This weekend I took part in an exchange on a Traveller Discord server about Vacc Suit vs Zero-G skill in Traveller. People have done some homeruling on it. I think that is probably unnecessary.

Vacc Suit skill, according to Book 1 (Classic Traveller, of course) is pretty clear that Vacc Suit imparts not just the knowledge of the suit itself but also how to move and accomplish tasks in Zero-G environments. It includes the ability to use other bulky suits (like radition suits, battledress, etc) without penalties from being in bulky suit. It’s actually a good skill, useful in a variety of situations.

Zero-G Combat is not introduced until Book 4: Mercenary, and deals with a very different situation – fighting in Zero-G - with various modifiers and rules for that situation. It does not include knowledge of the Vacc Suit, I suppose because not all Zero-G situations require a vacc suit.

I think that if you were playing with just Book 1 the rules included in the Vacc Suit skill description would be sufficinent to run the game. I have the Mercenary book, of course, and I’ve allowed one of our characters (an ex Army colonel) to study and acquire Zero-G Combat. In Zero-G combat we use the rules from Mercenary, but really if we didn’t have them and he didn’t have Zero-G Combat, Vacc Suit skill would be good enough to play the game.

Reading the Discord exchange again, to me it looks like a classic case of Traveller players reading the name of a skill and not really reading what it says. I have done that many times.