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From: owner-traveller-digest@MPGN.COM
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Subject:   Traveller-digest V1996 #289
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Traveller-digest           Thursday, 25 July 1996       Volume 1996 : Number 289

(R)1996. Traveller is a registered trademark of FarFuture Enterprises.
All rights reserved.

The following topics are covered in this digest:

         1. BOUNCE traveller: Non-member submission from [ImperiumGames@ImperiumGames.com (Matt Machtan)]
         2. Re: E-Magazine title
         3. Re: Traveller: Terra 1965
         4. Re: E-Magazine title
         5. Re: Adventure Creation
         6. Re: Surface Area and FF&S
         7. Re: comments and a scenario (was Re: Urban legends)
         8. Re: Psionic auto-mindprobe?
         9. Re: Adventure Creation (Td V96#283)
        10. Re: Traveller-digest V1996 #284
        11. Adventure Creation
        12. Re: Surface Area and FF&S

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

From: Rob Miracle <rwm@MPGN.COM>
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 14:59:10 -0400
Subject: BOUNCE traveller: Non-member submission from [ImperiumGames@ImperiumGames.com (Matt Machtan)]

This had bounced from the list to me.  Seems kinda important :-)

Rob


>To: traveller@MPGN.COM
>From: ImperiumGames@ImperiumGames.com (Matt Machtan)
>Subject: Traveller has left the Building
>
>Marc Miller's Traveller has gone to print.  It will be shipping from the
>printer August 2nd,  Imperium, and distributors Will have copied on August
>5th. The retail stores should have them by the 10th.  Those of you that
>have pre-ordered should have yours by the 15th (it takes time for Mr.
>Miller to sign that many books).
>
>JTAS has been set back to September and will be released along with the
>Starships book.  It will be out by September 30th, sooner if possible.
>
>Lets here the countdown...10...9...8...
>
>Ken Whitman
>President/Imperium Games, Inc.
>
>
>Check out the next issue of Shadis magazine for a review.
>
>
>
>

- --
Rob Miracle <rwm@TanSoft.com>
Tantalus Inc.
Be patient or be a patient. -- Anton Devious


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

From: eris@pen.net (Eris Reddoch)
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 96 13:27:03 -0600
Subject: Re: E-Magazine title

On 07/25/96 at 08:21 AM,  Jeffery.M.Miller@Dartmouth.EDU (Jeffery M. Miller)
said:

>--- You wrote:
>Suggestions:

>1. The Feudal Technocrat
>2. The Rock-Dropper

>--- end of quoted material ---
>3. CORN-DOGGER! ;-)

Ah Geeze! If you're going that route then go all the way....

 "Hot Rocks with BAD Colds!"

 "Dangerous Journeys!"
 
 "Did too! Did not!"
 
 "Traveller: The New NEW Era"
 
 ...and the ever popular...
 
 "Canon!" (on even issues and "Cannon!" on odd issues)
 
Eris 
- -- 
- -----------------------------------------------------------
eris@pen.net (Eris Reddoch)    using MR/2 ICE #245
- -----------------------------------------------------------




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

From: eris@pen.net (Eris Reddoch)
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 96 13:14:06 -0600
Subject: Re: Traveller: Terra 1965

On 07/25/96 at 10:39 AM,  Mark Urbin <eclipse@ultranet.com> said:

>>Don't forget the NUCLEAR airplane!  <g> Very buildable and it could have
>>remained aloft for months on end, with small craft shuttling passengers,
>>cargo and crew up and down as the ship continues to fly its route.

>  Double that grin. :-)  Having talked to family members on both sides of
>that project (Aircraft design & production/military nuclear design &
>production), it was painfully obvious that dog just wasn't gonna
hunt.  

Not in the Real World (tm).  <g> But we're talking about the world of 50's SF
reality here.

>Too big, too heavy & no place you want to land the bloody thing
>come refueling time.

Actually, I'd build it as a flying boat and land it off shore
somewhere...for flavor more than anything else.  <G> 

The reasons the real prototype was judged impractical was that it was judged
too soon.  The concept that was looked at, and rejected, was based on power
plant designs that nobody had had a chance to
optimize for flight..heck..this was before the Navy worked out how to use
fission reactors in submarines.  <g> The second thing was size, to be
practical the vehicle would have had to be huge, and I doubt anybody in the
early 50's really antcipated the true market for airtransport.


