Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY61.204 to FY61.233

Here comes the next installment of the detailed Frontier Timeline. The HSS History’s Hope is returning back home for it’s annual maintenance and gets waylaid, the UPFS Eleanor Moraes and CMS Osprey discover the sathar starship construction center in the FS30 system, and the Saurians start the process of settling into the Frontier.

We are drawing closer and closer to the launch of the sathar attack into the Frontier that will come to be known as the Second Sathar War. As I was starting to work ahead on that I realized that since back in mid April, I had forgotten to post the updates about the sathar ship construction and movement of sathar ships outside the Frontier. All of the craziness that result from COVID-19 resulted in me dropping the ball on these posts. The funny thing is, when I started this project nearly two years ago, these were the very posts and bits of information that I started the project to track. Seeing how the sathar moved ships around in preparation for and during the battle what the inspiration for the project in the first place. It’s kind of ironic that that is what I lost track of. The other stuff was just supposed to be filler around these posts, but these other threads seem to have taken on lives of their own.

I’ve gone back and fixed that error. In the final document at the bottom of the page, the posts (which start on FY61.068) that I missed posting to Twitter and in the monthly updates are highlighted in a blue font. I’ve assembled them into a separate table below so that you can see them all together if you don’t want to search for them in the document and see them in their context. These missed updates include almost all of the positioning of sathar forces before the commencement of the invasion. Going forward, things will be included as regular updates and posts and I won’t have to backfill.

I also realized, as I’m completing the events of the SFKH4 – The War Machine module, that in the time line, the Liberty System, which is the location of that adventure, is still unnamed and only known as FS30 on the star maps. So I’ve gone back through the document and changed all reference to the Liberty system to FS30. The name change actually occurs in the coming month and is an event that will be in the next update.

The Lost Events

Date (FY)	Events
61.068	A new sathar starship construction center comes on-line and begins producing ships. This new center is located in a system “south” of Prenglar, OFS203. It is designated SCC#1.
61.081	Sathar SCC#2 (FS30) produces 6 fighters
61.096	Sathar SCC#2 (FS30) produces a destroyer
61.105	Sathar SCC#3 (OFS138) produces a frigate
61.116	Sathar SCC#4 (OFS111) produces a frigate
61.128	3 sathar ships (1 DD, 1 LC, 1 AC, designated transit group TG 1) depart SCC#5 (OFS19) and begin accelerating for a high-speed transit to SCC#4 (OFS111).
61.141	A destroyer is completed in the sathar SCC#3 (FS30)
61.146	The sathar SCC#4 (OFS111) completes 5 fighters.
61.148	The ships of sathar TG1 arrive at SCC#4 (OFS111). The destroyer remains in the system while the remaining ships are joined by 12 fighters (housed in the assault carrier) and another light cruiser. TG1 begins acceleration for a high-speed transit to SCC#3 (OFS 136).
61.150	A sathar frigate leaves SCC#4 (OFS111) and begins a high speed transit to SCC#5 (OFS019)
61.170	The sathar frigate arrives at SCC#5 (OFS019)
61.172	The ships of sathar TG1 arrive at SCC#3 (OFS136). They are joined by another assault carrier (with 8 fighters), 3 heavy cruisers, and 3 frigates. They depart immediately and begin accelerating for a high-speed transit to OFS167.
61.173	The Sathar battle fleet arrives in orbit around Edge (Precipice). They meet no resistance and begin bombing the planet.
61.175	Destruction of the saurian world Edge (Precipice) complete, the sathar battle fleet begins acceleration to return to the Sauria system.
61.180	Several sathar ships (1 AC, 1 HC, 1 LC, & 6 fighters, designated TG2) leave SCC#2 (FS30) and begin accelerating for a high-speed transit to new SCC#1 (OFS203).
61.182	The sathar SCC#5 (OFS019) completes a cutter and light cruiser.
61.184	The sathar fleet arrives back at Kischen (Sauria). They begin an aggressive patrol of the system looking for any survivors or other ships that escaped their initial attack.
61.186	The Sathar SCC#2 (FS30) completes a destroyer. It along with six others, depart the SCC and begin accelerating for a high-speed transit to OFS 167.
61.193	Sathar Transit Group 1 arrive in the inner system of OFS167. They begin patrolling the system and waiting for other ships to arrive.
61.194	– Sathar TG1 is reformed consisting of 1 AC (with 6 fighters), 1 HC, 1 LC, and 1 frigate. It departs OFS167 immediately for a high-speed transit to SCC#1 (OFS203) – A new transit group (TG3) is formed from the ships at OFS167. Consisting of 1 HC, 1 AC and 7 fighters, it begins accelerating for a high-speed transit to SCC#2 (FS30).
61.200	Sathar Transit Group 2 (1 AC, 1 HC, 4 DD, & 8 fighters), arrive at the newly operating SCC#1 (OFS203)

That covers everything I missed in months past. I missed a few events in this month’s activities as I was doing the Twitter posts but they will just be included in the regular update below. The events I missed posting on Twitter will be highlighted in italics.

The Regular Update

Date (FY)	Events
61.204	After two days of preparation, the UPFS Eleanor Moraes, CMS Osprey, and the sathar scout ship (now named the UPFS Backdoor) lift off from Mahg Mar and begin accelerating toward the FS 30 system using the captured astrogation data. (SFKH4)
61.205	After over a week of deliberations, discussions, and subspace communications all of the Frontier, Princess Leotia of Clarions extends a formal invitation from her world to the Saurians to set up an initial settlement there.
61.206	– PG Meteor successfully jumps into the White Light system. They do not slow down but immediately begin calculations for the 10 light year jump to Theseus. – The second saurian Ark ships joins the first one in orbit around Minotaur and delegates from that ship join the discussions.
61.207	– Two UPF Frigates slated for SF Meteor are completed in the Minotaur (Theseus) shipyards. They begin a short shakedown cruise while they wait for the arrive of the assault scouts in PG Meteor. – After two days of internal discussions, the saurians agree to send one of the ark ships to White Light for direct discussions about settling on Clarion, at least initially. Princess Leotia offers to accompany them personally on their vessel as a show of good faith.
61.208	– The UPFS Eleanor Moraes, CMS Osprey, and UPFS Backdoor successfully jump into the FS30 system. They begin decelerating toward the location of the sathar base, codenamed Base Alpha. (SFKH4) – The first ship, a light cruiser, is completed at the new sathar SCC#1 (OFS203) south of Prenglar.
61.209	– The HSS History’s Hope jumps into the YS03 system and begins work on the jump back to YS02. – Sathar Transit Group 3 arrives at SCC#2 (FS30)
61.210	After 3 days of preparation, the 7th saurian Ark Ship leaves orbit around Minotaur and begins accelerating for a jump to the White Light system.
61.211	Jump calculations complete, PG Meteor jumps to the Theseus system and begins decelerating toward Minotaur.
61.212	– After four days of deceleration, the UPF ships approach the location of Base Alpha in the FS30 system. They realize that the base is a small assault carrier. Leaving the other ships behind, the captured sathar scout ship (UPFS Backdoor) approaches the carrier. (SFKH4) – The UPFS Backdoor is pulled in to a docking bay of the sathar carrier. After an intense battle through the decks of the sathar vessel, the crew manages to capture the ship and eject its engines before they can overload and destroy the vessel. (SFKH4)
61.213	Several ships, independently dispatched by members of the True Yaziria society, arrive in YS01. They discover several Family of One vessels in the system patrolling for the eventual arrival of the HSS History’s Hope as it returns to the Frontier.
61.214	– The HSS History’s Hope jumps to the YS02 system arriving safely. They begin work to make the jump back to YS01. – The True Yaziria ships engage the Family of One ships destroying one, crippling another, and driving off the remaining two. The FoO ships are trailed until they jump out of the YS01 system. – Four sathar fighters arrive from the inner system to investigate the explosions of the sathar carrier’s engines. A battle ensues between the CMS Osprey, UPF Eleanor Moraes, UPFS Backdoor, and the sathar fighters. The UPF forces win but the Moraes is severely damaged. (SFKH4)
61.215	– The 7th saurian Ark Ship jumps into the White Light system and begins decelerating toward Clarion. Princess Leotia radios ahead to alert her father of their arrival. – PG Meteor arrives at Minotaur station, the assault scout crews are given two days of rest before they are given their next assignment. The two frigates join the assault scouts, and the ships are temporarily assigned to the Frontier Expeditionary Force under Commander Reider.
61.216	After two days of engine overhauls and repairs, a small chemically propelled rocket approaches the UPF ships in the FS30 system. Capturing the rocket, they determine that it is a message requesting a meeting from some unknown group. They radio back to FEF headquarters. (SFKH4)
61.217	– The UPF forces in FS30 receive orders from Commander Reider to make contact with whomever sent the rocket and learn as much about the sathar in the system as possible. He is personally bringing reinforcements. – PG Meteor is split into two groups. One (a frigate and 4 AS) are sent to the FS26 system to see if any sathar ships were pursuing the saurians and establish a forward screen there. The other (a frigate and 2 AS), commanded by Commander Reider, depart for the trip to FS30. – After completing preparations, the crew of the UPFS Eleanor Moraes depart for the rendezvous point indicated by the map in the rocket. (SFKH4)
61.218	The full White Light Militia, sans the CMS Osprey, boost out from Clarion station to meet the saurian Ark Ship. – The sathar SCC#1 (OFS218) completes a frigate.
61.219	– With everything ready to go, the crew of the HSS History’s Hope prepares to jump back to the YS01 system. They go on high alert as this is the system they were attacked in before and are worried that there will be trouble again. – Jumping in to the YS01 system, the crew of the HSS History’s Hope detect radio signals from several different ships. Initially concerned, they soon realize that these ships are there as escorts, not antagonists. Work begins on jump calculations as the ships in the inner system accelerate to join them. – The Eleanor Moraes crew arrives at the rendezvous point, a small asteroid that has been hollowed out into a space station. After docking they meet with a new race, called the Mhemne. (SFKH4) – Two sathar destroyers arrive at SCC#3 (OFS138) and join the forces there.
61.220	– The 7th saurian Ark Ship, together with the White Light militia, settle into orbit around Clarion. Preparations are begun to send a delegation to the surface. – After a day of negotiations, the UPF forces and the Mhemne reach an agreement to work against the sathar in the system. They plan to slip to the surface of the planet (Snowball) and contact the resistance there and investigate the sathar factories on the surface. (SFKH4)
61.221	– SF Nova prepares to depart the K’aken-Kar system and begins accelerating toward the K’tsa-Kar system. – UPF forces descend to the surface of Snowball (FS30). After fighting off a Sathar hovercraft, they make contact with the Mhemne resistance on the surface. (SFKH4) – After consulting with Commander Reider, the UPF forces, assisted by the Mhemne resistance, begin a series of raids on the sathar factories on the surface of Snowball to disrupt sathar operations while they wait for PG Lancet to arrive in system. (SFKH4) – Descending to the surface of Clarion (White Light), the saurian delegation are met by King Leotus and Princess Leotia as welcome guests. The next several days are spent in meetings, festivities, and other activities to introduce the saurians to the Clarion culture.
61.222	– The larger portion of PG Meteor (retaining the PG Meteor designation) arrive in the FS26 system. They don’t detect any sathar signals but do detect the saurian beacon. They begin decelerating toward the inner system. – The smaller portion of PG Meteor, now designated PG Lancet, arrive in the Padda system. They begin calculations for a jump to the Waller Nexus system without slowing down.
61.223	After two days of discussions, the saurian delegation, escorted by Princess Leotia, begin a multi-day tour of Clarion to look for sites where the saurians could set up a permanent settlement.
61.224	– Joined by the True Yaziria escort vessels, the HSS History’s Hope jumps to the OFS222 system. They immediately begin engine overhauls and plotting the next jump to OFS221. – The last sathar Transit Group, TG1, arrives at sathar SCC#1 (OFS203). All ships stand down and complete any maintenance needed after their recent maneuvers.
61.225	After training the Mhemne resistance fighters, the combined UPF/Mhemne force make their first raid on a sathar factory. Catching the factory unprepared, they overwhelm the defenses and manage to capture one of the sathar shuttles. (SFKH4)
61.226	PG Meteor arrives in the inner system of FS26. The ships split up to begin exploring the planets there while remaining alert for sathar vessels.
61.227	– After completing engine overhauls and the astrogation calculations, PG Lancet jumps into the Waller Nexus system. The immediately begin work to jump to the FS30 system, again without slowing down. – Resting a day after their first assault, the UPF/Mhemne force on the surface of Snowball attack a second sathar factory. This fight proves to be a bit more challenging as the factory is on alert after the first attack. The factory is destroyed but the attacking forces are unable to capture another shuttle. (SFKH4)
61.228	After 5 days of guided exploration, the saurians decide on a location in the southern hemisphere of Clarion that is about a quarter of the way around the planet from Valencia, Clarion’s capital. They return to their ships to begin preparations for establishing the settlement.
61.229	– After another day of rest, the UPF/Mhemne forces attack the third known sathar factory. This is the most vicious fight yet and the sathar forces intentionally destroy all the shuttles when it is apparent they will lose the fight. (SFKH4) – Strike Force Nova settles into orbit around Kwadl-Kik (K’tsa-Kar). They will remain here for only 2 days before continuing on to Clarion (White Light) to meet the saurians in that system. – HSS History’s Hope and escorts jump to the neutron star system OFS221. While there was a hint of ship radio signals, it is lost in the natural radio noise from the pulsar. Work begins on engine overhauls and jump calculations for the trip to OFS224.
61.230	After four days examining all the planets in the inner system of FS26, the ships of PG Meteor settle into orbit around one of the two habitable planet in the system to compare notes and prepare for a departure back to Theseus.
61.231	SF Nova departs Kwadl-Kik (K’tsa-Kar) for Clarion (White Light)
61.232	PG Lancet completes their preparations and jumps into the FS30 system. They begin decelerating toward the inner system and establish communications with the UPF forces there.
61.233	– After four days of searching, the UPF/Mhemne forces on Snowball find another sathar factory. After a bloody and desperate fight, the UPF/Mhemne forces gain control of the factory and manage to capture an additional shuttle before it can be destroyed by the sathar forces. (SFKH4) – One day before the ships are ready to jump to OFS224, the HSS History’s Hope and escorts are attacked by 3 unknown vessels (2 corvettes and a Lightspeed Lady class privateer). In the ensuing battle, two of the escorts are destroyed and the History’s Hope is damaged, but they manage to destroy the attackers

