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Subject: Traveller-digest V1997 #1412
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Traveller-digest       Saturday, June 7 1997       Volume 1997 : Number 1412



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

The following topics are covered in this digest:

Re: 3D starmap question
Re: Star Trek & Windows in Spaceships
Re: Star Classification.
Traveller: Beyond The Pale... Episode 2
Re: 3D starmap question
Re: TNE Form People--look at this
Re: Windows on Starhsip?
Re: Star Classification
Re: Pocket Empires
Re: Starports & PE
Re: Anybody get a shipment yet?
Re: Pocket Empires
Re: Pocket Empires
What do people like?
Re: 3D starmap question
Re: X-Boat data capacity

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

Date: Fri, 06 Jun 1997 17:14:15 -0800
From: "David P. Summers" <summers@alum.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: 3D starmap question

Craig Berry <cberry@cinenet.net> wrote,
>I think most people on the TML would *like* to use 3D starmaps, all
>other things being equal.  Unfortunately, all other things aren't
>equal.  3D maps have two inherent disadvantages:
>
>(1) Moving to them now would invalidate 20 years of Traveller canon --
>    this isn't a problem if you're creating your own background, of
>    course.

I've wondered if it would be possible to contstruct a 3D setting that
retain the salient points.  If you assume that only high metalicity
stars are worth mapping you have a diskt that is 100 light years (if I
remember right) accross.  Thus the Imperium would still cover
the galactic plane from top to bottom.  However, to do so
and make sure that you weren't introducing problems would
be duanting task.
______________________________
summers@alum.mit.edu

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

Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 01:23:03 +0000
From: Garry Ward <Garry.E.Ward@worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: Star Trek & Windows in Spaceships

At 02:50 PM 6/6/97 +0000, you wrote:
>
><snip>

>Anyways, oddly enough, the Enterprise, in one of the movies,
>has a few windows, and they way they're set up is that there's 
>a tiny little room with a pressure sealed door for each window...
>they're like little viewing rooms out to space. (I think this was
>the old Enterprise, not the Next Gen one, which obviously had
>big windows just about everywhere). That's probably a not-too-bad
>model for Trav ships - a sealed, small viewing area for those who 
>need to focus their eyes on something very, very, very far away
>for a little while.
>
>Ethan
>
>-- 
>ehenry@magma.ca                                  http://www.magma.ca/~ehenry
>

Actually, in ALL the movies the Enterprise has honking big windows;
espcially in the crew lounge/rec areas. In the Classic Trek series, however,
the only windows ever shown were in the observation corridor along the
Hanger deck in the Engineering Hull. You could look down on the hanger deck
or out into the space, either way, you were isolated at the back end of the
ship, in the section where all other non transporter enterance/exit was located.

Garry

 

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

Date: Fri, 6 Jun 97 20:29:34 -0600
From: Glenn Hoppe <starcity@eagle.wbm.ca>
Subject: Re: Star Classification.

On 1997-06-06 09:33 thus spake SD Mooney:

>Can anyone explain how the stellar classification works in Traveller?

I'm sure lots of people can. :)

>I have an old text book that groups the stars by the letter/decimal
>sequence eg M5, K2 etc and absolute magnitude. how do I relate the figures
>in Traveller to the absolute magnitude and know which group the star falls
>into - is it a dwarf or a giant etc?

Stars are classified by Spectral Type and Luminosity Class.

The sequence of Spectral Type classifications, from hottest to coldest is 
OBAFGKM (with RNS being special types).

The types are subdivided by a digit 0-9 following the letter code.

Following the Spectral Type are Roman numerals denoting the Luminosity 
Class of the star. Ia and Ib are supergiants, II are bright giants, III 
giants, IV Subgiants, V are main sequence stars (dwarfs) like our sun, VI 
are subdwarfs and VII (or D) are white dwarfs.

>Also, somebody recommended a good astronomical text a while ago (in
>relation to maps of the galaxy); could you repost the reference?

