INET# Document Id: UX00a.BUX0124064
Item    3327078                 92/12/10        13:06
From:   WILDSTAR@MOENG2.MORGAN.EDU@INET#
Sub: TML Nightly - Not! (re-send fr

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Date: Thu, 10 Dec 92 13:06:08 EST
From: wildstar@moeng2.morgan.edu (Derek Wildstar)
Message-Id: <9212101806.AA23689@moeng2.morgan.edu>
To: wildstar@moeng2.morgan.edu
Subject: TML Nightly - Not! (re-send from Tue 8 Dec 92)


It appears that TML-Not! #3 (Tuesday, December 8th 1992) did not make it
out to some or all of you.  For those of you wondering what the "Pocket
Empire" posts are about, it got started in here.

For those of you that are seeing this for the second time, I apologise.

For those of you that missed it the first time, here it is:

==========
From wildstar Tue Dec  8 18:01:35 1992
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 92 18:01:16 EST
From: wildstar (Derek Wildstar)
To: wildstar
Subject: TML Nightly - NOT!
Status: R


Traveller Mailing List --- NOT!

TML-Not! is just me, Wildstar, forwarding mail to the list of TML
subscribers.  If you have something you want to send to all of the TML
participants, just send it to me and let me know you want it forwarded,
and I will put it in the next TML-Not!.  If you want to stop receiving
TML-Not!, let me know and I will take you off my list (this will not
change your status on the real TML in any way when it comes back).  To
respond to anything in TML-Not!, simply use your mailer's "reply"
command, and indicate they you want me to forward your reply.  Because I
use "blind" carbon copies, the reply will go to me (only) and I will
include it in the next TML-Not!.

==============================================================================

Subject: Re: Drop tanks
Date: Tue, 08 Dec 92 12:11:00 +1000
From: Pauli <grue@cs.uq.oz.au>

>(1) Does anybody besides me remember the Trimhanka Brilliance [sp?] disaster?
>    If the drop tanks do not separate properly, this ship will be unable to
>    jump (the field will not close over the tanks, which have no jump grid
>    installed; this will lead to misjump at best, or the destruction of the
>    ship).  But, if the drive is not discharged soon after charging, the
>    energy sinks may break down, resulting in catastrophic failure and the
>    destruction of the ship.  Fun choice, huh?

There is a very easy way around this, use the energy for some useless task
and use it very quickly.  Generating large lighting bolts might be one way
to drain you energy sinks quickly.  Any number of interesting energy wasters
could be devised to remove the excess energy.

A ship designed to work with drop tanks a lot should have some provision for
discharging the energy sinks when the tanks fail to drop properly.  The extra
cost should not be excessive and the gain if safety would be essential for
all but the suicidal.

For military ships some form of internal fuel is a must if only to allow
a retreat after jumping into a system occupied by a vastly superiour force
that is able to intercept you before you refuel.


Pauli

==========

Date: Tue,  8 Dec 92 15:51:52 +1100
From: "Bruce Pihlamae" <pihlab@hhcs.gov.au>
Subject: refuelling et al

It seems to me that an enterprising person with a large-ish vessel with
gas giant refuelling capability could set themselves up as a refuelling
depot at a gas giant thus reducing the time for free traders to refuel.

They just front up and buy the already processed fuel (rather than waste
time refuelling) and then head off.

With the bigger lines I would have thought they would have mobile refuelling
and "shipping containers" so that they JUMP in system, jettison the containers,
gather up and store new containers, refuel from the tanker and JUMP out.  It
has to be a rather well established shipping line to afford the extra
vessels but none of these service vessels need to be JUMP capable.  Its
sort of like what happens with land/sea transport.  The items are packed into
those big shipping containers, shipped from one port to another and then
trucked or trained from there.  How effecient is this setup?

Jim Baranski writes:
>           Is the current model of how jump works that you burn all your jump
>           fuel at the start to give you a 'push off' proportional to the
>            distance your jump is to cover?  I can't say I like that.  If that
>           were the case, then why bother designing jump fuel into the ship in
>           any case?

To answer your second question first, you have to get from the source of the
fuel to a location where you can make the jump.  If you don't want to carry
the fuel internally then you have to carry and deploy external jump tanks
or bladders.

