Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 125 – The Seventh and Final Hour

According to “About the Game”, this system can be used an adventure or campaign guideline. Since I have effectively “won” this game a couple of times over, let’s try this.

The story so far... Duke and the gang were jumped by the police. They shot their way out, but then the military showed up with 3 tanks and 6 troopers. All three tanks are disabled, but still firing on the ship. They have the equivalent of tech level one spaceship guns. The battle has been going on for an hour. The officer leading the tanks had a field disruptor, which forces any piece of equipment to make a breakdown roll. The ship has been hit several times, but has succeeded in it's save. This ship is Tech 6. Tech levels for ships only come into play for breakdown or risky jumping.

Dirtside, combat rounds are 5 minutes. In space, they are an hour. This the second hour of combat. We're going to do a little space combat soon.

2 hr, 00 minutes: Duke has ordered the ship to land and the hoppers to launch in the last round. This hasn't happened yet and he doesn't know why. Duke has taken over shooting from Audrey. He blasts another tank, as does Deadeye. The last tank misses.

David and Ace are in one hopper while Mike and Lefty are in the other. Each hopper can hold 14 CU of things. There are 13 crewmen. If they suit up, but abandon their heavy weapons, each one can carry 7 crewmen. Emily splits the crew up: Ace's hopper holds David, Audrey, Ratchet, and Bones. The second hopper hold's Mike, Lefty, Doc, Jon and Lucy. There is space for 2 more people on each Hopper. The crew in the hoppers are ready to pull in Fuel and Life Support units.

2 hr, 05 minutes: Emily is now at the controls of the ship, Duke and Deadeye have the guns as they break for orbit. Duke is confused by all of this, but rolls with it.

3 hrs, 00 minutes. Emily spots two patrol ships (e108) in orbit, ready to intercept the Buffalo. She switches on the ships ECM, sets the autopilot for max speed and orders Deadeye to a hopper. Deadeye hops into Ace's shuttle and they load one more Fuel Unit and Life Support Unit. Ace opens the Hopper bay doors.

The patrol ships are TL-4, have TL-4 guns and 10 hits. They have neither ECM or Screens. Duke and Emily unload on them, as does Ace's shuttle. They focus their fire on one of the two ships. Splitting fire in the game doesn't work. Duke and Emily roll six dice each, since they have TL-6 guns. The hopper rolls 5 dice, while it has TL-6 guns, against ships they do one die less. A roll of 1 or 2 is a hit, a roll of multiple hits indicates a critical has occurred, too.

Duke hits the lead ship for two points of damage. Emily piles on the criticals, doing 3 points of damage plus 2 criticals. Life support goes down in that ship. David scores another 2 hits plus a critical. The ship's cargo hold is bleeding air.

The ships return fire. They get 4 dice each. They lose one die because of the ECM, but gain one because there is no one at the controls of the Buffalo. I said we were on autopilot, but effectively, all three ships are flying in a straight line with no change in distance. The patrol ships are maneuvering for advantage while our hero's can't.

The Buffalo takes 3 hits, but no criticals. It's down to 8 more hits.

4 hrs, 00 minutes. Emily orders Duke to met her at the last hopper. You know he won't do that.

David scores three more hits on the lead patrol ship. She begins to break up. Duke rains now a barrage on the second ship. He scores 3 hits plus a critical that would have been scored on their ECM system. They don't have one, so the critical doesn't count. Emily is running back to the hopper, so she doesn't shoot.

The Buffalo takes another pair of hits. She is down to 6.

5 hrs. 00 minutes: The crew of the second hopper want to get out of here, but Emily is holding out for Duke. He blazes away at patrol ship, doing one more point of damage. David does the same.

It's not an even trade, as the Buffalo takes three hits. The Buffalo has 3 hits left while the patrol ship has 5.

6 hrs. 00 minutes. The last hour... Emily orders the hopper to leave as Duke hammers the other ship with 2 hits. It returns fire and explosions rack the Buffalo. As the ship burns, the hoppers destroy the last ship.

