From owner-traveller@Phaser.ShowCase.MPGN.COM  Tue Dec 24 04:24:51 1996
Return-Path: owner-traveller@Phaser.ShowCase.MPGN.COM
Received: from phaser.Showcase.MPGN.COM (Phaser.Showcase.MPGN.COM [206.66.87.5]) by emin36.mail.aol.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id EAA13829; Tue, 24 Dec 1996 04:24:41 -0500
Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) by phaser.Showcase.MPGN.COM (8.7.3/8.6.9) with SMTP id EAA23689; Tue, 24 Dec 1996 04:21:50 -0500
Received: by phaser.Showcase.MPGN.COM (bulk_mailer v1.5); Tue, 24 Dec 1996 04:20:46 -0500
Received: (from majordom@localhost) by phaser.Showcase.MPGN.COM (8.7.3/8.6.9) id EAA23506 for traveller-digest-outgoing; Tue, 24 Dec 1996 04:20:44 -0500
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 1996 04:20:44 -0500
Message-Id: <199612240920.EAA23506@phaser.Showcase.MPGN.COM>
From: owner-traveller-digest@mpgn.com (Traveller-digest)
To: traveller-digest@Phaser.ShowCase.MPGN.COM
Subject: Traveller-digest V1996 #787
Reply-To: traveller@mpgn.com
Sender: owner-traveller-digest@mpgn.com


Traveller-digest     Tuesday, December 24 1996     Volume 1996 : Number 787



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

The following topics are covered in this digest:

web site
Merry Christmas To All
Re: Dark Star now in .PDF Format!
Re: Jumpspace and Psionics
jtas cost/legal ramifications
"Everything Is Driven By Economics" - long
TravWeb Central is down...
Oh dear...(was "Economics...")
Aliens Overview and Mini-Review
JTA Price
RE: JTA Price 
Re: Ship Construction
Starship construction rates and times
GG Refuelling - Economic Factors
Re: Oh dear...(was "Economics...")
Re: Traveller-digest V1996 #785

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

Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 17:41:11 -0500
From: Kagehira@aol.com
Subject: web site

      As an aside. Several old JTAS articles are now currently available on
my web site. And with some luck lots more should be appearing.
      This is thanks to the kindness of the original authors and Marc Miller.
      So far I've had permission from Loren Wiseman for most of his stuff,
Phil Masters (all his material), and Marc Miller for 1 article (and general
permission). Leroy Guatney's will be showing up when he's got the time. And
I'm hoping for the Keith brothers material (cross your fingers).
      The site is at Http://members.aol.com/kagekiha/traveller/index.htm,
look under the JTAS index.
      If anybody without web access wants this material they should ask me
for copies personnally (material is available on disk, at cost).

      We now return you to the regular broadcast.

      Thank you,
      Bryan Borich

P.S. 1120 Sector maps are available (these were created as part of the
Regency Sourcebook project) via FTP at this site.

Member HIWG

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

Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 18:34:24 -0500
From: TPeterAZ@aol.com
Subject: Merry Christmas To All

Just a brief note wishing a Merry Christmas to all.


Tim Peter
<TPeterAZ@aol.com>
"There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, Ignorance."--- Socrates

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

Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 15:57:08 -0800
From: Douglas McCorison <douglas@camax.com>
Subject: Re: Dark Star now in .PDF Format!

I'm really interested in the Dark Stars.... And would send you
money today, but I seem to have lost your address.  Could you
tell me where to send money (X-mas is c`good for money :) )

Douglas

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

Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 19:35:10 -0500
From: "David J. Golden" <goldendj@usa.net>
Subject: Re: Jumpspace and Psionics

Leonard Erickson wrote:
> I decided that I wanted to read "The Demolished Man". And was *very*
> unhappy to discover that it is not in stock at any of the bookstores I
> checked. I haven't had a chance to see if it's still in print, but
> given that I've seen ads for a (too expensive) "special edition" of
> both it and "The Stars My Destination", I rather suspect that it *is*
> out of print, at least as a normal paperback. <sigh>

	Try the Science Fiction Book Club (www.sfbc.com); I just got _both_ of
them.

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

Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 20:40:07 -0500
From: Kagehira@aol.com
Subject: jtas cost/legal ramifications

    It's probable that when IG charged Leroy the extra charge that a couple
of laws were broken. Namely the Consumer Protection Act, and there is a
possibility of embezzlement charges. (and of course someone else mentioned
mail fraud.....)

