
-------- TML Message #612 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 612
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 89 12:38 EST
From: METLAY@vms.cis.pitt.edu
Subject: Gravitics and liftoffs



The new Starship Ops Manual from DGP addresses this matter; it seems that
thruster plates have a limited but usable efficiency in other directions
than straight back, so a ship with thrusters in back can lift straight up
if its engines are powerful enough.

Usually what's done is that the ship lifts in a horizontal attitude, slowly
tilts back in midair until it points straight up, then boosts. The reverse
process is used for landing. (Alternatively, if there's an air-traffic hold
pattern, horizontal flight is also possible.)

metlay

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-------- TML Message #613 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 613
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 89 10:09:55 EDT
From: dan@engrg.uwo.ca (Dan Corrin)
Subject: Re:  ship gravitics


on  Mon, 9 Oct 89 16  baranski%yoda.enet.dec.com@RELAY.CS.NET said:

> 
> I wish Traveller would either explictly define the spaceships gravity drive, or
> explain how these ships land and take off without them.  And allow for ships
> designs with and without the gravity drives.
> 
I thought that the starship operators' guide explaned a lot of these
areas such as take-off procedures and gravitics. I haven't read this
in several months, so I may be mistaken...

Has anyone else seen the new MegaTraveller book "World Builder's guide"
(I think that is the exact title...It is difficult to think of these things
when they are on the shelf at home, and I am at work.) I have caught
at least 5 minor errors, and several differences between the examples
and the text. (For those of you who haven't seen this, it is in the large
a repeat of the information in the books "Grand Survey", and "Grand Census"
from digest group. Much of the information has been revised, and expanded on.)

		-Dan

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-------- TML Message #614 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 614
Subject: Graphics Programs/mapping/plans
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 89 18:36:41 EDT
From: jbayer@ispi.COM (Jonathan Bayer)


Greetings fellow travellers;

I am getting ready to start up a new campaign, and have a small problem.
There will be a lot of spacecraft the players will be interacting with,
and I don't want to have to lug around a ton of books.  I was wondering
if there are any programs available that would let me either read in a
set of plans (using a scanner) or enter the plans in some way, store
them in a database, and let the players or myself recall them and/or
print them out as we need.  I would prefer it to work on a pc on a CGA
( :-(  card at a minimum (ega or vga preferred), but do have a Macintosh
available if there is software there.  I do not want suggestions such as
"Use Macdraw or MacPaint".  I am looking for something a bit more
oriented towards what I want it to do.  I also am not interested in
AutoCAD, since it costs $ 3000.


JB

- -- 
Jonathan Bayer		Intelligent Software Products, Inc.
(201) 245-5922		500 Oakwood Ave.
jbayer@ispi.COM		Roselle Park, NJ   07204    

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-------- TML Message #615 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 615
Subject: TML Glitches
Date: 11 Oct 89 14:48:47 PDT (Wed)
From: (James T Perkins) jamesp@dadla.WR.TEK.COM



News flash!

There has been a slight delay of service over the last two days, and I
have been very silent.  Problem is my little automatic file custodian
program that skulks around at 1am came alive and went mad, removing all
files that hadn't been modified in 24 hours.  So, I had to restore all
my files and I hope I haven't lost any mail messages or list traffic.

Now we return you back to your regularly scheduled programming.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Traveller Mailing List Administrator	  James T. Perkins @ Tektronix, Inc
traveller-request@dadla.wr.tek.com	  Beaverton, Oregon, USA
uunet!dadla.wr.tek.com!traveller-request  "Load Auto/Evade, Beowulf!"

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-------- TML Message #616 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 616
From: wrgate.wr.tek.com!att.att.COM!violin!plb@tektronix.TEK.COM
Subject: Re: Graphics Programs/mapping/plans
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 89 8:10:08 EDT


[This came to traveller-request@dadla.wr.tek.com, looks like it was
meant for traveller@dadla.wr.tek.com.  Watch those automatic reply
headers! -- James]

>> 
>> 
>> Greetings fellow travellers;
Greetings!
>> 
>> I am getting ready to start up a new campaign, and have a small problem.
>> There will be a lot of spacecraft the players will be interacting with,
>> and I don't want to have to lug around a ton of books.  I was wondering
>> if there are any programs available that would let me either read in a
>> set of plans (using a scanner) or enter the plans in some way, store
>> them in a database, and let the players or myself recall them and/or
>> print them out as we need.  I would prefer it to work on a pc on a CGA
	[ stuff deleted ]

ARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!   Your about 6 months too early!   I am ATTEMPTING to 
produce just such a program for the IBM compatibles...   Haven't been able 
to spend enough time working on it tho'.    Do me a favor and EMAIL me a set
of specs that would be EXACTLY what you are looking for.   Part of why this 
project has taken so long is a lack of specs.