I'll go one better. An online copy of the _Handbook of Space Astronomy 
and Astrophysics_, 2nd Edition by Martin V. Zombeck is available at the 
following URL:

<http://adswww.harvard.edu/books/hsaa/>

It is the "essential reference" to Space Astronomy and Astrophysics, and 
the online version includes links to web astronomy resources. It's a 
*reference* though, don't expect it to be a step-by-step beginners 
guide... It has lots of tables and formulae from an SI summary, to the 
periodic table, to  relativity equations, stellar classification, nearest 
stars to earth etc etc

If you prefer the analog edition :), or don't have the time/bandwidth to 
download TIFF or postscript pages (no HTML), use the following ISBN 
numbers at your local library or bookstore:

ISBN 0 521 34550 2 (hardbook)
ISBN 0 521 34787 4 (paperback)

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

Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 00:10:18 -0400
From: Roderick Darroch Elliott <rellio@po-box.mcgill.ca>
Subject: Traveller: Beyond The Pale... Episode 2

	Just ran the second session of my latest campaign, titled
Traveller: Beyond The Pale.  Here's the post-game summary:

The Cast:

Amr "let's go hunt down a gang of thieves without arming ourselves first"
Santayema: a young, somewhat impetuous, and altogether too pacifistic
merchant, played by the TML's own Ross Coburn.

Lt Kehaaarl: Aslan ex-marine, played by a non-TML'er.  Big, strong, and
whose frightening appearance is only surpassed by his frighteningly poor
command of Galanglic, employed as a body guard to...

...Sir Loreni Vilash: Vilani merchant from a poor family whose trading
acumen led him to a knighthood and the captaincy of a brand new free trader.

Dame Iliana Berek'san: a prominent chanteuse; tall, pale, beautiful,
dressed in the cutting edge of Sylean fashion, with a blue & purple topknot
reaching down to her knees and coloured contacts to match, who's slumming
it in the company of...

...Perlis Dalal: a muscular female ex-scout, well-trained in the Alberto
Fujimori School of Terrorist Negotiations.  Played by the TML's Glenn Grant.

	This lovely bunch of coconuts is presently assembled, along with a
growingly large number of fortune-seekers and adventurers, on Mishegaan
III, a godforsaken LSP mining colony, waiting for an Imperial interdict to
lift on a nearby cluster of main-sequence stars with mucho prime real
estate orbiting them.  Last game they incorporated Quintana Speculative
Ventures LIC and bought up all three Jump-3 vessels on the planet.


The Story:

	If you recall, last week's session concluded with a ship getting
bombed on the starport tarmac and Sir Loreni's cargo of Fusion+ units being
stolen.  This unsurprisingly caused considerable emoi at Mishegaan
starport, and so Lebar Eerht, the Imperial Administrator in charge of the
starport and Vought Hendaar, called a joint captains' conference.  Sir
Loreni attended this while Kehaaarl went off to liase with starport
security at the warehouse from which the Fusion+ units had been stolen.
After discussions in broken Galanglic with the security officers, he was
informed that they'd discovered a set of bulk hauler tracks proceeding away
from the warehouse and over the crater rim (Mishegaan III's sole settlement
being built into a crater wall with the starport inside the crater).
Kehaaarl then proceeded to the bombing site to investigate further.

	Meanwhile, at the captains' conference, held in a large boardroom
overlooking the starport, Lebar Eerht (a forty-something toughly competent
Imperial civil servant) and Vought Hendaar (visualize a fascistic-looking
version of the old geneticist in Jurassic Park) made a joint announcement
to the assembled merchants that yes, a ship had been blown up and a rather
daring theft had been committed.  They assured all present that they were
going to radically tighten security and increase patrols and would keep
everybody informed of future developments.  Questions came fast and furious
and were answered with smooth platitudes.  After the conference, Eerht took
Sir Loreni aside and escorted him into his office, where he informed him
that at present he was currently unable to spare any men to search for his
cargo, which in any case was on LSP's turf now.