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

Date: 24 Dec 96 12:46:26 +1100
From: Michael.Barry@FINANCE.ausgovfinance.telememo.au
Subject: "Everything Is Driven By Economics" - long

     
     "Everything Is Driven By Economics"
     This is true. Too true. However, you only have half the story. 
     
     Economics (at least, *as we currently understand it*), is a pretty complex 
     beastie. The economic forces acting between planets and wildly different 
     technological levels will be even more complex; however, here are some 
     observations based on what we know about late 20th c. Terra. 
     
     Technological superiority does not necessarily mean economic dominance. 
     True, a starport may have access to the most technically efficient power 
     plant on the planet. However, it may still not be the most *economically 
     efficient* way to supply the planet's power needs. Comparative advantage 
     has been thrashed out on the TML before, so I won't go into it unless 
     people really want me to. 
     
     A few questions - really rhetorical - I supply the answers at the end. 
     
     Q: Why didn't the UN mission in Cambodia result in an enormous increase in 
     domestic technology? Why instead did the presence of tens of thousands of 
     UN personnel result in massive inflation, unemployment, shortages, social 
     dislocation, prostitution and crime? 
     
     Q: Why doesn't the entire Earth have the same level of technology as the 
     USA and Europe? After all, multinational corporations span the globe, most 
     non-military technology is widely available, and restrictions on 
     international trade tend to focus far more on commodities and manufactured 
     items than the information necessary to produce such items. 
     
     Q: Why doesn't the US Embassy in Canberra supply the power needs of eastern 
     Australia by building a nuclear fission reactor? Surely this could be "a 
     nice little revenue earner" for them...
     Admittedly an extreme example, but the US Government has access to the 
     technology, they could make plenty of money from doing it, and the Embassy 
     has extraterritorial status so it would be difficult for the Australian 
     government to stop them short of booting the entire embassy out of the 
     country.
     
     A: (to all the above) - Because "Everything Is Driven By Economics"! 
     
     Parallel questions as follows: 
     
     Q: Is it possible that a high-tech starport could exist on a low-tech 
     planet? 
     A: Yes. Relative incomes between the starport employees and the indigenous 
     population (the Cambodia example) will mean that the high-tech items will 
     remain out of reach of most locals other than an elite; domestic 
     manufacturing will probably be unable to achieve the economies of scale 
     possible on the Imperial industrial *planets*. There will still be 
     substantial leakage of technology across the extrality borders, but 
     domestic manufacturing capability might never spring up, particularly if 
     high tech goods are readily available from interstellar trade. 
     
     It's easier, and more economically efficient, for a low-tech planet to 
     trade raw materials and low-tech manufactured items for high-technology 
     items. 
     
     Q: Could a starport sell its excess power into a local electricity grid? 
     A: Of course it *could*. That is, if the local authorities permit them to. 
     Here are some possibilities: 
     . The local government (TL7-8) declares itself opposed to the use of 
     nuclear technologies on environmental grounds. The starport is still 
     permitted to use fusion power within the extrality border, but sale of 
     'atomic power' into local markets is not allowed. 
     (a variant) Local plants are OK because they meet stringent environmental 
     regulations. Alternatively, the planet may use cheap solar/wind etc. power 
     generation systems. 
     . Local power technologies are controlled by a cartel of influential 
     interests. They convince the 'government' that starport fusion power is 
     dangerous. 
     . Local labour unions pressure the government into permitting only 
     domestically produced power, on the grounds that high-tech fusion power 
     will will cost local jobs. 
     . Few nations that would want anything as essential as power generation to 
     be dominated by foreign interests. OR would want power generation to be 
     dominated by a starport generator (a single, large one would be most 
     efficient and therefore most profitable!) 
     
     Installing a larger than needed fusion power plant might indeed be "a nice 
     little revenue earner". However, starports are very expensive, and the 
     agency building the port ( or the starport's financiers) might not want to 
     deal with more financial or political problems than absolutely necessary. 
     
