Thread: TNE - bootstrap

Does anyone have any thoughts about those RCES bootstrap missions. If they are trying to restablish a world's pre-coolapse industrial base, how much of the old industrial stuff still remains, and how much effort does the RCES have to make to get factories etc. back up and running.

A large supply of power is obvious as is the tech knowledge to run it. They will obviously have to replace certain components - ones with limited life such as seals, but is that it. Is it just spending a few £ to get the plant back up and running or is it a major rebuild job.

If they are goimg to have to spend in the orer of 50% of the buiuld cost to get pre-collapse plant up and running, then the RCES plans to expand over diaspora and build sufficient infrastructure are not going to happen in a few years but will take a decade at least - even if they only fully uplift a few choice worlds.

Cheers
Richard

They'd have to take the long view.  First is the power plant - what kind is it, what needs to be done (as you've mentioned) to get it working etc.  Does that power plant type need to be the one running or is an older type better for the meantime?  Transmission lines ... how is power brought from the power plant to the factory(ies) and residences?  How far is it?  More questions would surely arise in the process.
Tim
On Thursday, April 3, 2014 4:17 PM, Richard Perks <> wrote:

 
>Does anyone have any thoughts about those RCES
bootstrap missions. If they are trying to restablish a world's pre-coolapse
industrial base, how much of the old industrial stuff still remains, and how
much effort does the RCES have to make to get factories etc. back up and
running.
> 
>A large supply of power is obvious as is the tech
knowledge to run it. They will obviously have to replace certain components -
ones with limited life such as seals, but is that it. Is it just spending a few
£ to get the plant back up and running or is it a major rebuild
job.
> 
>If they are goimg to have to spend in the orer of
50% of the buiuld cost to get pre-collapse plant up and running, then the RCES
plans to expand over diaspora and build sufficient infrastructure are not going
to happen in a few years but will take a decade at least - even if they only
fully uplift a few choice worlds.
> 
>Cheers
>Richard
>
>
>

Partially depends on know how and economic activity. I could see a stable
government with prosperous industrial base say TL4-5 rising more rapidly
for the government/military/corporations... fastest in an F-tech. Once
people know something is possible, it should be faster to recreate than it
took to develop the first time, though lack of documentation will make
some repeating if dead ends inevitable.

Need to go to the assumption on what TL is, though... is it the planetary
average, that of the starport, or the max possible for the elites?

I'd love to see some rules for that sort of thing, though.

- Sent from my SM-N900T

Does anyone have any thoughts about those RCES bootstrap missions. If they
are trying to restablish a world's pre-coolapse industrial base, how much
of the old industrial stuff still remains, and how much effort does the
RCES have to make to get factories etc. back up and running.

A large supply of power is obvious as is the tech knowledge to run it. They
will obviously have to replace certain components - ones with limited life
such as seals, but is that it. Is it just spending a few £ to get the plant
back up and running or is it a major rebuild job.

If they are goimg to have to spend in the orer of 50% of the buiuld cost to
get pre-collapse plant up and running, then the RCES plans to expand over
diaspora and build sufficient infrastructure are not going to happen in a
few years but will take a decade at least - even if they only fully uplift
a few choice worlds.

Cheers
Richard

Richard (Tim, and Uxi)--

Bear in mind that I am saying this without PoT in front of me, which is
actually just as well, as you probably have it and don't need me to tell
you what you've already read.

It's all going to be based on rapid return on investment. Remember that
the RC is a shoestring operation; they are still relying on stuff they can
pull in from beyond their frontier to keep themselves going. While they
are getting Hiver assistance it is primarily technical assistance in
repairing things they can find and advancing their own industries and
technology. They don't have enough ships or personnel to do the expansion
they seek to do, their starports can't produce ships fast enough, and they
rely to a large extent on relic starships and parts to keep their own
fleet running.

So they don't have a lot of excess materials, supplies, technology, and
personnel to raise lots of planets up. Raising the planets up is the
long-term goal, but the immediate goal is to maximize return from uniquely
valuable technology, and this is going to be in the context of a web of
cross-cutting needs to raise as much capability as cost-effectively as
possible.

This sort of thing would be very referee driven, by seeing the possibility
for high/rapid return on investment on various worlds. This would be based
on several things: 1) What are the highest value capabilities that might
be restored, with 2) the lowest possible effort, with 3) resources that
are available (parts, expertise, personnel), and 4) which would be of the
highest possible value to other ongoing restoration efforts.

Such high value capabilities would be, in approximate order:
starports/shipyards, factories that manufacture important parts for fusion
plants, jump drives, electronics, industrial tooling for factories, heavy
machinery to support agriculture, valuable key minerals such as lanthanum
and other rare earths, platinum, tungsten, rhenium, iridium, silver,
palladium, iridium, diamonds, etc., particularly things that are readily
transportable.

For example, let's say a world has rich deposits of lanthanum (the key
element in jump drives), or some other rare earths (lasers, magnets,
batteries, electronics, etc.) or other valuable industrial minerals. It
also has a damaged power production capability that could be repaired
using parts used by the RC for its own systems, so they are readily
available, though not in large numbers. The power plant could provide
power to rebuild a city and nearby agriculture in about 10 years, or power
to an extensive lanthanum/rare earth mine which could be producing in 6-12
months. This mine would provide these mineral to RC industries, provide
income to the world, and provide a reason for traders (free traders and
the RC's own growing trade fleet) to call on the world. Getting the mine
running would require moving a significant number of people to the area
who would require food. The RC would go the mine route. The mission would
be 1) to get the power plant running with RC parts and training to locals
on how to run the plant, and running the power out to the mine site, 2)
setting up a low-tech ability to manufacture basic housing (cinder blocks,
bricks) to build the mining town--which will include an RC technical
school to train the locals, 3) moving people to become mine workers, 4)
identifying suitable land for a Type E or D starport, 5) set up a
planetary government/structure to see that profits from the rare earth
trade is invested in rebuilding the remainder of the planet by
rehabilitating key industries, identified and prioritized by the bootstrap
team. However, by spending the restorable power on the mine and moving a
large chunk of population out to the mine creates the need for food.

There is another nearby waterworld (Hydro 9) whose dirtside starport and
most of the surrounding industry on the small main island had been nuked,
nothing recoverable. What does remain is a shipyard (wet navy) on an
outlying island. Survey parties report that there are huge quantities of
edible food in the seas, in the form of fish, kelp, etc. The island with
the shipyard contains a lagoon that could be used as a water landing
starport and refueling basin with piers and warehouses added around it.
The shipyard is reduced to repairing existing ships, now powered mostly by
sails, but the world supports a large community of sailors with knowledge
of how to catch fish with their degraded tools. The RC decides to 1)
provide local power by emplacing a surplus fusion power plant 2) build a
small plant with contiguous RC technical school to build diesel engines to
upgrade the shipping fleet, 3) start upgrading the shipyard to produce
new, larger ships, 4) organize larger scale fisheries and aquaculture, 5)
negotiate an arrangement where the water world ships food to the lanthanum
mine world for a share of mining profits which are re-invested on the
water world to replace its steel refineries and resurrect other local
industries.

