TRAVELLER Digest 567

Topics covered in this issue include:

  1) Cultural Warfare was:Plague of Duskir, Vargr and Imperial Tech by Christopher Beattie <chrisb@MPGN.COM>
  2) Re: TNE vs. CT/MT by Charles Collin <charles@hebb.psych.mcgill.ca>
  3) "What did you do during the jump, daddy?" by aboulton@cix.compulink.co.uk (Andrew Boulton)
  4) Re: TNE vs. CT/MT by Rob Miracle <rwm@MPGN.COM>
  5) Re: "What did you do during the jump, daddy?" by Rob Miracle <rwm@MPGN.COM>
  6) Minor updates on ships by Alvin Plummer <alvin.plummer@sheridanc.on.ca>
  7) Re: Construction times by chriscox@ix.netcom.com (Lawrence Christopher Cox )
  8) MT Vehicle Design Rules by Rob Dean <robdean@access.digex.net>
  9) Jump drive by odysseus@inetnebr.com (Jeff Kazmierski)
 10) Starship Production Times, Liberty Ships et al. by Phillip McGregor <aspqrz@sydney.DIALix.oz.au>

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

Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 13:58:23 -0500
From: Christopher Beattie <chrisb@MPGN.COM>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Cultural Warfare was:Plague of Duskir, Vargr and Imperial Tech
Message-ID: <199601251858.NAA16267@Central.KeyWest.MPGN.COM>

> > Look at the native populations in Mexico as an example of what happens when
> > your society is destroyed by forces that you do not understand ... you see
> > the victor's society as being superior to your own, and adopt it as yours.
> > Hence, the adoption of catholicism by said natives and the effective
> > destruction of almost all traces of the "old" society within a generation
> > or so.

>First, Catholicism was hardly 'adopted'; in central Mexico, to as
> far north as the furthest extent of the Spanish conquest of
> California, the norm was forced conversion to Catholicism.  All
> traces of the 'old' society were actively suppressed by the
> benevolent missionaries.  There was a huge written body of knowledge
> that the Aztec, and the Incas had, that the priests destroyed as
> 'Pagan works of Satan'. That's why, today, we have only a few
> pitiful scraps of written history from the Aztec Empire, compared to
> the libraries that existed when Cortez first waded ashore.

This is true for the Aztec, but for the nearby Maya people, Catholicism
came, saw conquered and became conquered by the local population.  Their
Polythestic pantheon became the saints of Catholicism.  Their "world
tree" converted into the cross.  To this day, Mayan shamens still perform
their rituals to the same people who attend the Catholic churches.
Some rituals go on even in the very courtyards and within the very
churches themselves.  Yes, the codexes were burned, the temples were
destroyed, but the culture survived.  It adapted and in turn adapted
those who conquered it.

> Thirdly, take a good close look at the Catholic religion as
> practiced by most of the natives of Mexico...it's called the
> Catholic Church, but the European Church doesn't have brujos,
> witches, healers, Days of the Dead, or any number of native
> traditions that have continued quite strongly to this day.  As
> elsewhere in the Caribbean, the religions and traditions of
> the natives, and later, the imported African slaves, were absorbed
> into an amalgam of beliefs. In some cases Catholicism is (and remains
> to this day) merely a thin facade over the old beliefs.  Read about
> Santeria, sometime.

Yes, this is true, but this is more of a case of the infusing of the
African cultures bleeding into the Mostly European but slowly changing
church of Mexico, I think the Mayan example is a better one for keeping
most of your traditions intact.

But I think this is different from the Vilani Terran problem.
I think a better example that can be used is the American
Revolution.  The Brittish, using traditional European rules of combat
could not easily handle the American Colonial style of warfare
which eventually evolved into gurella warfare.  They departed
from the expected norms and the enemy was confused.
|     _____         |Christopher Beattie |Tantalus Incorporated|
|  ___ |[]|_n_n_I_c |Tantalus @ Key West |        P.O. Box 2310|
| |___||__|###|____)|Development Division|   Key West, FL 33045|
|  O-O--O-O+++--O-O |chrisb@mpgn.com     |Phone: (305) 293-8100|
| Opinions expressed here belong to me!  |  Fax: (305) 292-7835|


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

Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 14:20:48 -0500 (EST)
From: Charles Collin <charles@hebb.psych.mcgill.ca>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: TNE vs. CT/MT
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960125133213.8984A-100000@hebb.psych.mcgill.ca>

In the last Traveller Digest, Dave Golden said:

>>>>>>>>
        I also wanted to make the (possibly biased) observation that people
seem to be somewhat evenly distributed between the "Return to MT/CT" and the
"Tweak TNE" rules camps. I think the TNE folks have a slight edge,
especially since the return camp seems to also have a division among itself
of "Update" and "Force the heretics to return to the One True Faith" ...
Anybody been keeping closer track?
<<<<<<<<

I haven't been keeping closer track, but are you forgetting the
people on the xboat list?  I think a wide majority of them are in the
"return" camp.  Also, consider that the "Tweak TNE" people have more of an
axe to grind as Marc Miller seems to be leaning towards a return to CT/MT.
This is likely to make the anti-YARS forces more vocal.

Also, I haven't noticed the "One true faith" faction (though I've
only been skimming the debate lately, so I may have missed them).  If they
exist, I think they are a fringe element which should be suppressed lest
they screw things up for everyone...

__________________________________________________________________
TRAVELLER NEWS SERVICE BULLETIN:
Radicals Disrupt Yorbundi Parliament.

Yorbund/Spinward Marches.

A small group of radicals calling themselves the "Converts of
Tradition" succeeded in disrupting talks between the "Moderate
Traditionalists" and proponents of "The Next Evolution" party today.
Yorbund's conservative and liberal parties were meeting to try to come to
an agreement regarding president Marok Mylar's "Yorbundi Advanced Reform
Strategem", a bill he proposed to parliament in an attempt to revive the
flagging economy of the planet.

The devout CT supporters flooded the parliament building,
waving placards and shouting "Return to the one true faith!".  Diplomats
from the MT and TNE parties were unable to quiet them long enough to get
discussions under way.  Said one spokesperson for MT "I want to make it
clear that these are simply a radical fringe element, they do not
represent the position of my party."

The debate over Mylar's YARS paper has been raging ever since he
proposed it a month ago.  While the parties bicker, Yorbund's economy
remains in a state of depression...
_________________________

Sorry, I know it's sort of graveyard humor, but I thought a little levity
would help.  BTW, if Yorbund's government is not type 2 or 4, I don't
care!  It's a joke, dammit!

There you go Dave, just thought I'd add my biased view to your own :-)

Charles.

<0>         "The mind is stranger than it can imagine."<0>
<0> Charles Collin (charles@hebb.psych.mcgill.ca), <0>
<0> Psychology Department, McGill University.  <0>
<0> 1205 Dr. Penfield, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3A 1B1.  <0>






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

Date: Thu, 25 Jan 96 19:25 GMT
From: aboulton@cix.compulink.co.uk (Andrew Boulton)
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: "What did you do during the jump, daddy?"
Message-ID: <memo.169432@cix.compulink.co.uk>

There's been some discussion of the 1-week-per-jump 'problem' recently.
Actually, I quite like it, for several reasons:

1. It's one of the few situations where the party is totally alone, with
no contact with the rest of the universe. Good for murder mysteries etc.

2. My campaign was getting left behind by the 'real' timeline (when GDW
announced the assassination, I was still in 1114). After a couple of
scenarios involving lots of travel, I was back on schedule (those weeks
really mount up quickly).

3. If you're feeling short of ideas, or you accidentally left the scenario
notes at home, just ask the players to role-play through the week in jump.
Trust me, they'll soon find lots of entertaining things to do (mostly
involving ways of killing each other...)

---===---
Andrew Boulton

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

Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 15:11:35 -0500
From: Rob Miracle <rwm@MPGN.COM>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: TNE vs. CT/MT
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960125201135.0068a4d8@TanSoft.com>

>In the last Traveller Digest, Dave Golden said:
>        I also wanted to make the (possibly biased) observation that people
>seem to be somewhat evenly distributed between the "Return to MT/CT" and the
>"Tweak TNE" rules camps. I think the TNE folks have a slight edge,
>especially since the return camp seems to also have a division among itself
>of "Update" and "Force the heretics to return to the One True Faith" ...
>Anybody been keeping closer track?

I haven't kept track, but I thought it was time to throw out my 2 credits
worth. :-)

I have played Traveller from the days where there was just the three little
books.  I have been through the peaks and valleys of this game.  The day
they stopped producing JTAS was the day the game died in my opinion.  TNE
was a last ditch effort to save the game by GDW.  TNE had some nice things
about it, but I found it difficult to digest, as well as ref.   Frankly, the
little books were the best to read.  The system was simple, and the refs and
Marc/GDW were creative.  I got the Regency Source Book by mail order.  I
have 20-15 vision and I just about refuse to read a book with that small print.