Eris
- -- 
- -----------------------------------------------------------
eris@pen.net (Eris Reddoch)    using MR/2 ICE #245
- -----------------------------------------------------------




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

From: Daniel Taylor <dante@polaris.solon.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 15:02:14 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re: E-Magazine title

On Thu, 25 Jul 1996, Eris Reddoch wrote:

>  "Canon!" (on even issues and "Cannon!" on odd issues)
>  
So, would that be a Laser Canon or a Rail Canon?

                                 //
                                //
                               //
                              //
                             //
                   |----------------------|
____________________QQQQ______________QQQQ______________________________


Daniel Taylor


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

From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 01:56:48 PST
Subject: Re: Adventure Creation

In mail you write:

> I was reminded of the first one I'll discuss by a comment by Leonard 
> Erikson that he likes to exploit players' ignorance in his adventures.  

Not quite true. It's not *ignorance* I exploit. That wouldn't be fair. 
Instead I apply an *old* saying:

"It ain't what you don't know that hurts you,
 It's what you know that ain't so."

In other words, it's when you *assume* that you know something, but
really don't, *then* you get in trouble.

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

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

From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 03:15:57 PST
Subject: Re: Surface Area and FF&S

In mail you write:

> At 09:42 pm 7/22/96 -0700, you wrote:
>>Why a sphere?  It has the lowest surface area/volume ratio.  According to 
>>FF&S, our usable surface area is 274,000 square meters.  Actually, on 
>>checking back, I find that configuration does not affect usable surface 
>>area, so what I've just done is select the most surface area-efficient 
>>design.  Silly me.
>
>         1ST PRINTING ERRATA: Published by GDW in Challenge, corrected in 2nd
> Printing: Configuration DOES affect surface area -- "Surface area in square
> meters is the hull material volume ***(after hull form and airframe
> modifications but without adjustment for hull thickness)*** multiplied by
> 100." So you were right the first time.

ARRRGGGGHHHHH!

Someone, *please* tell me me the above isn't what the rules *really* say?

You *cannot* get a reasonable figure for surface area by *multiplying*
volume by a *fixed* number!

Consider a cube 1 meter on a side. The volume is one m^3, but the
surface area is 6 m^2. The surface area is 6 times the volume.

Now consider a cube *two* meters on a side. The volume is 2^3. That's 8
m^3. The surface is 6x2^2. That's 24 m^2. The surface area is 3 times
the volume. 

Now consider a cube that is 3 meters on a side. volume is 27 m^3, area
is 54 m^2. For a ratio or 2:1.

4 meters= 64 m^3 volume, 96 m^2 area. 1.5 to 1.
5 meters= 125 m^3, 150 m^2 area. 
100 m = 1e6 m^3 vol, 6e4 area, for a ratio of .06 to 1

General formulas for cube:
volume = l^3
  area = 6*l^2
surface/volume = 6/l

Get the picture? It works out similarly for other shapes.

Surface area of a sphere is 4pi r^2. volume is 4/3 pi r^3. So surface
to volume is 3/r.

Note that the surface to volume ratio of *any* shape is a constant
(determined by the shape) times the *size* (ie linear dimensions) of
the object. This also means that the ratio depends on the *units* used
to measure it. (this is because the ratio is ignoring the fact that you
are dividing area by volume, which isn't a legal operation
dimensionally)

So it looks like the surface area rules are *badly* broken. The
*proper* way to determine surface area is to have a "shape constant"
for the different hull shapes, and multiply it times the length
*squared*. Volume would use a *different* shape constant multiplied by
the length cubed.

Note that shape includes things like the ratios between things. For
example, the "constant" for a cone depends on the ratio of the height
to the width. Ditto for cylinders and the like. 

So it's probably a case of either using the "messy" formulas that take
into account the proportions of the shape, or else we'll have to
specify the proprotions of the various hull shapes.

BTW, this *could* be a reason for "inefficient" shapes like the
"saucer" section of the Enterprise. You build that way if you *want*
more surface area (either for cooling, or for mounting things on).



- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

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

From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 03:48:44 PST
Subject: Re: comments and a scenario (was Re: Urban legends)

In mail you write:

> There was a series of articles last year in _Fantasy & Science Fiction_
> magazine about how to identify radioactive waste storage sites as
> dangerous over thousands of years. The articles touched on all kinds of
> issues that have been discussed on the list in the past. Massive population
> reductions, radical language shifts, catastrophes causing loss of records,
> inability to read records that survived, all kinds of stuff.

