Category Archives: Background

Economics of Spaceflight – part 1b – Starliners

Last week we looked a bit at the logistics of running a passenger transport system between the various worlds and saw that if you wanted daily flights between all the worlds, you’d need over 600 ships.  And that would only give you 250 people moving between each world each day.

Now you can change that a bit by making the ships a bit larger or increase the passenger density. But it gave us a feel of what assumptions or changes you need to make to your setting if you want a certain level of interaction between the worlds.  Or if you limit the number of ships and passengers, some ideas of what impacts that has on the culture and setting.

In this article, I am going to look at the financial side of the passenger transport business.  We’ll start by actually designing our starliner to get an idea of costs and expenses, look at ticket prices, and decided if it is even worth it.  Then we can talk a bit about other changes that we need to make, if any, to make this all make sense.  Let’s get started. You might want to settle in. This one is a bit long.

Our Ship

If we’re going to look at economics, we’re going to need details on the ship.  In the last article, I based everything on a HS 10 starliner. We’ll detail that ship out and look at its cost. 

Hull and Engines

As a HS 10 ship, it will have three engines, which from the discussion last week, are atomic.  I realize now that as a passenger liner, maybe we don’t need the power of the atomic engines and can get by with ion engines. Surprisingly, in the discussion that the previous post generated, no one mentioned that.  It would also save on the overhaul time as ion engines don’t need that so the ship could be turned around in port more quickly.  But for now, we’ll stick with the atomic engines.

Cabins

The next major question is how many of the various passenger berths we have of each class.  We have a total of 250 berths.  Journey class are the standard.  Interestingly, the only safety requirement listed in the rules is that a spacesuit has to be provided.  You don’t actually have to have lifeboats for everyone. First class berths are more expensive and require more cabin space, cargo space, and facilities for the passengers. And do need access to a lifeboat.  Storage class cabins are cheaper for the passenger and have minimal storage space, but are more expensive to install in the ship, costing as much as a First Class cabin. With the standard starship construction rules, these tradeoffs really don’t affect the design of the ship other than the final cost as the system doesn’t really account for the space and facilities needed.  So for this analysis, I’m going to roughly base these ships on our modern airlines, with most of the cabins of the base Journey Class category with a few First Class and some Storage Class.  The breakdown will be 40 First class, 180 Journey Class, and 30 Storage Class.

Crew

The other major decision is the size of the crew.  We will need to purchase cabins and life support for them as well.  The rules give no guidance on this.  Looking at cruise ships, it is about a 1-to-5 ratio, crew to passengers.  Some of that, such as janitorial and maintenance work, will get automated away to robots on our star liner, but then we’ll need people to look after the robots as well.  We’ll design the ship around a crew of 50.  We’ll talk about the breakdown later when we have to figure out what they are paid.

Ship Vehicles

While we only need lifeboats for the First Class passengers, we’re going to have lifeboats for all of the passengers (except Storage Class, that’s just one of the hazards of the cheap fare, you are frozen and can’t get to a lifeboat) and the crew.  And we will toss in 10 escape pods so not everyone has to make it to a lifeboat.  As the final vehicles, we’ll add in 5 large (10 being) launches for shuttling people around between the station and ship, 2 small (4 being) launches for the crew’s use, and 2 workpods for ship maintenance.

Spacesuits

We are required to have spacesuits for all of our non-Storage Class passengers.  Plus we’ll have them for the crew as well.  Technically, each species has its own style of spacesuits adapted to their physiology.  The rules, however, only distinguish between vrusk and non-vrusk as they are only really concerned with cost and the standard spacesuit is 1000 cr. while the vrusk suit is 1,500 as they require more material.  If we assume that vrusk make up one quarter of the crew and passengers, and we build in a bit of buffer in the numbers to account for varying numbers of the different species, we’ll get 80 vrusk spacesuits and 220 non-vrusk ones.  This is 300 total, which is exactly our crew and passenger count but remember that the 30 Storage Class passengers won’t be using one so we actually have 30 extra.

Robots

There will be a number of robots on board to handle things like cleaning, maintenance, some food production, etc.  We’ll design the ship to have 50 robots, basically doubling the crew size.  These will be a mix of level 3 and 4 service and maintenance robots, will possibly a small number of security robots.  Overall the average cost of each robot will be 4,000 cr.

Other items

There are a number of other items that go into building the starship such as radios, intercoms, computers, portholes, Velcro boots for crew and passengers, toolkits, etc.  We’ll add those in as appropriate and list the details in the final stats when presented in the next section:

PGCSS Prenglar Glory

Here are the full KH stats for the ship along with its price tag, fully fueled.

HS: 10
HP: 50
ADF: 3
MR: 3
DCR: 50
Engines: 3 Class B Atomic, 6 fuel pellets each

Communications Equipment:  Videocom radio w/ 4 extra panels, Intercom system: 5 master panels, 400 standard panels, Subspace Radio
Sensors: 400 Portholes, radar, camera system, starship astrogation suite
Weapons: None
Defenses: Reflective Hull
Life support capacity: 500 beings, 200 days with full backup
Passenger Accommodations: 40 First Class cabins, 180 Journey Class Cabins, 30 Storage Class cabins
Crew Accommodations: 50 Journey class cabins
Vehicles: 10 escape pods, 14 lifeboats, 2 workpods, 5 large launches, 2 small launches
Computer Level: 4 (175 FP)
Computer Program: Drive 5 (64), Life Support 1 (4), Alarm 3 (4), Computer Lockout 4 (8), Damage Control 3 (8), Astrogation 4 (24), Cameras 1 (1), Robot Management 4 (16), Information Storage 3 (8), Communications 2 (6), Installation Security 3 (12), Computer Security 4 (16), Maintenance 2 (4)
Backup life support computer: Level 1 (4), Programs: Life support 1 (4)
Robots: 50 level 3-4 maintenance, security, and service robots
Other equipment: 220 non-vrusk spacesuits, 80 vrusk spacesuits, 300 velcro boots sets, 5 Engineer’s toolboxes, 10 sets of Magnetic shoes
Cost: 5,658,000 Cr.

The Ship’s Crew

Now that we know the design of the ship, we need to decide on crew makeup.  This will determine the wages owed as we operate the ship in the space lanes.  This is going to be an approximate mix.  The exact details may vary ship to ship but will give us a starting point to figuring out the operating costs when we get to that stage.  The crew makeup I settled on, allowing for round-the-clock operations is:

  • 2 Pilots – level 5 – necessary to operate a HS 10 vessel
  • 2 Astrogators – level 3 – It’s an established route so these could be even lower level
  • 2 Engineers – level 4 – as discussed last week for effecting the engine overhauls
  • 4 Technicians – level 4 – assistants to the engineers and helping with on-board maintenance
  • 4 Roboticists – level 4 – maintain the ship’s robots
  • 2 Computer technicians – level 2 – basic computer operations and maintenance
  • 10 Safety and Security staff – level 3 (beam) – assisting passengers and keeping everyone in line
  • 3 Doctors – level 4 – for maintaining the health of crew and passengers
  • 10 Food Services staff – level 3 – cooking, maintaining hydroponics, servers, etc
  • 11 other staff – level 2 – any other duties, entertainment, etc.

Now some of those, such as security, food services, and other could slosh around a bit depending on exactly want you want on the ship and what roles all those robots play, but this mix give us a starting point.

The Economics

Okay, with the ship squared away, let’s look at the income and expenses of running this ship. 

For this analysis, we will be looking at a single jump.  This means that we’ll be covering the 14 days from departure from one station until the ship is ready to depart the other one.  The Knight Hawks rules are based around yearly or 40-day “months”.  So we’ll often be scaling the values from the rules to cover just the 14 day period.

Let’s dive in.

Income

There is really only one source of income on a starliner, paying passengers.  The KH Campaign Book, page 44, covers the operations of a starliner.  We’ll start with the Spaceliner Bookings Table.

This table tells you how many of your berths a ship will fill traveling between different population worlds.  Now to be honest, I believe that this table really represents the situation if there were lots and lots of travel available.  If there is only a single ship flying between the two worlds each day, it will probably fill every berth every trip.  And depending on the route, it might be higher than that given by the table.  For example, traveling from Prenglar (high population) to Dixon’s Star (outpost) gives only a low fill percentage but in truth, most of those people are actually going to Truane’s Star (medium population) and so the ship would be fuller.  But I’m going to leave those details as an exercise for you to do for your version of the Frontier. I’m going to take the table at face value here.

This ship is flying between Gran Quivera (Prenglar) and Triad (Cassidine), which are both high population worlds.  According to the table the ship will fill 80+2d10 percent of its berths on any give trip.  We’ll just deal with the average which is 91%.  That means on an average trip we will fill 36 of our 40 First Class cabins, 164 of our 180 Journey Class cabins, and 27 of the 30 Storage Class berths.  Sometimes it will be more, sometimes it will be less but that’s the number we’re going to use.

The jump from Prenglar to Cassidine is 7 light years.  That means that a First Class ticket costs 1400 cr.  A Journey Class ticket costs 700 cr. And a Storage Class ticket costs 210 cr.  Given the number of berths being filled, that means that our income for any single jump is 170,870 cr.

That’s our gross ticket sales.  We need to fit all of our expenses for a trip into that number.  So let’s look at our expenses.

Expenses

First up is fuel.  We have three atomic engines and each jump uses a fuel pellet in each engine.  Since each fuel pellet costs 10,000 cr., each jump costs us 30,000 cr. in fuel.

The next obvious cost is the crew salaries.  Daily wages for characters with spacecraft skills are given on page 54 of the KH Campaign book.  Daily wages for characters with AD skills are given on page 60 of the AD Expanded Rules book. For the “other crew” line I just uses 10 cr. x level as their pay rate and for the food services crew I use 10 cr. x level+1.  I’ve also ignored the fact that characters may have multiple skills and the pay rate is just based on their primary skill level.  With the crew as detailed earlier, the daily cost for the entire crew is 3,690 credits.  Which means for the 14 days of our trip, the crew wages come to 51,660 cr.

After those two, the next largest cost is maintenance.  The ship has to spend 15-16 days in maintenance each 400-day year at the cost of 1,000 cr. per day.  In 400 days, a ship can make 400/14= 28 trips 8 days left over.  That means that we can make 27 trips a year.  So each trip needs to save away 16000/27 = 593 credits to cover that expense at the end of the year.  To be safe, and cover other unexpected maintenance costs, we’ll stash away 1500 cr. each trip.

We’ll also need to pay the crew during those 16 days as well so we need to save away a total of 59040 credits to cover wages.  That means each trip needs to save 59040/27 = 2187 credits which we’ll round up to 2200.

Each trip consumes life support.  According to the rules, refilling the life support system on the ship costs 15000 credits every 200 days or 75 credits a day.  Thus our 14 days of operation use up 1050 credits worth of life support.

Another expense is an office at each end of the line where passengers can come to buy tickets.  The rules state that this costs 500 credits per 40 days at each station or 12.5 credits a day.  With two end points that’s 25 credits a day or 350 credits of expenses for the 14-day period.  We need to squirrel way a bit of funds to cover the 16 days in maintenance but it’s not that much and we can assume it’s covered by the extra maintenance money we saved.

Finally, there are docking fees.  Here we are going to use the number given on page 32 of the module SFKH1: The Dramune Run, where it says that the standard rate for docking fees is 2000 credits a month.  Assuming that is the 40 day “month” we’ve been using, that works out to 50 credits a day or 250 credits for the 5 days in port during each run.

Tallying that all up, we get that the operating expenses for the ship total 86,810 credits for each leg of our run between Gran Quivera and Triad.

That seems pretty good.  We’ve got just over 170,000 credits in income and just under 87,000 in expenses.  Which is all well and good if there aren’t any taxes, and if the ship is paid for.

Now the rules don’t explicitly give rates for taxes, tariffs, and other fees associated with interstellar travel although they do talk about varying the rates for wages, docking fees, ticket prices, etc. that can affect the income or expenses for our ship.  And in the AD rules, when talking about PC and NPC character wages, it says to assume half of all their income goes towards living expenses and talks about raising/lowering taxes to adjust the amount of money the PCs have.  And local governments and the UPF need to get income from somewhere.  I’m going to leave the taxes issue up to you for your campaign.  But a corporate tax of say 5-10 percent of gross sales might not be unreasonable. 

