From: Grant Sinclair [email removed]
>To further explain the apparent inconsistency, there is the maintenance
>overhead aspect of the TCS rules (10% for operational ships and 1% for
>ships in ordinary). Both the economics of shipbuilding and published
>sources surely show that there would be many ships in ordinary. I have
Based on TCS campaign experience, this is true.
>not seen this taken into account in some of the discussions.
>(Incidentally, does anyone know why these are so high? Operational
>civilian ships only need 0.1%).
TCS maintenance costs include stuff like crew payrolls, military
pensions, life support costs, berthing costs, bases, training schools,
etc, etc, etc, that are paid for separately from "annual maintenance"
when using the role-playing rules (CT Book 2, High Guard, MT, TNE) for
ships.
>In Fighting Ships of the Shattered Imperium (which I know is not the
>best source of designs in the world, but it is official)
"Shattered Ships" is utterly worthless as a source of ANY information,
official or unofficial. It is so riddled with typos that EVEN GDW has
apologized for it; furthermore, the ships that aren't typographical
errors violate the published rules six ways from Sunday. Ignore it.
Hans & David:
>Except that they represent a stagnation of the economy that is quite
>incredible to me. It's the 'slow' I object to. One TL in umpteen
>centuries is not slow, it's moribund.
Yes. I excuse this rate of progress in most of the Imperium by
chalking it up to "Vilani Cultural Influence"; the Sword Worlds has no
such excuse. Rather the opposite: technophile Terran cultural
heritage, surrounded by enemies, constantly fighting wars. You need a
really good explanation why Sacnoth isn't TL21 already...
Feudal Technocracy:
Hans:
>I realize that I assume that the word 'feudal' in 'feudal
>technocracy' has a semantic content close to the normal definition of
>the word and is not a mere buzz-word.
So do I. If anything, the "technocracy" part is the buzz-word.
David, what you keep describing sounds like a plain old Corporate
state (Gov 1) to me. Frankly, a true "Feudal Technocracy" as
described in the CT/MT/TNE definition is either extremely rare or
describes the standard Vilani bureaucracy when it is still small
enough to be functional. Most non-Vilani Gov 5 worlds are probably
just High-Tech Feudalisms, a la Piper's Gram, or the worlds of the
Keltiad (Patricia McNeally).
To further muddy the issue, I have somewhere an issue of High
Passage or JOTAS (I forget which), in which Mark Miller describes the
Traveller government codes. He said that these government codes DO
NOT actually describe the whole government, but how it appears to
outsiders (travellers) that must deal with it (i.e., what kind of
government hassles your PCs get...). Don't pin too much on a single
UPP digit; set up your world's government anyway you like, and pick a
UPP digit that approximates it. There will be several to chose from.
Is the U.S. a representative democracy (gov 4) (based on government
structure as outlined in the Constitution), a civil service
bureaucracy (gov 8) (based on how the Federal government is supposed
to work), an impersonal bureaucracy (gov 9) (based on how the Federal
government usually works) or a charismatic oligarchy (gov C)(the
country is really run by a relatively small coterie of elected and
appointed officials who know each other, pat each other's backs, and
get the job by looking good in 30-second sound bites)?
As with TechLevel definitions, GDW created endless fodder for
arguments by mixing structural definitions (Representative Democracy,
Tech level of a given artifact), with procedural or functional
definitions (impersonal bureaucracy, production level of a world).
When doing detailed looks at a world, I find that GURPS Space has
better random-generation tables for government type than Traveller.
The government descriptions are more informative, too.
David:
>I'll give you this is you give me an example of a downward turn in your
>cycles, otherwise I'm sticking with the scientific method. :-)
You are confusing "scientific method" and Occam's Razor. OR is not
"scientific method", it is simply a useful heuristic for sorting out
multiple explanations. It is not necessarily correct, either.
Steve Bonneville:
>Somebody asked recently why so many old-time "classic" Traveller
>players are complaining about the rules changes, because they'd never
>seen AD&D players react like this when AD&D Second Edition came
>out. Well, my friend, that's because TSR didn't do something
>that at times I could describe with a pungent four-letter Anglo-Saxon
>word to the rules. Right now is one of those times, but I'm
>restraining myself. AD&D 2nd Ed. *is* AD&D.
Yep. I can take a 1st ed. AD&D character, monster or scenario
and drop it *unchanged* into a 2nd ed. AD&D campaign. Any necessary
changes are trivial enough to do in my head as I encounter them -- for
the most part. The only exceptions are dragons and the "d" critters
- -- most of them went thru upscaling in combat abilities and hit dice,
and scenarios involving them have to be rebalanced.
To drop a CT/MT scenario into TNE, I have to redo the NPCs, the
equipment, the animals, and the ships. All that is left is the plot,
and most of the MT stuff had really poor plots. In some cases, the
change from unlimited delta-V thrusters (or CT non-specific "maneuver
drive") to limited delta-V reaction drives totally throws the plot out
the window. Let's not even mention that if you use the TNE "Virus"
background, all the old 3rd Imperium background material is worse than
useless. TNE is an entirely NEW game with the Traveller name still
attached...
From: "Les Howie" [email removed]
> 2. The frontier war happens in a small corner of a huge empire.
>Larger forces may deployed against greater threats, or as a part of
>core imperial politics.
This may be true of, say, Ley sector, but the Spinward Marches
faces one of the 3rd Imperium's two biggest enemies, and GDW material
has repeatedly stated that the Spinward Marches, Deneb, and Corridor
Fleets are *OVERSIZED* because of the Zhodani and Vargr threats.
There is no greater threat besides the Solomani, and GDW material has
depicted the 3I deploying more forces against the Zho/Vargr front than
the Solomani Rim -- apparently, the Solomani were trounced during the
Rim War... <sarcasm intended>.
-- Cynthia Higginbotham
"Q: What is the difference between the BATF and the Gestapo?"
"A: BATF agents speak English."