Disclaimer: This is John Bogan, not Curtis Peer.
I picked up Challenge 71 the other day, and it had some items of intrest.
Frank Chadwick and Dave Nilsen had an article on Lasers in Space Combat,
critiques of which I'll leave to those better versed in the ins and outs
of lasers.
The Brilliant Lances design notes are in there. I'm glad to hear the
first mention of "Brilliant Lances Express", slated for 1994, which
will cover big battles with lots of BIG ships.
Traveller News Service is coming back on line, as Loren mentioned.
There's some problems with the "Straits of Magellan" scenario, though.
A "no spoilers" critique of the problems is this:
a) transit time between the inner and outer system is apparently
about four hours.
b) the ship they intercept is supposed to have travelled from two
parsecs away in realspace, taking 70 years to do so.
Maybe in MegaTraveller, but not with the fuel constraints of TNE.
To travel 2 parsecs in 70 years, the ship will have to be travelling
at almost 10% the speed of light. 0.1c works out to 1800 hexs/turn
in Brilliant Lances. Using its jump fuel, the Valor-class is able
to make up to almost 700 hexes/turn, providing you feel no need to
slow down:) , most other ships reach far lower velocities if they
exhaust their fuel.
If you changed the scenario so that the intercepted ship jumped
in but couldn't maneuver or signal, so the crew went into low berth.
To account for why it wasn't found if you assume the shakedown
flight only travells several hours away from its home port, rather than
the days or weeks needed for TNE in-system travel, have the Magellan
operate from a base in the outer system, rather than from the main
world itself.
In other sections, I'm left wondering why they used a Far Trader and
Fiery-class escort to illustrate a 2300 article :)
Cheers,
John H Bogan