Now, your first question.  I prefer to use the fuel as a reaction mass in
jump space so the amount used determines how far you go BUT the jump field
will not dissipate (dropping you back into normal space) until 1 week has
elapsed.  If you're only going a short distance you use less "reaction mass"
over the week.  If you're going JUMP 3 or better then you're pumping out
a lot more reaction mass to travel a longer distance in the same time
interval.

The jump field encloses your ship and the fuel so it is factored into the
jump calculations as if it were part of the ship anyway.

Wildstar writes:
>(3) Drop tanks are a combat liability.  They are unarmored and rather flimsy;
>    so that hits are very likely to destroy the tanks (see Trillion Credit
>    Squadron).  You cannot scoop for fuel with drop tanks, either.

WHY can't you have armoured drop tanks?  What grand physical universal law
would it violate to armour the suckers?  I have never understood this rule.


Anyway.   Got to go.

Have a Merry Festive Season.

Bruce...             pihlab@hhcs.gov.au

==========

Date: Tue,  8 Dec 1992 01:22:04 -0500 (EST)
From: Eric Edward Moore <deathmaster+@cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: TML Nightly - NOT!

On the subject of free trader style trade, it seems to me that free
traders might wind up being more market driven, and be "chartered" a
lot.  "I'll pay you 350 kCr to take this load of 3 tons of Lark's
Vomit to Efate (a 12 Parsec trip)".  This is the sort of silliness
megacorporations are allways trying to avoid and makes for better
adventure possibilities.  It also better represents the "fallen
between the cracks" sort of commerce you would see.

Actually, who knows what small carriers do on this planet?  My guess
is lots of that sort of thing, and trips to places where they are the
main source of imports.

Anybody know anone in this sort of buisness?

-Love, Kisses, and a Neutron Bomb
-Eric the Finn

==========

Date:     Tue, 8 Dec 92 11:16:59 EST
From: Robert S. Dean  <rsdean@cbda8.apgea.army.mil>
Subject:  Re:  TML Nightly - NOT!

>
> Traveller Mailing List --- NOT!
>
> TML-Not! is just me, Wildstar, forwarding mail to the list of TML
> subscribers.

Thanks!  I was starting to go into withdrawal (-: (-:!

> Date: Sun, 06 Dec 92 10:18:44 -0600
> From: "Steve Higginbotham" <p00206@psilink.com>
> Subject: Re: Traffic and Jump Capability
>
> > ... an independent trade speculator's best purchases are
> >going to be on a popoulous world with a great variety of products in
> >mass production.  The trader would be looking for overstock, excess
> >production runs, and recently-discontinued items to buy cheaply.  And
> >haul all of these goodies back to the kind of world described in the
> >paragraph above.
>
> This is how Cynthia handles anything that your basic Free Trader-type
> wants to do on an Industrial world...Sounds like DAK, doesn't it?

Yes.  This makes perfect sense to me.  Now, the porblem I have with the
system as shown in MegaTraveller is that it won't work for something like
a 600 ton subsidized merchant.  Often there wouldn't be enough cargo to
fill the hold.  I think that a ship of that size is within the reasonable
bounds of "player character adventure", and it would have the sort of
regular run that would fill the chinks between the megacorps, so the rules
should be able to cover it.

> >It seems to me that the most profitable way to operate would be on a
> >series of shuttle runs, back and forth, from these large-enough but
> >unprofitable for the large scheduled carriers, to the centers of trade,
> >industry, and government.
>
> I don't buy this.  If you can shuttle back and forth regularly making a
> profit, Tukera can, too.  And they will, and you won't be able to any
> more....You really need to make things iffy at the Industrial points:
> if there is ANY regularity at all in the operation, then Tukera has all
> the advantages in the operation.  We need to fix things so that there is
> always SOMETHING, but seldom something that can go to the same world as
> last time and be sold profitability....
>                                 ---Steve

I agreee here.  I'm not yet convinced that it _can't_ be done with a random
generation system of some sort.  If it can't, I'd think that GDW ought to be
able to sell something like 76 Patrons, except covering cargoes, which would
lay out the pitfalls and twists involved in each of the potential purchases.
Once those have been used, hopefully the GM's imagination would have been
prodded enough to come up with additional ones.  Perhaps a "tickler" list,
like that for patrons, would be the way to go.

Wildstar replies to Steve:
> Subject: Free Traders vs MegaCorps

> <In response the the last included paragraph above>

> Tukera COULD, but it isn't worth it.  The investment required isn't large for
> a megacorporation, but the return is pretty tiny.  For the investment of a
> 200 or 400 ton starship, the return is barely enough to pay off the note on
> the ship (over the next 40 years) and pay the salaries of the crew.  Why
> bother with these little worlds when the return is so much higher off of a
> high traffic route which can employ many 100,000 ton bulk carriers?  From
> some preliminary calculations, these large ships cost about a third as much
> as a subsidized merchant to buy and operate per ton of cargo hauled.

Tukera _would_ go after these routes _IF_ there is no place for them to get a
higher return on investment.  Obviously they allocate resources to the most
profitable routes first, but if they are expnading (even slowly), as long as
they can make more by running a route than by putting the money in the bank,
they will eventually expand enough to do it.  (I.e.--if I already hold all the
13% interest bonds that I can get, and I've got money to invest, do I put it
in a 3% savings account, or buy 8% bonds?)

Determing what these break points are is what we can't do with the current
rules...

With one small exception: I always consider (and I think this is the Higgin-
botham method too) that any two worlds that can consistently sell to one
another at a profit under the MT/Merchant Prince "all tons are the same tons"
cargo rules is tied up by regular shipping lines.

Rob Dean
email to: robdean@access.digex.com, not the account above

==========

Date: Tue, 08 Dec 92 15:03:20 -0600
From: "Cynthia Higginbotham" <p00206@psilink.com>
Subject: forward to TML-not!

I have a DOS subsector viewer (remotely derived from Mark Cook &
Dan Corrin's X subsector viewer) about ready for testing.  Anyone
interested in trying it out, and handing me back bug reports?
-requires 800x600 Super VGA, a mouse, & MS-DOS;
will run in DOS under OS/2.
-uses text subsector files created from standard sector files
with a small utility program.  (I kept xssv's input file format).
-displays two panels: the subsector map itself on one panel, and
UPP and easily derived data on the system on the other panel.  (Click on
a system hex and it displays the data on that system.)

==========

Date: Tue, 08 Dec 92 15:09:55 -0600
From: "Cynthia Higginbotham" <p00206@psilink.com>
Subject: Re: IMPERIUM.GIF

  ... A while back one of y'all posted an Imperial and a Shattered
 Imperium icon that you use... I misplaced the GIF, and what I would
 really like is the original X bitmap, if that's possible. (I'm too lazy
 to fire up bitmap and make my own...)  I intend to plaster it on the
 data sheet section of a DOS subsector viewer I'm refining...

 Also, if anyone out there has a utility for converting X bitmaps to GIF
or BMP format, I could really use it...

==========

Subject: Re: TML Nightly - NOT!
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 92 16:46:41 CST
From: goldman@orac.cray.com (Matthew D. Goldman)

Thanks for the TML Nightly -- NOT! list wildstar.

My players often ask me where I get my ideas for
their adventures.  They look at me really strangly
when I reply 'the news.'  Today was a really busy
day in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  Scanning
through the paper, I came up with the following.
For some of them I did not have to change anything...

The headlines from the Spinward Marches:

o Tukera Lines backs out of major starport deal with
  Norris government.
o Religious riots on Regina.  Extremists ousted from
  Ancient site.
o Regina -- Details of riots in towns and cities are
  hard to come by.
o Imperial marines sent to Arden -- this time to aid
  striken.
o Norton envoy stresses effort is not a military one.
o 3 Imperial soldiers slain on Esalin patrol.
o Zhodani to scrap absolute right to political asylum.
o Splinter group says it is targeting Solomani leaders.
o Intervention by major powers becomes acceptable.
  Developing planets unable to survive without help as
  Imperium crumbles.
o Norton tries to put longer-term focus on the economy.
o Explosion traps 8 in lunar mine; rescuers start mile-
  long decent.
o Agency to open investigation of Tukera Lines
  starships, sources say.
o Imperial peacekeeping force urged for Arcadia.
o Trin -- Fleet will get older before it gets newer.
o Caring for a precious resources: small population
  worlds.
o Time now for transit, not politics.
o Asteroid passes (relatively) closely.

There is more; however, that's a good start.

Enjoy.

--
Matthew Goldman              E-mail: goldman@orac.cray.com
Fax: (612) 683-3099                   Work: (612) 683-3061
      "Say George, I don't mean to interrupt, but
       there's a glowing red dot on your forehead."

