Various, ship design mostly

Wildstar asks:
>Just a curious question: is MegaTraveller your first exposure to Traveller?

No, actually.  I started with Classic Traveller, although nothing like
as seriously as my current campaign.  I did not, however, equip myself
with quite as many supplements as most of the TML: I did not get
Mayday, Striker, TCS, or any of the Digest Group stuff -- I suspect
the DGP material was perhaps less readily available in England as in
the USA.  My first introduction to the task system was therefore in
MegaTraveller.

On ship design:

>The major problem, however, has to do with circular calculations.

They're not really circular, they are mutually interdependent.  As I
implemented it, you can change the power plant output and the agility
will be adjusted; you can change the agility and it will find the
power plant size by iteration.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a two-level
design system.  I could really use a quick method of generating
designs in addition to the detailed one.  If GDW wanted to keep the
basic rules simple, a _Starship Operators Manual_ with the complex
design rules.

Your point about most players not having a computer is something that
has actually been brought home fairly heavily.  My programme was
written for an NCR Decision Mate V and although it ran MS-DOS on an
8088 the screen control characters were not exactly compatible with my
new IBM-clone PC -- I am faced with the prospect of a hurried porting
job in my copious spare time (hah!) and hoping the old compiler runs
on the new machine.  Meanwhile, I'm looking through the vehicle archives...

Now what I could *really* use is a Computer-Aided deck plan layout
system, preferably integrated with the design parameter system so I
could do everythign at once.  The characters in my campaign are far
too keen on boarding inoperative ships...

Martyn
- --------------sasmjw@unx.sas.com----(Martyn Wheeler)----DoD #293--------------
SAS Institute, Inc: [phone removed]            H: [phone removed] (Raleigh, NC)