     The difference between economic and technical efficiency became quite 
     obvious to me when I visited Russia a few years ago. In St. Petersburg, the 
     entire hot water and heating needs of the city are supplied by a few *hot 
     water plants*; soviet engineers had examined the problem of providing 
     heating and hot water to the city, and came up with a technically efficient 
     solution. The plants are enormous installations that do nothing but boil 
     water and pump it around the city. No need for the inefficient capitalist 
     pigdog imperialist approach of having your own hot water system in each 
     house. 
     
     Nice idea, except for the two weeks we were in the city, we didn't have 
     *any* hot water. The plant had been closed down for repairs. All I could 
     think was, thank God it was summer. 
     
     Finally, for those that might say "but electricity isn't hot water", I say: 
     true. However, in a world of cheap fusion power plants, don't you think 
     that each house might have its own fusion power supply, and electricity 
     grids become a thing of the past? 
     
     "Everything Is Driven By Economics". Too true. 
     

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

Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 18:50:08 -0800
From: "Peter J. Miller" <PeterMiller@youngmerlin.com>
Subject: TravWeb Central is down...

Hello,

As some of you may have noticed, my Traveller page (home of the IG FAQ!) is
down at the moment (http://www.dragonfire.net/~pm/traveller), as is the
whole Dragonfire system I think (for those with Dragonfire accounts).

Because of this, I have relocated, temporarily, my site to Inforamp.net
(http://www.inforamp.net/~scouse/peter/).  However, due to size\transfer
limits, it contains only the starships from my old page, and the most up to
date copy of the Imperium Games FAQ.  Both of these will be kept up to date,
and I may or may not add new things that are posted to the TML.

All of the web problems should be fixed sometime early in the new year.  As
soon as they are, I will post a notice to the temp. site and the list.

Also, as side note, to those of you in personal correspondance to me, my
e-mail address has changed from PeterMiller@youngmerlin.com to
PeterMiller@irevolution.com as of December 24th.  I will stil recieve mail
at my old address for a while, but would prefer is the new address was used
starting tomorrow.

Sorry for the off-topicness of this message.

Thanks, and Merry Christmas

/\___________________________Peter John Miller____________________________/\
||           "Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night..."          ||
||     Traveller, IG materials and the Home of the Imperium Games FAQ!    ||
||            On Peter's World - http://www.dragonfire.net/~pm/           ||
\/------------------------------------------------------------------------\/
   Great graphics, and the LOWEST prices on the net - www.youngmerlin.com

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

Date: 24 Dec 96 14:55:14 +1100
From: Michael.Barry@FINANCE.ausgovfinance.telememo.au
Subject: Oh dear...(was "Economics...")

     Phil
     ...although I don't agree entirely with your points about economics, I 
     have to say that your opponents are making a fairly poor showing and 
     therefore declare you winner by default. 
     
     From my travels to less civilised parts of the world (ie Russia 1994 
     and Solomon Islands 1995; for tact's sake I don't mention Melbourne 
     1996), the problem is that 'stuff' is not readily available at all. 
     
     Merchants tend to buy where they can get goods the cheapest, and sell 
     where they can get the highest selling price. (I say *tend*, they are 
     human after all). The problem is that the market is far from 'free', 
     even if you only take transaction costs (ie cost of shipping and 
     selling) into account. 
     
     There are a couple of ways of reducing/getting around shipping costs, 
     but the most common one is *scale* - ie ship huge amounts of a 
     commodity so that the per unit shipping cost is low. 
     
     Trouble then arises in a place that is relatively remote, with a weak 
     market. There will almost always be more profitable places to sell, 
     except if your product is surplus or unsaleable. Thus traders will 
     dump container-loads of defective clothing, near-rotten food, faulty 
     electrical goods and the like on the populace of said remote locale. 
     
     The price that the merchant gets for selling is far less than if they 
     managed to sell in developed countries, but still better than paying 
     for waste disposal. 
     
     Thus the phenomenon of seeing crateloads of near-rotten bananas for 
     sale on the streets of Moscow, or the fact that the main grocery store 
     in Honiara (Solomon Islands) only had a dozen or so products on the 
     shelves...but *hundreds* of items! 
     
     Oh, and if you want to give a Solomon Islander a special gift for 
     Christmas, why don't you buy them a box of cereal...it'd cost you 
     about $US25- ! 
     