There is third nearby world with a lot of relic unused hi-tech (TL 13-15)
facilities no longer usable due to the collapse of the power grid, loss of
trade, etc. While there are a lot of choice hi-tech goodies there, it is
beyond the RC's abilities to restore this technology. The machinery
required would have to be built to tolerances too high for the RC. But by
repurposing some of the equipment and providing some RC parts, technical
assistance, and training (and building the obligatory RC technical school)
they can build the core of a TL 12 manufacturing facility. By use of the
TL 12 3D printing technology (here's where this comes in, Traveller ought
to have 3D printing by TL 12, right) the plant first starts building parts
to expand its own production capabilities, then moves into parts for TL 12
fusion plants, jump drives, mining equipment for the lanthanum mine world,
undersea manganese nodule harvesters for the water world, and so on.

There are holes in the ideas above (not least of which is getting three
such worlds "nearby" each other) that need to be addressed by the referee
and/or inventive players, but I think you see the point. RC-style
bootstraps are not to restore a world's entire broad-spectrum economy and
technology, but to identify high-impact, rapidly developable capabilities
on different worlds that will complement and fuel each other's needs, and
most of all, encourage the interstellar trade to move those things around.
This will require more ships to be acquired, built, restored from relics,
etc., and will require security provide by RCN forces and procedures as
they knit together this interdependent economy, which goes back to why I
say that the RC is a shoestring economy which needs to keep growing and
expanding and finding new stuff so that it can keep up with the expansion
it is always trying to do.

The rules presented in WTH are, IIRC, more about building a planetary
economy from the ground up, and that is not the model I suggest here. For
the RC, The Future Is Now, and all bootstraps are conducted from that
point of view. This will require a lot of referee judgement and ruling on
what things are left to build on, what it takes in terms of time and
equipment to do so, etc. One thing it will also require, which I don't
think we addressed, is a system of money. For the near term and for a
while, it will have to be semi-barter, with these barters arranged and
guaranteed in some form by the RC, and that RC guarantee is the basis of
money eventually. If you hold that money you'll probably have a hard time
cashing it in, because it is guaranteed by the good faith and credit of
the next shoestring operation they can pull off, but the RC is not about
natural, organic growth, it is about figuring out ways to kick-start
interstellar civilization before it gets any worse, before the Vampires
come back, before the Guild gets its way, before the TEDs out there get
further entrenched, before some idiot Imperial-style government starts
back up and starts the whole mess all over again.

And those RC technical schools are intended not only to train the
technical cadre to run, rebuild, and grow those worlds, but it is also
expected that many of the students will become RC technical advisors who
will go on to serve in bootstraps on later worlds, part of the Star Viking
Peace Corps. Ask not what interstellar civilization can do for you, ask
what you can do for interstellar civilization.

That's what I think about this.

> Partially depends on know how and economic activity. I could see a
stable
> government with prosperous industrial base say TL4-5 rising more rapidly
for the government/military/corporations... fastest in an F-tech. Once
people know something is possible, it should be faster to recreate than
it
> took to develop the first time, though lack of documentation will make
some repeating if dead ends inevitable.
>
> Need to go to the assumption on what TL is, though... is it the
planetary
> average, that of the starport, or the max possible for the elites?
>
> I'd love to see some rules for that sort of thing, though.
>
> - Sent from my SM-N900T
>
>
> Does anyone have any thoughts about those RCES bootstrap missions. If
> they
> are trying to restablish a world's pre-coolapse industrial base, how
much
> of the old industrial stuff still remains, and how much effort does the
RCES have to make to get factories etc. back up and running.
>
> A large supply of power is obvious as is the tech knowledge to run it.
They
> will obviously have to replace certain components - ones with limited
life
> such as seals, but is that it. Is it just spending a few £ to get the
plant
> back up and running or is it a major rebuild job.
>
> If they are goimg to have to spend in the orer of 50% of the buiuld cost
to
> get pre-collapse plant up and running, then the RCES plans to expand
over
> diaspora and build sufficient infrastructure are not going to happen in
a
> few years but will take a decade at least - even if they only fully
uplift
> a few choice worlds.
>
> Cheers
> Richard
>
>

I'd add that it also depends on what happened to the world during the
Rebellion. Was it a Black War site? Was it the site of a major naval
battle? Was it ever subjected to nuclear strike or non-nuclear but
sustained bombardment? And then what happened when Virus showed up? If
everything just shut down, that would be great. Was it hit early by a
suicider? Did some destroyer, doomslayer, or other organics hating
vessel showed up and blasted the crap out of the place, that's obviously
going to hamper recovery efforts.

A GM is going to have to decide how much hell rained down on the world
in their TU. I know that in the 1248 sourcebooks, there were tables to
roll on to determine how far a world crashed and how much it recovered
by the time 1248 rolled around. But if you're gaming in 1202, I'm not
sure how useful they'd be to you.

I don't know if the recovery efforts in Europe and Japan after WW2 are
good examples for modeling recovery times, but they could be looked into
and extrapolated from, taking into account proximity (travel distance
adds to recovery time) and tech level of those involved. The jury may
still be out on more contemporary infrastructure building in other war
zones, particularly those where there remains a sectarian divide.
Bootstrapping a balkanized world still engrossed in conflict is trickier
than decapitating a TED, unless there are active opposition groups with
conflicting ideas on how to run the place.

\_/
DED
TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin

==================
Tim O'Reilly wrote:

They'd have to take the long view. First is the power plant - what kind
is it, what needs to be done (as you've mentioned) to get it working
etc. Does that power plant type need to be the one running or is an
older type better for the meantime? Transmission lines ... how is power
brought from the power plant to the factory(ies) and residences? How
far is it? More questions would surely arise in the process.
Tim

On Thursday, April 3, 2014 4:17 PM, Richard Perks wrote:

>Does anyone have any thoughts about those RCES
bootstrap missions. If they are trying to restablish a world's pre-coolapse
industrial base, how much of the old industrial stuff still remains, and
how
much effort does the RCES have to make to get factories etc. back up and
running.
>
>A large supply of power is obvious as is the tech
knowledge to run it. They will obviously have to replace certain
components -
ones with limited life such as seals, but is that it. Is it just
spending a few
£ to get the plant back up and running or is it a major rebuild
job.
>
>If they are goimg to have to spend in the orer of
50% of the buiuld cost to get pre-collapse plant up and running, then
the RCES
plans to expand over diaspora and build sufficient infrastructure are
not going
to happen in a few years but will take a decade at least - even if they
only
fully uplift a few choice worlds.
>
>Cheers
>Richard

And also things like how much population was lost. A massive pop decline can leave a relative treasure trove of tech, though it may be dangerous to access.

On a related note, a world that was balkanised pre-collapse may have more military tech, and tech that is focussed on internal as well as external threats. More G-Tanks, Battledress, Fighters.