	Sir Loreni then called Brougt Mingaan, Ling's Chief of Security on
the planet.  However,he only got a flunky wearing an impressive-looking
peaked cap who assured him he'd pass the message on.  Rather upset, Sir
Loreni realized that he was going to have to go look for himself.  He
stormed down to the main concourse, heading for his ship.

	In the meantime, Kehaaarl arrived at the scene of the bombing.  He
liased with the security officer in charge of the bombing investigation,
who revealed, among other things, that in his opinion Ling's security
people were a bunch of incompetent brutal fascist bastards and
uncooperative to boot, and that the explosion was the result of a very
large shaped charge detonated beneath the vessel.  He stated that given the
fact that the planet was a mining colony, there were explosives, up to and
including (well-guarded) fission devices readily available.

	Meanwhile, Dame Iliana and her entourage had just landed on an
intrasystem shuttle, fresh from a concert on one of the outer planets in
the system.  They were met at the arrival gate by Onyas Sedducha, her
manager, who informed her that he'd followed her instructions and bought
her into Quintana.  Spotting Sir Loreni stomping by in a foul mood, he
introduced the two.  After a brief discussion of the situation, Dame Iliana
decided that chasing after thieves would be highly entertaining and
insisted on tagging along with Sir Loreni.

	At first, they were going to take the (somewhat beat-up) LAV-10
that they'd bought when they bought the ship it was on, but Amr had a
better idea; to take their Locust-class Frontier Trader (a profitable
airframe wedge J-3 300td 1G trader that Ross really should post to the list
as it's a great design) instead seeing as how it packed a sandcaster and a
95 Mj laser.  All parties met at the Locust and they began lifting off...
whereupon everybody simultaneously realized that they'd forgotten to bring
guns.

	They quickly landed again.  Kehaaarl hurried off to his room at the
spaceport hotel, to collect his FSA 15mm cassette-fed gauss anti-tank
rifle.  Perlis ran and got her ACR-12, and Amr, recalling a discussion he'd
had with one of the seedier-looking merchants on the concourse, paid far
too much for a single Spurt Gun (all hail Greg Porter, Author of the Divine
Book Emperor's Arsenal).  Meeting back at the ship, the somewhat
better-equipped party took off, with Dame Iliana recording the proceedings
on her HandyCam-12.

	Tracking the cargo hauler upon which their cargo had been loaded
was not difficult; using the landing cameras on the underside of the ship,
they followed the tracks in the regolith up and over the crater wall, and
into the boulder-strewn wilderness beyond.  Shortly after leaving starport
airspace, they were joined by two Ling Security G-Carriers, who insisted on
coming along to supervise.  They followed the cargo hauler's tracks to a
smallish (approx 1 km) crater about 40 km away from the spaceport, where
the cargo hauler was parked by the crater wall.

	Suddenly, one G-carrier disappeared in a fireball.  A split-second
thereafter, they spotted a missile contrail rising rapidly from the crater
wall; Amr took evasive action, but failed; there was a large bang as the
SAM detonated against the hull.  Down in the turret, Kehaaarl opened fire
with the ship's laser, and continued firing at the spot from which the
missile had been fired until Amr dived the ship into cover behind the
crater wall.  Seconds later, they lost radio contact with the second
G-Carrier.

	On board the ship, much discussion ensued.  Finally, negotiation
was the course of action decided upon.  Sir Loreni broadcast over the
public mainband "Uh, excuse me, about our cargo..." at which point Amr shut
down his mike, and switched over to Perlis, who started in with "listen,
assholes...".  In the meantime, Kehaaarl, determining the location from
which the second missile had been fired, commenced laser bombardment of
that area of the crater.

