dcnilsen13 wrote:
>> You tried, which is more than can be said of others.
> Thanks, but what did I do wrong, or fail to do?
You didn't go far enough.
Maybe the old grognards would've screamed bloody murder for giving an
Earth-like world a proper star instead of a M7 V (i.e. Allel) or
removing the "M7" from "M7 D" (because D's are just D's). But for those
of us who were hoping for a bit more, it would've gone a long way.
==============
>> When generating the stars for the four sectors that appeared in the
second 1248 sourcebook, "Bearers of the Flame", EDG was on board and all
of us were determined to make the stars right to
>> the best of our
>> ability. In the 8 years that have passed, I'm sure we've learned a bit
more about astrophysics that EDG would want to
>> tweak those stars a bit more.
>Right, and that's part of why I was determined to be conservative and only
>change what was necessary (stars with no habitable zones, stellar remnants
>that would have killed their worlds already).
But we knew even back then that there were some stars that were too
cold. And someone at GDW knew it too because we wouldn't have received
"World Tamers Handbook" if you didn't. If you plug those numbers in
(Chapter 8: Stars and Planets) for worlds orbiting M5 or worse, there's
no way you're going to get an Ag world around an M7 V.
==============
>In a game like Traveller, which intends to remain in print forever and
also uses terms like "canon," you can't afford to get into chasing the
latest scientific theories all the time, because UWPs are "Holy Sacraments."
Not even going on theory here. I think it's safe to say that these are
facts. Most M stars are too small and cold to put out much heat so
you're going to have marginal worlds while a class "II" star is going to
be really freaking hot.
==============
> People get honked over HEPLaR and laser focal arrays but changing
UWPs all the time would be
pouring permanent itching powder down their shorts.
In for a penny, in for a pound. Everyone in charge of Traveller has
changed the rules with every published version. No one bothered to
explain why. A cynic would say that it was to sell more product. The
idealist would say that they found a way to make better rules. So why
not explain to people we're fixing the UWP's to make them better. And if
people can't accept that, whatever.
==============
> because for WHATEVER reason, a vast number of Traveller players are
collectors/completists, and they want to collect all those UWPs, which
are very important to them, and if we're stupid enough to give them to
them, there is some kind of assumption that they are going to be
reasonably stable. So I get why people don't want them changed. They're
hard enough to read and make sense of to begin with, but if little
digits start randomly changing here and there, how can you tell what is
what? What is a fix, what is a typo? Which of these eye-watering rows of
numerals can you trust? We'd all be running around like Oedipus gouging
our eyes out.
While I can't read a High Guard digit stream, my specialty was UWP's. I
never had a problem with that--my engineering background perhaps. But
we're not even going into the mass retention of atmosphere39;s bit, I was
just talking about the stars.
==============
>in many cases the UWPs were generated automatically by a buggy DGP
program and it
is not clear if the Star DMs were applied correctly. But the bottom line
is that IF THE "OFFICIAL" UWPs DON'T REFLECT THE GENERATION SYSTEM THEY
ARE ERRATA and must be brought into line with it.
Now it sounds like you're arguing my point. A lot of people know that
the data was buggy (Genie) but only the most stubborn of people want to
keep it.
At this point in your post, you keep arguing my point, so I'm not sure
why you did it except to rant at the people who gave you grief for years.
=============
>But we should not be chasing current scientific theory all day. The game
>was designed in 1977, and its 1977 design is locked into its UWPs and
>that's okay. The game is never going to realistic. We've got a flat map
>that is not based on actual star locations but claims to include Earth,
>we've got jump drive, psionics, etc., etc., so we can afford to draw a
>lone somewhere.
Again, I'm not talking about theories. And yes, we've got a 2D map for a
3D galaxy. That's not something we can control until we get into a
higher tech future where we can model that sort of thing with ease at
home. Realism is going to be an unachievable goal; does that mean we
should abandon the steps that we "can" take to advance things? Psionics,
jump drives, etc. yeah, there's going to be elements of the game that
are fictional assumptions to this game's universe. But there are some
things like stars and gravity and breathable atmospheres that are
factual, so why not try to get them right?
=============
>> IMTU, I've been changing the UWP's where my campaigns are active (Vland
>>and Windhorn). I've been altering stars to fit the mainworlds and bumping
>>up world sizes to ensure they have sufficient mass to retain their
>>atmospheres (as EDG educated us/me).
