Trade Codes and Star Types

Re: Trade Codes

Well, to advance the discussion into slightly new ground, I have
a few questions about the trade codes presented in the MT Ref's
Manual.

(Fl) Fluid
def: Non-water ocean(s).
reqs: size A+, atmos 1+

What does this mean? That only big worlds will have exotic
oceans? I suspect that there is a typo here: that the reqs should
read atmos A-C hydro 1+. Damn well near impossible to use the
MT material without that blasted errata sheet. Would somebody
please post the errata on the UWP (mainworld) generation?

(Ic) Ice-Capped
def: self-explanatory
reqs: atmos 0-1, hydro 1+

Maybe I'm confused about the definition. I mean, earth is ice-
capped (last I checked), but we don't fit under the requirements
for this trade code. So what is the significance of a world being
ice-capped?

(In) Industrial
def: economy based on mass-production of manufactured goods.
reqs: atmos 2,3,4,7,9, pop 9+

I know this one goes back to classic traveller, but I've always
had a problem with it. Considering the extent of robotics and
mechanized labor at high tech levels, I'm not sure this high a
population requirement is really necessary. Furthermore,
considering the extent of (clean) fusion at advanced tech levels,
I'm not sure that the atmospheres of such worlds would be so
heavily tainted (I guess they assume there are some negative
atmospheric by-products of mass production other than smog).

(Ri) Rich
def: your guess is as good as mine
reqs: atmos 6,8, pop 6-8, gov 4-9

So in other worlds, if a corporation suddenly takes over a rich
world, then that world is no longer a rich world. Makes
absolutely no sense to me. Maybe the governmental requirement
should be axed.

Now onward to that other topic.... grrrr...

Re: Star types

I really hate to open up this can of worms, but since several
people on the TML have argued that it's sort of important, we
might as well get on with it.

I've been comparing the star-system generation rules of
MegaTraveller, GURPS Space, and Space Master, particularly as
concerns the generation of star types. One thing I don't like
about the MegaTraveller system is that by going with the
mechanics alone, you will never generate type O/B or size Ia/Ib
stars (under book 6 of classic traveller you can get everything
but type O, I'm not sure why they changed it... probably in order
to conform more closely with observed stellar frequencies.
Interestingly, they kept the book six tables concerning habitable
zones, so the only information missing is that on type O stars).
The rules even admit this and advise the ref to just sprinkle
them in as an after-thought. Blech!

It is interesting to note that Space Master (unlike Traveller and
GURPS), includes two other spectral classes (S and N), which are
placed below M (dim red) on the classification scheme. Actually,
to the best of my understanding, there are 10 spectral classes:
O, B, A, F, G, K, M, R, N, and S. They originated out of Ann
Cannon's work at Harvard (who originally used all the letters
between A and S). Later studies cut the spectral classes down to
these ten letters (of which Traveller mentions only the first
seven). Are there any astronomer types out there who can tell us
more about these final three spectral types and/or give us some
local-area frequency probabilities for each of the spectral
types?

Another interesting thing about Space Master is that it ignores
the dwarf stars (size VI), so in one way it seems to be more
complete that Traveller, and in another way it seems to be less
complete. I wish I knew what the designers were thinking.

Regarding Orbit #'s, I'm still partial the way GURPS handles
this: by using Bode's law to figure out orbital distances. Still,
it's not hard to tell that even this section and most of the rest
of GURPS Space (when it comes to world-generation) seems to be
deliberately cognizant of Classic Traveller, its forerunner.
Since this isn't rec.games.frp.advocacy, however, I'd better can
the discussion of the other games right here.

My basic quip about the Traveller rules (with respect to this
topic) is that by relying so heavily on a d6 scheme of things,
GDW seems to be ignoring several important star types and is
probably fudging on the probabilities of those stellar
occurrences which are covered in the rules. Fixing this problem,
even with the help of the TML-astronomers is probably going to be
a hairy ordeal. To compound our difficulties, once we have a
"good" generation table for the primary, we will still need one
for secondary and tertiary stars. I have it on decent authority
that the *majority* of star systems out there have one or more
companion stars to their primary. However, when we look at the MT
or even book 6 rules, we see that Traveller is assuming that the
majority of stars systems are solos. After this problem is fixed,
we'll need to create habitable zone information for stars of type
O, R, N, and S for inclusion into the orbital zone tables. And
even then our problems won't be anywhere near finished (because
we'll need some method of finding out whether or not the
habitable zone is occupied and if it is, is this indeed the
mainworld?). Like I said before, this is a huge can of worms,
particularly when done by committee, which is the only way I can
think of doing it since I'm pretty much ignorant about a lot of
this stuff. One last time... are you sure you really want to get
into all this?


           _   /|       Jim Vassilakos
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