
-------- TML Message #1761 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1761
From: d9bertil@dtek.chalmers.se
Subject: Re: Lots-of-stuff and a spoiler at the end.
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 90 15:19:41 MET

Summary: Little Black Boxes, Manuever Drives, Antigravity, Armour, TDR Legal 
  Questions, Gramps, Jump Capacitors, Bad Science, Weapon repairs, Gaussrifles 
  and PS: A Possible Enigma.

Warning: PS: A Possible Enigma might be a spoiler for KNIGHTFALL and about the 
  Ancients, but PS: A Possible Enigma is at the absolute end of the this letter.

  I'd like to propose this as the first commandement of TDR:
 
"There shall be no LittleBlackBoxes unless they are sorely needed."

  ie Jumpdrive is a typical case where LBB is needed, Antigravity is probably
another one. Xray lasers might be one.

  As for manuever drives, why not use fusion rockets as standard drives? They
might need to be reworked with regards to fuel consumption, thrust, weight and
cost, but they are simple and don't seem to violate any major priciples of
physics.
  (ie, one has to go pretty far down in the mecanics to discover that it don't
work because the strenght of the magnetic field needed to contain the plasma in
such a small volume would throw around all metal in an 100 mile radius, or 
something like that:)

  Antigravity is another thing that I have problems with. Isn't antigravity also
a reactionless drive, or might it be rationalized as the drive really pushing
against the mass of the planet?
  (FLASH! Capitol/Lost in Space (????-???????-?)                        317-1120
   As some experts had predicted, the anti-grav generators on lucans new 
ludicrously large flying imperial palace, was strong enough to actually move the
planet of Capitol. We'll get back to you when we pass Vland...)

  I'll try to remember to do a comparision between grav modules and COACC 
engines with repect to thrust per weight and price. My impression from a brief
look at it yesterday was that grav-modules isn't terribly mor efficient, but
they tend to drink much lesser fuel (and much cheaper).

  The key to this set of problems (ie manuever drives don't work, and when the
do, they use far too little energy and powerplants that give far to little 
energy to account for the fuel they use) might be to both increase the 
efficiency of fusion power plants and the power consumptions of whatever we'll
use instead of manuever drives (fusion rockets or grav modules)

  Armour. Is there anyone else out there who have trouble with the thought of
spaceships with armour that you'll need a heavy shape charge to penetrate? 
Factor 40 armour is the the kind that one expect to find on the front glacis
and front turret of a tank! (120mm HV guns have a penetration of 34 when firing
KEAP at TL8 (I assume that KEAP is an catch-all for the best AP/APDS/APDSFS/
APDSFSDU of the appropriate TL) and the front of a modern tank *might* be
penetrated by a APFSDS fired from short range.)
  But remember that tank armour is much thicker at the front than on the sides,
the rearm top and bottom. And the effective thickness of the front armour is
multiplied about 1.5 times by the sloping of the front surfaces, so while
the effective front armour might equate Factor 40, the effectiveness of the 
armour against shots hitting it from higher elevations is lower.
  The starships, alas, have at least Factor 40 all around. This is probably in
the range of 20 to 30 centemeters of ordinary TL8 armour plate! And those
things fly???

  One idea for getting protection from cosmic radiation even without ludicrous
amounts of armour is putting the inhabitated parts of the ship in the centre
and surround them with water tanks. If we'll use fusion rockets then water
might be a good choise for reaction mass?

> From: George William Herbert <gwh@ocf.berkeley.edu>
> Subject: (1750) What's Approved?: The TML Strikes Back...
> > it. After all, there is a statement on the back of the book that clearly
> > states that it was printed in an provice on Terra!"
> 
> What, now the TML is denying the authorization of GDW products? 8-)

  What? Me TML? Disclaimer: I'm not TML, and besides, if FSSE, in the context
of the traveller universe, *were* a solomani plot, it would still be within
the context of the traveller universe. It would simply be a more advanced 
version of the "The Rebel Reporter" series of articles:)

  However, I think that this might highlight a question about TDR. What will
GDW say if we start pouring out things for something called Rebel Traveller?
I think that that name is too close to Traveller (R) and Mega Traveller (TM).
  TDR, on the other hand, is sufficienly non-specific that anyone can claim that
it really means anything. It's all a matter of plausible deniability:)