     FINALLY: 
     
     A phenomenon of the technological society in which we live (TL8 or 
     thereabouts) is that as goods/devices/production processes become more 
     sophisticated, a country becomes *more* dependent on international (in 
     T4 read interstellar) trade. Those starship components might not be 
     repairable on planet, regardless of the skill of your technicians. 
     Those particular components just might be disposable...see how many 
     computer technicians would try to repair a broken CPU, memory chip or 
     hard drive on your busted machine. Hell, they might be *able* to do 
     it, but it probably isn't worth their while. 
     
     Why would you spend an hour, at a staff cost of $25-, to repair a $10- 
     component? Why would you spend a week to repair a $500- component? The 
     answer: you wouldn't. Not unless there was no way to get a cheap 
     replacement, and your customer was desperate enough to *pay* the 
     extra! 

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

Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 22:16:27 -0600 (CST)
From: "Joseph E. Walsh" <ransom@connect.iconnect.net>
Subject: Aliens Overview and Mini-Review

Hi,

I haven't finished reading Aliens yet (and from the holiday activities 
still to come, I doubt I will for another week or so), but here's some 
info for those considering purchasing it:

Name:  Aliens Archive
Length: 108 Pages (2 pages of ads, 8 pages of "concept" illos in B&W, 2 
                   pages of color illos)
Author: Timothy Brown
Price: $22.95
Number of Aliens Covered: 12
Alien Names: Asym, Bye-Ren, The Controlled, Denaar, Graytch, Hana Saka,
             Hresh, Newts, Nuclees, Providers, Tekundu, Trakii.
Alien Types: All are minor races.  A variety is covered, from fairly
             human to quite unusual.  Sapient plant-life, reptile,
             communal worm beings, etc.  
Illustrations: Skeletal, Concept, and Final

Each Alien is covered in about 8 pages.  For each alien, the following 
information is given:  Psychology, Homeworld Background, History, 
Society, Character Generation, Other Game Rules (variants necessary for 
the alien species), Travel and Starships, Quick Role-Playing Tips.  Also 
included in each is a couple of Close Encounter-type write-ups, one of a 
native of the species, and one of an Imperial citizen of the species.

The aliens aren't tied to specific worlds, so that referee's can place 
the homeworld wherever s/he desires.  

The writing is high-quality and intelligent.  I have yet to find any typos.

On the down side, the font used is fairly large; it would have been nice 
if a smaller font size had been used, allowing either more information on 
each alien or more aliens.  However, I have found the variety of aliens 
included to be more than adequate, and the amount of information on each 
alien to be satisfactory.

My overall rating: 95%  (Again, I haven't read the entire volume yet.)

Subjective Review:  On a purely technical level, this supplement is 
better than CSC, simply because CSC has some typos and some info (a few 
price/mass figures) was left out of it.  However, CSC will be far more 
useful to me in my particular campaigns.  Your mileage may vary.


- -Joe
______________________________________________________________________________
Joseph E. Walsh      |  Atari 8-Bit User and Programmer Since 1982
ransom@iconnect.net  |  Classic Traveller Referee Since 1983
Stuck in the '80s    |  Microsoft-Free and Loving It! :)
       .....Official Reporter of Imperium Games Product Info.....

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

Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 00:18:53 -0500
From: Charlie <Brreclus@spectra.net>
Subject: JTA Price

Hey how about this. IG probably made a honest mistake. They cant afford
to ship You your copies for free. On the big scale of life this stuff
just is small potatoes and life is too short to sweat the small stuff.

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

Date: Tue, 24 Dec 1996 01:21:24 -0500 (EST)
From: That Computer Guy <darkstar@UDel.Edu>
Subject: RE: JTA Price 

In Reply to Your Message of Sat, 23 Nov 1996 00: 18:53 EST
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 1996 01:21:24 -0500
From: That Computer Guy <darkstar@strauss2.udel.edu>

: Hey how about this. IG probably made a honest mistake. They cant afford
: to ship You your copies for free. On the big scale of life this stuff
: just is small potatoes and life is too short to sweat the small stuff.

Now, I can agree with you on this, in the grand scheme, $11.20 isn't
that much of a deal to any of us.

However (there's always one of these), it's the principle of the matter
that is the issue here.  Forget the fact that they aren't honoring a
price they posted, forget the fact that they didn't tell anyone sooner,
forget the fact that right now many people aren't happy with IG because
of previous mistakes.

