
Traveller-digest    Wednesday, October 27 1999    Volume 1999 : Number 1267



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

The following topics are covered in this digest:

RE: Antimatter drives
Re: Just say "no" to lhy for Jump drives
Re: Welcome back, Kenji!
Re: Welcome back, Kenji!
RE: Taxation (off topic)
Re: Just say "no" to lhy for Jump drives
A Useful Non-Canon TU
Re: Just say "no" to lhy for Jump drives
Re: Just say "no" to lhy for Jump drives
TML members as resources/email goof-ups
Re: Just say "no" to lhy for Jump drives
Re: TML Members as resources
Re: Honoring J. Andrew Keith
Traveller: Aberrant jump drives (was Re: Just say "no" to lhyd)
Re: BD Crush Depth
Re: TML Members as Resources
Re: Nobles
Re: Frame Strength (was BD Crush Depth)
Re: Just say "no" to lhy for Jump drives

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 15:59:27 -0400
From: Ian Ferguson <ian@vax2.concordia.ca>
Subject: RE: Antimatter drives

Charles Collin writes:
>I've been thinking about antimatter drives.  How would they work?

	I tend to think of antimatter power plants, with some kind
	of drive that makes use of the power.

<snipped>
>I mean, my basic view of an antimatter rocket is just that:
>You feed a stream of antimatter into a chamber where it
>encounters a stream of normal matter.  They annihilate and you
>direct the energy out the back of the ship.

	Along with some matter, presumably.

>But then I got to wondering, isn't most of the energy produced
>going to be in the form of gamma rays and other "high energy"
>forms?  How easy is it to "redirect" this?  How much thrust
>would you get by forcing this out the back of the ship? Do you
>need reaction mass?

	This touches on a question that I have mulled over.  What
	sort of thrust do you get if your reaction mass is expelled
	at near c?

>Then I thought "I have no idea, I'll ask the friendly folks at
>the TML!"  And here we are... :-)

	A wise decision, and hopefully somebody here will enlighten
	us.

Peez

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:47:11 -0500 ()
From: "Joseph R. Dietrich" <yikes@evansville.net>
Subject: Re: Just say "no" to lhy for Jump drives

>Hm...you do realize that .01gs is only .025AU from a sun-sized star, and
>only 10 diameters from an earth-sized planet.

Oops. I did realize that at one point in my life ...

Okay, let's bump it up to 0.001 or 0.0001 gs or some such.


>No need to be concerned with 'stellar-sized' gravity wells either,
>assuming you can't jump into solid objects comets less than several
>hundred miles across will be impossible targets.


What I am attempting to handwave here is this: To propigate out of jump
space, you need a gravity well. However, there is some margin of error to
any jump, due to some sort of uncertainty effect of hyperspace. At parsec
and multi-parsec distances you can only expect to come with in your
destination point +/- millions and millions of kilometers. Anything smaller
than a a great, big gravity well and you might miss (and end up in
jumpspace forever-ever-ever ... mwah-hahahaaa! ;-).

It's an attempt to make it so that: a) shipping has to jump to a gravity
well and b) said gravity well can't just be some small artificial gravity
source that can be convienently placed by the Imperium.

[snip stuff]

>It also seriously encourages high-jump ships; you might see the jump-6
>merchant for some routes.

I don't have too much a problem with this -- it's going to be a space opera
setting. I think I'm going to make the jump drives more volume-intensive,
though, and this will offset it somewhat.


>At the specified distances, you're going to be regularly passing
>_dangerously_ close to stars.  Ships will need fairly substantial masses
>of coolant to safely travel that close to a star, and will want to be
>moving fairly fast.

I assume increasing the gs required for propagation from jumpspace will
increase the distances involved?

Thanks for the comments!

Ciao,

Joseph R. Dietrich
yikes@evansville.net

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 16:24:32 -0400
From: Ethan Henry <egh@klg.com>
Subject: Re: Welcome back, Kenji!

Craig Berry <cberry@cinenet.net> wrote:
> Well spoken, comrade. :)  On a more serious note...I wonder how the
> Imperium would respond to truly mercantilist (as opposed to free-market)
> capitalism?  Would an industrial world practicing trade protectionism and
> product dumping a la Japan circa 1988 be stopped, and if so, by whom, and
> using what official or unofficial techniques?

Product dumping is not a victimless crime.

