Why?

The question anyone who has ever played Silent Death has asked. This TPAC medium fighter introduced in the original game core rules that was lifted and shifted – along with the standard model redesign that occurred – when SD:TNG came out.

The big question was always why would Imperial Transtar build a fighter with only one battery of forward-facing Blatguns but requiring a crew of two to operate it? A pilot with their own gunnery skill and capability to operate the Blatguns as well as a gunner who can control the same guns, where both may not fire in the same turn? Even the notes in the core rules state that for best results give the gunner a high gunnery skill and the pilot a low gunnery skill.

The fighter itself is a formidable tool if used in the right scenario. Extremely fast and armed with high yield weaponry, it can run rings around heavy MPAC fighters and Gunships, staying well out of the range and speed restrictions of most weapons and dealing steady damage. Two Teal Hawks at a slightly higher combined cost than a single Sorenson III could do a far better job that the maligned, albeit with reason, Sorenson III.

The counter argument is a slightly cheaper and slower Hell Bender, while slower, could be more useful and not require the extra crew member.

At face value the only minor advantage this dual crewmember setup would provide is in terms of the rule where gunners shoot fist. A multi fighter coordinated battle could use this advantage well. Flying directly toward an enemy ship in the pilots forward firing arc could deal severe damage before the pilot could return fire, assuming they have a weapon capable of hitting the fast Teal Hawk at the range Blatguns allow attack from.

Large battles where the Teal Hawks job is to take out damaged opponents are a different matter, but if that is the plan use a Sorenson III as it gets two shots a turn. The nature of the game is often one of smaller battles where every ship must be able to deliver from the start, making it a difficult expense to justify a ship that hangs out on the periphery doing little to nothing in the first turns.

Ignoring the lobsided original game rules (um cheap Nighthawk anyone?), one would need to spend around 8 to 10 points on the gunner. Even with a single point spent on the pilot’s gunnery skill (as recommended in the rules) it is still a waste when every point may count.

Back to the question of why. What were the designers thinking? I have some ideas based on some probable scenarios:

• Training. While loose campaign rules came out as the game developed, the concept of keeping a roster of crew with their skills and what ships and weapons they are rated on, is possibly something many Silent Death players may have considered. One could go as far as to say within certain houses a pilot needs to be able to fly first and gunnery comes later. Thus, team a decent pilot up with a good gunner and use the Teal Hawk as a combat ready training model, where a successful mission, even if the pilot does not get a chance to shoot, could lead to a natural increase in pilots gunnery skill due to observation and training. The converse of this could be the pilot is teaching the gunner how to fly and fire. Where the pilot gives instruction on flying, lining up and firing vs a gunner simply watching for an enemy to come into their firing arc.

• Scouting. This could require house rules as the Scout Class was alluded to but never properly defined or differentiated from a standard fighter. But consider the Teal Hawk as a craft that can do serious distance, where the Pilot is heavily involved in scouting activities and does not have the time to operate weaponry if a combat scenario comes up, unless absolutely necessitated by the gunner becoming incapacitated. Or where the gunner is the main scout crew member and only provides back up gunnery where absolutely necessary. Universal Night Watch even mentions the Teal Hawk NW was repurposed as a scout.

I thought I would have more ideas. Both of mine speak to a house rules or campaign style game.

The Teal Hawk has seen refits over time:

• Teal Hawk II (Operation Dry Dock) – This refit not only adds three extra Mk10 torps in the rack, but increases the fighter’s defensive value to 15, making it extremely difficult to hit. At an extra 4 BPV this would usually be a better investment than the base model.
• Teal Hawk III (Kashmere Commonwealth) – The so-called smugglers mod. They dropped the torp rack and gunner to make way for a cargo bay. As fast and defensible as the original but 3 BPV cheaper, less the minimum 1 for the additional crew member. Who needs torps anyway when you are fast enough to run rings around slower ships and pling away at them. Come against a schwarm of Microraptors, Pit Vipers, Darts or even Delta II’s and you will be in big trouble. The 1 or 4 torps of the base or Mk II version wont help much in such a melee either.
• Teal Hawk EX (More than Valor) – Near twice the price of a Teal Hawk III and  the Mk III it has dropped the gunner. It however mounts the torp rack of the Mk II (instead of a cargo bay), has replaced the Blatguns with an Ion Ram and used the space saved by turfing the additional (superfluous) crew member to mount 6 Pulse Lazers. It has the same defensive value as the original and Mk III. Note it also has an additional decoy and better Point Defence system (1-6) than other Teal Hawk versions. With a minimum 7 points damage from the Pulse Lazers, small fast fighters must rightly fear it. Moderately slower fighters need to respect the Ion Ram. If a player can somehow slip this variant in amongst other Teal Hawks, short of really bad movement decisions or pure bad luck, it will cut battle turning swathe through the ranks of the opposition before they comprehend what they are facing.
• Teal Hawk NW (Universal Night Watch) – A standard Teal Hawk fitted with a DLT Mk10 torp. Decoys and Point Defence are removed in favour of the Defensive Value being  bumped up to 17 – making it near impossible to hit. While designed to take on Grubs, this could be a lethal fighter in any battle, especially if mixed in with other Teal Hawks. “Why do I keep missing that one?”