Eamon

Sent from my iPad

On 4 Apr 2014, at 22:41, DED <> wrote:

> I'd add that it also depends on what happened to the world during the
> Rebellion. Was it a Black War site? Was it the site of a major naval
> battle? Was it ever subjected to nuclear strike or non-nuclear but
> sustained bombardment? And then what happened when Virus showed up? If
> everything just shut down, that would be great. Was it hit early by a
> suicider? Did some destroyer, doomslayer, or other organics hating
> vessel showed up and blasted the crap out of the place, that's obviously
> going to hamper recovery efforts.
>
> A GM is going to have to decide how much hell rained down on the world
> in their TU. I know that in the 1248 sourcebooks, there were tables to
> roll on to determine how far a world crashed and how much it recovered
> by the time 1248 rolled around. But if you're gaming in 1202, I'm not
> sure how useful they'd be to you.
>
> I don't know if the recovery efforts in Europe and Japan after WW2 are
> good examples for modeling recovery times, but they could be looked into
> and extrapolated from, taking into account proximity (travel distance
> adds to recovery time) and tech level of those involved. The jury may
> still be out on more contemporary infrastructure building in other war
> zones, particularly those where there remains a sectarian divide.
> Bootstrapping a balkanized world still engrossed in conflict is trickier
> than decapitating a TED, unless there are active opposition groups with
> conflicting ideas on how to run the place.
>
> \_/
> DED
> TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin
>
>

DED--

> I'd add that it also depends on what happened to the world during the
> Rebellion. Was it a Black War site? Was it the site of a major naval
> battle? Was it ever subjected to nuclear strike or non-nuclear but
> sustained bombardment? And then what happened when Virus showed up? If
> everything just shut down, that would be great. Was it hit early by a
> suicider? Did some destroyer, doomslayer, or other organics hating
> vessel showed up and blasted the crap out of the place, that's obviously
> going to hamper recovery efforts.

I'm glad you went into that. That was in my head when I was writing my
fantasy, but with the other things I was trying to get at, never got back
around to those details. But as you observe below, it all goes back to a
lot of Ref/GM adjudication on details, and then seat-of-the-pants rulings
on time/cost/resources to put stuff back on line.

> A GM is going to have to decide how much hell rained down on the world
> in their TU. I know that in the 1248 sourcebooks, there were tables to
> roll on to determine how far a world crashed and how much it recovered
> by the time 1248 rolled around. But if you're gaming in 1202, I'm not
> sure how useful they'd be to you.

I had thought that the 1248 books were kind of "system-less," but those
tables make sense. I guess that makes at least three generations of tables
to account for the results of the "Rebellion."

1. Hard Times decline tables
2. TNE Collapse Tables
3. 1248 Collapse/recovery tables

Actually there were more than that. The TNE collapse tables only worked on
1117 pre-collapse UWPs, there was also a separate process for collapsing
worlds that had already been declined by the HT tables. Geo Gelinas may
have created that.

> I don't know if the recovery efforts in Europe and Japan after WW2 are
> good examples for modeling recovery times, but they could be looked into
> and extrapolated from, taking into account proximity (travel distance
> adds to recovery time) and tech level of those involved. The jury may
> still be out on more contemporary infrastructure building in other war
> zones, particularly those where there remains a sectarian divide.
> Bootstrapping a balkanized world still engrossed in conflict is trickier
> than decapitating a TED, unless there are active opposition groups with
> conflicting ideas on how to run the place.

My approach sidesteps some of that, by focusing it on very specific,
"practical," "see the results in a year" small subsets of the local
economy. Kills two birds that way: simplifies horrendous/impossible game
mechanics and insupportable assertions, and fits with RC requirements.

> \_/
> DED
> TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin
>
> ==================
> Tim O'Reilly wrote:
>
> They'd have to take the long view. First is the power plant - what kind
> is it, what needs to be done (as you've mentioned) to get it working
> etc. Does that power plant type need to be the one running or is an
> older type better for the meantime? Transmission lines ... how is power
> brought from the power plant to the factory(ies) and residences? How
> far is it? More questions would surely arise in the process.
> Tim
>
> On Thursday, April 3, 2014 4:17 PM, Richard Perks wrote:
>
>
> >Does anyone have any thoughts about those RCES
> bootstrap missions. If they are trying to restablish a world's
> pre-coolapse
> industrial base, how much of the old industrial stuff still remains, and
> how
> much effort does the RCES have to make to get factories etc. back up and
> running.
> >
> >A large supply of power is obvious as is the tech
> knowledge to run it. They will obviously have to replace certain
> components -
> ones with limited life such as seals, but is that it. Is it just
> spending a few
> £ to get the plant back up and running or is it a major rebuild
> job.
> >
> >If they are goimg to have to spend in the orer of
> 50% of the buiuld cost to get pre-collapse plant up and running, then
> the RCES
> plans to expand over diaspora and build sufficient infrastructure are
> not going
> to happen in a few years but will take a decade at least - even if they
> only
> fully uplift a few choice worlds.
> >
> >Cheers
> >Richard
>

I submit the below as evidence: Traveller players are smart, and thoughtful.

God knows what they need me for. Oops, I forgot, most of them don't.

> And also things like how much population was lost. A massive pop decline
> can leave a relative treasure trove of tech, though it may be dangerous to
> access.
>
> On a related note, a world that was balkanised pre-collapse may have more
> military tech, and tech that is focussed on internal as well as external
> threats. More G-Tanks, Battledress, Fighters.
>
> Eamon
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On 4 Apr 2014, at 22:41, DED <> wrote:
>
>> I'd add that it also depends on what happened to the world during the
>> Rebellion. Was it a Black War site? Was it the site of a major naval
>> battle? Was it ever subjected to nuclear strike or non-nuclear but
>> sustained bombardment? And then what happened when Virus showed up? If
>> everything just shut down, that would be great. Was it hit early by a
>> suicider? Did some destroyer, doomslayer, or other organics hating
>> vessel showed up and blasted the crap out of the place, that's obviously
>> going to hamper recovery efforts.
>>
>> A GM is going to have to decide how much hell rained down on the world
>> in their TU. I know that in the 1248 sourcebooks, there were tables to
>> roll on to determine how far a world crashed and how much it recovered
>> by the time 1248 rolled around. But if you're gaming in 1202, I'm not
>> sure how useful they'd be to you.
>>
>> I don't know if the recovery efforts in Europe and Japan after WW2 are
>> good examples for modeling recovery times, but they could be looked into
>> and extrapolated from, taking into account proximity (travel distance
>> adds to recovery time) and tech level of those involved. The jury may
>> still be out on more contemporary infrastructure building in other war
>> zones, particularly those where there remains a sectarian divide.
>> Bootstrapping a balkanized world still engrossed in conflict is trickier
>> than decapitating a TED, unless there are active opposition groups with
>> conflicting ideas on how to run the place.
>>
>> \_/
>> DED
>> TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin
>>
>>
>

Yes, they're system-less, but that's with regards to starship design, chargen, tasks, combat, etc. It doesn't mean they don't provide a couple rules/procedures of their own. One of the few consistencies among the many Traveller versions is the UPP. 1248 makes use of that for the crash/recovery procedure. It worked off of 1120 data. Not sure if it had anything for 1202 to 1248 conversion, but I can look it up if someone really needs to know.

