"Traveller Patrol Boats and Fighters?" Topic

I've inquired about these two subject on CotI, but figured I'd ask here as well.

Thinking that perhaps my Free Trading/Smuggling/Other crew may be a bit overmatched, even with significant vessel upgrades, when going up against a Close Escort, and/or other similar sized vessel, e.g. System Defense Boat (SDB), and/or Patrol Cruiser.

Therefore, I'm thinking that perhaps in some backwater areas they might be far more likely to encounter some smaller, less well armed foes, similar to today's modern patrol boats, and/or coastguard cutters. If there really lucky, they might even be able to evade them altogether.

Haven't seen my CT (Classic Traveller) Traders and Gunboats book in a while, and am not sure where it is, so wanted to inquire to see if there are any vessels like the above included in it, especially in the 100 ton, or smaller, class, say, built on a ship's boat, slow boat, pinnace, or cutter hull?

In the CT Starships LBB Book 2, it provides some generic vessel descriptions, and weaponry for the normal civilian variants of them.

I'm considering modifying those, and perhaps giving them a bit more armament, and perhaps better sensors and computers, given their military, or quasi-military function. After all, some of the better Patrol Boats/Gunboats should be able to pack a considerable punch, while others are probably barely good enough to successfully pursue and combat an emergency escape pod.

So, any thoughts on that, and/or designs you've come up with, or run across on-line?

As for fighters, any good stats for those?

I don't recall seeing much about them in CT, other than in passing, and think most were in the 10 – 20 ton range.

Thinking perhaps a beam weapon, or two, and perhaps 1 – 4 missiles each. Not sure on fuel and endurance, but suspect maneuver/accel. should be decent, if a bit limited.

Is there a CT, or other supplement that deals with the creation of fighters for Traveller?

Thoughts?

I think the 200 ton System Defense Boat was in Traders and Gunboats. That was the smallest military craft.

I seem to remember that the 50ton heavy fighter in Fighting Ships mentioned about them being deployed for anti-piracy/anti-smuggling operations singly or in pairs.

The 50t Fighter is detailed in Azanti High Lightning. There are also armed versions of the modular 50t cutter in Broadsword

I have a spreadsheet of Traveller ships, covering their name, class, TL, tonnage, user, sourcebook, and most of the fighters in it come from the book 101 Starships, which is a GURPS Traveller book, IIRC, made by the Power Projection guys in the UK (BITS?). Though for another rule system, you can work backwards to CT, using High Guard's small ship build system (or whatever rules you're using). GURPS Traveller tended to be overkill on the design side details.

T20 Fighting Ships (if I'm interpreting my codes correctly!) had some too, and Supp. 5 (Lightning-class Cruisers) had details on the Rampart, one of the main Imperium fighters, and a gunboat.

For (non-jump) ships, 101 Starsips again and GURPS Traveller's Starships (the actual SJG book) look to have the most, shuttles, cutters, customs boats, SDBs, etc. There's also the GAS# series of booklets (were on RPGNow/Wargame vault) that cover some smaller ships in more detail each, but not so much combat ones.

For small starships, 101 Starships, T20 Fighting Ships, and GURPS Starships have the most.

Not sure how available all of those are, I'm not sure if BITS is still around, though I think the GURPS stuff proper is available from SJG still.

The Ship's Boat is an incredibly dangerous fighter in CT …

And yes, all of the CT small craft appear in Traders & Gunboats. By CT rules, you shouldn't be able to cram much more into them, mostly because you're limited to an absolute maximum of three weapons (less than that?). You can try designing small craft in High Guard as well, although the design sequences don't give the same results. The advantage is that you have explicit control over the power plant.

Traders and Gunboats is available at DriveThruRPG for $3.00 USD in PDF form.

"all of the CT small craft appear in Traders & Gunboats."

All of the Book 2 small craft, yes, though only in their most basic forms.
The Type R and Type K use different versions of the Launch.
There were also a number of fighter variants in the first edition of High Guard.
The Fighting Ships book which came after had a Heavy Fighter.
Azhanti High Lightning had a 20-ton Gunboat.

Thanks for all of the suggestions.

I'll check them out.

I have a spreadsheet

Holy Memory Trigger, I just had a flashback to a Traveller shipbuilding app I wrote in BASIC for the TRS-80 Model III, circa 1982 or so. Oh, lordy, those were the days. I wouldn't be surprised if the code were in with my old LBB books. IIRC, the user selected the hull, armaments, engines, etc., and the app calculated the cost and generated a ship's code. Fancy, eh?

(As for "handling the local defenses," We had a standard cheat… uh, house rule at the time declaring that a ship's "hardpoints" were its "legally permitted" weapon's fixtures, but that a shipowner could actually double the weapons load in violation of Imperial code, and hope he never ran into a Naval commander or system law enforcement official who cared. Kinda wonky, maybe, but it fit our preferred "Han Solo" style of play. So of course my app had the option of "going illegal" in accordance with our house rule! )

The was some talk about Up gunning Shipboats into pocket SDBs on COTI. In CT smallcraft design rules were wrapped up in High Guard.

When you are pondering small ship Traveller Mayday is a wonderful place to start.

Remember the basics in that Missiles are the big dog in small ship combat, even more so after Special Supplement 3.

Don't discount the power of a hefty Computer and a broad selection of Software… (This last bit is often overlooked).

Wow, that was dedication Parzival, specially the bootlegger option. But then I once wrote a random system generation program in Fortran, mainly because I could.

Yea, I figured military, and/or quasi-military vessels could double their armament, especially if you use more "modern" unmanned turrets fired via remote control.

Remember haveing a book 1 character gen program in basic I ran on my C64..added up skills and everything.

Always wondered if you could make a MRLS out of a cargo pod. Kick it out the back of the ship, target with ships lasers, and break pod….But then Webber did it in Honor Harrington.