Subj:	TRAVELLER digest 295
Date:	95-05-24 16:43:25 EDT
From:	traveller@mpgn.com
To:	traveller@mpgn.com

From:	traveller@mpgn.com
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			    TRAVELLER Digest 295

Topics covered in this issue include:

  1) 
	by adou01@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Andrew Richard  Doull)
  2) Where to put software?
	by Alvin Plummer <alvin.plummer@sheridanc.on.ca>
  3) Re: TRAVELLER digest 294
	by Rob_Prior@nynet.nybe.north-york.on.ca (Rob Prior)
  4) Antimatter PAWS
	by "Upton, Django" <DUpton@vtrnntov.ms-mail.telecom.com.au>
  5) Re: TRAVELLER digest 294
	by "DSS Library" <library@babylon5.dss.gov.au>
  6) Anti-Matter
	by Roger Moore <moore@hep.phy.cam.ac.uk>
  7) Re: TRAVELLER digest 294
	by "Bob Brown" <Robert.Brown@newcastle.ac.uk>
  8) TNE Ship DMs
	by Hans Rancke-Madsen <rancke@diku.dk>
  9) Re: Draft FAQ Document
	by jamesd@spirit.com.au (James Dempsey)
 10) Re: Where to put software?
	by Alvin Plummer <alvin.plummer@sheridanc.on.ca>

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

Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 09:39:56 +1200
From: adou01@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Andrew Richard  Doull)
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Message-ID: <199505232139.JAA04630@cs26.cs.auckland.ac.nz>

Battle dress designs 

Someone asked me about battle dress designs using fuel cells.  Here are the
statistics  for  such designs.  The following table gives design statistics
identical  to  those in the basic Fire, Fusion & Steel book, extended up to
TL  17.   They are fully powered up to their maximum mass, which also gives
their  listed  fuel consumption (However, see fuel consumption note below).
Note in all cases except TL 10, excess power is generated which may be used
for  other  purposes,  but  decreases  the  listed  endurance.   At TL 14+,
doubling  the  size  of the fuel cell provides enough input energy to power
one  shot  every  10  phases  of  the  meson gun listed on the David design
submitted  to this list earlier.  The difference between the total mass and
maximum  mass (listed as ExcessM) may be loaded with any equipment desired,
without  overloading  the  frame or fuel cell.  In fact, in TL 12+ designs,
the  fuel  cell  provides enough power to overload the frame up to 30%, but
this also red

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

Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 19:29:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alvin Plummer <alvin.plummer@sheridanc.on.ca>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Where to put software?
Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.91.950523192309.17843A-100000@hubble.sheridanc.on.ca>


I finally got my Windows RICE program done (it handles a LOT of World 
Builder's Guide brainwork, and also provides a good amount of extra 
info): where can I put it?  I tried ghost.cc.missouri.edu, but Incoming 
is currently closed.

Incidentally: RICE01.ZIP was written in Visual Basic: I included the 
source code so anyone out there can modify it to their heart's content... 
after they decipher my codeing (ugh!).

Time to play with my creation... come here, Frankenstein...
<thud>
<THUD>
<CCCCRRUUNCHH!!!>
                                           ... no, it isn't that big, but 
                                               it feel's like it, it took 
                                               so long for a novice like 
                                               me to write it!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alvin Plummer
"Preserve what we created, Norris, and remember what we stood for."
                               - Strephon, 179-1126

Reply to: alvin.plummer@SHERIDANC.ON.CA

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


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

Date: 23 May 1995 21:14:08 GMT
From: Rob_Prior@nynet.nybe.north-york.on.ca (Rob Prior)
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: TRAVELLER digest 294
Message-ID: <927125403.12513945@nynet.nybe.north-york.on.ca>

>GDW portrays the RCES as "what you see is what you get" guys and gals,
>doing what they do for "the Good of Humanity", which kind of implies they
>have high morals.