	Perlis's negotiating technique had better effect, as they recieved
a response to the effect that Ling was a bunch of "suppressive fascists"
and that they were fellow travellers for wanting to get their cargo back
when it could be used against Ling.  Sir Loreni then asked how Ling was
oppressive; the mysterious individual informed Sir Loreni that if he met
him at the center of the crater in 10 minutes he could show him some scars.
Perlis then threatened that if they didn't "cough up the cargo in ten",
they were "gonna get smoked!  Ten!"  and stopped counting.

	At this point, the individuals down in the crater began a
discussion as to which precise units of time she meant but since none of
the PC's were privy to it I didn't dwell on it.

	Not being complete imbeciles, the PC's did not fall for the
terrorist invitation to meet them in the crater center, and so Perlis and
Kehaaarl donned vac suits, locked and loaded, and jumped out an airlock.
Sneaking around the crater rim, staying under cover and so forth, took them
the better part of an hour; in the meantime, Sir Loreni's sensor scans of
the area revealed pretty well zero activity and that the hauler was in fact
parked next to a small cave.  Perlis and Kehaaarl arrived at the hauler (a
large tracked flatbed job).  Determining that the cave mouth was artificial
and of recent vintage, they then decided that the best thing to do was to
shine the cargo hauler's headlamps down the cave.  At about this point, Sir
Loreni recieved a call from Ling Security enquiring as to the whereabouts
of their G-Carriers.  On being informed that they were smoking debris, and
that Sir Loreni's crew were investigating, Ling Security went ballistic and
sent out large numbers of reinforcements.

	After some dithering over the possibility of boobytraps,  Kehaaarl
fired up the hauler and moved it around so that its headlamps sone into the
cave.  They revealed that after about 12 meters in, the cave, or rather
tunnel, sloped downwards.  Shutting off the headlamps, Perlis and Kehaaarl
entered the cave.  At the end of the downslope they found a largish,
clearly artificial cave with a wide, circular opening in the floor that
went a long way down.  After some discussion, Kehaaarl emulated Pippin the
Hobbit and dropped a rock down the well.  A few seconds thereafter he was
rewarded with a barrage of small arms fire and tracer.  Both of them hit
the dirt.

	They then decided to try contact again; turning the gain on her
suit radio way down (so that it couldn't transmit through the meters of
rock overhead and be recieved by Ling), Perlis somewhat more politely asked
about their cargo, mentioning that Ling Security was on their way.  After a
few seconds, she received a similarly low-gain reply to the effect that
they could forget about their cargo, that the sender was very happy Ling
was on the way, and if Perlis and Kehaaarl had any sense they'd get out of
there very quickly.  At about this point, a fleet of 8 Ling G-Carriers
arrived in the crater.  They immediately demanded that Sir Loreni download
his sensor records for the entire incident to them; he complied.

	Perlis and Kehaaarl took the advice they'd been given and left,
without informing Ling's troops, who began preparing for an assault on the
cave.  Sir Loreni and company departed without further ado.  Arriving back
at the spaceport, however, they recieved a call from their lawyer (and
Ling's CLO for Mishegaan system), Liontzel Huutzaa, enquiring as to what
was going on, and informing them that Ling had lost contact with the
expeditionary force out in the crater about five minutes previously.  He
then stated that he was going to move on board ship, as things were
beginning to look a little dicey in the mining colony.

	On final approach, the PC's noted that a new vessel, a suspiciously
unstreamlined and heavily armed one, had landed while they were gone.

	And we called it there.  More next week.

R.D. Elliott <rellio@po-box.mcgill.ca>

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

Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 14:53:34 +0930 (CST)
From: David Sarkies <oedipus@student.adelaide.edu.au>
Subject: Re: 3D starmap question

On Fri, 6 Jun 1997, Anders Backman wrote:

> >Using XZ and YZ map pairs (like Battlefleet Mars did for combat) makes
> >it easier to tell if stars are close to each other. They have to be
> >close on *both* maps.
> >
> 
> You can use a pseudo perspective drawing of the stars with lines to the
> "ground plane". This makes it fairly easy to see what stars are close to
> others but as it is still hard for maps with lots of stars per map.
> 

It is possible that stars that were once 1 parsec away from each other
will suddenly become 6 because of the new z axis of a 3d map. Though 3D
maps are more realistic, 2D maps are much easier to work with.

