Bryan, could you see that Loren Wiseman sees this:
>Bryan,
> Could you send the following note to Steve Higginbottham on TML?
>
> Steve,
> As it happens, I am a GDW employee, and I know what a neutrino
>is (and I don't think its an itty-bitty neutron).
> Do you make a habit of calling people you haven't met idiots, or
>is this something you reserve for GDW alone?
> Loren K. Wiseman
>
> Thanks
Hmmm...
I ususally call anyone who can't spell my name correctly (when He/she
is copying it from other written matter) an idiot, but let that pass.
Reasons for thinking the people who generated MT are idiots:
1) COACC. I'm one of the few people who post to the TML
regularly who LIKED COACC. But I NEVER use it, because the various
engines presented on page 32 all have performances that are out to
lunch. None of those engines (except the fusion rocket) have NOT been
built, so it should have been a simple matter to look up actual
thrust/fuel usage/mass figures, and use them. The people responsible
didn't bother, so you have rockets with higher Isp than jets. Your
(yes, I know that you personnally had nothing to do with COACC (or at
least your name isn't mentioned on the credits)) fusion rocket has an
Isp of 2,000,000,000 and change. Which translates to an exhaust
velocity of 19,656,000 Km/s, which you should notice is 65.565 times
the speed of light.
2) Neutrino detectors. You all inserted a neutrino detector
into your starship design sequence that fits in a suitcase. This
device was supposed to be able to detect the neutrino emmissions from
a 10Kw power plant at long range (if it couldn't detect a 10Kw power
plant, then the 10Kw rating was pretty silly). Considering what we
know about neutrinos, its fairly safe to say that catching enough of
them to make detection meaningful would require a substance, which, if
plated over a ship as armour, would make the ship immune to trivial
things like meson guns, particle beams, and nuclear weapons. We
bogused up an explanation that didn't require perfect armour to be
invented along with the neutrino detector, but I doubt our explanation
could work unless the detector were the size of a Mac truck, as
opposed to a small suitcase.
3) Spacecraft with a density 4+ times that of platinum. Try
it. Design a spacecraft with armour 115 (bonded superdense, of
course). Put all the usual contents (J-drive, M-drive, P-plant, etc)
inside. Then divide computed mass by computed volume. Density 85+.
4) 10,000 year old technology that has never been improved
enough to bring the price down from point of introduction (LPHG grav
modules)
5) A trade system which makes merchandise more expensive if
BUILT (not bought) away from a large rail-center. I can believe that
the products of Nakege are more expensive to buy at Efate, but I find
it hard to believe that when I go to Nakege, they are marking things
up above the price I would have to pay elsewhere. Great way to make
sure I don't go there, terrible way to assume economics work.
6) For that matter, a trade system in an adventure kind of game
that encourages the players to stay near the center of civilization.
Arguably the best thing to do with your shiny new ship is to run back
and forth between Efate and Louzy until it gets paid off. You get
gobs of money that you would never see wandering around among "E" and
"D" starports in the boonies.
7) The generation of star types for the worlds of the Spinward
Marches that places Ag worlds around M7 V (0534, 1526, 2231), M6 V
(0614, 1817, 2908), M9 V (0710, 0732, 2523, 3004), M5 V (1210, 3138),
M8 VI (1912), M9 D (2324), F3 D (2912), none of which are in the
habitable zone, because there IS NO HABITABLE ZONE for those stars.
And if you can get "Ag" without being in the habitable zone, then why
is "Ag" even meaningful, when ANYONE can grow crops under ideal
conditions in a dome?
8) Trade class "In", which assumes that you cannot have lots of
industry without a polluted atmosphere, even though the major source
of air pollution (burning oil/coal/etc) stopped with the advent of
fusion power some thousands of years ago.
9) Fission power plants for vehicles/starships with fuel usage
rather more than 1000 times as high as REAL fission plants have. By
your rules, the submarine I was on should have had to carry 58,500
tons of fuel to operate as it did. Since the boat only massed
7000-odd tons, I'm pretty sure it DIDN'T carry that much fuel. This
is information available in any good university library. Along with
that, fissionable fuel that has a density higher than iridium.
10) Laser/maser communicators that use more power than radios.
11) Hard Times. Which either should be MUCH worse than it is,
or not nearly so bad as it is. You managed to find the ONE point to
stabilize at that is unstable - it should either fix itself quickly
(ten years or so), or collapse back to the stone age (in a century or
less). And the adventure/campaign in Hard Times provides the "good
guys" with a ship that can beat the whole "bad guy" fleet without
assistance. So why bother with the rest of the adventure/campaign?
12) Data dsiplay headsets. Introduced at TL13 in MT.
Introduced four or five years ago in the real world.
I'm frankly getting tired of typing, so I'll stop here. Is this
enough reason for me to suspect the MT designers are idiots? If not,
I'll gladly send more.
But, be that as it may, I was speaking largely facetiously when I
called you all "idiots". I think you all made a great TRY at
integrating the disparate elements in your rules. I just wish it had
been a great success. You introduced a task system (which is great!),
and a vehicle system (which falls apart near the limits), then didn't
bother to integrate starship design/combat into the vehicle system.
You added in aircraft, without ever bothering to insert into the rules
a good reason for them existing after the introduction of grav. You
publish modules where ships specifically described as having no fuel
scoops are seen to be scooping fuel at a gas giant (Knightfall).
"Fighting Ships of the Shattered Imperium" (Shattered Ships of the
Fighting Imperium?) includes a large number of ships that violate your
own rules (check the armour values assigned to BB-11, BB-12, BL-13,
BM-15, BH-14, BH-15), and almost no ships that are especially
combat-effective. That's just careless, sloppy work with a bad
spreadsheet, which is supposed to be caught by editors.
BTW, I do NOT disapprove of your third edition of Traveller. And I
don't approve of it because of your second edition, but in spite of it.
But let's see some good work, with an editor who EDITs, rather than
spell-checks with his word-processor. And a little reality checking
wouldn't hurt, either.
Last comments: If you need someone to give something a fine-tooth
"internal logic check", I'm always here. And you would probably get
more MT stuff for Challenge if you (a) payed a little better, or (b)
tried less hard to appear as if you were dumping MT in your eternal
quest to separate us from more of our money. At the very least, I'd
send you stuff better than most of the stuff you do publish for MT. And
WHY did you dump 2300AD and 1889??? What was done was among your best
work since the original Traveller, but now it's gone, never to return...
---Steve Higginbotham
PS. And I also call the people at DGP idiots on a regular basis. More
often than I call GDW people idiots, in fact...
- -- Via DLG Pro v0.991
[email removed]
I have learned to use the word "impossible" with the greatest caution.
--W. von Braun