

-------- TML Message #1065 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1065
From: wrgate.wr.tek.com!reed.UUCP!oresoft.uu.net!richard@tektronix.TEK.COM (Richard Johnson)
Subject: PBEM Admin for Turn 1.0
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 11:59:44 PDT


PBEM turn 1.0 Admin stuff...


Still ironing out mailers.  Almost all of you are working now - even
the recalcitrant mailers are bending to our collective will.


Rulings on psionics (at least for this game):

A psionic CANNOT passively determine if there is another psionic
(who is also passive) in the area.  That is, you'd never know whether
X is psionic unless one or both of you do something active.  This
means that either X has to scan you (which implies that you know
when your natural or artifical shield is touched) or you have to
scan X (and touch X's shield).  Of course, if there are several
beings around, any one or several of them might have touched the
shield, so there is not necessarily a two-way link at just this
level.  A more complete contact is needed for that.

A psionic CANNOT automatically tell the difference between a natural
psi shield and a technolgical (or drug-created) psi shield.  All the
character will know is that a shield is working.  

No one so far who knows for sure has come forward and said whether
wearing a psi shield in some fashion alters you psi abilities.  For
example, it might color or distort your impressions.  (I won't make
it do evil, non-rules, things though such as deflecting telekenisis
- - if it's supposed to work, it will work.  It might be just a little
off center however.)


Your location:

You have astutely determined that you are on the frontier near the
hinterworlds.  This is only several weeks fro Dulinor's territory,
Solomani Territory, and Aslan (I think its Aslan - you can correct
me on this if I'm off base -- don't have my books here) territory.

There are several nebulae nearby.  Note that these do not show up on
standard star maps because usually they're unfruitful for commerce
or military purposes.  (again correct me if I'm way off.  I don't
remember ever seing a nebula though...)


Other admin:

During your next turn-message, tell me whether you want to keep this
double-blind business going, or if you want me to post everyone's
address.  Also let me know if you don't want your address given out.
I assume we're all friends here, but I won't ask why if you don't want
anyone else to know your address.


Happly MT'ing!

Richard Johnson
	richard@agora.hf.intel.com
	richard@oresoft.uu.net




-------- TML Message #1066 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1066
From: wrgate.wr.tek.com!reed.UUCP!oresoft.uu.net!richard@tektronix.TEK.COM (Richard Johnson)
Subject: Turn 1.0 PBEM
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 12:01:17 PDT


During breakfast, on your third day, Adam comes in and starts to
talk (yell?) at everybody:


Well, I guess it's about time to move you folks out to the Alcyon.  
First, some announcements:

About ships:
Headquarters informs me that while you can take your own ships, you
do so at their risk.  If your ship is lost, destroyed, or damaged
because of the mission, Turnskaad will not replace it or reimburse
you for it.  We have transportation available if you'd prefer.  We
will also go to some length to make sure your ships are as ready as
possible before you leave.

Anyone and everyone who wants to take a ship, or a particular grav
carrier full of lab equipment, or whatever that is big and bulky,
see me RIGHT AWAY!  (This means tell the ref so he can figure this
nonsense out :-)

Insurance:
I'm passing out insurance and salvage agreements today.  You do not
have to fill these out.  However if you do not, salvage is assumed
to belong to Turnskaad fully, rather than leaving you a finders
portion, and Turnskaad is the default beneficiary of your life
insurance.  It really is in your personal interest to fill these
out.

Mission Equipment:
Everyone will be equipped with a TL15 scout-type vacc suit, except
for the members of the security team, who will have armored vacc
suits issued.  We expect everyone on the team to be in continuous
contact, at least in terms of location; all issue vacc suits have
ELT's (emergency locator transponders) built in.  The ELT's signal
the base ship every 30 minutes and relay your health and location
information.  More details are available if you're curious.

TL13 Stun pistol with a variety of drug charges is the standard 
issue sidearm.  You are expected to have this with you at all times, 
loaded.  You will receive some rudimentary training in selecting the
proper drugs to use in various situtations.  Of course, this does
not preclude your wearing or using your favorite sidearm; we just
want you all to have a visible reminder that this is initially a
peaceful mission.

Personal medikits are available from ship's stores.  A slightly more
substantial party-sized kit is assigned to each team's carrier.

Hand computers (TL15) will be issued to those who do not already
have them.  If you wish to buy one, you can do so at a discount, as
with all personal equipment you purchase for this mission.  (Send me
a list of equipment you wish, together with suggested price from
some book if you have a price.  I will indicate which are assigned,
which are for the ship, and which you need to lease or purchase.
For items to purchase I will assign a disocunt price.  After
everyone has bought what they want, I'll tell you how I figured the
discount, if you're interested :-).)

