So PCs are aware pirates are in play.

Serrena Dawn can be a PGC ship.

Jump route is not publically known. so PCs must travel to Truane's star. Streel may not be happy about PGC poking its nose into its territory.

We know that there has been a delay in sending a second expedition due to the police action on Cygnus Omicron IX so is this the angle that the Pale government allows the PGC team to have the jump route and go look for the first team?

What about the Dragon article "Volturnus Connection" with MINER and linds to the star devil?

EDIT: might have to allow for the party to be split- one or two PCs gets out in an escape pod but others on a life boat or shuttle.

Nothru and loper are along for the ride too- the loper will require a life boat or shuttle to get to the surface.

rather than the rail road of SF0 perhaps the PC can fight the Serrena Dawn against the pirates?

Arm it with a laser battery and rocket battery but give it only ion engines. They can fight but ultimately they cant win or escape the system. their only chance is to escape to the surface of Volturnus it would seem.

I like getting rid of the "rail road" plot line. This is supposed to be an RPG where the characters actions can change things.

Actually that was the Omicron II you're thinking of, but yeah...same concept. ;)

An approach like this does away with the "en media res" beginning of Crash on Volturnus.

Lets the Players go in with eyes wide open- they know the pirates are afoot

give them a chance to truly fight the pirates. Although a serena dawn that is slower of foot and out numbered will not have a lot of options. If players abandon it or manage to land it the pirates will come for it but that gives them possibilities for the battle of Volkos and joining in when the Pale militia and Space Fleet show up.

Would you propose redesigning it for higher level characters rather than an entry level adventure?

Two things I'm sure of: New players want to fly a ship and dont want to wait till level six prerequisits nonsense.

"Skilled Frontier" and "Spacer Skills Revisited" from SFman 9&10 work just fine.

I know the traditional progression has been Low level PCs walk around doing things, mid level drive around doing things, high level fly around doing things but this isn't that much fun. If a new player comes to the table expecting to be able to fly in a ship I think we should meet that expectation rather than have them lose interest and wander off to play something else.

So some modification is called for:

AD & KH's skills + "Spacer Skills Revisited"

OR

"Skilled Frontier" + "Spacer Skills Revisited"

OR

Use the rules from Dragon mag for creating Star Law characters which lets players have a PC on the cusp of KHs skills.

These are the options I would consider.

The Frontier is young, and ships just aren't that common. Anyone needing proof of that should look at just how undefended the Frontier is for the Second Sathar War: two spacefleet divisions stationed in the two largest population centers and a third (also stationed at one of those two) that roams/patrols. Ten more worlds have planetary militias, which are geared more for inbound traffic patrol & inspection than invasion...but something is still better than nothing. Twelve out of 23 worlds as published in AD, that leaves 11 unprotected worlds, almost HALF of the Frontier (and even more unprotected worlds if you use the Zeb's map). This is about 80 years after the First Sathar War was fought (going by Zeb's time line) in a system where the largest ship takes (HS x 30) 600 days to build, or 1½ year GST. Now compare that to the sheer size of the Sathar fleet that invades the Frontier...and that certainly isn't a representation of their total.

Civilian ships aren't much more affordable than warships. If a loose confederation can't cough up the funding for large scale fleets, independent civilians certainly aren't going to be flooding the space lanes either. This leaves the mega-corps as the big spenders, but again the vast majority (with vast meaning 99.something percent) of their craft will be civilian grade (with only a handful having secured contracts for constructing warships, and with a very limited means of providing them to anyone other than the UPF or planetary militias). While the civilian ship modifications do permit something fairly decent for combat in the upper range of the spectrum (read: anything with C-grade drives), the lower end is not suitable for anything more than self-defense against a single ship.

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On the other side of the coin, most SFers were influenced by Hollywood (notably Star Wars) where ships were very common and "you can practically buy your own for 10,000 credits". Fast forward to the prequels and even a 10 year old kid knows how to fly one, it's practically the equivalent to modern day bicycles: you can ride one at the age of five and by ten you're mowing lawns for a few weeks so you can buy one at WalMart. 

Traveller probably does a better job at the skills than Star Frontiers --- and I say "probably" because it's a random skill generation versus choice --- but if a SF ship is unaffordable then the cheapest Traveller ship is made of unobtainium...a 20 ton small launch costs over 5,000,000 credits. Meanwhile any pilot can fly any ship, but a higher level pilot simply does it better. Not that you'll ever gain experience in the game because your skills are generated at the beginning under a "historical" system that produces aged characters having retired or mustered out of service, never to be enhanced again during the course of play as the game is geared toward amassing wealth and power, not experience or skill...so after you've reached middle to old age you might have 40M credits to splurge on a used 100 ton Scout/Courier as an "entry level jump capable starship". Nonetheless ships are still plentiful in the game, despite being completely unaffordable from the onset.

