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Subject: Traveller-digest V1996 #743
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Traveller-digest    Wednesday, December 11 1996    Volume 1996 : Number 743



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

The following topics are covered in this digest:

Re: That annoying 1000d T-plate limit.
Re: SSDS and Drives
Re: Bitter Starships Review
Re: Bitter Starships Review
Re: That annoying 1000d T-plate limit.
Re: STARSHIPS
RE: Bitter Starships Review
Where to find classic Trav material
Re: Bitter Starships Review
Re: German Translations
Re: Imperial Democracy
Re: Mechs in Traveller
Canon, and K'kree symbols
Re: Canon, and K'kree symbols
Re: Mechs
Re: Mail from Ken Whitman
Starships Review and Rant
Non-Fusion Plus designs
Starships: my review
Re: Mechs in Traveller

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 16:46:39 -0700
From: "David J. Golden" <goldendj@usa.net>
Subject: Re: That annoying 1000d T-plate limit.

At 03:29 pm 12/11/96 -0100, you wrote:
>
>
>        I've been pondering it.  I know that it's been done to death and
>back again, but since I wasn't there for the debate, what was the
>motivation for putting it in (aside from planet-killing lifeboats infested
>with virus, loaded with burnt singing hardcovers and high school texts on
>Rebellion-era history, and covered in Chris Foss art, natch?

        It was another one of those canon-things. The limit was put in to
allow ships to travel freely through most of the solar system, but not out
to the Kuiper belt, located around and beyond Pluto's orbit. The Kuiper belt
is supposedly a big belt of icy bodies, which would be perfect for refueling
(say, an invading fleet).

        But canon says that the main areas for refueling for anybody are:
starports, large bodies of water, and gas giants. If you can efficiently use
the Kuiper belt, there's no reason to try a gas giant. Which breaks all the
history, feel and flavor for wilderness refueling and invasions.

        So, in our haste (one week from being asked to create SSDS to having
to turn in the results), we grabbed at a hand-waving limitation. Naturally,
there are ways to get around it (I personally think most major military
vessels will have HEPlaR boosters as well as thrusters, anyway, and HEPlaR
works fine out there). Your mileage may vary.

>        Personally, I think that it's  annoying, and would use the
>following explanation for how T-plates work: rather than depend on existing
>gravity fields, T-plates create their own.  T-plates have two major
>subsystems; a gravity field generator and a big flat plate of dense metal,
>sandwiched together with some space in between.  The grav field generators
>generate an extremely localized gravity well in a space surrounding the
>plate components (hence the gap between the generators and the plates), and
>the plate component simply moves within it, shoving the ship (solidly
>attached to its T-plates, one hopes) along with it.  Essentially, the ship
>just bootstraps itself along.

        Except that the generator which creates the force on the plates will
experience an equal and opposite force on itself, cancelling out. Try
lifting yourself up by your bootstraps some time--it just don't work.
- --________________________________________________________________
   Dave Golden                           PGP Public Key available 
   goldendj@usa.net     http://www.usa.net/~goldendj/default.html

 "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his
  enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes
  a precedent that will reach to himself" -- Thomas Paine

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 16:46:15 -0700
From: "David J. Golden" <goldendj@usa.net>
Subject: Re: SSDS and Drives

At 11:18 am 12/11/96 -0600, you wrote:
>"Phillip McGregor" <aspqrz@curie.dialix.com.au> wrote:

>SSDS does raise some interesting drive-related questions.  For instance,
>thruster plates now fail to operate efficiently if they are not within
>about 1000 diameters of a mass.  

        I thought it we'd agreed on a value in AU, not solar diameters, but
I just checked my copy ... oops!

>Is this a sudden cut-off, or does the
>drive efficiency gradually drop?  How gradually?  Linear?  Inverse-square?
>Inverse-cube?  The rules seem to imply it's a sudden change, but they
>aren't clear.  

        It was intended to be a step function based on
(mumble-mumble-tetrion-mhmrfm-mumble quantum-mumble-hrmph-mumble
gravitic-mumble-quantum) effects. The thrusters work fine until the local
curvature of space drops below a specific threshold, and then continue
working at a much lower efficiency.

