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Subject: TML Bundle #219: Msgs 2669-2681
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Date: Thu Aug  8 09:52:22 PDT 1991
From: traveller-request@metolius.wr.tek.com (TML Administrator)
Subject: TML Bundle #219: Table of Contents

-AMN- --Date--- --Sender--------- --Subject-----------------------------------
2669  23-Jul-91 Simon Anderson    Starship Ecomomics << More on MegaCorps ... C
2670  23-Jul-91 Leonard Erickson  How to kill a battleship... << On the subject
2671  23-Jul-91 richard@oresoft.C A Little Something to Chew On << 2019,117, De
2672  23-Jul-91 mwc@jake.cc.wayne Re: (2660) Plastic Starships << - -----------
2673  24-Jul-91 d9bertil@dtek.cha Re: Autofire << > From: teets@frith.egr.msu.e
2674  24-Jul-91 d9bertil@dtek.cha Planetary Bombardments << > From: Marc Alexan
2675  24-Jul-91 KELLOGG@ducvax.au Running old starships adveture idea (LONG!) <
2676  24-Jul-91 SULAIMAN@ecs.umas Large ships and meson guns.... << In answer t
2677  25-Jul-91 MacGyver          MegaTraveller II demo << I've uploaded a demo
2678  25-Jul-91 KELLOGG@ducvax.au Planetary Bombardment << It's time for my 2 c
2679  25-Jul-91 brianm@ism.isc.CO Megatraveller II computer game << Possible sp
2680  25-Jul-91 Carl Fago         DGP Product Info << This was posted on GEnie 
2681  26-Jul-91 Simon Anderson    High-speed Spaceguns << Leonard Erickson writ

------------------------------

Archive-Message-Number: 2669
From: Simon Anderson <cse426@cck.coventry.ac.uk>
Subject: Starship Ecomomics
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 91 16:19:34 WET DST

More on MegaCorps ...

Cynthia Higginbotham writes :
[On why Megacorps have all the trade in the galaxy tied up.]

> 1) If a good spec trade route already exists, a  major  corporation  will
> have it tied up solidly.

This would mean that the megacorps  spend  most  of  their  resources  on
keeping  hold  of all the speculative trade routes, routes that are going
to shift & change at the whim of their customers. To  quote  you  from  a
previous article

> Subject: (2617) starship prices & economics

> Steve Higginbotham:

> There  is  every indication (from the tables) that only a small ship (400
> tons or less) can make any significant amount of  money  by  spec  trade.
> Significant  in  terms of starship payments. If there was that much money
> to be made, Tukera would get an exclusive contract, and the profit  to  a
> starship owner would vanish.

The  problem  with  speculative trade, from a Megacorps point of view, is
that it doesn't involve a regular, reliable supply and demand. It's  made
up  of  lots  of  little  cargoes,  which  may not be available twice and
involve certain risks. They're unlikely to fetch the same price twice  on
the  same planet - it takes a skilled crew to make significant profits on
such deals. 

If a Megacorporation wanted to make a profit  from  the  differing  trade
classifications  of  two  planets,  it  would  set  up a regular run, buy
manufacturing capacity on the source world and set up retail  outlets  on
the  destination  world (s ). That's what Megacorps do, it lets them ship
thousands of tons of cargo in big ships and make real profits. 

With such a profitable business  to  engage  in,  why  then  should  they
divert  valuable  skilled  employees, who could make them much more money
elsewhere, to small speculative trade runs which would cover the cost  of
the  starship  in  a few decades ? That's not to say they don't make some
use of free traders for checking  out  new  markets  - the  free  traders
given  as  retirement  bonuses  are  clear  evidence  of  their buying up
bankrupt merchants and using them for a while,  but  the  way  they  give
them  away seems to show that they aren't using them as a major source of
income - It's easier to give a leftover ship to an ex-captain  who  wants
to continue to do a little trading, and collect the payments from him. 

> 4) Assuming your business plan is based on  speculative  trade,  it  will
> mostly  likely be a newly profitable route.  If the route continues to be
> profitable, in the long run Tukera or a similar large shipping firm  will
> undoubtably move in and take it over.

That  doesn't  mean  the  route  will  no longer be profitable. The goods
available for speculative  trade  represent  the  'spare'  output  of  an
entire  planet,  which  would  take hundreds of large ships to move, even
assuming the planetary government  would  let  a  single  megacorporation
take  over every manufacturing business, and the destination planets that
are prepared to pay enough for these goods for them to be profitable  are
likely  to  want  *anything*  the source planet is selling, so a megacorp
buying up all the air-raft spares (for instance) is  unlikely  to  affect
the market for, say, military weapons. 

> 5) Given: you have to explain your route to the  lending  agency.  Given:
> the  lending  agency is a part-owner or is owned by Tukera or other major
> shipping firm, it is not  unreasonable  that  the  lending  agency  might
> inform  its  parent of any potentially profitable leads that it acquires.
> A secret shared is no longer a secret.