I refer you to Book 4: 'Mercenary' for the most likely answer.
- --
Ethan Henry                                        egh@klg.com
Java Evangelist, KL Group                   http://www.klg.com

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 16:34:12 EDT
From: Sethkimmel@aol.com
Subject: Re: Welcome back, Kenji!

In a message dated 10/27/99 6:11:33 PM !!!First Boot!!!, cberry@cinenet.net 
writes:

<< Well spoken, comrade. :)  On a more serious note...I wonder how the
 Imperium would respond to truly mercantilist (as opposed to free-market)
 capitalism?  Would an industrial world practicing trade protectionism and
 product dumping a la Japan circa 1988 be stopped, and if so, by whom, and
 using what official or unofficial techniques? >>

The MegaCorps would crush them like a grape...

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 22:48:28 +0200
From: "Mark Seemann" <dko3835@vip.cybercity.dk>
Subject: RE: Taxation (off topic)

Wed, 27 Oct 1999 15:36:39 -0400 Ian Ferguson <ian@vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:

> If that wasn't bad enough, here in Quebec there are both
> federal and provincial sales taxes: the feddies charge 7%
> on the price of any goods or services purchased, then the
> provincials charge 7% on the price PLUS the federal tax.
> Thus, we poor sods pay something like 14.5% sales tax (of
> which 0.5% is tax on tax).  I cound be of by a few tenths
> of a percent, but you get the idea.

In an attempt to stop this thread, I'll throw this in: Living in Denmark and earning a wage a good mark above average, I pay:

First, 9% of ALL my income
Then, approximately 55% on what's left
Then, the general sales tax is 25% on ALL goods, except those that are taxed even heavier (everything which is fun).
And the cars are taxed 200% (not a typing error)

So there! :-/

(okay, so the hospitals are free, the schools and universities are free, etc. And no, Denmark is not a communist state - it's just the way it is)

Mark Seemann
mark@dk-online.dk (home)
marks@rainier.com (work)
20985193@note.sonofon.dk (SMS)
http://seemann.homepage.dk

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:14:33 -0700
From: Richard Hough <rdhough@home.com>
Subject: Re: Just say "no" to lhy for Jump drives

> In my upcoming, abberrant Traveller game I am considering dropping the lhyd
> fuel requirement for jump drives. Ships will only be required to fill their
> capacitors with energy before jumping. All jumps will require a
> sufficiently large (stellar-sized) gravity well of at least .01 g as a
> destination and will more or less take one week.

Since your drives work inside a gravity well, why have starships at all?
Why not build jump drives in army bases, subway stations, mines, hotels,
embassies, or whatever and jump people and cargo directly to their final
destination?

- --
IMTU t4+ ru ge+ !3i(3i++) jt-- au+ ls- 

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 16:12:48 -0500
From: "Robert Eaglestone" <eaglesto@nortelnetworks.com>
Subject: A Useful Non-Canon TU

Gentletravellers,

After reading a post by Joseph Dietrich about his Acanonical
Jump Drive Traveller Universe (AJDTU), I was thinking of
the influences such a system has had on TV and how useful it
might be to detail such an Alternate Traveller Universe (ATU),
for those who cared.

Consider a TU that's more like Babylon 5.  Introduce jump
gates/jump chargers and WHAMO!  You've got B5, and just
took a long step to assimilating the B5 RPG group.

Place your timeline sometime during the early Nth Interstellar
Wars, and you almost HAVE the B5 timeline, for free.

Some (cool) drawbacks to jumpgates might be:

1) They operate based on gravitic principles, and thus must be in
a specific gravity well to work at all.  Thus your gate placement
will be dictated by planetary alignments, or just orbital distance
from the primary.

2) They're expensive and inefficient.  If you can buy/sell cheap
jump drives you're better off -- you can push maintenance onto
the starship operator instead of the owning government.  Though
you lose a military chokepoint (not really if real jumpdrives can
exist), you also free up resources you'd otherwise have idle at
the gate.

How expensive?  Make 'em real expensive, like the cost of an
orbital class A starport or a global powerplant or a Naval fleet.
And then there's the yearly maintenance, at 1% of its cost...
ouch!

Who could afford these beasties?  Significant worlds with
high-quality starports.

Joseph, this probably isn't what you had in mind.  I was
thinking more along the lines of syncretism where you were
thinking a true Alternate TU.  Well, anyone can scale
accordingly.