Pete

- -- 
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/* - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  */

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-------- TML Message #617 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 617
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 89 16:39:49 PDT
From: gazis@halley.arc.nasa.gov
Subject: RE: ship gravitics, was take off procedures


[This came to jamesp@dadla.wr.tek.com, looks like it was meant for
traveller@dadla.wr.tek.com.  Watch those automatic reply headers! -- James]

       EIGHT WORLDS DRIVE SYSTEMS AND FLIGHT OPPERATIONS

Drine Systems
     Eight Worlds physics does not seem to allow for gravitics
technology.  Eight worlds ships have three drive systems:

     1) Hyperdrive.  Hyperdrive relieves much of the tedium of
interstellar travel, provided that no attempt is made to employ
it too near an interfering mass.  If this precaution is omitted,
the ship explodes, relieving ALL the tedium of interstellar flight.
The minimum distance at which hyperdrive can be employed without
explosive consequences (the infamous 'jump limit') is dependant
upon the intrinsic curvature of space, which quantity is, of 
course, equivalent to local tidal forces.  Thus, the jump limit is 
proportional to the cube root of the interfering mass.
     The jump limit for a terrestrial mass is about 1.0E+06 km.
The jump limit Sol is somewhere around the orbit of Mercury.  Or
perhaps Venus.  Who cares?  Both are worthless rocks.  The point
is that hyperdrive CAN be used for intrasystem transit, should one 
wish to travel to Io to replenish one's sulphur supply.  This is NOT 
the case in a system of habitable planets in orbit around a star of 
type M or smaller.  Which had important strategic consequences after 
the collapse of the Imperium.
     Hyperspace jumps appear to conserve momentum.  Certain aspects
of hyperspace jumps appear to allow for violation of causality, but
the relevant experiments are beyond the finacial capacity of any 
existing civilization.
     2) Fusion drives.  These are open core magnetic confinement 
fusion reactors which function as high specific impulse reaction 
drives.  (The most common configuration is a leaky tandem mirror
machine which burns D + D -> Useless Hot Junk.  The Useless Hot Junk 
heats reaction mass to provide thrust.)  Fusion drives are are used 
for planetary approaches and departures, to match velocity with a 
destination, and for Space Laser Tag, a fast-paced competitive sport 
with a simple and easily understood scoring system which is quite 
popular beyond the Frontier.
     Drives are not particularly useful without associated structure 
to keep the ship from collapsing.  I lump the mass and cost of the
load-bearing structure in with the mass and cost of the drives.  An 
interesting consequence of this approach is that it does not matter how 
much acceleration the ship pulls.  The structure of a 200 tonne ship 
with 200 tonnes of cargo accelerating at 2 Gs is under the same load
(4 MNewtons) if the ship dumps its cargo and flees at 4 Gs.  The crew, 
however, may notice a subtle change in their level of squishedness.
     Since fusion drives have open cores, they can't be used inside
an atmosphere lest the atmosphere leak in around the sides of the
plasma column, induce heavy-ion instabilities, and cause the ship
to explode boom.
     3) Atmospheric drives.  These are commonly known as 'Lifters',
and consist of an assortment of thermal turbojets and scramjets
driven by waste heate from the power plant.  (Eight worlds power
plants are closed core high-field magnetic confinement devices 
which commonly use the D + Li6 -> 2He4 cycle.  The energetic alpha
particles are then run through an MHD generator.  No muss, no fuss,
no radiation, and if there are any leaks in the system the crew all 
sound like Donald Duck.  It's great.)  Lifters are used to lift off, 
tool around the planet, depart the atmosphere, or land.  In the hands 
of unskilled crew, lifters can also be used to crash.
     Since lifters are part of the technology necessary to land on
a planet, I lump them in with streamlining, along with the aeroshell,
stabilizing fins, landing jacks, and paint job.  The thrust limitation
for lifters is imposed by the ship's load-bearing structure.  There
is no obvious benefit to attaching a 200 MNewton lifter system to
a ship which can only stand 8 MNewtons of thrust.