Speculative  trade  routes  aren't  secret -  anyone checking through the
planetary trade classifications can see which planets will sell  low  and
which  are  likely  to  buy  high. The very nature of the small ships and
small individual cargoes used for such trade means that the  markets  can
never get too much of the goods. 

> 6) It is also not unreasonable that the lending agency will make  a  loan
> in  spite  of  the fact that it knows that no profit will be made and the
> starship will be repossessed. This is because  they  can  then  sell  the
> starship  to  Tukera or whoever at a breakeven price for the bank, and at
> a considerable profit for Tukera. The only loser is the poor schmuck  who
> got the loan.

The  real  looser from such a deal would be the bank. The person (s ) who
got the loan loose their 20% deposit (or  whatever  ),  small  change  to
everyone  but  them, the Megacorp gets a starship at a price certainly no
less than they could  have  had  it  build  for,  and  the  bank  gets  a
reputation  for double-crossing it's customers. That bank can't close and
start trading under another name, it can't keep insider dealing  on  such
a  scale a secret, and it's reputation is linked to the megacorps who own
it. 

> 7)  This  happens in the real world. In the U.S., we have Anti-Trust Laws
> and insider trading regulations, etc  to  prevent  this  sort  of  thing.
> However,   indications  are  that  the  Imperium  does  not  interfere in
> business to that extent, especially since the  imperial  family  and  the
> high  nobility  are  significant  stockholders  in said megacorporations.
> Expect such scenarios to be even more common in Margaret's Imperium.

The Imperium doesn't interfere  with  interstellar  trade  and  commerce,
that's  left  to  the  individual  planetary  governments.  The  problems
imposed on megacorps by such governments are  completely  different  from
those  faced  by  independent  free  traders.  The  only  limitations  on
megacorps are how much of each planet it's government will let them  buy.
They  can  afford  to build as many ships as they can make a profit with,
they have the organisation to sell goods  produced  on  one  world  on  a
dozen  others,  and  so  they  can  specialise and use bulk-production to
lower costs and raise profits. 

But such a setup would make each planet dependent on the  output  of  all
those  others it received goods from, and especially on the megacorp that
found markets for all it's goods and supplied all it's needs. 

Such an arrangement might well benefit the planets involved, raise  their
living  standards  and  encourage  interstellar peace and harmony as each
planet found their ideal place in the orderly interstellar empire. 

But how many planetary governments are going to sell  their  planet  into
what  would  effectively  be  slavery,  giving  a megacorp control of any
significant portion of their economy would give  that  megacorp  leverage
to  push for whatever it wanted, and there would be no hope of assistance
from  the  Imperium  - It  doesn't  interfere  in   interstellar   trade,
remember.  And if the Megacorps banks have been ripping people off to get
the deposits they paid for their free-traders, how trustworthy are  these
people who say they want to help run your planet ? 

> Again,  the  upshot  is that, given the *present * pricing scheme, in the
> Imperium, most commercial starships will be owned by  the  government  in
> the  form of subsidized merchants, or government-protected in the form of
> megacorporate ships. Is this the picture of the Imperium that you want?
>--- Steve & Cynthia

The  present  pricing scheme is only applicable to small free traders, it
says nothing about megacorps being able to buy up *all * the  speculative
cargo  at the same prices. It does demonstrate that free traders can make
a speculative profit if they're good at what they do, which is what  it's
there for. 

"What's  that  Mr Carcharias ? The pharmaceuticals in District 268 ? Yes,
we'd already tried for an exculsive contract, but their government  won't
touch  us  after  you  stole  so  many  of their peoples money in crooked
starship deals.  They  said  they  preferred  not  to  give  a  bunch  of
criminals  control  of  their  economy,  even when we bribed the heads of
state, their police took a week to quiet the riots after  they  announced
the  deal,  so  they  had  to  call it off. Your methods of operation are
becomming a liablity, stock dividends from new business  have  fallen and
I'm afraid the banks going to have to let you go. Goodbye Mr Carcharias."

		Simon Anderson

------------------------------

Archive-Message-Number: 2670
Date: 23 Jul 91 05:25:46 EDT
From: Leonard Erickson <70465.203@CompuServe.COM>
Subject: How to kill a battleship...

On the subject of Planetary invasions vs large ships, allow me the
suggest that folks should read Roger McBride Allen's "Rogue Powers". In
it the big ship folks learn a hard lesson during a sneak attack. 

The invaders had Jumped into the system far enough out to be
effectively indetectable (say beyond the orbit of Saturn in the Sol
system). Then they careful set up the weapon....

A *big* mass driver on an asteriod hull. It fired multi kilogram
projectiles at say 10 km/sec or better. They were aimed as a "time on
target" barrage. Sure, it takes *months* for them to arrive on target. 
So what?

You *cannot* armor against a several kilo projectile with a relative
velocity in the tens of km/sec. And all a big ship gets you is the
chance to intercept more of these "rocks". 

If we assume high TLs in traveller, I bet we could boost these things
to a high fraction of lightspeed. In which cause they are equivalent to
a nuke! And they are *inherently* stealthed. Scratch any ship whose
moves you can predict sufficiently far in advance. 