- -Rob

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 16:19:52 -0500 ()
From: "Joseph R. Dietrich" <yikes@evansville.net>
Subject: Re: Just say "no" to lhy for Jump drives

>Can the jump capacitors be charged up before exiting
>jump space?

I don't like it, but possibly. I am having a hard time thinking of a
handwave to prevent this. I would like them to have to spend some time in
realspace between jumps -- but I suppose you could make a ship with a power
plant so big that you could fill the capacitors in a second anyway sooo...

Hmm. Perhaps each jump requires astrogation observations and calculations
that can take up to a couple of hours to perform.


>How long can they be charged?

As long as they can be in Traveller. ;-) I know that's a non-answer, but
I'm not sure that there is a time limit in the normal rules (here I'm
talking High guard and MT).


>Does holding a charge for long times cause damage?

If it does in Traveller. ;-) See above answer.


>There might still be reasons to go there  For example,
>you might have run out of Oorts.

Then you'll have to hoof it in realspace. :-)


>>3.) No microjumps to the outsystem.
>
>Why not?

I mentioned this in another letter. My idea is that you need a big gravity
well to propagate into. Because of an "uncertainty principle" inherent in
hyperspace travel, this well needs to be millions and millions of km in
size, otherwise you might miss (and never come back from jumpspace).


>>4.) Smaller ships, or more free space for cargo and
>>    other things in existing ships (although this can be
>>    counteracted somewhat by increasing the volume of the
>>    jump drive itself.
>
>	Huge change here.  Little fuel to buy, lots of cargo
>	space, no problems with unrefined fuel: the rates for
>	carrying cargo or passengers would tend to drop.

Yes. This is okay, though. I want space travel to be cheaper, and shipments
like raw ore or grain to make more sense.


>>5.) No High Guard -- except in describing ortillery for
>>    planetary assault.
>
>	Or when searching the gas giant for hidden SDBs.

No reason to go to a gas giant anyway -- I follow the "gas giants are
tactically insignificant" school of thought.

[snip other comments]

Thanks for the comments! These are the very things I need to think of.

Ciao,

Joseph R. Dietrich
yikes@evansville.net

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:19:59 -0700 (PDT)
From: Kiri Aradia Morgan <tiamat@tsoft.com>
Subject: Re: Just say "no" to lhy for Jump drives

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Richard Hough wrote:

> > In my upcoming, abberrant Traveller game I am considering dropping the lhyd
> > fuel requirement for jump drives. Ships will only be required to fill their
> > capacitors with energy before jumping. All jumps will require a
> > sufficiently large (stellar-sized) gravity well of at least .01 g as a
> > destination and will more or less take one week.
> 
> Since your drives work inside a gravity well, why have starships at all?
> Why not build jump drives in army bases, subway stations, mines, hotels,
> embassies, or whatever and jump people and cargo directly to their final
> destination?
> 
Now we're getting awfully close to the Banks' Culture universe we were
talking about the other day (which doesn't feel at ALL like Traveller and
isn't, in my NAAHO, space opera, even though I like it.)

I've not quite forgiven Banks for destroying Nagoya though... it's itoshii
Hiroshi-chama's home town.  (Though at times he speaks as though he'd like
to blast it, the family shrine and all need to stay standing.)

Kiri  =)

******************************************************************************
Kiri Aradia Morgan                                  93!  Thou Art God
tiamat@tsoft.com

"If time passes, everything turns into beauty
If the rains stop, tears clean the scars of memory away
Everything starts wearing fresh colors
Every sound begins playing a heartfelt melody
Jealousy embellishes a page of the epic
Desire is embraced in a dream..."              -- X-JAPAN 

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 16:22:46 -0500
From: Dan Roseberry <rosebee@troi.csw.net>
Subject: TML members as resources/email goof-ups

Charles Collin (in Email goof-ups) wrote:
> Ahem.  We have a few people (including one or two who claim to have
> computer 3+ :-) who do not seem to know how to use their email progs.