Items of a more sensitive nature, such as military-style hardware
are available at our asteroid spaceport.  You will be leaving for
there this afternoon.  (So send in your lists for this stuff, too.)
Of course, further comunications with the outside will be limited
after this, so if you've got any farewells to send, better do it
this morning.


==================================================================
Next part of this turn: You finally get to see the Alcyon
(once I find out how many ships you are bringing along.)

Richard Johnson
	richard@agora.hf.intel.com
	richard@oresoft.uu.net



-------- TML Message #1067 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1067
From: wrgate.wr.tek.com!reed.UUCP!oresoft.uu.net!richard@tektronix.TEK.COM (Richard Johnson)
Subject: Analyzing levels
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 12:08:27 PDT

I like Mark Cook's idea of equating level X skill with something
identifiable.  It would be interesting to compile an exhaustive list
(if such a thing could exist).  The one I always used was:

Medical:
	level 0: know when to call a doctor
	level 1: a good thorough, working knowledge of first aid
	level 2: equivalent to emergency medical technician or nurse
	level 3: equivalent to an intern
	level 4: doctor (U.S. type) or surgeon
	level 5: highly skilled neurosurgeon
	level 6: breaking new ground in medicine
	level 7: Hippocrates :-)

The caveat about U.S. type of doctors is because I don't know much
about any other type.  It could be quite different.  Level 4
witch-doctoring or shamanism might be quite useful. 

Richard Johnson


-------- TML Message #1068 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1068
Date:    Tue, 20 Feb 1990 16:58:27 EST
From: Stephen Tihor <TIHOR@acf6.nyu.edu>
Subject: Antomatter & you...

Yeah but think of all those lovely neutrons from the reaction  and what will
happen to the crew  after the pirates have caught and tortured you to death.

Me I would aim for the engine room too many use things there than a little
explosion will wipe out, jump drive, batteries, fusor, chief engineer.  All
hard to replace in deep space.

-------- TML Message #1069 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1069
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 19:22 EST
From: METLAY@vms.cis.pitt.edu
Subject: Utter hogwash about Pilot 7s and so on.


I won't argue with your math, or your marvelous grasp of the rules.
I will merely say that your initial premise is total bilge. Has it
ever occurred to anyone that if one preson in ten were a member
of the Imperial Services, the economy would collapse? Let's get
realistic here for a minute, folks! It should be equally easy for
one of you rules lawyers/mathematicians out there to estimate the
size of an Imperial Sector Fleet, based on the data in the Reb Sourcebook.
>From that, we can make a decent estimate of the total military strength
of a sector; if there are 1e13 people in a sector, I find it hard to
believe that unless there is a state of open war/draft callup, there
would be more than a hundred million people per sector in the service.
(I have no book s in front of me now; this is an estimate.) I really
think that all of your numbers should be scaled down by, oh, four orders
of magnitude. And not including aging effects is cheating, not to mention 
the fact that in a one-year service (Same Scouts, different rules) it's
much easier to get your tail shot off. Harrmph!

Oh, and if these posts were meant in fun, well, hahaha, very jocular.

(Can you tell I haven't seen my fiancee in two months? Knew you could.)

metlay

-------- TML Message #1070 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1070
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 17:51:20 PST
From: gazis@galileo.arc.nasa.gov
Subject: Antimatter And You


     What happens if you throw a big chunk of antimatter at a big chunk 
of matter?  The result depends on the impact velocity, and can be 
summarized in the following simple table:

Velocity        Result

Zero            There is a tiny bang and the two chunks bounce away
                from each other essentially intact.
Relativistic    The two chunks interpenetrate, all the particles
                interact, and there is a whopping big explosion.
In between      I dunno, but I'm willing to make a guess...

     If a chunk of matter contacts a lump of antimatter, there WILL be
an explosion.  Even if the impact velocity is zero, the atoms at the
contact surface will be attracted by Van der Walls forces.  The electrons
and positrons will interact and be destroyed.  The resulting storm of
photons will probably not be enough to overcome the electromagnetic
forces that will suck the protons and anti-protons to their doom.  Shlurp.
Bang.  
     But this interaction will only occur at the contact surface between 
the two chunks.  If the impact velocity of the two chunks falls below some 
critical value, the explosion at the contact surface will push the two
chunks apart before much  damage gets done.
     What, one wonders, is this critical velocity?  
     In general, this is a complex question, and depends on the mass and
shape of the chunks.  The answer is, in fact, in the province of bomb 
design, which deals specifically with the question of how to shape masses 
of explosive  material so that they hold together long enough to explode.
     Fortunately, we are not really interested in the general case.  We 
only want to know what happens when a teeny tiny impactor made from anti-
matter strikes a large, spacecraft-sized, object.  I suspect that in such
a case the critical velocity is the speed of sound within the impactor.  
If the impact velocity is higher than this, the shock wave generated at
the contact surface will not have time to propage and blow the impactor
apart.  
     What, you ask, is the speed of sound in a typical solid?  I don't
have the slightest idea.  Nor is it relevant, since the impactor will
be heated to plasma temperatures.  I would guess that the critical 
velocity is somewhere around 100 km/sec.  This is a perfectly reasonable 
number for a railgun projectile, and is about the kind of velocity one 
would need in any case if one hopes to hit a manuvering target with an 
unguided projectile.
     As for the mass of antimatter necessary to wreck a spacecraft, 
note that the interaction of 4 micrograms of antimatter with 4 
micrograms of matter will produce approximately 1.0E+16 ergs, which is
the energy of 200 grams of high explosive.  This is roughly comparable 
to a 30mm cannon shell.  A series of dramatic and realistic experiments, 
conducted over Germany 45 years ago, demonstrated that this was 
sufficient remove a wing from an armoured 20 tonne aircraft.  Four 
milligrams of antimatter is roughly the equivalent of a 500 pound bomb.  
Recent experiments, conducted in the South Atlantic, have demonstrated 
that this is sufficient to destroy a 4000 tonne seagoing warship or a
20,000 tonne seagoing merchant ship.  (It is not always sufficient to 
destroy a 500,000 tonne supertanker.  Make of this what you will.)

     A final interesting question is: 'How much antimatter does it take
to break a planet into little bits a la the DEATH STAR?'  The answer 
is... LOTS.  
     The gravitational binding energy of the Earth is approximately 
1.0E+33 ergs, give or take an order of magnitude because I'm working
this out on a piece of scratch paper while I wait for my lousy stinking
solar wind spectral simulation routine to run.  This (the binding energy,
not the simulation routine), is the equivalent of one million tonnes of 
antimatter.  Where, I wonder, did Governer Tarkin get the stuff?  Where 
did he keep it?  In his closet perhaps?  His cleaning service must have 
been surprised.

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


-------- TML Message #1071 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1071
Date:          Tue, 20 Feb 90 22:29 EST
From: RWMIRA01%ULKYVX.BITNET@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu
Subject:       Re: Pilot-7's

In the discussions of the "Frequency of Pilot-7's" one point seems to have been
looked.  Some of us use the enhananced character generation which gives a
higher number of skills that the basic system.  Just looking at the Navy
generation system you have anyone graduating Flight School will have a Pilot of
1-3 max(d6-3,1);  So before the first term is even served they could have a
pilot of three. Now since I am thinking like a player who gets to choose his
skills (when skills like SPACE come up) and we are wanting to see excessives,
we will see just how fast one could get to Pilot-7.

Flight School:    Pilot-3
Basic Training:   2 Rolls on Flight yield 2 pilots for a Pilot-5.
Fourth Year:      1 skill  We can finish the first term with a Pilot-6.

With a max of 4 skills a term after that (unless special duty comes out way) we
could have a Pilot-10 by the end of the second term (third if you count the
acadamy.)

Now this person can do one thing, fly a starship (and do a good job with Ships
Boats as well), but not much else.  With a little luck on Mustering out, our
character would look like:

Pilot-10, Navigation-2, Ships Boat-1, Engineering-1, Vacc Suit-1, Weapon-1
(from Mustering out with 2 weapon rolls).  Pretty lop sided, but none the less
enjoyable.

Now this all is really moot, so lets have fun with it and lets tell some
stories.

I once reffed a player who had a character who was a Pilot-9.

  "Legands say that the Great Pilot, Frey Starhunter, the best pilot in the
universe, could jump a ship into jumpspace from the ground ... And not misjump!"

(BTW: Jump from within 10 Diamaters is Formiadable, 15+ -8 (Max DM) 7+ to
succeed.  Odds are he will make it!!!  DM Note, I would bump it to Impossible
19+ to succeed, that makes it a bit rougher, and he needs an 11 or better,
still possible though.)

(Andy Rooney Voice on)
  Wouldn't it be nice ...  If howfar a ship could jump was a function of the
pilots skill?  And wouldn't it be nice, if they served more than peanuts during
the flight?
(Andy off)
(Sorry, coun't resist)

Rob
rwmira01@ulkyvx.bitnet

-------- TML Message #1072 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1072
From: "Mark F. Cook" <markc@hpcvss.cv.hp.COM>
Subject: Steal that Starship! (and more Psionics)
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 22:19:41 PST

Well, we already touched on the subject of a fine, upstanding, HONEST,
and NEW starship owner (that is, a NEW owner, not neccessarily a NEW
starship :-)).  But what about the less-than-honest NEW starship owner?

In the campaign I mentioned earlier, before either of my "about to become
starship title holder" PCs actually get their shiney, new asteroid dodgers,
they have to get out of one teeny, little predicament: a war.  Now, as
it turns out, they're at the starport when the planet is attacked, and,
as luck would have it, there will just happen to be a 1000-ton long haul,
freighter (fueled and ready to go) sitting in the parkbays.  Since the
plan is for the group to snatch the ship to escape becoming POWs, they
will be motivated into ship thievery by the situation, rather than greed.

Assuming that they make it to a safer haven (read, different system), and
assuming that the original captain and crew met with unsavory ends back
on the embattled planet (as Ref, I can safely make this assumption :-)),
is there a legal way for the PCs to permanently acquire the ship?  Be
advised that I'm not sure yet whether I actually want them to, but should
the situation present itself, I'd like to have some details ready.

So, compare this to a group of people fleeing the Nazis in WWII by stealing
a boat on the French coast and making it to England.  Do the english arrest
them for boat-napping, or do they say, "Right, it's your boat from now on,
an' don' let anybody tell you otherwise!"

Well, obviously I don't know the answer to this one.  HEEELLLPPP!!

        Mark F. Cook

USMail: User Interface Technical Support
        Hewlett-Packard - Interface Technology Operation
        1000 NE Circle Blvd.  Corvallis, OR 97330

INTERNET: markc@hpcvss.hp.com
UUCP:     {cmcl2, harpo, hplabs, rice, tektronix}!hp-pcd!markc

P.S.  Re: Psionics & Antimatter: You're right.  I forgot that we were
talking milligrams instead of grams.  And my 4-function math stinks!
The original number SHOULD have been 36 Kt, NOT 200 Kt.  So if the
REAL answer is a 0.36 Kt detonation (that's 360 tons of TNT, boys and
girls!), I still don't believe that somebody is going to laugh it off
if it goes off INSIDE their hull!!  It'll still hurt plenty!  The specific
reference I quoted earlier from Encyclopaedia Britannica was in the
Macropaedia, under the heading "Climate and Weather: Major forms of
weather disturbances: Tornadoes, whirlwinds, and waterspouts: Physical
characteristics of the vortices" (Whew!).  There is a comparison under
"Pressure, heat flux, and energy" of the energy of a tornado to that
of the Hiroshima bomb.

-------- TML Message #1073 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1073
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 11:04:51 EST
From: Chris Bartlett (Mouser) <cdba_ltd@uhura.cc.rochester.edu>
Subject: Character generation



I like the idea of allowing characters to have more than one service in their
background.  Most of the time though, players complain that they don't have
enough control over their character's development.  I refer, of course, to
the skill selection system.  How do you folks handle this?  I seem to
recall a point-based character generation system for Traveller in an *old*
issue of _Dragon_ (back when I still read it), that allowed players to buy
skills using points.  I've been having the players roll for which subtable
to select their skills from, and letting them have their pick from that.

For example, if a Scout character could choose from the Scout life, Field
Service, or Exploration subtables, I would have him roll for which table to
pick a skill from, i.e. if he rolled and came up with the Field Service
table, he could freely select a skill from there.  It seems to be a
reasonable compromise.  Any suggestions?


Chris


-------- TML Message #1074 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1074
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 09:36:05 PST
From: gazis@halley.arc.nasa.gov
Subject: 1 kilotonne HE = 4.2E+19 ergs


... according to the NRL Plasma Formulary (a useful object).

Paul R. Gazis

P.S. Or, if you are perverse, 1 KT HE = 1.0E+12 calories, enough energy to
do aerobics for 100,000 years.  Feel the burn!

-------- TML Message #1075 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1075
From: wrgate.wr.tek.com!reed.UUCP!oresoft.uu.net!richard@tektronix.TEK.COM (Richard Johnson)
Subject: Jim Cunningham's Address wrong?
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 8:47:07 PDT

Sorry about wasting bandwidth for this but...

For Jim Cunningham:

I have your address as jcunning@gliss.lis.uiuc.edu

I *consistently* get `gliss' as an unknown host, and am unable to
work around it (cause it's where you are.)

Did I get it wrong?  Is there another way I can contact you?


Richard Johnson

p.s. I can hear you fine at both agora and oresoft.

	richard@agora.hf.intel.com
	richard@oresoft.uu.net


-------- TML Message #1076 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1076
From: "45252-Peter L. Berghold" <wrgate.wr.tek.com!uunet.uu.net!allegra!violin!plb@tektronix.TEK.COM>
Subject: Re: Some Thoughts...
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 7:52:15 EST

Operating System: HP-UX A.B7.00 U
Organization: AT&T-BL, Red Hill System Administration Group (HRSAG)
Location: HR 1F138
Phone: (201) 615-4419
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.2 PL16]

*| tho, the only place where such things are legal in the official rules are
*| when the character is a Vargr. Short attention spans, I guess.|->
*| 

<hehehehe!>
Metlay,

You are responsible for an early morning laugh for me....


bleary eyed:
- -- 
/* - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  */
/*		Peter L. Berghold					*/
/*		System Administrator					*/
/*		AT&T Red Hill Systems Administration Group		*/
/*		1F138	+1 (201) 615-4419				*/
/*		EMAIL (UUCP):	{uunet!allegra|att}!violin!plb		*/
/* - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  */


-------- TML Message #1077 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1077
Subject: Re: PLEASE READ and Jim Cunningham's address
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 10:59:32 PST
From: James T Perkins <jamesp@metolius.WR>


Hi everyone,

A couple messages were lost yesterday while I was messing up my mailing
list software.  If you fail to see something come across the list that
you posted recently, go ahead and repost it.

I get through to Jim Cunningham with:

	jcunning%gsliss%gslisa@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (-Jim Cunningham)

I use this obtuse routing because of problems similar to the one you're
having; only a few sites seem to know how to get to the site that knows
about gsliss.

James
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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!"

-------- TML Message #1078 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1078
From: Bart Massey <bart@fatal.tv.TEK.COM>
Subject: Re: (1069) Utter hogwash about Pilot 7s and so on.
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 14:26:01 PST

In TML Biweekly Volume 6 Issue 16 METLAY@vms.cis.pitt.edu writes:
> I will merely say that your initial premise is total bilge. Has it
> ever occurred to anyone that if one preson in ten were a member
> of the Imperial Services, the economy would collapse? Let's get
> realistic here for a minute, folks!

Hmm.  Perhaps the estimate is high, but "total bilge"?  Please correct me if
I'm wrong, but I believe the good ol' U.S.ofA. has a total armed forces
payroll of around 2 million bodies, or about 2/300 of the total U.S.
population.  This would only change the estimates in question by 1 order of
magnitude, and certainly wouldn't invalidate the premise that the existing
rules make it abnormally easy for player characters to get high skill levels.

The problem is that the probability of getting skill level n + 1, given skill
level n, should be O(1/n) rather than the O(1) function it is now.  This
would make the probability of getting skill level n from scratch roughly
O(log(n)), which would make the suggestion of an earlier poster make sense,
by making the skill level be roughly the *log* of the actual "amount of
skill".  If the constants were chosen correctly, there might still be some
Pilot-9s in the universe, but there would be many orders of magnitude more
Pilot-7s.

On the other hand, I had always assumed that the rules were the way they were
to make player characters more interesting, and that they didn't apply to the
population as a whole.  To put it another way, if I used the character
generation system described above, I would probably throw away most of my
characters as "too boring", and the existing generation system just
"pre-throws-away" most, but not all "boring" characters.

I'm sure I will be liberally corrected on all of the above.

					Bart Massey
					..tektronix!videovax.tv.tek.com!bart
					..tektronix!reed.bitnet!bart


-------- TML Message #1079 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1079
Date:        Wed Feb 21 17:51:17 BST 1990
From: Solo <derek%TARDIS.CS.ED.AC.UK@cunyvm.cuny.edu>
Subject:     Re: Task System for GURPS Space

X-Mailer: Ream v4.12c (The One True Mailer)
X-Thought: Is it paranoia if they really *are* out to get you?


> This question involves GURPS Space and MegaTraveller.

Nice to see I'm not alone in using GURPS for a Space campaign...

> [stuff deleted to save bandwidth]
> I was thinking of something like this:
>
> Simple:     skill + 2
> Routine:    skill
> Difficult:  skill - 3
> Formidable: skill - 6
> Impossible: skill - 12
>
> In GURPS, you roll three 6 sided dice for an average roll of 10.5 .
> It just so happens that a novice in a certain skill will have a
> skill of 10 or 11 and will therefore succeed with a routine task
> about 50% of the time.  A reasonably experienced operator will
> usually have a skill of about 13 (maybe level 1 or 2 in traveller)
> and succeed in a routine task around 60-70% of the time.  So, how
> often should this reasonably experienced operator succeed if the
> task is simple, difficult, formidable or impossible?

  Hmm.  OK, time to dig out the GURPS books I guess.  The easiest way to
approach this would seem to be to check out the descriptions of various
skill levels, and work from there.
  In GURPS, level 12 in a skill is described as that of a talented
beginner, or an average man after a little study.  I don't think this
translates to Traveller skill 2 - level 1 maybe, but not 2.  Looking
further down the table we see that a "veteran" fighter (one with
experience, but not a lot of it) has a skill of ^15.  This leads to
the following rolls/percentages for different tasks:

        Simple    : Roll 16, 98.1% (as a roll of 17+ always fails)
        Routine   : Roll 15, 95.4%
        Difficult : Roll 12, 74.1%
        Formidable: Roll 9,  37.5%
        Impossible: Roll 3,  0.5%

  This seems to be in keeping with how I see Traveller skill level 2 -
although the chance for the Impossible task is perhaps a little on the
low side.
  Someone with a *lot* of experience will have a skill level of about
18, thus adding 3 to all the above rolls.  Thus, he will succeed at an
Impossible task about 9.3% of the time.  This, to me, seems like the
sort of skill level I would give someone with Traveller skill of 3.
  A Master, as described in GURPS, has skill 20.  He will succeed in the
Impossible task about 25.9% of the time.  Sounds like Traveller level 4
to me.
  A Wizard (described as someone who could fight blindfolded) has a
skill of 25.  This gives him a 83.8% chance at succeeding at the
Impossible task - Traveller skill 5, at a minimum.

  It is possible under the GURPS rules to have levels even higher than
this, although the cost of such levels is usually prohibitive, at least
for the Physical skills, such as Combat, Piloting etc.  I don't think
it's really necessary to go beyond level 25 for the purposes of looking
at the task system - much further, and the person attempting the skill
roll can do virtually anything 98.1% of the time (not 100%, as noted in
the table above.)
  All the above comparisons are based on the description of combat
skills found on page 45 of the GURPS Basic Set, Third Edition.  They
seem to fit the task levels presented fairly well to me, although
different people would of course need to alter them to fit with the
overall levels of skill found in their campaign.

Sayonara,
       Derek.

PS: To Richard Johnson - Received your mail test OK, did my reply ever
    reach you?

- --
Derek MacColl,          JANET:  derek@uk.ac.ed.cs.tardis
Ex-Computer Science,    ARPA:   derek%ed.cs.tardis@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Edinburgh University.   UUCP:   Sorry...
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
"I'm the best there is at what I do, and what I do isn't very nice."


-------- TML Message #1080 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1080
From: Bertil Jonell <d9bertil@dtek.chalmers.se>
Subject: RE:Steal that Starship!
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 11:28:50 MET DST

> >From: "Mark F. Cook" <markc@hpcvss.cv.hp.COM>
> 
> Assuming that they make it to a safer haven (read, different system), and
> assuming that the original captain and crew met with unsavory ends back
> on the embattled planet (as Ref, I can safely make this assumption :-)),
> is there a legal way for the PCs to permanently acquire the ship? 

Hardly, They could claim that they found it, though, but it will be hard to
legally clear them of the suspicions that *they* killed the crew in the
general confusion.
A starship is almost never unowned, If it isn't owned by a person, it is owned
by a corporation, or an Imperial Agency (IMC, IN, IISS etc), or by the system
govenment, or by an insurance company, or by the heirs of the previous owner
(this last case is the one that is most apliccable in your case) 

If they want to keep the ship, they would have to act as if it was stolen, ie
get it registerd under a new name, fix all id'numbers, and, most difficult,
fix the transponder...

> So, compare this to a group of people fleeing the Nazis in WWII by stealing
> a boat on the French coast and making it to England.  Do the english arrest
> them for boat-napping, or do they say, "Right, it's your boat from now on,
> an' don' let anybody tell you otherwise!"

If they steal somebodys cargoship, that somebody (or his company, or his bank,
or his creditors, or his family) is going to be mightily cross with them.

If they steal a german military (or ex-french military) boat then the English
government would take the boat from them and give it to the RN.

Just my quarter credits worth.
- -bertil-
- -- 
Bertil K K Jonell @ Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg
NET: d9bertil@dtek.chalmers.se 
VOICE: +46 31 723971 / +46 300 61004     "Don't worry,I've got Pilot-7"
SNAILMAIL: Box 154,S-43900 Onsala,SWEDEN      (Famous last words)      
"During the high point of the Downes Age, they put Ming the Merciless in charge
of designing California gas stations" W.Gibson "The Gernsback Continuum"

-------- TML Message #1081 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1081
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 12:50:37 CST
From: Jim Cunningham <jcunning@gsliss.lis.uiuc.edu>
Subject: address & things



The e-mail address that James listed for me is correct. GSLIS
stands for Graduate School of Library and Information Science.
Forgive me if I'm not too talkative for the next few months. Right
now I'm working 30+ hours a week and carrying a full load of grad 
classes and sending out resumes, interviewing, and occasionally
sleeping. Actually, I might be in over my head this time, and 
might drop something. If I do, you'll be hearing from me more often.


				Jim Cunningham
				Traveller Relic



YOU KNOW YOU`RE IN ZHODANI TERRITORY WHEN: You walk into a 
resteraunt and the waiter starts writing down your order before
you tell him what you want.



-------- TML Message #1082 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1082
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 13:08:22 PST
From: John Wilber <wilber%sal-sun3.usc.edu@usc.edu>
Subject: Merchant Profitablility


I have one suggestion for helping those merchants make their mortgages:

RAISE PRICES!!

So what if the books say a high passage costs kCr10, and a low passage
is kCr1 (I think)?  Altering the prices by a few thousand either way isn't
going to hurt anybody, is it?  Besides, this would introduce the effect of
having passages to the "smaller" worlds costing more than passages to
major worlds, which seems realistic to me.  Unfortunately, figuring out
what to charge for passages could become quite complicated, because of
having to figure in current interest rates, salaries, and prices.

The players would also have to worry about the competition from other,
large well-established lines with many ships (Tukera, Oberlindes), and
economies of scale on their side, which would probably keep them off
of the major trade routes.  Oh well, that's life...

/************************************************************************\
* John J. Wilber        * Perfect paranioa is perfect awareness!         *
* wilber@nunki.usc.edu  * "I'm a pessimstic cynic- I guess that makes me *
* student, partier, and * a realist."                                    *
* fun-loving guy.       *                                 Unknown        *
\************************************************************************/




-------- TML Message #1083 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1083
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 16:13:54 EST
From: Chris Bartlett (Mouser) <cdba_ltd@uhura.cc.rochester.edu>
Subject: Robot design


Hello all,

Andrew's posting of his grav bike design inspired me to dig this out.  It's
a design for a ship's surgical robot.  I designed it to be a static unit for
emplacement in the ship's infirmary.  The patient is placed *inside* the
unit for diagnosis and treatment.  It's similar to the automed in _2300_.  I
thought it would handy for PCs to have around, as PCs tend to have nasty
things happen to them.  I used _Book 8: Robots_ to build this:


  Static robotic surgical unit -- "autodoc" 	

 URP:  D1300 - 06 - LM221 - TF53	Cr 235,800.00	550 kg

	Fuel: -		Duration: -	TL: 12

  600/1500  (mesh)
  2 light arms
  2 very light arms
  2 very light tentacles
  2 visual sensors ( + tele ), 6 tactile sensors ( + sensitivity )
  2 audio sensors
  Power interface
  Voder
  Video display
  Medical instrument pkg  x 2
  Medical - 3

You plug it into a ship's power supply or equivalent.  That's why there's
nothing down for fuel or duration.  Hope everybody likes it.

			Chris



-------- TML Message #1084 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1084
Subject: Well, I made it
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 13:51:45 PST
From: James T Perkins <jamesp@metolius.WR>


Well, I didn't get laid off, so I guess the list will be around for the
forseeable future.  I've been busy and nervous lately so I'm a little slow
on responses to specific questions.  I promise to try to get caught up
in the next week.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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!"

-------- TML Message #1085 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1085
From: "Mark F. Cook" <markc@hpcvss.cv.hp.COM>
Subject: Deneb SubSector names
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 16:06:14 PST

Well, I need help again.  I downloaded a file containing (supposedly) all
the sector and subsector names (for the Imperium) from GEnie last week,
and I'm not sure that I trust the data.  Specifically, the list of subsector
names given for Deneb are as follows:

      (A) Pretoria      (B) Lamas       (C) Antra       (D) Million
      (E) Sabine        (F) Inar        (G) Dunmag      (H) Atsah
      (I) Star Lane     (J) Vincennes   (K) Usani       (L) Geniishir
      (M) Gulf          (N) Zeng        (O) Kamlar      (P) Vast Heavens

However, in "The Spinward Marches Campaign" Sourcebook, the sector map
of the Marches shows the names of the Deneb subsectors immediately
adjacent to the Marches to be "(A) Gulf", "(E) Star Lane", "(I) Sabine",
and "(M) Pretoria".  So, the list shown above would appear to be
upside-down (or worse).