Let's look at the one very important fact at hand--they applied charges
to a person's credit card without informing the consumer.  That is quite
simply illegal.  It's akin to theft and credit card fraud!!!  Had IG
called and said that they must surcharge or refund, and thus let the
consumer know what is going on, then things would have been okay.  The
fact is they didn't.

Likewise, for anyone that ordered with VISA, it is against VISA's policy
to charge anyone until the product leaves the door (no, I don't think
it's the same for MC, I believe that MC has a 1 week charge period).

I'll be the first one to defend IG tooth and nail to be allowed to make
Traveller products.  I'll even allow them to make mistakes in their
products.  I can't in any way justify them breaking all kinds of
consumer protection and credit card fraud laws simply because they are
ignorant of procedures!

As much as I hate to say this, if people are disatisfied with the cost
of JTAS, then thay should call IG, drop their purchase of JTAS, and have
the charges reversed.

       --Jerry

8) Jerry Alexandratos                %  "Nothing inhabits my    (8 
8) darkstar@strauss.udel.edu         %   thoughts, and oblivion (8
8) darkstar@canary.pearson.udel.edu  %   drives my desires."    (8

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

Date: Tue, 24 Dec 1996 03:12:45 -0500
From: Thad Coons <104765.503@compuserve.com>
Subject: Re: Ship Construction

Michel Nutt replies:

><more snippage throughout>

>>Alright, the more heavy or special equipment you need, the more likely
>>it is that it, or something needed to provide it, will be in short
>>supply. <grin>. I'd say most of the "extras" you trade merchant cargo
>>or passenger space for are either heavy or special.

> Not necessarily. After all, a great deal of that will be taken up, as
> you point out above, by armor and drives, which aren't "special" by any
> means.
> I'm not going to let you sneak in that "heavy" qualifier...   <grin>.

Heavier does indeed qualify for longer construction times (given the same
manpower applied to it). 

> Yup, spendng more money on it *does* get it out of the yards faster...
> but more efficient scheduling will also get it out the door faster,
> too, as will simply assigning more workers.

Assigning more workers equates to spending more money on it, that is, if
you're going to pay them...

> I'll admit that you have a point, to an extent. The TCS rules are
> designed with military craft in mind, not civilian. I agree that
> civilian craft shouldn't take as long, but then you get into a whole
> spectrum of problems... does my J3, 3G armed yacht bristling with
> lasers count as a military vessel, or as a civilian one? 
> Still, though, I don't see any way to make the numbers work out for a
> cost-based system without some sort of ruling about "number of
> applicable workers". I could live with it, I guess, if that were
> done... but nothing has been mentioned that seems in any way
> *objective*. Tonnage, at least, is easy to figure, and universally
> consistent.

Did you miss one of my messages to Hans on this subject, a couple of days
ago? Let me answer a couple more of your comments, and I'll put all this
into a coherent system.

<combining messages, with snippage>

>>True. But the very fact that the bottlenecks exist at all (even if
>>planned for in advance) will have an overall effect of limiting the
>>manpower you can effectively use in the shipyard, and stretching the
>>construction time.

>I disagree. It just means you have to *plan* your construction, instead
>of ordering a part to be delivered when you are ready to install it. The
>only way it will limit you is if you don't do your homework in designing
>your construction flowchart.

The various bottlenecks and so forth, of which shipyard capacity is only
one, impose limits on how much and how fast you can build. If, for only one
example, you only have 100 shuttlecraft, it's useless to plan a
construction rate based on having 150. The same goes with any other
limiting component or system.

>>On the contrary. Subcontracting permits you to effectively employ more
>>workers who are already organized to do the work you want done, thus
>>shortening the construction time from what it would be if you had to
>>build the laser in place.

> Um, true, but you're missing my point here. How do you come up with the
> number of workers available, and how will this number be affected by
> subcontractors? That "number of workers" is so vague that you're
> essentially assigning construction rates by referee fiat. 

> OK, I'm not totally clear on the differentiation you seem to be making
> here between construction rates and times. FWIW, I also don't think the
> numbers cited previously for cost-based construction (1-2 MCr per
> hundred workers per month) are high enough, either.

OK, enough arm waving: Let me put this all into a system.

