Printing Traveller Plans

I like using 28mm miniatures when I’m Refereeing Traveller and I’ve found a cheap method of printing A1 and A0 paper plans for less than £2 each.

For my US friends, A1 is about 23 x 33 inches, A0 is 33 x 47 inches, and £2 is about $2.50. I’ll admit up front that this blog post is aimed at those of us in the UK, but hopefully you can find somewhere similar for printing your own plans over on that side of the planet.

The deck plan preview you can see on the left is the Amun Ra, a modified 100-ton Scout/Courier I designed using Classic Traveller Book 5: High Guard, my favourite Traveller ship design system. I drew the plans in Microsoft Visio, dropping in some Traveller Geomorphs from Robert Pearce.

I’ll include a PDF for the Amun Ra at the end of this post plus another bonus PDF. Feel free to print and use in your own games.

In my universe, the Amun Ra is piloted by a Vargr bounty hunter, Kaekarr, or ‘Kae’ for short. She was the littermate of one of my players and her appearance was a big surprise for him! The Amun Ra needed jump-4 drives, an important plot point for a scenario which involved a cat-and-mouse chase across the Spinward Marches:

Description	Rating	Tons	MCr	EPs	TL	Factor
Ship Type	SC
Hull	100	100	10.0	–	–
Configuration	1		2.0	–	–	Needle/Wedge
Jump	4	-5	20.0	–	13
Maneuver	3	-8	4.0	–	8	3G acceleration
Power Plant	4	-4	12.0	4.0	15
Jump Fuel	–	-40	–	–	–	jump-4 x 1
Power Plant Fuel	–	-4	–	–	–	4 weeks
Fuel Scoops	Y	–	0.1	–	–
Fuel Purification Plant	Y	-3	0.03	–	15
Bridge	–	-20	0.5	–	–
Computer	4	-4	30.0	-2.0	10	Model/4
Hull Armor	0	–	–	–	–
Beam Laser / Missile Turret	1	-1	1.75	-1.0	13
Staterooms	1	-4	0.5	–	–	1 or 2 people
Half Staterooms	1	-2	0.25	–	–	1 person
Low Berths	4	-2	0.2	–	–	4 people
Cargo	3	-3	–	–	–
Totals		–	81.33	1.0	15	Agility=1

Tons: displacement tonnage, MCr: system cost in millions of Cr, EPs: energy points, Agility is based on spare EPs, TL: Tech Level required or specified for system

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So here’s the tip! Print your deck plans at Netprinter.co.uk using a black and white sewing pattern.

The paper is standard weight, just like you’d use in a laser printer. You can ask for folded or rolled. I prefer rolled but the delivery is more. There are some minimums per order and with the potential cost of delivery I’d advise you bundle up 3 or 4 prints at a time. They look amazing!

As I’ve mentioned, I use Visio to create new deck plans. You can do a lot with a bunch of lines snapped to a grid with a few grey infills, especially with those Geomorphs I’ve already mentioned.

I’ve also scanned pages of published plans from the Little Black Books or TAS Journals, notably the Subsidized Merchant from Supplement 7: Traders & Gunboats and the Fiery Class Gunned Escort from MegaTraveller Journal 2 (for private use only, not for distribution).

I’d also recommend printing sector maps which you can download from Traveller Map. They look great at A2 size in full colour. My brain is still getting used to see a white background instead of black! I’d strongly recommended this as an alternative to using your original Traveller maps which are now probably quite valuable. I had a lucky escape recently with mine and a knocked-over drink!

Here are the links to the PDFs I’ve mentioned. Enjoy!

Download the Amun Ra deck plan PDF to print out (A1 black & white)

Download the Spinward Marches sector map PDF to print out (A2 colour)