\_/
DED
TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin


---In , <> wrote :

DED--
> A GM is going to have to decide how much hell rained down on the world
> in their TU. I know that in the 1248 sourcebooks, there were tables to
> roll on to determine how far a world crashed and how much it recovered
> by the time 1248 rolled around. But if you're gaming in 1202, I'm not
> sure how useful they'd be to you.

I had thought that the 1248 books were kind of "system-less," but those
tables make sense. I guess that makes at least three generations of tables
to account for the results of the "Rebellion."

1. Hard Times decline tables
2. TNE Collapse Tables
3. 1248 Collapse/recovery tables

Actually there were more than that. The TNE collapse tables only worked on
1117 pre-collapse UWPs, there was also a separate process for collapsing
worlds that had already been declined by the HT tables. Geo Gelinas may
have created that.

That makes sense that it was UWP related. Since 1117/1120 data should be
available for everything (another way of saying that is that there should
not be a case where you have ONLY 1202 data available), a 1202-1248 system
may not be necessary, unless the 1120-->1248 system doesn't allow for some
values established for 1202 in TNE.

I seem to recall some discussion that they wanted to finish fixing the
stars, but may not have been given permission to do that. That bugged me,
because I tried to fix them in TNE but apparently didn't go far enough or
something. The requirement was to 1) get rid of all stellar remnants
(dense central core of star remaining after Red Giant, Planetary nebula,
Supernova, etc., in other words, anything with Luminosity Class D) with
habitable worlds, and 2) Fluff up stars that weren't providing a viable
life zone for worlds with biospheres, especially Agricultural and Rich
worlds (and maybe some others) which obviously had a livable climate.

The reasons for this were:

1) Stellar remnants have burned off the atmospheres of all their worlds,
there will be no "habitable" worlds, meaning worlds with atmospheres and
biospheres where you can stand outside without a vacc suit. Where the
system only contains airless worlds where people live in caves and domes,
these can be post Red Giant.

2) Because worlds described as Agricultural and Rich just make no sense
around a tiny pinpoint star whose rays don't warm anything.

And in both cases, since the UPP precedes the star in generation, game
significance, and game evolution (Many worlds were generated as only UPPs
before UWPs and stars were grafted on in Scouts) stars must be brought in
line with planets. The planet is the truth, the star is a footnote added
for SF color.

(And it may be that stars even came after UWPs, so are actually tertiary
and not even secondary for game color.)

I'm not sure what we missed, but I am assured we did miss something. Part
of the reason for that may be that the "fix" was applied manually,
resulting in possible errors or inconsistencies in technique, and it was
not applied by me, so I can't look anyone in the eye and say, "I did it, I
know how I did it, and I know I did it right." Geo Gelinas stepped forward
to take that on, I had lots of discussions with him on what had to happen,
believed he understood the goal, went through some iterations on his
approaches to refine them, and then I checked his work when it came in,
making sure there were no D luminosity class stars with worlds with
non-Zero Atmo and Hydro, checking Ag, Ri, (and whatever else) worlds to
ensure there were ample habitable zones, and so on. And then this system
was passed on to other writers to use following Geo's guidelines (or in
some cases he just did them for them) and I checked them when they came
in.

I might have missed stuff in checking, or it may be that the replacement
was too conservative. The goal of the manual replacement was to be
conservative, so as not to do violence to existing campaigns, where
important worlds where players "knew" that the star which had been Class M
was now Class F, and honestly I don't know if ANY Traveller players would
have noticed the difference, but I was trying to be considerate. So the
idea was to stay within Stellar class where possible and bump up the
Luminosity Class. In some cases Geo did replace dinky or D stars with
brighter classes, following some "not very often" guideline which made
sense in the discussion.

In addition, I modified the star generation tables to reflect the above,
and I thought that took care of it. I think I even removed Luminosity
Class VI and VII, because VII was synonymous with D, and VI Subdwarfs were
suspect for some reason.

Anyway, I understand that somewhere I missed something, which annoys me,
because I didn't like changing official "hard facts," so if we had to do
it, I wanted to only have to do it once and do it right. And it wasn't
because I wasn't aware of H-R diagrams or stellar evolution and how stars
age and wander off the main sequence. But I apparently missed something,
which is irritating, as I've pointed out.

Maybe it had something to do with old dwarfs that had left the main
sequence and were already red giants so would have already eaten their
planets. For example, when Sol becomes an RG its radius may extend out to
Earth, so that's three planets eaten, and now Mars is the first planet of
5 or 6 (Pluto). My take on that was that however many planets extended
system generation produced, that was how many planets remained outside the
star's surface. And the habitable zone was calculated on those planets in
the normal way. And because we're not talking about "habitable to normally
evolved life," we're talking about habitable in the 8000 years since
humanity has been in space and landed there, a snapshot in a stellar life
cycle, it washes out. Maybe with larger stars their giant phases eat more
or maybe all, but I would apply the same logic, along with 1) who says
there weren't originally 20 planets, so you're only seeing the 10 that are
left, we don't know enough about system evolution to say that's
impossible, and 2) the principle of sticking as much as possible with what
Traveller already says is there so as not to do violence to established
campaign "facts."

Cue the Good Dr. Ganymede. And get ready for me to start saying, "Crap!
Ow! Kicking myself hurts!" Maybe I just won't check my e-mail for a few
days.

> Yes, they're system-less, but that's with regards to starship design,
chargen, tasks, combat, etc. It doesn't mean they don't provide a couple
rules/procedures of their own. One of the few consistencies among the many
> Traveller versions is the UPP. 1248 makes use of that for the
> crash/recovery procedure. It worked off of 1120 data. Not sure if it had
anything for 1202 to 1248 conversion, but I can look it up if someone
really needs to know.
>
> \_/
> DED
> TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin
>
>
> ---In , <> wrote :
>
> DED--
> > A GM is going to have to decide how much hell rained down on the
world
> > in their TU. I know that in the 1248 sourcebooks, there were tables
to
> > roll on to determine how far a world crashed and how much it
recovered
> > by the time 1248 rolled around. But if you're gaming in 1202, I'm not
sure how useful they'd be to you.
>
> I had thought that the 1248 books were kind of "system-less," but those
tables make sense. I guess that makes at least three generations of
> tables
> to account for the results of the "Rebellion."
>
> 1. Hard Times decline tables
> 2. TNE Collapse Tables
> 3. 1248 Collapse/recovery tables
>
> Actually there were more than that. The TNE collapse tables only worked
> on
> 1117 pre-collapse UWPs, there was also a separate process for
collapsing
> worlds that had already been declined by the HT tables. Geo Gelinas may
have created that.
>
>
>
>
>

The tables for generating 1248 stats is in the first book at the back

On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 3:14 PM, <> wrote:

>
>
> That makes sense that it was UWP related. Since 1117/1120 data should be
> available for everything (another way of saying that is that there should
> not be a case where you have ONLY 1202 data available), a 1202-1248 system
> may not be necessary, unless the 1120-->1248 system doesn't allow for some
> values established for 1202 in TNE.
>
> I seem to recall some discussion that they wanted to finish fixing the
> stars, but may not have been given permission to do that. That bugged me,
> because I tried to fix them in TNE but apparently didn't go far enough or
> something. The requirement was to 1) get rid of all stellar remnants
> (dense central core of star remaining after Red Giant, Planetary nebula,
> Supernova, etc., in other words, anything with Luminosity Class D) with
> habitable worlds, and 2) Fluff up stars that weren't providing a viable
> life zone for worlds with biospheres, especially Agricultural and Rich
> worlds (and maybe some others) which obviously had a livable climate.
>
> The reasons for this were:
>
> 1) Stellar remnants have burned off the atmospheres of all their worlds,
> there will be no "habitable" worlds, meaning worlds with atmospheres and
> biospheres where you can stand outside without a vacc suit. Where the
> system only contains airless worlds where people live in caves and domes,
> these can be post Red Giant.
>
> 2) Because worlds described as Agricultural and Rich just make no sense
> around a tiny pinpoint star whose rays don't warm anything.
>
> And in both cases, since the UPP precedes the star in generation, game
> significance, and game evolution (Many worlds were generated as only UPPs
> before UWPs and stars were grafted on in Scouts) stars must be brought in
> line with planets. The planet is the truth, the star is a footnote added
> for SF color.
>
> (And it may be that stars even came after UWPs, so are actually tertiary
> and not even secondary for game color.)
>
> I'm not sure what we missed, but I am assured we did miss something. Part
> of the reason for that may be that the "fix" was applied manually,
> resulting in possible errors or inconsistencies in technique, and it was
> not applied by me, so I can't look anyone in the eye and say, "I did it, I
> know how I did it, and I know I did it right." Geo Gelinas stepped forward
> to take that on, I had lots of discussions with him on what had to happen,
> believed he understood the goal, went through some iterations on his
> approaches to refine them, and then I checked his work when it came in,
> making sure there were no D luminosity class stars with worlds with
> non-Zero Atmo and Hydro, checking Ag, Ri, (and whatever else) worlds to
> ensure there were ample habitable zones, and so on. And then this system
> was passed on to other writers to use following Geo's guidelines (or in
> some cases he just did them for them) and I checked them when they came
> in.
>
> I might have missed stuff in checking, or it may be that the replacement
> was too conservative. The goal of the manual replacement was to be
> conservative, so as not to do violence to existing campaigns, where
> important worlds where players "knew" that the star which had been Class M
> was now Class F, and honestly I don't know if ANY Traveller players would
> have noticed the difference, but I was trying to be considerate. So the
> idea was to stay within Stellar class where possible and bump up the
> Luminosity Class. In some cases Geo did replace dinky or D stars with
> brighter classes, following some "not very often" guideline which made
> sense in the discussion.
>
> In addition, I modified the star generation tables to reflect the above,
> and I thought that took care of it. I think I even removed Luminosity
> Class VI and VII, because VII was synonymous with D, and VI Subdwarfs were
> suspect for some reason.
>
> Anyway, I understand that somewhere I missed something, which annoys me,
> because I didn't like changing official "hard facts," so if we had to do
> it, I wanted to only have to do it once and do it right. And it wasn't
> because I wasn't aware of H-R diagrams or stellar evolution and how stars
> age and wander off the main sequence. But I apparently missed something,
> which is irritating, as I've pointed out.
>
> Maybe it had something to do with old dwarfs that had left the main
> sequence and were already red giants so would have already eaten their
> planets. For example, when Sol becomes an RG its radius may extend out to
> Earth, so that's three planets eaten, and now Mars is the first planet of
> 5 or 6 (Pluto). My take on that was that however many planets extended
> system generation produced, that was how many planets remained outside the
> star's surface. And the habitable zone was calculated on those planets in
> the normal way. And because we're not talking about "habitable to normally
> evolved life," we're talking about habitable in the 8000 years since
> humanity has been in space and landed there, a snapshot in a stellar life
> cycle, it washes out. Maybe with larger stars their giant phases eat more
> or maybe all, but I would apply the same logic, along with 1) who says
> there weren't originally 20 planets, so you're only seeing the 10 that are
> left, we don't know enough about system evolution to say that's
> impossible, and 2) the principle of sticking as much as possible with what
> Traveller already says is there so as not to do violence to established
> campaign "facts."
>
> Cue the Good Dr. Ganymede. And get ready for me to start saying, "Crap!
> Ow! Kicking myself hurts!" Maybe I just won't check my e-mail for a few
> days.
>
>
> > Yes, they're system-less, but that's with regards to starship design,
> chargen, tasks, combat, etc. It doesn't mean they don't provide a couple
> rules/procedures of their own. One of the few consistencies among the many
> > Traveller versions is the UPP. 1248 makes use of that for the
> > crash/recovery procedure. It worked off of 1120 data. Not sure if it had
> anything for 1202 to 1248 conversion, but I can look it up if someone
> really needs to know.
> >
> > \_/
> > DED
> > TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin
> >
> >
> > ---In , <> wrote :
> >
> > DED--
> > > A GM is going to have to decide how much hell rained down on the
> world
> > > in their TU. I know that in the 1248 sourcebooks, there were tables
> to
> > > roll on to determine how far a world crashed and how much it
> recovered
> > > by the time 1248 rolled around. But if you're gaming in 1202, I'm not
> sure how useful they'd be to you.
> >
> > I had thought that the 1248 books were kind of "system-less," but those
> tables make sense. I guess that makes at least three generations of
> > tables
> > to account for the results of the "Rebellion."
> >
> > 1. Hard Times decline tables
> > 2. TNE Collapse Tables
> > 3. 1248 Collapse/recovery tables
> >
> > Actually there were more than that. The TNE collapse tables only worked
> > on
> > 1117 pre-collapse UWPs, there was also a separate process for
> collapsing
> > worlds that had already been declined by the HT tables. Geo Gelinas may
> have created that.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>

dcnilsen13 wrote:

>>I seem to recall some discussion that they wanted to finish fixing the
stars, but may not have been given permission to do that. That bugged me,
because I tried to fix them in TNE but apparently didn't go far enough or
something.<<

You tried, which is more than can be said of others.

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.

Someone started a rumor that when MJD was writing the Spinward Marches
book for Mongoose he had assembled a team to overhaul the stars and even
the UPP's. It wasn't true, but so many grognards screamed bloody murder
that MM was forced to make a formal announcement declaring that no such
thing was going to happen. And that's too bad that the rumor was false,
because we still have garden worlds around M8 V dullards (or whatever)
just to appease those who can not stand the thought of changing one iota
of the sacred UWP's.

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). These changes have been
posted on my website (where applicable) and I include notes for each
subsector in case anyone really wants the old stats (though Berka and
Travellermap will always carry the originals).

\_/
DED
TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin

> dcnilsen13 wrote:
>
> >>I seem to recall some discussion that they wanted to finish fixing
the
> stars, but may not have been given permission to do that. That bugged
me,
> because I tried to fix them in TNE but apparently didn't go far enough
or
> something.<<
>
> You tried, which is more than can be said of others.

