Traveller: Life in the Marches - A ship of our own

Banjo

"if we're going with a pectoral problemator" he gives Nestor a nod, "what's our goal? Destroy the ship? Kill the pirates? Just create chaos so we can take advantage of it? I'm thinking a few shaped charges with some choice shrapnel, ideally positioned so it hits them in the back after they board, causing death, injury and vac suit damage but preserving the ship itself. Might need to leave Barrymore on board to trigger it. The electromags latch on to their ship so they can't disengage and can't easily turn around, then we attack their ship, Glenn warps Dhinor and some drones on. We murder all of them - maybe keep one to transfer command auth to us. And boom, we're heroes! What could possibly go wrong?"

OldGoat

Banjo wrote: »

"if we're going with a pectoral problemator" he gives Nestor a nod, "what's our goal? Destroy the ship? Kill the pirates? Just create chaos so we can take advantage of it? I'm thinking a few shaped charges with some choice shrapnel, ideally positioned so it hits them in the back after they board, causing death, injury and vac suit damage but preserving the ship itself. Might need to leave Barrymore on board to trigger it. The electromags latch on to their ship so they can't disengage and can't easily turn around, then we attack their ship, Glenn warps Dhinor and some drones on. We murder all of them - maybe keep one to transfer command auth to us. And boom, we're heroes! What could possibly go wrong?"

"Well, we really should be trying to capture rather than murder but apart from that...
If all goes well we have some prisoners, a good quality ship with a missing drive, a slightly damaged pirate ship full of drives, nukes and lovely lovely treasure and last but not least our new friends on Blue who want to honour our crewmate the Hero pirate vanquisher.
I might write an opera about this day."

Baggly

Banjo wrote:

"if we're going with a pectoral problemator" he gives Nestor a nod, "what's our goal? Destroy the ship? Kill the pirates? Just create chaos so we can take advantage of it? I'm thinking a few shaped charges with some choice shrapnel, ideally positioned so it hits them in the back after they board, causing death, injury and vac suit damage but preserving the ship itself. Might need to leave Barrymore on board to trigger it. The electromags latch on to their ship so they can't disengage and can't easily turn around, then we attack their ship, Glenn warps Dhinor and some drones on. We murder all of them - maybe keep one to transfer command auth to us. And boom, we're heroes! What could possibly go wrong?"

'first time you have made sense this whole journey'

jasonb

"All sounds good to me, assuming the Pirates are actually out there, we haven't seen any sign of them in days. Let's configure a different drone to stay on the ship, issue the distress call etc., Barrymore is too well programmed to lose him that easily!"

sullivlo

Mod

Non-player posts deleted. Do not post in this thread unless you are playing. Any questions PM a mod. Any further posts will result in bans.

First and final warning.

Banjo

"Soooooo..... anyone know anything about explosives?"

Evan starts breaking down non-essential furniture on the Vainglorious to make shrapnel.

OOC : Given that the Drones are not properly programmed yet, can we continue to try or is it a one-and-done roll?

Fourier

OOC: Retry allowed due to presence of Grandfather's Hammer Crew.
Electronic(Remote Ops)[Education], Difficulty: +2

Banjo

OOC: Rolled 6, 5. Total score : 15 - is this right? Electronic(Remote Ops)[Education], Difficulty: +2, My Education is +2, I have no Electronics skill (so -4), but have Engineer (Electronics)1 so treating that as Electronics (0)? If not it's 11 with the -4 penalty for unskilled labour.

While I'm here, I based my Engineer split (Power, Electronics) on a manual for an earlier revision of the game - are they still valid specialisations?

Fourier

OOC: Updated your sheet for you, in line with edition conflict.

This time, when Evan boots up the robots, they comply perfectly with his commands. Further more they are ready to enact with force and accuracy any tactics Alex delivers to them.

Even better, Evan removed modules not necessary for the current task (language databases, small sections of TAS library of planets) to expand and enhance their tactical cogitators and lengthen their gun barrels. Their combat performance has been significantly improved.

