FFW/Pirates and stuff

Jim Baranski:
>
> FFW is mostly a two person game, also

One of my friends ran a FFW pbm game for about 10 people by
making them the top five Imperial and the top five Zhodani
admirals respectively. The rest of the admirals were run
by him. He imposed the obvious information time lag, but the
player admirals were not required to plot ahead, of course.
He used the whole Spinward Marches map, but I can't recall
wether he introduced more squadrons for the rimward subsectors.
I wasn't involved myself, unfortunately, but he and several of
his players have told me that it worked well and was a lot of
fun.


I've been contemplating doing something similar when my campaign
reaches 1116 (When that will be is anybody's guess. Current time
is 1113 and I've had to suspend the campaign for lack of time :-( ).
What I'd like to do is to get 16-20 people involved: 2-3 top
political and 4-5 top naval characters for the Domain, one each
to run the Darrians, Sword Worlds, Border Worlds and Federation of
Arden, 3 or 4 aslan clan chiefs (_rival_ Aslan clanchiefs ;-)), the
Zhodani Governor of Chronor and whoever else I can think of (one
Imperial would definitely be the admiral of the Five Sisters forces).
Vargr forces would be handled by a semi-referee, not a regular player.
Interaction would be diplomatic as well as military.

Sigh! There's no earthly or unearthly chance that I'll ever have the
time to actually run such a monster, but I can dream, can't I? :-)


> RE: NOMADS
>
> Interesting idea...  Sounds like Space Vikings...

Yes, a little. Primarily they are a plot device to keep a sizable
slice of space incommunicado until the PCs can get a chance to
explore where no-one they've ever heard of has gone before.

Steve Higginbotham:
> I assumed the transponder range was system, at least.

That makes sense. However, in my universe the authorities are
not quite as hysterical about transponders as they are in the
official one. There's just too many legitimate corporations
that wishes to keep some of their business secret from
competitors for the authorities to get too hardnosed about it.
Transponders can be switched off (official excuse: so as not to
reveal our presense to pirates) and will often, Imperial
regulations to the contrary notwithstanding, be switched on only if
you are within range of an official ship or expect to be before
you jump out of the system (that is, you're going to land on
the planet). The penalty for having a switched-off transponder
is often only a fine, especially for first offenders. Mind you,
the authorities will propably enforce the regulations a lot
more leniently for a megacorporate ship than for a suspected
smuggler.

Mike Metlay:
>And no, the proton-proton chain, if 100% efficient, does not release any
>neutrons. But D-T fusion, as used in Traveller, releases TONS of them.
>This drags us back to the TDR discussion-- what do Traveller fusion
>reactors FUSE? The HIWG says one thing, other people say another, and
>I personally favor a third....

One thing that would help pirates survive would be to be able to hide
more effectively. Could we reduce the effectiveness of neutrino
detectors? After all, how _do_ you detect the direction of a neutrino?
The presense of more than can be accounted for by background radiation,
sure, but the direction to the source? I suspect that you'd need
statistical analysis of readings from widely scattered detectors. And
even then you'll be quite handicapped the moment you get more than a
couple of fusion plants in the system. How does a 12 ship squadron
detect a 13th ship halfway across the system? Then too the pirate can
reduce output from his power plant. One more thing: could you use a
nuclear damper to screen neutrino emissions? (Look, my knowledge of
nuclear physics is not  --  how shal I put this?  --  not Nobel Prize
level ;-)



      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     [email removed]
- ------------
        "A  subsector  official  pompously states that the
        subsector  armed  forces  have  four Kinunir class
        ships in service,  each with enough troop strength
        to put down any military operations that threathen
        the peace of the Imperium."

                        ---Adventure 1, The Kinunir