Oy vey......never claimed comp 3+; in fact comp 1-. But you already knew

that. Also:  Shotgun 1- (5 hits out of 25 shells spent vs shooting clays
on
average) and groundvehicle/atv 1- (car and 4-wheeler veer toward water
filled ditch often; see PLOP below)

As for the rest:
8436A6   Age: only Grandfather knows.
1 term college, 1 term graduate school (fail) 2 terms merchant (retail
sales
manager), 1+ terms bureaucrat (tax preparer).
admin-1 history-1 pol.science-1 broker-1 trader-1

PS You didnt sound crochety, Mr. Collin. Your just having to teach all
of us
dumb people how to use email properly ;-) Thanks.
Dan Roseberry(Plop 101) IMTU: tc++ tm++ he+  Dr+ Ne+ Da+ etc.
plop, (`plop) -n. the sound of plopping, as in car plopped, scoutship
plopped etc.

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:26:22 -0700
From: "David P. Summers" <summers@alum.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: Just say "no" to lhy for Jump drives

>Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 10:01:49 -0500 ()
>From: "Joseph R. Dietrich" <yikes@evansville.net>

>In my upcoming, abberrant Traveller game I am considering dropping the lhyd
>fuel requirement for jump drives. Ships will only be required to fill their
>capacitors with energy before jumping. All jumps will require a
>sufficiently large (stellar-sized) gravity well of at least .01 g as a
>destination and will more or less take one week.
>
>Okay, how can I expect this to change the Traveller setting?
 This is what I
>can think of:
>
>1.) Faster transit times for ships in a big hurry.
>    No need to stopover for fuel.
>2.) No jumping to the Oort cloud of a system.
>3.) No microjumps to the outsystem.
>4.) Smaller ships, or more free space for cargo and
>    other things in existing ships (although this can be
>    counteracted somewhat by increasing the volume of the
>    jump drive itself.

This is the biggie, unless you make the drive _really_ big.

>5.) No High Guard -- except in describing ortillery for
>    planetary assault.

Military ships will still probably want to be albe to do wilderness
refueling, but they probably will fuse the hydrogen as the collect
it and just store the energy.

______________________________
summers@alum.mit.edu
(This is the net.  My e-mail address may be in Boston, but I'm in California.)

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:42:47 -0700
From: "Benyamene' ZeAbe' Akella" <xrp@sierratel.com>
Subject: Re: TML Members as resources

> 54 in Scofield, but well annotated :-)

<homer>
Mmmm, Scofield....
</homer>

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:49:33 -0700
From: "Benyamene' ZeAbe' Akella" <xrp@sierratel.com>
Subject: Re: Honoring J. Andrew Keith

> Either create the "J. Andrew Keith"-class as a class of IISS survey vessels,
OR
> name a single large IISS vessel as the "J. Andrew Keith" (my personal
> preference).

How about a ubiquitous recon craft called an Andy? I'm thinking two man
shuttle type for checking out planets, with lots of sensors an little or no
armament. Sounds cozy to me.
"I'll skip down in the Andy and scope things out, want to ride shotgun?"
;)

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 17:17:04 -0500 ()
From: "Joseph R. Dietrich" <yikes@evansville.net>
Subject: Traveller: Aberrant jump drives (was Re: Just say "no" to lhyd)

>Since your drives work inside a gravity well, why have starships at all?
>Why not build jump drives in army bases, subway stations, mines, hotels,
>embassies, or whatever and jump people and cargo directly to their final
>destination?

The same reason you can't put a jump drive on less than a 100 dt ship, of
course! :-)

I'm not proposing jumping out of a gravity well any more than a normal
Traveller ship does. And actually, I wasn't trying to suggest jumping
*into* a gravity well any more than a normal Traveller ship does (I just
had my numbers wrong).

Preferably, what I am trying to do is come up with a FTL scenario similar,
but not exactly like, the normal Traveller model.

Here are the rules I am using to develop the concept.

* No lhyd required for jumps.
* Jumps should take a week +/- several hours.
* There should be a (significant) minimum size on starships.
* There should jump routes and choke points.
* There should be no jumping to truly empty hexes
  (a little wiggle room here for brown dwarfs).
* Jump destinations should be relatively close
  to a star or other hugely massive object. No
  jumping from system to system via the Oort clouds
  or outer planets.
* There should be some required time in realspace between jumps.
  Up to several hours.
* Ideally, one shouldn't get to jump from 100 diameters
  to 100 diameters of each world. Instead, one jumps
  from 100 diameters to x distance from the destination star.
* And now that it's been mentioned -- space travel should be cheaper.

I don't like:

* Fixed transfer points (as in _A Mote in God's Eye_
  or _Startide Rising_).
* "The fabric of spacetime needs a rest" excuse to
  make a ship stay in realspace.