I began drafting this article on a whim, thinking of the Teal Hawk and how it barely gets any play time in my experience. Having now completed this article, I may be a convert. Next game I am going to try running a few Teal Hawks. If you are up for a bit of a campaign, mixing it up with low key role paying or storytelling, imagine the mission to nick the Teal Hawk EX, or its plans from the Data Sphere. That could make for a remarkable story or mini campaign by itself.

Small parting comment. The Teal Hawk is one of the plastic models available in the Wings of Death box, if one can get obtain one of those these days. For a picture of a really nicely painted Teal Hawk among other fighters, check out gimgamgoo.com.

Shorty after humanity developed the hyperspace drive and began its surge towards the stars, the traditional means of time-keeping was abandoned as being impractical. A twenty-five hour day was instituted, along with a 360-day year of 12 months of 30 days each. These were synchronised and instituted all across Terran space.

While the Empire still thrived, the years are counted since its founding. There Imperial Year 0 marked the first consecration of the Imperial Dynasty Throne. Earlier dates were referred to as Pre-Imperial. The year in which The Next Millenium is set would have been Imp 518.

One the Empire fell, the former provinces felt they needed to break all ties with the Imperial way, so they began the numbering of years all over again.

Imp 511 became 0 AL, (Annus Libertatis: Year of Liberty). It was then that the next millennium – a fresh start, a time of incredible potential for both hope and destruction – began.

The current year is 7 AL. Proper notation for a date begins with the year and then the date, separated by a colon. For example, 7:125 AL stands for the 125^th day in the 7^th Year of Liberty (Silent Death: The Next Millennium 1998:6-7)

Silent Death: The Next Millennium is set roughly 10 000 Terran years in the future, if one uses the canon quoted here. A very useful time chart detailing key historic events can be found at the ICE Webring

One may postulate that retaining a Terran based time structure over such a long period stops making sense the further one travels from Terra, both in distance and time. Any given planet will naturally have its own day, seasonal and annual cycles which inhabitants would invariably settle into.

Consider also that earth time is based on a Babylonian sexagesimal – base 60 – system, which provides for 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. Note the Babylonians divided their day into 60 parts as well, or 12 double hours called kapsu. Theoretically a planet with a much longer day and/or year would not work well using a base 60 time period and would need to determine its own local time scale.

In space and for longer time measurement however one would need to determine a more useful standard that however still works with human natural work and rest cycles, based on the metric system which uses the Second as a base. Thus:

The Silent Death universe often speaks of freighters. After all this game isn’t based in The Great War on the Western Front, where enemies met each other on patrol most of the time, when not escorting bombers or attaching observation balloons! In an interstellar setting populated with billions of people living in kinds of conditions, where war is always happening somewhere, prize taking, raiding privateering or straight forward piracy is logically going to present itself for game scenarios.

Before we speak of Freighters and we need to consider some concepts and rules which will be familiar to most people who have read a science fiction book – often space opera – or have watched a science fiction film or TV Series. Salvage Claws and Tractor Beams! Without these common concepts that are by now surely recognized as part Science Fiction entertainment canon, having a way to take charge of a ship without blasting it to pieces presents quite an advantage when one wishes to capture some cargo.

Renegades: The Espan Rebellion was designated as the fourth expansion for the original Silent Death: Metal Express game. The original much loved game was somewhat unbalanced and had already introduced a number of additional, important rules during the previous expansions, necessitating a second edition, Silent Death: The Next Millennium. Renegades was refactored to align it to the new rule set and effectively became the first expansion of TNM. While it did not introduce freighters, it added further inertia to the original kernel – the smugglers favorite Shryak Shuttle in the core rules.

Renegades added the Crescent (blockage runner) and Conestoga (heavy transport). Renegades also introduced a very useful example of a salvage orientated ship: The Scorpion.

The first true freighter was detailed in the Sunrunners forces supplement which saw publication the following year.

The Borax Freighter is a slow, unarmed ship that, while provided a gunship style display for damage tracking, does not even get a write up about who built it or its history. Bold ‘C’s at specific positions in the side damage tracks are implicitly cargo slots which if hit mean a loss of cargo. The Critical Hit section also details special events for cargo loss. I could not find any other specific mention of this in the rules, but it is interesting to note the positioning of the cargo – see Part II of this article below. Sunrunners also repeated the Salvage Claw and Tractor Beam rules as well as the Scorpion’s ship display meaning one did not have to own Renegades to benefit from this specific aspect of its content.

