House rules for my Traveller.
PSIONICS
Psionics do not exist at all.
JUMP DRIVE
The jump drive works as per the Traveller wikis (and is all but canon
now anyway):
But important details: the jump fuel takes one hour to burn and this
charges up the jump capacitors.
But the capacitors are lossy and can not hold their charge for long,
so the jump must go ahead within 5 minutes of full charge, or else
they discharge past the crucial 99.9% requirement. If this happens, it
takes an hour to dissipate all that energy safely, and you now have to
refuel.
The jump field generators make a timed Einstein-Rosen bridge and the
ship slides into Jumpspace with the current movement vector (universe absolute).
This mechanic does mean jump drop-tanks can be used, bearing in mind
that they must be successfully jettisoned to more than 100 diameters
away before the jump engine is engaged.
ZHODANI
Zhodani are *not* Psionic Arabs as per the official Traveller canon.
They are now buxom vampires - a matriachal society of vampire women. .
Not vampires in the undead sense, but vampires in that they feed
solely on blood of other creatures.
Sun doesn't burn them, nor does garlic or crucifixes have any effect.
Though they are repelled by chocolate, cocoa and palm oil.
The were originally from human stock eons ago, and do breed normally,
but males in the Zhodani society are few and far between, and are only
used for breeding stock. The gene pool has not changed enough to make
Terran-Zhodani coupling infertile, and so the Zhodani augment their
genetic pool occasionally with out-crosses. Though any males born from
these unions are not reared.
GRAV DRIVE & PLATES
Grav plates as per the Traveller canon do not exist. You get too many
inconsistencies and problems with the infinite field strength that
ensues around the edges of the traditional grav plate. Instead, we
have miniature point-sources of gravity which can be increased or
deceased, at finite rate-of-change, up to 6G.
The effect is similar for manoeuvring around in space, but it means
ship design is very much different. At high G manoeuvring, you will
have certain areas of the ship were you cannot go because the gravity
will be too high, and other spots were it is 0G.
Getting space sick will feasible.
It also means, because if the structural integrity of the vessel,
space-faring ships can not enter the atmosphere of planets, nor land
on the surface.
Air-raft and other kinds of shuttles have to be used to ferry
passengers below, or scoop up water for refuelling. They do not use
grav drive and instead use other forms of propulsion.
Gas giants will still be able to be skimmed.
AIR-RAFT
Air-raft is spelt with a hyphen and not as "air/raft" as per the
official Traveller canon.
Spelling air-raft with the slash is a capital crime in all cultures
and creeds, and is enforced rigorously.
SCANNING
Visual-range is short in space terms. Visual-frequency on-board, 10m focal-length cameras can see 0.01 arcsecs. (10pt text (1mm pixel) @ 20km, or ship-id (5m pixel) @ 100,000km). Image-processing techniques can give you a five-fold resolution increase.This is the only form of silent running.
Short-range scan is used for most navigation and identification. It
has a range of 1 light-minute (18 million km). Short range scan
activates the transponder that all ships have in them, so you will get
this data too.
Medium-range scan will spot any ship-size object within 1 light-hour
(7.2 AUs). This doesn't activate the transponders (well it does, but
the reply would not be heard, so most transponders don't reply).
Medium-range scanning radiates a lot of energy so is forbidden within
a few million km of a space station or planet. Nav buoys do this.
Long-range scan scanners can see any ship in a light-year by sending out a
powerful ping, but it is directional, so you can only "see" things in
an 5 degree cone, and of course it is not very useful if you want to
get the information back in a reasonable time (who wants the reply two
years later?).
Transponders - all ships have transponders. In most ships they can not
be turned off, and in fact it is an offence in all jurisdictions to
switch them off; you will get shot out of the sky. The Scout Service
scout ships can switch them off, but the crews are warned, of course.
Transponders can not be faked, but they can be changed. This is also
highly illegal and the Scout Service doesn't indulge in this.
Transponders do not broadcast all the time, they are activated by a ping.
If you are with 10,000km of a ship when it jumps, and in
line-of-sight, you can work out (by the "angle of entry" into Jump
space) where the destination will be.
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