I don't mind huge jumpgates that cost billions to maintain (in fact I am
planning on using them -- it's a Fading Suns influence). But they should be
out of the Imperium's capability to build (TL 18+ Ancient artifacts).

Ciao,

Joseph R. Dietrich
yikes@evansville.net

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 18:48:46 -0700
From: "David J. Golden" <goldendj@pcisys.net>
Subject: Re: BD Crush Depth

At 06:36 PM 10/26/99 PST, you wrote:
>In mail you write:
>
>> I have been trying to figure the frame strength required for ships
>> given a G rating. I presume there is some way of converting crush
>> depth force to equate to an acceleration force. One atmosphere = 1
kg
>> per square cm.
>
>That's 1 kg*f* per square cm. Or 9.8 newtons.

	Huh? 1 atm=101.3 kPa=101.3 kN/m^2=1.013 N/cm^2


- -- "Eternal Vigilance is the price of liberty"
   -- Thomas Jefferson
   (That used to mean we watched the government, not vice
   versa)

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 18:56:12 -0700
From: "David J. Golden" <goldendj@pcisys.net>
Subject: Re: TML Members as Resources

Kenji's back! Yaay!

(Welcome back!)

>1)  Everyone with a BRAIN in their head knows that Strephon only
gave
>Imperial Warrants to degenerate liberal-policy-children intent only
on
>furthering their homosexual agenda, like Norris. 
>
>2)  Battledress certainly can withstand crushing pressures of many
>thousands of atmospheres, because they have to:  Imperial Marines
are so
>incompetent there's no other way they can survive.
>
>3)  Communism is not only feasible, but is inevitable.  I continue
to be
>amazed that the crypto-fascist slaveholding mentality of the Third
>Imperium is so virulently defended by the otherwise stellar
thinktank that
>is the TML.  Really, it's time to close the books on mercantilism in
>Traveller.  Private property is yesterday's neurosis.  The future
lies
>with the progressive "races" -- the Zhodani, the Sayat, etc.
>
>I'm sure there are other threads besides these underway, all of
which I
>look forward to participating in with all my new-found maturity and
peace
>of mind that I can muster.
>
>Kenji
>
>

- -- "Eternal Vigilance is the price of liberty"
   -- Thomas Jefferson
   (That used to mean we watched the government, not vice
   versa)

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 22:17:21 +0100
From: "Matthew Bond" <mgb@akira.swinternet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Nobles

- -----Original Message-----
From: Douglas E. Berry <gridlore@pop.mindspring.com>
To: traveller@lists.imagiconline.com <traveller@lists.imagiconline.com>
Date: 27 October 1999 19:39
Subject: Re: Nobles


>At 04:58 PM 10/27/1999 +0200, you wrote:
>>Douglas E. Berry writes:
>
>>>Or your wealth and influence make you SOC F, but your "real" title is
>>>Baron Pacifica.
>>
>>If you're SOC F, you can hobnob with people like Duchess Delphine. How
>>many people per planet do you think would qualify by that test?


Naaah! That'd be Carousing-F <g>

>Very few.  But if the Baron Pacifica also owns Feldercarb Shipyards, which
>is Mora's largest single cash cow, he might well wield the same level of
>real power and influence as the Duchess.
>
>{Power politics, got to love 'em.)


Quite! SOC is the measure of ones power and influence in *Society at large*,
not necessarily ones skill in *Socialising*.

After all, a middle manager at SuSAG wields considerable power (especially
if he's in charge of some secret R&D Project), but probably doesn't get out
much.

A Wit and Raconteur gets invites to all the best parties, but, to paraphrase
Stalin, "Oscar Wilde! How many Divisions does *he* have?" <g>

Matt

Matthew Bond
mgb@akira.swinternet.co.uk
www.akira.swinternet.co.uk/strom.html
- --------------------------------------------------------------
"To strike a man who insults you is one thing...
...To run him through with a sword is quite another!"
- --------------------------------------------------------------

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 23:39:24 +0100
From: John Buston <John.Buston@tesco.net>
Subject: Re: Frame Strength (was BD Crush Depth)

>> Very small objects, like missiles lose.
>Nah.  Small objects lose mass faster than they lose hit points.  Actually, large objects lose,
>it reduces the maximum Gs for large craft.  For a traveller feel, I'd increase the max to 1.0
>tons/hp, blame G-compensation for that.

