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Itinic Escape ca. 2159 AD
View from about 55 years prior to my current game date, when the race of of the Espic were looking to conquer their solar system, and maybe consider reaching for the stars. Fusion energy had been conquered, harnessed, and turned into highly efficient rockets. Though Itinic reached TL9 at the height of their drive into space, they never achieved antigrav (and thus artificial gravity and inertial compensators), nor jump drive technology.
The hauler here, is headed for the system's gas giant ring style station, still under construction, but already host to over 1000 workers, corporate execs, belters and independent merchants. The hauler can accelerate at about 2g's constant loaded - and thus really no need for the rotating flanges around its fore-section, but for docking and exit queues, it affords a little bit of comfort for those needing a tiny amount of arti-grav. Unloaded, the hauler can push 5.8g's solid for periods of time much longer than the crew would find comfortable.
The espic physiology, while at home at 0.8 gravities has an amazing ability to withstand much higher gravity for sustained amounts of time, and its speculated that this might arise from the benefits of evolving from a deep sea species that regularly journeyed to the shallows for hunting - and except for the gills, many of the original pressure-related biological elements remain, and translate somewhat to higher G-tolerance.
A world war a few years after this scene called all spacers back to the homeworld, their ships grounded and their atmospheric shuttles converted into bombers or parabolic orbital transport vessels. While not nuclear, it set the Espic back almost a hundred years in science and industry. As the war was fought between mainlanders, wanting to control and export all their dirty (carbon, nuclear, heavy waste) industries to the islands on the far side of the planet, and the islanders not wanting to watch their ecosystems die, the war was particularly devastating to populated zones, while leaving the biosphere more intact than world wars usually do.
The sad irony was that right before the war, a great many industries were finding their way into space, but it was only a toehold at the system's single gas giant and the mainworld's L1, L2 and L5 point stations, not enough to sustain the planet's (at the time) teaming hundreds of millions.
Now, fifty years later, space, among with a great many industries are tied up with vast amounts of red tape to prevent another world war, and no space power, by mutual treaty of all the signatories to the peace accords, may leave the gravity well with armed vessels.
Each of the three main factions, two islander, and one mainland, control aging stations, held at power-saving modes at the moment, with skeleton crews and occasional diplomatic visitations between them, mostly to make sure the others are following international law.
Prelude picture - in the process of redesigning the physical appearance of the Espic themselves to not look as clumsy-heavy as the original pictures, and maybe pushing a bit of their 'bug' appearance more toward lobster/crayfish - just superficially. The current date in my game where the Minsk and Neu Samarans are the focus of a Traveller campaign is 2207 AD. Their starship, having rescued a transport shuttle in distress is now trapped inside the zero-g section of the station in the picture above while languages are learned and Espic find out just how 'not alone' they are in the universe.
View from about 55 years prior to my current game date, when the race of of the Espic were looking to conquer their solar system, and maybe consider reaching for the stars. Fusion energy had been conquered, harnessed, and turned into highly efficient rockets. Though Itinic reached TL9 at the height of their drive into space, they never achieved antigrav (and thus artificial gravity and inertial compensators), nor jump drive technology.
The hauler here, is headed for the system's gas giant ring style station, still under construction, but already host to over 1000 workers, corporate execs, belters and independent merchants. The hauler can accelerate at about 2g's constant loaded - and thus really no need for the rotating flanges around its fore-section, but for docking and exit queues, it affords a little bit of comfort for those needing a tiny amount of arti-grav. Unloaded, the hauler can push 5.8g's solid for periods of time much longer than the crew would find comfortable.
The espic physiology, while at home at 0.8 gravities has an amazing ability to withstand much higher gravity for sustained amounts of time, and its speculated that this might arise from the benefits of evolving from a deep sea species that regularly journeyed to the shallows for hunting - and except for the gills, many of the original pressure-related biological elements remain, and translate somewhat to higher G-tolerance.
A world war a few years after this scene called all spacers back to the homeworld, their ships grounded and their atmospheric shuttles converted into bombers or parabolic orbital transport vessels. While not nuclear, it set the Espic back almost a hundred years in science and industry. As the war was fought between mainlanders, wanting to control and export all their dirty (carbon, nuclear, heavy waste) industries to the islands on the far side of the planet, and the islanders not wanting to watch their ecosystems die, the war was particularly devastating to populated zones, while leaving the biosphere more intact than world wars usually do.
The sad irony was that right before the war, a great many industries were finding their way into space, but it was only a toehold at the system's single gas giant and the mainworld's L1, L2 and L5 point stations, not enough to sustain the planet's (at the time) teaming hundreds of millions.
