Let's Read: Traveller, 1977 Edition, Starships, page 35

Okay, back to this. Clearly, I won't be done the second book by the New Year, but we're getting there. We continue with more effects of decompression during space battles.

 To my complete lack of surprise, hull hits result in explosive decompression that will kill anyone not wearing a vacc suit. However, somehow it's possible to throw on a vacc suit in time to avoid death, if you roll 9+, modified by your dexterity and level of vacc suit expertise. I'm sorry, but what? Explosive decompression means that all the air leaves RIGHT NOW, taking everything that isn't nailed down with it. How in the blue hell is someone supposed to manage to throw on a space suit while hanging on for dear life to the nearest anchor? I just don't see that as a possibility. Maybe if you are caught unawares in a fight and you already started to put on the vacc suit before decompression happens, THEN you might have the above chance of finishing the job in time to avoid being sucked into the vacuum of space. Otherwise, no; you're just dead.

Alright, moving along. Atmospheric braking allows a ship to slow down a bit; if any portion of the ship's vector passes within 1/4 inch of a planet's surface, the vector is reduced by 1/4 inch. So...you have to get VERY close to the planet to take advantage of this, and it's not going to do much to slow you down anyway. Hardly seems worth it, frankly.

Ah, now we get to everyone's favorite part of space combat: Abandoning the ship because you're about to get blown into space dust. You can use the ship's vehicles as escape vessels; they launch during the ordnance phase. Now, you can't do something else while trying board these ships; it's an exclusive activity. And if the individual trying to board is in a vacc suit, throw a 6+ to board or wait until the next turn. How tight are the doors to these things?

The above applies to military vessels, who drill in this sort of thing regularly and thus can do it faster than civilians can. Those ships take 1-6 turns (roll a die) to fully load all their little ships, and if you're impatient, you can always leave without the stragglers. Hey, the ship's about to be destroyed; it's not like they're going to complain afterward.

If you're in a vacc suit, you can always just jump out the nearest airlock and hope another ship picks you up. Or, if you're close enough to a planet and are into extreme skydiving, you can try to set an all-time record. Mind you, your suit is only good for up to 100 ten-minute turns, although if you thought to bring a spare air tank with you that time is doubled. Your suit is capable of a total of 3 inches of acceleration...again, what? 3 inches of acceleration in a vacc suit? Jumping Jiminy Crickets...that's three thousand miles in ten minutes. That's EIGHTEEN THOUSAND MILES AN HOUR!!!!!! That is absolutely insane! The Apollo rockets took four days to get to the Moon; a standard vacc suit can do it in a mere 13 hours! There's got to be another interpretation of that, because that's beyond ridiculous. Even if that's its maximum speed, you're still moving faster than a bloody moon rocket.

You can get a reentry ablation shield as part of your vacc suit, and if you're moving at those speeds, you're damn well going to need it. It only works if your vector doesn't exceed two inches, though. So much for that idea. At the speeds above, you're going to burn up like a shooting star as soon as you hit the atmosphere. And even if you do everything right, by which I assume you're not free-falling at interplanetary speeds, you still have to roll a straight 6 or better to survive.

Wilderness refueling is next; this is the process of skimming the atmosphere of a gas giant in the system so as to provide your ship with enough fuel for a jump drive to work. Gas giants are easily determined from a ship's library, or can be predicted from a short distance away (Jump-1). The referee throws the dice, and a 10+ means there's no gas giant, so if you don't have fuel, you'd better hope you can live comfortably on whatever planet is in this system, because otherwise you're screwed six ways from Sunday, 'cause you ain't going nowhere.

Ah, planetary defensive systems. Because nothing gets the juices flowing like watching heavy artillery leap up from the planet you're swooping by. Planets can have defenses in orbit on on the surface; the ones in orbit are treated like starships when attacked, and usually shoot lasers. Planetary surface weapons are attacked as usual, but they're only affected if the hit location roll indicates turrets. If you've got someone on the surface, they can serve as a forward observer to help the accuracy of your shot. Hey, I remember that skill from Book One; glad to see it's actually useful for something.

Finally, we have Damage Control. This continues on the top of the next page, so we'll end it there. Crew members can do field repairs; rolling a 9 or better (with appropriate skills giving positive modifiers) repairs one hit of damage. You can only try to fix one thing in a ten-minute turn, and if your drive or power plant is destroyed, you ain't fixing it. Suck it up.

Whew! That was a long page, wasn't it? Lots of information there. Next up...more stuff about space fighting.