Flight Opperations
     This is, of course, all very great and keen and all, but does not
answer the question 'How do you land these things?'  (A question I have
often asked while landing my hang glider.)
     Most Eight Worlds ships are tail-landers (The drives are aligned 
along the aerodynamic axis of the ship and they land on their tails...  
What WERE you thinking!)  This is a fine and dandy configuration which 
has been used successfully on any number of wierd experimental aircraft
back during the 1950s when they didn't know any better.  There was
also a bizarre proposal to build a tail-landing version of an F-16
for use on small naval vessels.  Ick.  Tail landers are not all THAT
hard to land (my hang glider is arguably a tail lander if it is landed
correctly.  At other times it is a nose lander), but they can fall over
once they are on the ground.  The usual cause of such accidents is
soil failure, which grows more likely as the weight, and hence the
ground pressure of the ship, increase.  The maximum safe weight for
landing a tail-lander on a compacted dirt field is 400 tonnes, which
co-incidentally is the size of most Eight Worlds trading ships.  My
my.  Another cause of toppling incidents are careless PC starcrew who 
land their ship on a 45 degree slope.  It was fun, it was great, you 
should have been there.
     An alternative configuration is a belly-lander.  Belly-landers have
their primary drives aligned along the aerodynamic axis, but possess
an additional set of lifters or a thrust vectoring scheme which allows
them to hover in a horizontal orientation.  That this scheme is feasible
is proven by one of NASA's AV-8 Harriers which even now is hovering
outside my window producing a terrible racket and making it difficult
to do any serious work.  Belly-landers are more stable on the ground, 
a field which can handle a tail-lander can handle a belly-lander of 2-3 
times the size.  With their extra lifters they are also a tad more
manuverable in the atmosphere.  But belly-landers have two problems:
     1) There is an extra mass and cost penalty, equal to 50% the cost 
of streamlining.  This penalty has proven prohibitive for small ships,
which do not need belly-landing gear anyway so who cares.
     2) The coffee mugs fall off the shelves.  This problem is generic
generic to all Eight Worlds ships when they make the transition from
space to atmospheric flight, but it is much worse for belly-landers
since it persists after they are on the ground.  Eight Worlds ship 
designers use lots of velcro, and draw heavily on 1950s Sci Fi flicks 
for their deck plans.  The results are agreed by all to be somewhat
unsatisfactory.

More Flight Ops
     Nope.  No more flight ops.  I lied.

Paul R. Gazis
Sunnyvale, CA

gazis@hal.span.nasa.gov   or
gazis%hal.span@ames.arc.nasa.gov   or
something like that


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-------- TML Message #618 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 618
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 89 22:22 EST
From: WRICKER@northeastern.edu
Subject: Laser guided laser rifles (late)


[Belatedly retransmitted -- reply to Pierson@Encore reply to Adrion]

Dan & Adrion,

I had just *assumed* that were were using low-power aiming mode on our
laser shoulder-weapons.  Iron sights are for the birds if you're not shooting
lead.

A current riot-control assault rifle has a VISIBLE-red aiming laser slung under
the barrel -- the red bouncing dot tends to having a calming effect on the 
rioter(s) its aimed at, I'm told.

For efficient transfer of energy from battery to victim, i suspect killing
lasers *are not* in the visible spectrum.  The only operaiontal deathray
I know of today, in man-aimable form, is a Maser -- called a navy gunnery
target designation radar.  Technicians supposedly adjust its iron sights by
aiming at a seagull (*Never an albatross!*) and squeezing the "trigger".
Basically a high-power, lasing, radar gun that produces instant oven
fried seagull at 30 paces and calls homing smart-bombs when painted on
large naval targets far away.