THE SEVENTH AND FINAL HOUR. Duke was all about the safety of his crew. He had a stasis unit installed in each turret, but as a consequence, there was no room for a U-suit.

Several civilian ships rush to search for survivors. Ace's hopper lands on the Serena Dawn out of Truane's Star while Emily's group makes for a courier ship bound for Mithril...

This adventure with the Star Smuggler Rule set is at an end. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I tried to use this set of rules as a jumping off point to see what I could start with a more advanced set of RPG rules. This set has its limits set the stage for future adventures. Half the gang will be moving on to the planet Volturnus in the Zebulon system while the larger group will join the crew of the courier to conduct the survey of Mithril. Fortunately, Lucy's ability to drive a skimmer, and possibly an ATV, will be an advantage.

Perhaps someday, they will meet up with Duke again. Or perhaps, one of them will become a Star Smuggler like him.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 125 – April 15th. Hour 1.

According to “About the Game”, this system can be used an adventure or campaign guideline. Since I have effectively “won” this game a couple of times over, let’s try this.

1 hr, 00 minutes: Duke and the gang leave the ship to make a contact at the spaceport bar. On the way, they are intercepted by the police. Apparently, they don’t like smugglers. These police are listed in e017. There are 3 police skimmers with TL-1 guns, each with a driver and gunner (E:6, M:5, H:3). There are two troopers in the back of each vehicle, (E:7, M:4, H:6) armed with TL-1 side arms and heavy weapons. They surround our party and order them to surrender. It’s 12 vs. 13. Game on!

Combat rounds on the ground are 5 minutes. In space, they are an hour.

Duke, Lefty, Deadeye, Emily, David and Audrey have TL-4 heavy weapons and open fire. But Lucy, Michael, Jon and Ratchet have TL-6 side arms and go first. Side arms will only damage skimmers on a critical. They hit 3 times, but fail to do any damage. But it keeps the troopers in the skimmers.

Next go the heavy weapons which should go better. And they do. All three skimmers are disabled and one officer is down. The police jump from their burning vehicles.

1 hr, 05 minutes: Duke and the gang run back to their ship in the distance. The drivers and gunners stay with the burning vehicles while 3 troops chase Duke’s gang and 3 other shoot. They all miss.

1 hr. 10 minutes: Duke and the gang reach the ship’s ramp. Duke, Lefty and Emily guard the ramp while the rest pile into the ship. They exchange fire with the Troopers. One trooper is killed outright, another is KO’ed and the third has a single hit point. Return fire is ineffective again.

1 hr. 15 minutes: Duke hit’s the last of the pursuing trio, killing him. In the meantime, the police have put out the fires and have called for backup. Jon fires up the ship while Deadeye takes one turret and Audrey takes the other.

1 hr. 20 minutes: The police have regrouped. The skimmer gunners have remounted the smoking vehicles and open fire on Duke, Lefty and Emily. Skimmer guns aren’t as dangerous as I thought, Duke shrugs off a single wound and the gang retreats into the ship.

1 hr. 25 minutes: Deadeye and Audrey return fire from the turrets. Two vehicles explode killing the gunners. In the meantime, the police units have recovered their dead, wound and more importantly, their weapons. The police force is down to just 7 guys, but 6 have heavy hand weapons and 1 has a side arm.

1 hr. 30 minutes: Audrey and Deadeye finish off the remaining vehicle as the police take cover. David and Ace head for one hopper while Mike and Lefty head for the other. Jon rotates the ship.

1 hr. 35 minutes: The military is on the scene now. 6 soldiers armed with heavy weapons and 4 frag grenades each. They have the same stats as the troopers, as e018 neglects to give stats. On top of this, the officer has a field scrambler. He fires on the ship and misses. The rest of the men start assembling an artillery piece.

