, which is a bit more 'on point' than the typical crew position roster. I mean: Having a medic is good, but frankly the closest person with any skill is better than the world's best doctor... in another star system.
Regarding Moving in system:
Due to the damage to your ship it will take four days to reach the inner system. As you get closer the lag on the chatter will decrease, of course, and at no point in your approach will the voices on the radio indicate that they've seen you.
The world you are approaching is clearly habitable, terrestrial looking from orbit (lots of greens and blues, a wet world, and large enough to have decent gravity and the attendant atmosphere...), with a large rocky moon, a bit smaller than Earth's Moon for reference. There is a second, smaller moon (more like a large asteroid) that seems to share the orbit of the larger moon, trailing it like a lost puppy.
As you get closer to the world you will start noting technological debris in orbit, almost a cloud of shards of metals and plastics, along with high energy weapon scars visible on the moon's surface, even from a considerable distance.
As soon as you get close enough I assume you begin using the ship's optics to visually scan the planet (and moon) for signs of life, habitation. You can see molten twisted wreckage of habitats on the moon's surface, determing how long ago they were destroyed is beyond your ability.
On the planet you can see clearly the former Low-Port (ground side station of a space port), which was clearly slagged from orbit some time ago, nearby is a newer construction that appears to be a Low-Port, though no ships can be seen from orbit, and you don't see the usual surrounding city that you would expect even at a relatively minor port, no major cites remain at all, though you can see areas where ruins are being overgrown by vegetation.
One noteworthy thing you see, though it is difficult to credit it as real, is a large desert area, in the middle of which lies the broken shattered remains of a statue that, if you calculations are correct, once towered MILES in height, made of some sort of glassy substance, the spreading sands of the desert appear to be from the slow disintigration of the broken statue. What it once represented is impossible to tell, though a beautiful, if slightly disturbingly alien, face stares blindly into the sky.
Fimion will note that the face resembles that of the Eloi, though the statue shows no other signs of being an Eloi artwork.
Quote from: Spike;1006165I ran into a similar problem in that I had assumed the 2e books were little more than minor updates to the 1e (with Ships and damage rules being the biggest, most obvious changes), only to find that I couldn't even fill out a character sheet properly because of "minor" adjustments to the skill system... some of which struck me as good ideas. I was sitting here having to fix mistakes I'd created simply trying to use the two editions more or less interchangably.
As for crew: Well, a ship does need an engineer! That's a pretty important crew position, as you need to roll engineering to Jump!
But yes: More pilots would be a very good thing, if nothing else. I should probably put a post up where i list common ship-actions and the skills necessary, which is a bit more 'on point' than the typical crew position roster. I mean: Having a medic is good, but frankly the closest person with any skill is better than the world's best doctor... in another star system.
Now the problem is that Rodriguez doesn't have Engineering - Jump Drives...
Yea, I was looking over the differences between 1e and 2e in preparation for rolling up a character for another game...
Did everyone use 1e chargen, or just some of us? I did find some conversion notes that suggest how to "upgrade" a character from 1e to 2e.
Frank
Are we just flaoting along with out any futher repairs? I had kind of assumed were were doing a bit of work but from your last post it sounds like you think were aren't fixing stuff.
Ok. So we are clear. Alijandro will organise a repair roster.
Priorities. First - fix the repair bots.
Second sensors.
Engines.
Weapons.
Shields.
Low hanging fruit can jump the cue. Things that take few hours for major bennies.
As a general rule, all ship repairs start at d6 hours and require d6 tons of spare parts. You have 15 tons of scrap and spares, and a workshop to turn scrap into spares if someone with Mechanics wants to man it.... I'm just going with the generic 15tons of all purpose spares for ease of bookkeeping.
So priorities really do matter right now, as you won't know until you're fixing how much fixin' you can do!
Well since all 6 squid bots don't weigh 6 tonnes I will keep the same priorities. I will cajoul the others into helping. Cooper is the computer guy he can tackle the squids.
I would like to make it mildly retroactive and have these repairs take place on the 4 days between the gas giant and the inner planet.
Ramirez will be quite willing to work on repairs.