Baggly

Dhinor spends his time searching the ship for parts so that he can make another sword like the one he already has.

If he finds them, he tries to build the sword.

Professor Moriarty

"Okay Captains, the bomb is ready. I'm guessing we won't be needing it now?"

Banjo

"Very good, Mr. Seneca. We have your shaped charges, we have shrapnel, we have attack drones, we have the grapple, the Vainglorious is partially disabled and broadcasting a distress call on an intermittent Kleist loop to simulate power failure and we're at a safe distance on silent running. The stage is set. Now," Evan steps out of engineering, head resplendent with a Bicorne hat that matches his long tailed bemedalled great coat Tuspis found for him in the ships locker, "Assemblez mes captains!"

OldGoat

Nestor gets ready, armed with the tranq pistol loaded with drugs strong enough to put a K'Kree to sleep, her new paintball gun loaded with, ermm... paint and her shotgun. The shotgun is mainly for intimidation or if she needs to shoot holes in a spaceship.

She ties a bandana around her head inscribed with a 'No Pirates' decal.

Fourier

Onboard the Pirate ship:
A young Vilani runs onto the bridge.

"Yeah their distress call came from closer to Blue than the last one. They're moving, but it's slow captain, they must have a damaged M-drive."

The captain, a cybernetically augmented surviver of the last Frontier War turns.

"The Lords want more Scout class vessels. This should be a simple way to reach our quota. KaaKra, your opinions? You were a scout once."

Necro

KaaKra looks at the captain.

'Can we send a scout team to investigate first? I do not wish to put our own ship in danger just yet.

Any sign of trouble and we blow it to pieces, move on.'

Baggly

Dhinor turns to the rest of the crew.

'Can we get a scan of the pirate ship using the drone who previously scanned our new friends ship? Might be useful to get a read on who and what we are facing exactly.'

Banjo

"We send that drone out there and it gets picked up, it's game over man. Game over. Look, the charges are set, Loc and Home are onboard the Vainglorious and ready to go. The recordings we cued up should convince them that the bridge is locked and the crew is trapped there, draw them in. Once they're docked and the clamps have them, they're ours. "

OOC : Remember, we can't see Necro's post and none of us know anything about space piracy, and the crew of the rescue ship didn't say anything about the plan being terrible, so we're stuck with it now. We haven't clearly defined what we're doing, but here's how I imagine it :
The sail is partially detached and we've faked a progressive power failure on the ship.
We've vented the air from the ship apart from the bridge, making it look like the crew is holed up in there behind a sealed door. The idea being that from a pirate's perspective they can loot the ship in safety without fear that the crew will interfere, all while pretending to be a rescue team.
The ship will play back recordings of crew voices (assuming we're too far off to broadcast live or such a broadcast would give away our position.)
2 Drones are onboard to provide information about the boarding party and to engage when the charges go off. Also, if feasible the fuel purifier will be modified and moved into Engineering facing down the main corridor, ready to do a moderate fuel purge that will light that corridor up to around half way up the upper state rooms.
Anything we might have had to hand that might suggest we have a valuable cargo would be left strewn around in the corridor behind the bridge and ships computer room to get them to walk down that corridor.

We're on silent running drifting somewhere behind the Vainglorious waiting for the Pirates to go by us, presumably hiding ourselves in the shadow of the nearest sun. When they go by we should be able to time a few MDrive kicks with solar activity to put us in slow pursuit of their vessel with minimal chance of detection, with the option of an active high-burn to close distance only once they're starting to commit to the boarding op which will give us away, but ideally we drift close enough for Glenn to do his thing and tele-board them with Dhinor and a couple of drones, jumping back and forth as many times as he can to get as many of us on board as we can.

Once their party is aboard, they walk down the corridor, they get torched, the clamp engages to lock the ship in, the boarders try to abandon ship, the charges go off and shred the suits if not kill the pirates, the 2 drones pop out of state rooms 3 and 4 (which could not have been searched at this time because the boarding party got torched) and mop up, then go across. Meanwhile Dhinor, Verne and the drones are ripping through the pirate ship.