>Incidentally, the thruster plate 1000 diameter limit applied to our
>solar system implies that thruster plates can be continuously used out
>to the Sun's 1000 diameter limit, just short of Saturn (and Saturn's

        That was the general idea, to allow you to get most places in the
solar system efficiently, but deny the Kuiper belt as a more desirable
refueling location than gas giants.
- --________________________________________________________________
   Dave Golden                           PGP Public Key available 
   goldendj@usa.net     http://www.usa.net/~goldendj/default.html

 "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his
  enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes
  a precedent that will reach to himself" -- Thomas Paine

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 15:43:46 -0800 (PST)
From: Craig Berry <cberry@cinenet.net>
Subject: Re: Bitter Starships Review

> Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 09:52:39 -0800
> From: "Douglas E. Berry" <dberry@hooked.net>
> 
> While most of the time I prefer the smaller vessels, I am currently planning
> a game set aboard the I.N.S Coronation (BB-216), a 75,000 ton TL 12
> battleship.  The players will control various characters from the senior
> officers to the ship's Marines.  I'm stealing the idea from Ars Magica.

To my way of thinking, the major problem with having characters in charge
of big ships (or big troop units, or big *anything*) is that it gives
them in (paradoxically) too little freedom of choice.  A 75 kton warship
is going to be very, very, *very* closely watched by multiple agencies,
commanders further up the chain, and so forth.  The Captain and senior
officers will have broad discretion on how to achieve goals -- but the
goals themselves will come from outside, and gods help them all if they
aren't carried out!

There's a lovely scene in one of Clarke's early short stories in which the
skipper of an interplanetary cargo vessel bound for Mars muses as the ship
leaves Earth's atmosphere.  "Ah, the freedom of space," he thinks to
himself.  "We can travel anywhere I choose...Venus, the moons of Jupiter,
the Belt..."  Then he sighs and continues the thought.  "Of course, there
will be twelve different kinds of hell to pay if I don't choose Mars, but
still..."

This to my mind captures the dilemma of being in too powerful a position.
The crew of an aging Far Trader are (relatively) free to go pirate, become
smugglers, involve themselves in secret plots, or whatever.  The crew --
and *especially* the officers -- of a big warship are not.  And this
constrains adventures severely.  Having every adventure consist of "You
receive orders to jump to Obnox XII and pick up Ambassador Querf and her
party" gets a little old...even if you come up with intriguing stuff about
the Ambassador and her party.

Of course, one could argue that Star Trek (especially TNG) suffers from
the same problem -- and this is true.  Trek manages to manufacture tension
by throwing an absurd number of extremely unusual situations at the
Enterprise and her crew.  It's really more "space opera" than "hard SF,"
when you come right down to it.  Also, Picard appears to have far more
leeway than I'd expect an officer in his position to have, given that
(barring plot devices) they never seem to be out of contact with Starfleet
HQ via subspace radio.  We won't even talk about *Kirk*'s leeway. :)

Sorry for the digression into Trek, but it's the best illustration I could
find for my point.  Anderson's Flandry series does a good job, too --
notice that as he rises through the ranks, he gets more constrained in
his options.  Ditto Laumer's Retief -- he's a second-string flunky, and
thus relatively free to skulk around during formal dinners and the like.

> For most Traveller campaigns, the big ships are just that: big.  They are
> beyond the scale of a free trader or scout in much the same way as a Geo
> Metro compares to a M1A2 MBT.  

Brother o'mine, you've had a major failure of the analogizer. :)

Displacement of your example vessel:  75,000 dtons
Displacement of scout:                   100 dtons
Size ratio:                           750:1

Mass of M1A2:                          5,000 kg (IIRC)
Reduced by factor of 750:                  7 kg

So the correct ratio between your battleship and a scout is that between
an M1A2 MBT and a medium-sized dog. :)

- ---------------------------------------------------------------------
   |   Craig Berry - cberry@cinenet.net
 --*--    Home Page: http://www.cinenet.net/users/cberry/home.html
   |      Member of The HTML Writers Guild: http://www.hwg.org/   
       "Every man and every woman is a star."