1 hr. 40: I’m making a judgment call here. Starship guns inside an atmosphere use the ship’s computer skill which is 6 instead of the gunner’s skill. I call B.S. because I have TL-6 guns, which is an automatic hit. I’ll roll 1d6 per tech level, minus one 1d6 for being in the atmosphere. That is 5d6, and a hit occurs on a 1 or 2. If I roll more than 2 hits, the each extra hit is a critical. I hit that artillery piece and destroy it. The officer fires back with his discombobulator. He hits and the ship falters, but doesn’t breakdown.

1 hr. 45 minutes: The gunners try to hit that officer, Deadeye misses, but Audrey wipes him out.

1 hr. 50 minutes: 3 TL-2 tanks arrive on the scene and open fire on the ship. One vehicle takes a single hit while the other takes a single hit and an ineffective critical. In the meantime, someone retrieves the officer’s field scrambler. One tank lands a hit on the ship for a single point of damage.

1 hr. 55 minutes: Return fire cripples the last tank, but they keep shooting. They don’t hit. The ship is hit by the field scrambler and power flickers again. Duke orders the ship to land and the hoppers to launch.

The police force is down to 6 troopers and the military has 3 damaged tanks and 6 soldiers.

We have 71,573 in cash, have 8 hypercharges. Duke and the ship has taken one hit. And we are in big trouble... 

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 124 – April 14th.

We land at the space port with no trouble and set about shopping for hypercharges. We are rudderless again since we paid off the ship.

Let’s take stock today by displaying the character sheets again. I’m only missing a few bits. The ship has screens and the hoppers have TL-6 weapons. The pantry is pretty bare. We could probably have a dozen skimmers, a pair of tanks or two hoppers in the ship's holds. But we don't.

On the character sheets, I removed all money and salary. I wasn't tracking that for a good long time.  Audrey should have a military suit from the hold.

We have 71,573 in cash, have 8 hypercharges.  We now own our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 123 – April 13th.

We decide to go right back to where we began, Regari.

I'm not sure what I'll do there, but it'll be nice to be home. We pass through the Palatek system and meet no troubles. The same for Regari. We'll head to the spaceport to refuel.

We have 72,573 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We now own our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 122 – April 12th.

We enter the Palace area. We get a chance to steal some statues, but we are here to sell a bed for a base price of 1,100. We have a 10 times multiplier. The crew is hysterical because Duke uses another one of these pheromones to double the price. We take in another 19,850 while the crew gets 220 each.

We move the ship over to the spaceport and try to replace our hypercharges. We end up doing it by the end of the day. Not bad for a day’s work.

Where do we go next?

We have 72,573 in cash, have 8 hypercharges.  We now own our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 121 – April 11th.

We blast off for Imperia. One of the special rules I made for the Buffalo was that it couldn’t double jump. So we have to jump from New Karma to Nipna, Talitar and finally Imperia. Surprisingly, nothing happens on any of these jumps.

We spend the last two hours moving two units in. Tomorrow, we will set down at the palace.

We have 54,723 in cash, have 4 hypercharges.  We now own our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 120 – April 10th.

At the colony on New Karma, we find these books have a base price of 12,000 secs. The crew is elated. The multiplier is three, but hold on to your hats. Duke uses one of those pheromone vials and doubles the price. That’s 72,000 secs. Each crewman gets 720 while Duke pockets 64,080. 

Our first 2 rolls are to purchase side arms. We want to sell them so that is annoying. Our last two rolls are to sell skimmers for a base price of 30 multiplied to 90. So we take in another 450 secs. Instead of pocketing these funds, Duke shares it among the crew. It makes the math easy and the crew happy.

We have 249,586 which is more than what we owe on the ship. We pay it off.

We have 54,723 in cash, have 7 hypercharges.  We now own our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 119 – April 9th.

I now have the calendar sync to at least the last digit, which is easier on the mind.

Based on all of the stuff we found, our best bet is to head to New Karma, then Imperia. Skimmers are hot commodity at Colonies and the books we have are worth a lot there, too.

