Let's Read: Traveller, 1977 Edition, Starships, page 11

Back for more! And now, we get to learn about drives and power plants for starships. This continues from the previous page, but there was no easy breakpoint in the text, so I just used the chart. So, we'll begin back on page 10 with a reminder that drives are assigned a letter of the alphabet based on their power and speed; the higher the letter, the bigger and better the engine. The chart on the next page gives us more detail on the specs of these drives and plants.

I forgot to mention that these letter designations apply to three different ship systems: Power Plants, Maneuver Drives, and Jump Drives. And starships get all three. Interplanetary ones wouldn't bother with the jump drive, obviously. I don't see anything that states that they all have to be the same size or letter, though. From what I can tell so far, a ship could have three different letter-designations for these separate systems, as long as they all fall into the range allowable for that particular hull size.

So, a size 600 hull, for example, might have a power plant H (2), a maneuver drive Q (5), and a jump drive M (4). Maneuvering drives are measured in maximum Gs, and jump drives are, I assume, measured in how far they can actually jump. According to the rules on passengers and cargo earlier, a Jump-3 drive is three times as good as a Jump-1 drive.

Next up, we are introduced to the Engineering Section. It's an important section, because it's both capitalized and in bold. And dear God, those are some expensive pieces of hardware. The costs in the table on page 11 are in millions of credits. On the tiniest ship allowable, with Type A plant and drives, it's 22 million credits for these three things alone. And the hull itself cost a minimum of 20 million. No wonder it's a 40-year mortgage. Captains will be taking on insanely dangerous jobs just to afford the interest payments.

Finally on this page, we learn that the sum of the mass displacements of each of the three components can't exceed the mass displacement of the engineering section itself, and all three have to be installed in the engineering section. Sorry, the Engineering Section. So far, though I don't know what the mass displacement of the engineering section is, so I can't give an example. Maybe I'll peek ahead?

No...that would be cheating. Tune in next time to find out what happens!

For those readers who are only hanging around for these Traveller posts, take a minute to post a comment and say 'hi.' What's your experience with these rules? Are you a newer-edition player? Do you prefer the later, 1981 version of the rules? Have you designed any cool spaceships with these rules? Is the cost going to continue to make me weep?

That last question is rhetorical, just so you know. I already know the answer.