On 2024-02-07 15:05, Jeff Zeitlin - editor at freelancetraveller.com
wrote:
> Power for ships is fusion-based; power plants
> planetside include fusion, but aren't obviously exclusively fusion;
> while
> it's not discussed except where needed for story, it's clear that some
> worlds have a low-enough level of technology that one can assume
> lower-technology solutions to the power question.
>
I think the RCN setting is a lot of fun.

There's one other big technology departure from Traveller, which shapes
a huge amount of the on-planet story.  While "high drives" aren't much
different from Traveller m-drives other than having a lower max G, they
*can't* be used to land nor is air raft technology available.

Ships land on plasma drives, and the energetic exhaust thus requires
landing in water harbours.  (A skilled handler can land in rivers or on
flat ground -- with significant impacts to the surface or river life.)
The harbour setting brings in all the things you'd find in books from
the era of sail.  Rowboats when hovercraft aren't available or are
scarce/busy, jetties to get to land, water creatures, scuba to do some
maintenance, rigging maintenance cradles using the deep space masts, a
shape that must be stable in water, and plasma blast shielding or wide
dispersal.  Ships load reaction mass as water from the harbour, which
raises fun issues of possible contamination.

Alan
--
Bicycles are the most efficient machine yet invented for turning energy
into motion. Indeed, the bicycle has been accurately described as a kind
of green car, which can run on tap water and tea cakes and, moreover,
has a built-in gym.

Lord Taverne, UK House of Lords, in Nov 2015 debate