Of course, the fact that they're not going to dock ruins a lot of this but we don't know that

Baggly

Banjo wrote: »

"We send that drone out there and it gets picked up, it's game over man. Game over. Look, the charges are set, Loc and Home are onboard the Vainglorious and ready to go. The recordings we cued up should convince them that the bridge is locked and the crew is trapped there, draw them in. Once they're docked and the clamps have them, they're ours. "

OOC : Remember, we can't see Necro's post and none of us know anything about space piracy, and the crew of the rescue ship didn't say anything about the plan being terrible, so we're stuck with it now. We haven't clearly defined what we're doing, but here's how I imagine it :
The sail is partially detached and we've faked a progressive power failure on the ship.
We've vented the air from the ship apart from the bridge, making it look like the crew is holed up in there behind a sealed door. The idea being that from a pirate's perspective they can loot the ship in safety without fear that the crew will interfere, all while pretending to be a rescue team.
The ship will play back recordings of crew voices (assuming we're too far off to broadcast live or such a broadcast would give away our position.)
2 Drones are onboard to provide information about the boarding party and to engage when the charges go off. Also, if feasible the fuel purifier will be modified and moved into Engineering facing down the main corridor, ready to do a moderate fuel purge that will light that corridor up to around half way up the upper state rooms.
Anything we might have had to hand that might suggest we have a valuable cargo would be left strewn around in the corridor behind the bridge and ships computer room to get them to walk down that corridor.

We're on silent running drifting somewhere behind the Vainglorious waiting for the Pirates to go by us, presumably hiding ourselves in the shadow of the nearest sun. When they go by we should be able to time a few MDrive kicks with solar activity to put us in slow pursuit of their vessel with minimal chance of detection, with the option of an active high-burn to close distance only once they're starting to commit to the boarding op which will give us away, but ideally we drift close enough for Glenn to do his thing and tele-board them with Dhinor and a couple of drones, jumping back and forth as many times as he can to get as many of us on board as we can.

Once their party is aboard, they walk down the corridor, they get torched, the clamp engages to lock the ship in, the boarders try to abandon ship, the charges go off and shred the suits if not kill the pirates, the 2 drones pop out of state rooms 3 and 4 (which could not have been searched at this time because the boarding party got torched) and mop up, then go across. Meanwhile Dhinor, Verne and the drones are ripping through the pirate ship.

Of course, the fact that they're not going to dock ruins a lot of this but we don't know that

OOC: I understand player knowledge =/= character knowledge, but i dont think its a stretch to try to get a scan on our new targets given thats what we did previously. It also wont impact, i think, our decision to go ahead with the plan. Just given Evan's previous bit about the possible outcomes if the other ship are x aliens, y aliens or z aliens, i thought it made sense to take the same approach before our big all or nothing honey pot plan.

Banjo

OOC : Oh yeah, it makes sense - I have no objections to intelligence gathering. But we have to send a drone out to do it I think - we did that with the Rescue team because we wanted to be found. If we send one out to the pirates, don't we give ourselves away?

I don't know how the sensors work. But Glenn does so the characters would know if this is a workable plan - i.e. can we do the scan from our ship or does it have to be done up close by a drone, and if the latter is the drone going to be detectable on typical scanners?
(Four - that question is at you )

BTW, above is not the plan. It's what I think the plan is. We have all been very vague about the plan. If you have ideas, put them in the pot!

Necro

On the pirate ship, KaaKra whistles nonchalantly whilst being seated beside a big red button.

Baggly

Banjo wrote: »

OOC : Oh yeah, it makes sense - I have no objections to intelligence gathering. But we have to send a drone out to do it I think - we did that with the Rescue team because we wanted to be found. If we send one out to the pirates, don't we give ourselves away?

