Starships as Giant Armored Air/Rafts

[David L Pulver]

In various Traveller adventures, starting with early GDW ones like Mission on Mithril but continuing the present day, there is often the assumption that their ship lands on an exotic world, and the crew exit to explore, map, hunt, or otherwise travel via ATV, open air/raft, or afoot across dangerous terrain, across the GM's detailed planetary hex maps while experiencing the perils of random alien animal encounters, local malcontents, and/or planetological events.

However, with spaceships generally being defined as vehicles possessed of reactionless/gravitic drives with thrusts usually in excess of the average planets (size 5 or so) gravity (especially if you have a scout ship, fast trader, pinnace, etc. with 2G+), the cunning player may well ask why they can't (when visiting X-class starport worlds or those of a low TL) just do their exploring or mapping or hunting by having their antigrav drive ship cruise along at walking to airship-like speeds just above the treetop, in perfect safety (as most ships are armored to resist 250-megawatt laser cannons) as a mobile base in comfort. Sure, they'll need to get out when they get close to interesting wild life or alien ruins or whatever, but that's far less dangerous and faster..

In many low-tech "mercenary" type adventures (e.g., classic ones like FASA's Seven Pillars) there seems to be an implicit idea that the PCs will land their ship at a fixed point, get out, and never use it as for planetary mobility. Of course, in worlds with some form of planetary defense, the local traffic control regulations will prevent or at least regulate this sort of thing. but I'm talking about low tech or strange new worlds here.

So, which of the rule sets, if any, address this sort of thing, either by explicitly allowing it, or by setting specific limits on the safety, maneuverability or capabilities of standard M-drives in a planetary setting. I've seen some rules sets that seem to require landing rolls, at least in bad weather, but not much that takes into account the fact that the ship's power plant is usually good for 2 weeks to a month and the ship is seemingly a giant VTOL grav sled covered in pretty thick armor....