> Ø 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?
>
> First, please understand that what I am about to say is not an attack, nor
> is it even criticism. You did the best you could with what you had
> available. You didnt have the advantage of listening to EDG. You didnt
> have the advantage of seeing later efforts (e.g. GURPS First In or their
> later Space 3). You didnt have to time to focus on it like I did. So, you
> didnt really screw up. You did the best you could and I want to stress
> that as the most important point of this message.
Don't worry, I know it's not an attack or criticism. I just know I wanted
to get it right, and since I didn't want to know where we fell short so I
can try to learn whatever is worth learning. I pretty much laid out
everything I could think of on this issue in the previous response to DED,
but if you have any observation based on the 10 item taxonomy I put in
there, that would be cool.
> I cant speak for anything outside the RSB. (I also did work on subsectors
> A-D in the Solomani Rim, but I dont think there were any TNE sources
> used,
> so that doesnt count.) However, as mentioned before, I studied the crap
> out
> of the RSB. The big problem with the stellar data in RSB is that you
> started
> the job, but you didnt finish. There are *way* too many D stars (all of
> which should have just been D not, e.g., G2 D or some such).
I think there are two issues there, first, as I mentioned in the previous,
we did not correctly turn all XX Ds into plain old Ds, don't remember why,
although I do remember knowing that at some point. Maybe too late.
Second, what do you mean by "too many?" Too many compared to real world
stellar observation? If so, that would have also required modification to
the generation system as I assume the number of Ds in the original data
came from the existing generation system, although in some cases it could
have been buggy.
> There are way
> too many habitable worlds around cold stars (or around Giants). So, what I
> did was to go back through them all and fix all of the D stars by either
> changing them to a V if they have a planet with an atmosphere around
> them,
> or making them a straight D otherwise.
Like I said in the previous, I don't understand how that happened. Why in
the world did I spend all that time talking to Geo about fixing the cold
stars if it didn't do anything? This takes me back to my speculation in
the previous e-mail that the existing "habitable zone" standard does not
meet the standards you are talking about.
Also I think I need to understand the EDG premise on the giants. Is it
that the spectrum of radiation from the bright stars is inherently
inhospitable? If so, the notion of the habitable zone in the existing
tables is inadequate or useless, which is a deeper issue and one we did
not deal with.
Is it that these are stars later in their evolution and have grown from
their earlier steady state? My take was that this was also allowed for the
habitable zone, as we're not talking about what might have happened to
life existing in the system through the star's life, but just what the
planets look like now in the tiny snapshot of the star's life in the past
8000 years when people could have come there. That is based on the
assumption that the presence of a habitable zone (in what was previously
the outer zone) means that the planet could either retain an atmosphere
from before or have developed a secondary atmosphere from outgassing of
gases in the crust from the more recent heating. The thing that maybe EDG
was saying is that there is some event in the evolution to a giant, like
the helium flash or something, that would have blown off the atmosphere.
> I also bumped (or dropped) the
> size
> of stars where the planets needed it.
What was the criteria for needing it?
> So, really, you took a few steps in the right direction, but you didnt go
> far enough in the stellar data. I pushed it that extra bit to finish it.
Where "not far enough"=
1. Didn't remove spectral type from degenerates
2. Had "too many" degenerates (as above, waiting for further details)
3. Had too many cold stars--Did we fix some of them? Is the issue that we
missed some, or that by the standards you are working from, we fixed none?
4. Had too many giants--that has a question above as well.
> I also wanted to fix the planet sizes, but knew that could never be
> accepted, so I didnt.
I agree, as I stated previously.
The reason I think it should have been OK is
> because
> no one (really) pays much attention to the planets size or gravity.
I agree with this as well. Unfortunately, it works against us. They DON'T
notice it in the adventures, but it would stick out like a sore thumb in
the lined up digits of UPPs, even though the difference between 7 and 8
wouldn't matter in an adventure. But it would end up making people scream
"Errata!" and then you'd say, "no, we changed it." "WHAT?? YOU CHANGED
IT?" It just seems like a no-win.
> (Seriously, they dont, including the adventures.) I actually came up with
> an easy way to do it so that things worked on a sliding scale and the
> distribution stayed smoother. But I never did it, because I figured it
> wouldnt be allowed.
>
>
>
> On a related note, I found several discrepancies in the Spinward Marches
> that I had to adjust and fix. (I think a few even made it into the
> Mongoose
> Spinward Marches book, too.) For example, one worthless world in Aramis
> got
> replaced by another worthless world.
Worthless world?
> Regina had its TL retconned. There
> are
> actually seven duplicate world names in the Marches. A couple others I
> forget.
I didn't worry about duplicate names, there are duplicate names in the US.
That's not errata, that's color. Or a mystery.
> In the Trojan Reach, there is even a phantom world that exists in the
> old
> Atlas of the Imperium, but never appears anywhere else, including the
> RSB.
There's a rule for that, which is "more recent publication is correct," so
if it's not in the DGP Domain of Deneb issue it's not real, unless you
declare that deutero-canonical, then RSB is the first one to be wrong, or
the new right one, or whatever.
> But none of this is really a criticism. There are crap-loads of worlds in
> the RSB and no one is going to get through them without a mistake or typo.
> I
> guarantee that my effort has mistakes and typos that I never caught. That
> is
> all just too much data for one person to manage.
I don't take it as a criticism. Sometimes it's even hard to take it
seriously. All of this exquisite detail. Try finding someone who cares
about the details of radar suites or gun calibers on this or that ship,
and those are real. All of this exquisite IMAGINARY detail in a game. In a
game that I lost my job working on 19 years ago.
> Mike West
>
>
>
>
>
>
> miss in TNE, what did I screw up in TNE so that it still has to be redone?