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 15:50:05 -0800
From: "Peter J. Miller" <PeterMiller@youngmerlin.com>
Subject: Re: Bitter Starships Review

>Actually, classic Traveller rules only supported ships up to 5000 tons.  To
>build bigger ships, you needed to buy _High Guard_, and the rule systems 
>between the standard "Book 2" designs and _High Guard_ turned out to not
>quite be compatible.  SSDS looks like a fancy version of "Book 2", when
>I think many people were expecting a fancy version of _High Guard_.

Starships, since it is outside of the regular rules is more of a fancy High
Guard, while QSDS, being in the main rulebook is more of a Book 2, in my opinon.

Thanks

_______________________________Peter John Miller
"There's a new home run king in baseball...and his name is Henry Aaron..."
 - announcer, after Hank Aaron breaks Babe Ruth's career home run record
- ------------------------------------------------
Traveller, Prime Directive, AD&D, and the home of the Imperium Games FAQ!
       http://www.dragonfire.net/~pm/

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 17:10:45 -0600 (CST)
From: Joseph "Chepe" Lockett <jlockett@io.com>
Subject: Re: That annoying 1000d T-plate limit.

I rather like the current explanation for thruster plates: it seems to
"fit" and "feel" better than any other we'd had.  (And I get a minor
egoboo by getting my name in the "Starships" credits for having written
the flavor text for it in the SSDS... :-).

The intent of the gravitational cutoff was to solve several problems:

	1) The aforesaid Near-Luminal Killer Lifeboat from Hell Scenario,

	2) Why don't stealthily-travelling ships use the Oort Cloud or
	   Kuiper Belt for refuelling in preference to the (canonical)
	   gas giants, ice balls, or planetary oceans?

	3) Why aren't "Calibration Points" and other such deep-space
	   transit and refuelling depots more common for commercial
	   carriers, rather than being purely the province of the
	   military?

The solution, of course, was to limit the "magic" of thruster plates to
within an (admittedly tiny) gravitational field.  I did the math (could
dig it up again if people are interested)... the cutoff ends up being at
about 400 nanogravities or so, which gives stars a _very_ generous space
but limits the "window" of opportunity around, say, rogue comets to just a
few kilometers or even meters.  And it "feels" better to hard-science
types, since we wave our hands to claim that, through interactions with
the local gravity well, the _entire_system_ is being used as "reaction
mass" in order to drive the vessel concerned.  If you had multi-million
ton shipping all heading out in the same direction, ultra-accurate
astrometry equipment might even notice the velocity change.  :-)

As Dave Goldman, several others, and I all agreed during the initial
discussions, "magic" is far more interesting when it has limitations
and inherent disadvantages, rather than being a universal panacea.
The "annoyance" you feel is intentional!

Quoth Roderick Darroch Elliott:
> T-plates have two major subsystems; a gravity field generator and a big
> flat plate of dense metal, sandwiched together with some space in between.
> The grav field generators generate an extremely localized gravity well
> in a space surrounding the plate components (hence the gap between the
> generators and the plates), and the plate component simply moves within
> it, shoving the ship (solidly attached to its T-plates, one hopes) along
> with it.  Essentially, the ship just bootstraps itself along.

But that's the classic recipe for a Perpetual Motion Machine, and gives
many gamers hives.  To give a simpler example, it's like moving a train
car I'm riding in by pulling on a rope attached to the back wall....
It's fine for your campaign if it doesn't bother you:  but on gdw-beta we
were striving mightily for at least a scientific fig-leaf.  If you do the
math, you'll probably find that, to fit the system in a reasonable volume
and yet have it yield appreciable acceleration, you're rapidly going to
create a quantum black hole.  And that makes the system even heavier to
lug around....

> causes them to glow, emitting  photons; as the photons "jump the curb" out
> of the area of sharply bent space surrounding the plate into normally
> curved space, they emit Cerenkov radiation.

Only if the speed of light differs in highly curved space from what it is
in flat space, which I don't believe is so: Cerenkov radiation requires a
medium in which the speed of light is lower that it is in vacuum, not some
exotic gravitation bounding condition (which I'm not mathematically
qualified enough to calculate, though it gives me the willies thinking
about it). 