You know *why* it was in F&SF, rather than, say, Analog? Because the
folks at Analog know that high level waste isn't dangerous over
multi-thousand year time periods.

Radiation output is *inversely* proportional to half-life. Anything
that puts out lot of radiation has a *short* half-life. The usual
figure is that after 300 years typical high level waste is no more
radioactive than a good deposit of uranium ore.

You wouldn't want to set up housekeeping there, but you can wander
through without any serious radiation hazard.

All the stuff with *long* halflives is hardly radioactive enough to
worry about. Plutonium is radioactive, but I could pick up a piece of
it, look it over, hand it to you, let you look it over, and then put it
back on the table and we could both walk off. No real problem unless we
got some into our bodies somehow. The radiation dose would be well
within safety limits.

A lot of these things are *toxic*, which is a different matter. Arsenic
is 30 times more toxic than plutonium. 

So if you store the waste in a form that is biologically inert, and
fairly strong, then while it'd be *nice* to have it marked for
millenia, it's really not that important after the furst few hundred
years.

> One of the identification methods discussed was covering the site with
> extremely durable stone works, sculpted to be discordant and disturbing.
> Throw in some glyphs showing people digging around in the site, then
> falling dead would help get the point across that this was somewhere you
> didn't want to be, and that you really didn't want to screw around with it.

And if I describe a site like that to most players, they'll
*immediately* figure that I'm running a crossover campaign (Traveller
and Call of Cthulhu!)

> Coupled with this was an effort to create some kind of unambiguous glyphic
> language that could present the message "Danger! Keep Out!" across ten
> thousands years.

I thought about that myself. I marked some containers with a pair of
red triangles placed point to point. About half the folks I asked
figured it out. (Hint, ever see a black widow spider?)

BTW, it's rather more likely than not that we'd be digging up nuclear
waste dumps *on purpose* and cursing the idiots that made it so hard to
extract the elements we want from them. There are a *lot* of uses for
the stuff in those wastes.

The same goes for a lot of "toxic waste". It's actually possible to
recycle them into other industrial processes. One of the more glaring
examples is that some of tye "poison gas" that the Army has stored
could be *sold* for a profit to the chemical industry. You see, some of
the components of "binary" gases are either useful industrial
chemicals, or something easily converted into such.

They can't dispose of them that way though because the public screams
about the idea of transporting "poison gas" thru their communities. Of
course it never occurs to them that there is one hell of a lot *more*
material that is *far* more toxic being shipped through every day. Lots
of industrial chemicals are as toxic as war gases, if not *more* toxic.

Yes, *more* toxic. The more toxic ones aren't useful as weapons for one
reason or another. Possibly because they aren't stable enough, or are
too much trouble to handle. Nitroglycerin is more explosive than
demolition charges too, but it's too much trouble to handle. Same idea.

Which brings up the fun of players accepting a shipment of industrial
chemicals, or some such, without reading the fine print....

For those of you who understand the notation, here's a clue....


                             /\
                            /  \
                           /    \
                          /   4  \
                         /\      /\
                        /  \    /  \
                       /    \  /    \
                      /   4  \/   4  \
                      \      /\      /
                       \    /  \    /
                        \  /    \  /
                         \/      \/
                          \      /
                           \    /
                            \  /
                             \/

<grin>

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

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

From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 04:16:39 PST
Subject: Re: Psionic auto-mindprobe?

In mail you write:

>> result. However I'd also say given the massive complexity of multiple
>> personality disorder it would not make a suitable roleplay character.
>
> Oh come now.  Roleplaying a multiple personality has to be the ultimate in
> fun!  One possibility that immediately comes to mind is having *two*
> players playing the same character.  When a certain set of circumstances
> or a traumatic event occurs, they switch.
>
> Of course, short of having a clinical psychologist as a player (which I do
> have, actually) the character will be played according to the players
> perception of MP disorder, not a real knowledge.  But hey! its a game!

Well, there was a person on one of the Compuserve Forums I used to
frequent who *was* an MPD (due to the nature of the forum, it is rather
unlikely that they were lying about it)

They had been diagnosed a while back and were undergoing therapy aimed
at integrating the sub-personalities into a whole, but it had a long
ways to go. But since most of them knew what was going on, they had a
"truce" of sorts.

It made for rather interesting message traffic. Especially if there was
a disagreement between "them" on how to respond to something.