By the way, do any astronomer know how far away the Orion Constellation is
from Earth? Particularly the stars in the belt.

May the grace and peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all
David Sarkies

- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Apollo ordained my fate ... but the hand that struck my eyes were mine
alone." Oedipus Tyrannos
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 01:31:55 -0700
From: "Edward Swatschek" <edjs@bitslayer.net>
Subject: Re: TNE Form People--look at this

> For all of you who asked for my TNE forms, you may not have gotten 
> them all.
> 
> I just noticed that there may be a limit to the number of attachments 
> that I can attach to a reply.
> 
> You should have files through "trave56a" and "trave57b".
> 
> Look at the files I sent you.  If you don't have them, let me know, 
> and I will furnish the ones you missed.

It looks like I got files up to trave37b.


- --
Edward Swatschek  *  edjs@bitslayer.net
                     edjs@mindlink.net

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

Date: Sat, 07 Jun 1997 01:18:20 -0700
From: JayStr <jaystr@best.com>
Subject: Re: Windows on Starhsip?

Look.... if you can have lanthanum grids and sensor mets built into the
hull of a starship, why not an OPTIC grid? On the outside you have
zillions of little bullshittium optic sensors transmitting x-many pixels
of visual information; on the inside at any given point, you have a
monitor. Between, you have solid hull metal... and you STILL have the
pleasant illusion you're looking out a window. More advanced models
would allow you to pan around and look in different directions; it'd
return to zero, so to speak -- looking straight out -- after a minute or
so of inactivity.

Think of it as a freebie that comes included with any passive sensor
array. Buy a whole 'nother passive array, put it on the INSIDE of the
hull, and sweet Jesus! you've suddenly got the mother of all
surveillance systems! Cheapo ships WITHOUT passive sensors are liable to
need an external monitor just to see what's going on (as though space
flight isn't 99.9% done by instruments anyway). This fits well for
inexpensive cargo-ship-turned-discount-liners -- packed full of people
staring morosely at the wall.....

- -- Jay Stranahan

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

Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 04:35:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: pawn@CAM.ORG (Glenn Grant)
Subject: Re: Star Classification

>SD Mooney <dom@cybergoths.u-net.com> asked,
>
>Also, somebody recommended a good astronomical text a while ago (in
>relation to maps of the galaxy); could you repost the reference?

Some time ago I mentioned a book that is intended more as a
science-popularization work for the intelligent reader, as opposed to a
scholastic textbook, so it should help you out, at least in terms of how
the galaxy is structured:

_The Guide to the Galaxy_ by Nigel Henbest and Heather Couper (Cambridge,
1994). It's packed with gorgeous color astrophotography, and it has the
best, most detailed maps of various regions of the galaxy I've ever seen.
An entertaining, in-depth description of the galaxy's structure as it is
currently understood. Highly recommended.

You might also try all the second-hand or remaindering bookshops you can
find, especially the ones near universities, and look for used astronomy
textbooks (easier on the wallet than new textbooks!). But remember that
this is a rapidly changing field of knowledge - get the most recent book
you can find. For instance, just in the last month the best estimates of
the age and size of the universe have undergone major revisions.

