Various

A thread of 2 messages, 8 August 1993 to 20 August 1993, in the order they were sent.

#5863 Various

Mark Watson · 8 August 1993

[ Loren Wiseman says no aliens supplements planned ]
I also see this in Challenge. Is it because GDW expect to lose interest
in the game before they could complete the series? ;-) The aliens stuff
is unfortunately key to this kind of game. If you started with
Megatraveller then for a long time you were sold short in 2 key areas -
aliens and robotics. Please don't do the same with TNE. Right from the
beginnings of Traveller the demand has been for background material,
but most of the plan in Loren's note says wargames, hardware and more
wargames. Now I guess that that is what some key people in GDW enjoy
doing and what they are best at. but don't lose sight of the other
stuff.

Speaking of Challenge, I just acquired 69. I liked much of the
Traveller material, however, some peeves:
- - continued practice of printing gushing letters that wholeheartedly
endorse the party line. Or maybe that's all the letters they get.
- - about half the MT material I already paid for when I bought Survival
Margin.
- - suddenly we are padding it with a 3 page movie review column. Why?
Aren't there movie review magazines for this kind of thing? And this is
a magazine that has gone bimonthly!

[ Matt Goldman, in response to Loren, says that most of the material to
be published from now on will be post-virus ]
Yes, but GDW can continue to support their pre-virus customer base and
I'm encouraged by the TNE book itself - the subsector data includes
both pre and post virus stats. The only place I have seen any lapse in
this policy is in the Antares data in Challenge 69, which only provides
Hard Times stats (hands up everyone playing Hard Times based campaigns.
Now hands up everyone enjoying them). By the way, compare the space
taken up by subsector data in TNE with that in Challenge.

Most background material should hopefully still include pre virus
information as historical data. Hopefully the lesson was learnt with
the Diaspora supplement - which, stats apart, only detailed the current
(Hard Times) situation and provided zero real background color, and was
as a result awful.

Mark

#5913 Various...

Timothy Little · 20 August 1993 · reply to #5863

[... Stranded astronauts trying to get to the moon ...]

> However it might be possible if they landed on the planet with vacc suits,
> given a generous ref :-).

Very generous indeed!

> Using the high altitude glider + balloons to gain
> altitude they could then have constructed some simple rockets fueled with,
> say alcohol, and use the remaining atmosphere coupled with the oxygen
> supplies from some of their vacc suits - this would be a one man trip only.

Getting high in the atmosphere does not mean that it will be any easier to get
into orbit.  There's still a slight problem of achieving 8 km/s.

I'd be amazed if a simple alcohol rocket could get 1 km/s exhuast velocity,
and even so it would take 200 tons of fuel to get a single person into orbit.
Multiply by 20 to get to the moon.

[...]

> This one guy then has the time it takes him to reach the moons surface from
> maximum vacc suit communication range to tell the TL15 ship to pick him
> up - otherwise he's dead. (A kinder alternative would be to allow him
> to achieve orbit round the moon - but that might overtax his vacc suit's
> computer, prehaps a decaying orbit? :-)

I'd like to see someone plot a decaying orbit around the moon!  No atmosphere
to slow the guy down means little chance of orbital decay.

Overtaxing the vacc-suit computer would be less of a problem (*especially*
at TL15 - hand supercomputers are TL11 stuff), compared to the problem of
needing yet more fuel...

- -*-*-*-*-*-

> 1> How "thick" is our galaxy? (in parsecs or light years) If I'm mapping it
>    into 3D, I want to have a general idea of how much vertical space I have
>    to work with.

It varies a fair bit, but 1000 parsecs is a reasonable guide.  As far as
Traveller goes, there is effectively no vertical limit.

> 2> Lots of SF works speak of nebulas. Where are these things located and how
>    big are they? I've not seen any descriptions of these in Traveller and it
>    seemed like a neat thing to include.

Nebulae are located all over the galaxy.  Dark nebula range in size from the
lower limit of observation up to galaxy-spanning lanes.  Bright nebulae
are usually only a few light years across, but can reach hundreds of light-
years if illuminated (or ionised) by very bright stars.  They wouldn't have
much game-mechanical effect - they pretty much 'just look cool'.  Density of
gas/dust in a nebula is still so low that interplanetary space looks like
osmium in comparison.  It's only because the thickness is so large, that you
can see anything.

- --
Tim Little