- -- Bill Ricker (WRicker@NUHub.ACS.Northeastern.EDU)

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-------- TML Message #619 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 619
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 89 08:35:27 PDT
From: gazis@halley.arc.nasa.gov
Subject: RE: Re: cold start launch


[This came to jamesp@dadla.wr.tek.com, looks like it was meant for
traveller@dadla.wr.tek.com.  Watch those automatic reply headers! -- James]

RE: F-20s

      Northrop has, in fact,demonstrated the ability of an F-20 to be
airbourne at 20,000 feet some absurdly small time after the pilot has
been strapped into the cockpit.  What has NOT been revealed is how
long the crew chief has had to beat on the plane beforehand.
      In striking contrast, the most optomistic time NASA eve{ quoted
for turning around a shuttle was something like a month.
     A few minutes to do a fast launch, a few weeks.  Both times are
utterly reasonable.  Take your pick.

Paul Gazis

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-------- TML Message #620 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 620
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 89 14:35:01 PDT
From: gazis@halley.arc.nasa.gov
Subject: RE: ahem....


[This came to jamesp@dadla.wr.tek.com, looks like it was meant for
traveller@dadla.wr.tek.com.  Watch those automatic reply headers! -- James]

TO: The Estimable Metlay

RE: Feel-o-tron

SUBJECT: Definition thereof...

     A simple and useful device to relieve the tedium of hyperspatial
navigation.  The technology can also be used to reduce the distress
associated with high accelerations.  To quote one user, "You still
take physical damage from all the G's, but you don't notice it until
the tape runs out.  That's why I always use SENSOMAX long-play cassetes!"

     I hope this information is of some use.

Paul Gazis


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-------- TML Message #621 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 621
Subject: Maps
Date: Thu Oct 12 15:45:06 1989
From: richard@agora.hf.intel.COM (Richard Johnson)



maps, maps, maps, maps...

I am getting tired of new/better/different ways to map sectors and 
subsectors.  I've already got all I can handle.

What I would like to see is some mapping tools for:

	Generating MAPS of solar systems, complete with lesser
	bodies, asteroid belts, main cometary paths, etc.
	It would be OK to have to use a computer for scaling
	or several sheets of paper for various scales.

	Generating major orbital-scale maps: one planet with
	its attendant natural and artificial satellites (and
	possibly the satellites') and major orbits (like
	geosynchornous).

	Generating maps of planets, continents etc.  complete with
	major population centers, life forms and so on.  It would
	be a requirement that the use input major parameters from
	the UPP (or have a machine do it).
(finally)
	Creating the rough equivalent of a "net list" of what's on
	each map (this is for all of the above) for the GM.  Then 
	the GM can use the list for adventure/campaign/encounter
	information without messing up the map.

any more thoughts?
	Richard


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-------- TML Message #622 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 622
From: ("45252-Peter L. Berghold") wrgate.wr.tek.com!uunet.uu.net!allegra!violin!violin!plb@tektronix.TEK.COM
Subject: RE: Re: cold start launch
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 89 9:01:38 EDT


>> 

Looking at this another way... when an US Navy ship prepares to get underway
from "Cold Iron" this can take a couple of days.  When it tries the same stunt
from some sort of "warm start" it can just be a few hours.

Pete


- -- 
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-------- TML Message #623 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 623
Subject: Gravitics, aerodynamics etc.
Date: 12 Oct 1989 15:35:55 GMT
From: andyc%minster.york.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk


I think somewhere in the Traveller rules, it is mentioned that only ships
with a certain configuration (needle/cone and wedge) can take off and land
on planets with an atmosphere.  It seems to me that because they
are aerodynamic, they must be able to take off and land horizontally.  This
could be why scouts only need to have drives in the rear.

But (now for the bit where I demolish my own argument), this doesn't work
in worlds with gravity and no atmosphere, where it won't be possible to get
enough lift for horizontal flight.  So possibly some kind of launch ramp could
be used as a compromise between horizontal and vertical lift off (this of
course raises the question of uninhabited zero atmosphere planets....).

Andy Coombes
Department of Computer Science,
York University, 
England.


