Ah, it's good to be back. When last we met, we were discussing the joys of the bridge and how much space Traveller's computers take up. We move on to other parts of the main compartment, starting with staterooms.
These are pretty straightforward, and pretty expensive; it costs half a million credits to put in a single stateroom, and it takes up 4 tons of space. These are for high and middle passengers, as well as the crew. Military and exploratory ships can double up on occupancy, but other ships have to have one room per crew member.
Low Passage...ugh. These berths only cost 50,000 credits each, and only take up half a ton of space. There's also a note that they can be used as cryo-storage for characters in an emergency when there's no rescue or medical assistance handy. Yeah, I'm still not doing it. That 5+ to survive still rankles.
Fuel. Yes, a ship does need a gas tank. Interestingly, there's no actual cost for the fuel storage tank, but you still need to allocate the space in the available tonnage. This will help determine the ship's range and frequency of refuelling.
Cargo Hold. Like the fuel tank, there's no intrinsic cost to the cargo space allotted. You just have to indicate how much space will be used for cargo and not for other things, like weapons.
Which happen to be next. Hardpoints are where your gun turrets are installed, and the ship can have one hardpoint for each 100 tons of hull displacement. Just setting up a hardpoint costs 100,000 credits, not including the actual weapon system.
The turrets can hold up to three weapons systems apiece, and the weapons don't all have to be the same kind. That's nice; if an enemy is invulnerable to one weapon, you can use a different one from the same turret. It's pricey, of course; 200,000 for a single-weapon turret, 500,000 for a double, and a straight million for a triple. Regardless of the number of weapons, the turret only takes up one ton of displacement. You can, if you wish, allocate cargo hold tonnage to the turret. I'm not sure why you'd do that, but maybe you're running short on space at this point. Those drives take up a lot of tonnage, after all.
Each turret has its own private gunner, who is part of the crew and gets a salary. I guess if he can handle three different weapons systems, he deserves a bonus.
Hardpoints have to be assigned when the ship is designed, but turrets can be installed later if money is an issue (and how will it not be, at these prices?). They can even be changed out later on if the weapons get damaged or obsolete. Weapons, however, can't be included in the ship plans and specs; they're always installed later. I would assume that you'd still have to pay the full price for the replacement turret, but that's not specifically mentioned. Maybe a discount would be in order, since it's just a matter of swapping hardware. Then again, you're already doing that when you install the turret in the first place.
The joys of old-school; there are a lot of grey areas in the rules.
And that's all the essential stuff (even for a merchant ship, there's got to be at least one turret for self-defense; too many space pirates out there). Next up: Optional components.
We get a brief introduction, which tells us that some of these components must be installed when the hull is laid down, and others can be included later on, even if the ship is decades old. But as to what those optional components might be...that will have to wait until the next page.
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