System Details - Location, Location, Location

I am updating my Pilot's Guide to the D'Arlee Quandrant with the details I generate for the solo game. One of my long-running desires was a better ship encounter set of tables, each one influenced by world stats and where it sits in terms of its neighbors. This was spawned from the back of the Supplement 7, Traders and Gunboats (one of my favorite supplements, and probably explains why I have hundreds if not thousands of deck plans I've collected over the years).

There are some interesting sources to pick up a more nuanced approach. Looking over the Pirates and Privateering book from Stellagama Publishing, it has a breakdown based on traffic and security, which combine into 8 categories. I am thinking of something very similar.

T5 has an extended world profile. Importance has some bearing on this, and that also affects trade routes. The economic extension relates to trade volume, which can also correlate to the traffic in the Pirates book.

GURPS Far Trader has perhaps some excessively detailed rules for establishing trade and traffic. I do like them but they are aimed for a big ship universe, so I tend to divide by 10 or 100 to get to a small ship universe that I prefer.

Still playing with the ideas, but there could well be variations on the yellow and green travel zones as classically defined. Red is always no, danger Will Robinson. But yellow could vary as could the green zones. If we add 4 ranges to each, that gives us effectively 8 travel codes, plus Red. Still playing with numbers, but going in a range of 0 through 3, where 0 is safest and easiest. Then Green 4 is basically a Yellow 0. Maybe...

What I want to do is introduce pirates into the D'Arlee Quadrant. It is both Classic Traveller and a pulp science fiction trope.

So, draft 1 of the revised travel codes. I will have to re-read Far Trader to see if that has any bearing. Then, we can generate random ship encounters based on the revised codes (or just use those out of the piracy book. So am I re-inventing the wheel? The travel codes below will map at least partially into those system types). I may want to break traffic out of danger levels as well. But then how finicky do I want to play it?

Green 0 - heavily trafficked and patrolled.
Green 1 - heavy traffic, usually patrolled.
Green 2 - medium traffic, some patrols.
Green 3 - light traffic, little patrols.
Yellow 0 - light to medium traffic, little to no patrols
Yellow 1 - light to medium traffic, no patrols
Yellow 2 - light to medium traffic, potential hostiles
Yellow 3 - dangerous
Red - prohibited

Maybe skip the green and yellow, and just establish a risk code and a traffic code. Risk 0 = no risk through, say 5, risk = high (and the world should be a yellow zone in that case).

As I don't want to create a ship encounter table per system but rather type of system, these ramblings will hopefully help me to figure a way to capture enough data to come up with some sort of matrix. Probably combining stuff from a multitude of systems.  The plan is to have the system entry something like:

0310 Nix C896610-5             Agricultural, Non-Industrial      2 GG                 Imperial

Extensions: {1} (8 5 C 0) Hub [G3]

So for Nix, it is a middling important world with an okay economy: above average resources, decent labor pool in the 10s of thousands, great infrastructure, and no efficiencies or inefficiencies apparently). Hub indicates it is more a traffic hub then a generator of goods (that whole non-industrial thing). and [G3] indicates it is a green travel  zone, but not heavily patrolled so a possibility of pirates or privateers does exist.  So hopefully I could have a ship encounter table for something like:

Imperial, Hub, G3 and a table of possible encounters. Possible DMs could be the importance (which ranges from -2 to +4) where the more important the more likely a patrol is around; economic ranges, where a higher economy may increase the change of piracy due to better goods floating around. So the encounter table needs to be created in a way that takes those into account. If a 1d6 table, the lower numbers represent more dangerous encounters, and the higher numbers more traditional types of encounters. And borrowing from the pirate book, where the encounter takes place.

Imperial, Hub G3, Arrival Zone. Add planet importance to die roll.

1 - Ship - Pirates!

2 - Ship - Privateer 

3 - Ship - Free Trader

4 - Ship - mega merchant

5 - Ship - Custom's Cutter

6 - Ship - Yacht

So a system with an importance of 1+ will never encounter a pirate here, and the more important, the more likely a yacht (diplomat? corporate titan? idle noble? hmm - another table detailing what specifically is going on? at least as a creativity booster if there are no plans afoot)