True, this is *definitely* limited to a "Pearl Harbor" scenario, but
they can happen... say just as the big naval manuevers get underway?
:-)




------------------------------

Archive-Message-Number: 2671
From: richard@oresoft.COM (Richard Johnson)
Subject: A Little Something to Chew On
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 91 9:52:50 PDT

2019,117, Deneb News Service...  (Imagine the smiling bimbo holo)

After a prolonged firefight, the far trader "Ducal Wind" safely
reached port today.  Upon entering the Deneb system two days ago,
they were besieged by a Vargr corsair that quickly disabled the
"Ducal Wind's" lasers and computer.  In desparation, the crew
jettisoned their cargo of agricultural goods.  The cargo pods
drifted between the "wind" and the approaching corsair, and
intercepted a laser blast.

Imagine the surprise of both crews when the pods exploded!

It seems their cargo was popcorn.
- - -- 
Richard Johnson     richard@oresoft.com      richard@agora.rain.com

WARNING: This product warps space and time in its vicinity.

------------------------------

Archive-Message-Number: 2672
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 91 14:37:26 EDT
From: mwc@jake.cc.wayne.edu (Mick Collins)
Subject: Re: (2660) Plastic Starships



- - ------------------------------

Date: Mon, 22 Jul 91 13:27:40 GMT-0:00
From: Hugh Schoenemann <hugh@pyra.co.uk>

Then the problem of aging occurred to me.  Plastics  age  through
photo-chemical  reactions  caused  by  the interaction of natural
phenomena (sun, wind, rain, local soil etc.) with  the  plastic's
own  atomic  structure  (plastics-  or  organic chemists - please
shoot me down in flames if this is a misconception on  my  part).
This  can  be  useful,  for example when designing bio-degradable
plastics,  but would surely be an undesirable trait in  plastics-
for-space-vehicles  purposes.  Given that UV light (which clearly
lends a hand in the aging process) is shielded  somewhat  by  our
atmosphere (unless you live in Antarctica, that is), wouldn't the
situation be that much worse in vacuum where  no  such  shielding
takes place ? I suppose solving this problem might help solve the
next ...

I remember hearing years back that all plastics are, to a greater
or  lesser extent, porous.  Is this true ? How could this be com-
pensated for or, preferably, eliminated when considering  plastic
vehicles ?


- - ----- End Included Message -----

  A polymer coating would probably stop UV deterioration, or at least
slow it down considerably.  It would also neatly solve the problem of porousness.  Given sufficent tech level, a decent plastic could be impregnated with other non-metallic materials(it suddenly occurred to me what you're
getting at) for increased solidity.  It would also help if the ship was 
designed/used for strictly non-atmospheric purposes |^>.
  Yeah, I could see these things in kit form, too("40 quid, mate--some resin,
a little Testors, and you're off! See yer on Jedispere!)
                                                  Mick


------------------------------

Archive-Message-Number: 2673
From: d9bertil@dtek.chalmers.se (Bertil Jonell)
Subject: Re: Autofire
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 91 17:15:19 MET DST

> From: teets@frith.egr.msu.edu
> Subject: (2651) RE:(2621) Autofire
> 
> 	When a weapon is put on auto and fired at a target the weapon will tend 
> to "junp" (for lack of a better word).  Once it has started to jump in one 
> direction it will tend to continue to go in this direction as long as it 
> continues to fire.
  
  How much it jumps depends on the weapon and the cartridge. I'd expect that
a 3.5kg assault rifle firing 5.56N ammo will jump noticably more than a 4.5kg
SMG firing 9mmP. (There are of course other factors that influence this too, 
such as the method the weapon use for cycling, wether the weapon is hand-
held or emplaced and so on.)

> 	Next:  For very shot over the first the to-hit roll is at -1 cumulative.
> for stabalized weapons, or -2 cumulative for non stabalized.  This really 
> represents how hard it is to keep an auto-firing weapon on target (known from
> 3 years of experience).

  I think that -2 per shot across the board really much. It all depends on the
weapon and the firer and what the firer is doing.

  (This is an addition to my mention of the Twilight autofire rules. In Twilight
every weapon has recoil figure. If the total recoil of all bursts fired in a
phase is higher that the strength of the firer, the difference is the number
of dice will be subtracted from *each* burst in that round.
  Say that someone with strenght 5 (about average) wants to fire 3 bursts of 
3 rounds each at a target using a M16A2. The recoil for the M16A2 is 2 per
burst, so the total recoil is 6, which is one over the firers strength, so one
die will be subtracted from each of the three bursts. The result is that only
two dice per burst will be rolled for a total of six d6 (and every '6' is a hit)
  If the firer had fired only two bursts, each burst had been counted in full,
giving six die in this case too, so the third burst was just a waste of ammo.
  And if the firer want to fire more bursts in the same phase the number of
dice rolled will decrease, and so will the chances of hitting anything.)

> 	Now we get into those nasty missed shots.  These can be discarded in an
> open field but not a crowded area.