  Someone (I don't know who, since I didn't find it when I went looking for it
in my old files:( asked, jokingly, if TDR are going to be a hostile takeover of
Traveller. GDW might interpret it that way if the word Traveller is used as a
obvious part of the name. 
  That someone also raised the idea of starting a company to do TDR. This will
definately move TDR away from TML and into the hands of SnailMail. I feel
fairly certain that Tektronix don't want to provide another company with 
communications for free, and without really knowing that they do it!
  Even if TDR was disengaged from TML, there would still probably be trouble
for those in TDR that have net access through their employers. I don't know any
employer that would be happy if his employees used the net access to run their
own companies...

> - -george
> 
> "In late-breaking news from the pocket universe, Grandfather admitted to
> having been converted to the new human religous fad, Bertillium.  Sources 
> indicate that massive changes are expected..."

  Aw, I'm already overworked! I don't have time to lead a major religion!
Perhaps Granps could ship some androids that look like me so they could do
my exams, leaving me with an immense amount of spare time for Traveller?

> From: Adrian Hurt <adrian@cs.heriot-watt.ac.uk>
> Subject: (1751) Re: Black globes revisited
> 
> "Robert S. Dean" <rsdean@crdec8.apgea.army.mil> writes:
> >							      Now if someone
> > who has the books handy can tell me how much energy the globe needs to be
> > overloaded on, say a 100,000ton ship with a Jump-4 drive (I think we still
> > use the jump drive as an energy sink even though the Starship Operators
> > Manual has disallowed jumping using the stored energy) we could make a
> > considered opinion.  
> 
> >From High Guard, as far as I can remember:
> 
> Tons of capacitors available = displacement of ship * jump no. * 0.5%
> 1 ton of capacitors stores 36 E.P.
> 1 E.P. = ??? MW

  250 MW, That's what one gets if one compare the power consumption by
weapons in MT and HG. Notice that all starship weapons use power in multiples
of 250 MW. (It's also stated explicitely in the rules somewhere. I think that 
it is in the space combat rules in Ref's Manual, the part about BG's)
  Since each old ton is 13.5 m3, one m3 of capacitor will store 666.6 MW.

  The ship in the example above will be able to store 18 TW (18,000,000MW) of
energy.... waitaminute... "watts of energy?" watt's are effect, not enery!
I guess that we've found another hole in the rules, big enough to drive the
corridor fleet through. I think that this error is connected to the fact that
all weapons just have a MW figure for continous operation. That is not enough
data to be able to compute the energy in a hit. To do that we'd need to know
how long the beam (in case of a laser) was targetted on the target.
  
  I think that the correct amount of energy will be the MW figure for one turn,
ie 18TW * 20 min, which yields 360 TJ. That's well into the range of nukes.

> From: Adrian Hurt <adrian@cs.heriot-watt.ac.uk>
> Subject: (1752) Weapon repairs
> 
> "Mark F. Cook" <markc@hpcvss.cv.hp.COM> writes:
> >	   I'd say that a specific weapons skill includes being able to
> > fieldstrip and clean your weapon, AND THAT'S ALL.  If a component is
> > broken, you take the weapon to a 'gunsmith' or, if you're in the service,
> > you have the company quartermaster replace it.
> 
> Making new parts from a piece of metal comes under Mechanical skill.
> Again, the difficulty level depends on the component, but will probably
> be quite high - we're talking about precision machinery here.

  But remember that even if a weapons is damage so that it won't work, that
dosen't nessesarily mean that any part is broken.
  Example: The magasine of an automatic weapon don't need to be bent much
before this starts to interfer with the feed. If the top part of a magasine is
damaged in a certain way, the weapon with refuse to fire at all. Similarly, 
springs might bent out of shape, cartridges might get stuck and so on.
  These isn't 'Superficial' errors, because each one will make the weapon 
unusable, and 'superficial' damage won't interfear with the operation of
something. Yet none of them require any new parts to fix, just some tools
and a little time.


