Scout Grav Bike

I finally had a little time over the July 4th weekend so decided to model Rob Caswell's great grav bike design from Grand Census / World Builder's Handbook. I had to take a few creative liberties - not unusual when going from 2D to 3D - but I think I got it pretty close.

Rob Caswell's original artwork

My take on the grav bike in 3D.

Yes, that's a sawed off shotgun tucked into the fairing.

A lone scout, loaded with gear, explores the inhospitable desert region of an alien world.

W is for Warbot

"Kerpow, Kerpow!" - JON-E Warbot


Similar in size and form to the Zhodani Tliazhashal PP04 medium warbot, the Harkuna model S3S by Ikeda Robotics is designed to be quickly reconfigured in the field to serve a wide variety of mission roles. The standard combat package includes two heavy energy weapons, usually heavy lasers, PGMP-13s or FGMP-14s.

The base model includes a basic sensor package but can be upgraded with just about anything desired. For reconnaissance missions, the heavy weapons can be swapped out for a recon mission package which includes densitometers, neural activity sensors, PRIS optics, and other miscellaneous sensors.

Two retractable light arms are located in a 360 degree swivel mount in the lower torso and are capable of handling any standard human tools or weapons. Between combat operations, the heavy weapons can be replaced with heavy work arms to facilitate field base construction and supply relocation.

For spacecraft operations, the S3S is designed to be able to go just about anywhere a soldier in battledress can go. Standard doors, airlocks, vertical hatches, and elevators are all accessible to the warbot.

At TL 15, and with the proper resources, this robot can switch out its own hardware and software to meet just about any mission requirement.

Civilian use
Most worlds view a warbot much like any other weapon, and as such they are restricted by local law level. Warbots used as personal body guards are not unheard of, but such use is rare. Actions taken by a warbot are the responsibility of the owner. Stripped of it's weapons and associated programming, the standard warbot can be reconfigured for a wide variety of non-military uses.

The Adventures of JON-E Warbot
The Adventures of JON-E Warbot, was a wildly popular children's animated tri-vid series produced in the early 1090's. The show followed the exploits of a stern voiced and duty bound E-series combat robot and his skilled, but trouble prone robot technician, Clark "Skippy" Weston. Being a children's show, there was never any overt violence against humans. Many of the adventures focused on rescue and humanitarian missions. When combat operations were presented they either featured stun weapons or were against enemy robots. JON-E's famous catchphrase of "Kerpow, kerpow!" spread to all corners of the Spinward Marches.

Funded by Ikeda Robotics, the show's critics labeled it as pure propaganda and a recruitment tool for the Imperial Navy. The show's antagonists were thinly veiled Zhodani, but never called such. There is speculation that the show stirred anti-Zhodani sentiments and glorified war, at least in the eyes of impressionable children, and possibly helped to expedite the start of the Fifth Frontier War.

Fan favorite episodes include "Skippy and the Brain Pirates", "The Return of Dr. Dredzliar", and the heart-breaking "Flowers for Sargeant Goodfellow".

"I was always very proud of that show", said Galt Trydine, retired public relations executive for Ikeda Robotics. "We had actually produced a combat model very similar to JON-E, and it's capabilities were pretty faithfully represented in the show. The voders at the time were never quite able to capture the smugness of the voice actor, but I heard some fans created vocal patches that do a pretty good job of it."
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For additional reading about warbots, check out Classic Traveller Alien Module 4-Zhodani and Book 8 - Robots.
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P is for Personal Re-entry Pod

"I'm going to regret this." - C-3PO, Star Wars

Personal Re-entry Pods go by many names: jump capsules, drop capsules, drop pods, escape pods, Human Entry Vehicles (HEV) or HEV Pods, Orbital Insertion Pods, or for those of you not into the whole brevity thing; Single Occupant Exo-atmospheric Insertion Vehicles (SOIEV). Regardless of what they are called, they are all designed to do pretty much the same thing; get a single passenger from a ship in orbit safely to the ground.

I first remember reading about jump capsules in Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers. The beginning of the book starts with a description of the "cap" (capsule) troopers making a drop from their ship to the planet below. Exciting stuff, and I was disappointed when the film version was made and it didn't include the capsule.

Generalities
The basic personal re-entry pod requires no skill to operate. Flights and landing coordinates are pre-programmed allowing the passenger to just enter the pod and activate a single, clearly marked button to launch. Historically, drop pods have a relatively high casualty rate, but improvements are always being made. The pods shown include stabilizer fins to reduce atmospheric turbulence are coated with a ablative ceramic coating to reduce heat. A small grav unit used to achieve a relatively soft landing and makes the pod usable in any atmosphere or any size world. Pods are reusable, but are unable to reach orbit on their own. The must be retrieved and re-outfitted to be used again.