Here’s the full file with all the updates:

DetailedFrontierTimeline Download

Void Jumping, Acceleration, and Other FTL Nuggets

This post is going to get a little bit math heavy toward the middle. Just warning you now.

The idea for this post stemmed from a recent discussion on the Star Frontiers: Alive and Well Facebook group talking about the accelerations involved in faster than light (FTL) travel in that game. I’ve written about this many times over the years on forum posts but since I can’t seem to find those posts (I think some of them at least are on the now defunct forums at starfrontiers.org), I’m going to do it one more time here on this blog as a permanent reference. But before I dig into the details of the math and physics, I’m going to share some links to other posts I’ve made that I do still have.

Void Jumping

The concept of the Void Jump was introduced with the Knight Hawks supplement in Star Frontiers. In the original rules (renamed to Alpha Dawn when the Knight Hawks rules came out), there were no spaceship rules and it just said to treat interstellar travel at the rate of 1 light year per day.

So how does it work? According to the rules, you make a jump by leaving your starting point and accelerating until you reach 1% the speed of light. At that point you “jump” into the Void. To get out of the Void, you just have to slow down slightly. While you’re in the Void, you travel amazingly fast, on the order of 1 light year per second (The rules don’t actually so but imply something close to that so that’s the value I use). Once you jump into your destination system, you swing the ship around and start decelerating. Remember, there is no artificial gravity in Star Frontiers so this acceleration and deceleration is what provides gravity in the ships. Most ships make these trips accelerating at 1g.

So how long does this take? For these calculations, we’ll take 1 g to be equal to 10 meters per second squared (m/s/s) of acceleration. On Earth we define 1 g to be 9.82 m/s/s but rounding up to 10 just makes everything easier and its less than a 2% difference.

Okay, here comes the math.

If you start at rest, your velocity at any given time is just:

v(t) = at

where v is velocity (in m/s), a is acceleration (in m/s/s), and t is time (in seconds). Technically v and a are vectors but we’ll just worry about speed, not direction.

Now, the void jump occurs at 1% the speed of light. We’ll take the speed of light to be 300,000,000 m/s. It’s really 299,792,458 m/s but we’ll again round up to make the math easier. The difference is less than 0.07%. Good enough for this discussion. 1% of that is just 3,000,000 m/s. That’s our target velocity.

Since our acceleration is 10 m/s/s, dividing 3,000,000 m/s by 10 m/s/s gives us 300,000 s of acceleration needed to reach jump speed. That works out to 83 hours and 20 minutes of acceleration. Given that a standard day in Star Frontiers is 20 hours long, that is 4.17 days.

That’s the time to get up to jump speed. It takes that much time to slow down on the other side as well. Which means at a minimum, an interstellar jump takes 8 and 1/3 days, assuming everything lines up perfectly (see the Exiting the Void Jump article for things that might lengthen that).

That’s the time required. What about distances covered? The equation for position is just the integral of the velocity equation above. Again, for starting at rest, and assuming that you measure the distance from your starting point, your position at any given time is given by:

x(t) = \frac{1}{2}at^2

where x is your position in meters. We know what t is from the velocity equation above is 300,000 s. a is just 10 m/s/s. Plugging these in gives us a distance traveled of 450 billion meters or 450 million kilometers. (A lot of people forget that factor of a half and end up with the wrong number.) Now the distance from the Earth to the Sun, called an Astronomical Unit (AU), is 150 million kilometers (again I’m rounding, the actual value is 149,597,871 km so the rounding is less than 0.3%).

So in those 4.17 days of acceleration, you traveled 3 AU. If you started at Earth and headed straight out from the sun, you’d be 4 AU from the Sun. That’s most of the way from Earth’s orbit to Jupiter’s orbit (at a distance of 5.2 AU from the Sun). That distance puts you well beyond the main asteroid belt which ends at 3.3 AU.

Now, these numbers all change if you use a different acceleration. Doing those calculations is left as an exercise for the reader.

ADF and the Board Game Rules

The above all works just fine. The problem comes when you start looking at the rules for the spaceship combat board game and try to rationalize those rules with the math above.

From the board game, we have that one hex is 10,000 km and one turn in the game is 10 minutes of time. Added to that is the ship’s statistic, the Acceleration/Deceleration Factor (ADF) which is described as the number of hexes that a ship can speed up or slow down in a given turn. The fastest ships (fighters and assault scouts) have and ADF of 5.

Let’s look at some numbers. First, what is Void jump speed on the game map. Well, jump speed is 3,000,000 m/s or 3,000 km/s. Since a turn is 10 minutes or 600 seconds, that works out to 1,800,000 km/turn. Given that a hex is 10,000 km across, that works out to a speed of 180 hexes per turn. Since the game map is only 54 hexes wide, you’ll never get to that speed in the game.

The problem comes when people start looking at ADF as acceleration in gees, i.e. that 1 ADF = 1g of acceleration. If you make that assumption, then accelerating at 1 ADF per turn, it would take you 180 turns to get to jump speed from rest. 180 turns at 10 minutes per turn means that it would take just 1,800 minutes, or 30 hours, significantly faster than the 83.33 hours calculated above. Obviously 1 ADF cannot equal 1 g.

So let’s work that out. 1 ADF represents a change of velocity of 10,000 km per 10 minutes in 10 minutes (or 100 km/min/min). That’s an acceleration, just not in the normal units of m/s/s. So lets convert them:

\frac{10,000 km}{10 min * 10 min} = \frac{100 km}{min^2} = \frac{100,000 m}{60 s * 60 s} = 27.778 \frac{m}{s^2} = 2.78 g

So we see that 1 ADF is really 2.78 g of acceleration. You’re not going to sustain that for 30 hours and have anyone in any sort of condition to function unless severe precautions are taken. Heck, even sustaining that for 1 turn (10 minutes) is going to be rough. It’s doable, that amount of acceleration and duration is roughly equivalent of a launch to low Earth orbit with modern rockets, but you wouldn’t want to keep it up for a long time.

That also raises another issue. 5 ADF is actually 13.89 g of acceleration. And Star Frontiers doesn’t have any sort of artificial gravity tech. Pulling those kind of maneuvers is a little unrealistic. (There are discussions about using interia screen tech to help with this but that’s a different article.)

There are a couple of solutions to this. One, which is the one I use and which is probably the simplest, is a willing suspension of disbelief. The board game rules are just that, rules for a board game that simulates (sort of) spaceship combat. There are other issues with the board game physics besides this one, so I don’t expect it to represent “reality”. It’s a fun way to approximately simulate spaceship combat.

Another option, which immediately removes the 1 ADF not equaling 1 g issues, is to change the size of the hexes in the board game. Simply saying that they are 3,600 km in size instead of 10,000 km, makes 1 ADF = 1 g. If you keep the range of weapons the same (measured in hexes as they are described in the game rules, the only thing that really changes is that any planet counters you put on the map have to take up 7 hexes instead of just 1. And it might tweak the gravity rules a bit, but not significantly. This doesn’t solve some of the other problems, however. That’s a whole different post as well.

How I Apply This In Game

So how do I use this?

Basic Application

For most ships, I assume that they have two astrogators that can work in alternating shifts around the clock to do jump calculations. Since the rules say it takes 10 hours of calculation per light year traveled. And since it takes over 80 hours of travel time to get to jump speed. This means that any jump of 8 light years or less takes the same amount of time, namely 8.5 days, which I typically round up to 9 for maneuvering around the station and slight variations in arrival location (see my linked posts). And actually, since I round this up to 9 days, it play it that jumps of 9 light years or less all take 9 days, regardless of distance. Each light year beyond 9 adds a half of day of travel time to allow for the calculations. This is how I calculate the travel times for ships in my Detailed Frontier Timeline.

Again that assumes that they have two astrogators. If not, jumps take significantly longer, namely one day per light year traveled, plus 4.5 days to slow down at the destination, with a minimum of 9 days total travel. So in this case, jumps of five light years or less take 9 days, and each additionally light year adds a day on to the jump time.

Now I do allow the jump calculations to be started before the ship leaves it’s berth, assuming the crew knows when they plan to leave (to within a day or so). But because the planets and stars are always in motion, and the jump calculations have to be done for each specific jump, no more than half the calculations can be done in advance. The rest must be done “in flight.” For me this represents the tweaking and refining of the ship’s course in preparing for the jump that I discuss in the other articles I linked. But that means that even for a ship with a single astrogator, they can reduce the flight time if the astrogator gets started before they leave on the longer jumps.

Traversing multiple systems in a single trip

Another aspect of this is what I like to call the “high speed transit.” This occurs when the ship wants to traverse several star systems but doesn’t need to stop in each one. In this case, the first jump starts as usual, but once they traverse the Void the first time things change.

In each system after the first, until they reach the final system that they want to stop in, they don’t decelerate, at least not appreciably. But rather remain near jump speed, either drifting or, if they want gravity, decelerating for a few hours, flipping around and accelerating, and repeating until they are ready to jump. During this time the astrogators work on the jump and the engineers do any needed engine overhauls. The amount of time spent in system is just the longest of those two activities. Once that’s done, they nudge into the next system and repeat until they arrive at the destination system where it then takes 4.5 days to slow down.

Let’s look at an example: The UPFS Stiletto, an assault scout, is on patrol in Truane’s Star and has orders to get to Dramune as quickly as possible. This route has 4 jumps:

Truane’s Star to Dixon’s Star – 5 light years
Dixon’s Star to Prenglar – 5 light years
Prenglar to Cassidine – 7 light years
Cassidine to Dramune – 4 light years

Using normal jumps, these are all less than 9 light years so each jump would take 9 days for a total of 36 days.

Rather than do this, let’s look at what this takes using the high speed transit option. According to the rules, engine overhauls take 60 hours minus 1d10 hours for each engineer level. The rules also say that Spacefleet ships typically have level 4 engineers. That means that on average, it will take 38 hours to overhaul each engine. We’ll assume that there are 2 astrogators and 2 engineers onboard the Stiletto. This is what a high speed transit looks like in this scenario:

Accelerate out from Truane’s Star – 4.5 days – plenty of time to do the 50 hours astrogation calculations
Transit Dixon’s Star – astrogation calculations take 50 hours (2.5 days of round-the-clock work), engine overhauls only take 38 hours of work, but since there is only one engineer per engine, they have to sleep. So these are the slow part, taking 4 days – so after 4 days, they jump to Prenglar
Transit Prenglar – astrogation will take 70 hours (3.5 days of round-the-clock work). This one is closer but the 4 days of engine overhauls is still the limiting factor. After 4 days they jump to Cassidine.
Transit Cassidine – Here the astrogation calculations only take 40 hours (2 days of round-the-clock work) and the astrogators get a bit of a break while the engineers finish up. After 4 days, they make the jump to Dramune
Decelerate in Dramune – it takes 4.5 days to slow down and arrive at Inner Reach.

All told, this trip takes only 21 days instead of the baseline 36, saving 15 days of travel. The crew might be a little tired, but they made it without taking any risks.

If you only had 1 astrogator and two engineers, one level 3 and one level 2 (more likely on a merchant ship or PC ship), the transit looks like this:

Accelerate from Truane’s Star – 4.5 days, same as before. We assume the astrogator got started before they left.
Transit Dixon’s Star – Astrogation takes 5 days, engine overhauls take 43.5 for the level 3 engineer and 49 for the level 2 engineer. The level 3 engineer can help the other engineer once they are done so the total time to do the overhauls is five days – Time in system 5 days.
Transit Prenglar – In this case the limit is the astrogation which takes 7 days. Time in system, 7 days.
Transit Cassidine – This time the astrogators win and the jump is waiting on the engineers – Time in system, 5 days.
Decelerate in Dramune – 4.5 days.

Total time: 26 days. Takes a little longer but still faster than the base 36 hours. If there was only one engineer, it would actually take longer than 9 days per system as one engineer just can’t do engine overhauls on two engines in each system that fast (unless they are level 5 or 6). You might as well stop over in the station each time unless you have a reason not to go into a system.

Final Thoughts

That’s it for this post. There are other aspects of the travel that I could talk about such as vector movement, the process of lining up for a jump, what happens to your calculations and alignment when you have to maneuver for a combat or something else, and a discussion on how long those alignment efforts take anyway. Some of those ideas I touched on in the posts I linked. I might look at these again in a future post or two as well.

What are your thoughts? What questions do you have? Share them in the comment section below.

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY 61.173 to FY 61.203

This was a rough month for getting the timeline posts out on Twitter. I was doing good and had them all scheduled up through my vacation, but then when I got back, completely dropped the ball for the rest of the month. Mainly do to being swamped by dealing with the loss of my truck and getting it replaced. In fact, I’m still getting caught up and some of the events in this post won’t make it up until later today.

This was another busy month in the timeline with several threads overlapping including the completion of the Dramune Run and Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes module events, and the beginning of the Face of the Enemy module events. Additionally, the last saurian Ark Ships leaves their home system and the saurians make contact with the Frontier.

Here’s the events of the last month:

Date (FY)	Events
61.173	– The Osprey departs Minotaur (Theseus) for their jump to the Padda system. – The sathar vessels overtake the 8th Ark Ship just hours before it is ready to jump. The escort vessels, combined with the defenses of the Ark Ship, put up a heroic defense. – The escort vessels sacrifice themselves to ensure the escape of the Ark Ship and manage to damage the pursuing sathar vessels enough that the Ark Ship, while severely damaged itself, can escape their pursuers and slip alone into the Void. They arrive safely in OFS191.
61.174	– Decelerating toward the inner regions of the OFS191 system, the 8th saurian Ark Ship begins scanning the binary star system. – After being sedated and interrogated for 10 days, the crew of the Gullwind is taken to meet with the Malthar. On the return to their cells, their guards are set upon by chukkahs running free in the station. They escape to the docking bay where the Gullwind is being held. (SFKH1) – Next to the Gullwind’s bay, the crew discovers a room with cages of imprisoned chukkahs and transport containers for them. Loading as many as they can into the transport containers and on to the Gullwind, they then depart the station just as a swarm of combat robots attack the ship. (SFKH1) – As the Gullwind departs Darkworld station, the Malthar’s ships pursue and attempt to destroy the vessel. The fight is quickly joined by both the Inner Reach militia and the elements of Strike Force Nova (LC, 2xFF, 4xAS) in the system. (SFKH1) – With the Spacefleet ships quickly turning the tide of the battle, the pirate and Outer Reach militia ships scatter. The Third Dramune War is over. (SFKH1)
61.175	– Arriving at Inner Reach, the crew of the Gullwind give a full report to the Inner Reach Government and Spacefleet on their discovery and the events of the Dramune Run. The crew discovers that Garlus left the Gullwind to them in his will. – After a quick resupply, the element of SF Nova that survived the battle depart for the Fromeltar system to rejoin the Strike Force.
61.176	– Just a few hours before making the jump to the Padda system, the CMS Osprey detects unknown radio signals in the outer system. The ship’s energy sensors confirm several faint sources in the same direction. They have passed close to the saurian Ark Ship and its escorts and detected some intership communications. – The CMS Osprey attempts to contact the unknown radio source but receives no response. They radio the contact back to Minotuar and continue on their way to the Padda system. – After analyzing the report from the CMS Osprey, the destroyer, frigate, and two assault scouts of the Theseus milita begin boosting toward the location of the contact.
61.177	– The HSS History’s hope arrives back in the YS07 system and begins deceleration. Unfortunately, all jumps forward from here are 10-12 light years long. The team begins weighing which of the five systems would make the most sense for progress beyond it. – The CMS Osprey successfully jumps to the Padda system. They immediately begin working on the jump calculations to the Waller Nexus system while not slowing down, only angling their vector toward that system. – The saurians detect the militia ships traveling toward them. Given their analysis of the radio signals collected so far from the system and the CMS Osprey, they believe the species living here are not allied with the Sathar and decide to risk communication.
61.178	– With the militia ships only a day away and now decelerating toward their location, the saurians open communications, attempting to contact the approaching ships. The Theseus militia receives the communication attempt and responds in kind. They also notify Minotaur of the development. – While initial communication between the saurians and UPF is difficult, both due to the long light delay as the signals travel between the ships, and the lack of a common language, progress is made as the distance between the ships decrease and the saurians’ computers translate Pan-Gal into saurian.
61.179	– The Theseus militia ships arrive at the location of the saurian Ark Ship and its escorts. They are impressed by the design of the saurian Battle Rays and the sheer size of the Ark Ship itself. – Rudimentary communications between the saurians and Frontier races are established and the story of the saurians’ flight are related to the crews of the UPF ships. This information is relayed back to Minotaur. – The Minotaur government notifies the UPF Council of Worlds via subspace radio of the detection of the saurian vessels and their contact with them. – The detachment of SF Nova arrives in the Fromeltar system from Dramune. The remainder of the Strike Force beings accelerating for a jump to the Kizk-Kar system.
61.180	– Having found no suitable planets in the OFS191 system, the 8th saurian Ark Ship begins accelerating for a jump to the OFS179 system. – The Council of Worlds temporarily suspends all other deliberations to discuss and debate what to do about the saurians.
61.181	– Having picked a system as their next target, and with deceleration complete, the crew of the HSS History’s Hope begin work on jump calculations for the next leg of their journey, a M5 dwarf 12 light years away. – The detached ships from SF Nova rejoin the main group as it accelerates toward Kisk-Kar.
61.182	– Calculations complete, the CMS Osprey jumps into the Waller Nexus system and begins decelerating toward Mahg Mar. They radio the UPFS Eleanor Moraes to establish communication with the downed ship. – The UPFS Elanor Moraes responds to the hail from the CMS Osprey and transmit the survey data they have collected along with coordinates for the Osprey to find the Moraes.
61.183	As the Council of Worlds continue discussion, the Minotuar (Theseus) government, under pressure from many of the citizens of their world, invite the saurians to bring their ships into the inner system.
61.184	– While working on jump calculations and surveying the YS07 system, the radar system on the HSS History’s Hope suddenly stops working. – As the engineers begin to work on HSS History’s Hope’s radar, they realized that they have been out so long that they have missed their annual maintenance. They discover several other systems that may cause problems in the future. – With it being about 100 days to make a high speed transit, perform the maintenance, and return to their current location, the HSS History’s Hope crew must decide if they should return or press forward with an increased chance of breakdowns in future jumps.
61.185	– After two days of internal debate, the saurians begin accelerating toward Minotaur, escorted by the militia ships. – The 8th saurian Ark Ship successfully jumps to the OSF179 system. The immediately detect a beacon left by the 7th ark ship indicating that the system had been surveyed but nothing suitable found. Deciding that the neutron star in OFS192 is a non-starter, they begin plotting a course to FS58 and shifting their vector for the jump.
61.186	– After four days of deceleration, the Osprey settles into orbit around Mahg Mar (Waller Nexus). After a couple of orbits to orient their mapping systems, they locate the UPFS Elanor Moraes and descend to the planet’s surface, landing just a few hundred meters from the survey vessel. – With repairs still ongoing on the HSS History’s Hope’s radar system, the crew comes down on the side of caution and decide to return to Scree Fron for maintenance. The calculations for the jump forward are aborted and calculations are started to jump back to YS06.
61.187	With the arrival of the CMS Osprey and the supplies it brought, the repairs on the UPFS Eleanor Moraes begin to progress much quicker. Captain Dentin takes command of the expedition and begins sending out the survey robots to scout the surrounding terrain.
61.188	– SF Nova arrives in orbit around Zit-kit In the Kisk-Kar system. They will remain here for 6 days. – The saurian ships settle into orbit around Minotaur (Theseus). Constant holovid coverage has greatly increased the public interest in these strangely graceful ships.
61.189	– The Theseus militia establishes a “no fly” zone around the saurian vessels to keep away all the curious onlookers attempting to visit and observe the ship up close in their small shuttles and private yachts. – Having discovered what appears to be some sort of village about 30 km away members of the Moraes crew are sent by Captain Dentin to investigate with the Osprey crew continues working on the repairs. (SFKH3)
61.190	– The two newest assault scouts for SF Meteor arrive at Gollwin Station orbiting Morgaine’s World (Prenglar). They are debriefed and join with their fellow assault scouts and formed into Patrol Group Meteor until the capital ship complete construction. – About 3/4 of the way to the village the crew of the UPF Eleanor Moraes discover a strange, small vehicle containing the bodies of two dead sathar and what appears to be a small, functioning robot. They radio the find back to the Osprey which sends out another team to collect the vehicle. (SFKH3) – With about 3 km left to the village, the Moraes crew reaches a tall cliff that their explorer cannot climb. They need to continue the rest of the way on foot. They camp at the base of the cliff for the night. (SFKH3)
61.191	– The saurians agree to send an envoy to meet with members of the Minotaur government aboard Minotaur station. They request that the captains of the militia vessels they had met originally be present at the meeting. – Security is enhanced on Minotaur station in preparation for the historic first meeting with the Saurians. Several protest groups are dispersed that were threatening to become violent. – As the crew of the UPFS Eleanor Moraes reach the top of the cliff, a strange, birdlike creature briefly emerges from the underbrush and then disappears again. The crew can see it crouching in the bushes and decide to wait to see what happens. (SFKH3) – After a several minutes, the creature emerges again from the underbrush and begins trying to talk to the Moraes crew. Establishing some basic communication with the aid of a polyvox, the creature, Beet-Chest, begins leading them to his village. (SFKH3) – Meeting with the village elders, the Moraes crew learn that the sathar had arrived on the planet about 3 months ago and 2 sathar attacked a party of the Notui (what the bird-like creatures call themselves) and were killed by the Notui. The crew spends the night in the village after reporting in.
61.192	– Patrol Group Meteor is dispatched to White Light via Timeon. – The saurian delegation arrives at Minotaur stations. Large crowds line the passages hoping to catch a glimpse of the visitors, but they are quickly moved away from the crowds. After several hours of discussion, they return to their ships. – Having determined the general direction of where the sathar’s ship landed (roughly in the same direction from the village as the UPFS Eleanor Moraes), the Moraes crew return to their ship to confer with Captain Dentin.
61.193	– Calculation and course corrections complete, the 8th saurian Ark Ship jumps to the FS58 system. They again detect a beacon from the 7th Ark Ship and realize they are still following the previous ship. – Having completed jump calculations and gotten the radar system fixed, the HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating toward YS06, they plan to make a high speed transit back to Scree Fron spending only enough time in each system to overhaul engines and make jump calculations. – The saurians of the 7th ark ship return to Minotaur station to continue their discussions with members of the UPF and Minotaur governments, returning once again to their ships at the end of the day. This continues for the next several days.
61.194	– After much deliberation the saurians of the 8th Ark Ship decide that jumping through the nebula again (which would take them to the Tristkar system) would not be the best plan, and like the 7th Ark Ship before them, start plotting a jump to the Theseus system. – Strike Force Nova departs Zit-Kit (Kisk-Kar) for the K’aken-Kar system.
61.195	After three days of detailed survey by the robots, no trace of the sathar ship can be found on land and Captain Dentin suspects that it landed in the water of the nearby river. The Moraes’ crew sets out to try to find some trace of it along the river.
61.196	A delegation from White Light, including Crown Princess Leotia Valentine Leotus, arrives at Minotaur station and joins the deliberations with the Saurians.
61.197	– Jump calculations complete, the 8th saurian Ark Ship begins accelerating toward the Theseus system. – After two days of careful search along the riverbanks, the Moraes crew discover a metal cable attached to a stake in the ground, partially buried in the sand, and extending out into the river. Investigation shows some sort of small craft submerged in the river at the other end of the cable.
61.198	– HSS History’s Hope jumps into the YS06 system and begin immediately working on the engines and jump calculations for a jump to YS05. – Using spacesuits with improvised weight belts, the Moraes crew investigate the submerged vessel. It is a hull size 2 ship of sathar design never seen before. They locate the airlock at the other end of the cable but do not attempt to enter.
61.199	Descending again to the sathar ship, the Moraes crew breach the security system on the airlock and enter the ship. Fighting through the ship’s defenses, they gain control of the ship with only minor damage to the ship and no serious injuries to the crew.
61.200	After a day of examining the sathar vessel, the Moraes crew discover what appears to be a sathar base of operations for the ship located in the FS30 system and astrogation data to get there. They send a report back to the Frontier Expeditionary Force HQ on Clarion.
61.201	PG Meteor arrives in orbit around Lossend (Timeon). They plan to spend two days here before continuing on to Clarion (White Light).
61.202	– The 8th saurian Ark ship successfully jumps into the Theseus system and immediately detect radio signals from the inner system. A few hours later they detect the 7th Ark Ship and establish communications. – The UFPS Eleanor Moraes and CMS Osprey receive orders from the Frontier Expeditionary Force commander to select a crew to man the sathar scout ship. The three ships are to jump to the FS30 system and attempt to capture the sathar base. – PG Meteor’s time in Timeon is cut short and their orders are changed to proceed immediately to the Theseus system to support Frontier Expeditionary Force operation in the FS30 system. They leave immediately for the White Light system.
61.203	– Strike Force Nova arrives at Ken’zah-Kit in the K’aken-Kar system. They will remain in this system for 18 days patrolling the outer system. – Engine overhauls and jump calculations complete, the HSS History’s Hope jumps back to they YS05 system and begins working on the jump to YS03.