Paying for the ship

But now we come to the biggest expense, at least during the early years of operating the spaceliner. How did we pay for that ship in the first place?  Maybe this is a mega-corp and they had a huge budget and could just pay for it outright.  They still need to recoup the cost of the ship but at least don’t need to take out a loan.  If it’s a smaller organization, they may have to get a loan for the cost of the ship, either in part or in full.  Let’s look at those two scenarios.  And we’re going to ignore taxes.  Subtracting our expenses from our income, that leaves us with 84060 credits after each trip. 

First, the mega-corp, paid in full option.  Assuming every one of those net credits earned goes into paying back the cost of the ship (which from above is 5,658,000 credits), it would take 68 trips to pay off the value of the ship.  At 27 trips a year, that’s two and a half years to recoup the cost of the ship.  If there are unexpected costs, it will take longer.

Let’s look at a smaller organization that has to take a loan.  Pager 42 of the KH Campaign book gives the monthly payment on a 10,000 credit loan amortized over a number of years from 1 to 20.  Now, the game was written in late 70’s to early 80’s and the interest rates back then were high, on the order of 10-15% for low risk ventures.  So the interest rates for starship loans, which are considered high risk, are set at 4% every 40 days or, over the 400 day year, an APR of 48%!  That may seem a bit high, even by late 70’s standards and especially today, but we’ll go with it as that is what is in the rules.  If you want to do the math and come up with a different interest rate for your setting, go for it.

We’ll start by looking at a 10-year loan.  Using the table on page 42 and the cost of the ship from above, and assuming we finance the whole thing.  The cost of the loan is 230,903 credits every 40 days or 80,816 credits every trip.  We had 84060 credits left so that’s good, the net difference is still in the black at 3,244 credits.  But we have to account for that 16-day maintenance period where we still have to pay the loan but aren’t making any income.   The loan cost for that 16 days is 92,362 credits.  Spread over the 27 trips in the year that comes to 3421 credits that need to be saved.  Which puts us in the red by 177 credits.  Considering we had a bit of buffer in our maintenance budget, to the tune of about 850 credits, we can cover that small deficit from that.

So that means, if we have a 10-year loan for the entire value of the ship, we can just break even if the ship operates continuously and don’t have any problems for a decade.  It can be done, but it will be tight.  But if we run into unexpected problems, we’re going to be in trouble.  We could look at a longer loan, but beyond 10 years, it doesn’t really help.  Even a 20-year loan only puts us at 1454 credits in the black each year but takes twice as long to pay off and we end up paying twice as much for the ship.

That’s just to break even, there are no profits beyond the wages for the crew so hopefully the owner is part of the crew or they get no money for the first decade.  And that is the economics for a run between two high population worlds were we basically fill the entire ship each trip.  On a run with fewer berths sold, there would issues on the scenario where the ship was financed. Also, if there are any taxes, we would really be in trouble.  It looks like any fraction of the ship that can be paid for up front will make the operation be more financially stable.

Some Variations

This article gives you a baseline for operating your starliner.  I will leave most of the variations up to you but look at one.  Some of those variations include, but are not limited to, changing ticket prices, changing the mix of berths, shortening the time in port so you make an extra run or three each year, selling more (or less) of the berths, different crew expenses, and using ion engines instead of atomic engines.  I’m just going to briefly look at the variation where we fill the ship completely every trip.  Which may very well be the case if there is only a single flight each day between worlds.

In this case, the only real change is that have 13 more paying customers across all three berth classes.  That means that our income goes up to 188,300 credits an increase of 17,430 credits.  Since our expenses don’t actually depend on the number of passengers (the life support costs probably would, but we ignored that), that is all extra profit.  In this case, we are now 17,253 credits in the black after each trip, assuming we keep the 10-year loan.

And that means we either have some profit for the owners and can save a bit for other unexpected expenses, or we can shorten the loan term a little bit.  We were right at the bleeding edge as far as the loan went and were already in the point of diminishing returns with respect to lengthening the loan.  With a full ship every trip, we could shorten the loan period from 10 years to 5 years and still have a 5,400 credit surplus.  And reduce that actual amount we pay for the ship (principal and interest) by 57%, a savings of 9,921,303 credits, which is enough to buy almost 2 more ships!  The total cost of the 10-year loan was just over 23 million credits, four times the cost of the ship.  That interest rate is very expensive.

Conclusions

So, running a passenger liner between two high population worlds is doable.  It might be tight for a few years (up to a decade) if you can’t pay for at least part of the ship up front and have to finance it, but it can be done.  Runs between smaller worlds might not be possible using the table from the rules to determine the number of berths filled.

This also gives you as a setting designer some ideas of knobs to turn to tune things in your setting or describe what PCs see as passengers on one of these ships. 

What did I miss?  What other variations might we look at?  Have you ever had PCs try to run a passenger liner?  What happened?  Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Economics of Spaceflight – part 1a – Starliners

My Starship Construction in the Frontier post generated a lot of discussion in the Star Frontiers group on Facebook. In some of the discussion, the commenters seemed to be making the assumption that I wanted to increase the number of ships flying around and that my post was advocating for ways to do that. I actually don’t have a strong feeling one way or another. In fact, I’m much more in the camp of small numbers of ships.

What I’m really looking at, and am interested in figuring out, are the implications those small numbers have and whether or not it makes sense to increase the numbers. Or if you don’t, what that implies for the realities of life in the Frontier and how that impacts the player characters.

I’m interested in questions like, if you only have a small number of ships across the Frontier, what does that mean for interstellar commerce? What impacts does that have on interstellar travel? Who owns the ships? What do they cost? And questions like that.

Since that starship construction article came out, and the ensuing discussion, I’ve been thinking more and more about this and have decided to do a series of articles on the topic. They will all have the Economics of Spaceflight title and a similar tag. In this first article, I’m going to look at interstellar passenger travel.

From the Rules

Let’s start by looking at what the rules say about these ships, which it calls starliners, and interstellar travel. We’ll begin with the description given on page 6 of the Knight Hawks Campaign Book:

Spaceliners. HULL SIZE = 6-15. Spaceliners (passenger transports) are built in a wide variety of sizes. Modern spaceliners are fast, quiet ships, capable of providing the wealthy passenger with any conceivable luxury. Many of the older liners are smaller, somewhat decrepit vessels that promise only the fundamental requirements of life support. The number of passengers carried by a spaceliner is about 25 times the ship’s hull size. For example, a spaceliner with a hull size of 10 can carry 250 passengers. Engine durability varies as much as size on spaceliners. Some will require an overhaul after three jumps, while others will be able to make 8 or 10 interstellar trips without maintenance.

KH Campaign Book, p. 6

This gives us a bit of information right off the bat. First, we have the range of hull sizes for these types of ships and the number of passengers per hull size. I’ll have more to say on that latter concept later. It also seems to imply that there are a bunch of these flying around as it describes various generations of ships. Other bits, such as the comments on engine overhauls, tell us that they typically sport atomic engines (as ion drives don’t need overhauls) and indicate some of the properties of the Class B and C atomic engines which the rules haven’t covered yet if you’re just reading through the book.

In the original Alpha Dawn Expanded Rules book, pages 49 and 50 talk about they modes and costs of interstellar travel. It lists three “classes” of travel accommodations and their costs:

  • First Class – luxurious accommodations with the best rooms, food, and and best access to survival gear in the case of an emergency. 200 Credits per light year traveled.
  • Journey Class – This is the standard accommodations. 100 Credits per light year traveled.
  • Storage Class – In this class, you travel as frozen cargo. 30 Credits per light year traveled.

More details on the accommodation types are given on page 21 of the Knight Hawks Campaign Book.

Travel time is one of the areas where the Alpha Dawn (AD) and Knight Hawks (KH) rule sets conflict with one another. The AD rules say that interstellar travel occurs at the rate of one day per light year, while the KH rules, require 10 hours (one day’s work) per light year to plot out the jump, but actually making the jump takes 8.7 days regardless of the distance. Reconciling and clearing that up is a whole article in and of itself. We’ll save that for a future date. For this article, we’re going to assume that it takes 9 days to make a jump, regardless of the distance.

Of course that probably means the cost of a ticket should be fixed as the same number of resources go into making a jump regardless of the distance but for now we’ll go with the AD rules ticket costs.

If the PCs come into possession of a starliner, either via salvage, original constructions, or some other means, the KH Campaign Book (p. 44) provides guidance on what it costs to operate such a ship, how much of the ship is full on any given trip, and the risks involved. We’ll come back to those numbers later as well.

How Many Passengers – revisited

For this article, we’re going to be looking at a HS 10 passenger liner which falls in the middle of the range specified in the KH rules. According to the rules, this ship can carry 250 passengers. The question is, does this make sense?

A modern cruise ship, roughly the size of a HS 10 starliner.

Let’s look at some sources. A HS 10 ship is roughly the size of a modern, large cruise ship here on Earth. These ships typically hold up to 2800 passengers and 1200 crew, for a total of 4000 people, or 400 per hull size. But that’s the maximum capacity and typically means 4 people to a cabin. If you’ve ever been on a cruise ship, you know those cabins are small, typically 15-22 square meters. Now this is roughly the size of a Journey Class cabin on our starliner (16-24 square meters), the difference being that that size on our starliner is for a single being, not a group of four. That immediately means we need to cut our passenger estimate down by a factor of four putting us at about 700 passengers.

The other thing our starliner has to deal with, that a cruise ship doesn’t, it life support. On a cruise ship, air is free. And while there is probably some recycling of water, it’s not a closed loop with full filtering needed. And cruise ships tend to stop and replenish supplies every couple of days unless it’s a long trans-oceanic cruise. So they don’t carry a lot of food on board. In the Frontier, ships are typically designed to carry half a year of food and the systems to process the air, water, and waste onboard which eats up more space on the ship.

Then you have all the lifeboats, spacesuits, and other ship’s vehicles that our starliner has to have. Cruise ships have lifeboats but the passenger density on them is going to be higher than the ones on our starliner and the some of the lifeboats on cruise ships are inflatable. That’s not going to happen on a starship. Those eat up space as well.

Finally, a cruise ship has a lot of the upper decks exposed to air. That doesn’t count against it’s volume but provides a lot of communal space for the passengers. That space needs to exist on starliners as well but has to be enclosed within the hull.

Between the extra life support machinery, the communal space, and the ship’s vehicles, that could easily reduce the capacity of the ship by 30 to 70 percent depending on how you figure it. 250 passengers is just 36% of the 700 passenger number we had left above. It’s possibly at the low end, but reasonable.

Another point of comparison is the volume based rules I created for starship generation. In that system, which accounts for passageway, cabin space, and storage space, I designed a ship the same size as a HS 10 ship in the KH rules. It had a total of 100 First Class cabins, 1250 Journey class cabins, and 200 Storage class cabins. And that includes the cabins for the crew, the size of which the rules don’t address. For this I’ll assumed 50 of the Journey class cabins are for the (lots of robots on Frontier ships). So the total capacity is 1500 passengers, which is a little large. However, this system doesn’t currently account for communal space which could easily be as much or more than the space taken up by the cabins. So if we cut that number in half we’re back to 750 passengers, similar to our initial estimate from the cruise ship.

The bottom line is that while 250 is probably a bit low, it’s not unreasonable and the actual number might be only a factor of 2 or 3 higher. So we’ll go with 250 passengers for our analysis.

A Typical Journey

The Starliner

Okay, we have our ship, it carries 250 passengers. What does a typical journey look like? For this example, we’re going say this ship makes the run between Gran Quivera in the Prenglar system and Triad in the Cassidine system, a jump of 7 light years. We’ll look at the finances later, right now we are going to just look at logistics.

We’ll start the journey at the point when the ship is all loaded and ready to depart Gran Quivera for Triad. The first step is the jump to the Cassidine system. It takes just under 4.5 days to get to jump speed and the same amount of time to slow down. We’ll assume the total travel time is 9 days. In truth it could be up to 11 days depending on the orbital dynamics of the two systems and how accurate the jump is but we’ll go with 9 days.

After docking at the station around Triad, the ship has to do a number of housekeeping activities. First, the passengers have to disembark, then the interior of the ship needs to be cleaned. And new provisions need to be taken aboard. Then the passengers and the luggage for the next trip need to board.