On landing at the colony, we get hit up for custom fees for vehicles. 5 secs. per vehicle, including the ship and boats. How annoying. It burns up the rest of our day and costs us 40 secs.

We have 185,506 in cash, have 7 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 113 to 118 – April 8th.

The Buffalo with cleaned up spaces
so we can take on more cargo

I want to resync the calendar to the days in game, so we are spending 6 days in the Ruins. Here is my game plan. Duke and Emily will form teams for alternating days. Any day that Engineers aren’t repairing found junk, they will be doing maintenance.

When an engineer does this, it causes a +2 on breakdown rolls for the first day and a +1 on the next two days. Breakdown occurs when a 2d6 roll is equal to or less than the tech level of the item in question. This is why TL-1 items are valuable. They never breakdown. Since the start, I’ve been tracking breakdown, but not really mentioning it. The reason is two-fold, for every item I had that could breakdown, I had a spare, which makes this a boring exercise. The breakdown roll on those healing tanks are kind of important, so I will be looking at that.

Since Lucy and Ratchet have been assigned skills first, they has reported an accounting error in yesterday’s activities. No one got their cut when we sold the guns. Duke and Emily confer with the crew and decide that the best plan of action is to apologize profusely and hand out some bonuses. 100 secs. each. This costs us 1,100 total. The crew seems happy and Duke breaths a sigh of relief. Emily cusses about Duke’s lackadaisical record keeping.

None of this in the game mechanics, I just happened to notice that glitch and thought this would be fun and easy way to fix it.

We are starting with 20 repair units and 14 fuel units. I’m not tracking Life Support as Nipna has good air. My scouts won’t be wearing U-suits, either but will have their PS bot on hand in case they are knocked to zero wound points.

Duke is out with David and Lefty. Emily will lead Deadeye and Audrey on opposite days.

Day: 113 – We find two skimmers. One is intact and the other needs repair. Lucy and
Day: 114 – Emily finds 30 secs. in coins then blunders into a building collapse. We roll very low and Emily takes 1 hit, Audrey takes one and Deadeye takes 3. Lucy begins repairs on the skimmer while Ratchet and Doc ready the tank for Deadeye. We are down to 19 repair units.
Day: 115 – Emily and Audrey heal up. Deadeye is fully healed in the tanlk and it doesnt' break down. The skimmer is now repaired. Duke’s team finds a single repair unit and a very large bed (e088). We have 20 RU.
Day: 116 – Emily finds a damaged GM-Bot and another damaged skimmer.
Day: 117 – Ratchet and Lucy have repaired the GM-bot and skimmer. The GM-bot starts doing maintenance. We are down to 18 repair units. Duke’s team finds a single U-suit and a set of books (e088).
Day: 118 – Last day. We find a pair of intact skimmers.

Based on what we have found, we need to go to New Karma and Imperia. We have a bed, 5 skimmers, a GM-Bot which we are keeping and a set of books.

The Buffalo packed full of found items. 

We have 185,546 in cash, have 8 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 111 and 112 – April 7th.

We blast off for the space station, because that is the only place you can sell starship guns apparently. We spend an hour moving to orbit, another to get to other planet’s space station.

We make a contact on the way in and purchase 3 vials of pheromones for 720 secs. Good deal.

Our first roll is nearly as fruitful. We get repair, life support and fuel units. For some reason, you can’t sell life support units here. We can sell fuel and repair units for 10 and 5 each. It turns out that we can’t really sell any fuel units and still have a reserve, so we purchase one for 20 secs. We take in 75 for this transaction.

We spend the whole rest of the day rolling to no effect. 95 secs isn’t very much so it’s distributed among the crew.

The next day (112) we get our roll for starship guns. We managed sell for 200 each. We also make another 600 secs interest payment. I have to be honest, I am only making sure we pay every ten days or better. I am pretty sure we are two weeks in advance but I’m not tracking that.