No, it implies that the RC _thinks_ they hold the moral high ground.  But
then, so did the Spanish in South & Central America, the British in India,
the Americans in Central America...

Given the love of history held by Frank, Loren et al I suspect that the RC is
in for a period of serious self-questioning sometime in its future.  There
might even be reparations to the survivors of SAG raids on Junak!  (Or
possibly not: have the survivors of Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki etc been
compensated?)

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

Date: Wed, 24 May 95 11:43:00 EST
From: "Upton, Django" <DUpton@vtrnntov.ms-mail.telecom.com.au>
To: tml <traveller@MPGN.COM>
Subject: Antimatter PAWS
Message-ID: <2FC3AB15@msmailv0.telecom.com.au>


The last time someone asked why antimatter PAWS are not used the answer 
appeared to be that the energy contained in the particle beam due to the 
fact that the particles are moving at relativistic velocities is much 
greater than the energy contained in the mass of the particles.
Thus the additional energy delivered to the target in an APAWS beam would be 
marginal.
Also the energy required to create the antimatter would probably be greater 
than that delivered to the target and would be better used to create a 
faster beam anyway!

Django.

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

Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 14:21:31 -0700
From: "DSS Library" <library@babylon5.dss.gov.au>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: TRAVELLER digest 294
Message-ID: <9505241421.ZM9983@library>

Dear Folks -

In digest 294, Scott Brogley wrote about the use of grav generators as
weapons.

My reading of the system is as follows:
1. The effectiveness of artificial grav generators drops off dramatically
with 
range. In effect, any "g-missiles" would have to be practically touching the 
target ship to have any effect - and this has been ruled out in TNE due to 
anti-missile fire: "...somewhere in the last 30000(?) km a missile will be 
killed".
2. Effects inside a ship are limited due to the surrounding dampers; that is,

those in adjoining rooms, and those on the floors above and below. The damper

field is supposed to cushion occupants against forces which - potentially -
can 
come along ANY ship axis. Therefore, the field must cover a discrete area -
and 
ALL of that discrete area - in order for it to protect its occupants.
3. Any other effects, I believe, should be able to be neutralised by the
ship's 
own CG plates. The things which lift a ship should - in my view - be stronger

than and able to overwhelm anything a localised generator can produce.

- Hyphen
  (David Jaques-Watson)


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

Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 11:16:45 +0100 (BST)
From: Roger Moore <moore@hep.phy.cam.ac.uk>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Anti-Matter
Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.91.950524102739.6891C-100000@axpf.hep.phy.cam.ac.uk>



> >From memory, anti-matter creation and the use of  disintegrators only 
> >come in at TL16+.
> 
> You're right in that anti-matter *power plants* and hand disintegrators
> aren't available until TL16+, but I was never under the impression that
> disintegrators used antimatter.  And building anti-matter power plants and
> creating anti-matter are different things.
> 
> Anti-matter creation, in fact, goes on all the time right now -- Physicists
> routinely use antimatter electrons (positrons) and protons (negatrons? --
> can't remember) in the various flavors of atom smashers we have lying
around.

Anti-matter protons are called 'anti-protons'.

> So, really, my original question stands:  Why aren't the intrepid weapons
> designers of the 57th century building antimatter PAWS?

The particle accelerator I work with at CERN accelerates protons for an 
energy of 450GeV (giga electron-volts; 1 electron-volt = 1.6E-19 joules). 
This is about 450 times the mass of the proton and so the particle's mass 
is essentially irrelevant. Anti-protons would in fact be WORSE than 
normal protons in a weapon since they have a larger cross-section for 
interactions with matter and so will tend to penetrate less (although the 
effect is very small). The main reason for not using anti-protons though 
is that they are far harder to produce, this is the reason why the new 
LHC collides two proton beams at a 14TeV (14x10E12 electron volts), an 
anti-proton beam is just too difficult to make.