  All open fields might not be so safe those either. There is a case right now 
here in Sweden where a passing driver were hit in the head by a 7.62N and
killed when driving on a road about 3km from a military target range. It's 
still unknown if the shot had been fired at high elevation (totally against all
regulations) or if it had richochetted upwards somehow, but IMHO a richochette
that goes 3km sounds unlikely.

> Matt Teets
> ------------------------------

- - -bertil-
- - -- 
"Oops!" - PC after managing to accidentaly discharge a borrowed rapid pulse
 fusion gun inside the ship, leading to a hull breach, a electrical fire in one
 air-lock, total power failure, and various other interesting happenings.
 Fortunately for him, the first thing destroyed was the power-feed for the gun:)

------------------------------

Archive-Message-Number: 2674
From: d9bertil@dtek.chalmers.se (Bertil Jonell)
Subject: Planetary Bombardments
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 91 17:44:12 MET DST

> From: Marc Alexandrovich Volovic <mav@cs.huji.ac.il>
> Subject: (2652) YACOPI (Yet Another Comment On Planetary Invasions)
> 
>   I assume the following - Steve Kellog suggested a possible way to
> obliterate (or, at the very least, heavily damage) any planet by a single
> Type S scout. This is a tactic employable by any starfaring nation. The
> only possibility is to have it mutually proscribed, the same going for
> planetary bombardment to destruction. Otherwise - better not speak, eh?

  There is also a psycological angle that shouldn't be forgotten. People tend 
to remember things like that for a long long time. A case in point would be the
Sack of Gashikan(sp?) which still affects human-vargr relations in the 1120's.
  And the total destruction of a high-pop planet would probably breed hatred on
an incredible scale from not only the allies of the ex-planet, but from 
everyone that could ever imagine that the bombing side could be in opposition
to them.
  I think that this is the reason why the Zhodanis never simply nuked Efate and
Jewell into oblivision and why the Imperial Navy went to all the trouble of
conquering Terra and not simply dump a few multi-megaton displacement asteroids
on it.
  If the Zhodanis had done it the 5FW wouldn't have ended in a cease-fire, the
population of the Imperium ("Efate yesterday, *Your* planet tomorrow?") would
have demanded that the Consulate be crushed totally and mercilessly (I doubt
that the Imperium could pull that off, but that is beside the point).
  And if you think that the Solomanis are bad enough already, imagine them
fueled by the destruction of Terra.

  In either case, I'd give Capitol five years before some terrorists, Zhodani
or Solomani, manage to used the Type S caper on it, or dump some virulent 
bioweapon on it, or something equally nasty, and the violence would escalate
from there...

- - -bertil-
- - -- 
"How about black and yellow striped with neon-green highlights?" - The PCs tries
 to camouflage their ship.

------------------------------

Archive-Message-Number: 2675
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1991 15:12 CDT
From: KELLOGG@ducvax.auburn.edu
Subject: Running old starships adveture idea (LONG!)

Greetings Refs

A few days ago Rob Dean asked about how to implement the use of older
starships for the use of players.  Well, in every campaign I have run
thus far the players have started out with a very old starship with a
few peculiarities to prey upon the players sensibilities.

There is a series of short stories by Stanislaw Lem called 'The Tales
of Pirx the Pilot' all very good stuff and possible trav inspirations.
But the one I have used (twice now) as an introductory incident/adventure
is the last story in the book:  "Terminus".  I strongly reccomend this
one.  I used it as kind of a feeler to find out more about my players.

Spoiler below If you have'nt read Terminus: this will ruin it.

But here is how my version went:  The players are addigned to an OLD
starship.  An extremely old model 100 yrs+ that is no longer being
manufactured.  It seems that many years ago one of this model was lost
the crew died and was never recovered.  That incident has the equivalent
fame of the Titanic:  Books, movies, folklore.  It seems that the
captain was quite a successful and popular trader.

The players inspect their ship.  Though the ship is very old, the
registration number was issued in the last few weeks, the spaceworthyness
certificate issued the same time, the radio operation permit. etc etc.

She has just had a major overhaul.  The aft end has one brand new hull plate
still showing the welding scars.  In the engine room on the forward
bulkhead is a large new plate unpainted directly in line with the aft plate.
Foward of the engineering bulkhead there are some partitions which are new.
Foward of the partitions is another bulkhead with a hole in it which has been
plated over.  This continues through out the length of the ship and culminates
in a new hull plate in the foward end of the ship.

Basically, something hit the aft end of the ship and drilled its way forward
through the ship taking out everything in its path.

In the engine room there is a very old moronic engineering robot.  It creaks,
it breaks down, it moves erratically and it Stutters!

The players if they do a little detective work will eventually establish that
the ship was recently found adrift, towed in for salvage and was repaired.
The ship is in fact the same vessel as the one that was lost in the folklore.

