Ship Types and Traveller

“I’ve got something, about three hundred thousand clicks out and closing. Her transponder says she’s a Type-A trader… the Elixa Mae, one of the old Almus-class. Kline registry, ID #112-A-7338, outbound Dix to Fornorb. Looks a bit big for a Type A, though. And whatever she’s doing, she’s moving with a purpose…”

Early editions of Traveller featured a relatively small number of standard ship designs, which were assigned a letter code to designate their general Ship Type. The most iconic Type, of course, is the ubiquitous Free Trader (Type A). The 1981 Book 2 Starships has but seven standard designs: Types S, A, R, M, Y, C, and T. As Traveller evolved additional Types were added as new ship designs were published.

A letter code provides a nice, convenient shorthand for referees and players as long as you have a relatively small number of codes. But the system quickly grows unwieldy as the number of ship designs expands beyond the capacity of most people’s recall. Everyone can remember that a Type A is a free trader, Type C is a cruiser, and Type S is a scout. But is a Type J a safari or a seeker mining ship? Is a Type P a patrol corvette or a corsair?

As Traveller evolved the old letter codes gradually faded in importance, although they never completely disappeared from the game. The same basic ships appear again and again, but they became more frequently identified by description (“free trader”) or increasingly, by a specific ship class (“Beowulf”), rather than type.

Ship Types make something of a return in both Mongoose Traveller and Traveller⁵. Which got me wondering, just what is a Ship Type?

Surprisingly, the term receives only limited explanation in any Traveller edition. The MegaTraveller Referee’s Manual (1987), in a note to the “Space-Faring Craft Type Codes” table, explains that “Space faring craft have some special type IDs that are used across the Imperium” (84).

MegaTraveller also introduced the concept of the Imperial Design Package (IDP), a set of common standards and specifications used across the the Imperium for “everything from graphite pencils and radial tires to starship software” (Survival Margin 75). As Charles Gannon explained in his article “Ships of the Black War”:

IDP designs are recognized standard architectures which have passed a supposedly rigorous Imperial design accreditation review and which are thereby licensed for distribution throughout the lmperium. Since the architect gets a small percentage of each purchase, this is a truly desirable occurrence. The value of IDP designs is that they have been selected from among thousands as being ‘best suited’ for fulfilling a particular set of operational requirements. Although some operational requirements are so specialized and unique that no category exists for them at the Imperial review level, most ships and boats fall into one of a few dozen operational domains.

IDP designs are selected for various characteristics—price, size, ease of maintenance, reliability, etc. Those few designs which are designated as IDPs are then packaged for distribution to any world willing to pay the heavily subsidized access fee. In this way, the Imperium not only promoted the emergence and dominance of superior designs, but limited the proliferation of competing designs and the concomitant chaos that would have crippled attempts to maintain and repair so diverse a fleet.

A similar concept is described in Traveller⁵ as the “TNAS (Quality Ship Design Scheme): a set of standard component specifications which are manufactured on worlds with the appropriate tech level and industrial capacity, but which can be assembled and maintained at any starport of the appropriate type, regardless of local tech level or industrial capacity” (Book 2 p. 27). Unfortunately, very little additional information is provided: it’s not even clear what “TNAS” actually stands for, or if this is something specific to the Galaxiad setting.

Establishing and promoting a small set of proven, open-source ship designs across the vast Imperium might provide significant economic efficiencies for ship builders and buyers alike, which in turn promotes interstellar trade. You can standardize crew training. You could have a supply chain of generic parts available in any Class A or B starport from the Marches to Alpha Crucis. The sheer economies of scale here probably advantage the megacorporations (‘How you gonna compete with LSP on a Type S?’) as well as Imperial shipyards.

The standard CT Ship Types, therefore, probably represent IDPs for common small vessels likely to be owned and operated by civilians—that is, player characters. A Ship Type is a generic category applicable across manufacturers, worlds, or sectors within the Imperium. Although the terms Type and Class are sometimes used interchangeably, I see Classes as specific expressions of a much broader Ship Type.

So any small free trader that meets certain design specifications can be called a Type A; the familiar Beowulf class is but one specific expression of the Type. Other classes of the Type A might be built at different Tech Levels, have very different appearances, deckplans, crew requirements, cargo capacities, or manufacturers. This might explain minor design differences between ships of the same type across game editions: the Type A is TL10 in Traveller⁵, TL12 in Mongoose Traveller, but TL15 in MegaTraveller!

For example, consider the Port of Call-class free trader detailed in FASA’s Adventure Class Ships, Volume 2 (1982), or for that matter, the popular A2 variant, the Far Trader from Supplement 7, Traders & Gunboats (1980). Given the ubiquity and longevity of the design standard, going all the way back to the Interstellar Wars, there might well be hundreds if not thousands of different classes and variants of classes of the Type A across Charted Space.