And here’s the full timeline file:

DetailedFrontierTimeline Download

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY61.142 to FY61.172

This was a busy month in the timeline. There are a number of threads that all piled up on each other. The Dramune Run (SFKH1) is nearing completion, the Mutiny on the Elanor Moraes (SFKH2) occurs, the HSS History’s Hope continues it’s journey, the sathar make their final push on the saurian worlds to eliminate them, and we see the completion of the first ships for the new Strike Force Meteor come out of the shipyards.

In some cases, I had six different events on a single day. That definitely wasn’t planned. If I was really planning this out all in advance and not just doing it a bit at a time, I probably would have spread some of these things out differently. But, given the way I add in events and work out their consequences, this is how they fell out and it probably is more organic and accurate that way anyway. Sometimes events all pile up on each other.

It was also a tough month on the posting side. Because there were so many intertwined and detailed events happening, I had to make sure I wasn’t missing anything and so got behind in writing the updates and getting them posted. If you’re following along on Twitter, you would have noticed that there were large gaps of no daily posts followed by floods of posts over several days as I worked on getting caught up.

In any case, we made it through the month. Here are the events happening in the Frontier over the last 31 days.

Date (FY)	Events
61.142	The last shipment delivered by Obar Enterprises to Triad (Cassidine), a shipment of rubies from Pale (Truane’s Star), triggered a flag in a resource tracking system on Triad due to the speed of the high profile delivery. It is flagged for future investigation.
61.143	The UPFS Eleanor Moraes successfully arrives in the Waller Nexus system and begins scanning the system for planets.
61.144	The Gullwind successfully jumps into the Cassidine system and begins deceleration toward Triad station.
61.145	Strike Force Nova leaves Cassidine and begins accelerating for a jump to the Dramune system.
61.146	– Calculations nearly complete, the HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating for a jump to YS06. If successful, this will complete the jump route between YS06 and YS05. – Initial scans by the UPFS Eleanor Moraes detects a potentially habitable planet orbiting Waller Nexus. An atmoprobe is launched toward the planet. They adjust their deceleration vector to take them into orbit around the planet which they dub Mahg Mar.
61.147	– After scanning the OFS179 system for 20 days, the 7th Saurian ark ship has identified all the planets near the star and none are suitable for colonization. They begin working on jump calculations to their next system. – Results of the atmoprobe sent to Mahg Mar indicate that the atmosphere is breathable but contains trace toxins. Breathing masks will be required at all time when outside on the surface. – The 8th Saurian Ark Ship is completed. With sathar ships in the system and suspecting that the ships that razed Rock (Sessar) will be joining them, the shakedown cruise is skipped and loading begins immediately.
61.148	– Arriving at Triad station (Cassidine), the crew of the Gullwind replenish supplies and spend a day decompressing from their recent encounters before making the final leg of their trip to Inner Reach (Dramune). – Having confirmed the destruction of the saurians on Rock, the Sathar fleet in the Sessar system begins accelerating toward the Sauria system to join with the other fleet there.
61.149	– The UPFS Eleanor Moraes settles into orbit around Mahg Mar and begins preparation for landing on the surface of the planet. – Fearing that this might be the last Ark Ship launched, the Saurians move all of the remaining cultural artifacts that were planned to be spread out across the remaining 12 Ark Ships under construction to this one. All resources are dedicated to getting this ship underway before the expected sathar attack occurs. – The Gullwind leaves Triad station (Cassidine) and begins accelerating for the final jump back to Dramune.
61.150	– The HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps to the YS06 system and begins decelerating while planning their next jump. – A day out from Triad station, the Gullwind is intercepted by an assault scout, the MESS Maltharia. In the ensuing battle, the assault scout is damaged but takes out the Gullwind’s engines. It disengages, leaving the freighter adrift. (SFKH1)
61.151	– The first two ships for the new Strike Force Meteor emerge from the Pan Galactic shipyards orbiting Gran Quivera (Prenglar). They depart to Morgaine’s World (Prenglar) to begin exercises with elements of Task Force Prenglar. – Unable to repair the engines outside a spacedock, the crew of the Gullwind call back to Triad for assistance. The UPFS Melinda McCoy (destroyer) and UPFS Dirk (assault scout) respond to their mayday. (SFKH1) – After hearing the Gullwind’s crew’s story, the Melinda McCoy’s captain, Commodre Klat-tic M’tal, a vrusk, arranges a tug to take them back to Triad. He also radios ahead to SF Nova, current decelerating toward Inner Reach (Drammune) with the story. (SFKH1)
61.152	– After three days in orbit generating a preliminary map of Mahg Mar’s surface, the crew of the UPFS Eleanor Moraes selects a preliminary landing site and the ship descends to the planet’s surface. Work begins immediately on overhauling the ship’s engines. – The HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating for the jump to their next target system, a binary M dwarf system 7 light years away.
61.153	– The sathar attack fleet from Sessar arrives in the Sauria system. The remains of the sathar fleet still in the system begin accelerating toward Kischen, the saurian homeworld. The Battle Rays tailing this fleet radio the news home and begin accelerating home as well. – The Gullwind arrives back at the CDC shipyards around Triad. Luckily there is room available in the shipyard and the Gullwind is immediately admitted for repairs.
61.154	– Calculations complete, the Saurian ark ship begins accelerating for their jump to the FS58 system, an F3 start, probably too hot for them but more likely than the M0 star they are currently at. – Strike Force Nova arrives at Inner Reach (Dramune), they only spend a day at the station before continuing on to Fromeltar.
61.155	– The decelerating fleet from Sessar is detected by the saurian forces, three days away from the planet. – Fully repaired, and short on cash, the Gullwind departs the CDC shipyards and once again begins accelerating toward Dramune. (SFKH1)
61.156	– Overhaul of the first engine complete, the captain of the UPFS Eleanor Moraes, Winston Marlboro, authorizes an initial scouting expedition to survey the surrounding area. Preparations begin for an expedition that will leave in the morning. (SFKH2) – After a day of acceleration, the crew of the Gullwind have noticed that they have a shadow, a pair of ships following their course but always remaining just at the edge of radar range. They suspect it is the UPF Melinda McCoy and Dirk but cannnot confirm this. (SFKH1)
61.157	– With the sathar fleet less than a day away, loading of the last Ark Ship is aborted with only 90% of the material goods and 50% of passengers loaded. The ship departs Kischen with a small military escort and heads toward the Precipice system, the last remaining saurian system. – A small detachment of the sathar fleet breaks off from decelerating and begins accelerating in an attempt to catch the departing ark ship. – The HSS History’s Hope successfully completes the jump to the new system, which they designate as YS07. Decelerations commences as they prepare to plot the return leg of the jump. – Shortly after Captain Marlboro, along with most of the ship’s crew, departs to begin surveying the surrounding area via airship, Bill Terry, first officer of the Eleanor Moraes, turns on the remaining crew and stuns or otherwise incapacitates them, taking over the ship. (SFKH2) – With the ship secure, Terry remotely orders the survey robot accompanying the airship to attack and destroy the airship. The captain is injured as is the chief engineer. After a brief message from Terry explaining that he is abandoning them on the planet, he cuts all communications between the survey party and the ship. (SFKH2) – Salvaging what equipment they can, the uninjured members of the survey party are ordered by Captain Marlboro to take the survey robot and proceed overland to recapture the Eleanor Moraes. There is still 45 hours of work to do on the ship’s engines before Terry can leave so they must hurry. (SFKH2)
61.158	– Battle of Kischen – The remaining saurian forces engage the attacking sathar vessels. After hours of battle, the saurian forces are destroyed but the sathar vessels are similarly devastated. – The remaining sathar forces around Kischen begin bombarding the planet, paying particular attention to heavily industrialized areas. The remaining ark ships under constructions are destroyed. – Three days out from Inner Reach, a small group of ships breaks off from SF Nova and begin decelerating back toward the inner system. – The crew of the Eleanor Moraes continues their travel back toward the ship. Bill Terry uses some of the survey robots remaining at the ship to attempt to ambush the party while en route but they manage to defeat both of his attempts and overcome the natural obstacles in their way. (SFKH2)
61.159	– The 7th saurian Ark Ship successfully jumps to the FS58 system. They begin decelerating and scanning for planets. – Strike Force Nova makes the jump to the Fromeltar system and begins decelerating toward Terledrom. – Realizing that he won’t get the engine overhaul completed before the rest of the crew arrives, Bill Terry begins preparing the Eleanor Moraes for liftoff anyway. (SFKH2) – The Eleanor Moraes crew arrives at the ship before Terry is ready to lift off. Breaching the defenses he has put in place they gain access to the ship. In a tense standoff on the bridge, the crew convinces Terry to surrender. (SFKH2)
61.160	– The Gullwind makes the jump to the Dramune system and begins decelerating toward Inner Reach. Almost immediately, their shadow reappears and hail the Gullwind, identifying themselves as the Melinda McCoy and the Dirk. They begin decelerating with the Gullwind, slowly closing the gap between the ships. (SFKH1) – With the ship secured, and the captain and chief engineer recovered from the airship crash site, the crew of the UPFS Eleanor Moraes send a subspace message back to Theseus informing the Frontier Expeditionary Force HQ of the recent events and their status. (SFKH2)