==========

From: Wildstar (wildstar@moeng2.morgan.edu)
Subject: Late-breaking News!

I just got off of the phone with Dave Nilsen at GDW.  Last week I had asked
him to see if TML could develop a "pocket empire" for the New Era.

The answer is yes!

I asked for and received permission to develop a pocket empire in the J, K,
N, and O subsectors of the Reaver's Deep sector.  This is situated exactly
inbetween the Solomani and Aslan in the middle of the sector; a corner of
the Federation of Daibei's Frontier runs through it, too.

I will be going to the sector data (and looking in whatever other materials I
have) to shed some light on the region.  If anybody (hey, Metlay!) knows of
already-published material which covers that region, perhaps you could
post the reference and a summary.

We will need to run the whole thing through Hard Times, and then simulate a
further slide due to the Virus.  The area also has millenia-old traditions of
pirates, corsairs, and raiders; all in all it sounds like a prime spot for
New Era adventure.

==========

From: Wildstar (wildstar@moeng2.morgan.edu)
Subject: Jump Drives and Free Traders

"Bruce Pihlamae" <pihlab@hhcs.gov.au> writes:
> I prefer to use the fuel as a reaction mass in
> jump space so the amount used determines how far you go BUT the jump field
> will not dissipate (dropping you back into normal space) until 1 week has
> elapsed.  If you're only going a short distance you use less "reaction mass"
> over the week.  If you're going JUMP 3 or better then you're pumping out
> a lot more reaction mass to travel a longer distance in the same time
> interval.

This sounds pretty accurate for Classic Traveller, where the ship's main
power plant charged up the Jump Drive to establish the field, and then you
used the jump fuel to propel your ship.  See the discussion of breaking off
by jumping and black globes in High Guard.

The scenario I gave is pretty much chapter and verse from the Starship
Operator's Guide, for whatever that's worth.

For TTNE, I would like to see a return to the Classic Traveller model, but
it's not a big deal to me; I can live with either.

> WHY can't you have armoured drop tanks?  What grand physical universal law
> would it violate to armour the suckers?  I have never understood this rule.

I think because once you've gotten them structurally beefed up and armored
to the equivalent of your outer hull, then they are "external demountable
tanks".  The Gazelle class close escort uses them.  Check TCS for details.


Robert S. Dean  <rsdean@cbda8.apgea.army.mil> writes:
> Yes.  This makes perfect sense to me.  Now, the porblem I have with the
> system as shown in MegaTraveller is that it won't work for something like
> a 600 ton subsidized merchant.  Often there wouldn't be enough cargo to
> fill the hold.  I think that a ship of that size is within the reasonable
> bounds of "player character adventure", and it would have the sort of
> regular run that would fill the chinks between the megacorps, so the rules
> should be able to cover it.

How about rolling for "Large Lots" (use the Major Lots column of the freight
and cargo tables, and double the size of any lots thus generated).  A ship
this size is probably profitable enough that larger concerns may be operating
them on their smaller routes (probably in direct competition with the player
characters).  This may lead to an interesting and exciting friendly rivalry
(or maybe not so friendly, depending on the mood of the referee) between the
independent player characters and their corporate competition.

> If it can't, I'd think that GDW ought to be
> able to sell something like 76 Patrons, except covering cargoes, which would
> lay out the pitfalls and twists involved in each of the potential purchases.
> Once those have been used, hopefully the GM's imagination would have been
> prodded enough to come up with additional ones.  Perhaps a "tickler" list,
> like that for patrons, would be the way to go.

This sounds like a great idea!  I should point out that a few examples of
just this sort of thing were included in Knightfall.  Can anybody come up
with a bunch and post them?

> Tukera _would_ go after these routes _IF_ there is no place for them to get a
> higher return on investment.

Right.  And while we can't determine the exact break points with the current
rules, worlds below a certain size will be almost exclusively the province of
Free Traders.  As the trade volume gets larger, so will the size of the
ships, and so will the competition from larger and larger organizations.  So
your 600 and 800 ton subsidized merchants would likely face some competition
from the larger lines, while the smaller 200 ton free traders are much less
likely to have the problem.

Wildstar
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                    Science-Fiction Adventure
                                                            in the Far Future


***************
END of TML-Not!
=END=