I don't know how the sensors work. But Glenn does so the characters would know if this is a workable plan - i.e. can we do the scan from our ship or does it have to be done up close by a drone, and if the latter is the drone going to be detectable on typical scanners?
(Four - that question is at you )

BTW, above is not the plan. It's what I think the plan is. We have all been very vague about the plan. If you have ideas, put them in the pot!

OOC: That was my understanding of the plan as well, at least for my character. I thought the drone was undetectable though - so if thats not the case, then ill defer to our scanner skilled comrades on going in blind vs going in with more info.

Fourier

OOC: Drone cannot be detected. Well technically it can, if you were trying to find it with the right equipment, but not if you're just casually flying around in a typical ship.

Banjo

Drone away!
Godspeed, Ronnie Drone. Godspeed.

jasonb

OOC: Just one thing, if Glenn is going to teleport onto the Pirate Ship, where he's never been before, then we'll be relying on two separate dice rolls I reckon...

Fourier

jasonb wrote: »

OOC: Just one thing, if Glenn is going to teleport onto the Pirate Ship, where he's never been before, then we'll be relying on two separate dice rolls I reckon...

OOC: Correct, just so everybody knows. Glenn will have to remote view and then teleport.

Necro

OOC: This is fun Come join me, Glenn... I'm waiting

Fourier

Gospis alerts the others.

"Vessel moving at tremendous speeds on long distance scanners."

Baggly

'how much time do we have?'

Fourier

Pter wrote: »

'how much time do we have?'

"They've definitely messed with their drive to gain speed....two hours."

Baggly

OOC: Also, how much time do we have until the next set piece. Think we might regain our axe wielding lion tomorrow....if that might be relevant to any upcoming events.

Fourier

OOC: This pirate bit will probably close out this first thread, so let's wait for tomorrow.

Mollyb60

Verne sits in peaceful meditation, quietly contemplating recent events and experiences since he left his homeworld. He has indeed learnt a great deal about the galaxy and it's inhabitants. He is still confused about a great many aspects of the human species resolves to learn more. He senses a thrill of excitement and anticipation in the air and slowly brings himself back to consciousness, feeling well rested and centered.

He looks around at the strange new cabin; 'Hmm, this does not appear to be the same place I began my meditation, it seems a great deal has occurred while I slept.' He stretches and takes a deep breath. 'I smell battle' he says with a grin and heads off in search of the bridge and the rest of his crew.

[OOC: right lads lets fcuk sh1t up!]

Necro

OOC: Welcome back Molly. I look forward to blowing you, and the rest... out of the sky

Banjo

"Oh great. Rip Van Wildcat is awake. How kind of you to join us. Now, go back into your stateroom that you refused to share while some of us have been sleeping in re-purposed fuel purification ducting, shove two of your claws down your throat and purge all that undigested wildebeest now 'cause we don't want you puking in your Vac Suit after you teleport. Then suit up, Simba! We're on the hunt"

OOC : If he gets aggressive, Cilla and Nancy will, I'm sure, intervene as programmed.

"Captain Glenn, make sure the Vainglorious knows how much time you need to do whatever that creepy Mandrake **** you'll be doing is, your effective range and your probability of success - the remote spying and the jumps in and out.

Vainglorious, based on that information we need to know how big a window the Cap'n will have to get us onboard that pirate ship as it passes, and again a projection of how long we'll have when we catch up before we have to burn MDrive to stop and give ourselves away.

Ronnie Drone - report as soon as you have a scan of that ship - layout, pirate numbers, unpopulated areas, anything we might use to improvise during the assault, and if there's a concentration of unsuited crew.

Dhinor...." He kisses him on both cheeks, resists the urge to cup. "Good luck you beautiful bastard!"

Baggly

Dhinor is very very confused by the exchange, but stays focused on the mission and his role in it.