Military Use
In the military, drop pods are used primarily for the insertion of ground combat troops. Drop pods can provide a benefit in combat operations by presenting multiple small targets as opposed to one big one, and also by strategically placing troops in specific locations. Flights are pre-programmed in at a console in the drop bay, and the actual launch is initiated by an officer who remains on the ship. The typical one man pod is a tight fit for a soldier with gear, and special interiors have been created for those wearing battledress. The military also use a non-occupied version of the drop pod, which replaces the passenger compartment with a storage compartment for pinpoint delivery of weapons, food, and supplies.

Non-military Use
A drop pod's primary non-military use is as a spaceship's emergency escape vehicle. Escape vehicles designed for 8, 12, or 16 passengers are more the norm, and much more economical. Still, if you have a small ship, or when you want to get off a ship fast and don't want to wait for other passengers, the single occupant pod is the way to go. The pod's launch sequence is tied directly into the ship's navigation computer, which automatically computes the safest trajectory and landing zone. This information is updated automatically by the ship's computer every five minutes, although the pilot or navigator can select different coordinates if desired. Non-military models typically contain an emergency vacc suit, emergency rations and supplies, and an automated tracking beacon.

Check out Twilight of the GM's excellent article "Abandon Ship", for more thoughts about escape pods.

Also take a look at Atomic Rockets well thought article on the folly of escape pods in the article "Emergency Deck".

Below is a Drop Capsule geomorph, with a similar Pod Bay. It includes areas for the cap troops and a control center, from where the capsules are programmed and launched. In this scenario, even the sleeping quarters are pods - kind of like the Japanese capsule hotels. Maybe cap troopers are agoraphobes.

G is for Grav-Hauler

Possibly the smallest of the small craft, the Grav-Hauler is a one man anti-gravity vehicle used to transport small cargos. It's performance when loaded is very similar to the standard air/raft, and is slightly faster when unloaded. It is most frequently used to haul single standard 4 dton containers,  but two containers can be linked and hauled together with some loss of performance. The cabin allows for 12 hours of life support, and contains an emergency vacc suit which will provide an additional 12 hours. It is possible for a second occupant to squeeze into the cabin, essentially on the pilots lap, but all operations are performed at a skill level of -2 and life support time is halved.

The vehicle requires the Pilot skill or Grav Vehicle skill to operate (level 0 is acceptable). Operation of the cargo clamps and cargo grav units is fairly intuitive and no special skills are required for basic manuevers. Cargo Handling skill is recommended for anything more difficult. The Grav-Haulers cargo clamps retract when not in use and the vehicle only takes 1 dton of space, so they are often carried aboard larger cargo ships.

The Grav-Hauler is an ubiquitous vehicle, and can be found at nearly all starports and spaceports, transporting goods across the planet or across town. Pilots of these craft are often part of a close-knit community and are known to look out for each other.

The model of the scout ship was created by Cyberia23 at the SketchUp warehouse. The alien planet landscape background is from WallpaperSafari.com

Grav-assisted CargoBot

This was inspired by the grav-assisted APC in one of my old Traveller books (but for the life of me I cannot find it - I just remembered something like "imagine a tank moving at Lamborghini speeds...). So the idea is the cargo bot has an anti-grav module to make the cargo lighter and therefore easier to move around. I provided several different options from what I remembered from Book 8 - Robots, but am past my days of gearheading all the small details and counting credits. I figure the these would run from about 80KCr for the manually driven cargo mover up to 200KCr for the grav version with all the bells and whistles.

I created and really liked an image of a grav cargobot holding cargo from above, like some flying beast with prey in its claws, but then I started thinking about the anti-grav cargo module contradicting the effects of the anti-grav mobility unit. It made my head hurt. I eventually remembered this is all fiction and decided anti-grav fields could run the same way or perpendicular to each other, but not in opposite directions, hence the last image with the robot below the cargo.

Finally, this is a strong attempt of mine to stay away from anthropomorphized robots. I like Star Wars as much as the next guy, but after Wall-E and BB-8, the cute robot thing is starting to get to me. This is my push back with the cargobots just being sophisticated equipment. No vocoder, although it does have an audible warning system. It communicates via text with the user through the ship's computer, the user's hand computer/datapad, or the screens on the center of the control unit.