Now the players start finging some of the inaedequacies of the ship.  The
power plant is brand new (the old one was in the line of the asteroid drill
hole.)  The Jump and maneuver drives are the original equipment.  The maneuver
drive is not thruster plates but anti-grav.  The plates will not give full
thrust even within the ten diameter limit, and outside it are very poor
indeed.  The jump drive was designed at tech 12 as a jump-3 drive, it was
built at tech 9.  It is Jump-3 capable, but the fuel consumption is big.
The purification plant takes longer than it is supposed to.  There is no
active EMS system, only radar.  Also missing is a passive EMS, and in its
place is a radar/radio diraction finder.  No densiometer, No Neutrino sensor.
The ship has artificial gravity, but no inertial compensators, (watch out for
cargo shifting!)  ((especially if the players are running arms, these guys had
a squadron of ten GR-1 Harriers aboard with air to ground munitions...))
There might be a few old TL 9 lasers mounted (visible wavelength).  Low
Berths of dubious utility.  The main computer is... Well... slow...

Computer:  Hold on, I forgot what I was going to say....

BOOM!

Computer:  Oh yeah, Hold on, an asteroid is about to hit the ship!

In maneuvering the ship is found to be a huge collection of noises.  Creaks,
groans, unexplained popping noises....

Anyway, the players first take the ship into jump.  It takes full power, ie
if you didn't practice jump dimming before, you damn well do now.
As the ship enters jump, the whole ship audibly groans.  And while the
crew is sitting around in the darkness, there starts up this eerie moaning.
(I used a tape of whale sounds and ran it when ever they were in jump)
At this point the players should be getting perhaps a little spooked...

After a bit of investigation it seems that the entire jump grid is vibrating.
(This exists nowhere in any trav product, I made it up.)  The phenomena is
known as 'Jumpsong' Apparantly, when a ship has spent Huge numbers of hours
in jump, the jump grid is affected by jump space.  Rather in the way that a
huge steel hull would be affected by the prescence of a large magnetic field.
The hull is closely interacting with jumpspace and is humming with the
interaction with it.  (Handwaving phyisics argument, but since jump space is
fiction, I can make up anything I want to.... So there!) {Actually, I just
wanted something to help create an eerie atmosphere...}

After a few watches in jump, the communications officer, anyone with commo,
pilot, recon, sensors, or applicable skills is awakened by an odd addition
to the noises the ship makes.  If they don't make a roll to recognise it,
they roll over and go back to sleep, having nightmares about the old dead
crew of the ship.

Finally someone is going to be awakened by this noise and recognise that it is
morse code...
Read out a transcript of a conversation in letters  A...R...E...Y...O...U...
T...H...E...R...E...?
The conversation is bettween two former officers of the ship.  ie the crew
who died aboard.  They are in vacc suits and running out of oxygen.  There
is a long pipe/power conduit that runs the length of the ship this is the
source of the morse vibrations but it will take a long time to locate (there
are an awful lot of sounds going on, plus bad accoustics)  Eventually, they
find the pipe, but the messages end before they can locate the source of the
noise.

From time to time these messages crop up and the players eventually trace the
pipe down to engineering.  There is the old engineering robot hammering
away at the pipe.  Note the robot has no communications skill and is not
aware of the fact he is signalling.  He was repairing a radiation leak in the
pipe line.  It is possible to communicate with the dead crew by signalling
on the pipe.  If someone does try, the 'ghosts' will frantically signal and
beg for help and oxygen.  They assume that a rescue party has boarded the
ship.

The Robot is the cause of all the mess.  It was aboard the ship at the time
of the asteroid strike and was unable to help crew and prevent them from
dying.  (First law of robotics?)  It has gone 'insane'  The only cure is to
replace the robots entire brain and programming.  The robot is not a threat
and will not harm anyone, but it will continue to broadcast the dying words
of the crew every time it has to repair a pipe.  (a common occurrance on
the ancient ship)

Some players I have had (who's background was D&D) assumed that the robot
was haunted.  And tried to exorcise the robot.  They tried explaining to
the robot what it was doing, It couldn't understand.  They then tried
explaining to the 'ghosts' that they were dead.  The 'ghosts' responce were
that they were very much alive and desparately needed help.

Other Players I have had correctly decided that it was a synaptic problem
and dumped the brain.  (They tried to do it piecemeal replacing what they
thought was damaged) It took a while, but the robot gradually went back
to its old ways until they replaced the brain and its programming.

I should warn you that while I had a lot of fun with this scene not all the
players did.  The D&D players bailed out, but those used to science fiction
role playing enjoyed it.

Admittedly I have been a player and gotten very BORED with some ship board
adventures.  We once found an alien ship and tried to access the computer.
We spent several hours pouring over it (one character had computer-5 I think)
and we managed to find the diagnostics port on it.  Maybe if I was a real
computer jock (Computer-0 that I am) I would have enjoyed it, but It just
seemed to go on forever (I hope the ref that ran it doesn't see this!)
	(Steve edit this!)
But problems caused by old ships can be a lot of fun if you have the right
kind of players.  If they can't get into it just dump it, you will
alienate the non-mechanically inclined in five seconds if you try.

The only published adventure (I know of) that deals with this stuff is in
High Passage 5 (a great adventure but the ship stuff is only a sideline)

Anyway, I found it fun, others will not according to their inclinations.