- ----------------------------*------------------------*------------------------
 Joseph L. "Chepe" Lockett  |"Nullum magnum ingenium | GURPS fan, Amiga user,
http://www.io.com/~jlockett | sine mixtura dementiae | Shakespearean scholar,
  Email: jlockett@io.com    | fuit." -- Seneca       | actor and director.

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 19:20:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert Flammang <FLAMMANG@vms.cis.pitt.edu>
Subject: Re: STARSHIPS

Hi.

> From: 34zbtxq@cmuvm.csv.cmich.edu (Susan M. Shock)
 
<snip>
> not. There is AS OF YET no system in place for handling starships larger
> than 5,000 tons in space battles. When there is it will undoubtably involve
> a slighly different rating system than that used for smaller ships (example;
> High Guard as opposed to Book 2, or Battle Rider as opposed to Brilliant
> Lances). When this system is ready, there will undoubtably be expansions to
> both QSDS and SSDS to cover ships of that size. Failing that, there will be

Good point, the starship combat system will not handle large ships or
fleet actions very well.

>         I'm sure TCS and High Guard et. al. are fun to play if you're in to
> that sort of thing. IG is trying to get the basic materials out for
> ROLEPLAYING in the Traveller Universe. Traveller is, first and foremost, a
> ROLEPLAYING GAME. In my mind, and I'm sure in the minds of some of the
> powers-that-be, this is it's primary focus.

	I agree entirely, that's one reason it would have been good to
see nicer deck plans. The lack of a grid doesn't bother me, but the lack
of detail does. Oh well, it's not like they suck; they just aren't as
good as Traders and Gunboats, which was a lot cheaper than Starships
even adjusting for inflation.

One thing that would have been good about seeing High-Guard- like rules
is that a few of us use naval strategy, naval bases, and naval
construction for campaign flavor. In fact, I've never used High Guard
and TCS for anything else but these "role-playing" considerations. The
lack of rules in Starships isn't going to stop me from doing this, of
course. (I still have my High Guard, afterall, and I'm working on a High
Guard to T4 conversion.) But new referees may be looking for a little
guidance. And while I'm sure that T4 is not going to change CT's
"flavor," newbies may not yet have a complete sense of what that flavor
is. This means they may have to later invoke a few retcons into their
campaigns if they want to maintain compatability with canon; this
can sometimes be a minor annoyance.

Of course, most of us have known for a while that SSDS was going to be
limited to 5000 tons. But I understand that a newbie who's heard of High Guard
may feel some legitimate disappointment.

>                                                 Allen

- -Rob

PS - Hans asked earlier if the hull tables are extrapolatable to higher
tonnages. The answer is yes, if somewhat crudely. It requires a small
amount of mathematical sophistication (in other words, you can't have
forgotten your high school algebra), but that is no problem for Hans. I
don't know whether this will help Brian; I suspect most people will find
puzzling out the extrapolation formulae too tedious. (Hint: If you have a
spreadsheet program, it is often helpful to plot the tables in a log-log
format.)

What I haven't figured out yet is how to extrapolate the spinal mounts.
But I haven't had a lot of time lately.

- -Rob

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 18:06:44 -0600
From: "K.C. Komosky" <kc@mb.sympatico.ca>
Subject: RE: Bitter Starships Review

>> Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 09:52:39 -0800
>> From: "Douglas E. Berry" <dberry@hooked.net>
>>
>> While most of the time I prefer the smaller vessels, I am currently 
planning
>> a game set aboard the I.N.S Coronation (BB-216), a 75,000 ton TL 12
>> battleship.  The players will control various characters from the senior
>> officers to the ship's Marines.  I'm stealing the idea from Ars Magica.
>
>To my way of thinking, the major problem with having characters in charge
>of big ships (or big troop units, or big *anything*) is that it gives
>them in (paradoxically) too little freedom of choice.  A 75 kton warship
>is going to be very, very, *very* closely watched by multiple agencies,
>commanders further up the chain, and so forth.  The Captain and senior
>officers will have broad discretion on how to achieve goals -- but the
>goals themselves will come from outside, and gods help them all if they
>aren't carried out!

