Brandon replied to Anthony, who replied to me: > >> I'm working out reasons why one would have a very fast starship > >> with little payload, and no means to earn an honest living as a > >> trader. One idea was a bounty hunter ship, either a long time > >> ago in a galaxy far, far away, or in a distant future history. > > > >Not sure why bounty hunters particularly care about anything like that. > >To me, that screams 'courier ship'. > > Depends on in what way the ship is fast. It needs better FTL and STL > speeds than average commercial ships. In Traveller, with Jump-1 and 1G > common, a > bounty hunter ship could probably get by with Jump-2 and 2G capability. > > IOW, the standard scout/courier ;)
I'm writing seven ships, from TL10 to TL16, all 30 tons and all high-speed, low-payload transports. One is a FTL "data courier" with big lasercoms and no landing capability, one is a "parcel service" ship, one is for a cinematic spy, and so on. One out of seven is a bounty hunter ship. Roger replied to me: > >* Might be armed. That isn't the case for the vehicles of real > > world bounty hunters, but clearly this is a cinematic design. > > Stealth might be a good idea - get ahead of the target, warn the > authorities on the world he's going to that there's money in it if they > line the starport with security guards and grab him as soon as he leaves > his ship... Stealth is good, but just informing the starport might not bring the full bounty -- better use it to sneak in and board. > Lacking a system-crippling weapon, perhaps a high-powered, slow-firing, > horribly accurate weapon, so that the pursuer can aim at specific > locations on the target ship? X-Ray Laser, RoF 1/2. > >* A single hunter or more? GURPS Mecha had the single hunters > > in their high-tech battlesuits against mid-tech mecha. The > > lone hunter meme is appealing for a movie or novel, but > > teamwork is better for games. > > Crew compartment very separate from prisoner compartment... The cell should be accessible in flight, which means that the cabin can be reached from the cell. That would give captured PCs a chance to overpower their jailers during dinner time, or with a well-faked illness. > >* Investigative gear. How do you represent that, beyond a > > multiscanner? > > Forensics lab? Good idea, but not in a 30-ton ship. > >* What sets the ship for a "bad" NPC bounty hunter apart from > > the ship of a "good" PC party? > > The "bad" NPC has nuclear missiles and is happy to collect the lower > "dead" bounty... How do you prove whom you got? Johannes replied to me: > Bounty hunters with ships might also fill different roles as well. Like > they might transport mail. A more legitimate business might make things > easier in some ports. The mail transport is another design. > Then there is the question, how tracking is done. Maybe the huntship has > drones or other subcrafts as mobile eyes. The bounty hunter has to get specific individuals, not broad classes of ships. Big, space-capable drones won't do. Little spy drones are another issue. VXii24, VR remote controls. > Or it might drop missles/mines that wait for a specific ship and then > attack/disable it. Autonomous precision attack? What if it fries a passenger liner? But it could be a SALH missile, obsolete for most military purposes, but highly accurate. > I suppose a hunter will also need a high speed in ordinary space. And in FTL, too. > Stealth would be good too. > > It also would be important, what sort of runaways would be typically > hunted. Dangerous criminals, that use the lawlessness of the frontier to > their advantage? Divorced parents dodging child support payments? Notorious crime lords, who fled beyond the reach of core world law enforcement? Player characters, who messed with the plans of the Evil Empire? Player characters, who messed with the plans of the Evil Megacorp? Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