If I were going to take over, here is what I would do.  I would take the CT
rules and republish them with the art, and Traveller TL advances of the MT era.
Combat has been a pain in the but since Snap Shot and Mayday to the point
that I either avoid combat or generalize it.  Frankly I liked the days where
I made a chart of weapons vs armor and if a player had an ACR shooting DS
rounds vs Cloth, I just looked it up on the card, found the to-hit roll, let
them roll the dice, if they hit they did damage.  There was none of this
number of dice of penetration trash to use.  Roll to Hit, Roll to Damage,
Dead or Alive.  Simple.
Computers have to come back the way they were in CT.  Many adventures were
built around getting the "Jump Tape" to get from here to there.  It also
kept ship combat and construction simple as well.

Another key point is Gaming materials are reference material.  One of my
dislikes about GURPS and TNE is that you have to search a lot harder to find
the answers to a question than you do with AD&D and CT/MT.  TSR has produced
the best monster books of any company.  One monster per page, alphabetical
with cool art.  World Building.  Go to the book on Worlds.  Side bars and
stories are a waste in a rule book.  Put them in your magazine, or in your
adventures, but don't include them in the rules.  Character Generation,
World or Ship Generation should start on page n, and go step by step to page
n+x.  None of this do a couple of steps, jump ahead a section to look up
details, now come back stuff.

Traveller has a wealth of background material and that needs capitalized on.
One other thing that I would like to see is a way that players individual
campaigns can be incorporated in the whole.  Maybe a way to submit TNS
reports to Marc and he can work in the events into the history.  We have had
some success with this kind of networking on a small scale within our AD&D
world.  Events in three states and four campaigns effect the other.  With
our electronic world, we should be able to do this.  Admittedly someone has
to have editorial control over it or Duke Norris would get killed by an
assassin somewhere that may mess the game up for 99% of the other campaigns.
Instead of a few people shaping the universe, let the universe shape itself.

On the campaign setting, I personally enjoyed the times of the 5th Frontier
War, and the ability to go into the areas around the Spinward Marches and
explore uncharted worlds.  I didn't care for adventuring in the Solomani Rim
because it was too developed.  The problem with MT's setting is that
everything is too defined.  TNE tried to un define a bunch of stuff, but I
had to work hard to keep my players from just going around looting.  So I
would like to see stuff coming out circa 1111, but its real hard to play in
a setting where the history is already defined.  You know the rebellion is
coming, and that virus will hit.  So the setting becomes a hard call.

One final thought, when CT was out, there was new stuff coming out
frequently and it was affordable.  MT came out, and I think could have been
successful if it wasn't for the horrid editing, but the larger books were
expensive and were less frequent.  TNE came out and carried a big price tag,
and didn't come to market quickly (admittedly this had to do with reduced
staffing, and lack of sales).  Any thing new will have the same barriers.
Come out with a revised set of rules based on CT and sell it at $25-$30, but
the release supplements monthly or bi-monthly at $10 each.  I don't know
why, but I will pick up a $10-$14 item and not think about it, but when that
price gets to be $15-$20+, I hesitate on buying it, particularly if the
material is not completely new.

Look at the success of tradeable card games.  You can take a $10 to lunch,
stop at the book store and then spend your change to pick up a couple of
booster packs while that new supplement sits on the shelf because you don't
want to pull out the VISA or check book to pick it up so again smaller is
better.

Ok, it was more like 25 credits worth....

Rob (yearning for a real Traveller campaign that I'm not refing)
--
Rob Miracle (rwm@TanSoft.com)| GCS d-->--- !H s:++ !g !p au+ a34 w+ !v C++>++++
Tantalus Inc.  Key West, FL  | UU++++$ P--- L+ 3 E--- N+++ K-  W+ M-- V-- -po+
"You have a problem?  I have | Y-- t++ 5>++ jx R+++ G'''' tv+++ b D B- e++ u**
a plan!" -- Anton Devious    | h---- f r+++ n---- y++++


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

Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 15:17:22 -0500
From: Rob Miracle <rwm@MPGN.COM>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: "What did you do during the jump, daddy?"
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960125201722.006f3e30@TanSoft.com>

At 02:27 PM 1/25/96 -0500, you wrote:
>1. It's one of the few situations where the party is totally alone, with
>no contact with the rest of the universe. Good for murder mysteries etc.

Yes, nothing like having an illness start to sit in during the first day in
JSpace, and then on Day two have passangers start turnnig up dead, only to
find the great calcium sucking beast in the cargo hold munching on the chief
engineer.