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So to tailor the skill system one also needs to tailor the game setting itself, because it makes little sense to have 500 pilots per available ship (with none of them able to afford the ship as a beginning player.). As such the game designers made ships like castles in D&D --- available at "name level". While I have tailored my game so that ships are "slightly" more plentiful, it's still a name level feature. My suggestion for anyone wanting to be a beginner spacefarer is to hash out the basic adventures to get them familiar with the game and then award them 120XP to buy skills with...it's just enough to buy the PRs and pilot:1 (4XP over to be precise). They can fly a system ship but they still won't be affording anything for a while.

Then let them play SF0 Crash on Volturnus, where those ship skills won't be worth a dollop of dralasite dung and they'll all die in the desert because none of them opted for the environmental skill. 

  

I think there was a bit of a generational disconnect between the Gen X gamers that played Star Frontiers and the Baby Boomers that designed it.  We always struggled with what seemed to be the quirkiness of SF and why we couldn't pilot ships like all of our 70s space heros.  Now thanks to the internet I understand SF much better and it all makes sense.  Not so much when you throw a new SciFi RPG at kids that were used to BSG (1978) and Star Wars.  Now that I understand it, I can better accept that my hero doesn't have his own ship.

@ Shadow Shack:

Be able to fly a star ship and buy a star ship are two different things. In this particular example the PCs would be flying on a PGC owned or chartered vessel. Ownership is irrelavent.

In setting I assume that planets without militia have some squadrons of Fighters- from the perspective of the KHs campaign game they are not in that game because they cannot effectively chase the sathar around the map. However they make a lot of sense from the perspective of defense and economy- easily built on the ground, easily operated from the ground Thus I think a lot of colonies have trained pilots and gunners.

I like the real world example of World War 2 (which is clearly the inspiration for KHs) where the US government took 18 year old farm boys from the mid west, trained them in a short time and suddenly they were piloting ships and operating gunnery stations. Using Spacer Skills Revisited (SFMan 10) effectively models this. Sure it does not model the level of training a space shuttle pilot of today but it is a better model of what was happening in WW2 which is the model for the KHs game.

To my way of thinking classic KHs skill requirements= not fun

Spacer Skills Revisited= fun.

I'd rather have fun.

Spacer Skills were the weakest part of KH in my opinion.  They were not very realistic and appear to be written as they were to hinder PCs and reward experienced PCs for attaining uber high skill levels.  Never mind that most players would leave in frustration before getting there.  

Piloting is a specialized skill but not particularly complicated.  In the real world more in line with learning to drive a big rig than brain surgery.  

If I ever get a SF campaign going again I will be using A Skilled Frontier and SSR.

Even so, if players come into the game with an interest in piloting right away, like I said...run the basic scenarios (Port Loren Raiders and the Hydra) and then award 120XP afterwards so the players can start right off the line with a KH skill and the PRs that go along with it. 

This is the reason for the Brotherhood of Spacers- called a cadre but clearly a union also.

I still think you are giving too much away by giving that much XP. I would much rather play a game with Space Skills Revisited prerequisits than the KHs ones- under any skill system AD or otherwise. But clearly this is a point we wont agree on nor do we really need too. And that said I would still sit in on a game you were running even with the 120 xp outlay just for the love of the game. With the caveat that I wont play D20 modern.

Not to disagree with agreeing with disagreement --- it's not giving too much away if the players want to start off with ship skills. Now if they decide to go strictly with AD skills then yes, it's a Monty Haul giveaway, to which I wouldn't allow the award. It's just a simple solution to a group that would want to start off with ship skills right away versus a group that is willing to build up toward them. Naturally the caveat would be you can only spend those XP on the PRs and the corresponding initial ship skill itself while retaining a PSA that matches the PR skills (re: Tech for pilot, astrogator, & engineer and Military for gunnery skills). 

In other words, your Yazirian character that wants to start out as an engineer would spend 60XP to get Technician:4, Robotics:2, and Engineering:1 --- but he would have to invest the remaining 60 into either Technician or Robotics...he wouldn't be able to get Melee Weapons and boost is Battle Rage with the leftovers nor could he boost his engineering level either. Beginning ship skills is just that: beginner at level:1

In hindsight I would probably have to lower the award for astrogators and gunners because it leaves too many leftover XP that can't be spent (re: computer:6 and beam weapons:6). But the bottom line is it's not dififcult to give starting characters ship skills from the start. Simply skip the XP award and give them the basic PRs & PSA and lv:1 ship skill and nothing more after the basic scenarios, and then they have to follow the normal XP progression from there. Or just send them to "PanGalactic Starship Acadamy" for a year and give them the same. There are lots of simple solutions without altering the canon rules.

At 75,000Cr max that gives them some decent spending cash to start their adventuring careers. Not enough to buy a ship, but more than enough to get everything they'd possibly want or need from the AD lists.