The Essential Ship Types

Later CT supplements introduced some new ship types such as the Type MK Transport from The Spinward Marches Campaign (1985), but few of these were carried over to subsequent editions. In general, these ship designs seemed too specific to be true Types. The MK, for example, appears to be exclusive to a specific merchant line (Al Morai) and region (the Marches) and thus is probably better described as a ship class.

Many of these late CT types also seemed a bit too large in tonnage. Although not specified anywhere, it seems to me true Ship Types should be reserved for Adventure Class Ships, which Traveller⁵ defines as Small Craft of 10 to 100 tons and Starships of 100 to 2,400 tons; these are ships "appropriate for ownership by, and operation by, player characters” (Book 2, 31).

In looking through various editions of Traveller, I identified eighteen different Types that seemed to be reasonably common across editions. I found only one type introduced after CT, the Type U Armed Packet, that seemed worthy of inclusion here:

Standard Ship Types

Type	Description	Original Source
A	Free Trader	CT Starships (1977)
A2	Far Trader	Traders and Gunboats (1980)
C	Mercenary Cruiser	CT Starships (1977)
CE	Close Escort	Traders and Gunboats (1980)
GE	Gunned Escort	Traders and Gunboats (1980)
J	Seeker Mining Ship	Citizens of the Imperium (1979)
K	Safari Ship	Citizens of the Imperium (1979)
L	Laboratory Ship	Citizens of the Imperium (1979)
M	Subsidized Liner	CT Starships (1977)
P	Corsair	Citizens of the Imperium (1979)
R	Subsidized Merchant	CT Starships (1977)
S	Scout/Courier	CT Starships (1977)
SD	System Defense Boat	Traders and Gunboats (1980)
T	Patrol Corvette	CT Starships (1977)
U	Armed Packet	T5 Starships (2015)
X	Express Boat	Traders and Gunboats (1980)
XT	Express Boat Tender	Traders and Gunboats (1980)
Y	Yacht	CT Starships (1977)

This seems like a fairly good mix of sizes and missions. Almost all of these types should be fairly common within the Third Imperium, if not all of Charted Space. If I were forced to winnow this list further to reflect the most useful and essential types, I’d probably drop the escorts and SDB as too militarized, and the X and XT as not applicable for player characters. I might also drop the K and L as too specialized—though the K seems a fairly popular PC ship.

The Type P corsair, introduced in Citizens of the Imperium (1979), has spurred much debate over the years: how would a ship design intended for piracy ever become a standard? And if it did, how could it be effective? Who builds corsairs, and what bank would ever finance one?

Using Ship Types in Play

Traveller⁵ introduces the extremely useful Quick Ship Profile (QSP), a five-character string encoding key ship parameters in the format Mission, Hull, Configuration, Gs, and Jump. The familiar Type A, then, would be assigned a QSP of A-BS11, which breaks down as a free trader (A) with a 200-ton (B), streamlined (S) hull and Jump-1 (1) and 1G (1) capability.

The QSP is vastly easier to use than the old Universal Ship Profile from High Guard (1980), which was just too long and complicated to have a lot of utility. The Type A, for example, has a nearly indecipherable USP of 2111111-000000-00000-0.

In general, the old Ship Type maps pretty neatly to the mission parameter of the new QSP. In some ways, the QSP is a worthy successor to the old letter types: fairly simple to understand but even more expressive and extendable.

Marc Miller developed a new summary format for describing ships that incorporates the QSP in his article “Clipper Ship Service In Traveller” from Xboat issue 3 (2020). This format is both extremely useful and eminently readable, short enough to write on an index card and shared with players as needed. I imagine this approximates the information PCs would receive from an onboard starship recognition guide.

Here are Mongoose Traveller stat blocks for the eighteen Ship Types using the Xboat format:

Free Trader A-BS11. 200 tons (streamlined hull), Thrust-1, Jump-1, TL-12, Computer-5. 21 tons fuel. Five crew, five passengers, 20 low berths. 81 tons cargo. MCr 51.48.

Far Trader A2-BS12. 200 tons (streamlined hull), Thrust-1, Jump-2, TL-12, Computer-5/bis. 41 tons fuel. Five crew, five passengers, six low berths. 64 tons cargo. MCr 54.24.

Mercenary Cruiser C-HS33. 800 tons (streamlined hull), Thrust-3, Jump-3, TL-12, Computer-20/fib. 252 tons fuel. Six crew, 19 passengers. 8 hardpoints. One air/raft, one 50-ton modular cutter. 72 tons cargo. MCr 292.46.