During the last thruster thread, it was stated that we have missiles now capable
of doing 100G for a very short burst.

If I use the 0.1 stons/HP rule then I can only make 120G missiles at TL13. I
could easily make 200G+ GTL13 missiles otherwise.

>> So G compensation is the reason big military ships are buildable with
>> Traveller performance? They would otherwise be unbuildable using this
>> formula.  Shades of Star Treks structural integrity field here, though on a
>> smaller scale. 

>Yup.  A 10,000 tD 1-G ship is a ridiculous engineering challenge with realistic materials
>(think of the Missouri flying through the air.  It would break in half).  

Yes, 1G for a 10,000 DT cargo ship with minimum armour (DR100) is just above the
0.1 tons/hp limit.

Actually not that big for an armoured ship. The 400DT SDB in the GT book would
be unbuildable without Extra Heavy Frame strength. Anything bigger than that or
with more armour would be undoable.

So a sensible safety rule would be to not let anything bigger than its thrust/hp
rating enter atmosphere.

In space though it should be easier to build bigger, providing a turn is nice
and slow. Thinking supertanker.

Using fully vectored thrust for large craft is pointless too. 
Goodbye GT thrusters ;-)

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

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 23:39:42 +0100
From: John Buston <John.Buston@tesco.net>
Subject: Re: Just say "no" to lhy for Jump drives

>In my upcoming, abberrant Traveller game I am considering dropping the lhyd
>fuel requirement for jump drives. Ships will only be required to fill their
>capacitors with energy before jumping. 

>All jumps will require a sufficiently large (stellar-sized) gravity well 
>of at least .01 g as a destination and will more or less take one week.

If by that you mean precipitated out at the 0.01G limit and can jump from the
0.01G limit, then note that this is less than 4 diameters out for Earth. Gravity
halves with every planetary radius step you take. This vastly speeds up transit
times and makes planetary defence even harder. 

You want 0.00001 G to approximate 100D for planets, and 0.001 G to approximate
100D for the sun. Note Earth is only just over 100D from the sun.

0.01G is about 25D from the sun (in any direction).

0.001G from Earth is about 15 diameters (half the distance to the moon).

>Okay, how can I expect this to change the Traveller setting? This is what I
>can think of:

>1.) Faster transit times for ships in a big hurry.

The difference between a jump 1 and jump 2 ship with this is much less on the
mains, and much worse on the voids.

>    No need to stopover for fuel.

For commercial craft this is not an issue. Unloading/Loading times for cargo and
passengers have always exceeded fueling rate. Though of course now there is no
charge for fuel. 

X-boat routes are faster.

For military craft, this is Nirvana. There is much less difference between an
SDB and a starship. Ships are both more agile, and more heavily armoured.

>2.) No jumping to the Oort cloud of a system.
>3.) No microjumps to the outsystem.

Unless there is a large asteroid, small moon or wayward planet out there...

>4.) Smaller ships, or more free space for cargo and
>    other things in existing ships (although this can be
>    counteracted somewhat by increasing the volume of the
>    jump drive itself.

You need to halve all the shipping rates to make the economics work as per
traveller (assuming no fuel charges and all the jump fuel space is usable for
cargo). Probably simplest.

>5.) No High Guard -- except in describing ortillery for planetary assault.

and that threat is much worse with ships jumping in at 4 diameters.

>What else. Poke holes in this idea please.

If you use jump masking, the incoming jump point will mask the outgoing jump
point half the time.

Gas Giants have less strategic advantage. Though their moons are still good
outposts and atmospheres are still good hiding places. 

All planets, most moons and large asteroids are potential jump points and need
watching and guarding, and as this is practical, may be attempted. The 0.01G
(25D ish) radius round the star is still an awful lot of space to watch though.

Fleet tactics change beyond recognition, logistics are so much easier. No battle
tenders. No oilers.

Making high risk jumps close to small masses becomes a standard military tactic.

You can't make your PCs visit a planet to refuel, when this is required for plot
purposes. They just jump to a random jump point around the star, look around,
move a bit, and jump out again.

A ship can nearly always jump away. You can't make your players stay in system.

Nearly all the scenarios out there will need significant work to fit into your
campaign. Deckplans, pictures, descriptions, logistics, will all need changing
or justifying. The same is true if you use Star Trek, B5 or Star Wars modules,
though in the opposite direction.

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

End of Traveller-digest V1999 #1267
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