I sed:
>Chicago's O'Hare is class C? No bloody way! Class C means unrefined
>fuel and 'reasonable' repair facilities. No overhauls, no 100 hr
>inspections. To me, that means that the port is more like your local
>airstrip. (Say College Park airstrip for the DC & MD crowd)
>Small private planes VERY small commercial stuff. Class D is more
>like a grass strip airport, with MAYBE a hanger. Class E is a
>farmer's field.
Wildstar sez:
}To quote chapter and verse (Traveller Book 3: Worlds and Adventures,
}copyright 1977 by Game Designers' Workshop, page 5):
}A = Excellent Quality Installation. Refined Fuel Available. Annual
} maintainance overhaul available. Shipyard capable of starship and
} non-starship construction present. May contain Naval Base and/or
} Scout base.
}B = Good Quality installation. Refined fuel available. Annual
} maintainance overhaul available. Shipyard capable of constructing
} non-starships present. May contain Naval and/or Scout bases.
}C = Routine installation. Only unrefined fuel available. Reasonable
} repair facilities present. May contain a Scout base.
}D = Poor quality installation. Only unrefined fuel available. No
} repair or shipyard facilities present. May contain a Scout base.
}E = Frontier installation. Essentially a bare spot of bedrock with
} no fuel, facilities, or bases present.
}X = No starport. No provision made for any starship landings.
}Note that nothing explicit is said about traffic levels (even relative
}traffic levels). Going back to the airport metaphor, which is imperfect
}at best, does O'Hare have the capability to build an aircraft or
}assemble one from components? I don't know what a 100hr inspection
}entails, and I don't know of any airline has a major maintainance
}facility there. If major maintainance is available, I would classify it
}as Class B; otherwise it's got to be C.
The 100 hr inspection for aircraft (or annual) is a complete overhaul.
Most airports have the capacity to perform a 100 hr on small aircraft.
Say that a cessna is the equivalent of a small craft, that means
virtually all starports have the capacity to overhaul smallcraft.
O'Hare is a major hub. They ought to have capacity to overhaul jumbo
jets. That means they have the equivalent of overhaul for starships.
That makes it an 'A' yard. Yet, they have no 'ship' yards.
}In my (humble) opinion, starport classification has nothing to do with
}size or amount of traffic. If a municipal airport rents out one of the
}hangars to a lightplane maintainance and restoration company, and if the
}airport has both AvGas and Jet-A available, then it is class B (overhaul
}available, both kinds of fuel). Other airports of similar size might be
}Class D, if they only sell AvGas and no repairs are available. Class E
}might be an "airstrip" out in the outback of Australia - a patch of bare
}ground that's been cleared of most large obstructions. Class X is a
}farmer's field: you are not supposed to land there, but you might be
}able to in an emergency.
}More than anything else, I think we are hitting our heads on a major
}limitation in Traveller: not enough detail in the definitions (and too
}few categories to pigeonhole things into). Probably there sould be some
}detailed starport generation scheme, which detailed the types of
}services available, and the capacity of each one.
Ah, well, this is basically the stand I took in the beginning. There is
not sufficient detail: A class 'A' port does not necessarily mean the
presence of jump capable ship yards. A class 'B' port does not necessarily
mean high traffic.
I hereby suggest a traffic code mod for starports:
(sporadic but alphabetical)
H Heavy: Vessels up to a million tons. Major worlds.
M Medium: Vessels below 100,000 ton vessels.
L Light: Vessels under 1000 tons. (Player type ships)
O Occasion: Traffic rarely in system.
Z Zero: No traffic in system. Vessels EXTREMELY rare.
Note that Heavy traffic worlds must of necessity be at most jump-2 or
jump-3 apart from each other to accomodate the jump range of the starships.
(Jump-4 merchants are kinda rare)
Also note that traffic will be proportional to the population &
industry levels.
Further, any type of starport can have nearly any traffic level within
reason. A class A port could have ship yards and light traffic,
a class E port could have no maintainence but heavy traffic.
AH AM AL - -
BH BM BL BO -
CH CM CL CO -
DH DM DL DO DZ
EH EM EL EO EZ
- - - XL XO XZ
(Shionthy belt is probably a XL or XM class port: Local stuff only :-)
}[More about Madrigal]
>Yeah, possibly, but who would want a bunch of TL 6 Steel hulls for
>spacecraft? If they are very late TL 6 they might be able to manage
>a Gemini or Mercury type space capsule, or at BEST an X-20 Dynasoar.
}Although you may have a point, I will argue that there's no real
}penalty in having a steel hull for most commercial applications.
}In almost all cases, agility is going to be zero anyway, so that
}the mass of the hull is irrellevant; volume of hull material does not
}enter into the design sequence anyway, and the price modifier for steel
}is the same as superdense or bonded superdense - the cheapest available.
}On the other hand, being cheap and low tech, it has relatively few
}control points. [..] This would tend to save on computer and crew
}requirements.
These are holes in the craft design system which don't make sence.
I therefore ignore them.
Of COURSE it matters how much a ship masses. To say it doesn't is
just ignoring physical laws which are common sence. Also, the agility
definition I (and Rob Dean) work with does take ship weight into account.
Also, control points on hulls is a kind of silly idea. A steel hull
(while easier to build) is gonna require more maintainance than a
stronger material hull like crystal iron (TL 10). Titanium (TL8) will
require a LOT more work than crystal iron.
More on Xtaliron later when I get around to Catie's stuff on hull
materials.
2G Scott
Metlay babbles:
>The concept of a prebooked connection Jump boggles my mind. Completely.
>Anywhere other than Tukera monopolized core areas, who would dare try?
Check out Adventure 10: Safari Ship. prebooked tickets in the
Spinward Marches/District 268. As froniter as it gets.
TML Historian? Nyahh! Nyahh! Nyahh! :-)