Update: There is now a wiki entry for Charted Space, which supercedes this.
I've been refining the starmap. The potentially-Aslan worlds have been moved off to a hidden layer because I'm just not sure what I'm doing there. I've started adding borders (though I see a couple errors now that I've exported it, of COURSE): magenta for Imperial, blurple for Imperial-allied, orange for Vargr (not that it's that cohesive, plus I accidentally excluded the Vargr probably-homeworld), green for the quasi-Zhodani, red for the Solomani.
The darker blue represent J3 access, and the yellow lines are where there is regular(ish) Chirper service, possibly including ferries for J1-J3 ships such as the connections through Dessonia.
I think I will probably generate the (sub)sectors all around the edges, because I don't like the artificiality of the current rectangle. Of course, I could just feed it to the network-diagramming functions and let it be more freeform, but again I like the Trav aesthetic too much. It's a failing.
Can Types
Cargo cans are 30-ton cylinders with (fairly) standard hookups and three rings of mount points (often with a hexagonal frame. Ships may be equipped with basic cargo-can racks, which include basic power/monitoring systems, or with more advanced racks that connect the can to ship life support, allowing stateroom modules. Door placement is also reasonably standardized, so that passenger modules can be connected to airlocks or ships' passages and cargo modules can, in many ships, be loaded/unloaded while in place.
Half-cans are 15-ton, half the length of standard cans, and have two mount rings. They can be mounted in full-can racks, but because they take two rings they often cannot be doubled up unless the ship is equipped specifically to do so.
Basic Cargo Can
Just what it says on the tin: a large, empty cylinder with temperature and pressure sensors. Many, but not all, have fire detection sensors, and some basic memory functions that carry ownership information and a record of what has been carried in the can - though that's more for the convenience of its owner than a trustworthy record. A shipper will be wise to assume the worst of a can they haven't had control of, and do their own radiation and contamination checks, not to mention pressure integrity.
Cargo cans generally have a loading door for package cargo, and frequently but not always a passenger-type door for inspections or hand-loading. They may have minimal heating and/or cooling systems to offset hostile conditions on-world.
Tanker Can
A variant on the basic cargo can, a tanker replaces the loading door with a pumping/valve system, generally specific to a particular type of liquid fuel. Tankers often have heating (or less often, cooling) systems to keep their cargos at appropriate temperatures when on-world.
Fuel Can
A specialized tanker with fuel scoops, to skim and refine water to refuel starships. It is generally mounted to a cutter, or to a multi-can scooper. Most starships don't hold cans in a configuration that allows scooping, but some smaller ships do.
Shuttle Can
A passenger module with basic passenger accomodations and baggage area, for in-system use. Some have sleeper compartments for multi-day trips. The module has a standard side-mounted passenger door, usually with airlock, for loading, and a front-mounted and rear-mounted passenger door to allow access to a cutter's cockpit and engine area.
Passenger Can
A passenger module for long-term accommodations: basically providing six staterooms plus about 6dt of baggage area. The can requires a heavy-duty power connection, but otherwise has self-contained life support. Like the Shuttle Can, it generally has three passenger access doors, and may or may not have a cargo door.
Can Traffic
Many basic cargo cans are all but publicly owned: passed from small carrier to small carrier at a deposit so small it's effectively a short-term rental. Many tramp freighters carry cans they don't own, and will readily abandon them in favor of a customer's can knowing they can pick one up at almost any port. Of course, cans with broken or non-standard connections are common, and some carriers deliberately alter their connections to make them less desirable for "accidental" re-use.
Highports impose fines for loose cans nearby, provided they can identify the culprit - sometimes tramp freighters discover they've been fined only upon return to a port, and after a sufficient period of time that they can't always contest the charge.
Many highports pay a bounty for loose can retrieval, and most systems with enough traffic have at least one crew with a rickety modular cutter collecting cans. Sometimes they're not picky about what constitutes a "loose" can.