Since this is a HS 10 ship, it has three Class B atomic engines. These engines require an overhaul after every three jumps. Since there are three engines, it makes sense to stagger the overhauls so that you do one after each jump. You’re always doing an overhaul each time in port, but you are only doing one and that make it reasonable. We’ll also top off the fuel pellets in the engine we’re doing the overhaul on. We’ll assume that the ship has two level 4 engineers on board that work alternating shifts so that maintenance and overhaul work can proceed around the clock to be as efficient as possible.

Let’s look at time scales. If a cruise ship can load or unload it’s 2800 passengers in a single day, I think it’s safe to assume that our 250 passengers can be loaded and unloaded in a single day as well. So that requires two days in port for those two operations. Refueling one engine takes on average 7 hours. The engine overhaul takes on average 38 hours. That’s a total of 45 hours of work. Assuming it is split between the two engineers, either working together on 10 hour shifts or around the clock on alternating shifts, that takes two and a quarter days. We’ll call it three to account for any variations and potential issues that come up. The provisioning and cleaning can occur while the engine work is happening. So our ship spends 5 days in port and then is ready for the return journey to Gran Quivera. So far we’re up to 14 days.

The trip back is exactly the same. It takes 9 days to make the jump, and another 5 days in port before it’s ready to leave. That is a total round trip time of 28 days.

The Shuttle

That’s the main part of the journey. You also need some way to get the passengers from the surface of the planet up to the station to board the starliner. That means you’re going to need a shuttle. For comparison, a Boeing 737 is about the size of a HS 2 ship. And it carries 175 people and their luggage. A Boeing 747 is about the size of a HS 3 ship and it carries 416 people plus luggage.

Now the trip up to the ship isn’t that long. As the Dutch astronaut Wubbo Ockels commented about his 1985 trip on the Space Shuttle Challenger:

Space is so close: It took only eight minutes to get there and twenty to get back.

That was at 3g and we probably want to be a little gentler on our passenger but it shouldn’t take more than a half hour to get into orbit and an hour back. They will need acceleration couches regardless and those take up a bit more room than a typical airline seat but not by much. It’s completely reasonable that a HS 3 shuttle can carry the 250 passengers for our space liner.

That means that we’ll need one shuttle at each system. If we let our spaceliner carry more than the 250 passengers, we’ll need more shuttles as well.

How Many Ships Do We Need?

With one ship, every 28 days we can move 250 beings from Gran Quivera to Triad and another 250 beings in the reverse direction. If this is the only ship running the route, there will only be a single trip once a month between the worlds. If you miss your flight, you’ll have to wait 28 days for the ship to be back. And if you want a round trip then you will spend at least 5 days in the destination system assuming you fly back out immediately when the ship leaves, otherwise it will be 33 days (or longer) after you arrive before you can catch a ship back.

Of course we can increase the frequency by adding more ships on the route. Let’s say we want a flight leaving every day. That’s easy enough. It’s a 28 day round trip for a single ship, you just need 28 ships and means you have a departure and arrival every day. And that allows you to move 250×28 or 7000 beings each way between the two systems in that same 28 day time period.

Regardless of how often you have interstellar departures (as long as it’s not more than once a day), your one shuttle can supply all of those ships. So even though you have 28 starliners, you only need a single shuttle at each system to handle the passenger traffic.

But that’s not the whole story. Each of those ships needs to have annual maintenance performed and that will take on average 15-16 days per ship. Which means once a year, each ships needs to be pulled out of rotation for one cycle to have it’s maintenance done. That means we need a spare ship to fill in while it’s out of commission. If you’re running a ship every day, you’ll actually need two spare ships to cover the gaps as the repair time on 28 ships is longer than a year and there will be some times when two ships are in maintenance. The shuttle needs annual maintenance as well, but that only takes on average 8-9 days as it is a smaller ship. If you only have 1-3 flights in that 28 day period, you can get away with a single shuttle and squeeze in its maintenance between runs, otherwise, you’ll need two of them to cover the maintenance periods.

My rendition of the AD star system map. Click for full size version.

That’s the numbers for a single system. There are 17 inhabited star systems on the AD map (not counting the Zebulon system) for a total of 19 jump routes. If there is a single flight along each route, once a month, you need a starliner for each leg plus a spare. And a shuttle in each system. That’s 55 ships. Of course that ignores the fact that some of the systems have two inhabited worlds (23 in all) and you’ll need more shuttles at those worlds and some ships to move passengers between the two planets in the system.

Now 55 ships (or 67 to account for the two world systems), isn’t too bad, but that is only a single trip every 28 days. If you want a daily trip between systems, you need 30×19 starliners (570 ships) plus 2×17 shuttles for a total of 604 ships. Again, accounting for the two planet systems, that’s another 6-12 shuttles and anywhere from 6 to 168 interplanetary starliners depending on how frequent you make the trips (6 shuttles and 6 ships for once every 28 days and 12 shuttles and 168 ships for daily trips).

With the starship construction centers only capable of supporting about 1500-2300 ships, we’re now looking at about one quarter to one half of the total ship capacity of the Frontier just to connect the worlds for a few hundred people moving between each system each day.

If you want more people moving between the worlds, you have several choices. First, you can make the passenger density higher and make each ship carry more. But that’s only realisticaly a factor of 2 or 3. As another option, you can make the starliners bigger. But remember, if the average ship size increases, the total number of ships the Frontier can support goes down. The final option is to increase the number of ships that the Frontier can support.

Implications

What this all means is that you have to make a decision about interstellar travel. If you have few ships, then trips are few and far between and not a lot of people will be traveling between worlds. Your characters should expect to spend months or years on a single world with all their adventures there, as getting tickets to move between worlds could be relatively rare depending exactly on how you structure it. It also probably means they won’t have their own ship as they are too rare.

Additionally, unless there are daily (or every other day) flights between each world, then it will take a long time to travel across the Frontier with layovers of several days to weeks in each system depending on the frequency and scheduling. If they are traveling between worlds, then there will be even longer spans of time (above the already long base travel times) between adventures and your plots need to account for those long time scales.

This article was focused simply on the logistics of travel and the number of ships it would take to support that. I didn’t even address the costs and economics of each individual flight. That will be part 1b at a future date.

What are your thoughts on the number and size of passenger liners? How do you handle it in your game? What other implications have you thought of that I didn’t cover? Let me know in the comments below.

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY61.051 to FY61.080

This month sees the final leg of the trip for the remaining ships of the Discovery Squadron and it’s final disbanding, the HSS History’s Hope gets back on track on it’s exploration mission, avoiding it’s assailants in the YS01 system, and a new ship emerges from the Minotaur shipyards that will play a pivotal role in the history of the Frontier. Spacefleet also begins construction on the ships for Strike Force Meteor.

As always, you can follow along daily on the Star Frontiers Twitter feed if you don’t want to wait for the monthly summary. I’m a few days behind at the moment with my Twitter posting but I should get caught up in the next day or so.

Date (FY)Events
61.051– The Sathar starship construction center in the Liberty system completes 2 destroyers.

– Strike Force Nova jumps into the Zebulon system. They begin decelerating toward Volturnus.

– After much deliberation, the sathar high command decides to send two of its new cutter ships to the Kazak system to scout out the UPF and Rim forces there.
61.052Construction begins on a new UPF assault carrier at the PGC shipyards (Gran Quivera, Prenglar).  This is the first of the new ships commissioned for the new Strike Force Meteor group to be built around the battleship already under construction.
61.053– Shakedown cruise complete, passengers begin loading onto the newest saurian Ark Ship.

– The HSS History’s Hope detects emissions from another ship in the YS01 system, assumed the be their previous assailant.  However, the ship is far away on the other side of the system.  They believe that they will be able to get out of the system before it could catch them, even if they were already detected.
61.054Construction begins on a new Spacefleet light cruiser, part of the new Strike Force Meteor, at the CDC shipyards (Triad, Cassidine).
61.055Strike Force Nova arrives at Volturnus (Zebulon).  The two Truane’s Star militia assault scouts are released to return to their home system. They begin accelerating toward jump speed.
61.056– Construction begins on two destroyers for Spacefleet’s new Strike Force Meteor at the Hentz (Araks) shipyards.

– Deceleration, plotting, and engine repairs complete, the HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating for their jump back to YS02. Signals from the other ship in the system change and it seems to be accelerating toward them.  However, its distance makes an intercept nearly impossible.
61.057– Construction begins on two frigates for Spacefleet’s new Strike Force Meteor at the Minotaur (Theseus) shipyards.

– Sathar cutters arrive in the outer reaches of the Kazak system and begin a slow deceleration as they gather data on the system.
61.058Repairs at the PGC shipyard (Gran Quivera, Prenglar) restore capacity to 85%.
61.059After several weeks of short intra system runs, the CDCSS Mystic embarks on its first interstellar journey shuttling several CDC managers to Fromeltar to meet with members of the new Groth Energy Corporation.
61.060– The HSS History’s Hope makes the jump to YS02 without encountering the other ship which was still 1.3 AU away when the jump was made.  They begin decelerating and plotting their next jump, which after more study of the astrographic data, will be back to YS03, a jump of 6 ly.

– Upon arrival in YS02, the HSS History’s Hope sends a subspace message back to Histran informing their organization of the presence of the hostile ship still in the YS01 system and their plans to continue onward. They YS01-YS02 jump data is not transmitted.
61.061Construction begins on two assault scouts for Strike Force Meteor at the PGC shipyards (Gran Quivera, Prenglar)
61.062Sathar starship construction center in OFS019 completes a cutter.
61.063Sathar cutters in the outer Kazak system complete their deceleration and continue to collect data on the Rim forces in the system.  They relay that Strike Force Nova seems to have departed the system.
61.064The two Truane’s Star militia assault scouts arrive back at Pale station.  The crews are given a three week leave while the ships are overhauled and repaired in the shipyard before rejoining regular patrol duties.
61.065Memorial Services held in Valencia City (Clarion, White Light) for the crew of the Clarion Royal Marines frigate lost battling the sathar in the Zebulon system.
61.066Sathar begin mobilization for final push into the Saurian system.
61.067After 100 days all of the newly hatched Eorna infants are still alive and growing healthily.
61.068CDCSS Mystic arrives at Groth Station (Fromeltar) without incident.  Its maiden interstellar voyage went off without a hitch.
61.069After months of data collection and analysis, scientists believe they have cracked the structure of the signals from OFS200. Some of them are voice transmissions in an unknown tongue that sounds similar to recordings of sathar voices.
61.070The HSS History’s Hope successfully makes the jump from YS02 to YS03 and begin their deceleration and plotting of a jump back to YS02.
61.071– Summer ends on Alcazzar.  CDC begins pulling staff in preparation for the long winter.

– Construction begins on two assault scouts for Strike Force Meteor at the CDC shipyards (Triad, Cassidine)
61.072With the release of the findings about the signals from OFS200, the Anti-Satharian League stage demonstrations outside the Council of Worlds and Spacefleet headquarters demanding an immediate attack on the system to eradicate the worms.
61.073Loading complete, the sixth saurian Ark Ship departs the Sauria system in search of a new world away from the sathar.
61.074After over a year of rebuilding and new ship construction, the sathar begin gearing up for final push on the Sauria system.
61.075Sathar starship construction center in OFS138 completes a heavy cruiser.
61.076Repairs of Triad Starship Construction Center bring it up to 90% capacity.
61.077Construction of the CMS Flitter complete at the Minotaur (Theseus) shipyards.  The ship begins its maiden voyage to its home system of White Light.
61.078After spending ten days in port, the CDCSS Mystic loads passengers for a return trip to Triad (Cassidine). The CDC delegation remains on Groth (Fromeltar) to continue negotiations with the Groth Energy Corporation.
61.079The UPFS Eleanor Moraes emerges from the Minotaur (Theseus) shipyard and begins a shakedown cruise as the final members of the crew begin to arrive in the system.
61.080Repairs at the PGC shipyard (Gran Quivera, Prenglar) restore capacity to 90%.

Here’s the full timeline file:

DetailedFrontierTimelineDownload

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY61.20 to FY61.50

This was a busy month on the Frontier (and beyond). The HSS History’s Hope finally overcomes their misjump issues only to be ambushed by an unknown assailant. A strange computer virus nearly destroys the Moneyspider, and the ships of the Discovery Squadron, on their way home, engage and destroy a sathar raid in the Zebulon system.

As always, you can follow along daily on the Star Frontiers Twitter feed if you don’t want to wait for the monthly summary.

