I vaguely recall seeing a copy of Soleri's book sometime around 1972. Does
anyone know offhand if it's still in print? (I know, check Books in Print...
but it may take me a day or two to get to the library.)
In addition to restrictive societies, it would seem to me that arcologies
would be the way to go for a planned colonization of a marginally inhabitable
world, say one with an atmopshere too thin to breathe without a compressor.
In a situation like that, there wouldn't be much incentive to gad off on your
own and try to homestead. I ran through the World Builder's Handbook pro-
cedures for Horosho/Glisten in the Spinward Marches a few weeks ago, in
connection with my face to face game, and came up with a base temperature
and atmospheric pressure combination that meant that over a broad band around
the equator, the seas boiled in daylight...which means rain, Rain, RAIN
elsewhere. With no native life, this looked like a perfect place for arcs, and
I would have put them in anyway...but the dice came up with populations of the
same order of magnitude as the world population (8) for the primary cities,
which made it a sure thing. I also figure that the unstable atmospheric
conditions restrict the use of grav vehicles.
Guns:
As Mark Cook pointed out, the minigun does have a Traveller equivalent. Also,
since some people have access to Striker, I should point out that Striker's
gun design system allows you to design any size and barrel count autocannon
you might like.
However, for the stout of heart, I picked up a copy of "Guns, Guns, Guns" by
Greg Porter of BTRC this weekend. There was an article in Challenge #40 by
Mr. Porter on GGG to MT conversions. This system allows you to design guns,
rockets, missiles, lasers, and high energy weapons using a fairly straight-
forward and easy to follow system (easier than MT vehicles, let's say, but not
quite so easy as Book 2 starship design). For a conventional weapon, you start
by picking the slug parameters, followed by the powder charge, the casing,
the receiver, the barrel, and the add-ons. My only problem is that I'm not
a real gun buff, so I don't know how silly something might be before I start.
Anyway, if you want something with a penetration of 7 so that it will punch
through cloth armor, it can be done (I did it with a TL9 DS round for what
turns out to be a 9mm heavy machine gun cartridge fired from a bolt action
rifle with cost increased 4 times to get a 50% cut in weight to about 6kg--
think of it as a Boys Antitank Rifle.) Just for grins, I'll append my first
three design tries, converted for MT (without the extraneous GGG data) below.
One of the things I especially liked about the system is that guns improve with
tech levels. We're all aware of the recurring problem of cultural paralysis
in MT, where the TL1 and the TL15 manufactured versions of an item are
identical...
THREE GUN DESIGNS
Gun Ammo Rds Pen/Attn Dmg Auto Dgr Sig Recoil Difficulty
3mm Needler - 60 3/3 2 2 - M M Handgun
4.5mm AR - 40 3/2 3 3 - M M Rifle
9mm Rifle - 5 5/3 3 - - M M Rifle
AP 5 6/3 3 - - M M Rifle
DS 5 7/2 3 - - M M Rifle
20mm AG HEAT 5 7 4 - - M M Rifle
Flech 5 1/2 4 - 1.5 M M Rifle
AP 5 4 3 - - M M Rifle
Ranges are Distant for the Rifle and AR, Vlong for the Needler, and
Vlong for the assault gun with HEAT or AP, Long with flechettes.
Gun Length Weight Cost Ammo Wt Ammo Cost
3mm Needler .39m .53kg 2240 .12kg 75/60
4.5mm AR .64m 3.8kg 730 .246kg 13/40
9mm Rifle .57m 5.6kg 9890 .878kg 9/5 slugs
18/5 AP
27/5 DS
20mm AG .28m 3.7kg 450 .24kg 17/5 HEAT
6/5 Flechette
6/5 AP
Notes: The 3mm Needler is a TL10 product, and fires a 3x30mm flechette caseless
round. It looks like you could probably fire it as a rifle rather than a
handgun if you used an extendable stock. Sort of an Uzi or Ingram M-10
item.
The 4.5mm Assault Rifle is manufactured at TL9 by the League Arsenal (Sea
League, Overnale/Glisten), and is fairly conventional--cased round, bullpup
configuration. The rate of fire is pushing the limits, and a referee might
want to think about jamming mishaps if the weapon is used for extended auto-
fire. It should, however, be able to handle 2 autofire targets without
problems. (Heavy duty receiver, unusual in an assault rifle design.)
The 9mm Pegasus Hyperion is a bolt action bullpup rifle chambered for the
Pegasus 9mm HMG round (Pegasus Defender HMG forthcoming), used for hunting
the large game found in some of Overnale's coastal regions (36,000kg
amphibious killers, would you believe?).
The 20mm assault gun is basically a light grenade launcher firing a short range
small HEAT round. I'm figuring on a folding stock on this one...sort of a
cross between a 10 gauge shotgun and a German HK-69 grenade launcher. Semi-
automatic. The flechette round carries 128 2x20mm needles, and I treated it
along the same lines as the game treats shotguns as far as danger space. Like
a shotgun, anyone in the path might have a problem. I doubt you would use the
steel slug (AP) round for much of anything, but it's cheap for practice.
According to GGG, most Traveller weapons ought to be able to reach into the
next range category, although that would make firing them at extreme ranges
"Impossible". (Maybe not a bad model...)
One thing Porter doesn't cover in the Challenge article is cost conversion.
In GGG he uses something he calls credits, and I have transferred them over
intact. This means that most of these weapons come out a bit pricey next to
current MT models, so you could fudge those as you like.
Overall, I'd say that it's worth the $8.95 price, especially if you've got
a) the Challenge 40 article, and b) a need for odd guns.
Rob Dean