So, I'd say that playing such a character is *possible*, but *very*
difficult. The multiple players for one character approach would be one
way. But to do it "properly", they should only get to communicate via
notes. That is, the one who is currently running the character had best
leave notes about what he is doing and why. Otherwise when the "switch"
comes, the player getting control is not going to have any idea what's
going on. Contrary to popular belief, the personalities are generally
*not* concious of what occurs when they aren't in control. (I think
I've heard something to the effect trhat this can change as the
personality starts to re-integrate, but I'm not sure if that's known,
or just speculation).

> Mindprobing Aliens: Humans think in images and in languages.  To some
> extent our symbol of a thing is the word we use to refer to it and the
> mental picture of it.  When I think of 'bird' I think at the same time of
> the four letter word 'bird' and of a small winged creature as a visual
> image, generally a Robin.  This follows a certain theory of symbol
> formation whose name I forget, but which says we use "ideal" examples of
> things when thinking about them.

Actually, it's fairly easy to show that while we think symbolically, we
do *not* do so in words. I know *I* have had the situation of having a
symbol (concept might be better) that there just *wasn't* a word for.
I'n my mind it was a clear, simple thing. But it took hours to explain
to someone else, and even then I'm sure that their "mapping" of the
concept was different from mine.

This actually makes sense given our knowledge of how things like
perceptrons and neural networks "store" knowledge. It's a
multidimensional "array" sort of thing. You have a bunch of inputs
(one per dimension) with a various value sets (yes/no, colors, etc).
The "concept" is a plane cutting through the array. If the inputs are
on one side of the plane, the output is "match", if they are on the
other side, the output is "doesn't match".

BTW, this is why it can sometimes be almost impossible to teach someone
something. The way they have their *existing" "concept planes"
configured, the new concept may be too close to several of the existing
ones. 

This gets seen when training neural nets. You can train one to
recognize some images, then feed it a new one and discover that once
you've "trained" it to recognize a the new one, it no longer can
correctly identify one of the older ones. Train that one back in, and
it loses the other one. At that point, you either train some *other*
images, and then see if they broke the deadlock, or you clear the net
and retrain it from scratch, but make sure not to train the images in
the same order you tried last time!

> Therefore if I were to mindprobe a person who did not speak english I
> would be presented with a partially understandable series of symbols and
> images which I could take some meaning from.  If I were to mindprobe a
> human with a truly different set of basic assumptions (say, an Arabian
> desert nomad) as humans we would have onlyy a few common anchors to
> interpret his thoughts.  The very structure of his language is different,
> so I would not know whether I was looking at a 'verb' symbol, a 'noun'
> symmbol, or something entirely different.

Not true! It turns out that a *lot* of the basics of huiman language
are hardwired. Which makes telepathy a lot more likely to be workable.
Probing an alien (ie non-human) would be a lot harder. Vargr should be
much simpler because they are from the same planet, and not *that*
distantly related to us.

> Aliens? even worse.

Much, much worse.

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

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

From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 04:51:54 PST
Subject: Re: Adventure Creation (Td V96#283)

In mail you write:

> Joe Walsh <ransom@connect.iconnect.net> wrote:
>> My method is the flip-side of that: use something I know in a way that 
>> imparts that knowledge to the players.  Has anyone else used this method?
>
> Sure!  One of the one's that got a lot of comment from my players is the
> scenario where they were doing recon through a forested, mountainous
> area.  They came across a strange sluice filled with water (which I
> carefully described) and followed it to an even stranger collection of
> barrels and tubes: a moonshine still.  Needless to say, the moonshiner's
> reaction was predictable.

Heck, if there *weren't* barrels and the like, I'd be worried that I
was trespassing on someone's mining claim. A sluice box is an old, but
quite effective method of getting gold dust out sand and gravel. 

Miner's don't like strangers wandering around either. :-)

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

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

From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 04:57:55 PST
Subject: Re: Traveller-digest V1996 #284

In mail you write:

> Suggests a picture for a combat-ship workstation (assuming you don't want
> full scale G tanks) very different from what is usually illustrated.
>
> 1. The chair is highly reclined -- perhaps this is variable, but in action
> would go to optimal recline for high G.
>
> 2. Its "plumbed" for all essential functions -- possibly including sip tubes
> for water, nutritional supplements (you could be DAYS at high G).

I seriously doubt that anything bigger than a fighter will spend long
periods at more than 3 gees (uncompensated). And at 3 gees, you can get
out of the position and crawl to the john. :-)

Also, please consider just what *one* day* at a mere 3 gees *means*.