 - G M G -

    -----------------------Glenn Grant-----------------------  
                         <pawn@cam.org>
    Web: <http://helios.physics.utoronto.ca:8080/ggrant.html>
"Nature abhors normality. It can't go too long without a mutant."
                        --Dr Blockhead

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

Date: Sat, 07 Jun 1997 22:57:42 +1200
From: Andrew Vallance <a.vallance@netaccess.co.nz>
Subject: Re: Pocket Empires

>Date: Thu, 05 Jun 1997 19:35:20 +0100
>From: Bruce E J Lewis <bruce@legend.ftech.co.uk>
>Subject: Pocket Empires

>Hi,

>	I may pick up Pocket Empires tomorrow night. can anyone tell me if it's
>worth getting, or does it suffer from the same blight as Starships and
>First Survey? I can't remember seeing a review anywhere, so I would
>appreciate a few people who have bought it letting me into a few of its
>darkest secrets.

It's an excellant product. Having all the tables in the back can be a bit of
a pain
from time to time, but you can photcopy (or even dare I say rip them out) them
for easier play. I've only found one error. The table to determine which alien
race colonised a world (if non-humans are indicated) is missing. Other than that
I'd have to say its brilliant.

  Andrew etc.
    a.vallance@netaccess.co.nz

****************************************************************************
The longest distance between two points is with children.
****************************************************************************

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

Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 00:54:02 +0100
From: SD Mooney <dom@cybergoths.u-net.com>
Subject: Re: Starports & PE

Douglas Berry wrote:

>As for Starports, PE does include rules for upgrading starports.  Costs are
>in Resources Units (RU).

For your reference 1 RU = 5000 MCr in TL12 Sylea in year 0.

- ------Dom Mooney---dom@cybergoths.u-net.com-------
"Feel the guilt / like shackles round your feet / like a halo in reverse"
                     Depeche Mode "Violator"

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

Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 21:41:40 +1000
From: Jason Anderson <midnight@kagi.com>
Subject: Re: Anybody get a shipment yet?

>Also, a more recent entry (May 26) indicated that on May 31 "Anomalies",
>"Psionics Institutes" and "The Long Way Home" would be released. May 31 +
>3 days is...well...now, so, the question goes begging: Anybody who
>pre-ordered on the internet plan get their shipment of these items yet?
>(I know I haven't, sigh...)


Heck, I haven't even got my copy of issue 26 of JTAS yet. In the end I
broke down and bought it at the local RPG shop today ($11 Australian
later...)

Cheers,
Jason

- -------
Beyond Midnight Software                               <midnight@kagi.com>
                                      <http://www.vision.net.au/~midnight>

             If it's not on fire then it's a software problem.

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

Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 13:39:58 +0200 (METDST)
From: Hans Rancke-Madsen <rancke@diku.dk>
Subject: Re: Pocket Empires

Ryan Christensen writes:
>	Yes, PE does have costs for starport development. They're listed in
>terms of Resource Units, a sort of abstract measure of resource usage,
>but there is a sidebar to figure out how many credits a Resource Unit is
>worth on a particular world. 

Yep, and by that we can see that it costs ca. 6,000 Sylean Megacredits to
improve a Class E starport to a Class D and MCr60,000 to improve that to a
C. At those prices it's a wonder that there are any starports in the
universe at all. 

The other parts of the book looks very good, but the planetary development
chapter is definitely broken. I did point out during playtest that a system
that makes it 10 times more expensive to improve the infrastructure of a
100 man outpost on a size 10 planet than it is to improve that of a size 1
planet with 10 billion inhabitants were perhaps a tad unrealistic, but
apparently the authors disagreed with me.

Take the example of infrastructure improvement that is given in the book.
Uurigger is "by far the most promising economy within the Empire outside
of Khuir itself. It has a population of 0.4 labor points, a TL of 8,
Resources of 7, and an infrastructure of 7. Culture isn't mentioned, so
let's assume it is 7. The present GWP of Uurigger is ((7*0.1*7)*0.4*7)/8
or 1.72. By improving the infrastructure it becomes ((7*0.1*7)*0.4*8)/8
or 1.96, an improvement of 0.24. To get this improvement Khuiir has had
to invest 51.2 RUs, which means it will take 213 years before the
investment has been paid off (and that's without charging any interest).
And if the repayment is to be used on Khuiir, the transportation costs 
impose another 50% loss.

