Beam me uuupppp

[c57d]

I am been intermittently working on a Cage/pre-Cage campaign. I am enamoured by the "rough n' ready", "seat of your pants", less Prime Directive, more "hands on" exploration approach and themes.
Maximum cruising speed is WF4, and transporters (aka Materializers) have only just been certified for shipboard use, and even then only for front line cruisers.
Ships like the Mann class (my current favourite) 

And the Baton Rouge class (previous favourite)


Now, wanting to place greater emphasis on the materializer's newness and potential risk, I am toying with a risk table for any failures.
I am proposing to expand on the FASA rules, as follows:-
First transport attempt failure - no transport, but a mild headache and lose one AP for one hour. 
Second attempt failure - no transport plus roll on table, below:-
Fail by 1-10% - lose 1D10/2 AP for one hour
Fail by 11-25 -% - suffer 2D10 Temporary hits until healed
Fail by 26-40%-suffer 2 D10 Wound hits until healed
Fail by 41-60%- suffer 4D10 Wound hits until healed
Fail by 61-75%-suffer 8D10 Wound hits until healed
Fail by 76%+ - Die (materialize inside out (as STMP), materialize in a wall etc)
All second failures also blow the system, needing at least 30 minutes repairs and a successful Transporter Technology roll. If this fails then another 30 mins repairs then skill roll etc.
Welcome any and all opinions

[c57d]

Expanding this theme, I would assume that UESPA would have held off installation of a materializer in both conversions and new build ships for a year or so until suitable crew were intensively trained.
These would be transport operators and transport technicians (with 40% skill each) and would both (as the Cage) be present at each and every transport, as well as equipment maintenance between transports.
They would be a highly specialised subsection of Engineering and never on Landing Parties unless their skills were specifically needed.

[Jack Photon]

I've been writing up a post-Cage/pre-NoMan campaign. I created my 3rd Edition Framework to support my running of said campaign.

The oldest of characters will remember when warp 2 was fast and the dreaded 'warp 4 barrier'; Materializers have now reached maturity and about to be replaced with the new-fangled Transporter Systems; Communicators, Tricorders and Phasers are still a couple years out. The Scout ship has the last iteration of laser cannons and internal conversions have dropped the auto cannons.

Like you, I love the rough edges and seat-of-pants the era suggests, though my campaign is more strictly enforcing Prime Dir. Transition zones/boundries/times always make for interesting story fare.

I'll post a pdf of my draft Player Brief in its own thread at some point here. I scared a few normal trek friends off with its... thoroughness.

[Jack Photon]

As to the materializer's scary chart, I had to think a few days.  How reliable must a unit or the tech be before it would be certified fleet wide and; once one person sees another in their party get wounded, or even bad headaches, how big a trust and subsequent morale hit is that?

While the risk of an airliner in our times is 'small', it's notable for when it does happen. One consequence to a crash is that no one ever sees it, only the aftermath. When you are on the pad with that person who doesn't make it and you hear and see them go, faith in the tech is going to drop, especially on a player's part.   Player's handle even a shuttlecraft crash better than a transporter accident.

While the phrase 'disassociated condition' was used in two episodes and there were plenty of near-misses and release of the magic-smoke that makes them work, just the idea of a transporter malfunction table is scary talk.

One question I have: is the dice failure due to faulty equipment, operator error or both? If faulty, who certified it for use? If operator error, who let them near the sliders?

With any show failure, there were no physical after-effects except when something else was going on -mirror mirror swaps universes,so they felt dizzy for a second, okay. Enemy within is a very scary transporter accident, but should it be so common a result as to be part of a table?  If it happened before, it would have been in starfleet records, even in testing data as a possible circumstance.  So technically, split in good/evil is not a possibility until that episode and then it is moot as it will be a known factor with that ore dust contamination.  VOY blended 2 characters, but I don't know any details.

Perhaps a palette of consequences to choose from rather than a specific result, upto including STTMP and interior walls ala' Dark Matter shown. A consequence could be a shriveled arm (and dice damage).

Bad transporter was always a specific plot device (Doomsday, Tholians, Dagger, etc).  While a random table generator can be a fleet-footed GM's best friend, it can also send a game plot in ANY direction.  A factual die result is a hefty weight to balance as opposed to a list of potentials to consider.

Some kind of chart, possibly tied to era to represent overall safety would be a useful asset.  Base safety factor would be in the 99%+ range, never achieving 100%.  Is one in one hundred times safe?  How about one in one thousand?  And what are the 'real chances' of you the GM rolling '000' or '001'?  Or even 1 in 10k for 4d10, '0001'.  A million for 7d10?  Does GM tell players each time they transport, that you will roll and they may die, game over?  And if it is one in one million, how do you roll the other theoretical 999,999 transporter usages at that time to be sure?