Special mention should also be made of the Curtiss Shuttle in the same book. While not specifically classed as a cargo ship and having no specific cargo slots on its damage track, as an apparently reasonably sized shuttle, it could carry cargo internally. Faster, cheaper and more capable of taking some damage than a Shryak Shuttle, the Curtiss Shuttle has no armament so would be best employed in safe environments or with a fighter escort.

When it comes to Cargo in Silent Death, one has to look at the Kashmere Commonwealth house supplement. Published the following year from Sunrunners, it clarifies the implicit ‘C’ slot rule, further details Cargo Damage and Capacity while defining a system to design ones own Freighter. (TNM provided a system to design Fighters and Gunships).

House Kashmere is all about trade and this book defines the Ushas mega-freighter. Technically an Escort Class vessel it uses a Warhound ship display. It can also swap portions one or both of its massive side mounted holds to mount Battle Pods. On the other side of the scale is the Lakshmi, a swift and pretty deadly two person fighter with capacity to carry a small cargo in a reinforced bay. In between these tow is the Vishnu, a slow but heavily armored freighter, carrying some mild defensive weaponry and using the gunship style ship display. Although there are thousands of Vishnu plying the trade routes, one has to be careful that its dangerous twin is not encountered. The Yama is for all intents and purposes a Vishnu, but mounts Battle Pods instead of cargo, turning the slow well armoured freighter into a slow well armoured and deadly gunship!

The Hostile Takeover annex book takes all the rules built on in the previous three books and ties them into a campaign, linking back to Renegades: he Espan Rebellion.

In terms of this article, note should be made of the Tractor Shielding rule introduced in Hostile Takeover, which helps negate the pull of a Tractor Beam.

Hostile Takeover details the last freighter to be noted in this article, the Astrahauler. Like the Borax Freighter and Curtis Shuttle it does not get its own picture on its gunship style ship display, but it does at least get a write up (sans ship picture) of its providence, where we learn it is made by the same Rio Rojo shipyards as who made the Conestoga.

The Astrahauler follows what can by now be seen as a standard mid size freighter pattern – slow and able to take a bit of damage before it starts to lose bits of cargo or ship components. To its benefit it is fitted with blast canons fore and aft which, against small fighters could do some damage.

In Part I we looked through what Silent Death had to offer in the line of Freighters and by extension heavy transports and shuttles. The concept of Space Freighters mounting containers alongside their core is hardly new and I believe Silent Death followed this Zeitgeist. (I specifically used that word as I want to touch on this in another article sometime).

To try and be brief, where I am going here is that modular containers are the norm currently, no paradigm shift to fundamentally change that pattern has occurred (like the paradigm shift from crates loaded into holds to modular containers), so in our current understanding of the world it is logical Space Freighters may take a similar form.

This can be seen in the Original Battlestar Galactica.

I asked for permission to publish these from the BSG Modelling Group (GALACTICA Model FX) on Facebook.

In terms of Silent Death these massive freighters would have to be tendered at an orbital satiation or a space station freight hub, being unable to land. Certain books or shows may take a different view – that with the right technology one could land one of these monsters, but I tend to like the space only concept, backing it up with a “well perhaps if unencumbered”, as the sheer weight they would carry plus even light gravity would have have to be a structural integrity risk.

The same rule may not apply for shuttle, heavy carrier or even mid size carriers who may depending on their design and intended capabilities, have atmospheric capabilities. Silent Death, like many a science fiction universe has a special fuel which allows for trans light capability, but that can only work with ships large enough or built to take the necessary engineering. Landing on any earth like planet thus comes with the added cost of ascending again, which is also a consideration when it comes to fueling, special trans light engine or not. Fuel converts to energy energy is never free.

The makers of Silent Death only ever made models of the Vishnu and Ushas freighters. These are still available via Silent-Death.mx.

That said I found this beautiful model on a web search. I have tried to contact the maker – Sublight Drive – via ETSY but my messages keep bouncing. No idea as to the scale.

The conundrum remains however, how does one accommodate models of the non pictured Silent Death Ships? the Borax Freighter, the Astrahauler, the Curtis Shuttle?

This is the crux of the article to an extent. We have established what a freighter may look like. By now 3D printing has become relatively common, many people know someone who has a printer, or can access a printing concern to undertake a custom print. To this end many a CAD artist has done the work already, either through passion or perhaps identifying a gap in the market. There are many other games out there, or even dedicated Silent Death players designing their own freighters and needing a suitable model.

I forgot to take own the URL for the above picture, but will endeavor to search it out and update here. This could easily be an Astrahauler or Borax Freighter, if that is how your imagined it. Or for a slightly larger, more modular effect, I quite like this one I found at CG Trader.

The biggest question would have to be what kind of scale the models are and if they fit with your game.

To be fair, Silent Death had scale issues with its original metal core ships often enough. The original Night Hawk (later Cossack in TNM) single person fighter was massive compared to say the original Pharsii – which was thankfully re launched in a more realistic size (original model got reassigned as the Bat)