Wildstar:
>Steve Higginbotham writes:
>> 2) Design requirements and (possible) mistakes: All of the
>> canned ships have quite a lot of maneuver fuel. All well and good
>> for PCs to rip around in, but aren't the merchant ships designed to
>> make money???
>As a work-around, perhaps we can assume that the provided ship designs
>are as modified for exploratory trading in the wilds? At least until
>we get teh Technical Architecture manual (or wherever GDW decides to
>put the starship design rules).
Well, actually, I would consider any ship that pulled only 1G and was
unarmed to be totally useless for exploratory trading in the Wilds. So,
no, *I* couldn't assume that. The rest of you will decide these things
for yourself, without any inputs from me, of course...
>> Either way, it is easier to use a J-1 boat to do the job that an SDB
>> used to do (after all, the J-1 requires MUCH less fuel than the
>> normal space crossing, and takes less time if you are going as far as
>> Jupiter...)
>Definitely. It might even be a good idea to put a Jump-0 drive into
>the Technical Architecture book. A jump drive optimized for in-system
>travel; probably with a maximum range of under a half a light year per
>jump. Such a drive, particularly if it were cheaper and/or consumed
>less fuel, would be particularly nice. Say, about half size and cost
>of a J-1 drive, and about half fuel consumption. Max jump about a half
>a light-year.
This is what we have been using in our own campaign for many years. J-0
uses 5% of ship's displacement fuel to go up to 10,000AU.
>> 1) The "100 Diameters Travel Times" Table on page 225 is incorrect
>> in almost every entry.
>> 2) The Interplanetary Distance Matrix has many entries, of which
>> no more than 1/3 are correct.
>> 3) The "Interplanetary Speed" Table has nine entries. NONE are
>> correct
>Can you provide corrected tables?
Yes...
Oh, you mean NOW?!? Sure:
NOTE/WARNING: Lots of boring tables. Those not interested (which
should be almost all of you) should page-down to the dashed line.
100 Diameters Travel Times:
Time in hours unless otherwise mentioned. Accurate to 1/10 hour. Note
that the basic assumption that G-hours can be used as a velocity in
these calculations is adhered to, though many of the numbers in the
size-0 column are small enough that the assumption is not really valid.
== : time required to expend the specified G-hours.
time/== : (specified time OR time required to expend specified G-hours,
whichever is GREATER) OR 25 min, whichever is LESS. Basically a really
short time.
World size:
0 1 2 3 4 5
G-hours
0.1 50m* 12.7 25.3 38.0 50.7 63.4
0.2 25m 6.3 12.7 19.0 25.3 31.7
0.3 17m/== 4.2 8.4 12.7 16.9 21.1
0.4 13m/== 3.2 6.3 9.5 12.7 15.8
0.5 10m/== 2.5 5.1 7.6 10.1 12.7
0.6 9m/== 2.1 4.2 6.3 8.4 10.6
0.7 == 1.8 3.6 5.4 7.2 9.1
0.8 == 1.6 3.2 4.8 6.3 7.9
0.9 == 1.4 2.8 4.2 5.6 7.0
* : This is ASSUMED to be correct, just because I have no reason to
believe that there IS a correct answer to that particular question.
Other values for the size-0 case are based upon this.
World Size:
6 7 8 9 A SG**
G-hours
0.1 76.0 88.7 101.4 114.0 126.7 385.8
0.2 38.0 44.3 50.7 57.0 63.4 192.9
0.3 25.3 29.6 33.8 38.0 42.2 128.6
0.4 19.0 22.2 25.3 28.5 31.7 96.5
0.5 15.2 17.7 20.3 22.8 25.3 77.2
0.6 12.7 14.8 16.9 19.0 21.1 64.3
0.7 10.9 12.7 14.5 16.3 18.1 55.1
0.8 9.5 11.1 12.7 14.3 15.8 48.2
0.9 8.4 9.9 11.3 12.7 14.1 42.9
** : It is assumed that Neptune is the size of the generic Small Gas
Giant. Neptune has a diameter of ~49,000Km
World size:
LG
G-Hours
0.1 1086.5
0.2 543.3
0.3 362.2
0.4 271.6
0.5 217.3
0.6 181.1
0.7 155.2
0.8 135.8
0.9 120.7
*** : It is assumed that Jupiter is the size of the generic Large Gas
Giant. Jupiter has a diameter of ~138,000Km
Interplanetary Speed:
Time (min)
G-Hours
1 142
2 71
3 47
4 35
5 28
6 24
7 20
8 18
9 16
Note that these values are about 25% lower than those on the original
table. Which means transits are 25% FASTER.
Interplanetary Distance Matrix:
NOTE/WARNING: This is the big one, anyone silly enough to have hung on
through to here is advised to skip this one.
Note: Any distance over ~120,000 light seconds will take the fastest
listed ship over one year to cross, so the parts of this table dealing
with the orbits 13+ are especially meaningless.
Note also that any ship can jump to any orbit 7+ faster than it can
cross the distance in normal space.