A haunting song comes into his head immediately after Evan finishes kissing his cheeks, however.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dOwHzCHfgA

Mollyb60

Banjo wrote: »

"Oh great. Rip Van Wildcat is awake. How kind of you to join us. Now, go back into your stateroom that you refused to share while some of us have been sleeping in re-purposed fuel purification ducting, shove two of your claws down your throat and purge all that undigested wildebeest now 'cause we don't want you puking in your Vac Suit after you teleport. Then suit up, Simba! We're on the hunt"

OOC : If he gets aggressive, Cilla and Nancy will, I'm sure, intervene as programmed.

'As I stated previously, I do not require a stateroom. So if you chose to put me in there it is your problem and not mine. Also I was not sleeping, I was meditating. It is an essential component of my people. I do not make fun of your culture and I thank you not to make fun of mine. I see your wonderful attitude has not changed much while I was away.' he turns away in disgust.

'Can someone (else) get me up to speed. What is the plan?'

Baggly

Dhinor explains the plan is to honey pot the pirates using their scout ship as bait, while they attack the pirates using Glenn as a teleporter to bring some attack drones and Dhinor over to the pirate ship, while other drones are attacking any pirates that board the scout ship.

Banjo

"I don't know how it is for Lion-men, but in my experience people don't snore like that when they're meditating. And sleeping on the job isn't a culture, ex-captain. This isn't Malta! OK - the plan : You go get your big, impressive, very sharp stick. Tiamat is going to jump you into the pirate ship, you're going to try not to puke and then shove your axe through as many pirate skulls as you can till you're either dead or victorious. Or both. A win's a win!"

Mollyb60

'I was not snoring, the sound you heard was a meditative chant that Aslans use to maintain focus. You seem touchy about the fact that you have not been captain. I find Captaincy to be a honour bestowed only on those that the crew trust. Perhaps something you can consider working towards rather than antagonizing everyone?

Glenn I'm ready whenever you are.'

Banjo

ooc : actually, I declined the position :P Welcome back!

jasonb

using Glenn as a teleporter

"Always good to feel like an integral and respected part of the crew" Glenn snarks...

OOC: As I can't teleport without knowing where I'm going, I'll do a roll for a Remote View of the Pirate ship as soon as I can (next 20 mins or so hopefully) and let you know how that goes. If it doesn't work, at least we know in advance that the Teleport is off the table. If the Remote View does work, I'll still have to roll for the Teleport itself. Fourier, can you give me the roll instructions for the Remote Viewing? Thanks...

Necro

OOC: Come join the pirates, jason - we have... use... for your abilities and will treat you nicer

Fourier

jasonb wrote: »

Fourier, can you give me the roll instructions for the Remote Viewing? Thanks...

OOC: It's just a 2d6 roll. The bonus from your psi strength (+2) and the ease of the power (+2) are cancelled by the distance of the ship (-4). Note though failure might just mean you see the ship interior in a blurred fashion and make teleporting more difficult, but not rule it out.

Fourier

OOC: Just to let ye know, I'll catch up with this, but I won't be free until a good bit later tonight.

jasonb

OOC: Ruh roh... I rolled a 5. Just wondering, can I roll again when the ship is closer, considering the distance was a factor? Or is rolling again a no-no in the game?

Fourier

jasonb wrote: »

OOC: Ruh roh... I rolled a 5. Just wondering, can I roll again when the ship is closer, considering the distance was a factor? Or is rolling again a no-no in the game?

OOC: Yeah, you can.

Glenn gets a faint vision of the ship. He sees or more senses that there are three sophonts on board, maybe more. Interior of the ship is quite cramped, most of where he casts his mind is bulkhead and metal. As cramped as a far trader normally is, this is even worse.

Fourier

Gospis looks nervous.

"Ship is crossing into mid range scanners....they've fired a nuke at the Vainglorius. Impact time....twenty minutes."

Necro

OOC: Ooops, my finger slipped

Fourier

"The ship has fired five objects....they're not missles....thirty minutes until impact with the Vainglorious....wait, they're drill pods."

Necro

KaaKraa leads the crew on board the pirate ship in nude, ritualistic, pre-raid dance. Complete with multiple lunges.