> My reading of the TL section was that bulk anti-matter, and anti-matter 
> containment/reactors, is indeed TL16+ -- however, you have to remember that
C20 
> Earth is producing (minute) quantities of anti-matter in particle
accellerators!

The 'high-tech' trick for anti-matter is unlikely to be containment but 
more likely to be how can you produce anti-matter for less energy than 
you get from it? In almost all cases when you produce anti-particles 
you produce and equal and opposite number of 'normal'-particles, mixing 
these together again merely means that you get back the energy you 
originally put in, useful for batteries but not much else.

To get useful energy out you need to find someway of producing 
anti-particles WITHOUT the associated particle ie. an interaction which 
is different for matter and anti-matter. We know that there has to be 
something that does this since the Universe is made of matter, with no 
traces of anti-matter anywhere. We can observe something of a difference 
in the decays of neutral kaons (a type of meson) and the experiment I'm 
working on is trying to find what causes this difference. (The technical 
term for this is break in the matter/anti-matter symmetry is CP violation).


Niel Taylor wrote:

> We can, and do, today produce particle beams of anti-protons; adding 
> neutralising positrons would not be difficult (to make a neutral beam).
There 
> is a high cost in energy to produce the beam, as the production system
relies on 
> blasting a particle beam at a suitable target and collecting the few
neutrons 
> that collect an electron and get knocked out as anti-protons (to be
collected 
> into the new beam...)

Anti-protons are produced essentially by the protons kinetic energy being 
turned into mass in the form of quarks which may then combine to form 
anti-protons - this uses the STRONG force. Electron capture/emission by a 
neutron is caused by the WEAK force and so has a far, far smaller chance 
of occuring. (a neutrino can only interact using the weak force and these 
can sail through the earth without noticing!)
 
> Impact from an anti-hydrogen beam would add a lot of energy to the
collision, 
> but the beam density would be lower for a given powered generator.  OTOH,
the 
> annihilation would generate swarms of secondary particles and gamma
rays.... 
> yuck!

As I mentioned above the particle's own mass is effectively negligible, 
and in any case at such energies the proton will fragment in almost 
exactly the same way as the anti-proton will, creating showers of photons 
and pions.

I hope the above helps clear up some points!

Roger

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

Date:          Wed, 24 May 1995 11:19:20 +0000
From: "Bob Brown" <Robert.Brown@newcastle.ac.uk>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: TRAVELLER digest 294
Message-ID: <199505241018.LAA22016@cheviot.ncl.ac.uk>

With regards to antimatter PAWS, there is actually an article in an 
old TAS Journal covering exactly this topic i.e APAWS that's the 
title of the article, maybe someone out there who has the relavent 
literature could write in and give a brief summary.

I was thinking of posting a few designs for stiker weapons on the 
list, would people be interested? The're stright forward and pretty 
short and I might be leading to something BIGGER! "I have a cunning 
plan m'lord" though I'm still working on it, those sorry individuals 
who are subjects of Her Britannic Majesty's Goverment may here some 
more.
Cheers
Bob.
 "... oh if I had a million pounds I'd buy a big turnip in the 
country."

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

Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 16:26:29 +0100 (METDST)
From: Hans Rancke-Madsen <rancke@diku.dk>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: TNE Ship DMs
Message-ID: <199505241426.QAA09051@embla.diku.dk>

Sir George Anonymous <lcdavis@mailbox.syr.edu> writes:
>[Someone else]: 
>>When a group of characters are first created they can pool together their
>>ship DMs.  They then roll on the [first of the two tables] table and see
how
>>many minus DMs they get to allot to their ship - assuming they don't end up
>>with High or Middle Passages.  For example lets assume they end up 
>>with -16 DMs to allot (the worst case).
> 
>Look at the other end of the scale too.  If you have five PC's with four 
>terms each in the Navy, and each character spends two terms enlisted and 
>two as an officer, the group gets 70 ship DM's.  They can get almost any 
>type of ship they want with no DM's to work off.
 