Cans with more stringent requirements, such as those used to haul foodstuffs, will be tracked more closely, and are usually owned by a specific carrier or customer. This is also true of more specialized cans; one can sometimes rent a passenger module, for instance, but they require a much higher bond and are limited as to where they can be taken/dropped off, sometimes only back at the system where they were rented.
Note: After mostly finishing this entry I realized that there's an entire GURPS Trav supplement on the Modular Cutter which I probably even have as part of a bundle spouse picked up not too long ago. Have I even opened that bundle? I don't think so. Have I read the Modular Cutter one? Nope. Did I reinvent the wheel? Probably. DANGIT
The Rainbow Fish
The Rainbow Fish is a mostly-stock Millionfish with a family crew.
The primary crew is the human owner, a Vargr pilot, and a human engineer, with the unplanned addition of four of the owner's grandchildren.
Horace Marsh Cranch, owner aboard and navigator
Korrlondha/Cortland, or C-Dog, Vargr pilot/first mate
Heywood, engineer
Alfonse, oldest, pilot-in training.
David, middle boy, reluctant engineer in training.
Bruni, middle girl, enthusiastic engineer in training.
Lyle, youngest, just happy to be here.
"Captain Marshie" has been flying the Rainbow Fish for some decades, but five years ago his son and daughter-in-law died in an accident, and he found himself the guardian of his four grandchildren. The oldest, then a young teen, had grown up with the dream of becoming a starship pilot, though he hadn't imagined it would be in apprenticeship to a Vargr.
With four staterooms, the Rainbow Fish is rather crowded, and its passenger-ship days are over. C-Dog and Heywood already bunked together, so the other two staterooms are now given over to the children. Heywood is somewhat bemused to find himself teaching two tweens-to-teens, one of whom has regrets about shipboard life.
Rainbow Fish is based out of Delsatia Sector, in the Solomani Sphere.
Publication day
I've been writing this in tumblelog without actually pushing it to the web server, but it's finally time to throw it out there. Begin at the beginning if you want it to make (some) sense.
Interestingly, I have kicked around the idea of making a digest-format zine out of the setting at some point, and spouse just revealed that he's been wanting to put together a retro-fantasy RPG zine. It's a funny coincidence of timing, though we've both always had amateur publishing on our little shelf of ADHD Hobbies. We (mostly he) ran a Champions-themed APAzine back in the 90's, and the Little Black Books of Traveller have always held a special place in my heart.
Anyway, I guess that means it's time to at least put this out there electronically. Will there be a paper version? Ehhh, maybe. We'll see if it goes anywhere more interesting than "Canon Trav universe but smaller."
I also might be convinced to resurrect Gameropolis/the Old Phoenyx as a multi-user setup. I deleted a WriteFreely to put up the tumblelog, but going back would be pretty easy-peasy.
Close-up on 1108
Dessonia is probably not an ideal PC base given that, y'know, only a Chirper ship can go there. So how about one of the Imperial backwaters?
Lilowerpe 1108 B526300-B Lo Cp 424 Nw
"Lilowerpe" is the randomly-generated name of the world and, since it's designated the capital, also the [sub]sector. Sometimes I duckduck generated-gibberish names to see if DDG can correct it to a more promising name. In this case it failed totally and decided I mean "lower." So, what if it's the... li-something lower pe-something? Little lower pentad? "Lower" is kind of odd for something at the top of the map but whatever. It's a five-system J-2 cluster, so that works for now. The sector is usually called The Pentad, its eponymous capital is Lilowerpe or LLP.
(Edit: I realized there's a J-3 pentad of worlds above it, so Linked/Lower Pentad and Upper Pentad are now the canonical source for the name, taken from the technical description on original survey maps or possibly from Ancient designations.)
I'm less happy with that random UWP for a sector capital - four thousand people, no government? I'm going to roll that again.
Lilowerpe 1108 B986941-A N Hi Cp 422 Im
Kind of the opposite!