I hope this is useful or inspiring,

Mr. Scott
"That Vulcan won't be satisfied 'till these panels are a puddle of lead!"

------------------------------

Archive-Message-Number: 2676
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1991 18:33 -0500
From: SULAIMAN@ecs.umass.edu
Subject: Large ships and meson guns....

In answer to Rob Dean's letter:

> As it is--which comes first?  If I reduce armor
>then the enemy will build PA armed ships in their next procurement cycle, and
>I will have to uparmor mine to compensate, as well as be left with a bunch
>of vulnerable ships. 

1. Starting with a warship of 52G, agility 6; there is never any possibility of
criticals or interior explosions from any spinal PA via the regular damage
charts. Auto crits cease at 50kt or greater. This is with the largest spinal PA
at TL-15(T-PAWS).  
 
The penalization of having a spinal-PA goes beyond just not doing enough damage.
They take more volume and hardpoints and are much heavier in general than meson
guns. This more than overwhelms any advantage gained via a smaller power
requirement. 

On the defensive end, the armor consideration has to be balanced by the
tremendous increase in price, not just for the hull but also for the power-plant
and in crew spaces required to handle this extra increase. A ship designer while
increasing price to add armor should consider the increasing vulnerability to
meson guns and consider increasing the size of the vessel or just building
another one. 

> I think real designers faced with this problem would
>either a) accept the PA casualties for increased agility or b) routinely armor
>at such a level as to render PAs useless, and either solution would be
>acceptable.  

Agreed. However I would consider armoring to a level to render PAs ineffectual
but not to a level to render them totally useless. PAs can be forced into a
situation where their primary use is to be in a commerce raider type role where
typically unarmored vessels can be found, or against smaller craft where the size
difference overwhelms the armor protection. In the long run your fleet will be
better off as lightly armored(armor<60) with multiple very agile smaller craft
with meson and PA spinal weapons. In a way it is a compromise between the two
points mentioned above. 


Battle-tenders vs 'battleships':
>The retreat issue as discussed in old Trav is still valid though--

I am forced to agree but I'll add that if all ships are downscaled then a given
tender could carry more vessels and the ratio of riders lost while screening the
escaping ones can be improved. Their might also be a tendency to commit the
riders to battle first, before any jump capable ships engage. Thus they'll be the
first to be lost in any case leaving the tender with its options open. Finally
as jump drive size and its fuel requirement has gone down, it might be possible
to equip ALL riders with an emergency J-1 drive. They can even jump using their
original P-Plant fuel if it is a large enough amount. A rendezvous point could
be prearranged w/ the tender. In that case the tender might need to be carrying
excess fuel to allow it to do 3+ jumps without refuelling. 

>I tend to expect that fleets would run toward medium meson gun jump capable
>cruisers for forward system screens (which would run if disadvantaged) and
>rider squadrons to remain concentrated for the counterattack.  

See above for a different view.

>Battleships are very questionable.

Agreed. Atleast in the sense as we believe them to be currently (100ktons+).
Although we can now call anything over 50kt could be a battleship. Any spinal
vessel less than 50kton a cruiser etc.


>A reasonable specification system.  Note that thrust based maneuver 
>calculations can make it difficult to actually achieve 6-G in any ship 
>with even minimal (50+) armor.


That is your variant system. Which incidently means that atleast in your world
protection against meson guns or PA spinals is almost an exclusive or option.
You can be protected against one or the other but not both - atleast not in any
reasonable way. 

>Well, I might wish that you would include the Atlantis' 13 2kt+ riders and
>the several hundred fighters with comp-9s in the analysis, figuring that 
>these subcraft will act as a screen for a couple of rounds before the main
>ship actually joins combat.  After all, they are included in the price you're
>quoting for the price comparison.

Well, I hate to bring this up but in the final analysis the riders and the
fighters are irrelevant and barely worth it (but Glisten is loaded so who cares).
Here is what I got:

The Atlantis battleship is worth between 120 and 150 Sikkinthar SDBs, depending
on whether you go by price or total displacement. We'll take the smaller value.
All values are approximate and broadly rounded in favor of the Atlantis.

Assumption 1:
Atlantis uses its craft as screens, so it takes no part in initial combat.
At any stage if the Atlantis makes an appearance it will be immediately destroyed
as is clear enough from my earlier example. 

The 'Atlantis' class carry 3x10kt, 10x2kt, 6x200t, 15x50t, 250x40t

Assumption 2:
It is assumed that each of the 2000t+ ships is capable of destroying one SDB per
round(this is stretching it a bit far as the ration is more likely 3 ships to
destroy 1 SDB). All craft are agility 6 w/ Model 9 comps. 

Assumption 3:
All craft under 2000t are armed with missile turrets. The reasoning being that
it has the highest probabity of a hit at any range for a 1 or 2 turret craft. 

Round 1:
The 2000t+ craft destroy 13 SDBs. All the other craft combined achieve 23 hits.
It takes about 30 to strip the SDB. End of round 1, 14 SDB destroyed. 106 to go.
The SDBs achieve 40 hits with their missiles and 33 with their spinals. The 13
2kt+ ships are all destroyed as are atleast 40 fighters.