Close Escort CE-DU65. 400 tons (standard hull), Thrust-6, Jump-5, TL-15. Computer-30. 128 tons fuel. Twelve crew, eight gunners. Four hardpoints. One 100-ton drop tank. One 20-ton gig. 33.68 tons cargo. MCr 116.

Gunned Escort GE-DS62. 400 tons (standard hull), Thrust-6, Jump-2, TL-12. Computer-20/fib. 84 tons fuel. Seven crew, four gunners, 30 marines. Four hardpoints. One 100-ton drop tank. 5 tons cargo. MCr 128.

Seeker J-AL22. 100 tons (streamlined hull), Thrust-2, Jump-2, TL-12, Computer-5/bis. 21 tons fuel. Three crew. One hardpoint. 26 tons cargo. MCr 36.76.

Safari Ship K-BL12. 200 tons (streamlined hull), Thrust-1, Jump-2, TL-12, Computer-5/bis. 41 tons fuel. Five crew, six passengers. One hardpoint. One air/raft, one 20-ton launch. 22 tons cargo, plus two eight ton capture tanks. MCr 71.5.

Laboratory Ship L-DC22. 400 tons (standard hull), Thrust-2, Jump-2, TL-12, Computer-10. 82 tons fuel. Four crew, sixteen passengers. One air/raft, one ATV, one 40-ton pinnace. 3 tons cargo. MCr 136.

Subsidized Liner M-FU13. 600 tons (standard hull), Thrust-1, Jump-3, TL-12, Computer-10/bis. 183 tons fuel. Six crew, 24 passengers, 20 low berths. One 20-ton launch. 119 tons cargo. MCr 161.523.

Corsair P-DU32. 400 tons (standard hull), Thrust-3, Jump-2, TL-12, Computer-5. 130 tons fuel. Five crew, five passengers, 20 low berths. Four hardpoints. 160 tons cargo. MCr 180.

Subsidized Merchant R-DA11. 400 tons (streamlined hull), Thrust-1, Jump-1, TL-12, Computer-5. 41 tons fuel. Five crew, 14 passengers, 9 low berths. One 20-ton launch. 201 tons cargo. MCr 90.287.

Scout/Courier S-AL22. 100 tons (streamlined hull), Thrust-2, Jump-2, TL-12, Computer-5/bis. 23 tons fuel. Three crew, one passenger. One hardpoint.12 tons cargo. MCr 36.76.

System Defense Boat SD-DS60. 400 tons (streamlined hull), Thrust-6, no jump capability, TL-13, Computer-25/fib. 16 tons fuel. Nine crew, four gunners. Four hardpoints. 100 tons cargo. MCr 175.41225.

Patrol Corvette T-DA43. 400 tons (streamlined hull), Thrust-4, Jump-3, TL-12, Computer-15. 124 tons fuel. Nine crew, eight marines. Four hardpoints. One 30-ton ship's boat. 46 tons cargo. MCr 174.4128.

Armed Packet U-CA33. 300 tons (streamlined hull), Thrust-3, Jump-3, TL-12, Computer-5. 91 tons fuel. Four crew, twelve passengers, five low berths. Three hardpoints. Air/Raft. Fifteen tons cargo. MCr 111.885.

Express Boat X-AS04. 100 tons (streamlined hull), no maneuver drive, Jump-4, TL-13, Computer-20. 41 tons fuel. One crew. MCr 31.518.

Express Boat Tender XT-KU11. 1,000 tons (standard hull), Thrust-1, Jump-1, TL-13, Computer-15. 115 tons fuel. Eight crew, three gunners. Two hardpoints. 25.5 tons cargo. MCr 308.25.

Yacht Y-BU11. 200 tons (standard hull), Thrust-1, Jump-1, TL-12, Computer-5. 22 tons fuel. Five crew, thirteen passengers. Air/Raft, ATV, one 30-ton ship's boat. 21 tons cargo. MCr 67.402.

Postscript

Miller’s article on clipper service is an excellent read and suggests that clipper ships might be a “missing” category of Traveller ship, though they might be too rare to constitute a standalone Type. As he writes, “Travellers seldom encounter clipper service. They either buy passage for one jump to neighboring worlds, or have their own ships. When they are in the wilderness, they are unlikely to be in the same place at the same time as a clipper” (11).

That said, fast yachts are probably kicking around my version of Magyar sector, providing chartered passenger service between Wu, Iouo, Terra, Home, Kusyu, or other important worlds:

Fast Yacht YF-HS64. 800 tons (streamlined), Thrust-6, Jump-4, TL-14, Computer-20. 514 tons fuel. 8 crew, 8 passengers. Eight hardpoints. 25 tons cargo. MCr 315.

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