Date (FY)Events
61.020 Castuss Wallorr (yazirian), the sape handler on the Moneyspider, is launched out of the ship on a lifeboat. His distress call causes the ship’s roboticist, Daqor Klarr (vrusk) to snap and have to be restrained. (SFAD5)
61.021 – Baralou Ap-Reaverchan (yazirian), Moneyspider’s astrogator, is killed in a sudden explosion in the life support system on Snobol, the asteroid the ship is tethered to. (SFAD5)

– On their return to the Moneyspider from Snobol, the elevator fails and the crew that responded to Baralou’s distress call are severely injured.  (SFAD5)

– In the confusion of the elevator crash, Daqor, sedated in the Moneyspider’s medical bay, is killed by an overdose of anesthesia.  (SFAD5)
61.022 Calculations mostly done, the HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating for its jump back to the YS01 system.
61.023 – The Moneyspider’s security robot malfunctions and starts shooting holes in the gas tanks holding the filtered toxins from the planet’s atmosphere. The life support system is also malfunctioning and not filtering the air.  Fiator Geauis (dralasite), ship technician is killed due to a sabotaged gas mask. (SFAD5)

– Ellen Coopermann, as the only survivor of the original crew is the prime suspect, but she convinces the rescue party she is innocent. She begins to believe the rescue teams account of the Matrix and works to help them eradicate it. (SFAD5)
61.024 After many weeks of behind the scenes deals and increasing discontent over the practices of the Groth Energy Corporation, the creation of a new entity is announced, the Consolidated Nebula Energy Group (CNE) (ZG), formed by the merger of the three largest independent energy producers on Groth.  All smaller energy producers are invited to join.
61.025 – Despite their best efforts, the techniques that worked on Jetsom aren’t working to destroy the Matrix on Moneyspider. (SFAD5)

– Looking through the Captain’s Computer/Robot System’s Manual Ellen learns that Baralou, the astrogator is listed as one of the ship’s robots, which means it was not her body recovered in the explosion on Snobol. Baralou becomes the prime suspect of all the deaths. (SFAD5)
61.026 – The Sathar starship construction center in OFS111 completes a light cruiser.

– Her secret discovered, Baralou attempts to eliminate Ellen and the rescue team. After a running fight through the ship between the surviving crew members and Baralou, who is aided by the ship’s robots and automated defense systems, Baralou is neutralized. (SFAD5)
61.027 – The Discovery Squadron arrives at Faire in the Capella system.  They spend three days on the planet before heading on to Zebulon.

– The HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps into the YS01 and begins decelerating. Jump calculations are begun anew for another attempt at the jump to the YS02 system.

– With Baralou gone, the remaining crew on the Moneyspider slowly begin to make progress on destroying the Matrix from the Moneyspider’s systems. (SFAD5)
61.028 An attempt is made to sabotage the Minotaur (Theseus) shipyards. It is foiled due to increased security after PGC shipyard attack a few months ago.
61.029 – Deceleration nearly complete, the HSS History’s Hope is set upon by an unidentified, armed vessel that does not respond to any attempts to communicate. While obviously of Frontier origin, the vessel is not one that the crew has seen before.  An SOS is broadcast via subspace radio to the Frontier.

– In the ensuing fight, the HSS History’s Hope’s engines are severely damaged but a lucky shot by their gunner sends the assailant spinning out of control, ending the fight.  The crew rushes to fix the engines and get underway before the assaulting ship can repair itself and return.
61.030 – Having remained undetected as they drifted through the outer system, the sathar ships in the outer Kazak system begin slowly changing their vector for a jump to Zebulon. 

– Just hours before the relief ship arrives at the Moneyspider, the crew eradicates the last vestiges of the Matrix from the ship.  The remaining crew board the relief ship to head back to the Prenglar system. (SFAD5)
61.031 With the “fall” season approaching CDC decides that winters are too harsh to keep the crew on Alcazzar (Rhianna) and stop operations for the year after mining over 6.3 million credits of resources, mostly gold. (SF4)
61.032 Repairs of the HSS History Hope’s engines take much longer than expected. Luckily, their assailant failed to return. The crew debates whether they should return to the Frontier for complete repairs or push onward. 
61.033 After much deliberation, it is decided that the HSS History’s Hope will push on but not transmit their completed routes back to the UPF for registration, but only to Histran to track their progress.  Calculations are begun again for a jump to YS02.
61.034 Repairs at the PGC shipyard (Gran Quivera, Prenglar) restore capacity to 80%.
61.035 – Repair work on the Triad SSC continues.  The construction center is now at 85% of its original capacity.

– The Discovery Squadron makes the jump to the Zebulon system and starts decelerating toward Volturnus.
61.036 – The sathar ships from OSF019 make the jump and arrive in the Zebulon system.  They start decelerating toward Volturnus.

– Initial calculations complete, the HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating once again for a jump to the YS02 system.
61.037 – Sathar ships are detected by Discovery Squadron and messages are sent to Spacefleet, Pale (Truane’s Star), and Strike Force Nova announcing the sathar presence in the system.

– As the only armed vessels in the system, Discovery Squadron is ordered to intercept the sathar vessels despite being severely out classed.
61.038 The decision by Obar Enterprises to not report the Truane’s Star-Cassidine jump route has paid off nicely.  In just 100 days, they have made over 1.6 million credits in gross profits, more than double what would have been possible before the jump route was plotted.
61.039 – Discovery Squadron intercepts the sathar ships. Whether due to a sizable skill differential or simply good luck, the smaller UPF ships manage to destroy all 4 sathar vessels. Unfortunately, the militia frigate and one of the Streel corvettes are lost while the other 2 corvettes are severely damaged.

– Realizing that they have too much force projected into the Rim, and that the sathar seem to have a way into the Frontier around the ships station in Kazak, Strike Force Nova begins a high-speed transit back to Frontier Space.  Patrol Group Virgo is split off again and remains in Kazak to bolster the Rim defenses in that system.
61.040 – After making critical repairs, the remains of the Discovery Squadron begin making their way to Volturnus.

– The HSS History’s Hope successfully arrives in YS02, much to the relief of her crew.  They begin decelerating and plotting the return jump to YS01.
61.041 The sixth saurian Ark Ship is completed and begins its shakedown cruise.
61.042 Information is uncovered that the buyout of Groth Energy may have been orchestrated by the group known as the Investors. The reporter that uncovered the leak is found dead after falling off of his 16th story balcony in downtown Port Loren (Gran Quivera, Prenglar).
61.043 The Discovery Squadron pulls into orbit around Volturnus where they start working on more repairs and resupplying the assault scouts which had depleted all their assault rockets in the fight with the sathar.
61.044 Strike Force Nova jumps into the Osak system but remains near jump speed as they compute the next leg of their jump to Capella
61.045 Deceleration complete, the HSS History’s Hope begin accelerating for the jump back to YS01.  They are aiming to arrive high in the system to attempt to avoid the assailant that was there last time if that ship is still in the system.
61.046 – Repairs complete, the Streel corvettes begin accelerating for a jump home to Truane’s Star.  The assault scouts are ordered to stay in the Volturnus system for the time being to provide early warning and defense of that system as Spacefleet finalizes it’s plans.  Discovery Squadron is officially dissolved.

– Strike Force Nova jump into the Capella system, again remaining near jump speed as they compute a jump to the Zebulon system.
61.047 Fortress Kdikit (Madderly’s Star) completed.
61.048 After much debate, and heavily swayed by discovery of the sathar presence in OFS019 and the recent events in the Zebulon system, the Council of Worlds authorizes additional spending by Spacefleet to commission several new vessels.
61.049 With the go-ahead and funding from the Council of Worlds, Spacefleet decides to exercise their development plan Sierra Foxtrot Meteor, which builds out another Strike Force similar to SF Nova.  Orders are placed for vessels from various shipyards around the Frontier.
61.050 The HSS History’s Hope successfully makes the jump back to YS01 arriving high in the system as desired. They immediately begin decelerating and scanning the system for any other ships as they start in on engine overhauls and plotting the jump back to YS02.

Full timeline file:

DetailedFrontierTimeline-1Download

HSS History’s Hope and the Yazira Sector Map

HSS History’s Hope

As part of my Detailed Frontier Timeline, one of the threads I’ve introduced is the voyage of the Histran Starship (HSS) History’s Hope, registered out of Histran in the Scree Fron system. The goal of this voyage is to attempt to reach a star system that recent astronomical observations believe to be Yazira, the original homeworld of the yazirian species.

In my Yazirian History and Legends and Lore – Yazirians posts last month, I pointed out that most modern yazirians don’t know the location of their native world having fled some 150 years earlier to escape an astronomical disaster. Early in the Detailed Frontier Timeline I introduced the astronomical discovery of a system that matches the description of the yazirian homeworld, complete with a nearby brown dwarf. It is this system the HSS History’s Hope is trying to reach.

Of course there are some complications. First, the system is over 100 light years, in a straight line, from Scree Fron. Jumping from star to star, it’s even further. And all of those jumps are uncharted so each one carries the risk of a misjump and the crew getting lost along the way. They’ve had several misjumps in the timeline already and they aren’t even halfway there. In fact, they’ve just barely left the area covered by my Extended Frontier Map. This is additionally complicated by the fact that the ship is heading into the Vast Expanse, a region of space where the stars are further apart and thus the jumps are longer and more difficult to chart.

The second complication for their voyage is that the Family of One doesn’t really want them going out there and finding Yazira. And are willing to take measure to ensure that they won’t return. They have already been set upon by unknown assailants but managed to escape and continue their journey. They can expect more of the same in the days to come.

At some point I’ll probably do a write-up and timeline of the whole endeavor as a single post instead of having it spread out through the full timeline project for those that want to see how the mission played out and more of the background related to it’s organization and funding. If that is something you’d be interested in, let me know.

The Yazira Sector

As part of this project, I needed to place the yazirian homeworld. I chose to put it way off to the left of the Frontier, well beyond the area covered by the Extended Frontier Map (EFM). Since I didn’t have any maps of this area I had to create one.

For this map, instead of doing a large area, I chose to do a small, long strip. Enough to allow for multiple possible paths through the area, but not too big. I the end, I made it 90 light years wide (the same width as the EFM), and 20 light years tall (1/5 the EFM). However, I added in a new wrinkle. Unlike the EFM, which has all the stars in a single plane, I added a third dimension to this map making it 24 light years thick. So instead of all the stars being in the same plane, they have a z-coordinate as well.

This is a feature that was already part of my star map generation program that I had turned off for the EFM. I talked a bit about this in my post on the Rael Core Sector map. The image to the right shows how this is represented on the map with the z-coordinate represented by the small number to the lower right of the stellar symbols. Those three systems look close to one another but are widely separate in actual space. RS069 and RS073 are actually 5.1 light years apart, RS069 and RS064 are 9.1 light years apart, and RS064 and RS073 are the closest to each other, separated by only 4.6 light years even though they appear to be the furthest apart on the map.

Additionally, the Yazira sector is part of the Vast Expanse, an area of low stellar density, i.e. not a lot of stars. So in addition to turning on the z-component of the position, I also dialed down the density parameter in the program by a factor of almost 3. So we now have 1/3 the number of stars spread over about 4 times the volume of space. This means that in this region, there are going to be fewer stars than in a comparable area on the EFM. It doesn’t look that sparse to the eye because of the projection on the the 2D plane of the map, but crunching the numbers (and assuming a thickness of 5 ly for the EFM even though they are all on a single plane) you get a density on the EFM of 1 system per 159 cubic light years and in the Yaziria Sector of 1 system per 645 cubic light years. A factor of almost exactly 4. If I strictly held the EFM to a thickness of one, it would be a factor of 20.

So what does this region look like? Well, here’s the map. You’re going to have to click on it to see the details. In fact, I recommend right clicking, downloading it, and opening it up in another window where you can zoom and pan around.

94x20 ly map of the Yazira Sector containing 67 star systems

The EFM is to the right of this map. OFS222 is shown on the far right (the blue star about 1/3 of the way from the top) so you can connect it up with the EFM if you want. (This map is actually 94 light years wide. I added on the extra 4 light years so that OFS222 would be on the map, showing the overlap). OFS215 should be on this map as well, but I forgot to add it in when making this draft version of the map. I’ll be sure it gets on there for the next iteration when the HSS History’s Hope gets a bit farther along on its voyage.

The first thing we notice, even without looking at the map at full resolution, is that there aren’t a lot of bright stars here. We see a few, but mostly we see small red dwarfs (M stars). There are a few blue stars and a few giants. This is why the yazirians had to go all the way to the Frontier sector to find a suitable planet. There just weren’t any around.

