Subject: X-boat Routes
Reply-To: [email removed]
>b) given a text file with the sector or subsector information, what is
> a good format to store the xboat route information? (I am thinking
> of a text database format to be compatible with that used for sectors)
In Archive-Message-Number: 263 Rob Miracle says
Well, what you could do is use a format like
0101 System Name A123456-7 BTrade Codes A701ImStar1 Star2 Star3 0202
^
XBoat Companion ---+
This wasn't exactly what I had in mind. This does not in fact tell me
where the routes are. Also, I don't think that the format that GDW uses
for the Spinward Marches is quite appropriate. (For one thing you don't
need the stars necessarily, for another its cramped.)
I had more in mind 3 files for each sector:
name.sector (mainworld generated sector info)
name.xboats (xboats routes in sector name)
name.extend (additional info on worlds I'm interested in)
I'm not quite sure what the last would have in it, but if would at
least have the names of the subsectors; I'd like to have them somewhere.
The sector file would have lines like:
Wunderland 2140 C130110-8 Lo Ni Po De 615 IM
I adopted this from the way Digest Group lists worlds in Traveller's
Digest. Name first, then location, zone at end after alignment. The
trade classifications can also hold additional info, including Xb, for
an Xboat station. Then the xboats file will have the info on the graph
which is the route.
The question is how to store that graph.
I made some changes on the gensec program James Perkins wrote which I found in
the archives. I made it compatible with MegaTraveller. It was the base for my
musing about how to do the X-boat routes.
It looks like this:
% gensec nonsense
usage: gensec {-S | density | maturity}
Generates Traveler sector or subsector.
S = {A..P}, subsector to generate
density = generation percentage or rift|sparse|scattered|dense
maturity = backwater|frontier|mature|cluster
defaults are entire sector, 50% stellar density, standard frontier maturity.
% gensec -L rift backwater
Unnamed 2627 E335377-4 Lo Ni 021 IM
Unnamed 2630 C573551-7 S Ni 202 IM
Unnamed 2729 E7B0535-7 Ni De 520 IM
Unnamed 2921 B510373-A Lo Ni 212 IM
Hot jets!
Fred Schiff ([email removed])