>
> First, please understand that what I am about to say is not an attack, nor
> is it even criticism. You did the best you could with what you had
> available. You didnt have the advantage of listening to EDG. You didnt
> have the advantage of seeing later efforts (e.g. GURPS First In or their
> later Space 3). You didnt have to time to focus on it like I did. So, you
> didnt really screw up. You did the best you could and I want to stress
> that as the most important point of this message.
Don't worry, I know it's not an attack or criticism. I just know I wanted
to get it right, and since I didn't want to know where we fell short so I
can try to learn whatever is worth learning. I pretty much laid out
everything I could think of on this issue in the previous response to DED,
but if you have any observation based on the 10 item taxonomy I put in
there, that would be cool.
> I cant speak for anything outside the RSB. (I also did work on subsectors
> A-D in the Solomani Rim, but I dont think there were any TNE sources
> used,
> so that doesnt count.) However, as mentioned before, I studied the crap
> out
> of the RSB. The big problem with the stellar data in RSB is that you
> started
> the job, but you didnt finish. There are *way* too many D stars (all of
> which should have just been D not, e.g., G2 D or some such).
I think there are two issues there, first, as I mentioned in the previous,
we did not correctly turn all XX Ds into plain old Ds, don't remember why,
although I do remember knowing that at some point. Maybe too late.
Second, what do you mean by "too many?" Too many compared to real world
stellar observation? If so, that would have also required modification to
the generation system as I assume the number of Ds in the original data
came from the existing generation system, although in some cases it could
have been buggy.
> There are way
> too many habitable worlds around cold stars (or around Giants). So, what I
> did was to go back through them all and fix all of the D stars by either
> changing them to a V if they have a planet with an atmosphere around
> them,
> or making them a straight D otherwise.
Like I said in the previous, I don't understand how that happened. Why in
the world did I spend all that time talking to Geo about fixing the cold
stars if it didn't do anything? This takes me back to my speculation in
the previous e-mail that the existing "habitable zone" standard does not
meet the standards you are talking about.
Also I think I need to understand the EDG premise on the giants. Is it
that the spectrum of radiation from the bright stars is inherently
inhospitable? If so, the notion of the habitable zone in the existing
tables is inadequate or useless, which is a deeper issue and one we did
not deal with.
Is it that these are stars later in their evolution and have grown from
their earlier steady state? My take was that this was also allowed for the
habitable zone, as we're not talking about what might have happened to
life existing in the system through the star's life, but just what the
planets look like now in the tiny snapshot of the star's life in the past
8000 years when people could have come there. That is based on the
assumption that the presence of a habitable zone (in what was previously
the outer zone) means that the planet could either retain an atmosphere
from before or have developed a secondary atmosphere from outgassing of
gases in the crust from the more recent heating. The thing that maybe EDG
was saying is that there is some event in the evolution to a giant, like
the helium flash or something, that would have blown off the atmosphere.
> I also bumped (or dropped) the
> size
> of stars where the planets needed it.
What was the criteria for needing it?
> So, really, you took a few steps in the right direction, but you didnt go
> far enough in the stellar data. I pushed it that extra bit to finish it.
Where "not far enough"=
1. Didn't remove spectral type from degenerates
2. Had "too many" degenerates (as above, waiting for further details)
3. Had too many cold stars--Did we fix some of them? Is the issue that we
missed some, or that by the standards you are working from, we fixed none?
4. Had too many giants--that has a question above as well.
> I also wanted to fix the planet sizes, but knew that could never be
> accepted, so I didnt.
I agree, as I stated previously.
The reason I think it should have been OK is
> because
> no one (really) pays much attention to the planets size or gravity.
I agree with this as well. Unfortunately, it works against us. They DON'T
notice it in the adventures, but it would stick out like a sore thumb in
the lined up digits of UPPs, even though the difference between 7 and 8
wouldn't matter in an adventure. But it would end up making people scream
"Errata!" and then you'd say, "no, we changed it." "WHAT?? YOU CHANGED
IT?" It just seems like a no-win.
> (Seriously, they dont, including the adventures.) I actually came up with
> an easy way to do it so that things worked on a sliding scale and the
> distribution stayed smoother. But I never did it, because I figured it
> wouldnt be allowed.
>
>
>
> On a related note, I found several discrepancies in the Spinward Marches
> that I had to adjust and fix. (I think a few even made it into the
> Mongoose
> Spinward Marches book, too.) For example, one worthless world in Aramis
> got
> replaced by another worthless world.
Worthless world?
> Regina had its TL retconned. There
> are
> actually seven duplicate world names in the Marches. A couple others I
> forget.
I didn't worry about duplicate names, there are duplicate names in the US.
That's not errata, that's color. Or a mystery.
> In the Trojan Reach, there is even a phantom world that exists in the
> old
> Atlas of the Imperium, but never appears anywhere else, including the
> RSB.
There's a rule for that, which is "more recent publication is correct," so
if it's not in the DGP Domain of Deneb issue it's not real, unless you
declare that deutero-canonical, then RSB is the first one to be wrong, or
the new right one, or whatever.
> But none of this is really a criticism. There are crap-loads of worlds in
> the RSB and no one is going to get through them without a mistake or typo.
> I
> guarantee that my effort has mistakes and typos that I never caught. That
> is
> all just too much data for one person to manage.
I don't take it as a criticism. Sometimes it's even hard to take it
seriously. All of this exquisite detail. Try finding someone who cares
about the details of radar suites or gun calibers on this or that ship,
and those are real. All of this exquisite IMAGINARY detail in a game. In a
game that I lost my job working on 19 years ago.
> Mike West
>
>
>
>
>
>