Well I'll admit I've done the Trek campaign in Traveller - having the ch  
aracters still enlisted in the Navy. AS a matter of fact, the idea is 
suggested in an article in JTAS #23.

You're completely right - the players freedom of choice is severely 
restricted. On the other hand, it makes it very easy for the Referee to get 
his players to go where he wants them to ;-)

It was rather entertaining, but I wouldn't want to do it forever. But some 
players do get a kick out of 'owning' (more or less), a Tigress class 
Dreadnaught.

K.C. Komosky
kc@mb.sympatico.ca

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 18:22:21 -0600
From: "K.C. Komosky" <kc@mb.sympatico.ca>
Subject: Where to find classic Trav material

I've spent many hours over the past 10 years that I've been into Traveller 
scouring the various used role-playing stores in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, 
and I pretty much cleaned them out a long time ago.

Its time for me to look further afield. Does anyone know of any stores, 
brokers, whatever that have GOOD inventories of CT and MT material? 
Preferably in Canada, but anywhere in North America would be just fine.

Thanks a whole lot. I've been lusting after a copy of TCS for years, among 
others...

K.C. Komosky
kc@mb.sympatico.ca

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 19:33:13 -0500
From: BrianMays@aol.com
Subject: Re: Bitter Starships Review

In a message dated 96-12-11 13:49:21 EST, you write:

<< Actually, classic Traveller rules only supported ships up to 5000 tons.
 To
 build bigger ships, you needed to buy _High Guard_, and the rule systems 
 between the standard "Book 2" designs and _High Guard_ turned out to not
 quite be compatible.  SSDS looks like a fancy version of "Book 2", when
 I think many people were expecting a fancy version of _High Guard_. >>

This is very true.  I didn't take that into consideration because, by the
time I started playing Traveller, High Guard had already been out for years.
 But High Guard cost how much? $6.00?

It's no great feat of imagination to guess how much IG will want for a T4
"High Guard."  Pretty glossies and all.  Like I said before, it had better
kick butt.

Brian

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 19:51:56 +0000
From: Mused <marz@hotstar.net>
Subject: Re: German Translations

Joseph M. Saul wrote:
> Isn't there a toast (or war cry) -- "Hals und Beinbruch!"  Since I don't
> have my dictionary here, I have no idea what Hals means.  (Maybe it's the
> secondary planet in the system.  ;-)

my guess, based on pronunciatin, would be "health"

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 19:54:20 +0000
From: Mused <marz@hotstar.net>
Subject: Re: Imperial Democracy

Andrew Boulton wrote:
> 
> In-Reply-To: <01BBE566.4B908D10@flfnas01-p01.mts.net>
> 
> << At present (although I'm moving in 2 weeks thank god) I live in the
> small mining community of Flin Flon >>
> 
> Aw, c'mon...you're making these names up!

Nope, he is for real, and so is Flin Flon, Manitoba (and for that matter, Come by Chance, 
Newfoundland and Dildo, Newfoundland)

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 19:59:55 +0000
From: Mused <marz@hotstar.net>
Subject: Re: Mechs in Traveller

Rich Ostorero wrote:
> 
> Daniel Poulin wrote:
> > Gimme a bloody break! Giant Robots!
> > My favorite description of Giant Combat Robots can be found in the
> > supplement Trident/RMBK for Living Steel: 70 tons of junk, 70 tons of
> > Molten Slags, 70 tons of useless scrap".  Giant Robots, while
> > technically feasable in Traveller terms (remember the mention in 101
> > vehicles), they are useless militarily.  The pressure on the ground
> > would make these vehicles useless on any type of terrains but the
> > hardest.  The technology (and space) required to put legs on something
> > like that and make it walk is useless when one can think of what you can
> > put on a grav tank.  The signature of these things would be so great as
> > to make them useless militarily.  Any decent missiles would blow them to
> > pieces.  It would be sufficient to blow one leg away to make these
> > vehicles stationary.  At least a stationary tank can be thought of as a
> > light pillbox that can rotate.  A stationary mech is but a target.  You
> > couldn't put any decent armor on these things because of the weigt ratio
> > (you don't want your mech to end up in the ground evertime).  Think
> > there is a reason for tracks on tanks.  Once more, while building mechs
> > is a fun thing to do using the traveller rules (even FF&S), any decent
> > general would prefer to donate them to his enemies in the hope that they
> > would use them.  This was my ranting for today.  This closes our
> > programming for today.  Thank you :-#).
> 
> Ahhh yes, the "walking tanks suck" thread.
> 
> I counter by saying: Trav is a science-fiction game. Technical barriers are assumed to
> be overcomable. You say they can't be overcome, I say that technology can and will
> overcome the barriers you raise.
> 
> I'm a gentleman, not a flamer, so can we agree to disagree?