Fimion will try to Investigate what's going on in the Comm traffic, in between helping repair the repair bots. That just means general lifting of parts back and forth until someone lucks out on a mechanics roll. Fimion tries to be useful beyond "breaking delicate electronic shit through trial and error."
Quote from: Opaopajr;1006381Fimion will try to Investigate what's going on in the Comm traffic, in between helping repair the repair bots. That just means general lifting of parts back and forth until someone lucks out on a mechanics roll. Fimion tries to be useful beyond "breaking delicate electronic shit through trial and error."
Ramirez does have Mechanical skill...
So, to answer questions: It seems very highly likely that the radio chatter is coming from the low-port station, planetside... probably the one that wasn't bombed into oblivion, but unless you are planning extensive orbital manuevers to triangulate the broadcast down to the square kilometer scale or less 'best guess' is what you get. This sort of pin-pointing is best done planetside.
There seems to be nothing mechanically wrong with the drone, per se, so it seems at first that its merely a linkage issue, the Drones are 'networked' to operate as a team, allowing one person (or advanced software on the ship's computer... if the data-stack was intact) to coordinate their efforts seamlessly. Popping open the chassis it seems obvious that something is seriously wrong...
Clearly this is the primary unit, which is why the rest of the drones aren't responding, but even taking that into account the drone is... weird. Verify by looking inside other drones, and its obvious that at some point someone heavily rebuilt this drone, upgrading the computer until it is less a drone and more a mobile computer unit... only the technology is advanced beyond anything any of you have seen (except Cooper, if Ras is still with us?). Its also fried. Not unlike the Data-stack, but far less extensively. It seems the internal batteries discharged into the primary computer core of the drone, possibly as the result of some sort of cybernetic warfare... an attack designed to override software controls.
You don't have the right stuff on hand to rebuild the internal computer, and the system is too advanced... adn probably too damaged... for you to repair, but you can transfer the primary node functions to another drone and get the remaining drones functional. Someone (with the right skills... engineering primarily, and Remote Operation (Cooper has), can direct their repairs from the bridge much faster and easier than manual repairs, though this will not stop otehr crew from conducting repairs of their own, if they have the skills.
Comm Traffic: Roughly every four hours the voice on the Comms changes, given that you have several days of listening you start to recognize specific voices... some sort of shift change. A sample of dialog in IC.
So... everyone is going down?
Yes. Or at least 3. Not sure about Rodriguez, she may want off the ship pretty bad.
Quote from: Headless;1006879Yes. Or at least 3. Not sure about Rodriguez, she may want off the ship pretty bad.
Rodriguez is not a she, or were you meaning the NPC?
The NPC she doesn't like it when I call her 'the bot.'
Cooper isn't the best pilot at small craft, but you could find some reasonably flat spot to put the Jenny down in at the slagged lowport, sure. The problem isn't so much landing, its leaving the shuttle without getting cancer. Well, maybe Cancer... Eventually, but still.
The tech level of the newer port is... mixed. Most of the concrete appears to have been repurposed, but not all of it. There is a lot of painted wood and scavenged Pre-fab (plastic boards), but there is clearly some sort of low energy power source, probably powering the radio, so they aren't completely 'off the grid'.
I've been assuming you are avoiding being seen from ground level. The Jenny, like most starships you are familiar with (except Fimion) uses Gravity Engines, so no contrails, and you haven't picked up any signs of radar sweeps, which would be fairly noticable... even expected from a real Spaceport. Beyond that you don't see any excitable activity from the surface.
Radio active decay? Fucking finally! I can find out how long ago something happened. I think I even have physical sciences. And Ball has the instruments to take accurate measurements. Does a vac suit keep out radiation?
The standard issue emergency vacc suit is basically a stretchy latex body-suit with a small air recycler and a bubble hood. It protects you from decompression and suffocation for a few hours and that is absolutely it. Heavier vaccsuits that more closely resemble military body armor (or 21st century NASA space suits) do provide some protection, but as of right now the only one reasonably safe for extended forays in the blasted lowport is Rameirez, with his advanced high-tech combat armor, though Fimion's clunkier, more primitive suit isn't worthless in this regards.
On the other hand, you can keep your normal vacc suit in a pocket until you need it, so there is that. On the OTHER other hand, the suits you got from the Ship's Locker (there are probably a dozen or so in there) are well past their expiration date, so who knows how effective they are...
Now, as for your question: The sensors on The Jenny are more powerful than those on your drone, simply as a matter of scale, but yes, your drone would be fine for extended forays out of the Jenny into the 'low level' radiation of the Lowport (Low as in: It won't kill you today, not low as in 'safe'...).
Hmm.
Scanning the damages and taking readings you are able to determine that most of the radiation comes from extensive use of particle beam and fusion weapons in the area, so high energy neutrons fired at absurd velocity, or naked atomic fire, both of which strip atomic nuclei at 'random', producing unstable isotopes, sometimes even altering the atomic composition of individual molecules as protons might be stripped away, or fused!
Still, there are some standard models for this sort of thing (these weapons having been common for a long time at the military level), and after a while you can determine within plus or minus fifty years that the last 'Atomic Firefight' happened here rough two and a half centuries ago. However, the real damage was from orbit, and with the relatively thick atmosphere, neither particle nor fusion weapons are advised for surface bombardment... and some of the damage seems.... unique. Areas of the old Lowport were slagged with some form of weapon you can't identify, leaving twisted remains that bear no relation to conventional weapon impacts... looking more like mad sculptures than damage.
Other areas, however... particularly the more irradiated areas... seem to have more conventional impact craters from orbital strikes.
That is all you can tell from inside the Jenny, using sensors and visual sweeps from the sky.
Edit::: Locks: the Jenny has an Air-lock. Its reasonably secure from pry-bars and brute force. The electronic keypad on the exterior for access can be cracked with the right knowledge fairly easily so its slighly more secure than a modern car (no busting out windows to get in), but its not a bank vault. Does that help?
Is there any part of Low port not radio active?
The levels of radioactivity do vary, but the entire area has an elevated background count, to an unhealthy degree.
as far as the tactical or strategic viability of slagging the entire port... well that would depend on the goals of the slagger. Given that there are plenty of signs of wrecked ships, its safe to suggest that simply wasting all the ships may have been the goal, as ships on the ground are soft targets.
Its hard to tell, as I said the damage isn't uniform... some areas were gutted with ground weapons that left most of the radiation and some areas were turned into surreal wreckage with weapons you can't identify, and probably from orbit.
?? ??
What? I'm answering questions. What are you doing?
Or did something I say not make sense?
Let's see how well embraced my compatriots' sensibilities are with my PC's military dark humor! :cool:
sorry Opaopajr... this game seems DOA. I've gotten formal quit notice from Headless, and he was the most active poster. I was going to post something but I didn't think anyone else was still paying enough attention to bother. My bad.
Quote from: Spike;1008164sorry Opaopajr... this game seems DOA. I've gotten formal quit notice from Headless, and he was the most active poster. I was going to post something but I didn't think anyone else was still paying enough attention to bother. My bad.
Sorry I haven't had too much response... Things are interesting, but somewhere I'm getting lost in how to respond. I have found it a bit harder to keep Traveller play by post moving that D&D because the next course of action isn't always so clear, and without being around a table, you can't tell if the pregnant silence is because people are too busy to respond or everyone is waiting on someone else to pipe in with an opinion or what. Face to face, you can read faces and it's easier to prompt for someone to take action, or at least propose as action for someone else to take...
Frank
But I almost got off the ship this time! :(
Sorry it hasn't worked out. I know I'm not the only one struggling with the format... but it certainly didn't help that you guys treated everything like a potential trap! :confused:
At least its not like that one group I took over from another GM where every player character brought two crowbars. I wouldn't have been shocked if the PLAYERS brought crowbars just to prove their characters had 'em!!!
SHOCKED I tell you!
Anyway... I guess I'll fall back and regroup, either to figure out where it went wrong so I don't repeat it, or decide if its even worth trying this format again. Its been a mildly unpleasant way to play, if I'm honest.
Well, it is a challenging format. If it helps you are welcome to join my PbP and we can futz around together. Then you can suss out what you like and what you don't and what you feel keeps momentum. :)
That said, one of the criticisms I'd offer is: often it seems we had naught but obvious choices. Granted, it's just a perception from my angle. But it is something to hash out as a way to see how to make the open world feel less "funnel-like." Sometimes we give all this loving detail, yet haven't figured how to make it feel inviting (less punitive) to attempt.
Only if you are down for an after action report, though. :)
I'm not adverse to that
If this is the AAR I'll add my 2 cents. I had 2 frustrations. First we haven't made a choice yet. I will first say I think this is a transation issue, translating real time experence to play by post experence, not an "evil railroad dm" (trade mark held by therpgsite.com) issue. I think the first month of the game online could have been played in an hour in person. And if there are no real choices in the first hour of a game thats ok. We are settling in getting a sense of things etc. If you flow charted what we played a lot of the boxes would say, "that doesn't work goto the previous box" many of them would say "that does work go to the previous box" some of them would just have some flavor text and say "go to the next box."
All of that would be great in person, we would get to roll dice, we would find some limits, we would get a sense of what we were in for. In this format the opportunity cost of a bit of flavor text (not the right term and I fear its overly pejorative in this sense but it isn't supposed to be, flavor text is essential here we're role playing not playing M:tG) can be 3 days.
That brings me to my second issue. Information density. It was too sparse. Waiting a day for a couple lines from you, or less from another player is just a tease, enough to frustrate, not enough to satisfy. The couple times we got a dozen posts in a night were fun. When we couldn't get that the posts needed to be 3, 4 , 10 times as long. And explicitly sign posted, I am doing X until y or z (or other), or "the slagged low port is too radio active to expore until you find hard suits."
I am certianly guilty of short posts and I'm not sure I would be willing to write 10 times as much. So I'm not really sure how helpful my input is.
None of this is meant as personal critism, just one persons analysts of why this game limped. Offered in case you decided to take another swing.
Yes, one of the reasons Momentum! is so important is the churn allows for smaller posts and the game feels lively (which is where characterization can sneak in). But that requires buy-in from players, too. I recently fear I may have killed my own game again trying to keep everyone at the same time pace.
But the medium really doesn't support it. It's too easy to deal with life -- and then forget to contribute regularly -- that there is no immediacy to sustain momentum. And stalling for other players to catch up deprives momentum. It really has been a learning lesson on my part as well. It feels like running an Open Table with Stable of PCs game, trying to juggle everyone's attention or lack thereof.
How to juggle that? I honestly don't think you can. I think the medium is one where active players are favored with more content and passive players are left in the dust. Active players will give you the regular feedback: will engage, will post often, will explore, etc. And all that covers Headless' issue 2. Momentum, it seems to be everything.
As for issue 1, feeling funneled into one obvious, or no good, choices? That's a challenge. It seems like you had a very specific campaign concept, but we didn't feel 'let in on it'. So perhaps it was an issue of buy-in and not knowing what sort of responses, (read: active player behavior,) you needed to forward the campaign. We can say sandbox, but it is easy to forget that just means one aspect of scope of play, not facets involving genre, atmosphere, decision priorities, etc.
One thing I would add, to avoid our starting point lockjaw from skill-gates, would be Suite of Baseline Skills for functionality. In a ship (space is no exception, the stakes just get worse) there's no room for error. There is a basic level of functionality to operate as a crew. If we're doing a crew game, give a package of mandatory ship skills at 0, skill-gates are gone.
If you want to simulate "victims on a crashing plane!" use redundancy: majority of players have the skill, one may not have it at all, and one has it at skill 1. (This becomes only really possible at 3 PCs or higher, but you get the idea.) In this way there is vagaries of performance, but if you have a table majority present things are at least passable (more consequences, but passable).
So now, feedback from you Spike! :) If you had to get us onto the same page again from the start, how would you approach it? What sort of expectations would you want form your potential players?
Hmm...
I'm sorry if my contribution rate was low. I did find the situation interesting and I'm sad to see the game aborted.
It was interesting to me to see a fear of mine with Mongoose Traveller perhaps shown up. The expansion of the skill list means PCs need more skills. Also, the more modern game style where if you don't have the skill, you really can't do the activity is perhaps an issue. I have been running Classic Traveller (1977) with mostly Books 1-3 using Christopher Kubasik'sTales to Astound (https://talestoastound.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/traveller-what-the-traveller-adventure-had-to-say-about-throws-in-classic-traveller/) thoughts on skills. Between these, instead of 3 different engineering specializations on top of Computer, Electronics, and Mechanic, there's just Engineering, and if you don't have it, it's not necessarily a disaster. But maybe we also needed more ships crew PCs, though it was never quite clear to me what the other PCs skills were, having a list of the PCs might have helped (for example, see this from one of my play by posts: Wayward Sun PCs (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MDD7SXjSVWSXhvIpJoOLzNtfshM1JC7QHpEhiv8zFKc/edit?usp=sharing). In a face to face game, it would have been quick for players to resolve issues of who had what skills if they didn't want to share their character sheets. I think Mongoose Traveller can still support the index card character sheet that was so often used with Traveller, or this kind of few line character description.
We certainly had some growing pains of getting started, but I'm not sure they are fatal. My Wayward Sun campaign only just saw the PC ship complete it's first jump after almost a year of play. It has stalled a few times, but isn't dead. I was in an OD&D play by post for almost 10 years, and it was slow, but continued to be fun.
One thing learned from the OD&D play by post is the old school caller can really help move things. Pick an active committed player and allow them to make player side decisions to keep the game rolling. Combine this with the GM trying to anticipate things and not always wait for a player response. That's a tricky balance, but having a caller puts the decision to move forward with incomplete input on the players.
I'm certainly still game for a play by post if you want to try again, or even if we want to tweak a few things here and pick this one back up.
Frank
I will admit that I'm not a fan of the way MongTrav handles specialization of skills, and have no problems with treating Engineering (Pick your Speciality) as just... Engineering. I do agree with the observation that most of the game thus far probably could have been handled in an hour or so face to face, which is frustrating all around. Combine that with long stretches of time (a week generally) where it seemed like it was just Headless and Me and... well...
I think one of my frustrations was due in large part to the low rate of posting, where the players (you guys) would get caught up on some minor obstacle over and over again (the computer being fried. How many times did I repeat... Its fried?), probably because you forgot or didn't notice the last time someone tried it? Alternatively: you'd overlook BIG THINGS... like an NPC wandering around as if 'meh', because damnitall there's a computer to ask questions of!
Cue GM slamming his head into a desk repeatedly to make the pain go away. :p
It was getting very close to the point where I was about to contradict myself and just... magically fix the computer so you could get whatever answers you were looking for and we could stop wasting time asking the broken computer for answers!
Of course, I, as the GM, should have recognized quickly (-er?) that my players are not all that familiar with Traveller (or... MongTrav!) and pushed more obvious actions forward... maybe a simple checklist of things. Of course I also expected a lot more player interaction which never materialized, despite a few heroic tries early on from you guys. I also got too caught up in my Big Idea for putting the group together, so when I wound up with No Crew ( I mean: A pirate turned noble who's big skills are guns and paperwork, a failed navy man turned soldier, a soldier and a merchant... its not that no one tried to bring Crew Skills... but thanks to random generation no one really had any!), I should have taken some time to alter The Plan (Say it like The Joker for maximum effect. I can't do links in my browser anymore for some reason) so that there was some sort of NPC crew to handle crew things and let you guys get on with being some sort of away team, I guess.
It's never wrong to restrict play options to fit a concept campaign. :)
Just like you can give Baseline Skills, or Skill Redundancy, to avoid gate-locks, you can similarly frontload that into Chargen Expectations. Say things like "you have to bring X amount of these Y functions for your PC to be at the table." Then we can chargen lifepath for something compliant.
One fix to the characters don't fit the situation you want to set up is to either tell people to skip the enlistment roll, so all PCs rolled are in a service that will make sense, or allow players to roll several PCs and pick the one they are most interested in playing in the situation.
For my part, part of the posting speed was not always being sure what input I could make. This is an issue that can be quickly resolved face to face. If players seem to be not cluing into the decisions that need to be made, one thing to do is call out what decisions need to be made.
I'm still down for getting off the ship for the first time in a Traveller game. :) So whenever you're all down to give it another college try... :D