Now, fifty years later, space, among with a great many industries are tied up with vast amounts of red tape to prevent another world war, and no space power, by mutual treaty of all the signatories to the peace accords, may leave the gravity well with armed vessels.
Each of the three main factions, two islander, and one mainland, control aging stations, held at power-saving modes at the moment, with skeleton crews and occasional diplomatic visitations between them, mostly to make sure the others are following international law.
Prelude picture - in the process of redesigning the physical appearance of the Espic themselves to not look as clumsy-heavy as the original pictures, and maybe pushing a bit of their 'bug' appearance more toward lobster/crayfish - just superficially. The current date in my game where the Minsk and Neu Samarans are the focus of a Traveller campaign is 2207 AD. Their starship, having rescued a transport shuttle in distress is now trapped inside the zero-g section of the station in the picture above while languages are learned and Espic find out just how 'not alone' they are in the universe.
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1000 x 714px
File Size 278.2 kB
Well, technically you have them at a catch22 ... You never -left- the gravity well with an armed vessel, you jumped in from another star system.
But yeah. Any bureaucracy being thrown at you isn't necessarily because your hosts are narrow-minded. Its because they want an excuse to keep you as long as it takes for them to figure out what the hell to DO about this. They're civilized though, they mean you no harm, but you've brought a hint of obscene amounts of power and social drive into their midst out of the blue.
/Darth Vader
"I want that ship!"
/!Darth Vader
But yeah. Any bureaucracy being thrown at you isn't necessarily because your hosts are narrow-minded. Its because they want an excuse to keep you as long as it takes for them to figure out what the hell to DO about this. They're civilized though, they mean you no harm, but you've brought a hint of obscene amounts of power and social drive into their midst out of the blue.
/Darth Vader
"I want that ship!"
/!Darth Vader
Actually, considering the amounts of thrust those engines put out...I think they've got some improvised weapons right there in a pinch. They don't even have to worry about the fight or flight decision, they can easily satisfy both at once. (And that's also not considering what sort of trouble a wayward bulk freighter a non-relativistic bulk freighter can cause. Newton gives no quarter.)
Think he was referring to the Espic ship, not yours. You only crank out 2g's of non-reactive thrust. Though with the safeties off, you can sustain up to 4g's for escape purposes, which your inertial compensators can easily handle. Varus is talking about the ship in the picture.
With room to maneuver, even an unarmed freighter can toss rocks (or itself) at pretty freaking high velocities. Ships accelerating constantly at 2-5g's for days or weeks, which the hauler can match, and really good maths can really wreck a planet's day.
In your case, you're locked down in the station's cargo bay with no room to maneuver - Could blast your way out, but the station's pretty well reinforced against industrial accidents in the core - by the time you did enough damage that you might escape, your own ship could very well be totaled - and you would have irrevocably earned Domatarrensic as an enemy, and shown the Espic race as a whole that you're patently suicidal sociopaths.
/!GM
With room to maneuver, even an unarmed freighter can toss rocks (or itself) at pretty freaking high velocities. Ships accelerating constantly at 2-5g's for days or weeks, which the hauler can match, and really good maths can really wreck a planet's day.
In your case, you're locked down in the station's cargo bay with no room to maneuver - Could blast your way out, but the station's pretty well reinforced against industrial accidents in the core - by the time you did enough damage that you might escape, your own ship could very well be totaled - and you would have irrevocably earned Domatarrensic as an enemy, and shown the Espic race as a whole that you're patently suicidal sociopaths.
/!GM
True, though lobbing rocks is only really effective against targets that can't get out of the way (or don't see the rocks coming - at C fractional speeds, that could very well be the case for someone accelerating under a predictable trajectory - by the time you detect the rock, its too late to do much about it, you're holed or worse).
The Espic, thankfully, would be absolutely horrified to consider using that kind of weapon against a living planet or space station - at least so far. They've thought of it, only so that they can discard it as ever being an option. Their first world war was non-atomic and was universally ruled afterwards as a sign of racial sickness, insanity, that they had to address, so they buried weapons of mass destruction under treaty and the methods of conducting conventional war under an internationally agreed upon pile of bureaucratic red tape. The thing that prevents anyone from breaking these new rules is a delicate 3 way balance of power. The one who breaks a rule ends up facing both of the others.
The Espic, thankfully, would be absolutely horrified to consider using that kind of weapon against a living planet or space station - at least so far. They've thought of it, only so that they can discard it as ever being an option. Their first world war was non-atomic and was universally ruled afterwards as a sign of racial sickness, insanity, that they had to address, so they buried weapons of mass destruction under treaty and the methods of conducting conventional war under an internationally agreed upon pile of bureaucratic red tape. The thing that prevents anyone from breaking these new rules is a delicate 3 way balance of power. The one who breaks a rule ends up facing both of the others.
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