Thad Coons  

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

Date: Tue, 24 Dec 1996 03:12:50 -0500
From: Thad Coons <104765.503@compuserve.com>
Subject: Starship construction rates and times

A few days ago, Hans gave a figure from TCS of 1 ton per thousand
inhabitants per year, I think. I proposed converting that to simply a
figure in MCr, using an average of .5 MCr per ton.
With the figure I gave of shipyard production at 1-2 MCr per 100 shipyard
workers per month, that gives a total of about 4 workers per thousand
population: the higher rate gives about 2.

Actually, I think it works better if you pick the size of the industry as a
percentage of the population, and let your MCr of shipyard capacity go up
with tech level. The various governmental modifiers and other TCS modifers
might apply to this percentage. It would naturally vary somewhat from world
to world, in any case. However, once chosen, it should cost to increase it.

Now, you divide up these MCr according to ship classes (if you're figuring
naval budgets, the amount you can devote to new construction goes into one
or more of these classes).
Divide the MCr devoted to a given class by the average ship cost
appropriate to that class, to give you ships per year. 
Divide this by 50 (52 if you insist) to give you average ships per week. 
The reciprocal of this last number is an average construction time in weeks
per ship.

This number assumes that you are building only one ship at a time, which is
absurd for small ships. Multiply this average time by the number of ships
you are building at any given time, to get the construction time for one
ship.

Now, if you increase the MCr devoted to the ship class, without changing
the number of ships at any one time, you are increasing your rate of
production and shortening construction times. 
If you just increase the number of ships at a given time without increasing
the MCr, you are dividing your resources among more ships, so each one
takes longer, but your overall rate of production remains the same. 
If you increase the MCr and thus the rate of ship production, and the
number of ships being built at one time, the construction time remains
about the same.
If you increase the cost of a ship, either by making it bigger or putting
more hardware in it, your ship production rate goes down, and the time it
takes to build it goes up, unless you either either increase the budget for
the class, (increasing production rates) or concentrate your effort (MCr,
workers) by building fewer of them at a time.

This system is perhaps a little more complex than I understand TCS is, but
it is much more powerful, flexible, and IMO realistic.

 

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

Date: Tue, 24 Dec 1996 17:23:23 +1100
From: "Phillip McGregor" <aspqrz@curie.dialix.com.au>
Subject: GG Refuelling - Economic Factors

It should be painfully obvious from the ongoing argument about GG
refuelling that, except in systems where there is no mainworld, that GG
refuelling will never happen, simply for reasons of security. However,
there is a better reason - and one that has the imprimatur of none other
than Marc Miller himself!

What? you say? *What* is this reason? Well, I know I've been harping on it
somewhat for other threads, but it is still applicable - and *very* much
so! It is, of course, as Marc points out quite specifically in the basic
rules (pg. #7) -- "Everything is driven by economics".

Consider the *economics* of running a commercial starship. As I have shown
in "recent" posts about the economics of running Free, Far and Fat Traders
(you *can't* run them at a profit *unless* you speculate in cargoes, more
or less), even running at two jumps per month (on average), profitability
is difficult to ensure.

That's assuming, as has always been the case, that the starship picks up a
cargo, maneuvers from a planetfall/port, makes one jump and then maneuvers
to a planetfall and delivers a cargo. The Jump takes about a week,
regardless of distance, while it takes between 6-7 hours (at 1G) and 2-3
hours (at 1G) to maneuver from planetfall to a safe jump distance ... call
it a day each end. Then allow a day at each end for loading/unloding (at
least) - and an average of a day at each end looking for cargoes (Starport
fees traditionally cover a stay of up to six days). So the all up time per
"Jump" (or trip) is around two weeks ... two Jumps per month.

Now, if you want to refuel at a GG you have to add travel time to and/or
from the thing. According to MTrav Referees Companion, typical distance to
a far neighbour world (which I presume is a near GG) is between 1.6 (at 6G)
and 4.0 (at 1G) days ... and if the GG is a "far" GG, this is 2.8 to 6.9
days respectively! Assuming a one way trip at each end, you add between 3.2
and 13.8 days to your turnaround time. (Oh, and even microjumping is
pointless as it takes a week in Jumpspace anyway - and time is, quite
literally, money!)