At this rate by the time the entire group will be destroyed in 6 rounds. At which
time there will be about 100 SDBs left. It only takes 5 to blast the Atlantis.
In fact about 50 SDBs of the Sikkinthar type will take out the entire group.

As Dean pointed out Atlantis is a poor design. This situation does not improve
if you take its entire group into account.

> My ships, at least, were High Guard
>conversions, and it should be remembered that it was easy under those
>rules to keep your agility up to the level of your maneuver drive _and_ have
>a reasonable armor class, so the ships mentioned above were not quite so
>crippled as they appear to be now.

Point well taken. But I guess (To belabor the point), not only is MT radically
different than High Guard in construction designs, it also changes the way in
which Space combat takes place.


>Please check my recent designs for the number of craft carrying armor 52
>for this reason...Your analysis is quite correct.  The other potentially
>useful armor values are 82 (minimum to avoid all surface damage from
>secondary weapons) and 100 (minimum to avoid all surface damage.)  I
>might calculate the mimimum necessary to avoid manuever hits from surface
>damage too.  Once again, the spectre of High Guard hovers over the fleets.

Usefulness aside, are they practical in the sense of combat. You may have 82
armor but someone with a "pocket" meson can blow your ship just as easily as a
as a 40 armor cargo ship except your ship cost and weighs 40 times more. High
agility at peak performance provides a more cost-effective defense than armor.
Instead of having agility as a secondary consideration, craft should be built for
agility with armor as an addon if it does not effect performance too much.


>Rob Dean

By some unfortunate coincidence I seemed to have picked all of Rob's design to
prove my theory on. It was an unfortunate coincidence. I'll try to be less
discriminatory in my next few postings. 

I'll also try to put up some warships meeting my requirements as soon as they are
done. 


Ameer


------------------------------

Archive-Message-Number: 2677
From: MacGyver <macgyver@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Subject: MegaTraveller II demo
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 91 8:15:05 EDT

I've uploaded a demo of the upcoming MegaTraveller II computer role playing
game for IBM to sunbane. It should be available by now. It requires an 
IBM or compatible PC, with VGA monitor.

------------------------------

Archive-Message-Number: 2678
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1991 11:33 CDT
From: KELLOGG@ducvax.auburn.edu
Subject: Planetary Bombardment


It's time for my 2 cents again on this one...

In the 5th Frontier War, The High Council of the Zhodani Consulate was
trying to give the Imperium a bloody nose to get the message, "Don't
Mess With Us!" across.  Their mission is to prevent the Imperium from
attacking the Consulate.  You don't do that by whipping your opponant
into a war fever where the only way he will be safe is if he exterminates
you.

On the other hand, the Zhodani Troops are in the field to liberate the
people of the Imperium from their oppressive government.  The people
are not allowed to use a science that would keep them safe and happy,
anyone who does use this science or even if they just have a talent for
it gets lobotomized by the evil Imperial government.  Now you don't
liberate a group of people by exterminating them, do you?

This is why the Zhodani never used projectiles at one tenth the speed
of light (remember at that speed 1kg projectile =100ktons TNT) to
destroy Efate, Jewell, Regina, Rhylanor, Glisten, etc, etc.  Their
commerce raiders could have done it easily. but they did not.

Scott S Kellogg

PS  Just who is this Steve Kellog????  I'd like to meet him...

Come on you guys!  You see my name on your breakfast table every morning
and you can't spell it?!?!?!?

------------------------------

Archive-Message-Number: 2679
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 91 11:44:01 -0700
From: brianm@ism.isc.COM (brian makens)
Subject: Megatraveller II computer game

Possible spoilers - be warned

Well, I just plunked down the money and bought the new traveller
computer game "secret of the ancients".  The game action is similiar
to the original computer game, except much of the arcade action is
stripped out.

The game has more of a role playing flavor to it, the introduction is
quite amusing and graphics is much better. Wandering around a city is like
controlling your own little party as they wander around a SimCity city.
Actually, that is one of my peeves on this game, the party is some times
difficult to see, particularily at higher zoom out layers.

Combat is quite simplified from the previous game. Players will do their
own shooting, and assign themselves tasks both on the ground and in
ship. Ship combat is no longer like "Mayday". You no longer have to
worry about courses and acceleration. You just tell the ship byu menu where
you want to go. Combat between ships is a lot more interesting to watch!

You can have a party made up of both Vargr and Humans, and they have
faces ala some of the TSR AD&D computer games.

You have a lot more worlds (118) than the first game, but systems are like
paper traveller before scounts or world builder handbook. "Just the main
world, Maam". Worlds are bigger and usually have more than one city. A lot of
wee little folk(npc's) wandering around to stumble into. City buildings
reflect tech level.

The user interface is activated by 4 icons, which bring up a menu each.

I actually like this game better than the original. Worlds are a lot more
interesting and the role playing flavor is stronger by far. Much
improved over the  original version.