Thanks, but what did I do wrong, or fail to do?

> 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). 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." People get honked over
HEPLaR and laser focal arrays but changing UWPs all the time would be
pouring permanent itching powder down their shorts. Because another 8
years from now someone will want to tweak them again. I don't think you
can afford to do that, plus I think it keeps you permanently nuts.

It's like the way we had to rewrite T2K every couple years to chase
current events until Frank hit upon the idea of splitting the universe off
at Yeltsin. At least that was just background information and didn't
change game mechanics.

> Someone started a rumor that when MJD was writing the Spinward Marches
book for Mongoose he had assembled a team to overhaul the stars and even
the UPP's. It wasn't true, but so many grognards
> screamed bloody murder that MM was forced to make a formal announcement
declaring that no such thing was going to happen.
> And that's too bad that the rumor was false, because we still have
garden worlds around M8 V dullards (or whatever) just > to appease those
who can not stand the thought of changing one iota of the sacred UWP's.

Wow. There's got to be a good conspiracy theory in there somewhere.
Traveller is nothing without conspiracy theories.

But back to howling grognards, that's why I had a conservative approach on
the changes. Not because I think "the players are over-sensitive, can't
afford to tick them off," but 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.

BUT HERE'S THE THING PEOPLE DON'T REALIZE, some of these star fixes are
not just amateur and professional astronomers being all fussy and
demanding current scientific accuracy, THEY ARE ERRATA. Traveller extended
system generation said to place mainworlds Size 1+, Atm 4-9 in the
habitable zone, which requires there to be one. The term "habitable zone"
must mean something, else it would not be in the game. If it doesn't mean
anything, then IT'S an erratum and needs to be removed. Further, 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&quot; UWPs DON'T REFLECT THE GENERATION SYSTEM THEY
ARE ERRATA and must be brought into line with it.

And while we're in there, since this is supposed to be a SF game which
takes the S remotely seriously, we shouldn't have lush planets around
white dwarf stellar remnants, because it shows we don't care and we're not
serious about this. We ought to have at least that much self-respect. OR
AT THE VERY LEAST, anyone who says, "keep your hands off my stars" will be
shot if he ever complains about anything being "unrealistic&quot; anywhere else
in the game. "Virus would never happen, but I'm keepin' my Agro worlds
around White Dwarfs." BLAM!

But I think there is a line. We SHOULD fix stars that are ERRATA (no
habitable zone for main worlds that require them), and not assign
degenerate stars to worlds with atmospheres.

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.

That's my balancing point, not like it's up to me anyway. I just remember
when it was and I keep flashing back.

> 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. I get how you to ought to allow for molecular mass and
escape velocity and thermal motion, but those first two UWP digits are
from the oldest layer of Traveller, back when they were UPPs and not UWPs.
To me that would just be a "traditional embedded mistake" that we know is
in error but it's been in the game for 37 years, so we just accept it,
UNLESS it has a significant game effect, such as performance of vehicles
in atmosphere (e.g., gravity doesn't jibe with atmospheric pressure so
planes don't fly right).

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.

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?

> These changes have been posted on my website (where applicable) and I
include notes for each subsector in case anyone
> really wants the old stats (though Berka and Travellermap will always
carry the originals).
>
> \_/
> DED
> TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin
>

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&quot; 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

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 didn’t have the advantage of listening to EDG. You didn’t
have the advantage of seeing later efforts (e.g. GURPS First In or their
later Space 3). You didn’t have to time to focus on it like I did. So, you
didn’t really “screw up”. You did the best you could and I want to stress
that as the most important point of this message.

I can’t speak for anything outside the RSB. (I also did work on subsectors
A-D in the Solomani Rim, but I don’t think there were any TNE sources used,
so that doesn’t 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 didn’t finish. There are *way* too many “D” stars (all of
which should have just been “D” not, e.g., G2 D or some such). 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. I also bumped (or dropped) the size
of stars where the planets needed it.

So, really, you took a few steps in the right direction, but you didn’t go
far enough in the stellar data. I pushed it that extra bit to “finish” it.

I also wanted to fix the planet sizes, but knew that could never be
accepted, so I didn’t. The reason I think it should have been OK is because
no one (really) pays much attention to the planet’s size or gravity.
(Seriously, they don’t, 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
wouldn’t 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. Regina had its TL retconned. There are
actually seven duplicate world names in the Marches. A couple others I
forget.

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.

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.

Mike West

Dear Folks -

Sorry to be abstruse (obtuse?? Just plain Dumb???)

I know MJD is, but who is EDG?

(Who am I kidding, I never even found out who DED was back when I was still keeping my Jump Points list up-to-date and he was still running "Traveller in the DED Zone"...)
----------------------------------------------------------
David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw
"I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"

To illustrate what I am talking about with the stellar data, let me show you
what I did with the Regina subsector. Do note that, while this is taken from
my 1248 work, there are no spoilers here, as I have stripped out everything
but the hex location, world name, and stellar data. No spoilers here.

The data is below, but let me highlight what was done for the changes:

- Any star that was size "D" either becomes just "D" or is moved to
"V", depending on the atmosphere present. So, Alell, Whanga, Regina, Feri,
Beck's World, and Moughas all get their white dwarf promoted, and Pixie and
enope get their white dwarf outright listed.

- Stars too big (e.g. Menorb) or too cold (Uakye) get their star
shifted to something more sustainable. In the case of Menorb, its star was
swapped with the nearby Yres so that the Red Giant star didn't totally
disappear, but both worlds end up with more reasonable stars for their
environment.

- Heya and Keng were done a little more creatively, and the stars were
swapped so that the giants would be retained, but the other star could
actually host the home world. This is an example of a mistake I made, as I
really should have wiped out the Giants, and at the least, the "good" star
should have been listed first (as it is the home star of the listed world),
not second. Even so, the attempt was to give the relatively nice world a
compatible star, but not completely eliminate the Giant that was originally
listed.

- As a side note, the Regina subsector was host to two of those seven
duplicate names: Kinorb and Inthe.

This is just an example of what DED and I are talking about when we say RSB
"did go far enough". However, just to stress this to ridiculous extremes,
this is not really a criticism or complaint. You were the only one who ever
even really tried to fix that stuff. That it wasn't an unmitigated success
is irrelevant; you tried. We both recognize that effort and salute it.

Mike West



Anyway, here is the data. Note that the "new" is shown first, and the "old"
is shown second. Anything with only one entry wasn't changed.