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-------- TML Message #624 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 624
From: (Jo Jaquinta) jaymin@maths.tcd.ie
Subject: Introduction
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 89 13:26:38 BST


     I  have only recently become aware of the Traveller  mailing 
list but have devoted many hours to creating Traveller  software. 
So by means of introduction I will list some of the things I have 
worked  on. Interested parties please e-mail me and if  there  is 
enough general interest I will post it to the list.
     Most  of  the  code  is fairly  portable  as  it  was  first 
developed under Berkely Unix then ported to a MS-DOS PC.

                    jaymin@maths.tcd.ie
                    jaymin%maths.tcd.ie@cunyvn.cuny.edu

     LANGUAGES. I was always annoyed that the original  Traveller 
didn't have language generation for English (Villani). So after a 
series  of programs I now have one that will take a  given  text, 
parse  it  in repeated passes and try to find  the  best  fitting 
syllabic pattern. It then effectively generates a table like  the 
standard  ones.  There is another trivial program  that  actually 
generates  the words. It worked well on English,  brilliantly  on 
Maori; I am unqualified to judge the results on German and  Irish 
but  it  couldn't adequately parse Latin. Its  assumptions  about 
syllables occurring independently within a word just don't work.

     YET  ANOTHER CHARACTER GENERATOR. I am sure it doesn't  have 
much  over the others but the one nifty feature it does  have  is 
that you can set the interaction level. I.e. you can specify that 
the  computer is to make the decisions as to what cascade  skills 
to pick up to even choosing when to muster out, etc.

     SCALED  HEX MAPPING. The idea is to design a map at  several 
different  scales.  You can go up to the  largest,  mark  several 
hexes  as hills, go down a few levels and add the finer  details. 
It turned out not to be as useful as I first thought.

     YET  ANOTHER  TRADE PROGRAM. Handles what is  available  and 
keeps a record of where you have been. Not very sophisticated.

     YET   ANOTHER  SYSTEM  GENERATOR.  Scouts  expanded   system 
generator. Not much more I can say.

     ZAP. I started ZAP back in college shortly after Elite  came 
out.  I  liked the trading and exploration aspect  of  Elite  and 
strove  to come up with something similar. It uses  the  galactic 
co-ordinates  as a random seed and the system for that  area  (if 
there  is  one)  is generated from that.  Add  a  simple  density 
function  and I have literally an entire galaxy of stars  even  I 
know nothing about.
     System  generation and ship construction are  done  although 
the  latter is not like Traveller. Trading is there but not  very 
well  done.  I  had a combat section done but it  seems  to  have 
disappeared.  Due  to  time pressures its  development  has  been 
rather  slow  over  the  last two years. I want  to  be  able  to 
generate maps of planets next but am having difficulty coming  up 
with  a  good  enough representation (more  of  that  in  another 
posting).
     I  would dearly like for someone to volunteer to  take  over 
development of it. Or best a group development of modules for  it 
al    la   'nethack'   centrally   co-ordinated   (Anyone    read 
'Planiverse'?). Anyone who might be interested in doing odd  bits 
please e-mail me and perhaps the mailing list might want to adopt 
it.

				Jo Jaquinta; jaymin@maths.tcd.ie.


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-------- TML Message #625 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 625
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 89 17:03:35 EDT
From: ("William B. Morrison") morrison@pyr.gatech.edu
Subject: Re: Cold Start Launches


In his article,  Peter Berghold writes:

> Looking at this another way... when an US Navy ship prepares to get
> underway from "Cold Iron" this can take a couple of days.  When it tries the
> same stunt from some sort of "warm start" it can just be a few hours.
>
> Pete

Mostly true, depending on what you mean by "cold start". From what I
remember when I was in the Navy, if you include the inspections,
preventive maintenance, etc in that, it could take weeks regardless
of what type of power plant you have. However, lets assume that
all of that is out of the way, and that a "cold start" means
that you're ready to push the button to star the engines to
generate power. Both nuclear and boiler plants on ships generate
steam to turn the turbines. Generating the temperatures and
pressures for a steam plant average about 8 hours to get tooperating
capacity. However, the new gas turbine (read: jet engine) ships
can be underway in about 30 seconds from when the button is pressed.

>From this, you can project technology to get engines that start in
as long or as short a time as you want (yes, I said all of that
just for this). You may want to consider the purpose of the ship
in determining the cold start time, and whether you want to count
inspections or not (if someone is stealing a ship, did the 
predessors, inspect it?), etc.

