AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Traveller is pretty much built from the ground up (CT certainly) around the concept of a completely random sandboxed type of play. Ships are always potentially vulnerable to hijack or piracy, and space is LARGE, so being armed is a very good idea. However, most of the sorts of ships PCs are ever likely to possess are tiny and thus carry very limited weaponry. Also, small size does not grant one speed, not in any sense. Smaller ships actually tend to be on the slow end of the scale, as there's little justification to waste huge volumes of expensive hull on fuel tanks and such. However, even military vessels don't really gain 'speed' by being small. The most likely reason why there ARE very small very fast ships is simply because that level of speed is sub-optimal for most military uses, but its cheap enough to have a limited supply of fast scouts and interceptors, most 'book 5' warships can easily afford to carry a pretty hefty mix of small craft. They're worthless in any real battle, but quite handy if you just want to nab an enemy spy or something.