1705 Efate K4V

1706 Alell M7V M7V <- M7V M7D

1802 Yres M5 II <- G5V

1803 Menorb G5V <- M5 II

1805 Uakye K9V <- M9V

1806 Whanga A1V M1V <- A1V M1D

1807 Knorbes G3V

1808 Forboldn G0V

1809 Ruie G5V

1810 Jenghe M0V

1903 Pixie M0V D <- M0V M1D

1904 Boughene K7V

1909 Hefry K6 II M6V

1910 Regina F7V M6V M8V <- F7V M6V M8D

2005 Feri G4V M3V <- G4V M3D

2007 Roup F9V

2106 Pscias K5V

2110 Yori F1V

2201 Dentus M2V

2202 Kinorb-1 G7V

2204 Beck's W M0V M2V <- M0V M2D

2205 Enope K6V D <- K6V M5D

2207 Wochiers F0V

2303 Yorbund M3V

2306 Shionthy M4V

2308 Algine G9V

2309 Yurst K9V

2402 Heya M8 III K6V <- K6 III M8D

2405 Keng M9 III G5V <- G5 III M9D

2406 Moughas K9V M9V <- K9V M9D

2408 Rethe G7V

2410 Inthe-2 F8V

On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 4:17 AM, David Jaques-Watson <>wrote:

>
>
> Dear Folks -
>
> Sorry to be abstruse (obtuse?? Just plain Dumb???)
>
> I know MJD is, but who is EDG?
>

Evil Doctor Ganymede AKA Constantine Thomas

--
Evyn

> 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 didn’t have the advantage of listening to EDG. You didn’t
> have the advantage of seeing later efforts (e.g. GURPS First In or their
> later Space 3). You didn’t have to time to focus on it like I did. So, you
> didn’t 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 can’t speak for anything outside the RSB. (I also did work on subsectors
> A-D in the Solomani Rim, but I don’t think there were any TNE sources
> used,
> so that doesn’t 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 didn’t 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 didn’t 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 didn’t.

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 planet’s 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 don’t, 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
> wouldn’t 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
>
>
>
>
>
>

The one and only Evil Doctor Ganymede. I fear he is gone away to a far
place, because I've taken his name and subject matter in vain quite a bit
in the last few days.

> Dear Folks -
>
> Sorry to be abstruse (obtuse?? Just plain Dumb???)
>
> I know MJD is, but who is EDG?
>
> (Who am I kidding, I never even found out who DED was back when I was
> still keeping my Jump Points list up-to-date and he was still running
> "Traveller in the DED Zone"...)
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
> http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw
> "I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"
>
>

Oh cool, you anticipated my question. This is a good idea. However, I will
have to come back to it tomorrow when my head is more willing.

Oh look, there's Alell. Never mind, DED, we found it.

I like the way you said "no spoilers here" twice.

Okay, I looked down a little bit. Yes, you fixed the companion dwarf by
just bumping it to the same luminosity class as the primary, which I think
I mentioned in my DED reply as the easy thing to do while we were in
there, don't know why we didn't.

In most cases you simply changed the degenerate companion to a V or D.
Since I can't see the rest of the UPP I can't see why you made that call.
I assume you switched to V if it had an atmosphere and to D if it didn't?

Argh, I see you left Alell as M7 V, which as I pointed out to DED, turns
out has no hab zone, and DED already didn't like it that way. Why didn't
you crank it up?

Oh, wait, you've discussed them below, never mind.

I don't suppose you have ever compared the "not far enough" TNE data to
the pre-TNE data so we could work out some kind of score on what % we did
fix?

I want to keep obsessing on this now, but I really need to set it aside
and return tomorrow.

Later.

> To illustrate what I am talking about with the stellar data, let me show
> you
> what I did with the Regina subsector. Do note that, while this is taken
> from
> my 1248 work, there are no spoilers here, as I have stripped out
> everything
> but the hex location, world name, and stellar data. No spoilers here.
>
>
>
> The data is below, but let me highlight what was done for the changes:
>
> - Any star that was size "D" either becomes just "D" or is moved to
> "V", depending on the atmosphere present. So, Alell, Whanga, Regina, Feri,
> Beck's World, and Moughas all get their white dwarf promoted, and Pixie
> and
> enope get their white dwarf outright listed.
>
> - Stars too big (e.g. Menorb) or too cold (Uakye) get their star
> shifted to something more sustainable. In the case of Menorb, its star was
> swapped with the nearby Yres so that the Red Giant star didn't totally
> disappear, but both worlds end up with more reasonable stars for their
> environment.
>
> - Heya and Keng were done a little more creatively, and the stars
> were
> swapped so that the giants would be retained, but the other star could
> actually host the home world. This is an example of a mistake I made, as I
> really should have wiped out the Giants, and at the least, the "good" star
> should have been listed first (as it is the home star of the listed
> world),
> not second. Even so, the attempt was to give the relatively nice world a
> compatible star, but not completely eliminate the Giant that was
> originally
> listed.
>
> - As a side note, the Regina subsector was host to two of those seven
> duplicate names: Kinorb and Inthe.
>
>
>
> This is just an example of what DED and I are talking about when we say
> RSB
> "did go far enough". However, just to stress this to ridiculous extremes,
> this is not really a criticism or complaint. You were the only one who
> ever
> even really tried to fix that stuff. That it wasn't an unmitigated success
> is irrelevant; you tried. We both recognize that effort and salute it.
>
>
>
> Mike West
>
>
>
>
>
> Anyway, here is the data. Note that the "new" is shown first, and the
> "old"
> is shown second. Anything with only one entry wasn't changed.
>
> 1705 Efate K4V
>
> 1706 Alell M7V M7V <- M7V M7D
>
> 1802 Yres M5 II <- G5V
>
> 1803 Menorb G5V <- M5 II
>
> 1805 Uakye K9V <- M9V
>
> 1806 Whanga A1V M1V <- A1V M1D
>
> 1807 Knorbes G3V
>
> 1808 Forboldn G0V
>
> 1809 Ruie G5V
>
> 1810 Jenghe M0V
>
> 1903 Pixie M0V D <- M0V M1D
>
> 1904 Boughene K7V
>
> 1909 Hefry K6 II M6V
>
> 1910 Regina F7V M6V M8V <- F7V M6V M8D
>
> 2005 Feri G4V M3V <- G4V M3D
>
> 2007 Roup F9V
>
> 2106 Pscias K5V
>
> 2110 Yori F1V
>
> 2201 Dentus M2V
>
> 2202 Kinorb-1 G7V
>
> 2204 Beck's W M0V M2V <- M0V M2D
>
> 2205 Enope K6V D <- K6V M5D
>
> 2207 Wochiers F0V
>
> 2303 Yorbund M3V
>
> 2306 Shionthy M4V
>
> 2308 Algine G9V
>
> 2309 Yurst K9V
>
> 2402 Heya M8 III K6V <- K6 III M8D
>
> 2405 Keng M9 III G5V <- G5 III M9D
>
> 2406 Moughas K9V M9V <- K9V M9D
>
> 2408 Rethe G7V
>
> 2410 Inthe-2 F8V
>
>

Ø Oh look, there's Alell. Never mind, DED, we found it.

Oh look, there is a big ol’ screw-up on me.

The physical characteristics of Alell are 467. So, yes, indeed, it should
have had one of its stars increased to be F-K. I probably should have made
it have stellar data of “K7V M7V”. I dunno why I screwed it up. Maybe I
thought two M7Vs in a tight formation would have produced enough heat?
Regardless, I should have definitely bumped it. Maybe I could have swapped
it around with Boughene and make Boughene be an M7V, and Alell be a K7V M7V
so as to try and keep the distribution a little more like the original.