All right, a big world, dense atmosphere, 60% ocean, nice place. Four billion people, a representative democracy, minimal Imperial Law, a pretty good tech level for a backwater. It'd be an industrial world if it had a tainted atmosphere, because Classic Traveller pre-dates the Clean Air Act and air pollution seemed the inevitable result of industrialization back then. (Look that up, if reversing climate change seems insurmountable!)
Deep Trader
A J3 free trader doesn't work in regular Traveller economics, but that's simply solved even if I use Trav shipbuilding rules: starships don't have to be that expensive to build. (And I'm inclined to use Trav ships, just because there's a lot of resource out there.)
It's been awhile since I have built a CTrav ship and I don't have a spreadsheet built for it, but that's fine because I'm just spitballing.
Millionfish
200ton hull
Type C JDrive (20t)
Jump Fuel (60t)
Type B MDrive (3t)
Type C PP (10t)
PP Fuel (30t)
Bridge (20t)
Model 3 (3t)
Air/Raft (4t)
4 Staterooms (16t)
4 Low Berths (2t)
Future Fire Control (2t)
Module Bay (30t)
It's basically double the modularized Scout, but J3 over J2. Such a trader might have its own cargo module, or might pick up whatever module needs moved from one place to another.
I'm somewhat inclined to reduce the volume of fuel needed, because I want these to be very common little traders (hence the name) and I feel like a dual module bay hits the sweet spot.
Using Traveller ship design rules means I get to swipe Traveller deck plans, but possibly a good alternative is to just say "what would be a J2 ship in Trav is a J3 ship here."
Modular Cargo
Traveller almost pre-dates intermodal shipping containers, and certainly pre-dates really widespread use of (and knowledge of outside the industry) the TEU, so there's not a lot of intermodal stuff in Classic.
There's one, though: the Modular Cutter. I have, in past settings, extrapolated a lot of ships that use 30-ton cylindrical shipping "cans" (to swipe a term from Cherryh again). The Modular Cutter accepts these like a semi pulling an FEU, and it looks like modern Trav uses the same extrapolation: [https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Modular_Cutter_Module](Modular Cutter Module). They're standard across my Imperium-equivalent, though possibly less so in Solomani/Zhodani space and probably only present in Vargr space as Imperial-made equipment.
30 dTons is a bit larger than modern TEU/FEUs: a TEU is 33 cubic meters or so (highly dependent on height, but that's the common size), compared to 14 cubic meters per dTon. So a stateroom is (including equipment and common areas and whatnot) almost the size of a "typical"/FEU container. At (simplifying) two dTons per TEU, that makes a shipping can 15 TEU or about seven semi-trailers' worth.
A railroad tanker car, meanwhile, is a cylinder that holds about 114 cubic meters, or a little over 8 dTons. A boxcar varies, but is 12-15 dTons - a half-can.
(Aside: I wonder if anyone has calculated the amount of fuel it would take to connect two star systems with the amount of traffic that happens between e.g. the US and China, and how long it would take to burn off an ocean doing it.)
The "can" is not an entirely impractical shape, for streamlined ships. Back in the 90's, I worked for an airline that flew cargo 727's and 737's carrying mail and overnight packages. They were converted passenger planes, with a cargo door cut in the side and a floor made of rollers. They had "huts" that were semi-circular, like a cross-section of the upper deck. Those huts would be pre-loaded with all the packages for a certain place and big ol' forklifts would zip up, slide them in the door, and they'd get rolled to the back of the plane, one after another until the plane was full. (Hmm that'd be a LIFO stack so maybe they had two doors, because they loaded the outbound hut in at each stop. It's been a lot of years, I've forgotten the details.)
I have no idea if it still works that way today, but I like the idea of small ships carrying a couple of cans semi-externally, plus some loose "indoors" tonnage. Maybe you can upgrade to a fancier can dock, with power and life support hookups, and an access airlock, so you can pop in an eight-stateroom module when you need to haul passengers.
Dial the classic Type S Scout/Courier back to a single stateroom and you have 15 tons of cargo, enough for a half-can, and now you're a Space Trucker.
