FAQ - Referee Questions - Jump Travel - Travel
Fuel for Ships
All star ships and system ships use refined hydrogen fuel for operation. This hydrogen comes from water or the atmosphere of gas giants. There are two types Refined and Unrefined.
Type A and type B Starports {and space ports in more advanced Systems with a type A starport} sell Refined fuel at Cr500 per ton. Starport type C and D only sell Unrefined fuel.
Unrefined fuel has a cost of Cr100 per ton. Using unrefined fuel in a starship creates a DM-2 to all Jump attempts until the full fuel modules have been purged.
Refueling a typical ship takes 1d hours to complete.
If the Traveller wants or needs to find fuel outside of a starport they have the option to skim a nearby gas giant.
insert notes from Starship Operators Manual
While fuel scooping and processing is standard practice for non-commercial ships, many traders or passenger liners prefer to buy their fuel at a port instead. There are three primary reasons for this, the first being time. Although fuel scooped from natural sources is ‘free’, it is a significant time investment; 2–4 hours to scoop and 24 to process is typical, compared to the 1-2 hours to refuel at a port. For most commercial ships, time is money. Second, some systems do not allow fuel scooping, out of environmental concern – particularly with oceanic refuelling – or a desire to control their revenue sources. Some systems seed CAPTOR (CAPtive TORpedo) mines within their oceans and gas giants to secure this restriction with lethal force.
Finally, wilderness fuel scooping can be dangerous. Even without a port’s interference, dangers such as turbulence from gas giants or local large fauna can kill a ship as surely as a torpedo strike. Commercial ships rarely see the risk as worth it compared to paying a few thousand extra Credits at a port.
insert notes from Forums - written by the author of World Builders Guide
Okay, Geir’s-Total-Unofficial-But-Workable-and-Consistent-with the-Core-Book rules for gas giant refueling:
Refueling at a Gas Giant: Difficult (10+) Pilot check (Special duration, DEX).
Duration: 2 hours for each 10% of total hull volume refueled. Each positive point of Effect reduces time by 5%. For example, to refill 20 tons on a 100 dton ship, or 40 tons on a 200 ton ship, requires 4 hours, with each positive Effect decreasing time by 12 minutes.
This task can be performed carefully, resulting in an Average (8+) check requiring twice the indicated time, or rushed, resulting in a Very Difficult (12+) check requiring half the indicated time.
If the task is successful, the ship emerges from the gas giant and continues on its way.
If the task is failed, the operation is aborted one hour into the operation, with no fuel collected. The pilot must make a Difficult (10+) Pilot check (1 hour, DEX) with a DM equal to the negative Effect of the initial failed check to avoid damage and to allow a second refueling attempt, if desired. Positive Effect on this check will reduce the time interval by 6 minutes to a minimum time of 30 minutes.
If this task is failed, the ship suffers hull damage equal to 1D times the Effect of the failure, times the tonnage of the ship divided by 100. For example, if a pilot of a free trader (200 tons) fails this second check with Effect -2, then the ship takes 2D x 2 points of hull damage, a range of 4 – 24 Hull points. As a free trader has 80 Hull points, critical hits occur when damage exceeds 8, 16, and 24 Hull points – the referee can roll a Severity 1 critical for each 10% interval or may choose to roll once at a higher Severity (for example a single Severity 2 if 16 Hull points of damage occur). This may result in more Hull damage, more criticals and other bad things.
After a failed refueling, the ship remains at the layer of the refueling attempt. By default, a refueling takes place in the Deep (4) layer. Careful refueling occurs at the Shallow (3) layer. A rushed refueling also takes place at the Deep Layer, but is performed at higher velocity, resulting in more fuel gathered, but at greater risk.
Descriptions of gas giant Layers are as in the Traveller Companion (p.163-164), but layer penalties are not applied to the refueling task, only to other Piloting tasks conducted at that layer. For non-refueling operations or the aftermath of a failed refueling, task DMs as indicated in the Companion (for instance DM-1 in the Shallow and DM-2 in the Deep), but only one (Usually, Average (8+)) Pilot task check at the deepest layer (or per day of gas giant operations at that layer) is required. Failures result in the damage indicated above, based on the Effect of the failure, not the Layer. This damage result balances piloting skill and size of the craft, causing less percentage damage to an almost successful check but more absolute damage to larger vessels.