Here's what one day gets you:

	velocity	distance
accel	km/s	%c	km	AU
- ---	------	-----	------	-------
1	8.47e2	0.282	3.66e7	0.244
2	1.69e3	0.564	7.32e7	0.488
3	2.54e3	0.847	1.10e8	0.732
4	3.39e3	1.13	1.46e8	0.975
5	4.23e3	1.41	1.83e8	1.22
6	5.08e3	1.69	2.19e8	1.46
7	5.93e3	1.98	2.56e8	1.71
8	6.77e3	2.26	2.93e8	1.95
9	7.62e3	2.54	3.29e8	2.19
10	8.47e3	2.82	3.66e8	2.44
11	9.31e3	3.10	4.02e8	2.68
12	1.02e4	3.39	4.39e8	2.93

I think it's safe to say that no fight is going to involve as much as
*half* a day at any given acceleration. 

> 3. Probably also includes "medical" functions, to provide first aid for
> casualties, med read-outs for medics, etc.

Considering that *now* biomedical readouts can be provided by some very
*small* sensors attached in out of the way spots, that's not going to
be a problem.

> 4. Controls are "sidearm", whatever type is appropriate to the station.

"sidearm" controllers are like the "pistol grip" style joysticks.

You'd use a keypad (probably chording) for most functions.

> 5. Don't put anything "above" the station but an airbag.  Info from
> side-mounted holo-projectors somehow getting the right image into your
> retina with the minimum up-from mass.

We have "heads up" displays *now* that are quite adequate. There's a
mono monitor that consists of a matchbox sized unit mounted off to one
side of an eye and a bit ahead.

> 6. You may experience negative G's in a maneuver, so some sort of wrapping
> across the chest, limbs is essential.  Perhaps the chair is virtually a
> suit.  And you need to be able to go to a local environment if the
> compartment depresurizes.

Negative gees are *real* unlikely in space combat. Only thing that
would be likely to do it is having to change the ship's *orientation*
rapidly. And if the control room is near the center of the ship, thaty
won't matter much. The main drive is always going to be thrusting in
the same direction.

Frankly, I suspect that for combat, everybody suits up. You can use
heads up (or whatever) displays built into the helmet quite easily. The
suit needs to handle things like excretion anyway.

> 7. You can't get out for damage control.  Perhaps this is done by "robots"
> remotely controlled from the DC workstation.  If this is not good enough,
> you would bring the G's down, but that will not always be an option in 
> combat.

Again, *extended* operation at for than 3 gees is unlikely. Powered
armor will let you get around then. Though I expect that dropping
acceleration, or even cutting power is *not* a bad idea. After all,
anything aimed at where you *would* have been is going to miss by quite
a bit if you change acceleration by very much.

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

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

From: anwfh@orion.alaska.edu (William F. Hostman)
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 12:26:55 -0800
Subject: Adventure Creation

>Does anyone else have a particular method of adventure creation that
>could be helpful to the rest of us who are often at loose ends when
>coming up with the umpteenth adventure scenario? :)
>
Methods I use include: Reworking Biblical Stories (Quite amusing, one of my
players had his character change name to Job).

The other method (for occasional use only) that I really like is to drop
them on a world, and let them do shoppy-store for a good long while, while
using the random encounter rules. Damn near killed three PC's during a
robbery of a jewelery store they were in.

Let your random encounters occur in situ; don't have the characters
encounter the npcs, have the NPC's come to the PC's. You wind up with some
really bizzare stuff (like 3d6 thugs encountered during a banquet at a
dukal palace...)

Another fun one is to mad lib before session, to fill a 1d table:
        Who     Did What        to whom         with what
1       PC(s)   ____________    the PC(s)       _______________
2       ______  ____________    ____________    _______________
3       ______  ____________    ____________    _______________
4       ______  ____________    ____________    _______________
5       ______  ____________    ____________    _______________
6       ______  ____________    ____________    _______________

Fill in table by asking your players for random types for the given
collumn. Then let it set a week, and roll once per collumn. Can be used
several times. Collect a variety, and you get a book of locally developed,
possibly campaign specific, re-useable random plot generators.