Note also that the entries that were correct in the initial tables are
marked with an '*' (all 22 of them)
Outer orbit number
1 2 3 4 5
Inner orbit number
0 (10) 100* 250* 400* 700* 1300*
1 (20) 150* 300* 600* 1200*
2 (35) 150 450* 1050*
3 (50) 300* 900*
4 (80) 600*
6 7 8 9 10
Inner orbit number
0 (10) 2500 4900* 9700 19300 38500
1 (20) 2400 4800* 9600 19200 38400
2 (35) 2250 4650* 9450 19050 38250
3 (50) 2100 4500* 9300 18900 38100
4 (80) 1800 4200* 9000 18600 37800
5 (140) 1200 3600* 8400 18000 37200
6 (260) 2400 7200 16800 36000*
7 (500) 4800 14400 33600
8 (980) 9600 28800
9 (1940) 19200
11 12 13 14 15
Inner orbit number
0 (10) 76900 153700 307300 614500 1273900
1 (20) 76800 152600 307200 614400 1273800
2 (35) 76650 152450 307050 614250 1273650
3 (50) 76500 152300 306900 614100 1273500
4 (80) 76200 152000 306600 613800 1273200
5 (140) 75600 151400 306000 613200 1272600
6 (260) 74400 150200 304800 612000 1271400
7 (500) 72000 147800 302400 609600 1269000
8 (980) 67200 143000* 297600 604800 1264200
9 (1940) 57600 133400 288000 595200 1254600
10 (3860) 38400 114200 268800 576000 1235400
11 (7700) 76800 231400 538600 1198000
12 (15380) 153600 460800 1120200
13 (30740) 307200 966600
14 (61460) 659400
16 17 18 19
Inner orbit number
0 (10) 2457700 4915300 9830500 19665900
1 (20) 2457600 4915200 9830400 19665800
2 (35) 2457450 4915050 9830250 19665650
3 (50) 2457300 4914900 9830100 19665500
4 (80) 2457000 4914600 9829800 19665200
5 (140) 2456400 4914000 9829200 19664600
6 (260) 2455200 4912800 9828000 19663400
7 (500) 2452800 4910400 9825600 19661000
8 (980) 2448000 4905600 9820800 19656200
9 (1940) 2438400 4896000 9811200 19646600
10 (3860) 2419200 4876800 9792000 19627400
11 (7700) 2380800 4838400 9753600 19589000
12 (15380) 2304000 4761600 9676800 19512200
13 (30740) 2150400 4608000 9523200 19358600
14 (61460) 1843200 4300800 9216000 19051400
15 (127400) 1183800 3641400 8556600 18392000
16 (245780) 2457600 7372800 17208200
17 (491540) 4915200 14750600
18 (983060) 9835400
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>In my humble opinion, the multiple conflicting definitions for UWP
>government codes is the single most serious problem with the rules, and
>should be fixed immediately (as in "Is there still time to prepare an
>errata page for the boxed edition?") if not sooner.
This has my vote. An Errata Sheet is DEFINITELY called for here...
Bertil:
> Further assumptions: The nuke/laser assembly represents the largest
>part of the price of normal missiles. After that comes the electronics
>and the cheapest part is the actual engine.
Before you get too attached to this idea, remember that these missile
all are capable of WELL OVER 100,000m/s delta-V. These are NOT simple,
solid-fuel missiles. These are fusion-rocket missiles, and so the
drives are likely to be more expensive than you might guesstimate.
Note also that you are assuming that the det lasers are sprayed wildly
when detonated. It is probably safe to assume that each lasing element
has the necessary controls to POINT itself at a target before detonation
occurs.
>Cannister missile.
> This missile releases 15,000 10g 10mm tungsten spheres into a cloud
>to ensure that at least one of them hits the target. The cloud is
>released at a range of 30,000km and the velocity with which it expands
>is automatically selected based on the closing velocity between the
>missile and the target to achieve the maximum probability of a hit.
This is a joke, right? At 30,000Km, the target ship would have to
expend around _1G-second_ laterally to make sure that the cloud of
pebbles makes a clean miss.
Wildstar:
>pp.191, "TED Government Type" table - new table:
>Die Code General Description
<etc>
I like this, but I wonder at the necessity of a TED table at all. TEDs
are relatively common in classic Trav material (Pavabid, which has a
TED/Religious Dictatorship comes immediately to mind), so why bother
listing it separately? This sounds like an attempt to codify something
best left to the referee's imagination...
> If the world government is a TED, the nroll 2d6+3 to determine
>the world's law level.
I disagree with this. A TED CANNOT maintain tight control with a
dwindling supply of HighTech goodies. What he will have is a HIGH Law
Level WHERE HE IS AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT, and almost NO Law Level anywhere
else (since it is NOT in his interests to establish a real government to
run things - they might decide HE is optional, especially if they have
access to his goodies. If they DON'T, then they will be pretty much
incapable of running things (think of Prison Trustees, in the absence of
Guards)).
---Steve Higginbotham