In all of TOS/TAS, there was never one person or creature physically wounded by transporter malfunction or operator error, yet they were far from 100% perfect or functional.  And were Spock or Scott not at hand, Kyle may very well have lost some people...

Transport failure tends to create a smoke-puff and repair delays, suggesting there is a fuse that keeps them from failing during active transport of a pattern.

That gets back to what 'should' happen...  Definitely food for thought...

[Jack Photon]

CLIP

I am proposing to expand on the FASA rules, as follows:-

First transport attempt failure - no transport, but a mild headache and lose one AP for one hour.

Was the failure system-based?  If so why is an immediate repair crew set to task?

If failure was operator, why are they getting a second chance and are you, on the pad, going to trust them with your life now?

One AP sounds arbitrary and of no lesson or point to the matter.

Second attempt failure - no transport plus roll on table, below:-

So, no light flicker or sparkle dust, yet up to death may occur?

Is the 2nd attempt only if immediately pursued or any time later?

   

Fail by 1-10% - lose 1D10/2 AP for one hour

Fail by 11-25 -% - suffer 2D10 Temporary hits until healed
Fail by 26-40%-suffer 2 D10 Wound hits until healed
Fail by 41-60%- suffer 4D10 Wound hits until healed
Fail by 61-75%-suffer 8D10 Wound hits until healed
Fail by 76%+ - Die (materialize inside out (as STMP), materialize in a wall etc)

That is up to 100% of the fail margin?  Ex: If the target is a 75 and the roll a 76, that's a Fail by up to 100% of the 01% difference?

What specifically is 'transporter damage'?  Do you suddenly have a liver cell in your toe and a toe nail cell in your brain and brain cell in your forearm multiplied by up to 1 trillion cells?  Is it at the molecular level?

If so, how is that damage 'healed'.  Can it be healed short of magic spells?

In a case like this I can't help but think of the 3rd Edition Framework Purple Heart tables.  Inspired by Chris Pike, it's a system that spells out Mortal, Major, Serious & Scratch levels of damage.  Rather than taking standard wound damage off END, d10s worth of dice are taken directly off one or more Attributes depending on GM, dice results, circumstances, etc.  Mortal damage cannot be healed by any means per Pike.  Major can be sort of healed, Serious can be fully healed and 'Tis but a Scratch' gets you sneered at for occupying an otherwise perfectly good bed someone worse off could have used.  And a medal.

Per the show, had the script not required Lt. Latimer to die, he would have suffered a Major or Mortal wound per the Purple Heart Table. 

Mortal Wound is 10d10 subtracted off the Species Max of one (or more) Atts (per GM/situ). Where that intersects your natural Att, the difference is how many points you actually lost off your 'natural' rating. It could be that damage is not sever enough to affect your natural rating.  However, in 3rd Edition you can improve your Atts so this loss becomes your new Personal Max as opposed to your species max and you can never train higher than your new personal max.

The Purple Heart is designed not to kill, but can immediately retire any character as Starfleet maintains base 55 Atts for Officers.  Drop below those and you're out.  Drop any Att below 01 and you are croaked per this sentiment and system.  Transporter error might have to bump the Purple Heart damage up to Ultra-Fatal. (1d10)x(10d10) spread across as many Atts as needed.  Per Pike, the body is utterly wrecked and has no chance of healing.

All second failures also blow the system, needing at least 30 minutes repairs and a successful Transporter Technology roll. If this fails then another 30 mins repairs then skill roll etc.

Who would step on a pad after any of this? No wonder McCoy is paranoid. He's read the autopsies!

------------------------------

There must be some risk involved.  McCoy is paranoid for a reason, however realistic or 'old-fashioned' Kirk may say he is. 

To serve the story, pointless transporter death is pointless.  You either go out like Spock in TWoK or Han Solo, a check mark devoid of meaning or weight. 

A character's death, even an NPC's should have a payoff.  An NPC stumbling over an exploding rock pays off by alerting the PC's to the danger, saving their lives.  Any KIA serves the greater crew however bad any one given death may suck. 

Then again, crud happens.  Starfleet knows the inherent risks and accepts them as trade for their greater service.  Yes, 'meaningless' death is real life, but this is a game of fiction designed as escape from real life. 

For a GM to employ random transporter death, a storyline needs be at the ready.  Whether it's simply role-playing the musings of death and life and such for an entire session, or perhaps the death points to a hidden danger no one new about and you the GM were just waiting to spring the story.  Whether it's any number of underlying reasons, some story point/arc should be served or become evident.  Otherwise random death may boil down to Killer GM syndrome. 