OTOH, high-population worlds are incredibly good investmenst, of course.
Unless they are a few parsecs away, in which case transportation costs
will eat up any profits.

My suggestion for infrastructure improvement is that it costs RUs equal to
the TL of the planet for each labor point (100,000,000 people). 

Similarily, I recommend a cost of RUs equal to infrastructure per labor
point to uplift technology.

The cost of establishing a new colony should be Inf*TL per labor point.

The cost of moving people should be 10 RU per parsec per labor point.

Transportation costs should add 10% per parsec to foreign investments, not
50%.

Note that I haven't playtested this (except by doing a lot calculations), so
it's possible they are as badly broken as the present rules, but if my
calculations are correct, it will make the return of most investments 
reasonable (much will depend on the resources and culture of the planets, of 
course). If anyone does try it and runs into any problems, please let me know.

One thing that seems clear to me is that to the ruler of a pocket empire,
planets with less than a million inhabitants are completely insignificant
in an economic sense. That dosen't mean that they can't be tremendously
important in a political sense, of course. 


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

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

Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 07:18:37 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph E. Walsh" <ransom@connect.iconnect.net>
Subject: Re: Pocket Empires

On Sat, 7 Jun 1997, Andrew Vallance wrote:

> It's an excellant product. Having all the tables in the back can be a bit of
> a pain from time to time, but you can photcopy (or even dare I say rip 
> them out) them for easier play. 

Not that I would ever, in a million years, suggest that anyone should 
take apart their RPG products <G>, but if you have one of those thermal 
binding machines available, you can put the book in there, heat the spine 
up, then slip the pages out of one location and put them in another.  

I did that with Starships, moving the color plates to become the final 
pages in the book.  It worked fine for me that once...your mileage 
may vary.


> I've only found one error. The table to determine which alien race 
> colonised a world (if non-humans are indicated) is missing.

Just in case anyone missed it the first time around (I noticed Dave 
Bullock hasn't put it on the IG website yet), here's that table again:

ALIEN RACE TABLE

Roll  Race Type
 2-9  Minor human race.
10-11 Minor alien race.
 12+  Major alien race.



- -Joe
______________________________________________________________________________
Joseph E. Walsh  |  Game Designer for Marc Miller's Traveller
_________________|  Atari 1200XL and Apple IIGS User and Programmer

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

Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 13:46:42 +0100
From: John Wood <John@elvw.demon.co.uk>
Subject: What do people like?

In the "PE review and questions" thread, 
Robert Flammang <FLAMMANG@vms.cis.pitt.edu> wrote:
>  Overall impressions:
>  T4:        *** (****, if I modify tasks and don't use QSDS.)
>  Starships: 0
>  AA:        *** (I like it, but for some reason, I don't use it.)
>  CSC:       ****
>  M0:        *****
>  FS:        0
>  EA:        ?
>  PE:        ***** (I have used it extensively for the two weeks I've
>                    owned it, and I forsee continual use in the
>                    future. It could be better, but it's the best there
>                    is. It is truly a groundbreaking supplement!)

Hmm...counting "intuition", this matches with mine except for CSC (which
I'm not particularly interested in).  I bought AA straight away; looked
at M0 in the shop and bought it; didn't look at Starships or CSC; and
took one look at FS and thought, "I'm not paying for that".  After
reading a description of PE, I reserved a copy straight away (it should
have arrived at the shop by now, but I haven't been there for a while).
So far, reading has confirmed my intuition (and your scores).

How would other people rate the T4 products so far?