>That would be beyond my line based on the "errata" test, as it's not
>errata unless you're also re-doing the world generation system to disallow
>current results.
In fact, that was done for Mongoose under their Open Gaming License. I
believe EDG was involved with it (not really sure) and it's way in the
back of the "Traveller System Reference Document" under "Space Opera
Rules". But I do know that he's been hard at work re-creating system
generation procedures. You can find it all at sfrpg-discussion.net
=============
>Also, now that we are finding exoplanets for the past couple years, we are
>going to start getting the doors blown off our assumptions on solar system
>formation, so I wouldn't be in a hurry to change things we'll just want to
>change again in a couple more years.
It'll be a long time before they make sense of all the data coming in,
and they're not even getting the complete picture--it39;s skewered in
favor of the massive gas giants and earth-sized worlds are at the low
end limits of their resolution. Yeah, there will be people that are
willing to dive right in, but I'll wait. I've got plenty to do now.
============
>But, you still haven't answered, what did I do wrong in TNE, what did I
>miss in TNE, what did I screw up in TNE so that it still has to be redone?
Ok, take a deep breath and relax. I'm not picking on you. It isn't that
you did things wrong, Dave. You had the tools (World Tamer's Handbook)
but didn't take full advantage of them. Some of us have. Nick Bradbeer
programmed a spreadsheet with chapter 8's stellar data to make it easy
to compute average temperatures on worlds. I modified it for my own use
by plugging in interpolated data for the stars in between the data
points you gave us (0's and 5's). And just using that I go around
tweaking stars to get something that makes sense (to me, anyway) based
on the UPP and those pesky trade classifications. If you guys had done
the same back them, you might've done it yourselves. But I get it, you
couldn't spend all your time worrying about the UWP's. There were other
supplements and adventures to publish. You didn't have the luxury of
time. Maybe if MTG never happened...
For the record, I'm doing this for MTU. I don't care if the game's
current publishers do anything about it or not, and I don't blame you.
You did more to fix Traveller's problems than anyone else before or since.
\_/
DED
TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin
>> You tried, which is more than can be said of others.
> Thanks, but what did I do wrong, or fail to do?
You didn't go far enough.
Maybe the old grognards would've screamed bloody murder for giving an
Earth-like world a proper star instead of a M7 V (i.e. Allel) or
removing the "M7" from "M7 D" (because D's are just D's). But for those
of us who were hoping for a bit more, it would've gone a long way.
==============
>> When generating the stars for the four sectors that appeared in the
second 1248 sourcebook, "Bearers of the Flame", EDG was on board and all
of us were determined to make the stars right to
>> the best of our
>> ability. In the 8 years that have passed, I'm sure we've learned a bit
more about astrophysics that EDG would want to
>> tweak those stars a bit more.
>Right, and that's part of why I was determined to be conservative and only
>change what was necessary (stars with no habitable zones, stellar remnants
>that would have killed their worlds already).
But we knew even back then that there were some stars that were too
cold. And someone at GDW knew it too because we wouldn't have received
"World Tamers Handbook" if you didn't. If you plug those numbers in
(Chapter 8: Stars and Planets) for worlds orbiting M5 or worse, there's
no way you're going to get an Ag world around an M7 V.
==============
>In a game like Traveller, which intends to remain in print forever and
also uses terms like "canon," you can't afford to get into chasing the
latest scientific theories all the time, because UWPs are "Holy Sacraments."
Not even going on theory here. I think it's safe to say that these are
facts. Most M stars are too small and cold to put out much heat so
you're going to have marginal worlds while a class "II" star is going to
be really freaking hot.
==============
> People get honked over HEPLaR and laser focal arrays but changing
UWPs all the time would be
pouring permanent itching powder down their shorts.
In for a penny, in for a pound. Everyone in charge of Traveller has
changed the rules with every published version. No one bothered to
explain why. A cynic would say that it was to sell more product. The
idealist would say that they found a way to make better rules. So why
not explain to people we're fixing the UWP's to make them better. And if
people can't accept that, whatever.