What are the correct subsector names?

Second question:  Where can I find a current list of the X-boat routes
in Deneb (or any other, for that matter) sector.  So far, the only current
routes I know of, are for Corridor sector (I got them from issue #18 of
Travellers' Digest).

If there's not an official list, do I just play "connect-the-dots" with all
of the class A and B starports?

Regards,

        Mark F. Cook

USMail: User Interface Technical Support
        Hewlett-Packard - Interface Technology Operation
        1000 NE Circle Blvd.  Corvallis, OR 97330

INTERNET: markc@hpcvss.hp.com
UUCP:     {cmcl2, harpo, hplabs, rice, tektronix}!hp-pcd!markc

-------- TML Message #1086 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1086
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 90 16:53:01 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronald Henry Daubel <rd1g+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Hospitals, Insurance, and other stuff

Hi,

I had a problem the other night with my group of players.  What happened
was one of them was being an idiot on a law level 2 world.  He wanted
information, and was going about it the wrong way.  He got his right
forearm blown off, hand and all.  There was a hospital around, so he was
taken there.  I've always been under the assumption that hospitals do
emergency cases first, and worry about payment later.

Well, they fixed up his arm (I assumed tech level 10 could put a robotic
appendage on) and were looking for payment, either immediately, or in
some kind of payment contract.  The problem is, he WAS a general in the
Army, before he retired.  Would he have some kind of Veterens insurance
(for just such a thing) or would he be on his own with payment?  Since
he didn't have anything specific, I offered a payment plan.  He didn't
want to sign, and generally made a nuisance out of himself. (Remember
this is LL2) I had the cops arrest him.  He was still a pain in the ass,
so the Cops (unsavory fellows) executed him.

What should I have done?  What would you have done?

Thanks,

Ron

Internet:  rd1g@andrew.cmu.edu
Bitnet:	arioch@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu

-------- TML Message #1087 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1087
From: "Mark F. Cook" <markc@hpcvss.cv.hp.COM>
Subject: Re: Pt. Defense Targetting
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 90 13:14:40 PST

A few week ago, I posted the following question about vehicle combats and
Point Defense Targetting:

> According to the specs. for the Sword Worlds TL11 Gram grav-tank (inside
> cover, "101 Vehicles"), it has a "TL11 Point Defense".  This is listed in
> the MT Ref.  Man. as:
>         "  Point defense targetting allows the weapon to fire at incoming
>          missiles and projectiles.  Hardpoint mounted weapons automatically
>          have this capability.
>            For each direct fire weapon which must also serve in a point
>          defense capacity, install one point defense targetting module."
> 
> Now, since the Gram grav-tank has the following weapons:
>                                 Pen/        Max.    Auto  Dngr
>                      Ammo Rnds. Attn Dmg    Range   Tgts  Spc  Sig  ROF
>         Plasma PA-11  -    -    44/5 20   VDist(5.1) 2     15   H   40
>         3 cm AutoCan HE   500    2   6    VLong(3.5) 4     3    M   200
>                      HEAP 500    5   4    VLong(3.5) 4     -    M   200
>                      KEAP 500    4   4    VLong(3.5) 4     -    M   200
> 
> I assume that the PA-11 automatically has PTD (Pt. Def. Targetting) and
> the one add-on mentioned is for the autocannon.  Anyway, how does this
> get used in vehicle combat?  Does the tank gunner give up a shot at a
> target during a combat round, and elect to use PDT to eliminate incoming
> rounds instead?  Or does PDT automatically provide some kind of defensive
> DM for the tank and no explicit crew action is required?

I got an answer telling me that the PDT weapon can either be used for
PDT or standard combat in any given round, but not both.  What I still
need to know is: If the weapon is used from PDT, does in automatically
succeed?  Isn't there a roll for TOTAL/PARTIAL/NO success?  If it auto-
matically succeeds, then it seems way too powerful to me.

What's the straight scoop, guys?

Regards,

        Mark F. Cook

USMail: User Interface Technical Support
        Hewlett-Packard - Interface Technology Operation
        1000 NE Circle Blvd.  Corvallis, OR 97330

INTERNET: markc@hpcvss.hp.com
UUCP:     {cmcl2, harpo, hplabs, rice, tektronix}!hp-pcd!markc

-------- TML Message #1088 --------

Archive-Message-Number: 1088
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 90 02:18:52 -0500
From: wilson m liaw <macgyver@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Subject: MegaTraveller Alien Source Book Vol 1


	Good news, MegaTraveller Alien Source Book Vol 1 is now finished.
It has been sent to the printer, and will be shipping shortly!!

				Mac

-------- End of TML Messages --------