Even though a GM may have stories A,B,C lined-up and ready, it's for reasons such as those above that it's a good idea to have several side-orders ready on the burner. 

Transporter failure is quite the little hum-dinger of a campaign twister to say the least.

[Jack Photon]

To the point of STTMP deaths. The woman was Kirk's girlfriend in previous script drafts, which is why he is so devastated in the hall.  The emotional attachment survived editing, but the the happy-moments were dropped, leaving the scene disjointed.  The Vulcan was a bait and switch that paid out into the greater marketing surrounding Nimoy and the will-he/won't he in the trades -an excellent example of how script dictates story and money dictates script and Executives dictate money.

That the transporter is only used once after and never again is bad script writing -or film editing depending on how you look at it. In writing, the accident is a 'gag'.  A gag has a setup, often a repeat, and then the pay off. Princess Leia flying in space is a failed gag, a setup with no payoff; a completely irrelevant story point done for no reason than to do it.  So too, the Transporter accident had no long term effect on Rand who we never see again, nor on Kirk or Scotty, much less Jenkins(?) down in engineering when the sparks fly. Minutes/hours after this nightmare horror, there is no apprehension seen by those people who beam in before McCoy and no genuine danger when McCoy does arrive, just a grand entrance for a top star, just like Shatner and Nimoy each got, Nimoy's being the grandest.   Scotty was next as a walk-on with Kirk.  Sulu Checkov and Uhura all get lumped together in one shot; while Ilia gets her own reaction shots and grand entrance as the disposable co-star to the other disposable co-star, himself a minor walk-on to Scotty, himself a walk-on.

Where was I going with all this...?  Transporter accidents, right. 

[Falconer]

The Klingons have silent transporters as shown in “Day of the Dove,” and John M. Ford in The Final Reflection posited that the “shriek” of the Federation’s transporters had to do with a redundant secondary (or tertiary, I forget) wave of data which gave their transporters a much higher safety factor. Klingons scorned safety and really valued surprise!

[Falconer]

IIRC, the original point of the transporter accident was from the Phase II TV series, to explain why the very young and inexperienced Xon was the new resident Vulcan (as a last-minute replacement for the tragically killed Sonak). Strange that they left it in the movie, IMO. I guess they were convinced that there would be a resident Vulcan in Spock’s absence, so they still better kill him off to pave the way for Spock’s return.

[Jack Photon]

I didn't know that about Phase II. I have a copy of 'In Thy Image', so only know about the girlfriend from that.  It's Xon throughout InThy as Spock never comes back. I don't know why they renamed Xon to Sonak for the movie.  Same character, same plot points whether Spock came back or not.

If Klingon 'porters were as bad as 1:100, then with an average LP of five, every 20 transports results in one klingon dying horrifically. No wonder they're so angry all the time. Every fifth to tenth mission or so, one of you is guaranteed to get puree'd. Surviving a T-porter accident could be worse than dying in one.

[Jack Photon]

Safety would increase over time to the point of the nonsensical Picard shot of hundreds of people walking into and out of transporter beams seemingly all at once. That is a nightmare scenario waiting to happen in my books. Getting to Cage and TOS era, safety is going to have to be in the one in a million and better range for the theoretical disbursement of the tech over more area and circumstances. If Federation-wide dozens or hundreds of people are getting twisted, even out of billions, it's going to cause a stir and revolt. I hold the Federation in higher regard and expect full transparency on things like this. UFP is not a cover-it-up kind of sociopathic society. Truth and honesty must always triumph or you do not have the UFP as voiced by Kirk, the single-greatest story-telling representative of that mindset.

Back to Transport failure. 6d10, roll all zeros and you're toast. Safety-minded personnel, especially in early days are going to be overly-sensitive to potential failure as it is they who are then personally responsible for the death of someone -even if not legally held so.

By TOS-Kirk, things appear much more casual suggesting a roll of all zeros on 9d10 perhaps and the immediate tear down of the system and offlining of all units while the cause is investigated -like the navy does with their planes when one fails, all stop flying. That's the kind of thing where once-ever is too often (outside of unusual influences or circumstance).

Going to the show, failures were always puffs of smoke until they weren't and transport initiated correctly on the very same pads.  Apparently the smoked circuit wasn't really needed or fixed itself somehow as the person, often Kirk, would beam in on the same pad that puffed not moments ago.  Repairs were always to the console and never the pads -until TNG sometime (iirc).

