Trojan Trade War: Campaign Premise and Characters

The PC's are hired to crew an up-gunned Subsidized Merchant Q-Ship in the Outrim Void, mostly in the Trojan Reach. They will be operating semi-autonomously on behalf of the Baraccai Technum, which is currently engaged in a low-key trade war against McLellan Factors and the Arkesh Traders in the region.  

The ship is a 400-ton subsidized merchant, a "Fat Trader" of the sort found throughout Charted Space. This one, however, has seriously upgraded armor, armament, and legs - it is more than a match for the typical pirate vessels, and can punch above its weight if the crew is clever and lucky in the ambush. While the ship will be largely self-directed and self-supporting, they will occasionally operate in support of BT's large 1000-ton merchant cruisers that operate on months-long expeditions in the region. We will work out the exact terms and contract provisions later, possibly in play.

I want the group to be able to pick and choose its own directions most of the time, while still having a reason to take orders and have a patron. There will be various patron NPC's, but no executive shot-caller will be riding along. Whoever is the captain will have to be utterly reliable by BT's standards, with their best interests taken personally to heart. There will be naval combat between small ships, hup hup hup style tactical action, Cyberpunk- and Star Wars-style street action, and opportunity to make some side money. Once in a while, you might even do some good. 

I figure the gang will make two sets of characters - ship's crew for the onboard shenanigans, ship's troops for the gun bunny scenarios. When on the ground or in port, they can play whoever is appropriate. In a fight, everyone will have a role. The characters need not be tidy and professional-looking, Spaceman Spiff and GI Joe, so long as they are good at what they do. I figure the sort who work this sort of assignment aren't the spit-and-polish regulation abiding types for the most part. The ship has the following crew positions, which will be filled with either PC's or NPC's: 

• (Jason S.) CAPTAIN/CO-PILOT (Must be loyal Barracai Technum employee)
• (Dixie H.) PILOT
• (Scott M.) ASTROGATOR/SENSORS/EW
• (Clint H.) SENIOR ENGINEER (Jump and Maneuver Drive)
• JUNIOR ENGINEER (Powerplant and Miscellaneous)
• (Ruth L.) MEDIC 
• GUNNERS x4 (Secondary Positions Out of Combat, Pilot-0, Engineering-0, et cetera)
• SHIP'S TROOPS - SENIOR NCO (Must be loyal Barracai Technum employee)
• SHIP'S TROOPS - ASST NCO (Must have Pilot-0 to fly the Gig)
• TROOPERS x6 (Must have Spacer skills of some sort at 0-1 for Prize Crew duties)

In the spirit of Traveller, we will make characters mostly the "standard way", where you roll for each term and you never know what will happen. Because you guys will be in a lot of danger in this campaign, character generation will apply the following kloodges to the process to ensure that you are mostly badasses. 

1. For attributes, you will roll 2d6 eight times instead of six, dropping the two lowest scores. You may arrange the scores however you like to make the character you imagine. 
2. You automatically survive your first tour and may progress to the second without an issue. This ensures that if you -want- to do two terms of service in the same career field, you can. There is no limit to how many terms you can serve, but aging starts to affect you around your fourth go-around... I'd say 4-5 terms should be enough unless you fancy playing a middle-aged character with bad knees and a few good skills. 
3. Every player gets three chips to use to re-roll any roll you want in the character generation process. That's per PLAYER not per CHARACTER. Use them wisely. Any chips that are leftover can be spent to improve a skill by one level.