Just some things to think about

- --Bill

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-------- TML Message #626 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 626
From: ("45252-Peter L. Berghold") wrgate.wr.tek.com!uunet.uu.net!allegra!violin!violin!plb@tektronix.TEK.COM
Subject: Re: Maps
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 89 14:42:43 EDT


>> 
>> 
>> In Archive Message Number 621,
>> 	Richard Johnson <richard@agora.hf.intel.com> writes:
>> > I am getting tired of new/better/different ways to map sectors and 
>> > subsectors.  I've already got all I can handle.
>> 
>> 
Along the lines of random life forms:  One of my old campaigns (about 10 years
ago) did not even make the assumption that all sentient life forms would be 
human/humanoid.  Two planets side-by-side could have totally divergent races.
To generate the sentient creatures I used a set of rules from a TSR space game
(the name of which I forget at the moment) for this purpose.   I got life form
types from those rules of everything from humanoids to spiders and everything
in between.

Pete



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All opinions and material above is the responsibility of the originator.
Submissions: traveller@dadla.wr.tek.com, or uunet!dadla.wr.tek.com!traveller
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-------- TML Message #627 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 627
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 89 14:03:41 -0500
From: f3w@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Mark Gellis)
Subject: Re:  Gravitics, aerodynamics etc.


[This came to traveller-request@dadla.wr.tek.com, looks like it was meant
for traveller@dadla.wr.tek.com.  Watch those automatic reply headers!
- -- James]

I have dealt with this problem in my game (VERY modified version) by having
four kinds of potentially aerodynamic vehicles.  The first is a lifting body
(i.e. brick-with-wings space shuttle design).  The second is a needle (i.e.
1950's rocket w. fins, or something similar).  The third is a stealthed hull
(kind of like a lifting body in shape).  The fourth is a lander (closer to
the LEM than anything else, although another good example is the big moon
lander in 2001).  I don't believe in gravity control, etc., so all of these
have to deal with with standard spacecraft dealing with gravity problems.
The only one that is a tail-lander is the lander model; the others have to
deal with the "coffee mugs fall off the shelves problem."  (Actually, my
description of the problem is a little more hideous--all the toilets turn
90 degrees; one hopes that landing procedures includes turning off the 
plumbing for a while, or at least moving modular units into new non-spill
positions.)

Of course, since about 95% of the population in my game world (200 billion 
to 500 billion per average solar system, and sometimes a lot more) lives in
space habitats, and most inhabited planets have their own elaborate shuttle
systems (very useful to keeping out smugglers, terrorists, etc.) this is
not a common problem for players.  (When it is, they velcro the coffee mugs
to the wall and turn off the plumbing for a few hours.)  Usually, your 
spacecraft docks at a habitat's spaceport or sits a few hundred kilometers
away if the docking berths are all taken and a space gig comes out to your
ship and shuttles you into the habitats.

NEW TOPIC.  How many people run adventures in large habitats (my typical
large habitat is a rotating cylinder affair 15 km. at the base and 60 km.
from end to end; at each end is an "endwall complex" of enclosed levels
for industries, apartments, etc.--imagine about 700 shopping malls stacked
on top of one another and you'll have a rough idea; the endwall levels 
are about 100 m. wide so you get a huge amount of internal space from them--
plus a "dayside," the landscaped interior of the cylinder.  The whole
thing supports about one million people; with the endwall complexes included
the internal surface area is about 4800 square km., of which roughly three
quarters (or two thirds of 3600 square km. if you use narrower endwall levels)
is "indoor" or endwall complex, and the remainder "outdoor" or dayside, 
the latter being used for farms, parks, wilderness preserves, etc.)?
Personally, I am satisfied with a set-up that I find plausible, and I have
found that while microworlds have some limitations (anyone who specialized
in Field Artillery is going to fill a bit left out since using howitzers
inside a habitat is generally considered a bad idea), a million-person
setting can give you some remarkably complex adventure scenarios, and is
a little easier to map out than a billion-person world.  When you finish
one adventure in one habitat, of course, you can always move on to another.
(I assume that in many cases you will get a few hundred to several thousand
habitats clustered around a big asteroid or a large moon--the main source
of raw materials--and they will form a general political alliance.  The
result is that my universe is one where most people live in the galactic
version of an archipeligo.)  Any comments, questions, suggestions?


All opinions and material above is the responsibility of the originator.
Submissions: traveller@dadla.wr.tek.com, or uunet!dadla.wr.tek.com!traveller
Administrator: traveller-request@dadla.wr.tek.com (James Perkins)
The TML is made possible by facilities provided by Tektronix, Inc.

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