Big targets are big targets, now and forever. The surface area of a box is less than that of a 
human, and you do not need massive gears and joint protection. Sure some of the barriers 
will be solved, but which way would you go: bionic horses, or helicopters?

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 18:42:01 -0600
From: "K.C. Komosky" <kc@mb.sympatico.ca>
Subject: Canon, and K'kree symbols

	Just a (hopefully) quick question, and a request.

	First of all, is DGP material considered an official part of the Traveller 
canon? I ask because after checking with Don McKinney's Traveller timeline, 
I found a couple references from an MT journal that conflicted with some 
material I was working on for my web page.

	I'll probably go ahead with it anyways, but I still can't help wondering 
about this.

	Secondly, I really liked the MT idea of each faction/ nation having a 
symbol. Well, I'm starting to work on my K'kree homepages (the LSAT is over 
- - finally. hooray!). And I was wondering if anyone had any billiant ideas 
for a symbol for the 2000 Worlds.

	To date the best I've come up with is a tree, but that somehow seems a 
little too peaceful for the K'kree.

	Any ideas? I'd be most grateful!

K.C. Komosky
now nervously waiting for his LSAT results
kc@mb.sympatico.ca

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 20:38:53 +0000
From: Mused <marz@hotstar.net>
Subject: Re: Canon, and K'kree symbols

How about the K'kree halberd thingy, or a sort of Ghostbustersish symbol with a carnivore 
in the middle?

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 18:00:18 -0800
From: Rich Ostorero <stormhvn@inreach.com>
Subject: Re: Mechs

Lewis Roberts wrote:
> 
> Rich Ostorero wrote:
> 
> No, that's somesort of Battletech gladiator planet right? 

Solaris 7 is the home of galditorial mech battles.

> Also to
> those who asked I never saw Robojox, so I don't know what its about.  I
> was thinking about putting the culture down in the Rimward portion of
> the Spinward Marches. I had a planet in mind, Bender I think.
> 
> 
> I'd love to see these <mech designs>.

As soon as I type 'em up, I'll post em.

- --Rich
stormhvn@inreach.com

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 18:33:14 -0800
From: "Peter J. Miller" <PeterMiller@youngmerlin.com>
Subject: Re: Mail from Ken Whitman

At 14:59 11/12/96 -0800, you wrote:
>Did anybody else on the list get a couple of messages from Ken Whitman
>today?  One describing the Trav stat test from GenCon, the other an offer of
>dog tags for sale..

I did, and I like it, cause I wanted those tests.  I just hope Ken isn't
going to get himself in trouble, I thought he "wasn't associated with
Traveller anymore".

Thanks

_______________________________Peter John Miller
"There's a new home run king in baseball...and his name is Henry Aaron..."
 - announcer, after Hank Aaron breaks Babe Ruth's career home run record
- ------------------------------------------------
Traveller, Prime Directive, AD&D, and the home of the Imperium Games FAQ!
       http://www.dragonfire.net/~pm/

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 22:30:30 -0500
From: "Chris Cox" <chriscox@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Starships Review and Rant