Brian Makens, INTERACTIVE Systems Corp., Calabasas, Ca., (818) 880-1200
			brianm@kobito.ivy.isc.com


------------------------------

Archive-Message-Number: 2680
Subject: DGP Product Info
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 91 20:48:23 PDT
From: Carl Fago <carlf@agora.rain.COM>

This was posted on GEnie recently and thought it would be of interest to
those on the TML...

Category 11,  Topic 3
Message 334       Mon Jul 22, 1991
DIGEST.GROUP [Jay Adan]      at 20:00 EDT
 
DGP MegaTraveller Update

     By the time you read this, MegaTraveller Journal #2 should be available
in your local stores. Subscriptions should be arriving about now as well. 
     Things are coming together quicker than I expected for Journal #3. It
looks like we may be able to make a late November release date with it. That
will put it about two months ahead of our planned schedule.
     For those of you who panicked at the news that the Journal was being
released irregularly, but that we were striving for a bi-annual frequency: the
pendulum swings both ways. Six months is the "mean" period we're targeting,
but if we CAN publish it sooner, we will. 
     At any rate, I'm pretty pleased with the way the content's shaping up.
And for those of you who are preparing to send SASE's for your DoD stats (see
Journal#2's Helm Report), save your stamps! Journal#3 will be publishing them -
 possibly as a pull-out supplement. Other goodies include a Worldguide for
Vincennes and a new alien minor race in the Domain by William H. Keith, Jr.
     We've straightened out our problems with the SOLOMANI & ASLAN manuscript
and are currently targeting that book for a September release. I can't wait to
see that one finished myself. Visually, it should really outshine VILANI &
VARGR. Not only are the illustrations more numerous, but they're being done by
two of the game's best illustrators, Blair Reynolds (FLAMING EYE and DEFYING
THE WOLF [MTJ#2 adventure]) doing the Solomani and Mike Vilardi (KNIGHTFALL,
THE NORRIS INTERVIEW, and SNAPSHOTS OF THE OCCUPATION [MTJ#2]) doing the
Aslan. Some of you who made it ORIGINS may have got the chance to see the art
for the Aslan section, as it was being worked on at our booth. The cover will
be by Dell Harris (MTJ#1 cover).
     For those of you waiting for THE BEST OF THE TRAVELLERS' DIGEST, we've
back-burnered that product until we hit (IF we hit) a lull in MTJ submissions.
We'll announce that one as soon as we establish a firm date.

- - --Rob Caswell
 ------------

Category 11,  Topic 3
Message 335       Wed Jul 24, 1991
DIGEST.GROUP [Staff]         at 23:01 EDT
 
Delays, delays, delays...
     Well, I don't like to report them any more that you like to hear them.
However, it looks like, after critically assessing the state of the Solomani &
Aslan manuscript, that that product won't be hitting stores until late October-
early November. The set back is a result of some unforseen editorial juggling.

- - --Rob
 ------------


------------------------------

Archive-Message-Number: 2681
From: Simon Anderson <cse426@cck.coventry.ac.uk>
Subject: High-speed Spaceguns
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 91 14:18:10 WET DST

Leonard Erickson writes :
Subject: (2670) How to kill a battleship...

> A *big* mass  driver  on  an  asteriod  hull.  It  fired  multi  kilogram
> projectiles  at  say  10  km/sec or better. They were aimed as a "time on
> target" barrage. Sure, it takes *months* for them to  arrive  on  target.
> So  what?  You  *cannot*  armor  against a several kilo projectile with a
> relative velocity in the tens of km/sec. And all a big ship gets  you  is
> the  chance  to  intercept more of these "rocks".If we assume high TLs in
> traveller, I bet we could boost  these  things  to  a  high  fraction  of
> lightspeed.  In  which  cause they are equivalent to a nuke! And they are
> *inherently* stealthed. Scratch any ship  whose  moves  you  can  predict
> sufficiently  far  in  advance.  True, this is *definitely * limited to a
> "Pearl Harbor" scenario, but they can  happen...  say  just  as  the  big
> naval manuevers get underway? 

The  drawback  with  this method of attack might well be that space isn't
entirely a vaccum. Interplanetary dust and gasses will  tend  to  collide
with  the  projectiles,  and while this is no real problem at low speeds,
it gets worse as the projectile ( or spaceship ) gets faster. 

At a high fraction of lightspeed, the projectile will have to be made  of
something  very  special  if  it  is  not  to  be  ripped  apart  by such
collisions, and it will certainly radiate *lots * of  energy  from  them.
As  for  a  defence  against  such  things,  once they have been detected
smashing their way through space, how about an old-fashioned  sandcaster?

The  impact  with  all  those  particles  will  the  projectile  no  good
whatsoever,   and  if  it  can  somehow  survive  those  impacts  at  0.1
lightspeed then it's  time  to  fall  back  on  repulsors  ,  lasers  and
throwing the kitchen sink at it :-)

Perhaps someone with more astronomical know-how could let us know what
you're likely to run into travelling through a crowded solar-system at
such speeds, and what the impacts will do ?

			Simon Anderson

------------------------------

End of TML Bundle
*****************