[Jack Photon]

Transporter Operation.
While in the end there was often only one person on duty and eventually even no one via pre-programming. The tech will evolve over time, even a few short years apparently -and to the point where speech is audible in transit and personal motion is irrelevant by TWoK.

The two guards in Children Shall Lead could have used an alarm beep confirming the planet below -or a second operator and a more experienced operator than distracted-Kirk casually throwing the sliders. That Spock didn't immediately attempt to beam the guys back may have suited the story, but was not otherwise realistic. Those guys had a good chance if the script didn't demand they die.

Where/when and how SOP changes in-universe is a matter for debate. Going from two operators and maybe an off-screen technician, to two, to one, to programming. we certainly saw that evolution on screen so should be able to quantify it all.

Relatedly, it was Teratin Incident or Lorelei where they first used the Tp's for reversing damage with a saved pattern. Watching the series specifically for TP milestones which are then translated to a timeline would be a task for sure.

[Jack Photon]

Here's another biscuit to chew. What prevents Tps from being used for assassination? It would occur to the Klingons certainly. Mirror2 should be all over the notion. That Scotty could have beamed Plassus and Droxine into the nearest wall and no one be the wiser.

That beaming is trusted at all in Mirror2 strikes me as odd. So the operator is punished/executed for killing you. Big deal! You the captain or random shmuck chosen on a whim are dead -and painfully so.

TPs do not however make a good combat weapon for the time and limited targeting available. A photon grenade does more, faster.

[Jack Photon]

"Disassociated Condition"

"...Are the Transporters beaming up yet?"

"Not 100%, Captain.  We beamed down some inert material and it came back in a disassociated condition.  We wouldn't dare try it with people."

...

"What about the Transporters?"

"They're still reported unsafe."

"Transporter room...  Try using overload power on the Transporters.  We've got to get them working!"

...

"They came back alright, sir.  In my opinion the Transporters are now safe for human transport."

"Landing parties 1, 2 and 3 report for immediate beaming down to the surface of the planet..."

- - - -

With that, ~18 people are now trusting their lives on a Lt's 'opinion'.  The Lt. beams objects in, gives them a cursory eyeball from a distance and qualifies the Porters as safe for humans.  Ummm.

This one interaction with danger raises so many questions left unanswered.  Testing, certifications, 'opinions', legalities, technicalities, ethics, morals and a whole host of related issues.  Amazing.

And that's just this one episode.  Doomsday and Tholians pop into mind for immediate study.  Enemy Within an obvious one.  Gary 7, Dove and Dagger for procedural/capabilities...

[Jack Photon]

"Ready to Beam, sir."

With those fatalistic words, the Doomsday Machine must have picked up the energy surge and fired its slicer beam at that moment causing two pads to go poof!

Looking into the chamber from the console, we'll call front left pad 1, front right pad 2, making 3 and 6 on the sides and 4 and 5 farthest back, all counter-clockwise.

It looks like Pad 6 and 5 went up in smoke about the 16:50 mark at which point Spock orders Kyle to initiate repairs.

41:58     "Transporters are operational"

43:20     "The Transporter is not operating at 100% efficiency.  30 seconds is very slim timing." 

             "It's a chance I'll have to take."

             "A cranky Transporter is a mighty finicky thing to be gambling your life on, sir."  Says Scotty as he steps into a beam.

 44:20   "What's the matter with that thing?"
            "It's a power drain somewhere, sir.  I almost lost you."

            "It'll never work like this.  It's the main junction circuitry.  I'll get it."

             "Bridge.  Transporter malfunction."

Circuits are sparking in the Jefferies tube. Sparks stop.

45:00     "Bridge, Transporter is operational, but this jury-rigging won't last long."

            "Captain, Transporter operational but just barely."

46:11    "Energize."    

            Pad 6 poof  Scotty back in the tube.

46:40    severe sparks fly in tube. pad 2 goes up.  "Try inverse phasing."

47:05    Pad 5 poofs. "Try her now, Mr. Kyle."

47:40    Kirk comes in on pad 1

The suggestion is that if your pattern is lost, you simply fade away into the ether, between locations, never knowing any different.  STTMP says otherwise for big-screen impact and drama.

[Jack Photon]

Tholian at 10:38 has Spock and co. twinkle in the chamber a moment, but cuts back to them shifting around on Defiant waiting for the beam.

Scotty tries 3 if not 4x depending on how you count it before heaving a big sigh of relief that they came through as if it were close. Kirk sparkles once, cuts back to Defiant which fades out taking Kirk with it. From there, only a matter of him being at the right place and time when they attempt to beam him, no particular troubles.

Trying to remember when Spock "cross-circuiting to B" saved the day... Obsession?