And another article I found on rec.games.frp. I'll continue to forward these
for those of you who haven't access to r.g.f and for those who don't want it
to read it for Traveller info. It also may spark interesting discussion
here.
[P. Baughman: I forwarded this article to the Traveller Mailing List which I
administer. If you're interested in this list, I'll gladly send you any
information].
My reply is below.
James
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James T. Perkins Traveller Mailing List Administrator
Tektronix Logic Analyzers "Load Auto/Evade, Beowulf!"
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Article: 5368 of rec.games.frp
Path: [email removed]
From: [email removed] (P. Baughman)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp
Subject: MegaTraveller Question
Message-ID: [email removed]
Date: 11 Jul 88 15:03:11 GMT
Organization: The Pennsylvania State University - Computation Center
Lines: 25
Greetings and Salutations,
Here is one of my few and far between postings.
While running through the MegaTraveller Basic Mainworld Generator I came across
something I didn't understand, to wit: step 14--Population Multiplier. This
procedure generates a random number from 0 to 9...but what is it FOR? I can
find nothing in the text to explain it. I had one suggestion that it was for
pupulation increases for the planet. Does anyone know if this is true?
And if so, so what? I can't imagine a campaign lasting however many
years/decades/centuries it would take for this to become significant to the
game. Any thoughts/opinions on this?
I agree with Paul [email removed] that many of us are eagerly awaiting
Errata, etc. Has anyone heard if/when something like that will be out?
Paul <the other one> Baughman
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The only thing I can think of is the obvious: that since the population UPP
digit is the exponent of the population, representing values of 10, 100, 1000,
10 000, 100 000, 1 000 000, etc., the population multiplier allows you to be
more fine-grained: 10 000, 20 000, 30 000, 40 000, etc. I don't plan to use
it for population increases; just as a finer-grained measurement of
population.
Going along with this finer-grained idea: suppose I am an administrator that
wants to tax a planet by population. Since 2x10^8 is twice as many people as
1x10^8, I'd prefer to know the population by exponent plus one significant
digit! Also might help out Trillion Credit Squadron rules.
James