William F. Hostman

Aramis@AsylumBBS.com



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

From: cyhiggin@usa.pipeline.com (Dragoness Eclectic)
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 21:11:08 GMT
Subject: Re: Surface Area and FF&S

On Jul 25, 1996 03:15:57, 'shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)'
wrote: 
 
>In mail you write: 
> 
>> At 09:42 pm 7/22/96 -0700, you wrote: 
>>>Why a sphere?  It has the lowest surface area/volume ratio.  According
to  
>>>FF&S, our usable surface area is 274,000 square meters.  Actually, on  
>>>checking back, I find that configuration does not affect usable surface 

>>>area, so what I've just done is select the most surface area-efficient  
>>>design.  Silly me. 
 
>>         1ST PRINTING ERRATA: Published by GDW in Challenge, corrected in
2nd 
>> Printing: Configuration DOES affect surface area -- "Surface area in
square 
>> meters is the hull material volume ***(after hull form and airframe 
>> modifications but without adjustment for hull thickness)*** multiplied
by 
>> 100." So you were right the first time. 
> 
>ARRRGGGGHHHHH! 
> 
>Someone, *please* tell me me the above isn't what the rules *really* say? 
> 
>You *cannot* get a reasonable figure for surface area by *multiplying* 
>volume by a *fixed* number! 
 
[snip mathematics] 
 
>Note that the surface to volume ratio of *any* shape is a constant 
>(determined by the shape) times the *size* (ie linear dimensions) of 
>the object. This also means that the ratio depends on the *units* used 
>to measure it. (this is because the ratio is ignoring the fact that you 
>are dividing area by volume, which isn't a legal operation 
>dimensionally) 
> 
>So it looks like the surface area rules are *badly* broken. The 
>*proper* way to determine surface area is to have a "shape constant" 
>for the different hull shapes, and multiply it times the length 
>*squared*. Volume would use a *different* shape constant multiplied by 
>the length cubed. 
 
Well, um, no.  You're not familiar with FF&S, are you?  
The Hull *Material* Volume (HMV) mentioned above is actually a factor 
that is multiplied by the hull *thickness* to get the ACTUAL volume 
of the HULL material.  Not the volume enclosed by the hull, but  
the volume of the material making up the hollow shape that is a hull. 
 
And, when you take a close look at it, HMV is just SURFACE AREA. 
So, since HMV is surface area, saying Surface Area is HMV * 100 
isn't broken, it's just scaling to units used.  And misnaming of 
the relevant factor. 
 
The "hull form and airframe modifications" mentioned in the rules 
are your "shape factor".  The base number is not length squared,  
though; it's enclosed volume.  There's a factor to get length from 
enclosed volume (aka displacement), modified by hull shape; the 
basic length factor found on the hull size table is based on a 
spherical hull of the given displacement.  It's rather easy to 
derive the diameter of a sphere given the volume, don't you think? 
Modifiers for hull shape are based on the sphere having a multiplier 
of 1.0. 
 
>Note that shape includes things like the ratios between things. For 
>example, the "constant" for a cone depends on the ratio of the height 
>to the width. Ditto for cylinders and the like.  
 
Obviously, the cylinder, cone, wedge, needle, rectangle, and slab 
hull lengths require a certain fixed length:beam ratio. 
 
The cylinder constant is off; someone forgot to include the endcaps 
in the surface area.  Other than that, backfiguring/reverse engineering 
led to: standard cone, 3:1 or less length:beam ratio, standard needle 
no greater than 6:1; others are fine, I think.  Oh, the Slab is fairly 
long, but I don't remember what L:B ratio it works out to. 
 
I did this a while back when I wanted to know what standard hull 
shapes to use to get a ship with a specific length:beam ratio. 
BTW, cone isn't a cone, it's a cylinder with a hemispherical cap, 
IIRC. 
 
>So it's probably a case of either using the "messy" formulas that take 
>into account the proportions of the shape, or else we'll have to 
>specify the proprotions of the various hull shapes. 
 
I'll get out my notes on this when I get home, and maybe even 
remember to post them. 
 
>BTW, this *could* be a reason for "inefficient" shapes like the 
>"saucer" section of the Enterprise. You build that way if you *want* 
>more surface area (either for cooling, or for mounting things on). 
 
Yep.  I worked out the most efficient hull shapes for a given 
purpose, and the best compromises sometime ago.  There's a 
good reason all my small ships in Steve's TCS game have spherical 
hulls. 
 
                        --Cynthia 
 
p.s. I'm still alive. 
- ----------------------------------------------------------------- 
Alt.gothic.CR Master-at-Arms ---NRA---- cyhiggin@usa.pipeline.com

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

End of Traveller-digest V1996 #289
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