  Lastly I'm going to challenge one of basic pre-conceptions of Traveller and
MegaTraveller: The recoilless gauss-rifle.
  The gaussrifle fires a small 4mm calibre bullet. This bullet travels at 
1000m/s which is about as fast as an normal 5.56 NATO round. And yet, the 
gaussrifle inflict 4D with a penetration of 7, while a 5.56 NATO in Traveller
would inflict 3D at around 3 or 4 in penetration.
  This would indicate that the bullet from a gaussrifle travels much faster 
than a normal rifle bullet, maybe somewhere in the range of 1500 to 2000 m/s.

  How this weapon can be thought as being particularly recoilless is beyong me:)

- - -bertil-
PS A Possible Enigma (And spoiler for KNIGHTFALL, Why don't ^L work, btw? :-P
  In KNIGHTFALL the Primordials are introduced. They were about 250 000 yrs 
before the Ancients and the Ancients studied them. The big question is: Why?
The ancients are an already established source of fantastic artifacts and 
puzzling sites. Why then introduce another race? If they had no other purpose
but serve as the goal/enigma of KNIGHTFALL, they are totally unjustifiable.
  I don't even think that the thought of introducing another old mystery race
would enter anyones mind unless there were some justification.
  I'm beginning to suspect that there is justification.
  Remember the Aslan Enigma: Nobody thought it strange that the Aslan did things
contrary to their nature and achieved jumpdrive in an extremely short time.
Everyone assumed that they did this without outside influences, until Digest
ran the Aslan story and the interview with MM where he stated that this was an
Official Enigma (tm:).
  The droyne lived a pastoral life as some low techlevel and never showed the
least aptness for conquering the universe. Then, suddenly, Yaskodray appeared,
turned droyne society around and spread them over the stars in pursuit of 
different scientific projects.
  Nobody thinks that strange.
  Another clue might be the usage of the term 'uplift' in Vilani & Vargr when
talking about geneering a species to sentinence. That usage of the word is from
Brin's books (Not the Brin of Sintra/Corridor:). Very briefly those books 
feature a succession of species that each uplifted their successors.
  The answer to the droyne question would then be: No, they didn't do it
without outside influence. If the Primordials were involved, it would also give
the Ancients a very good reason for conductiong research about the Primordials.
It would also perhaps explain why the Ancients borrowed so much of their
technology from the Primordials.

  The answer might of course also be that my imagination is working overtime:)
- - -- 
"Words on the net aren't usually worth the paper they are written on."

-------- TML Message #1762 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1762
From: d9bertil@dtek.chalmers.se
Subject: TDR
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 90 15:57:09 MET

  I forgot to mention in that last post:

  Yes, I vote "yes" for TDR/Rebel Traveller.

- - -bertil-
- - -- 
"Words on the net aren't usually worth the paper they are written on."

-------- TML Message #1763 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1763
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 90 10:48:57 -0700
From: FELLOWS STEVEN B -5 CR <sfellows@slate.mines.colorado.edu>
Subject: Re:  CARGO

Orcinus orca <jokim@jarthur.claremont.edu> wrote:

>From: FELLOWS STEVEN B -5 CR <sfellows@slate.mines.colorado.edu>
>
>  Someone mentioned that they could not understand why it would cost 
>different amounts of money to ship different material.  100 tonnes of feathers
>as oppossed to 100 tonnes of machine parts.  Well, in my system, it would cost
>more for the feathers, since they take up more volume.

Waitasec.  I thought 100 tons referred to volume, as in equivalent
volume of 100 tons of liquid hydrogen.  The rest of the ship is
designed using volume-tons and this makes it easy to figure out
how much space you have left in your cargo hold.

End of jokim's post.
- - ------------------------------

Okay,   my error.    I assumed that you were still talking about mass.  If you
were referring to what I was talking about in an earlier post that 100 tonnes of cargo implies either 100 metric tonnes of mass or 100 cubic meters (volume) then they should cost the same.

I don't think it referres to that as the volume of an equivalent mass of liquid
hydrogen: that would be a cumbersome way of working.  Of course, this could be
how it is referred to in Traveller, for something being too cumbersome has not
stopped them before.

I have never designed a starship for Traveller.  However, designing a cargo
vessel for 2300AD, I just determined the volume of the cargo hold that I wanted,
and then determined the mass of the shell and supports used in manufacturing the
hold.  Anyway, it is not too unlikely that the designers use a different unit
of measure than the users.


Steven B. Fellows
sfellows@slate.mines.colorado.edu.



-------- End of TML Messages --------