61.161	– The last saurian Ark Ship successfully jumps to the Precipice system. They immediately radio ahead to the outpost there to prepare for a full evacuation as they begin decelerating toward the planet Edge. The sathar ships pursuing them return to the main force orbiting Kischen. – Two assault scouts, part of the new Strike Force Meteor, are completed at the Triad starship construction center. The UPF crew takes command of the vessels and begin accelerating for a jump to Prenglar. – The UPFS Eleanor Moraes receives a response from the FEF HQ that the CMS Osprey is being dispatched from White Light with material and personnel to effect repairs. The Moraes crew is to continue their primary mission of surveying the planet until the Osprey arrives in 28 days. (SFKH2)
61.162	– Deceleration complete, the HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating for the jump back to YS06. – After two days of deceleration, just as they are approaching the orbit of Outer Reach, the Gullwind and it’s escorts are enveloped by a powerful jamming field preventing all communications. They are assaulted by 9 vessels (3 frigates, 2 corvettes, & 4 assault scouts) that include the Outer Reach militia. (SFKH1) – After a brief but intense battle, the UPF vessels are destroyed and the Gullwind is disabled and taken in tow. The Gullwind and UPF ships manage to destroy one of the corvettes and an Outer Reach militia assault scout as well as severely damage one of the frigates. While under tow, the jamming field is maintained to prevent communication. (SFKH1)
61.163	– Strike Force Nova arrives in orbit around Terledrom (Fromeltar). They will remain in the system for 16 days while it waits for the ships detached in the Dramune system to catch up. – The CMS Osprey begins accelerating for Theseus and the first leg of their mission to rescue the UPFS Eleanor Moraes. (SFKH3)
61.164	– Now slowed in the inner system, the 7th saurian Ark Ship discovers a habitable planet. However, due to the intensity of the star (F3 vs their native G8), the high gravity (1.5g) and slow rotation (40 hours), they deem the planet unsuitable. Preparations are made to depart the system. – The Gullwind arrives at Darkworld station, home the Malthar who orchestrated their capture. The crew is overwhelmed my the Malthar’s robots when whey refuse to leave the ship.
61.165	– The 7th saurian Ark Ship begins accelerating for their next jump which will take them to the Theseus system. – Having destroyed all visible traces of the saurian population on the planet Kischen, the sathar fleet begins accelerating toward the Precipice system.
61.166	The 8th saurian Ark Ship arrives in orbit around the planet Edge (Precipice) and immediately deploys shuttles to start loading the population.
61.167	The HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps back to YS06 completely charting the route between the two systems. They relay the jump data back to their home foundation on Histran via subspace radio and begin the return journey back to YS07.
61.168	After incorporating lessons learned from the false start and several weeks of successful operations, Synthcorp’s “Muffin Button” is declared a success and begins to roll out in other locations on Inner Reach.
61.169	With the population and as many supplies as possible loaded from Edge, the 8th saurian arkship begins accelerating out of the Precipice system. They decide to follow the general direction of the 7th Ark ship and begin accelerating toward OFS191.
61.170	– The two new UPF assault scouts arrive at Morgaine’s World (Prenglar) and join up with their sister ships exercising with Task Force Prenglar. – The 7th saurian Ark Ship successfully jumps into the Theseus system where they immediately detect radio signals from the inhabitants and ships in the system. – Vectoring their deceleration to stop deep in the outer system, the saurians begin studying the signals coming from the inner system. They are not detected by the system’s inhabitants. – The sathar ships make the jump to the Precipice system. They detect the saurian ark ship beginning its acceleration out of the system. Several ships are detached at high speed to try to intercept it.
61.171	The CMS Osprey arrives at Minotaur station (Theseus) where they are briefed on all the details available about their jump route and the Moraes crew and status. They take on additional supplies for the stricken ship. (SFKH3)
61.172	Two more assault scouts, destined to be part of Strike Force Meteor, are completed at the Streel shipyards orbiting Pale (Truane’s Star). The UPF crews take possession of the ships and begin accelerating for a jump to Dixon’s Star and then to Prenglar.

And here’s the full timeline to download.

DetailedFrontierTimeline Download

Organizations – Tristars

We were finally able to get another “Skills for Hire” gaming session, this time with 8! players last week. Which means I can post some of the content from that game without it being a spoiler for the players. If I post something here I didn’t give them in game, they can consider it something they learned from their investigations.

This week we’re going to look at another organzation, the Tristars, and organized crime group centered in Myha’s Beach on Pale in the Truane’s Str System.

Organization

The head of the organization is one Gornar Welnat, a yazirian. He owns Brekstoone Manor as well as several of the large resort hotels in Myha’ Beach. He is a well respected businessman in town and his connection the Tristars is guessed but not generally known.

The Tristars are divided into two different sub organizations. One is more white-collar and is concerned with political and business interests in the city. They have bought off local politicians, businessmen, and in some cases, police officers to help them further their business interests. Those that won’t cooperate are subject to other forms of persuasion, ranging from loss of business deals, stiffer competition, or even physical damage to property or persons.

Which is where the second half of the organization comes in. This branch of the Tristars is actually the larger segment and consists of beings willing to do the dirty work for the organization. It has members ranging from stilled tradesbeings to basic street thugs and the individuals that manage them.

All members of the organization have a tattoo that identifies them as members of the Tristars. In it’s simplest form, it consists of three open stars arranged in a triangle as seen at the right. This logo is the source of the organization’s name. The basic form is the version sported by all new recruits and the lowest echelons of the hierarchy. Some members wear the tattoo openly, while others have it more concealed. It is often found on wrists or shoulders.

As one moves up the ranks, the design gets more elaborate with second level members sporting divisions in the stars. And third level members sporting more divisions still.

Individual member might add color to the various designs but silver and gold colorations are reserved for upper echelon members in the more business and political oriented side of the business. It is rumored that Gornar has a gold version of the tattoo somewhere.

The various portions of the organization are fairly isolated. The street level teams know very little about the upper echelons. They might have a contact name or chronocom number but that may be the only contact that they have. Groups will know their superior and who they get “jobs” from but don’t know much about the organization beyond that.

At the third level in the hierarchy, members might know that the Tristars are operated out of Brekstoone Manor and probably suspect that Gornar is involved, but still may only have a single contact at the Manor itself if they have a contact there at all.

History

This is something that the player didn’t discover as it never came up but doesn’t affect the game in any way so I have no problem posting it now.

The Tristars started as just a low-level street gang in the city some thirty or forty years ago. They claimed a section of the older part of town as their own and exerted there dominance there. They remained a low level, minor organization until about twenty years ago.

By then Gornar had already built his first resort hotel and was constructing a second. Facing competition from some of the older, smaller hotels, as well as some other large hotel owners, he decided to employ some local muscle to “dampen the competition’s spirit” as he put it. His agents contacted the Tristars for some “jobs.” Pleased with the results, he came to rely on them more and more, always through intermediaries.

Over the next few years, with Gornar’s help and guidance, the Tristars began to grow and take over or take out other local gangs in the city until they were the largest group in town. While there are still other groups around, they don’t have the scope or support that the Tristars do. At the beginning of this growth, the early gang leaders tried to keep control of the growing organization but they were quickly disabused of that notion by Gornar’s agents. While there is still some resentment within the organization over the loss of control to “outsiders,” most realize that they would not be as successful or as safe as they are without that outside help.

Rivals

At the higher levels of operation, there aren’t really any major rivals to the Tristars in Myha’s Beach. They are the major player. While some businesses and organizations oppose them, they are individual operations or small alliances of individuals.

On the street level, there are still several other smaller gangs in town that operate and often oppose the Tristars when they can. These include, most notably, the Jade Vipers and Windsurfers. The former more active in the newer portions of town and the latter more active down by the shipyards.

None of these groups oppose the Tristars too hard, as they recognize that if the Tristars wanted to focus on them, the could eliminate them altogether. But they are not opposed to spiking the wheels of individual operations regularly to make things difficult. These rival groups could be recruited to assist anyone opposing the Tristars. If you can contact them.

General Knowledge

The Tristars are a known force in Myha’s Beach and even on the radar of people in Point True. That said, most of the inhabitants of Myha’s Beach know that the organization exists but little else. They mostly associate it with the street level gangs. Very few people know of Gornar’s connection to the operation.