To a commercial operator this is *disastrous* ... you have cut 20 - 50% off
your profitability through lost time!!! That is, assuming a 3.2 day
addition, you get 4 jumps in the time you would otherwise get 5; assuming a
13.8 day addition, you get one jump in the time you would get 2!!!

And what does fuel cost? 500 Cr per ton refined and 100 Cr per ton
unrefined! So you average 200 ton Free Trader will "save" 10k Cr by
forgoing one Jump in two - at a *cost* of around 125k Cr ... a net *LOSS*
of 115k Cr !!!

Seems to me that in systems where there *are* mainworlds that there will be
*huge* economic incentives for ships to fuel there. Only in systems that
are otherwise uninhabited will there be any point in fuelling at a GG.

Oh, and note that, even if the ship is simply "passing through", the
assumption that Traveller Jump-control is precise enough to come in pretty
close to the target makes coming in close to an inhabited world more
attractive than going to a far GG. Unless you're running full, there's
always the chance that you might get a hot chance for a pickup cargo - one
that would make no economic sense to pursue if you had to divert from a
GG!!!

Of course, this all assumes that the standard 1000 Cr per ton rate for
cargo applies - but, as I've already pointed out, it almost certainly won't
except on high volume routes - still, for the sake of not producing further
off *this* topic arguments, lets assume it is applicable.

Ergo, out of Marc Miller's own mouth (so to speak), GG refuelling is almost
never going to happen - and, for the purposes of the SDB argument, *never*
will happen in any system with an inhabited mainworld !!!

Phil
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip McGregor | aspqrz@.curie.dialix.oz.au
Have Game Designer, Will Travel

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

Date: Mon, 23 Dec 96 22:44:27 -0500
From: eris@pen.net (Eris Reddoch)
Subject: Re: Oh dear...(was "Economics...")

On 12/24/96 at 02:55 PM,  Michael.Barry@FINANCE.ausgovfinance.telememo.au
said:


>  Why would you spend an hour, at a staff cost of $25-, to repair a $10- 
>  component? Why would you spend a week to repair a $500- component?
>  The answer: you wouldn't. Not unless there was no way to get a cheap 
>  replacement, and your customer was desperate enough to *pay* the
>  extra!   

I agree with you, but with a little proviso.

If the component is necessary and a replacement is *completely* unavailable
then it isn't a $10 component..it's value is whatever it takes to repair or
replace it.  If it costs $500 to repair that $10 part, and the alternative
is waiting on the ground 6 weeks for the part to be shipped in, then the
*economic* thing to do is pay the $500 and put the ship back into service
earning money.

Wouldn't as much of a ship's equipment as possible be designed to be field
repairable?  On ships that will be travelling to places where replacement
parts aren't readily available, I'd want
*everything* really important to be field repairable.  


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

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

Date: Tue, 24 Dec 1996 20:01:47 +1100
From: "Phillip McGregor" <aspqrz@curie.dialix.com.au>
Subject: Re: Traveller-digest V1996 #785

> Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 09:06:39 -0500 (EST)
> From: Ethan Henry <ehenry@mag1.magmacom.com>
> Subject: Re: Why the Vilani Lost

> > My suggestion is that the Vilani Military was run as a commercial
operation
> > and that the wars that they fought were run according to strict
economic
> > principles ... profit was the bottom line. Just think, for example, how
> > this would affect their ship design philosophy for warships!
> 
> The Vilani were, above almost everything else, Empire Builders. You
> don't build an empire like the _Empire of the Stars_ just to make a few
> bucks. Certainly not in the short term. Even in the looong term,
> which the Vilani have a better grasp on than the Terrans, it's a
> questionable decision. In modern terms, imagine if the American
> civil war had resulted in the North removing the right of self-government
> from the South and imposing Northern laws, etc. Total annexation.
> That's the First Imperium. It wasn't a happy, friendly economic
> coalition, like the modern EC. Then again, the EC doesn't seem that 
> happy.
>
> The Vilani conquered more than the Terrans ever did. They must have had
> some idea about how to wage war.

Well, yes and no. The Vilani, as we know from all the canon sources (*all*
the sources that refer even vaguely to the First Imperium) were *the* top
do, technologically speaking *throughout* the period of their "empire
building", as you call it - *until* they came across the Terrans (and even
there they had an *initial* advantage). The Vilani had never come across
(at that stage - except for the Vargr, maybe, who weren't competition
because of their own chaotic social structures) anyone like the terrans ...
they had always been able to rely on gunboat diplomacy to overawe the
natives. They had the advantage in tech - and a *huge* one. They never
really had any serious competition and fought "wars" the way they expected
to ... on a commercial basis (the latter is my own suggestion, of course,
but the former is fairly obvious).