Also there aren’t any nebula. That’s intentional, this area of space is actually devoid of them. That is a part of it being more empty that the Frontier sector. I won’t be adding any in on the final version of the map once it is done (other than the one between OFS222 and OFS215).

Zooming in you can see that most of the star systems are unlabeled. The only ones I have labeled so far are those that the HSS History’s Hope have visited and the one they believe to be Yazira. Others will get named as they travel through the sector and the final map will be presented in a future update.

The system that the crew of the HSS History’s Hope believes to be Yazira (spoiler, it is) is located at the far left of the map above the legend. This system is represented as a K4 star with a brown dwarf companion. The brown dwarf that disrupted the planetary system is still very close the star, less than a light year away, so it is represented as a single system on the map.

Looking at the right side of the map, you can see the jump routes plotted by the HSS History’s Hope as of today (March 24, 2020) as posted in the timeline posts on Twitter. A new feature on this map that wasn’t on the EFM is the one-way jump, represented as a dashed line with an arrowhead on it. The arrow points in the direction that the jump can be considered “charted.” The jump from YS01 to YS02 is the most recent jump made; they are still slowing down to make the return jump. They had a misjump that took them to YS03 (so no charted jump there) and while trying to jump back to YS01, misjumped again and ended up in YS04 (again no charted jump between those two systems). They did successfully chart the jump from YS04 back to YS01 but did not try to go the other direction, hence that connection is only one way.

Right now the HSS History’s Hope is in the YS02 system slowing down and preparing to chart the jump back to YS01. They are somewhat hesitant about that as the ship that attacked them is probably still in that system and they may have another fight on their hands. We’ll see how it goes as the timeline unfolds.

Going Forward

The HSS History’s Hope still has a long way to go. From YS02 to Yazira is still another 80 light years in a straight line. It’s taken them over half a year to cover the 29 light years they’ve traveled so far. And their path forward is far from straight with lots of long difficult jumps ahead. Who knows what waits for them along the way.

If you want a fun exercise, you might try finding a path forward to Yazira and see how difficult the journey will be. Remember that the chance to plot a new route is 50% + 10% x astrogator’s skill level – 5% x jump distance in light years. They have a level 6 astrogator, plus deluxe astrogation equipment (which in my house rules gives a +10% bonus to astrogation checks). This means their base chance of success is 120% – 5% x distance. With a roll of 96-00 always being failure.

If the jump fails, they end up somewhere other than where they planned and then have to try to figure out where they are (30%+10% x level chance and takes 2d10 x 10 hours per attempt). Each jump takes 9 days (180 hours) unless it’s over 9 light years long. Then it takes a number of days equal to the number of light years. How long did it take you to get to Yazira?

What do you think about this sector map? Are there things you like to see added? Clarified? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

The Blue Plague, Revisited

This was not the post I had planned for this week but with all the precautions and closures due to the COVID-19 coronavirus the last few weeks, it got me thinking about medical technology and then about the differences between Frontier technology and our modern tech.

A Look at the Frontier

One thing that always stood out to me, even as a preteen/teenager in the early 80’s was that the relative levels of technology in the Frontier was very different from our own, and that was ignoring things like spaceflight, laser guns, and FTL travel.

Take computers for instance, even in the early- to mid- 80’s, the computer technology here on Earth was beyond that of the Frontier, or at least on par with it.  And looking at the game with modern eyes, we are way beyond the Frontier tech.

Zeb’s Guide did a little to advance the computer technology and shrink it down, with the introduction of the bodycomp.  This helped to bring the tech somewhat in line with what was available in the mid-80s.  But a visitor from the Frontier to Earth today would be amazed with our modern computer technology.

However, if you look at Frontier medical technology, it is light years ahead of even our modern medicine.  With just a handful of relatively inexpensive drugs, you can cure most diseases, neutralize toxins, heal injuries, and even postpone death.  Not to mention the freeze field and storage class transport fields that can put you into indefinite suspended animation (as long as the power doesn’t go out).  These wonder drugs would be a dream come true for medical professionals on Earth today.

I don’t know if it was a question really, more like an unsatisfied curiosity, but I have always wondered and thought about why the Frontier went down that technology path rather than the one we did.  Why is the medical technology vastly beyond the physical technology?

Game Play

At a practical level, it is what it is so that the game can be exciting and playable.  You need advanced medical technology (just like you need healing spells in a fantasy game) so that the PCs can get right back into the adventure after getting hurt.  And you don’t want the tech to be so amazing that it overshadows the abilities of the characters.

In fact, it was either Larry Schick or Dave Cook, the original creators of Star Frontiers, who, in an interview said that they set the tech level where it was so that it was the PCs that had to do the tasks and not be able to just call on the technology to solve all their problems.  That was why they made the computers big and clunky, with no real networking, and many of the other design choices that they made.

That said, it is still a fun exercise to think about what events we could work into the history of the Frontier to account for such a balance of tech levels.

A Sweeping Pandemic

Which brings me back to COVID-19 and the events happening in the world today.

In Zeb’s Guide, it talks about the Blue Plague and five worlds that were lost to this plague.  While I either like or don’t mind many of the setting elements introduced in Zeb’s Guide, this is one that has never really sat well with me.  So much so that I left those worlds off of my Extended Frontier Map completely.  What where the original names of those systems?  They wouldn’t have been called Alpha through Epsilon originally. Why weren’t they on the Frontier map from the original rules?  They would have been in setting at the time in the history that the original game occupies.  I understand the desire to expand the setting, but the way the Zeb’s Guide timeline was built made many of the things it presented inconsistent with the original game setting and modules.

I don’t like the placement that Zeb’s Guide gives to the Blue Plague, occurring from 17-27 FY – after the original sathar invasion that prompted the formation of the UPF.  It feels too late and tacked on.  And I don’t like that it wipes out five star systems that should have been part of the Frontier history but were never mentioned in the original game.

But what if something like the Blue Plague happened, just much, much earlier in the history of the region?  Back when all the technology was young and prompted a focus on the biological and medical sciences over the physical ones?  That could have prompted the technology development we see in the game.

Now you might argue that you need the physical and computer tech advances to produce the medical ones, we definitely see technology aiding medicine today. But we don’t know that it’s absolutely necessary.  We only have one sample timeline.  It didn’t work out that way for us, but that’s not to say they path we took is the only one.  It’s time for a little willing suspension of disbelief.

The Blue Plague Revisited

So let’s dial the clock way back, to the early settlement of the Frontier.  In the Knight Hawks rules, it states that the discovery of the FTL travel was an accident.  It was completely unexpected.  In my game it was the humans who stumbled upon Void Jumping and shared it around.  In the process of exploring it, they discovered a signal from the Vrusk and went to investigate.  But because of its accidental discovery, I have the human tech level originally set somewhere around that of the late 60’s, early 70’s somewhat consistent with the computer tech of the game.  They just happened to have developed better propulsion systems to get the necessary speeds.

Instead of hunkering down, they exploded throughout the region.  There is a reason there are many more human worlds than those of the other races, and even then, you find humans almost everywhere.  They had the ability to travel to the stars and they did, aggressively. The other races expanded outward as well, but not nearly as much.  As I detailed my Yazirian Lore posts last month (part 1, part 2), the yazirians were expanding outward out of a sense of preservation.  The vrusk and dralasites didn’t expand out nearly as much.

And then, shortly after all of these worlds were being settled, the Blue Plague struck.  In Zeb’s Guide, it describes the plague as receiving its name due to its early symptoms: large blue welts that appear about the face and extremities that leave horrible black scars even if you survive the plague.

No one knows exactly where it came from.  The first cases were on Prenglar, the hub of the Frontier where travelers from all over mingle and visit.  As more and more cases were discovered on Gran Quivera, it began to be studied more, restrictions and quarantines were put in place, and efforts were made to get it under control.

But by then it was too late.  The disease, having a very long incubation period, had already spread throughout the Frontier and cases began popping up on every world.  Due to the horrific nature of the plague as well as the relatively high mortality rate, quarantines and restrictions became very strict.  Of course, this impacts production, research, and distribution, especially of food.  Because of the long incubation period, coupled with the long duration of the illness itself, these quarantines ended up lasting for a very long time.  As many people probably died of knock-on effects of these restrictions as died from the Blue Plague itself.

One impact of the long duration of the plague was the development of robot technology.  Since the citizens were afraid to come in contact with one another, something had to be done to produce the goods and food needed to sustain the populations of the various worlds.  Thus, robot technology got a huge boost.  The early models were crude, probably remotely operated, and not very sophisticated, but the plague launched the nascent robotics industry that would continue to develop over the intervening years.

More importantly, the Blue Plague resulted in a huge boost in funding into medical research.  This funding came from everywhere.  Governments heavily supported it at the behest of their citizens.  Companies supported both to try to keep their workers and as a public relations measure.  And private citizens supported it for a wide variety of reasons ranging from altruism to a desperate desire for self-preservation.

Regardless of the reason, funding into the biological and medical science boomed and universities and research institutions flourished.  It took several years, but a cure was finally found.  Along the way, other interesting avenues of research were uncovered but left unexplored in the rush to find the cure.  Eventually, all this research payed off and the Blue Plague was eradicated.

Aftermath

After the Blue Plague was under control, the citizens of the Frontier took stock of the situation and the results were horrifying.  Millions dead across every world of the Frontier.  Millions more permanently disfigured for life.  No one issued a proclamation, no one passed any laws, but collectively as a Frontier-wide community, the people resolved to never let this happen again.  The funding in the medical sciences, while never again as high a proportion of the total wealth of the Frontier as during the Blue Plague itself, remained very high.

Because of this high state of funding, all those interesting side avenues that had been discovered during the Blue Plague research were able to be pursued and developed.  Over time, this led to the development of the wonder drugs known in the modern Frontier as Biocort, Simdose, Staydose, Omnimycin, Antibody Plus, and AntiTox.  Six drugs that together can treat almost anything the universe might throw at you.

Having seen the benefits of using robots for many of the menial jobs required during the Blue Plague era, robotics continued to develop a heightened state, although nowhere near the level of the medical sciences.  Effort was put into developing robotic systems that could be autonomous and operate independently of direct supervision but rather controlled by programming or robot management software.  This heightened development has led to the relatively inexpensive and highly capable robots found in the Frontier today.

Of course, the cost of this increased medical and robotics development was a slowing of the development of the other technologies.  Computers, vehicles, starships, and even weapons systems fell behind the curve.  Advances were made, but not nearly at the pace of the robotics and medical technologies.  Thus we get the technology levels presented in the game rules.

Using This in Your Game

If you chose to use this history in your version of the Frontier, what impacts might it have in your game?

One aspect is survivors of the Blue Plague.  Depending on how long you made the extended history of the Frontier, and where you place the Blue Plague in that history, there might still be survivors bearing all the scars of their ordeal.  Personally, I don’t like the 400+ years of the Zeb’s Guide Timeline and prefer to compress it much more than that. Making it 200 years at most.  That allows me to have the technology not as developed.  But that means, given the 175 – 250 year average lifespans for the various Frontier species, there will be survivors of the Blue Plague still around.  They will be older, but could still be active members of society.  How do they see the world?  Do they have agendas they push for?  What stories do they have to tell and how has their experiences shaped the way they look at the world?

The modern wonder drugs can solve almost any issue.  What does that mean for all the companies that have invested in the research side of things?  Is research slowing down?  Is the funding shifting?  How does that impact the economy and the people working in those industries?  Maybe there is funding slowly shifting to other areas?  Are computers becoming smaller and more powerful, starting to move along the path of our Earth technology?  Is the money going other places?  Or maybe there are occurrences of other diseases like the Blue Plague that break out but never to the same extent that require constant retooling of the medicines keeping the biotech industry alive and well.

Is the Blue Plague really eradicated or do new cases pop up occasionally around the Frontier?  How do people react when it happens?  Are the causes natural or contrived?

How did the enforced isolation required during the Blue Plague era affect communities?  Would the isolation become standard?  Would it cause an increased awareness of the need for community?  Would it spark an increased care and understanding of the needs and interests of one’s neighbors?  Maybe it did all of those on different worlds or in different communities.  When you create a community for the PCs to interact with, you might sprinkle in an unusual custom that dates from the time of the Blue Plague.

What other ideas does this alternate timeline bring to mind?  How else might you apply it in your game?  Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY60.391 to FY61.019

This month see a new year in the Frontier, an escalation of the tension with a small battle between UPF and sathar forces, and the start of construction on a new UPF exploration ship. The HSS History’s Hope also runs in to some trouble with a few bad misjumps, ending up in systems they never intended.

Date (FY)Event
60.391 Construction of the CMS Swallow begins
60.392 The CRL-E1 maintenance robot on Jetsom stops functioning and refuse to move or obey any commands.  Resetting its mission and functions restores functionality but only for a few hours. The rescue team realize that it has become infected by the Matrix. (SFAD5)
60.393 – After reviewing the data from Patrol Group Flint, and in light of the information returned by the Discovery Squadron, the commander of Strike Force Nova decides to send another scouting mission to OFS019 before making more definite plans.

– Patrol Group Flint is again detached from the Strike Force and begins accelerating for a jump back to the OFS019 system.  If possible, they are to remain undetected in the system and transmit data back via subspace radio.
60.394 Second K’aken-Kar militia assault scout arrives in its home system.
60.395 Repair work and astrogation calculations complete, the HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating toward their next system, designated YS002.
60.396 Shakedown cruise complete, the fifth Saurian Ark Ship begins loading of cargo and passengers.
60.397 After over two weeks of dealing with issues caused by the Matrix, the rescue team finally discover its fatal weakness and start taking measures to destroy the virus and eradicate it from the Jetsom platform. (SFAD5)
60.398 Patrol Group Flint arrives in OFS019 once again. They stay near jump speed with engines off to reduce the chance of detection and coast across the system at high velocity. They begin cataloging signals from ships in the system.
60.399 The HSS History’s Hope initiates the Void Jump to YS02. Unfortunately, due to an error in their calculations, they end up in an unknown binary star system.  Designating this as YS03, they start deceleration and trying to figure out where they ended up.
60.400 – Preparations, which have been going on for weeks, are finalized on worlds around the Frontier for a major Founding Day celebration celebrating six full decades of the United Planetary Federation. While some events over the past year have been troubling, everyone is determined to make this a celebration to be long remembered.

– After two days of data collection, Patrol Group Flint catalogs an ever growing sathar presence in the system. They have identified over 25 military vessels including four of the new, unknown ship type, as well as a station and various ancillary ships. The data is relayed back to Strike Force Nova.
61.001 – Major Founding Day celebrations held throughout the Frontier. Although there were some small incidents, the general mood on every world was very upbeat.

– Having crossed the system so that their engine emissions should be less noticeable, Patrol Group Flint begins decelerating.  They have solidified the ship count to 8 fighters, 4 of the unknown ships, and 15 capital ships, plus a single space station.
61.002 WarTech factories on Hargut (Gruna Garu) attacked by unknown forces. Expecting a lower alert level due to the Founding Day celebrations, the attackers underestimate the automated defenses and alertness of the security staff and are repulsed with heavy losses.
61.003 Sathar forces in OFS019 detect the decelerating ships of PG Flint.  A light cruiser, two destroyers and a frigate are dispatched under radio blackout to intercept.  They boost hard for several hours and then kill their engines, minimizing emissions as they approach.
61.004 Streel files a protest with the Council of Worlds requesting that its ships that were part of Discovery Squadron be released by Strike Force Nova to return to the Frontier as they are private vessels and not part of Spacefleet or a planetary militia.
61.005 After six days of work, the History’s Hope astrogation team finally determines their location.  They shot way beyond their mark arriving in a system that is 6 light years beyond YS02. The good news is that they know where they were, the bad news is that it is well off the path they had planned to take, and they now have two uncharted jumps back to YS01.
61.006 – Deceleration complete, Patrol Group Flint continue to monitor the OFS019 system and begins plotting a return jump to Kazak from their current location.

– The Sathar starship construction center in the Liberty system completes a destroyer.

– With only eight days until the orbital window opens for them to return to the Moneyspider, the recovery team on Jetsom has nearly eradicated the Matrix from the mining platform.  The only holdouts are areas where damage prevents them from pressurizing the area and increasing the temperature.
61.007 After three days of deliberations within Spacefleet, the Council of Worlds, and slow communication with Strike Force Nova’s commander, all of the ships of Discovery Squadron are dedeputized and allowed to depart Kazak and return home.The six ships of Discovery Squadron from Truane’s Star depart immediately upon their release.  The two Humma ships stay with the Flight forces in the system.
61.008 Patrol Group Flint detect the approaching sathar ships as they begin decelerating and angling for intercept.  With evasion unlikely, the UPF ships send off a subspace radio and begin a hard acceleration to try to escape, while expecting to fight a very uneven battle.
61.009 The sathar ships catch Patrol Group Flint.  After a short running battle, the two UPF destroyers are destroyed by the sathar forces which suffer severe damage to the frigate and one destroyer, but all ships survive the battle.
61.010 – Loading complete, the fifth saurian Ark ships departs the Sauria system for destinations unknown.

– With the destruction of PG Flint, the sathar launch a raid into the Frontier sector to try to draw off the Frontier forces from wherever they are basing from. Two light cruisers, three destroyers, and a frigate leave for Zebulon via a high-speed transit of the Kazak system.
61.011 The HSS History’s Hope’s attempt to jump to the YS02 system from YS03 fails and they land once again in an unknown binary system of two M dwarf stars. As they decelerate, they begin trying to work out their position.  It seems travel here in the Vast Expanse is more difficult than expected.
61.012 Construction is completed on the CDCSS Mystic at the Triad (Cassidine) shipyards. While it has the same profile as the CDCSS Nightwind, this ship is focused on passenger transport rather than cargo.  It begins a shakedown cruise carrying CDC personnel from Triad to Rupert’s Hole and back.
61.013 The Council of Worlds convenes for the FY61 session. 
61.014 – The CMS Osprey docks with a strange looking freighter for what its commanding officer, Lt. Tabbe, says is a “high security” mission.  When the airlock opens sathar swarm into the assault scout. After an intense battle, the Osprey’s boarding party neutralize the sathar and their agent Lt. Tabbe.  The freighter gets away, but the Osprey is saved.

– The sathar ships from OFS019 arrive in Kazak well outside the inner system.  They remain near jump speed search the system for signals of Flight or Spacefleet presence in the system.
61.015 Detecting Strike Force Nova and the Flight forces in the system, the sathar ships begin cataloging the ships detected. They remain near jump speed and coast through the outer system.
61.016 After five days of around-the-clock work, the astrogators on the HSS History’s Hope have determined their location and also uncovered an error in their astrographic catalog that may have been the source of their error. The system is designated YS04.
61.017 – After a day of rest, the HSS History’s Hope’s astrogators begin charting a route to YS01, the closest system with known jump routes.  It is a 10 light year jump, the farthest new jump they have charted.  OFS219 is closer, at 8 ly, but would require several new jumps to get back to charted space lanes.

– Discovery Squadron arrives in the Osak system where they spend a day resting before heading on to Capella
61.018 The rescue crew from Jetsom returns to the Moneyspider to the relief of Captain Akizk.  As the rescue crew is en route to the Captain’s office, the Captain dies, seemingly by suicide. The second in command (Ellen Coopermann, human) doesn’t believe their report about the Matrix. (SFAD5)
61.019 The Frontier Expeditionary Force begins organizing a project to explore beyond the Theseus system.  A new ship, the UPFS Elanor Moraes is commissioned for construction at the Minotaur (Theseus) shipyards.

Here’s the full file:

DetailedFrontierTimelineDownload

Legends and Lore – Yazirians

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This is the second part of my post on the history, legends, and lore of the yazirians in my Star Frontier universe. Part one, Yazirian History, was posted last week. Both of these posts are part of February’s RPG Blog Carnival, Legends and Lore, being hosted by the Enderra blog.

In last week’s post, we looked at the history of the yazirian species in relation to their arrival in the Frontier region and colonization of the worlds they now occupy. Most of the material presented there is both fact and general knowledge in the Frontier that most characters would either know or be able to discover with just a little bit of research. In this post, we look at things that may be true but unknown, true but hidden, rumor, speculation, or conjecture, the latter three may be true or false. I’ll try to flag each of these items as I discuss them.

Some of this information is part of the ideas I have for an major campaign where the PCs go in search of the yazirian homeworld, the fate of those that remained behind, and the Warhon’s ship. They are definitely spoilers for anyone that may play in that game if I ever run it.

I think the best way to do this will be to organize the ideas by general topic, possibly with a miscellaneous section at the end. In each section, I’m just going to provide a bulleted list with the relevant information. Let’s get started.

The Fate of Yazira

  • The last exodus ship that arrived in the Frontier departed Yazira some ten years before closest approach of the interloping brown dwarf. (fact, known)
  • Millions of yazirians remained on Yaziria unwilling to leave their world. (fact, known)
  • No ship has ever returned to the Yazira system. (fact, known)
  • In the early days after yazirians arrived in the Frontier, several ships attempted to go back to Yazira to see what happened. None of these ships have ever returned. (fact, obscure)
  • Most of these ships that failed to return were destroyed by agents of the Family of One. (fact, deeply hidden) Some simply disappeared and their fate is unknown, but none made it to Yazira.
  • There is no known jump route data back to Yazira. (false rumor). Deep within the archives of Clan Anglann and the Family of One, there is a stored set of routes back to Yazira. They are known only to a few yazirians and heavily guarded and obscured. They are also nearly a century out of date at this point and may not be valid.
  • Modern yazirians don’t even know which star is their homeworld, just the general direction in the sky. (fact, known) There are some members of the Family of One who know, but this knowledge is a closely guarded secret as well.
  • Predictions of Yazira’s fate, based on the path of the brown dwarf, indicated that the planet would be hurled out of the system into deep interstellar space. (fact, obscure)
  • Instead of being spun out into interstellar space, Yaziria was actually captured by the brown dwarf as it passed through the system and now circles that object in a wide orbit as it continues on its journey. (fact, unknown)

Fate of the Warhon and his Guard

  • Of all the exodus ships, only the Warhon’s ship failed to make the trip to the Frontier (fact, known)
  • The Warhon’s ship was sabotaged by agents of Clan Anglann so that it wouldn’t arrive and they could seize power. (discredited rumor, but true). There is no evidence to support this anywhere in the Frontier but Clan Anglann did sabotage the Warhon’s ship. All records possibly relating to this were lost in a computer “crash” early after the exodus. Only two living yazirians, seniors elders in the Family of One, know the truth and they aren’t saying anything.
  • Most of the Warhon’s personal guard that were part of the early exodus died soon after arriving in the Frontier. (fact, obscure) Most of these deaths were “accidents” caused by Clan Anglann (obscure rumor, fact). Most modern yazirians have moved on and just don’t care.
  • Some of the Warhon’s Guard survived the purge and quickly emigrated to the Prenglar, Triad, and Truane’s Star systems where they went into hiding from the Family of One. (fact, obscure)
  • The survivors of the Warhon’s Guard formed a secret society named “True Yaziria” that word to oppose or diminish the influence of the Family of One (fact, obscure)
  • Despite the sabotage of the Warhon’s ship, it was not destroyed and managed to survive long enough to make planetfall on an unknown world. (fact, unknown) Rumors exist that it is still out there, spread by True Yazira, but it is all speculation. No facts exist to support it.
  • The genetic Ark on the Warhon’s ship survived and is completely intact in the remains of the ship. (fact, unknown)
  • All of the conspiracy against the Warhon was a very small slice of Clan Anglann. (fact, unknown/hidden) Most clan members were not involved and would be horrified to know the truth.

The General Population

  • Very few living yazirians actually remember their homeworld as most were born in the Frontier. There is a small and dwindling population (maybe 10%) of older yazirians that actually lived on Yazira. (fact, known)
  • There is a fairly large generation gap between this older population and the next wave of yazirians. In the final years leading up to the exodus, the birthrate dropped off significantly. (fact, known)
  • The yazirians of the Frontier, while aware of Yazira, don’t give it much thought except as it is used in holovids and expressions about how things used to be. (fact, known)
  • The problems with terraforming operations on the worlds in the Scree Fron, Athor, and Gruna Garu systems are intentional problems caused by the Family of One and the General Overall Development Corporation (GODCo) to keep those systems in line. (false, rumor). The problems truly are technical and result from GODCo being overextended trying to work on five different worlds instead of just the one they original planned for. Despite having nearly a century to grow, they still don’t have the resources and manpower they need. These issues provide openings for rumors to be spread by the True Yazira society in their effort to undermine the Family of One.
  • Interaction with the other species of the Frontier dealt a serious blow to the yazirian cultural identity as a warrior species. (fact, obscure) They discovered that despite their history, they were neither the strongest nor the nimblest species in the area. Although it is slowly fading away, ripples of this are still seen throughout yazirian culture, especially among older yazirians.