If you asked a random citizen about the Tristars, they would probably know the name but little else. Or if they are more familiar with the organization, won’t say much as they are either part of the group and not sharing secrets, or have been intimidated or otherwise influence by the Tristars and don’t want to get into any more trouble.

Hangouts

The group has a couple of well-known hangouts around town where you can usually find members at almost any time of the day.

One is the Shining Star, a pub/restaurant just outside of the old town and a couple streets back from the beach. It’s a small restaurant, seating about 50 where members of the gang like to hang out and socialize.

Another is the Flaming Oar, a bar down by the shipyards. This is a larger establishment, with a capacity of about 150 beings, that lies just outside the territory claimed by the Windsurfers. There are often dust-ups between the two groups there.

Use in my Game

For my game, the Tristars are the major antagonist for the current adventure. The daughter of a senator was kidnapped while vacationing in Myha’s Beach in an attempt to influence his vote for an upcoming bill. The PCs have discovered the Tristars’ involvement in the kidnapping (they did the deed) and staged a raid on the Shining Stat to capture a third level member of the organization for information. They suspect that the Tristars are holding the daughter in Brekstoone Manor.

Final Thoughts

This is a basic outline of the organization. It is general so that you can adapt it as needed to your game. I’m sure if I run other adventures in Myha’s Beach, the Tristars will get fleshed out more.

I have a couple more posts coming related to this one. But they have to wait until the PCs finish their adventure. One will be a scenario write-up for the adventure and the other will be a more detailed description of Brekstoone Manor.

Share your thoughts and ideas about the Tristars in the comments below.

HSS History’s Hope – part 2

This isn’t the post I had planned to do this week but since my game session last Wednesday fell through, I can’t post the details of that adventure yet. So I’m going to revisit the HSS History’s Hope this week. Hopefully we’ll get that game session in on Wednesday and I can post up all the goodies from that adventure.

A few weeks back I was contacted by long time game fan Matt Crymble about the HSS History’s Hope and the timeline project in general. Matt’s on-line involvement in Star Frontiers predates even my one as he is one of the original list serv members from back in the day that I was never a part of. We featured some of Matt’s creations in early issues of the Frontier Explorer and he created the Khad’dan, or yazirian honor blade that figures into a lot of the fan material.

He asked me if I was interested in any help on creating the ship and while I already had KH stats and partial deck plans for the ship, he did a wonderful write-up on the ship’s history. So let’s look at the ship a bit closer.

The HSS History’s Hope

History of History’s Hope

This is the write-up Matt sent me:

The HSS History’s Hope began life as an Imp Class Yacht which was modified into a racing yacht. The vessel class was initially selected for reliability and comfortable long term crew habitation, both critical for the exhausting pace of multi-system racing. Its speed was boosted at the expense of some maneuverability and as a racer it held a distinguished career even though it was not considered a champion. Unfortunately, the highly competitive nature of interstellar racing meant that the ship was too expensive to maintain without champion results and it was eventually made available for sale.

The vessel’s reliability and comfortable crew accommodations also made it a good choice as an exploration vessel and the extra bracing that was added for the increased acceleration from a standard Imp Class make it a sturdy little ship. The racer was slightly modified again after being clandestinely purchased by True Yazira and was rechristened the HSS (Histran Star Ship) History’s Hope out of the Scree Fron system.

Little modification was needed to turn the vessel into an exploration ship, though extra food and fuel stores as well as crew comforts and spare parts were added. Additionally the ship’s precision racing navigation station, known as the “sailing bridge” aboard ship, remains unchanged physically having only received new software to assist with the difficult astrogation tasks of plotting entirely new jump routes.

Because of its status as an exploration vessel the standard radar system was upgraded to include a planetary radar mapper and a planetary scanning system. The planetary scanning system can also work as a limited energy sensor in a focused area in an emergency while in interstellar space. The History’s Hope retains the ability to land on atmospheric worlds with habitable G ratings. The Assault Rocket launcher has been removed though a small part of the mechanism remains and parts were later added to give the vessel the ability to launch atmoprobes.

Crew compliment for a ship this size is small. This is a holdover from its racing days when extra crew was considered extraneous and the vessel is usually crewed with experienced spacers to ensure all needed skills are present. The extra crew berths are taken up by scientists and other specialists with most of the remainder being used for the extra storage necessary for such a long journey.

I hadn’t thought of the idea of an old racing ship, but I had intended it to be HS 4 and an old yacht. So I love this backstory for the ship. There are just a few things in his write-up that I am going to change. Otherwise, it will stand as is.

Modifications

First, it wasn’t “clandestinely purchased by True Yazira.” At least not explicitly. The ship is owned by the Yazira Heritage Foundation (YHF) which is a public non-profit organization. The True Yazira society is a major funder of the YHF, but not as an organizational endeavor. Rather the YHF has many private donors who also happen to be True Yazira members. It’s a happy coincidence. Although not surprising as the goals of the YHF directly align with some of the goals of the True Yazira society and it’s only natural that members of one would donate to the other.

Second, the ship was modified to have a lot more crew that I think Matt was intending. In the end, the ship has a total crew capacity of 24. Actually, there are 24 crew members, the capacity is actually a bit higher but that would require double bunking.

In addition to the ability to launch atmoprobes, I also added in a landing drone and a remote probe, as well as adding in a full-sized (20 being) lifeboat, a small (10-person) lifeboat, a workpod, and small launch. The truth is, a HS 4 ship starting to be pretty large. Designing the ship with my new starship construction system that takes volume into account, and adding in all the systems I needed, created a ship that was within a couple hundred cubic meters of the standard HS4 volume, a difference of just a few percent which is well within the design variation limits given in the rules.

I like how he indicated that it probably had a Deluxe Astrogation suite. That was definitely in the cards for this ship and it would have been upgraded to such if it didn’t already have it. In my game, having the Deluxe Astrogation suite gives a +10% to all astrogation skills. Something definitely needed when charting unknown routes.

While the planetary radar mapper and a planetary scanning system are not standard equipment listed in the rules, I like the description. I did add energy sensors to the ship, so that have that at full capablitily, not just a limited one as described in Matt’s text.

Full Ship’s Stats

Here are the full stats for the ship as I wrote it up:

HS:	4
ADF:	4
MR:	3
DCR:	32
Engines:	2x Class A Atomic
Crew Berths:	24 single occupancy cabins – Journey Class equivalent
Weapons:	LB
Defenses:	RH
Communications Equipment:	videocom radio, subspace radio, Intercom system
Sensor Systems:	deluxe astrogation suite, radar, energy sensors, skin sensors, external camera system
Life Support:	Primary: 600 days for 35 beings Backup: 200 days for 35 beings
Exploration Equipment:	2x atmoprobe, 1x remote probe, 1x landing drone, 1x laboratory
Computer Level:	4
Computer Programs:	Astrogation 4, Atomic Drives 4, Computer Lockout 4, Damage Control 2, Alarm 2, Laser Battery 1, Skin Sensors 1, Guidance/Analysis 3, Anlysis 3, Maintenance 1, Information Storage 6, Communications 3, Language 4, Robot Management 4
Vehicles:	small launch, large lifeboat, small lifeboat, workpod
Other Equipment:	30 spacesuits, laser power torch, 2x engineer’s toolkit, full redundant backup computer, 300 atomic fuel pellets

Deck plans will come in a future post. I have them mostly sketched out but still have a couple decks to go and need to make digital versions of them to share.

The Journey So Far

That’s the ship. Let’s next turn to looking at the crew and their travels up until now.

Crew

The crew is fairly large for this small of a ship, but the truth is, there is plenty of room inside the hull for them all. The crew size, as given in the stat block above, is twenty-four. It breaks down like this:

2 pilots
3 astrogators, one of which is the captain of the expedition
2 engineers
2 energy weapons specialists
2 technicians
1 roboticist
1 computer specialist (in addition to the astrogators)
1 psycho-social specialist
1 doctor
2 environmentalists
4 security personnel
1 linguist
2 archeologists

The first half of the crew are concerned with getting them to their destination or keeping the ship systems and crew running on the journey. The second half are merely passengers for the initial voyage, their skills will be needed if their destination turns out to actually be Yazira.

The Journey

When I first posted about the trip, the ship had left the Frontier and started into the Yazira sector and had made several misjumps. In the intervening months, they have recovered from those early errors, made more, recovered again, and continue to make progress toward their goal. Here is the sector map with the systems they have visited and the jump routes plotted.

The Full map. Click for full sized version.

The route to YS07 is a bit of a spoiler, but only because I’m a bit behind on posting the timeline updates. I should have already posted the successful jump from YS06 to YS07 by now. In fact, today they are beginning their acceleration back to YS06. Those updates will show up in the next few days. At this point, they are about 1/3 of the way across the Yazira Sector to their destination and not quite half way from Scree Fron.

What Does the Future Hold?

The ship is coming up on its one year anniversary since it’s retrofit. That means that they will have to decide if they want to double back to the Frontier for their annual maintenance, or skip it this first year and push on. Even making a high speed transit, it’s on the order of 50 days back to Scree Fron and another week to the nearest SCC. Then 5-15 days of maintenance. And then that same amount of travel time to get back to where they left off. That’s over a quarter of a year of travel. They’ll have to decide if the chance of a system breakdown is worth it.

Also, they were attacked back in YS01. There may still be ships there. And most probably there will be hostile ships in the Frontier itself. They have enough fuel and life support to make it all the way to their destination assuming no major mishaps. But they may have to return for supplies anyway.

The next jump after YS07 is going to be a long one, either 10 or 12 light years. And then some long ones after that, so there is plenty of chance for mishap. There’s a reason this part of space is called the Vast Expanse, the stars are few and far between and the crew is starting to run into that now.

I know what the future holds for the ship in certain areas, but I am actually rolling for all the astrogation skill checks as they come up so I never know if they will succeed in a jump or not. Which means I don’t know how successful they will be or what detours will come up. We’ll have to find out together.

Final Thoughts

That’s it for this post. I’m working on the deck plans and will post them, along with another progress update, once they are done. I’m also planning on a 3D model of the ship once the deck plans are finished. Although that might not be for a couple more months. But those are things you can look forward to.

What thoughts to you have on the travels of the HSS History’s Hope? Are there things about the ship or the expedition you’d like to know more about? Do you have ideas of things they might run into? Let me know in the comments below.

Quality of Spacefleet Enlisted Personnel

This thought has been bouncing around in my head for a long while now so I figured I’d get it out of my head and on (digital) paper so it would quit distracting me. It doesn’t have anything specific to do with any of the projects I’m currently working on but I’m sure it will apply at some point in the future. Regardless, it’s definitely good background/setting material so I’ll label it as such. While the specifics are related to Star Frontiers, the general though process can apply in any setting you are working on.

The “Problem”

In the Knight Hawks Campaign Book (p 48-49), it says:

Although the officers of the Spacefleet represent some of the finest individuals in the Frontier, the same cannot be said for the crews of Spacefleet ships.
The enlisted members of the fleet come from all walks of life. The fleet always is short of crew members. so the requirements for enlistment are not rigorous. No checking is done regarding a crew member’s background or abilities; consequently, a great amount of galactic riffraff has found a home in the crew’s quarters of Spacefleet vessels.
Many of these crews become fine fighting units; the combat record of the Spacefleet is impressive. Occasionally, however, a charismatic bully will win the respect or inspire the fear of his mates to the point of inciting a mutiny. More than one Spacefleet vessel has dumped its officers into space and disappeared to the fringes of the Frontier to embark on a career of piracy and plunder.