Its like comparing the Europeans in their colonial phase vs. the african
and asian peoples they "conquered" - would the armies they organised to
fight these fuzzy-wuzzies, dervishes and "natives" have stood up in combat
against *other* european forces designed to combat equals? The answer is
(and I *can* quote exceptions - but irrelevant ones) a resounding *NO*!
They were (for example) universally short of heavy weapons (in a european
sense) for a start ... they were basically light infantry.

The Terrans were different. They were something that the Vilani had never
come across before - an *equal* opponent (well, maybe they had come across
technologically advanced states before, but it seems as if these states did
not have the advanced Jump drives of the Vilani, as the implication is that
this was always the Vilani advantage).

So they continued to use their "normal" tactics, and their "normal" ship
designs - and got trounced. The response would have been to throw more men
and materiel at the problem, and perhaps even beef up TO&E's, but by that
time they had lost their vital edge in tech and the Terrans were able to
equal them there. Worse, the terrans didn't seem (one can assume) to fight
by the rules.

For example, I suspect that the Vilani would have been horrified at the
thought of (say) bombing infrastructure indiscriminately (a la WW2) to
knock it out - they would have looked at it from an economic point of view
and preferred to *capture* it, or leave it alone until it *could* be
captured. Then those crazy terrans start trashing the Vilani non-military
infrastructure "behind the lines" ... using the sort of depots in empty
space to "turn" the "front line" as has been suggested much of late. This
would give the Terrans a huge headstart as the Vilani probably didn't even
have the equivalent of SAMs or AA guns to defend such sites ... as it never
occured to them to defend them as they had never had to! It would then take
a lot of reapraisal and then tooling up and redeployment before they could
meet the threat.

The Terrans, of course, would never entirely leave their own assets
undefended - but would soon realise that the Vilani wouldn't attack them
and would get away with running riot for a *long* time. I suspect that this
sort of thing would be so completely foreign to the sort of hug-a-tree
fuzzy-liberal attitudes the Vilani seem to be credited with (my
interpretation here, of course) that they mught *never* realy come to grips
with why the Terrans were doing these terrible things ... and how they
always found ways to escalate when they finally came to grips with theit
*last* "crazy tactic".

> Hm, yes. Which isn't to say that the stress of assimilating (sp?) dozens
> of new cultures into the Vilani over a thousand years wasn't creating
> any stresses. I'd say that I agree with you, but if it hadn't been
> the Terrans, it would have been someone else. The Vilani had lost the
> ability to deal with external threats in a useful manner, as there
> wern't any left by the time the Terrans rolled around (well, except for
> the Terrans).

Well, certianly - the Zhos, if they'd been encountered before the Terrans,
for a start. Or the Aslan (assuming they had somehow invented their own
J-Drive and earlier than historically). Not the Hivers. Perhaps the K'kree,
too.

> > Any comments?
> 
> You've got 'em. The fall of the Vilani, like the fall of the Romans,
> is difficult to attribute to any one single factor. barabrians,
> lead in the pipes, an overextended empire, corrupt emperors, etc, etc,
etc.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I am not saying that this was the *only* factor - I
still stand by my comments of some while ago about how it is likely that
the Terrans outproduced the Vilani (again, at least partly because of
differing views of economics) rather like the Allies vs. the Nazis. And the
"liberation" factor - all those "subject peoples" who probably yearned to
get rid of their stifling Vilani overlordship (someone *always* thinks the
overlords are stifling!).

Phil

- ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip McGregor | aspqrz@.curie.dialix.oz.au
Have Game Designer, Will Travel

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

End of Traveller-digest V1996 #787
**********************************

To unsubscribe to Traveller-Digest, send the command:

unsubscribe traveller-digest

in the body of a message to "traveller-request@MPGN.COM".  If you want
to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from,
such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the
"subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-traveller":

subscribe traveller-digest local-traveller@your.domain.net

A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to
subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "traveller-digest"
in the commands above with "traveller".