We have 186,646 in cash, have 8 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 110 – April 6th.

Duke, Emily, Deadeye, Audrey and David are out attempting to make contact with a buyer or seller of those high tech items we found yesterday. We get a few meaningless rolls, such as a repossession team before we get that offer. The repo team ignores you so long as you are current on your bills and not wanted.

We can purchase a regrowth tank, which will heal someone 1d6 a day. If it breaks down at the end of the day, it will cause 1d6 points of damage. I like it. They have a base price of 2000 times 2. So, I purchase 2 for 8,000.

We also purchase our hypercharges at 1,500.

We have 186,290 in cash, have 5 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 109 – April 5th.

Every planet has a theme.  Mynkuria’s theme is to win the war with Nipna via unusual tech. Nipna’s theme is to win the war via high tech.  Mynkuria isn’t working out for us, so we travel back to Nipna.

On our way back into the system, we encounter gun buoys. Emily manages to get the ship away before they can fire on us.

We head for the spaceport on the first planet and are detected on entry. We are approached with the opportunity to purchase some high tech items. We’re offered starship defensive screens for 2,500. We take ‘em.

This uses up all of our time for the day, but it was a super effective use of time.

We have 195,790 in cash, have 5 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 106, 107 and 108 – April 4th.

On Day 106, we take a day of RRR to heal up the entire crew. We also pay 300 in interest.

On Day 107, we get cracking on those Stasis Units we picked up from e103. In the first stasis unit, we find a wounded pilot. The medics lead him off to the crew quarters.

The next unit is more problematical. We open it and 4 guys jump out. Based on the last encounter, I’m going to decide that Duke tries to talk to them. Everyone except the medics and the newly found pilot are here.

The bodyguards open fire. They have the following stats:
Marksmanship: 4
Melee: 1
Endurance: 6
TL-5 side arms.

Duke makes his cunning roll and they do not surprise us. Lucy, Ratchet, Jon and Mike all have TL-6 side arms so they shoot first. All of them hit, but only Lucy scores a critical. 3 of these guys take a single point, while the last takes 5.

They return fire. They shoot at Duke, Mike, David and Lucy. Each needs a 9. Duke, Mike and Lucy are hit. Duke takes 3 points as a critical, while the other two take one point of damage.

To finish the round, Duke, Lefty, Deadeye, Emily, and Audrey shoot back with heavy weapons. Ace shoots with a TL-1 side arm. All four guys go down in a hail of gun fire.

We call for medical help and all of the wounded, including our newly found pilot, are transported to the city for treatment. This is expensive, but it avoids encounter checks. We pay 600 for the service.

On Day 108, Emily brings the ship to the city to pick up Duke and the gang. Nothing really interesting happens. On entry to the city we have a chance to sell TL-5 or six side arms, but the crew doesn’t want to sell. This is a rest day for Duke, Mike and Lucy.

Emily makes her rolls for the ship as we would like to sell these TL-1 level weapons. No deal on those, but we do get buy life support (1 secs. base), repair units (2 to buy, 1 to sell) and fuel (1 secs. to buy and sell). Twice, each actually.

This creates a dilemma for the solo player. If a player first makes all of their rolls for the day like I did, effectively, they can see the future. So, in order to blind myself, Emily decides to purchase 10 each at the first transaction, then possibly sell some on the second transaction if the price is right.

The first round results in Life Support for 3 each (30 for 10), Repair units for 2 each (20 for 10) and fuel at one each for a total of 10. This is due to the price multipler. We paid a more for the LSU, and base price for the other two. In the second round, the multiplier is 1, so we would lose money if we sold, so we don’t. A player can always refuse to buy or sell based on price, the problem comes in when you know that you have multiple chances.

We have 195,790 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 105 – April 3rd.

This has been a bad deal all around. We are hauling back to Mynkuria and our entry contact is r328. This gives us an advantage to sneak into the area of our choosing, until we are detected. We pick the military base on Mynkuria. This gives a bonus on detection rolls.

