Re: other odds 'n' ends

Steve Higginbotham writes:

>Wildstar:
><starport/traffic generator>

>I liked your generator.  I didn't agree with the modifier for worlds
>within J-1 of wherever, since I disagree with the notion of J-1 traffic
>being significant (how many one-cycle steam engines are still in use in
>the US Merchant Fleet?  They're a 150 year old idea, and J-1 is ten
>thousand years old.  And was superseded much more than 3500 years ago.)

But there is a major difference: one-cycle steam engines are not economical
to build or run these days.  Ships powered by steam would be much more costly
to run and would probably be slower travelling too (correct me on that bit
if necessary).  A starship with J-1 takes the same time as a J-6 ship to
make that short jump and it burns less fuel and it costs less to build and
maintain.  Sure, over longer distances J-1 isn't as economical but so long
as a world has trading partners close enough J-1 would be the way to go.

Also, the jump-1 drive of 3500 years ago is exactly the same as the jump-1
drive of the present imperium.  They have made no real progress in all that
time (actually, they can build jump drives that go further but the basic
jump-1 drive is still the same size/cost/everything else as it was originally).


>However, this is a minor quibble.  A slightly (only slightly) more
>serious quibble is the extra information you are adding into the
>standard hex display - those hexes are crowded enough as it is.

I agree with this completely.  Save our hexes from massive over crowding.
One possible way to improve the situation may be to colour code the symbols
giving some of them dual meaning (not that I've even started thinking about how
to double things up ;-).  Then again, this may still lead to information
overload and it wouldn't be as nice to photocopy and distribute.





        Pauli

Paul Dale                       | [email removed]
Department of Computer Science  | [phone removed]
University of Queensland        |
Australia, 4072                 | Did you know that there are 41 two letter
                                |     words containing the letter 'a'?