The whole procedure is an attempt to substitute dice rolls for Referee
discretion. I don't expect I'll ever run an RC campaign, but if I did
I most certainly wouldn't let the question of what kind of starship, if
any, the PCs had depend on die rolls. A starship has a tremendous
influence on a campaign  -  it's presence or absence and it's size and
armament dictates a LOT about the flavour and style of a campaign. If
my players have a starship then I want to design the campaign to fit.
And since I'd lay down the basic campaign parameters before the players
designed their characters  -  in fact, before I even decided who to
invite to join the campaign  -  the whole question about ship or no 
ship would have been decided by me in advance. 


      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     rancke@diku.dk
------------
        "The referee should determine the nature of subsequent
         events based on the individual situation."
                                _76 Patrons_, p. 8

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

Date: Thu, 25 May 95 01:06:11 
From: jamesd@spirit.com.au (James Dempsey)
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: Draft FAQ Document
Message-ID: <20b798f9.aba02-jamesd@loki.spirit.com.au>

  A couple of responses to my post (actually, the only two) pointed to
something I left out of the message I sent earlier this week with the draft
FAQ document. So here it is.

  The list of suggested topics in section 3 are headings only.

  What I would like, is for the people involved in (or avidly watching) any
of the discussions to post a precis of the result of the discussion. This can
then be included under the heading as an explanation to someone who might be
interested in the topic. It would only need to be a paragraph or two, and
explain what the discussion was about, and what the result was. Also, if you
can, could you include the range of digests over which the discussion
occurred, so they can be referred back to for further info. (Thanks to Paul
James for that suggestion)

  Please feel free to submit info other topics than just the four which I 
could think of off the top of my head.

  An example of the sort of thing is the summary of the Feudal Technocracy
argument which Tom O'Neill submitted on 30Aug94, (digest # 24 I think, but
I may be wrong). It is probably a bit longer than the standard, but is a good
summary. BTW: Tom, can I put that description in the FAQ?

BFN.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
James Dempsey
email: jamesd@spirit.com.au



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

Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 14:03:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alvin Plummer <alvin.plummer@sheridanc.on.ca>
To: Zaidfeld <cs911408@red.ariel.cs.yorku.ca>
Cc: traveller@MPGN.COM, xboat@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: Where to put software?
Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.91.950524135347.4353D-100000@hubble.sheridanc.on.ca>

On Tue, 23 May 1995, Zaidfeld wrote:

> 
> What does the program do?  System creation and detailing (Orbits etc?) 
> Could you describe the features briefly for me..  Thanks,
> 
>            -Shalom Zaidfeld

RICE10.EXE provides...
  UWP generation, Trade codes, Star generation
  gravity, day, year, pressure, natural weather flag
  bast temp, latitude effect's, equator max to pole min
  daily temp change, weather factor (TNE: World Tamer's)
  Social, Legal, Tech codes
for the RICE paper

It also provides...
  Axial Tilt, LandKey (if you have the World Builder's guide)
  Greenhouse effect, Max Day increase, Min night decrease
  Polemax/Min, Equator Max/Min
  Star Mass, World Mass, Star Luminisities, Diamerer, orbit
  Temp effect's of: orbit eccentricity, multiple stars
for additional information.

Also, the Visual Basic 3.0 source code is provided, as well as Digest 7 
(TML0894-07??), detailing what a RICE paper is, how to write one, and an 
example (Glisten, Glisten/2036, Spinward Marches, during the Aslan 
Occupation).

A copy has been sent to goeran (goeran@enter.hb.se), and should soon be 
available on the WWW.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alvin Plummer
"Preserve what we created, Norris, and remember what we stood for."
                               - Strephon, 179-1126

Reply to: alvin.plummer@SHERIDANC.ON.CA

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



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

End of TRAVELLER Digest 295
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