Just picked up my copy of Starships today from Fred 's FLGS (mine is
back in Sacramento) and after looking it over a bit I'm disappointed
with what I see.  First off let my say what I liked about Starships. 
I like that there are new ships and that the "old ships" are
different from previous versions of Traveller.  I had fear that most
of this book would end up being just a recycling of old material and
I'm very happy that it isn't.  I Love deckplans and am quite pleased
to see a large majority of ships with deckplans.  And for the most
part I like Foss's black and white illustrations of the various ship
designs.
   Now for the things that I didn't like about Starships.  First off,
The information telling us what all the data for the starships means
is buried in the Standard Ship Design System (SSDS) in the back of
the book instead of at the front of the book where it should be. 
While the SSDS allows building more detailed ships than was possible
using the Quick Ship Design System in the T4 main book, the ship in
the book don't seem to make use of this extra detail.  In particular,
Its hard to determine how many and what type of staterooms there are
on these ships and its even worst for airlocks and cargo hatches. 
Also, the 12 pages of color art shoved in the middle of the SSDS is
baffling.  These aren't any of the ships in the book and in some
cases aren't even ships.  Also, there is no attempt to make them
relevant to the rest of the book.  Finally what has to be the biggest
disappointment for me are the deckplans.  Not only are they boring,
but they are drawn very poorly.  Most amateur deckplans are drawn
better than the deckplans in Starships.
    BTW I not particularly bothered by either the lack of Grid lines
or the 5,000dton limit on hulls.

Chris Cox
"Lets hang ten for justice" so says the talking tourist Tick
(chriscox@ix.netcom.com)
The Draconis Cluster Traveller pages
(http://users.aol.com/yanbeck/trav.htm)

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 20:50:00 -0600
From: "Andrew Akins" <igor@netins.net>
Subject: Non-Fusion Plus designs

A SSDS question:

Does anyone know what needs to be done to the fusion plant stats
if designing a non-imperial ship, i.e. one that does not benefit from
"Fusion Plus" technology?

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Andrew Akins                                                       |
| igor@netins.net - http://www.netins.net/showcase/theakins/         |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| May your villages remain ignorant of tax collectors, and may your  |
| sons be many and ugly and strong and willing workers, and may your |
| daughters be few and beautiful and excellent providers of love     |
| gifts from eminent families that live very far away, and may your  |
| lives be blessed by the the beauty that has touched mine.          |
|                    - Number Ten Ox, "Bridge of Birds"              |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 20:43:55 -0600
From: "Andrew Akins" <igor@netins.net>
Subject: Starships: my review

Well, everyone else has given their review of Starships, so I said
"Heck, my opinion matters too! Doesn't it?"

Overall, I liked it...this puts me in the minority it sounds, but I do
like it. I think the designs are well thought out, and there are some
good new designs to offset the inclusion of the old ones. The presence
of the old designs doesn't bother me as much as it does some people,
I consider it useful to have all of the designs in one place.

SSDS appears to be good - I haven't tried to make a ship yet, but it 
looks good.

The imperial calandar and the personalities are fine - not spectacular,
but not bad.

The art: much to-do has been made about the art - about how it's not
Travelleresque....and it's not. But it's not bad. I think it will appeal to
some people. And since IG needs to bring in some players, flashy
art is a good idea. Old timers like me will always keep the old art near 
and dear...but it's just art. If it attracts attention, I say good for
Traveller.

What really disappointed me are the deckplans. Not the lack of grid
lines - that's small potatoes. No, the plans are simply bad. There is
no detail. The ships are not designed logically. They don't have exterior
airlocks! Most of the ships that have small craft, the small craft docking
areas are not shown. Some room sizes make NO sense - on the far trader,
staterooms are 4x6m...a little bigger than the 3x4.5 that was the norm in
the past. On the secure trader, some rooms are 6x6, and some are 2x6.
And the subsidized liner - where staterooms need to be "nice", has spacious
2x2m staterooms. See if you can fit a bed, fresher, dresser,etc in a 2x2
room.

This part of starships is what I find insulting - these errors are glaring,
in
my opinion. If this is the quality that they were setting out for, I think
they should have scrapped the deckplans and added more ship designs. But,
of course, the better solution would be to have better deckplans. People
have mentioned Traders and Gunboats - this book should be the MINIMUM
standard for published deckplans...and the quality of some DGP deckplans
should be the ideal.

