In reply to the person who objected to a lingua-franca based
upon English ir should be noted that your reasons have been
put forth concerning the present-day world & in spite of all
the reason that other languages, (Chinese, amongst others)
would eventually displace English, in fact English is more
solidly entrenched than ever before. It seems to me that there
is *at least* as much chance that English will maintain it's
position as there is that it will be displaced. As far as this
concerns the game I really think it's a minor point anyway so
substitute whatever you wish in your campaign. I seriously doubt
that this point will make much difference in whether or not the
new system is a success or not. In any case, as members of this
list have pointed out numerous times, lapses in "credibility" are
endemic to this system.
Now , as long as I'm on the soapbox, ;*) I have a few other issues
I'd like to address;
There have been a number of posts concerning the ability of a small
number of systems to produce enough ships to flood any sector with
protective vessels. According to the "Trillion-credit Squad." rules
this is quite true. However, it should also be considered that what
applies to the Islands subsectors concerning how much each system
spends on "Defense" won't necessarily apply to any systems, subsectors,
sectors or the Imperium itself. It could very well be that the various
govs, for whatever political reasons, would be willing to tolerate a
reduced military expenditure & therefore a decreased level of protect-
ion in exchange for money avail. for other programs. Some posters have
also felt that the situation in Classical Trav where you had 500,000t
naval vessels protecting the "space-lanes" that much smaller , 200-1000t
, merchant vessels plied was somewhat unrealistic. Well, I always figured
that what determined the size of these vessels was what their purpose
was. The merchants were the size they were because that was all the big-
ger they needed to be for commerce purposes while the naval vessels were
the size they were due to military considerations. Now, the commerce sys-
tem contained within the rules may not have supported this situation but
if those rules were altered the situation defined in Classical Trav
could be arrived at just as easily as it could be changed. In the end,
it really just depends on how you want to play the game. For my part
I never have incorporated the rebellion & have adopted only parts of Mega-
Trav.
Phil Pugliese
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