Lost Scoutships

  • There were many scout ships sent out from Yazira shortly after FTL travel was discovered, most of these never returned. (fact, obscure)
  • Several of these lost starships made it to systems in or near the Frontier, including Volturnus in the Zebulon system. There may be survivors, possibly descendants of the crews, in primitive societies to be discovered. The crew that made it to Zebulon did not survive. (fact, unknown)
  • Some of the scoutships penetrated into sathar space and were captured or destroyed. (fact, unknown)

Family of One and GODCo

  • All of the upper management of GODCo are members of the Family of One (fact, discoverable).
  • All of the upper management of GODCo are members of Clan Anglann (false, rumor). While a significant portion are, not all of them are from the same clan.
  • The Family of One is using the work done by GODCo to attempt to control all of the yazirian populated worlds. (false, rumor). While the upper leadership of GODCo are members of the Family of One, they are not ideological power-mongers. At least not any more than leaders of other mega-corps. While some fervently believe in the idea of a unified yazirian species according to the Family of One precepts, many are only interested in helping their fellow yazirians and are members of the Family of One out of necessity – they couldn’t hold their position if they weren’t.
  • Many members of the Family of One are members in name only and only minimally hold to many of the tenants of the religion. (fact) They are members because you need to be to hold any significant position on Hentz (Araks).
  • Family of One members on worlds other than Hentz tend to me more fervent as membership is optional on those worlds. (fact)
  • The Family of One is watching all aspects of yazirian culture, everywhere. (partially true, rumor). While the Family of One tries to keep abreast of everything going on, they don’t have nearly as many spies, inquisitors, and informants as the rumors (spread by the True Yazira society) would have you believe.
  • The Family of One is preventing GODCo from deploying all of its technology and releasing all the flora and fauna from Yazira on the worlds other than Hentz. (fact). Debates about this practice arise regularly in yazirian society. GODCo claims that it is because the environment are not ready or suitable, but most of the restrictions come from the Family of One and their effort to ensure that Hentz is the only “New Yazira”.

HSS History’s Hope

In my Detailed Frontier Timeline, one of the story threads is covering the travels of the HSS History’s Hope, a small exploration ship registered on Hakosaur (Scree Fron) that is currently trying to chart a route to a star system believed to be Yazira. If you want to use this little storyline in your campaign, there are some rumors about it, even though the project has just started.

  • The Family of One tried to cover up and suppress the discovery of the star system with the nearby brown dwarf because they knew it was Yazira. (fact, rumor) This rumor popped up almost immediately and is based in fact. The star system is Yazira and the Family of One doesn’t want people poking around because no one knows what they will find.
  • The HSS History’s Hope is being financed by True Yazira. (partially true) While many of the original supporters of the expedition, and and many that provided initial funding, are members of True Yazira, not all of them are and it isn’t a project being directed by the secret society. It just aligned with the society’s goals and many members independently jumped on the opportunity.
  • Most of the entire crew of the HSS History’s Hope are members of True Yaziria (fact, obscure rumor). Since the society’s membership is very obscured, it is hard to tell for sure who is and who isn’t a member. The rumor circulates among upper members of the Family of One. Most others don’t know about the secret society or don’t care. The fact is that about 80% of the crew are members of the society simply because they have an interest in finding Yazira. It wasn’t intentionally planned.
  • The Family of One has sent ships to eliminate the HSS History’s Hope. (fact, hidden). This one is a spoiler for the timeline. As I’m writing this, the History’s Hope has had a bad string of calculations and made some misjumps. When they finally get back to the known space lanes, they are going to have to deal with this.

Outstanding Questions

The points above provide some ideas and background but they also raise a number of questions. These are either things I’m going to flesh out in the future as I develop the storylines more or things that someone using this information could expand upon as well. Some of these are:

  • What exactly happened to the Warhon’s ship?
    • How did it fail? What was the damage?
    • Did the crew survive? All enter freeze fields?
    • What happened to the Warhon’s family?
  • If they made it to a planet surface, what is their current state?
    • Another yazirian colony?
    • What tech level are they at?
    • What happened to the genetic ark?
  • What is the “True Yaziria” society doing?
    • How to you become a member?
    • How well known is it?
    • What resources does it have access to?
    • I invented this organization just recently as I was working out the detail of these two posts so this is an area I plan on expanding on. This may very well show up as an entry in June when I’m hosting the Blog Carnival.
  • What events and consequences will the HSS History’s Hope expedition trigger? What will they find?

Final Thoughts

That’s what I have for now. There is still a lot of legend and lore for the yazirians that could be explored. I intentionally didn’t cover much in regards to the daily life of a typical member of the species and current events in the Frontier, just items that are part of their cultural heritage. Some of these other ideas will undoubtedly show up in future posts. Other bits may show up in the pages of the Frontier Explorer.

What legends and lore do you have for the yazirian species? Share your ideas in the comment section below.

Yazirian History

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The RPG Blog Carnival this month is being hosted by the Enderra Worldbuild & Role-playing Games blog and the topic is Legends and Lore. You can follow that link to find all the other posts people have made on the topic.

When I read this topic, my mind immediately went to the Yazirians in the Star Frontiers setting. They were a natural choice to pursue in greater depth, especially based on much of the fan material that has been developed for that species. And while I’ve been thinking about these ideas for all of the Star Frontiers species, the yazirians are particularly relevant to me right now since part of my Detailed Frontier Timeline (most recent post as of this writing) is currently dealing with a plot line exploring this history directly, namely a ship, the HSS History’s Hope, that is headed toward a system that they think might be Yazira, the yazirian homeworld.

A lot of the foundation for this background is set in two articles that we published in the Star Frontiersman nearly a decade ago in issue 16, back in December 2010. The first is an article written by my friend Tom Verreault entitled “Origin of the Species & the UPF” on page 34 of that issue. In this he gives his version of how the various species in the Frontier got there. The second article, which I wrote to support the ideas he presented for the yazirians in that article, is entitled “Interstellar Interloper (Brown Dwarf)” (p. 46), and discusses what could happen to a planetary system if a brown dwarf sized object passed close through the center of a star system. I recommend you grab issue 16 and read both articles.

This is going to be a two part series. In this first post will look at the background and history of the Yazirian race as I conceive them when running games. The next one will look at the Legends and Lore as it exists at the current point in the campaign. Some of the material is fact, some is common knowledge, some is belief, and some is propaganda. I’ll be looking at it from all those angles.

The Loss of Yazira

The yazirian homeworld, Yazira, orbited a K4 star that is located some 100 light years “west” of the Frontier in an area known as the Vast Expanse, so named because of its low stellar density and large distances between neighboring star systems. Interestingly, very, very few yazirians living today actually know the location of this star system. More on that in the next post. To start let’s go back to about 200 years ago.

It was a time of relative peace and growing industrialization and prosperity for the world. The world had been united under a single government for several centuries and was beginning to develop spaceflight and really start looking into the universe beyond the Yazira system.

A Threat Discovered

It was at this point, as they began to survey the cosmos, that the yazirian astronomers noticed something in the sky that would completely change the course of their specie’s history. When it was first discovered, it was a curiosity. An object extremely bright in the infrared but extremely faint in the visible, even with the yazirian’s definition of visible light that extended somewhat into the infrared. It wasn’t long before a theoretical model was developed for the object, something we today call a brown dwarf.

The astronomers were excited. Based on the observed characteristics, they realized it had to be very close to Yazira. It would allow them to study this type of object up close. As the object was studied more, the distance, a mere 1500 AU, was established.

However, what was also established was that it was coming closer. Over the next few years, the orbit of the object was refined and it was realized that the brown dwarf was falling nearly directly toward their star and would pass very close to their world in the process. Simulations showed that depending on the mass of the object and its exact path, their world and species was in for a major catastrophe ranging from severe and drastic orbital and therefore climate change to complete ejection from their solar system. If something wasn’t done, they were probably doomed as a species.

The bad news was that they were in trouble. The good news was that they had nearly 140 years to prepare. To the Warhon’s credit (the leader of the yazirians), he took the news in stride and neither dismissed it since it wouldn’t happen in his lifetime, nor panicked. Rather he understood the issue for what it was and began charting a course for his people.

The general populace wasn’t so stoic. Many denounced the scientists as alarmists. Others claimed the discovery to be a hoax. Still others used it to as an excuse to hoard survival gear, food, and other essentials and drop out of society. Many just ignored it due to the long time scale. The most troubling, however, were those that took the news to mean that society was over and reverted to lawlessness and anarchy. It was these latter groups that would plague yazirian society for the next century.

A Plan Takes Shape

Over the next decade, as the Warhon’s troops dealt with the anarchists and the astronomers worked to refine the object’s trajectory even more, the government began investing heavily in space technology. While yazirians had already visited their two moons and had many low altitude orbital flights, the extra push from the government allowed them to set foot on other worlds in the system for the first time before the decade was over.

With the development in space technology well under way, the government also started a few other projects. One was increased medical research, especially related to long duration spaceflight and how the yazirian body would adapt and change under different conditions (gravity, stellar flux, etc).

The other was called the Ark Project. This had two areas of focus. The first was to catalog the genomes of every species on the planet, plant and animal, and collect this into a large database as well as collecting samples of as many species as possible. The second was a push into cloning technology that would allow the recreation of those species from the database.

The ultimate goal was to move the yazirian population off of their homeworld to somewhere else. Where was yet to be determined. The initial plan called for the creation of huge generations ships that would travel to likely star systems looking for a world to inhabit. Astronomers had already begun looking for worlds around other suitable stars.

A Change of Plans

Some thirty years after the original identification of the brown dwarf, a discovery occurred that would change the very foundation of what had come to be called the Exodus project.

Using a variety of propulsion technologies, a major break through had been achieved that would allow them to accelerate small probes fast enough to reach some of the nearer star systems before the generations ships would have to leave the Yazira system. The first probes were launched, and as they achieved speeds of about 1% the speed of light, only a fraction of their final velocity, they vanished.

At first it was believed that the probes had broke up or otherwise become inoperable. However, deep radar scans of the region of space they should have been in returned no data. And having five probes, all going different directions, vanish in exactly the same way was more than mere coincidence.

Another set of probes were launched as a test which ended with the exact same result. Yazirian scientists realized that this was some fundamental aspect of physics that they had not suspected or known about. Hundreds of researchers started working on the problem.

It was nearly a decade before a breakthrough was made and a theory of hyperdimensional travel was discovered. In the mean time, work had been going on to improve technology to the point that a crewed vessel could achieve the speeds necessary to invoke the effect.

It would be another decade before a ship was ready to make the first attempt at testing this theory. With a total delta-V of 5% of the speed of light, the ship should be able to achieve the hyperdimenional travel speed, slow down and do it again. Thus is should be able to make a trip and return. In theory.

A Historic Flight

With an all volunteer crew, the YSS Grand Voyager set out on its maiden voyage in an attempt to make history. It took a month of acceleration to get up to near the 1% speed of light threshold and then another agonizing month of small bursts of thrust to precisely measure and cross the threshold. Then just like the the probes, the Grand Voyager vanished.

It would be months of anxious waiting before the fate of the Grand Voyager would be learned. Most people had given up hope when a faint radio signal was received from the ship coming from high out of the orbital plane of the system. They had survived the trip and hyperdimensional travel, which would come to be called Void travel when they met the other species in the Frontier, was possible. There was still much to learn about this new form of travel, but the travel time for the exodus had been greatly reduced.

Looking for a Place to Call Home

Over the next two decades, propulsion technology was innovated and improved and more and more ships were launched to scout out the nearby star systems looking for a world that they could move the population of Yazira to. Most of these ships would eventually be lost as they explored further and further from Yazira. It was not known if there were troubles with the Void travel, mechanical failures with the ships, or they had suffered misfortune in the systems they visited.

As ships did return, they learned much about the nearby stellar systems but no suitable world was found. Finally, after nearly two more decades of searching, a ship returned from a two year journey reporting that a suitable world had been found, nearly 100 light years away. The star was significantly brighter and yellower than Yazira but the world itself was nearly Yazira’s twin in climate and gravity.