We grab our 13,500 credits, 1,485 goes to the 11 crew members.

Duke decides to make a large payment on the principal of the ship, dipping into our savings. We map our 4 rolls and thankfully get Stasis Units. This time we can buy units in any size we want for a base price of 50 per CU. Since the wealth code is 30, we get them for 50 per CU.

I need two stasis units to open the 2 stasis units we found. For that, we need 2 five CU units. That’s 500 secs. Next, I want to put a Stasis unit in the pilotage and improve the ones in the crew quarters. Another 5 CU unit. The crew quarters are going to be broken in to 4 parts, so that is 4 seven CU Stasis Units. That is another 1400. While I’m at it, I might as well cover engineering for another 350 secs. All told, that is 3,250 secs.

We can discard all of the old stasis units, as they can’t be sold. What waste. This approach hardens the ship against attack. In the crew quarters area, up to 7 people can be protected in each of 4 areas. Each 7 unit device takes up 8 spaces.

This hardens the ship against attack.

We have 196,750 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 103 – April 2nd.

Duke isn’t pleased with all of the guys packed in the hold of the ship. Emily had the engineers install the TL-6 guns. If we get in a fight, we are going to be in trouble. All we can muster is a pair of Hoppers as the turrets are down.

If we get caught, explaining 45 freedom fighters will be hard. They’ll execute us. It’s really not worth the 13,500 secs. we will get for dropping them off and returning to Mynkuria. Sigh.

Our outboard trip is peaceful and arrival in system is boring. We find a second 3 CU stasis unit floating in space. We haul it on board. There is just enough room to store it in the crew quarters.

They weren’t really specific about where we drop them off so we head to the craters. There is a -2 on entry detection there. We don’t get detected, but we zip right through a radiation zone which causes a hit of damage to everyone on board.

We keep going and land to let these guys off.

The Engineers get those guns installed at the end of the day.

I have updated our deck plans as I notice a few mistakes on the last upload. Boat Guns take up five CU, the two groups of 5 CU of space next to the ship's boats are not inside the boats but in the bay they sit in. I didn't bother to draw in the fighters we were transporting as they got off.

We have 218,686 in cash, have 7 hypercharges.  We now owe 225,564 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek. 

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 102 – April 1st.

David and Duke need healing and rest, so we are off to the Spaceport. This is a player choice, David was downed by concussion and really doesn’t need healing, just some time off.

We are of course detected on entry. We get an offer transport men to Nipna. They take up 2 CU in the ship and we will be paid 300 for each guy we transport. Emily agrees.

Emily makes the weekly payment of 600 on the ship. We still have a few hours of daylight, so Duke get healed up at a price of 450 secs. Emily purchases more hypercharges (1000) and two sets of ships guns, TL-6 for 1200 each.

3750 secs. well spent, so Emily makes a calculated desision to pay off 14,436 on the principal of our ship. We now owe 225,564 on it.

We have 218,686 in cash, have 8 hypercharges.  We now owe 225,564 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

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Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 101 – March 31th.

Duke and David are regulated to the ship’s med bay, wherever that is. Emily leads Deadeye, Lefty out to look for stuff.

One of the problems with a high tech world is, you are always detected on entry. In this case, the contact roll leads us right to the table I want to roll on. However, this one time only takes an hour instead of 5.

I probably should have scooted back to the Spaceport Med Center, but we are here.

They find one intact PS-bot and one repair unit. We get one extra chance to roll for stuff, but all we find are damaged U-Suits. They aren't worth the effort so we discard them. While this isn’t a great haul, I can now assign a PS-bot to Audrey.

We have 218,186 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We are wanted on Palatek.

100th Day Post Celebration

Today, I made it to my 100 day playing Star Smuggler. I thought I should do something to celebrate. A few weeks ago, my dad sent me a foam cutter, so I decided to try it out using my drawing of the Buffalo Heavy Transport. 

