Whereas I do agree there was a period (I figure 1977-sometime in 1979) where the Imperium did not have a published existence (perhaps separate from the existence in the hands of the creators), buy 1979, still in what *I* would call an LBB, was Supplement 3: The Spinward Marches.
And, for the record, I"m not arguing at any point that they did not provide a rule and that said rule has endured, rather I am arguing about the way it would be seen by most travellers given the odds and considering what that would mean were it to be the reality. Now, if there was a grand conspiracy never to release mortality information, maybe nobody would know (that's another possibility).
GT took a different stance. It's a pity we can't ask why. I will see if I can find some GURPS space stuff (non Traveller) and see what their version of a cryoberth might be and how it works. It may fall from that or it may have been a decision about what reasonable levels of mortality would make sense for people to accept.
I will also point out another potential gap: We know about frozen watches and there are specifics as to how many pilots you need, etc. basic mortality is NOT (as far as I can see) taken into account in anything written about frozen watches (or they'd have to have more pilots, etc in a crew segment). If you are reviving frozen watches to recover crew numbers and skills, and knowing it might be happening in combat conditions or just between fights in a campaign, then it is quite reasonable to consider that all medical staff with the usual high competency (med-3+) could be dead and thus revival should, especially in this case, kill more people that are critical, so therefore planners should include even more redundancy in their definition of the size and composition of a crew factor.
Further, there should be a standing protocol that locates members of a crew section in such a way as to not put key personnel geogarphically close so one another in frozen storage (to avoid ship damage from (for instance) wiping out all pilots (or engineers, or whatever). That may not be able to be managed in small vessels, but if it were to be considered, deckplans might want to not allocate all frozen watch storage to be in one large store (vulnerable) but rather in distributed spots all around the ship. And it may matter where your pilots (or engineers) are relative to their duty stations (or alternate emergency duty stations where they can still perform their function).
I fully concede that what was written as a rule has been kept in most versions to date.
My feeling why:
a) It was done, nobody thought to look at it too closely again.
b) It was done to make the PC's use of low berths risky (to make them think twice about flying cheap).
c) With more important sections of the game to update, this didn't make anyone's radar.
d) Nobody had (or has yet) considered the implications of the math here on the rules for frozen watches (and revivals thereof).
Which you think it is will obviously colour your Third Imperium.
That's what's fun... for every Traveller referee (and possibly every player) there's a different Third Imperium. :-)
One thing I don’t know is why are low berths so much safer in Gurps Traveller? Was that inherited from the generic space rules, or was it a deliberate choice? That might give an insight into how LKW saw the Imperium...
oooh, that's a good question. It's a shame we can't ask.
Anyway, thank you for this two minute break from horrors of APA7 in detail (I'm writing a guide for students). (APA7 is ok in general, it's the detail that's a pain!) It's giving me a nasty little headache.
tc
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