- -- 
John G. Wood  |  john@elvw.demon.co.uk  |  Oxford, United Kingdom

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

Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 08:22:23 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: 3D starmap question

In mail you write:

>>Using XZ and YZ map pairs (like Battlefleet Mars did for combat) makes
>>it easier to tell if stars are close to each other. They have to be
>>close on *both* maps.
>
> You can use a pseudo perspective drawing of the stars with lines to the
> "ground plane". This makes it fairly easy to see what stars are close to
> others but as it is still hard for maps with lots of stars per map.

That's just another form of "2 view" presentation, with the
*dis*-advantage that players & refs will have the devil's own time
producing their own maps (unless they are very skilled or someone
writes a computer program).

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

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

Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 08:45:44 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: X-Boat data capacity

In mail you write:

> However, I was browsing through my stuff last night to see what there was
> about the express boat system, and I came across the entry in the Imperial
> Encyclopedia. In that entry, there are no 'X-boat tenders'. An X-boat
> jumps in system, beams it's data to an Xboat Station, which then beams the
> data back out to another Xboat waiting to jump out. This process usually
> takes under four hours, and has been recorded at a record of seven
> minutes.

Which shows that the person who wrote it hadn't thought things thru.
The spread between 4 hours and 7 *minutes* makes little sense. Nobody
calls it a "record" if you transfer a much smaller than normal load in
a short time. More on this later...

> (WARNING WARNING I am working from possibly faulty memory here about the
> rate at which data can be transmitted at a given frequency...I think it's
> 1/2 bit per cycle)

Shannon's Law:

	C= W log2( 1 + S/N )

	C = throughput in bit per second
	W = bandwidth in hertz
	S/N = signal to noise ratio


> This gives us some numbers to work with. The frequency of a modulated beam
> gives an upper limit to the amount of data that can be transmitted using
> that beam (this is a basic restatement of Shannon's Law) at a bit density
> of 1/2 bit per cycle. We'll use tight beam maser communications. Masers,
> microwave lasers, operate in the frequency range of about 10^9 to 10^11
> Hz. lets say 10^10 for ease of calculations.
>
> By Shannon's law, we can transmit a maximum of 5 x 10^9 bits per second.
> Using modern day standards, of 8 data 1 start 1 stop and no parity bits,
> that's 5 x 10^8 bytes per second, a transmission rate of 500
> megabytes/second.

5e9=1e10 * log2(1+S/N)
.5= log2(1+S/N)
sqrt(2)=1+S/N
.414=S/N

> Ok, we have the bandwidth, Now there are two ways that the xboat station
> can handle the data.
>
> 1) they can accept all the data, then retransmit onnce it is done. This
> gives us at a first approximation, 3.5 minutes of data transmission time,
> or 105 Gigabytes of data.
>
> 2) They can stream the data to the reciever from the moment they start
> recieving it from the incoming x-boat. This gives us the full seven
> minutes of data, or 210 Gigabytes of data.
>
> And this is for the fastest transfer on record...so I suspect it was with
> a minimal data load. The IE article mentions that the usual turnaround
> time is about four hours. Lets give that a 50% slop time, and say
> they're only transferring data for 2 hours. 2 Hours at 500 Mb/second is
> 1.8 terabytes for an 'average' Xboat load.

I rather suspect that the data channel is very noisy. So they have to
use error-correction code. The 7 minutes is essentially an error-free
transmission, the 4 hours is with a "normal" number of resent packets.
That's a ratio of about 34:1. Which is why I assume a very noisy
channel. I get a "normal" S/N ratio of .01 for the channel.

> This analysis makes some restrictive assumptions, too, in using maser
> communications. If laser communications are used, then the data
> transmission rate goes up by almost 5 orders of magnitude.
>
> We can get insane, and use a downpowered X-Ray laser. X-Rays inhabit the
> range of 10^16 - 10^21 Hz. At 10^18 Hz you will get a rate of 5 x 10^17
> bits/second, or a final data rate of roughly 500 PETAbytes /second.

I draw the line at UV lasers for comm. Higher frequencies are just too
damn dangerous to work around.

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

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

End of Traveller-digest V1997 #1412
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