Not bad so far. You'll notice I have a very shaky hand. My Dad uses these foam cutters like a kid uses crayons. I'm not very good right now, so why not check out one of his castles? 

Top view	Cockpit, top down	Cockpit, bottom up
Rear of ship, bottom side	Bottom of ship

I've only cut the rough details and not even all of them. The aft bottom of the ship is nearly featureless. I can't wait to finish this project.

Wish me luck!

And thank you for sticking around for 100 days of game play.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 100 – March 30th.

If Duke took off his beret, he
wouldn't look like this. 

If Han Solo had a beret, he wouldn't
look like this. 

This trip was unrewarding, so we are off to Nipna.

We enter the system in the middle of a space battle. We slink away and make landfall in the ruins. We get an interesting roll on landing. We are attacked by a Mynkurian death squad. Two guys have suicide vests, two have poison darts and the last two have heavy hand weapons. The event describes them as attacking no matter the tactical situation.

I call BS and decide that we need something more cinematic for day 100!

If that last instruction is followed, they will run up to the ship as it lands, and I will slowly gun them down as heavy weapons, bombs or poison can't hurt the ship.

Instead, let’s try this. David, Lefty, and Duke are leaving the ship via the ramp when they get charged by these guys. They have Tech Level 6 equipment, while Duke, David and Lefty have TL-4 Heavy Weapons, Military U-Suits and PS-Bots. There is no air on this world, so this will be brutal and short.

All six guys try to charge to the ship's ramp in their first round. Deadeye, from the gun turret has a shot at them. Audrey’s turret can’t turn that far, so she doesn’t get a shot. Besides, we won't ask her to kill anyone on her first day. Deadeye has tech level 1 guns and a 6 marksmanship. He needs to roll 7 or less.  He rolls a six and one guy takes 10 hits.

Duke needs a 9, Lefty a 10 and David needs an 8. All three hit. Duke hit’s the other guy with a suicide vest and he explodes (The guy had 3 Endurance, so he's toast on a 2-7 and dead by vacuum on 8-12). Lefty hits one of the poison dart guys as does David. One takes 4 points of damage while the other takes 2. That doesn’t kill either of them, but their suits breach and they go down. They’ll die if no one helps them. None of us are all that helpful.

Next round. The guys with heavy weapons stop running and open fire. Each has a markmanship score of 4, with TL-6 weapons, gives them a 10 to hit. They shoot first. Both hit, one on Lefty and one on Duke. Duke takes 7 points of damage while Lefty is knocked out by concussion. Duke’s suit is breached and the PS-bot begins emergency life support. David fires and hits one guy, knocking him out by concussion.

At this point, Emily realizes something is wrong and jerks the ship into the air, allowing Deadeye another shot (they were too close to the ramp before). The last guy is vaporized, but Deadeye and Audrey take a moment to hose the bodies with the ship’s guns. This takes 3 more rounds.

In the aftermath, Emily sets the ship down and investigates. I am going to rule that all of attacker’s equipment is destroyed.

Emily takes a team out to search the ruins while the medics patch up the team. Emily comes home with a small collection of coins worth 30 secs. Instead of adding them to our inventory, she distributes all of them among the crew.

We have 218,186 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We are wanted on Palatek.

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Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 99 – March 29th.

We have reduced the outing party to David, Lefty, and Duke. By leaving Emily back we can have a hopper and the ship come to our rescue.

We get the same option to ransack an office and again we pass on it. We interview and hire a Starship gunner. We hire her on for 100 right now and the typical 1% for the crew. I totally made that up on the fly, she would normally get much less. We outfit her from the Cargo Bay, so she has weapons and a U-suit. I'll get her a PS-Bot soon enough.

Our final roll is for Hopper Guns, again. They are not armor piercing, so we pass.

While Duke and the gang are shopping, our engineers are engaging in RRR to install those boat guns.