==============
> because for WHATEVER reason, a vast number of Traveller players are
collectors/completists, and they want to collect all those UWPs, which
are very important to them, and if we're stupid enough to give them to
them, there is some kind of assumption that they are going to be
reasonably stable. So I get why people don't want them changed. They're
hard enough to read and make sense of to begin with, but if little
digits start randomly changing here and there, how can you tell what is
what? What is a fix, what is a typo? Which of these eye-watering rows of
numerals can you trust? We'd all be running around like Oedipus gouging
our eyes out.
While I can't read a High Guard digit stream, my specialty was UWP's. I
never had a problem with that--my engineering background perhaps. But
we're not even going into the mass retention of atmosphere39;s bit, I was
just talking about the stars.
==============
>in many cases the UWPs were generated automatically by a buggy DGP
program and it
is not clear if the Star DMs were applied correctly. But the bottom line
is that IF THE "OFFICIAL" UWPs DON'T REFLECT THE GENERATION SYSTEM THEY
ARE ERRATA and must be brought into line with it.
Now it sounds like you're arguing my point. A lot of people know that
the data was buggy (Genie) but only the most stubborn of people want to
keep it.
At this point in your post, you keep arguing my point, so I'm not sure
why you did it except to rant at the people who gave you grief for years.
=============
>But we should not be chasing current scientific theory all day. The game
>was designed in 1977, and its 1977 design is locked into its UWPs and
>that's okay. The game is never going to realistic. We've got a flat map
>that is not based on actual star locations but claims to include Earth,
>we've got jump drive, psionics, etc., etc., so we can afford to draw a
>lone somewhere.
Again, I'm not talking about theories. And yes, we've got a 2D map for a
3D galaxy. That's not something we can control until we get into a
higher tech future where we can model that sort of thing with ease at
home. Realism is going to be an unachievable goal; does that mean we
should abandon the steps that we "can" take to advance things? Psionics,
jump drives, etc. yeah, there's going to be elements of the game that
are fictional assumptions to this game's universe. But there are some
things like stars and gravity and breathable atmospheres that are
factual, so why not try to get them right?
=============
>> IMTU, I've been changing the UWP's where my campaigns are active (Vland
>>and Windhorn). I've been altering stars to fit the mainworlds and bumping
>>up world sizes to ensure they have sufficient mass to retain their
>>atmospheres (as EDG educated us/me).
>That would be beyond my line based on the "errata" test, as it's not
>errata unless you're also re-doing the world generation system to disallow
>current results.
In fact, that was done for Mongoose under their Open Gaming License. I
believe EDG was involved with it (not really sure) and it's way in the
back of the "Traveller System Reference Document" under "Space Opera
Rules". But I do know that he's been hard at work re-creating system
generation procedures. You can find it all at sfrpg-discussion.net
=============
>Also, now that we are finding exoplanets for the past couple years, we are
>going to start getting the doors blown off our assumptions on solar system
>formation, so I wouldn't be in a hurry to change things we'll just want to
>change again in a couple more years.
It'll be a long time before they make sense of all the data coming in,
and they're not even getting the complete picture--it39;s skewered in
favor of the massive gas giants and earth-sized worlds are at the low
end limits of their resolution. Yeah, there will be people that are
willing to dive right in, but I'll wait. I've got plenty to do now.
============
>But, you still haven't answered, what did I do wrong in TNE, what did I
>miss in TNE, what did I screw up in TNE so that it still has to be redone?
Ok, take a deep breath and relax. I'm not picking on you. It isn't that
you did things wrong, Dave. You had the tools (World Tamer's Handbook)
but didn't take full advantage of them. Some of us have. Nick Bradbeer
programmed a spreadsheet with chapter 8's stellar data to make it easy
to compute average temperatures on worlds. I modified it for my own use
by plugging in interpolated data for the stars in between the data
points you gave us (0's and 5's). And just using that I go around
tweaking stars to get something that makes sense (to me, anyway) based
on the UPP and those pesky trade classifications. If you guys had done
the same back them, you might've done it yourselves. But I get it, you
couldn't spend all your time worrying about the UWP's. There were other
supplements and adventures to publish. You didn't have the luxury of
time. Maybe if MTG never happened...
For the record, I'm doing this for MTU. I don't care if the game's
current publishers do anything about it or not, and I don't blame you.
You did more to fix Traveller's problems than anyone else before or since.
\_/
DED
TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin