Subject: Ships in Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!
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Jerry Williams Notes:
[]It's been a while, but I once used this equation to
[]determine how much fuel would be required for a
[]fusion plant to accelerate a ship to 0.1c. Assuming
[]all deuterium, I think that 1/2 of the ship needed
[]to be fuel. That drops down to about 4% (I think) of
[]the ship if antimatter is used (assuming total energy
[]conversion -- I don't know what the real output of an
[]antimatter reactor would be).
Perhaps T:TNE should draw upon the Niven "Known Space/Kzin Wars" idea of
ships.
In "Man/Kzin Wars" (post hyperdrive) Ships are equipped with a contra-gravity
drive as well as the hyperdrive. Ships have a maneuver reserve in
deltaV (i.e. in the thrid book, one character noted that Kzin standard warships
have a 1.5c DeltaV reserve for maneuvering.
However, no fuel use was mentioned for this reserve (but I presume it was
something low).
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When I recently ran Traveller, I modified my system generation program to
figure Tech Levels differently. My system assumed a "General TL" and
worked down based on Starport. For the Imperium, GTL was 15, 16 in the core,
the Zhodani had a GTL of 14, Sword Worlds has 12, etc.
A Starports reduced GTL by 1d2-1 (i.e. 0-1), B-starports reduce it by 1d3-1
(0-2), C ports by 1d4 (1-4), D by 1d4+1 (2-5) and E by 1d6+2 (3-8). X ports
were a special case. (straight 1d6-1 or soemthing).
In the case of fringe areas (spinward marches, etc) the variance was increased
by 1 (thus, in the marches, a B-starport rolls 1d4-1, not 1d3-1). In the
core variance is reduced by 1 (in the capital sector, B-starports roll 1d2-1).
Tight collectives (Darrian, Sword Worlds) reduce variance by 1 as well.
Very tight collectives (small, 5-world federations) reduce variance by 2
(never below 1d2).
Within the imperium and Vargr areas, roll 2d6: a 12 indicates +1 TL.
This system gets a littl sticky when rolling random systems outside any normal
collective body, but I think it handles the idea of technology following the
heavy-traffic planets better.
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Clay Bush Requests:
[]Someone in recent discussion noted that Aliens were getting dropped during
[]each revision of Traveller. MT made obsolete the Alien Modules, and now a
[]T:2000 conversion will invalidate important parts of the two MTA books.
[]Aliens are very important to any si-fi game, and deserve careful attention
[]in GDW's marketing plans.
Yes, Aliens should have a part in T3. It wouldn't be traveller without the
Doggies :)
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Burton Choinski Phoenix Technologies, LTD
"All opinions are mine, not Phoenix's" Cambridge, MA
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