>2. My campaign was getting left behind by the 'real' timeline (when GDW
>announced the assassination, I was still in 1114). After a couple of
>scenarios involving lots of travel, I was back on schedule (those weeks
>really mount up quickly).

I read a Travellereusque book once, don't remember the title, but they had
jump points.  The week of  travel was spent getting to and from the jump
point, but no time was spent in the jump.  Kept them in real space for
naughty things, but still took time.  Still I like my 1 week in J-Space.  I
found that the calendar that was printed in the back of the Forms supplement
(12 I think) The left half of the calander was in jump space, the right half
was planet side.  Made planning easy.

Rob
--
Rob Miracle (rwm@TanSoft.com)| GCS d-->--- !H s:++ !g !p au+ a34 w+ !v C++>++++
Tantalus Inc.  Key West, FL  | UU++++$ P--- L+ 3 E--- N+++ K-  W+ M-- V-- -po+
"You have a problem?  I have | Y-- t++ 5>++ jx R+++ G'''' tv+++ b D B- e++ u**
a plan!" -- Anton Devious    | h---- f r+++ n---- y++++


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

Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 18:49:14 -0500 (EST)
From: Alvin Plummer <alvin.plummer@sheridanc.on.ca>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Minor updates on ships
Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.91.960125182100.29164C@atlas.sheridanc.on.ca>


A) I neglected to add that the Majesta has 10,860 emergency ship's
berths,enough to hold the entire crew.  No modification to price or
anything else is needed,I just skipped over it while typing.

B) All my warships's Active EMS are Dirction Finding capable.
No modification to the spec's are needed, I just neglected to type it in.

Have fun!

PS: Just love your adventure, Bruce!  Anyone else out there (especially
    one gentleman in particular) who has more adventures to add, go right
    ahead!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alvin Plummer

"He *stole* the Enterprise?"
..
"[Sulu's] fine," Janice said quickly, patting her on the head.  "I swear,
he's fine.  He's on Vulcan."
"Vulcan?  What's he doing on Vulcan?"
"I'm a little confused on that part myself.  Believe it or not... I think
he's there with Spock."
"With Spock?  Spock's dead."
"He..." Janice fished for words and couldn't find any good ones.
"...he got better," she said.
                                 - Peter David, _The Captain's Daughter_

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

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

Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 15:49:30 -0800
From: chriscox@ix.netcom.com (Lawrence Christopher Cox )
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: Construction times
Message-ID: <199601252349.PAA27008@ix7.ix.netcom.com>

Phillip McGregor <aspqrz@sydney.DIALix.oz.au> wrote:

>As for how realistic these times are, consider, as I said, the 747.
>Weighs around 170 tons. Production time, when geared up? Around a
>couple or more a *day*.

Eamon Watters. <E.Watters@Queens-Belfast.AC.UK> replied:

>Yes, a 747 might appear off the end of the production line each day.
>But that 747 took a year or more to produce.

I think that Modern jet production makes a very good model to base
starship production times on, so let me just add a few bits of
information I found in variuos new bits from
Beoing(http://www.boeing.com).

The first of a new Freight version of the 767 started production in
January of 1995 and was rolled out of the hanger in May,  a production
cylce of 3 to 5 months.  Flight testing on the plane started in June
'95 and in October the Plane was delivered to the customer UPS.  The
total time for this version of the 767 from inception to customer
delivery was 29 months.

Conversions on 747s from passanger to cargo craft take about 4 months.
I would guess that the production cycle for a new 747 would be from 4
to 8 months.

Also it seems that the shortest time that a customer can expect to
receive delivery on an aircraft from time of order is about 6 months,
with most taking a year or two.

Now these are peacetime production rates, wartime time production rates
would probably result in dramatic reduced production cycle time, maybe
something like a 747 being built in a month.  Wartime of course would
make it much harder for characters to get a ship built for personal
use.

With advances in technology production cycle times will be reduced.  On
the other hand this can be offset with increases in complexity of the
craft being built.

Chris Cox
New York City
(chriscox@ix.netcom.com)
The Draconis Cluster Traveller Pages
(http://users.aol.com/yanbeck/trav.htm)

P.S. 25 747s were produced last year giving a prduction rate of about 2
a month. This year, Boeing plans to increase that rate to 3.5 a month.