All in all, I enjoyed the material in starships, and I don't regret buying
it like
some people did - but I am very disappointed in the deckplans. I really
feel
that if you fix the plans, the book is quite excellent.

'nuff rambling...

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Andrew Akins                                                       |
| igor@netins.net - http://www.netins.net/showcase/theakins/         |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| May your villages remain ignorant of tax collectors, and may your  |
| sons be many and ugly and strong and willing workers, and may your |
| daughters be few and beautiful and excellent providers of love     |
| gifts from eminent families that live very far away, and may your  |
| lives be blessed by the the beauty that has touched mine.          |
|                    - Number Ten Ox, "Bridge of Birds"              |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 22:38:12 -0500
From: Daniel Poulin <pould@netcom.ca>
Subject: Re: Mechs in Traveller

Mused wrote:
> 
> Rich Ostorero wrote:
> >
> > Daniel Poulin wrote:
> > > Gimme a bloody break! Giant Robots!
> > > My favorite description of Giant Combat Robots can be found in the
> > > supplement Trident/RMBK for Living Steel: 70 tons of junk, 70 tons of
> > > Molten Slags, 70 tons of useless scrap".  Giant Robots, while
> > > technically feasable in Traveller terms (remember the mention in 101
> > > vehicles), they are useless militarily.  The pressure on the ground
> > > would make these vehicles useless on any type of terrains but the
> > > hardest.  The technology (and space) required to put legs on something
> > > like that and make it walk is useless when one can think of what you can
> > > put on a grav tank.  The signature of these things would be so great as
> > > to make them useless militarily.  Any decent missiles would blow them to
> > > pieces.  It would be sufficient to blow one leg away to make these
> > > vehicles stationary.  At least a stationary tank can be thought of as a
> > > light pillbox that can rotate.  A stationary mech is but a target.  You
> > > couldn't put any decent armor on these things because of the weigt ratio
> > > (you don't want your mech to end up in the ground evertime).  Think
> > > there is a reason for tracks on tanks.  Once more, while building mechs
> > > is a fun thing to do using the traveller rules (even FF&S), any decent
> > > general would prefer to donate them to his enemies in the hope that they
> > > would use them.  This was my ranting for today.  This closes our
> > > programming for today.  Thank you :-#).
> >
> > Ahhh yes, the "walking tanks suck" thread.
> >
> > I counter by saying: Trav is a science-fiction game. Technical barriers are assumed to
> > be overcomable. You say they can't be overcome, I say that technology can and will
> > overcome the barriers you raise.
> >
> > I'm a gentleman, not a flamer, so can we agree to disagree?
> 
> Big targets are big targets, now and forever. The surface area of a box is less than that of a
> human, and you do not need massive gears and joint protection. Sure some of the barriers
> will be solved, but which way would you go: bionic horses, or helicopters?

Sorry for the tone of the message that I intended to be humorous (hence
the quote from Living Steel and the attempt at humour at the end, I
though I had been clearer).  While we (me and the original poster) may
disagree over this issue, and technology may change, there is still the
fact that Trav (even if there is a space opera undertone) is still hard
science.  It is possible to imagine a mech unit that would not go into
the ground everytime it attempts to walk by putting grav units into it,
but wouldn't it make it even more useless?  Why not build a grav tank
instead?  It also doesn't change the signature of these units and their
relative fragility.

I can imagine a feudal type society with the nobles playing around with
mechs, however, the same thing that happened to historical knights would
happen to these nobles: they found themselves outclassed by technology. 
Suddenly, the nobles were being picked out by peasants (how
embarassing).  The same thing would happen to your high tech knights
when they would be facing an army.  The only use these units would have
would be to fight other units of their type.  When facing a regular tank
they would rapidly die.

It is important to remember that I am referring to the technology of
Trav (not some imagined technology).  In traveller terms, a mech is
useless in warfare.  You can imagine that it could have some use as a
pleasure vehicle for racing or fighting between youg nobles, but I don't
think it is possible to justify their existence as a military vehicle.

Daniel Poulin
pould@netcom.ca

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

End of Traveller-digest V1996 #743
**********************************

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