Twilight of the Surreal

 Once upon a time, there was a magazine called Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society. Then there wasn't. Then there was. Then there wasn't now there is. The first incarnation of the JTAS dealt with Classic Traveller for 24 glorious issues! One of the goodies in JTAS were articles and supplements by the Emperor himself and I still marvel at the man's brilliance. Anyway he did Special Supplement 3: Missiles and went into great detail on the little death dealers. Some of it really belonged in Book 2 (like acceleration and number of burn turns!) but what is done is done. Sadly the supplement needed a ton of editing which came out in the Consolidated Errata for Traveller, including notes by Mr. Miller himself and addenda. And t also included errors in the tables for the missiles. Use the Errata and the formulas given. Write your own tables. Missiles had limited fuel and accelerations similar to starships. The engines were described as continuous with solid fuel, and limited

Why?  If you're considering it seriously you have access to a ship (or at least a position). Unless you have less sense than a K'kree in an old style phone booth or impaired fortune, a ship will make you money, without people shooting at you (unless you run into pirates...) True you have salaries, payments etc, but you do make a profit. Just look at a subsector map for five minutes and you'll spot places screaming for you to buy low and sell high.  Reasons to be a Pirate 1) Coercion: it was either join up or take a long jump out of a short airlock. Historically, pirates did abduct crew with skills they needed. They made them sign the ship's articles and bam they were pirates. With their incriminating signature on record they'd hang with the rest of the crew if captured. Bartholomew Roberts, one of the most feared pirates in history, started as an honest navigator on a merchant man. Once he was abducted he decided if he had to be a pirate he was going to be a good on

  So Rob, what are we doing to nerf the players today? Dang -coming up with ways to nerf players gets tiresome. Instead let us look at an old post  In it I posited c hanging  the fuel use in 2d6 Games, earmarking 10-60% of ship mass for your maneuver drives and 1-6% of ship mass for your Jump drives. To be more clear 10% fuel will allow thrusting at 1G for one week, 20% will allow thrusting at 2Gs for a week or 1G for two weeks. Work out the rest yourselves. Now I also say that jump space (or  hyper, pick your flavor) draws matter in it. This creates a huge and incredibly convenient Oberth effect. As your propellant is drawn into the nether-verse, it speeds up and to balance the books, your ship speeds up. The exhaust then conveniently vanishes. The M-drive is thus related to the Jump Drive. So far with none of its side effects. Use it in orbit, who cares if your exhaust misjumps? That part is bugging me. What if the M-drive requires a Jump Grid or other J-Drive fittings? You have a 10

 That lost city of the Ancients turned out to be a bunch of fuel tanks. That treasure map only made money for the guy who sold it to you. You were adventuring or jailed or lost and as a result, you missed the last few (or six) payments on your ship. What now? A bank will recognize extenuating circumstances. A bank. Not your bank. Where's the fun in that?  If your ship is interned for various reasons the Bank might actually take your side and bring its considerable influence to bear. At the very least they might allow you to continue your mortgage at a slight  increase in pay until you are no longer in arrears. they do this for people who have proven they can make money for the Bank -by on time payments or paying down the principle. A new shorter term mortgage at higher rates is also possible.  Piracy of course all get a response. The Bank will put a reward out on the pirates. You are still expected to keep up your payments or the Bank will finance a slightly damaged ship for a new

 Final Approval...  If you read that with a booming reverb sounding in your head, you read it right. Final approval means the Bank will indeed invest in your ship(s) provided you make some tweaks. First, the Bank will provide you with an anti-hijack program. Lh, it will work against others trying to hijack your ship as well.  They may also gift you a Library program. Fun fact, Library programs update every time you put into port -not just the regular content, but your payment and credit history.  Your ship's transponder will also notify any and all that you skipped a payment. Oh, you'll shut it off? That won't look suspicious at all. Your Library program or anti-hijack program may introduce all manner of colorful glitches into your ship as you miss payment(s). They get worse and worse. Eventually you get all manner of false warnings when you try to run your Jump programs. Want to jump anyway?  As a sign of your new long term relationship, the Bank will show its love by pu

 Pity the poor banks. they give loans out of the goodness of their hearts (and 220% interest) to devious traders who then proceed to skip -run for the frontier and never make a payment again! That's why There are no longer any banks around, just traders living off their profits in their ill gotten ships. Hold it. Banks are still there, large and in charge.Traders for the most part are making payments and plying their trading. People skipping are far and few between. It must not pay. Why is that? Read on. The Loan Getting a loan is more than just signing on the dotted line. You need to come up with a business plan. For RP purposes this could be as simple as trading food and machinery between an agro world and a high population or industrial world, or running metals and resources from an non-industrial world to anyone really in exchange for anything manufactured or grown. Have a couple of such runs in mind in a single cluster and you'll have it relatively easy (aside from pirates