I’ve always had a bit of a problem with this idea for a couple of reasons. One, I’m not sure I agree that they are always short of recruits, unless it working for Spacefleet is a really bad job. It doesn’t feel to me that the crew sizes are all that big. The other is the skills required to make off with a ship. Let’s look at those each in turn. Maybe I’ll change my mind by the end of this, or maybe not.

Short Staffed

Let’s start by looking at the staffing issue. There are estimates of crew size for each of Starfleet’s vessels in the opening of the Knight Hawks Campaign Book (KHCB, p. 5) where it describes the different ships. From that we get the following crew estimates:

Fighters: 1
Assault Scout: 4-6
Frigate: 25-30
Destroyer: 40-50
Minelayer: 30-40
Assault Transport: no crew size give but 600-1000 troops, estimate 100 crew
Light Cruiser: 70-100
Heavy Cruiser: no crew size – estimate (based on the battleship) of 300-400
Assault Carrier: 300-400
Battleship: 400

Now I’m going to ignore the Assault Transports in this analysis, at least to start, as they are mentioned nowhere else in the rules and there aren’t even game chits for them. But I’ll probably come back to them later.

If we take the Order of Battle from the Second Sathar War game (KHCB, p. 55) as the baseline size of Spacefleet, we have the following number of ships:

Fighters: 16
Assault Scouts: 14
Frigates: 7
Destroyers: 5
Minelayers: 4
Light Cruisers: 8
Heavy Cruisers: 1
Assault Carriers: 2
Battleships: 3

Now I’d argue that the minelayer in the unattached ships list should be an assault carrier, but it won’t change substantially the argument.

Using that list of ships, what is the total crew size of Spacefleet? We’re going to ignore the fighters, as those are single crew vessels and are going to be manned by officers, not enlisted crew. With their small crew size, the same could probably be said of the Assault Scouts, but we’ll count them anyway. I’ll use the max crew size listed for each ship. This gives us:

Ship Type	# of ships	Crew Size	Total Crew Members
Assault Scout	14	6	84
Frigate	7	30	210
Destroyer	5	50	250
Minelayer	4	40	160
Light Cruiser	8	100	800
Heavy Cruiser	1	400	400
Assault Carrier	2	400	800
Battleship	3	400	1200
Total			3904

If we assume that 10% of the crews are officers, that gives 390 officers and 3514 enlisted. Which to me, doesn’t seem like all that many positions to fill.

The question then becomes, how hard is it to fill those 3514 positions across all these ships? That really depends on what you feel the population of the Frontier is. The game gives population codes (heavy, moderate, light, and outpost) for all the worlds but never really defines what numbers those correspond to.

In a thread on the old starfrontiers.org forums (now defunct) I did a simple analysis of birth and death rates and population growth. Given that some of the worlds of the Frontier have been inhabited for up to 400 years (if you use the Zeb’s Guide timeline), subtle tweaks to those values, would allow you to have basically any population you wanted on a world. (I should resurrect that analysis, I still have the data, and do a new post on it.)

Let’s go with what I consider low population numbers:

Heavy population – 500 million inhabitants
Medium – 200 million
Light – 50 million
Outpost – 200 thousand

According to the AD rules, there are 7 Heavy populations worlds, 8 with medium populations, 4 with light populations, and 3 outposts. Using those numbers, across the Frontier, there are a total of 5.3 billion inhabitants. That’s less than the current population of the Earth. That means that the 3514 enlisted crew members that we need represents 0.000066% of the population. Or one out of every ~15000. I don’t see that as an impossible number.

I mean just for comparison, the ship’s compliment of a US Nimitz class aircraft carrier is 3532. And that doesn’t include the air wing. The US Navy operates 10 of those carriers, with a total crew size of 10x what we’re looking for, with a population of just 330 million, 16x smaller than the estimated Frontier population. And that’s just the aircraft carriers.

Based on those numbers, I just don’t see that it would be that hard to fill the enlisted berths with high quality, low risk recruits.

More Ships?

Now, how might those numbers vary? The first option is that Spacefleet has more ships. The listed order of battle is, after all, from a strategic and tactical board game, picked for playability game balance. The number of ships could be larger. Although the background material in the rules do say there are only 3 battleships. It’s not unreasonable to think that there might be twice as many ships. But that still doesn’t add that many more crew members, putting us up to only 2 aircraft carriers worth.

Another possibility is that there are lots of those assault transport flying around. If you wanted to transport 30,000 troops, you’d need 30 transports, at 100 crew per transport that’s another ~3000 crew members. So depending on the number of troop transports flying around, You could have an order of magnitude more crew members, which gets us closer to the crew complement of just the US aircraft carriers.

Still the crew numbers are small, filling the berths shouldn’t be too hard.

Smaller Population?

Another option is to make the population of the Frontier smaller. But remember that the US Navy supports a much large crew compliment on a population that is almost 20 times smaller. I think you’d have to make the populations of the Frontier worlds, really small indeed for this to start to be an issue.

In fact, I think the population would actually be larger than the numbers I quoted above, by at least a factor of 2 if not more. These worlds have been settled for a couple of hundred years at least. In the last 200 years on Earth the populations has grown from 1 billion to 7.8 billion. Give the high quality medical care, lots of available space for population growth, and general high level of industry and technology, it would not be unreasonable to have a very high birth rate and low death rate. Especially since the average lifespans are much longer.

Undesirable positions?

Another factor would be that these positions are somehow undesirable. This could be possible. Maybe Spacefleet is strapped for funds and doesn’t pay very well. Or maybe people don’t like being on-board ships for extended tours. Or there is some other factor. While these are all possibilities, I don’t seen them being a big factor.

Crews sizes are relatively small, which means it doesn’t take a lot of credits to make payroll. While it may not pay quite as well as civilian sector jobs, I don’t see it being that much different.

I don’t see the on-board living conditions being that much of an issue either. With the exception of the assault scout, these ships are quite large relative to their crew size. A modern Arleigh Burke destroyer is basically the same size as a Knight Hawks destroyer. But the Arleigh Burke has a crew of 300 while the UPF destroyer has a crew of 40-60, 6-7 times smaller. Now there are differences in equipment and living space, but that still leaves a lot of room to make living accommodations more spacious and comfortable. Living on these ships wouldn’t be too bad. Plus they regularly call on stations around the Frontier giving plenty of opportunity for “shore leave” on a regular basis.

I also don’t see it as a reputation issue. Nothing in the game indicates that Spacefleet is looked down on. Quite the opposite actually, it seems that Spacefleet is held in high regard around the Frontier. So sporting the uniform would seem to be a plus not a negative.

There might be other reasons that I’m not thinking of that might make the job less than desirable. Share your thoughts in the comments. The bottom line is that I don’t think Spacefleet would have a problem filling their limited crew slots with high quality crew members, rather than the “galactic riffraff” as described. There might be some that make it in, but I don’t see it being a high percentage.

Crew Mutinies

Let’s leave that aside for now and assume that for some reason, there is a lot of “galactic riffraff” in the Spacefleet enlisted ranks. Even if that is the case, I don’t see them dumping their officers and sailing off to the fringes of the Frontier to engage in piracy.

And the reason is the way the skills are structured. It takes a very skilled set of individuals to fly a spaceship. I don’t see the “galactic riffraff” have the necessary skills and experience to reach the levels necessary to fly these ships. Even an Assault scout takes a level 2 pilot skill which in turn requires level 2 computers and level 6 technician. And a frigate or destroyer requires a level 3 skill. And then you need at least an astrogator, and preferably an engineer and some gunners, although those latter might be able to be recruited later.

In Spacefleet, those skills are found in the officers, not the enlisted crew. If a crew mutinied and dumped its officers, the ship would just sit there as there would be no one to fly it.

That isn’t to say there couldn’t be mutinies. It would just have to involve some of the officers so that there are enough of the spaceship skills to fly the ship. While that goes counter to the quote from the rules, it’s not unreasonable. In fact, in my campaigns, there is a Spacefleet officer that makes off with one of the light cruisers and one point in the timeline.

There is no reason mutinies can’t happen, I just don’t think they would be quite the way described.

Final Thoughts

So that’s my take. Personally, I don’t see the enlisted personnel of Spacefleet being of any lower caliber than its officer corps. The population is high enough, and the number of berths to fill low enough, that they should be able to screen for the better candidates. And while mutinies may happen, they are going to have to involve the officers to some extent or there will be no one to fly the ships.

What do you think about the status of the Spacefleet personnel? Do you play it as written or modify things to be different? If so, what modifications do you make? Share your ideas in the comment section below.

The original draft of this post (everything up through the end of the initial quote) was saved back in May of 2018, right after I started the blog. It had been bouncing around in my mind for a while then, and that was two years ago. I might have more to say in the future but it’s late and I need some sleep.

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY61.112 to FY61.141

This month got a bit busy in the middle with the Dramune Run starting, the first Saurian ark ship headed toward the Frontier departing, the UPFS Eleanor Moraes beginning its fateful trip, and the sathar starting their final push on the Saurian homeworld.