During this time, the designs of the exodus ships were rebuilt from the ground up to use this new mode of faster than light travel. With a destination finally established, exploration ceased and construction began on the first ship, the YSS Yazira’s Ark, that would take a select crew, along with a copy of the genetic archive, to this new world to start preparing it for the arrival of the rest of the population.

The Exodus Begins

It took five years for the YSS Yazira’s Ark to be completed. Crewed primarily by members of Clan Anglann, it departed for the new system which had been dubbed Araks to colonize and begin yaziriforming the planet Hentz.

By this time, the brown dwarf was visible to the unaided eye on Yazira and was year by year growing brighter. The world began to focus almost completely on the construction of the exodus ships. While there were some that decried the damage being done to the environment due to the industrialization of the planet, most understood that the world was doomed and so accepted the changes.

Five years after the YSS Yazira’s Ark left, five more ship were completed with nearly twenty-five more in some stated of completion. These later ships were gigantic, nearly ten times the size of the Yazira’s Ark. It would take nearly two hundred more to move the entire population. With the first five ships complete, the exodus of the yazirian population to Hentz began in earnest.

It had been decided early on that when the time came, ships would be populated by clans. While the crews were often from Clan Anglann, the passengers were drawn from a single clan or possibly two. Depending on the size of the clan, it could take two or three ships to hold the entire clan population.

Over the next two decades, a steady stream of ships departed the Yazira system. Finally, the last ships were completed, three of the giant colony ships and a final, smaller ship modeled on the original Yazira’s Ark. This last ship contained the Royal Court, the Warhon and his family, who was the son of the Warhon who had started the project, 120 years earlier. It also contained a final copy of the genetic database including all the additional data that had been collected since the Yazira’s Ark had left. It was the last ship to leave their doomed world. The interloping brown dwarf was clearly visible in the night sky and only 18 years away. It was the last ship to leave.

Trouble at the Destination

As the second wave of colony ships were arriving at Hentz, the yazirians detected signals from other spacefaring species not too far from their new world. Concerned that they might be hostile, Clan Anglann, which had been organizing the exodus, diverted ships from waves three and four to several new worlds in systems nearby. These ships went to the Athor, Gruna Garu and Scree Fron systems. The worlds there were not as desirable as Hentz, but the yazirians wouldn’t have all their eggs in a single basket if these new species proved to be hostile.

Loss of the Warhon

The trip from Yazira to Araks was a long one requiring nearly twenty Void jumps along the way. As the final fleet of ships made the journey, disaster struck. On the 5th jump, the Warhon’s ship didn’t arrive in the destination system. The other three ships waited for nearly two months but the Warhon never reappeared. Finally, they completed their journey and delivered the news to the yazirians on Hentz and it was related to the others in the Athor, Gruna Garu, and Scree Fron systems.

A week of mourning was held for the Warhon’s family. And then political chaos erupted. With the entire royal family gone, a power vacuum was created. In the end, Clan Anglann and the Family of One, who had been organizing the exodus on behalf of the Warhon, took control of the yazirian government.

Fallout

Many suspected foul play. Of the nearly 250 ships built, only the newest ship with the most up to date technology was unable to make the trip. Coincidentally, it also happened to contain the Warhon and his family. The most vocal opponents of the Family of One’s rule was the Warhon’s personal guard that had arrived in advance. Their voices were quickly surpressed. Many just vanished. Others emigrated to the Prenglar, Cassidine, and Truane’s Star systems, integrating with the other races in the Frontier who the yazirians had established contact with some years before.

It wasn’t too many years later that the sathar first appeared in the Frontier. This effectively put an end to the inter-clan conflict as the species in the Frontier united to fend off his new foe. With the formation of the UPF, the yazirian race started looking forward instead of back. Some still remember the old days but most have accepted the new order and are working toward the future.

Next Time

That represents the history of the Yazirian people as most people know it. There are a few things in that narrative that are not widely known (such as the suppression of dissension by the Family of One, but that information should be familiar to most yazirian characters and many non-yazirians as well.

Next week we’ll look at lots of details behind the scenes and outside the Frontier that impact the store and contribute to the lore of the yazirian species.

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY60.360 to FY60.390

This is a busy month in the time line with lots of events happening simultaneously. If I had realized how much overlap there would be in some of the story threads, I might not have started the Bugs in the System (SFAD5) thread last month. The timing of the Warriors of White Light events, however, have been scheduled since the beginning of the project.

Things are coming to a head relative to the Sathar Starship Construction Center in OFS019. I haven’t really decided how that will resolve out yet so we’ll just have to wait and see. Also, the HSS History’s Hope is making regular, if slow progress toward it’s goal. They’ve been lucky recently. I roll with each newly charted jump to see if they make it and they’ve made a few by just a couple of percentiles. Moving into the Vast Expanse the jumps are going to get significantly longer with much lower probabilities. At some point I’ll post a star map with the systems in what I’m calling the Yazira Sector.

If you follow along on Twitter (@StarFrontiers) you may have noticed that I fell behind a bit a couple of times this month as well as dropping some of the story lines and having to get caught up. That’s what I get for just working a few days ahead recently. I’m going to try to get a bit ahead of this again in the next few days. Anyway, on to the timeline.

Date (FY)Event
60.360 – The TransTravel assault scout arrives at Terldrom (Fromeltar)

– Strike Force Nova, joined by the ships of Patrol Group Virgo, leaves orbit around Volturnus (Zebulon) and starts accelerating for their jump to the Capella system in the Rim.
60.361 Sathar SCC#2 (Liberty) completes a destroyer.
60.362 Discovery Squadron successfully jumps into the OFS017 system coming in high out of the plane of the system.  With two near misses, they decided to take some downtime in this system to allow the astrogators to rest.
60.363 Just 10 days after the buyout, the Groth Energy Corporation (GE) has reopened all their operations. They also announce a major hike in energy prices. There is much grumbling but due to the nature of the Groth (Fromeltar) infrastructure, most customers are locked into to GE as their only provider and must pay the higher prices or be cut off.
60.364 The HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps to the system designated YS001 and begins deceleration in preparation for their return jump to OFS222.  They are the first ship to leave the Outer Frontier Sector into the Vast Expanse in over five decades, none before have ever returned.
60.365 Repairs on the starship construction center orbiting Triad (Cassidine) restore capacity back to 80% of maximum.
60.366 Sathar SCC#4 completes 5 fighters
60.367 Confident now that the danger to the newly hatched eorna is past, another cretch of fifty eggs is hatched.
60.368 – A freighter, the HHSS Sojourner, traveling from Scree Fron to Araks, stops over at Snobol (Belnafaer) due to engine trouble.  The freighter has several passengers in addition to its regular cargo (SFAD5)

– After several days of rest and time for some needed maintenance, the ships of the Discovery squadron begin accelerating for a jump back to Kazak.  This will be their last uncharted jump.
60.369 Strike Force Nova arrives at Faire (Capella).  Fleet officers meet with leaders of the Flight and the Rim Government to discuss plans for the OFS019 system.
60.370 – Responding to a mayday call from the PSS Prenglar Doll, the CMS Osprey engages the pirate ship PVSS Raven, a Streel manufactured corvette that was attacking the PSS Prenglar Doll. The Raven escapes the battle after damaging the Osprey’s engines but the crew and cargo of the Prenglar Doll survive the encounter. (SFKH0)

– Having completed their deceleration, and jump calculations, the HSS History’s Hope begins acceleration back to the OFS222 system.
60.371 Captain Akizk of the Moneyspider recruits some of the passengers of the HHSS Sojourner to remain in the system and help him get Jetsom working again and rescue any crew still trapped there.
60.372 Sathar SCC#5 completes a light cruiser
60.373 Discovery Squadron successfully jumps into the Kazak system and begins decelerating toward Stenmar Station.  They transmit all their navigation data to the UPF and Rim Coalition forces.
60.374 Construction of second assault scout for the K’aken-Kar militia is completed at the Terldrom (Fromeltar) shipyard.  It begins it’s journey to it’s home system.
60.375 – The GLLR-5 recreation robot on the Moneyspider goes haywire attacking Daqor Klarr (vrusk) and Fiator Geauis (dralasite) in the rec room. A symptom of the Matrix infecting the Moneyspider, it is considered a simple programming glitch. (SFAD5)

– The HSS History’s Hope arrives back in the OFS222 system and begins deceleration.  They transmit jump data back to the UPF.
60.376 – The team recruited by Captain Akizk of the Moneyspider descend to Jetsom to investigate the problems there. They find the platform operating but the life support is keeping the temperature very cold (-10 C). (SFAD5)

– After a week of discussion, no consensus has been reached between the Rim and Strike Force Nova as to how best deal with the sathar in OFS019.  Strike Force Nova leaves Faire (Capella) to continue on to the Kazak system.
60.377 – Construction completed on the UPF light cruiser in the Gran Quivera (Prenglar) starship construction center, replacing the one lost at the Battle of Zebulon.

– Exploration of the Jetsom platform reveals one crew member in a freeze field, the body of another in a freeze field whose power failed, and the remains of a third that was killed by the sapes on the platform.  The sapes are still alive and the fourth crew member is missing. (SFAD5)
60.378 – The body of the fourth Jetsom crew member (Akord Zon – vrusk) is found, dead and slumped over her computer terminal in the reactor room.  A tear in her insuit resulted in a radiation overdose that killed her. (SFAD5)

– After two days of work, the rescue team can still not get control of the life support system on the Jetsom. While attempts to correct the system seem to work, they always revert to the very cold temperatures after a few hours. (SFAD5)

– Discovery Squadron arrives at Stenmar Station.  The commanding officer of Patrol Group Flint deputizes the ships to be part of the patrol group until Strike Force Nova arrives and decides the next course of action
60.379 On its one year anniversary, the Yazira Dome has received over 5 million visitors. During a special celebration, GODCo announces its intent to build a second dome on Hakosaur in the Scree Fron system. Many believe that this is in response to the pressures to allow non-yazirian visitors into the dome on Hentz (Araks).
60.380 – A wildcat miner in the White Light asteroid belt reports the location of a pirate base in the asteroid Planaron to the Clarion Royal Marines.  Plans begin immediately to neutralize the base. (SFKH0)

– Deceleration complete, the HSS History’s Hope begins acceleration back toward YS001 to continue their voyage into the uncharted space.
60.381 – On board the Jetsom, hatches start randomly locking and alarms start randomly going off reporting dangerous conditions when none exist. (SFAD5)

– Strike Force Nova arrives in the Osak system.  They maintain velocity near jump speed and begin plotting jump to Kazak.
60.382 The four Clarion Royal Marine militia vessels (1 frigate & 3 assault scouts) engage the pirate forces (3 corvettes) at the pirate base.  The CMS Wasp is destroyed in the fight and all the militia vessels take damage. The frigate, the CMS Leo, is nearly destroyed as well. The pirate vessels and base are all eliminated. (SFKH0)
60.383 An order is placed at the Minotuar starship construction center (Theseus) for two new assault scouts for the Clarion Royal Marines, the CMS Flitter and the CMS Swallow.
60.384 Construction completed on fifth Saurian Ark Ship which begins its shakedown cruise.
60.385 Based on Akord Zon’s notes and their experiences over the past week, the rescue crew on the Jetsom establish that the computer and electrical failures are due to the action of a semi-sentient computer virus that Akord had named “the Matrix.” (SFAD5)
60.386 Using Akord Zone’s notes and after much experimentation, the rescue team on Jetsom are finally able to wrest control of the life support system from the control of the Matrix.  They reset the temperature on the platform to a more comfortable 20 C. (SFAD5)
60.387 Construction of the CMS Flitter begins
60.388 The rescue team on Jetsom start experiencing issues with their equipment that they brought with them, especially any power packs that they have recharged recently.  They register as charged but provide no power. (SFAD5)
60.389 Having arrived back in YS001, the crew of the HSS History’s Hope begin maintenance work on the ship while the astrogators work on plotting the jump route for the next leg. The target is a small M dwarf 5 lightyears away.
60.390 Strike Force Nova arrives at Stenmar Station (Kazak). Patrol Group Flint is merged back into the Strike Force.  Together with Discovery Squadron and the Flight forces in the system, the warships represent the greatest collection of ships since the Second Common Muster to face the sathar six decades previous.

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