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

Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 20:03:45 -0500 (EST)
From: Rob Dean <robdean@access.digex.net>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: MT Vehicle Design Rules
Message-ID: <199601260113.UAA17040@access5.digex.net>

Anyone who wants to know how the MT vehicle design rules work is invited
to drop me an email, and arragne for a phone call--I won't type as much
as would be needed to explain them multiple times. (-:

Rob Dean
robdean@access.digex.net

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

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 06:20:18 -0500
From: odysseus@inetnebr.com (Jeff Kazmierski)
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Jump drive
Message-ID: <199601261223.GAA11257@falcon.inetnebr.com>

>While I'm griping, I'd like to say that there are two things about =
>Traveller that I find mildly regrettable.  The first is the fact that a =
>jump takes a week of game time.  I assume this is a holdover from the =
>Imperium wargame or whatever, but it gets tiring trying to explain what =
>the characters do for a week every time they jump.  It seems to waste a =
>lot of game time, and  it's not flashy or impressive like warp drive or =
>hyperspace.  It's not heroic

What, we finally develop a ship's engine capable of propelling us at
outrageous relativistic speeds (up to 1020x the speed of light at Jump-6)
and it's still not fast enough for you?  Geez...

If the standard "one week per jump" isn't quite enough for you, try this on
for size:  try scaling the jump times.  For example, supposing your PC
party is outfitted with the ubiquitous Scout/Courier.  Standard travel
times are one week for a 2-parsec jump and about 3-4 days for a 1-parsec
jump.  Similar divisions apply to ships with higher jump speeds.  It
changes things a bit, but not drastically.

                +
                -\        "Real men don't ask for directions."
                | |      /
                | |       _
       _        | |      /@
        \ ______|/______/
_________\ @@@@@@@@@@@@/_________odysseus@inetnebr.com



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

Date: Sat, 27 Jan 1996 00:13:36 +1100 (EST)
From: Phillip McGregor <aspqrz@sydney.DIALix.oz.au>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM, xboat@MPGN.COM
Subject: Starship Production Times, Liberty Ships et al.
Message-ID: <199601261313.AAA08298@sydney.DIALix.oz.au>

Two things that need some comment -

1) That 747 that rolls off the production line twice a day (or more) as
being the end result of a year's work. Well, yes. But so what? If you trace
it back to each separate component, quite possibly some of them had to be
ordered more than a year before the actual day of production. Again, so what?
In a mass production situation, this is not a major concern, because, like
Henry Ford, you are producing in advance of orders anyway, in order to keep
the price down so that you can make a small profit on a lot of things rather
than a lot of profit on a few.

In any case, we are *not* talking Industrial Revolution technology here,
we are talking *post* IR production tech. Even the crippled sort of factories
that I suggest Traveller has (as opposed to the ones that I proposed in my
Secret Histories post) should be far more efficient than ourt current
ones. For ghu's sake, we're looking some 3.5 millennia into the future!
It should be the case that the factories/shipyards produce everything at
once from stockpiled raw materials run through robotic refining and milling
machines ... at that level of tech this should be no problem at all. Yet we
are looking at 20th century limitations.

I do not see that you have a valid point given the advances in production
tech that we can reasonably assume must have occurred in the 3500 years or
so into the future of the Traveller background. This is, of course, Travs
main problem, the future is so backward!

2) Liberty Ships being "throw aways". Well, according to my 86/87 "Combat
Fleets of the World", the US National Defence Reserve Fleet has quite a
number of Liberty/Victory Ships in mothballs for reactivation in emergencies.
OK, they haven't done a lot of steaming in that time, but they're still
intact (tho I believe that they were slower to reactivate for the Gulf War
than planned for) ... and a lot of the USN supply and support vessels are
WW2 (even pre-WW2) vintage. And *they* have seen service for all those years.
Nope, Liberty and Victory ships *and* all the "mass produced" designs made
for WW2 were just as long lived in most cases as their predecessors and
successors. Thus, building a crappy little 100 ton Scout/Courier shouldn't
take longer than a day, and this should have no adverse effects on their
longevity.

3) Jump Missiles: Hmm, so my proposition allows *larger* spacecraft to dispense
with the power stage of JDrives. Of course it does! This isn't something I
just proposed off the cuff, it's actually a part of my formal background.
Why, then, doesn't the Imperium use them *officially*. Well, we know that
the Vilani are ultraconservative, we know that they have tainted even the
3rd Imperium irrevocably with their brand of unltraconservative blindness.
So, the answer is obvious ... the idea has been suggested, probably many
times, but has always been rejected because its *not* the "way things have
always been done!"

Phil


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

End of TRAVELLER Digest 567
***************************