Date (FY)	Events
61.112	After 60 hours of initial jump calculations, the crew of the HSS History’s Hope begin accelerating for a jump back to YS05, eight light years away.
61.113	The investigation by Star Law trace the sabotage that killed the Consolidated Nebula employees back to a worker at Groth Station. Local agents are dispatched to bring him in for questioning.
61.114	The being thought to be the saboteur of the starliner is finally tracked down and while Star Law agents are speaking to him, he is shot by an unknown assailant and killed. After a chase through the station, the assailant is cornered and, unable to get away, turns his gun on himself and fires, dying instantly.
61.115	Initial background checks on both the victim (the saboteur) and the hitman that killed him reveal that they don’t seem to have any connection and are just normal people, neither with any sort of record. More investigation will be needed.
61.116	The UPFS Eleanor Moraes successfully jumps to the FS11 system, dubbed Padda. (SFKH2) They begin deceleration toward the binary star system and start scanning the system for planets.
61.117	The HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps back to the YS05 system. Remaining near jump speed, they immediately get to work on engine overhauls and calculations for the jump back to YS03.
61.118	After running all the way across the Frontier from Dramune, the Gullwind arrives at Minotaur station in the Theseus system. The crew start working on engine overhauls and replenishing the ship.
61.119	Repairs compete for the PGC shipyard (Gran Quivera, Prenglar) restoring the starship construction center to full capacity.
61.120	The sathar war fleet arrives at Tischen were it will spend two days before pushing on to the Sauria system.
61.121	The members of the Gullwind crew, all dralasites, are killed by agents hired by Malco on Minotaur station (Theseus). Garalus slips the Gullwind from its berth at the station and departs for White Light alone.
61.122	– Crown princess Leotia Valentine Leotus (Clarion, White Light) celebrates her 34th birthday. – Loading complete, the 7^th Saurian ark ship begins accelerating to leave the Sauria system. This one is headed toward the Frontier. – The Sathar fleet departs the Tischen system enroute to the Sauria system.
61.123	SynthCorp launches a limited trial of the “Muffin Button” on Inner Reach (Dramune). For a monthly subscription of 1 cr, you receive a button that each time you press it, 2 fresh-baked muffins are delivered to your door by robotic courier and 1 cr is charged to your account.
61.124	Garalus Tylappar docks the beleaguered Gullwind at Clarion Station (White Light) and begins looking for a replacement crew. (SFKH1)
61.125	The last ships of SF Nova leave the PGC shipyards at Gran Quivera (Prenglar). They are assigned to patrol the vrusk loop of the Frontier, starting with a trip to the Cassidine System where they will exercise and brief Task Force Cassidine on their trip to the Rim
61.126	Garalus finds a new crew for the Gullwind. While conducting some business in the Spacer’s Lounge, they are attacked but drive off the assailants.
61.127	– The Saurian ark ship successfully jumps out of the Sauria system and arrives in the OFS179 system. They begin scanning for suitable world but don’t have high hopes as the star is only a small M0 dwarf. – The new crew get to work repairing the Gullwind’s hull which was damaged in the flight from Dramune.
61.128	– After completing and double checking their jump calculations, the HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps back to the YS03 system from YS05. They begin decelerating and start the calculations once again to jump back to the YS05 system. – While working on the hull repair, the new crew of the Gullwind is attacked by the leader of the thugs from the Spacer’s Lounge with a new group of toughs. They drive these attackers away as well.
61.129	– After only six days in distribution, SynthCorp has to temporarily suspend orders on the “Muffin Button” as the dralasites of Inner Reach have overloaded the system. – Repairs to the hull complete, the Gullwind immediately departs Clarion station, bound for the Madderly’s Star system. – The sathar battle fleet is detected decelerating toward Kischen, the saurian homeworld in the Sauria system. All of the saurian defense ships are mobilized to intercept the sathar fleet as far from the homeworld as possible.
61.130	– Repairs of the Triad Starship Construction Center complete restoring it to full capacity. – Shortly after leaving Clarion Station, the Gullwind is attacked by another armed freighter, the Nightshade. They manage to drive off the attackers and escape. – The saurian defense fleet engages the sathar ships. Many of the sathar ships are damaged or destroyed but the saurian losses are just as bad. The sathar break off the attack and begin retreating toward Tischen. Two saurian Battle Rays are tasked to tail the retreating sathar while the other ships return for repairs.
61.131	– After 15 days of scanning the Padda system, the crew of the UPF Eleanor Moraes have discovered no planets orbiting the stars. They begin calculating a jump to the next system, dubbed Waller Nexus (FS24) – Health failing, Garlus collapses. When revived, realizing he has only days to live at most, he reveals to his new crew the reason for the flight from Dramune and the recent attacks and charges them to get the chukkahs safely back to Inner Reach. – A second sathar fleet arrives in OFS 184 enroute to the Sessar system.
61.132	After accelerating away for two days, the sathar ships In the Sauria system begin decelerating again looking to stop somewhere in the outer Sauria system. The two trailing Battle Rays radio this information back to Kischen and begin decelerating as well.
61.133	Shortly before the Gullwind makes the jump to Madderly’s Star, Garlus Tylappar passes away leaving his new crew to finish the Dramune Run on their own.
61.134	The Gullwind successfully jumps to the Madderly’s Star system. The crew immediately get to work on engine overhauls which are a jump overdue. Between the three engines, 108 hours of work are needed to get the overhauls completed.
61.135	Strike Force Nova arrives in orbit around Triad (Cassidine). They will spend a week here working with TF Cassidine.
61.136	After a week of changes, updates, and upgrades, SynthCorp re-enables its “Muffin Button” service, but with the price doubled to 1cr a muffin.
61.137	The second sathar battle fleet arrives at the Rock in the Sessar system. They begin a massive orbital bombardment of the planet, completely destroying the saurian population there. The saurians manage to get word out via subspace radio to alert the people of Kischen.
61.138	– Calculations complete, and another 7 days without a planetary detection, the UPF Eleanor Moraes begins acceleration for a jump to the Waller Nexus system. – In their second 100 days of operation, the OE jump route between Cassidine and Truane’s Star yields the company just over 2.5 million in gross profits.
61.139	On their second attempt, the HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps from YS03 to YS05, completing both directions of that jump and fully charting it. The jump data are sent back their supporting foundation but not to the UPF. Work begins to plot the jump back to YS06.
61.140	With the engine overhauls complete, the Gullwind begins accelerating for a jump to the Cassidine system.
61.141	The Gullwind’s radar detects two unidentified ships closing on the freighter. Deciding they don’t want another fight, the crew strap into their acceleration chairs and max out the Gullwind’s engines for several hours, avoiding the encounter.

Here’s the full timeline file:

DetailedFrontierTimeline Download

June RPG Blog Carnival – Organizations – Wrap-up

It’s the end of the month and time for a wrap-up on this month’s RPG Blog Carnival. Regular readers of my blog know that I normally do a “State of the Frontier” post on the last day of the month, that post will be up tomorrow. Today we’re going to look at the various entries in this month’s blog carnival topic, Organizations.

I don’t know if the topic wasn’t very appealing, people were crazy busy, or if the blog carnival is losing steam but we did not have a lot of submissions this month. I know I’m guilty of not doing an article every month as sometimes I’m strapped for time or just don’t have the inspiration to bend the often fantasy themed topics to sci-fi. But I was hoping this month’s topic of organizations would be broad enough to appeal widely, I guess I was wrong. That said the entries we did get were great.

First up was Building a Financial Landscape with Megacorps by Phil Forbes on the Stray RPG Thoughts blog. This entry discusses how to use Keith J. Davies’ Polyhedral Pantheons system to, instead of creating gods for a setting, create a series of mega-corps that are the main influencers in a setting. Phil then goes on to apply the system to the local branches of the mega-corps and the local markets they are operating in. This provides a rich framework of connections and competing interests for the players to interact with. I found this one interesting as my preferred setting, Star Frontiers, already has a pantheon of canonical mega-corps controlling various interests throughout the setting. I’m definitely going to take a look at this system for expanding these interactions.

Next up was an entry by Andrew Girdwood on the Geek Native blog. He gave us a random secret society generator. You can never have enough random names on hand and this generator gives you an infinite supply. You choose a general genre (Contemporary, Horror, Low or High Fantasy, or Sci-Fi) and then generate a name. You can keep clicking to get new ones or until you find one that sparks your imagination. The second one I got on his sci-fi generator was “The Eternal Planet Faction.” I immediately thought of a tie-in with the True Yazira society that I posted as part of the kickoff of this month’s carnival. In this case, it’s not part of the True Yazira Society, but a faction within the Family of One and the GODCo mega-corp that is trying to recreate their homeworld. I might write that up in the future. I’ll definitely use it at some point in my game.

Next was the entry by Gonz from Codex Anathema with their entry on the Silver Arrows, a loose, crime-prevention organization that might be part of the Church of the Silver Flame in their Ebberon campaign. They even provide a variation on the Arcane Archer archetype to play a member of the Silver Arrows.

As host, I offered up two different organizations. The first as part of the kickoff post, was the True Yazira society, primarily a cultural organization striving to preserve the traditions of their homeworld but also opposing the practices of the group that has usurped authority (as the True Yaziria Society sees it) from the rightful rules of their species. The second was the Investors, as shadowy, behind-the-scenes organization that works to influence governments and corporations to increase their own wealth and power.

That’s it for this month’s RPG Blog Carnival. I hope you found a nugget you could use in your game from this month’s posts or were inspired to generate some new organizations for your world even if you don’t blog or didn’t submit an entry. For me this is just a springboard as I plan to present various organizations from my setting in future posts, not just part of the Blog Carnival. I have several ideas lined up, I just need to find the time to write them down and get them posted.

Next month’s entry is still TBD but be sure to check out the RPG Blog Carnival’s home page on the Of Dice and Dragons blog to find links to past and future topics. And come back tomorrow for my regular “State of the Frontier” Post.

Myha’s Beach

I had originally planned to do a post on the HSS History’s Hope this week but I’m not quite ready for that. Instead, I’m giving you the outlines of a small town on Pale, Myha’s Beach. While I developed this as part of my Star Frontiers campaign, you could easily drop this town on to any world in any game.

Location

In my game, Myha’s Beach is located about 300-400km east of Point True on the sea coast. Here’s a map of the region around Point True.

I can’t seem to find where I recorded it, but I believe each of those grid boxes are either 300 or 350 km on a side.

History

Myha’s Beach started as a small fishing village founded shortly after the sathar were driven out of the Frontier. The village was built about five kilometers south of the crater left from the sathar’s destruction of a former costal city.

Not long after the basic city infrastructure was in place, the small town became a favorite beach destination for vacationers wanting to get away from Point True. The waters are warm and clear as the spur of land to the north keeps the cooler arctic waters from flowing into the bay. The city has embraced this role and now tourism employs a major portion of the city’s workforce.

About a decade after the city was founded, Streel decided to get into the shipbuilding industry and brokered a deal with the city to open a shipyard some 10 kilometers to the south of the city proper. This caused the city’s population to grow once again as the shipyard workers moved to Myha’ Beach and more services grew up to support the new citizens.

City Layout

Myha’s Beach is a long narrow city that sprawls out along the seacoast. The original village lies toward the northern end of the current town. The original marina is still in use. As the tpwn began to grow, it was originally small, 4-10 room hotels that were built both north and south of the original village, with almost everything built with access to the beach. This region of small hotels and private residences comprises the northern 3-4 kilometers of the town, centered on the now historic original village center and marina.

With the construction of the Streel shipyards to the south of the town, the town’s growth began to shift more in that direction with new residential and commercial districts being built southward with the residences on the beach and the commercial districts more inland. While growth continued to the north, it slowed considerably. At this same time, several large resort-style hotels were built on large swaths of the beach south of the existing city.

The city’s growth northward was effectively halted in FY18 with the construction of Brekstoone Manor. The manor is simply referred to as Observatory Manor by the locals, due to the large observatory dome on the manor’s north tower. The Brekstoone family secured a large tract of land that ran from the sea several kilometers inland on which they built the manor. With no more room northward to grow, the town continued to grow southward.

The 3-4 kilometers around the initial resort hotels was zoned for more of the same while the area between these large hotels and the Streel shipyards was reserved for the smaller hotels and residences. As this area filled in the city began to grow inland from the seashore with more commercial and residential areas to support the growing resident and tourist population.

In FY36 a small spaceport was built about 30 kilometers inland from the town to reduce the noise and air traffic impact on the town. This allows offworld visitors to come straight to Myha’s Beach instead of having to go to Point True first.

Current Population

The current resident population of Myha’s Beach is about 20,000. It is about 55% human, 20% yazirian, 15% vrusk, 9% dralasite and the remaining 1% made up of Rim and other races. In addition to the residents, the city supports between 20 to 40 thousand visitors, depending on the time of year.

About 5% of the resident population work at the Streel shipyards. Another 10% work in the town’s still thriving fishing industry supplying fresh seafood to both the local residents and tourists but also to Point True. A quarter of the resident population works directly in the tourist industry running shops, hotels, equipment rentals, and as guides both to the ocean and the inland areas. The remaining population works all of the support industries including city services, maintenance, restaurants, and stores that keep the city running.

Your thoughts?

That’s the city of Myha’s Beach. What other details would you like to see in a city write-up like this? Do you have any suggestions for other things that should be included or discussed? Let me know in the comments below.

The Lost Events

The Regular Update

Other Posts

Void Jumping

ADF and the Board Game Rules

How I Apply This In Game

Basic Application

Traversing multiple systems in a single trip

Final Thoughts

Organization

History

Rivals

General Knowledge

Hangouts

Use in my Game

Final Thoughts

The HSS History’s Hope

History of History’s Hope

Modifications

Full Ship’s Stats

The Journey So Far

Crew

The Journey

What Does the Future Hold?

Final Thoughts

The “Problem”

Short Staffed

More Ships?

Smaller Population?

Undesirable positions?

Crew Mutinies

Final Thoughts

Location

History

City Layout

Current Population

Your thoughts?