On a related through, I noticed in your reply to DED that Frank hated the
“high-pop hostile” world. I really hate those, too, and (with the horrible
upheaval even in the Domain of Deneb/Regency) used that as an excuse to
ruthlessly crush many (maybe most) of those worlds. (In fact, I initially
went too far and ended up putting some of them back.)

Mike West

He's still subscribed to this list but doesn't receive emails. Perhaps I
should summon him.

\_/
DED
TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin

=============
The one and only Evil Doctor Ganymede. I fear he is gone away to a far
place, because I've taken his name and subject matter in vain quite a bit
in the last few days.

> Dear Folks -
>
> Sorry to be abstruse (obtuse?? Just plain Dumb???)
>
> I know MJD is, but who is EDG?
>
> (Who am I kidding, I never even found out who DED was back when I was
> still keeping my Jump Points list up-to-date and he was still running
> "Traveller in the DED Zone"...)
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
> http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw
> "I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"
>
>

If he were receiving e-mails I wouldn't want to harass him, but in this
case maybe he'd be interested.

> He's still subscribed to this list but doesn't receive emails. Perhaps I
> should summon him.
>
> \_/
> DED
> TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin
>
> =============
> The one and only Evil Doctor Ganymede. I fear he is gone away to a far
> place, because I've taken his name and subject matter in vain quite a bit
> in the last few days.
>
> > Dear Folks -
> >
> > Sorry to be abstruse (obtuse?? Just plain Dumb???)
> >
> > I know MJD is, but who is EDG?
> >
> > (Who am I kidding, I never even found out who DED was back when I was
> > still keeping my Jump Points list up-to-date and he was still running
> > "Traveller in the DED Zone"...)
> > ----------------------------------------------------------
> > David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM
> 1520)
> > http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw
> > "I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of
> gravity"
> >
> >
>

Mike--

Just finishing up the questions here because I said I would.

I just realized that Regina is in the TNE book so I can see the UWPs and
observe directly what you did in detail.

I am going to be comparing your process to the thoughts that I have laid
out over the past couple days so that I can translate your apples into my
oranges. This is NOT to criticize your approach at all, but having thought
through this before (22 years ago) to come up with a solution, I just have
to approach this in a way that allows me to make sense of it. So again, as
you've said to me several times lately, please don't take this as
criticism or argument. I'm just trying to think it through by own lights.
If being the idiot who tried to do this the first time grants me any
benefits, maybe this is it. :-)

As I said in an earlier e-mail, my first test is presence of hab zone or not.

1. You swapped Yres and Menorb not so much because you HAD to (both
already had hab zones) but because assigning an Earthlike star to Menorb
is nicer because it was a Hi-Pop world with a thin breathable atmosphere,
and since Yres had an insidious atmosphere and fluid oceans it seemed like
less of a waste to put an oddball bright giant star there, which probably
started life around a B1 or B2 V.

Again, please do not take this as criticism, but as both did have hab
zones, I think of this as cosmetic, not required. However, given the
desire you expressed in previous e-mails to permit as much as possible the
ability for worlds to develop indigenous life, you moved the shorter-lived
star away from the more hospitable world. While I might not have felt
compelled to do that, I can understand why you did. (But, just for the
sake of discussion, it might also be possible for life to form in gooey
Yres with its previous V star, so maybe it's a coin toss.) In general,
since there are bright giants in the galaxy, there ought to be some in
Traveller, and just because they've croaked whoever used to live there,
there is still a habitable zone for humans to colonize in, and that makes
sense in the game. (Now if I'm reminded that Menorb has distinctive
indigenous life that I'm overlooking I may have to penalize myself.)

2. For Uakye M9 V has no hab zone (discussed previously, dangit), so you
bumped it up to K9. You could have bumped it up as low as M4, but once
you're bumping, it's a matter of taste, and since its Atm is vacuum (very
thin) K9 was fine. And actually in a form of (possibly superstitious)
conservatism, Geo would often change M9s to K9s to only change one digit,
as anything between K5 and M4 was a distinction without a difference
anyway, so I thought that was fine, so you did what we would have done.

But actually I believe that when we tried this back in 1992-93 we figured
that worlds like this weren't that much more hospitable than airless rocks
(0.1-0.42 atm) as they would require permanent "domed" habitats to allow
survival anyway, so the presence/absence of stellar heat was not that big
an issue. I might have said this didn't make the cut. If this were in the
Wilds, these people would have died. For me this also is cosmetic,
atmosphere not breathable without assistance, so not required.

3. Already discussed Alell, no hab zone, but still no hab zone, and as it
is a Rich world, is Bad.

Definite screw-up on my part, as it is a Rich world and requires extra
attention. Call it a double failure.

4. Alell, Whanga, Feri, Beck's World, Moughas, D companion changed to V as
had breathable atmosphere

As I've written previously, on some level we figured that having a hab
zone was the first priority, and these already did. And a degenerate means
that it's maybe already made a mess like a planetary nebula, so could
interfere with the indigenous life in the system, IF it is a close
companion. On the other hand, if it is a far companion or a really small
star to begin with (no red giant, goes straight to the left of the main
sequence without making a mess), it might not interfere, and allow
reasonable variation in the game under some circumstances.

For a quick, safe rule of thumb, I concur with turning Ds into Vs for
planets with atmospheres. To allow for the interesting variation that
Traveller might want to admit, maybe not always. But for the sake of not
quibbling, I'll take a full hit on five worlds, Five failures (separate
failure for Alell).

5. Pixie, Enope, XX D companion changed to D as no atmosphere, so having a
degenerate is okay

While this is a semantic difference with no game effect, the point is to
use the language correctly, so two more failures.

6. Regina, D changed to V as had breathable atmosphere. However, Regina is
a special case, its system was described in detail in several Traveller
products with its named stars Lusor, its D companion Speck, and Darida
with a separate, so I left it as is, but should have changed Speck from M8
D to D.

While I deliberately made the decision to preserve the defined, named
("Speck") degenerate in Traveller's oldest defined world, I did fail to
make the semantic change, so another failure.

7. Heya, did the change D to V as dense breathable atmosphere, but then
swapped the luminosity classes. That got you two habitable zones instead
of just one (the bumped V had none). Based on your remark below about a
"home" star, I'm wondering if you roughed out the orbits to see how the
star orbits and hab zones interacted. However, you describe this as a
mistake to have kept the giant, and I don't understand this. The K III
would have previously been, say a G V, and while it would have fried its
original habitable zone, it has pushed this habitable zone outwards. For
smallish stars (including Sol) this new period could last a few billion
years, long enough for life to evolve again before the helium flash, and a
similar period after helium flash. But more to the point, depending on how
the binary system is configured, the red giant behavior may not interfere
with worlds in the habitable zone of the existing V star, so does not
necessarily impair its ability to continue developing life. Moreover, it
does not at all prevent colonizing humans in the past 8000 years from
living there. Since giant stars do exist, we don't want to exclude them
from the Traveller universe, so these stars could easily be in the length
period before or after the helium flash(es).

Since the first issue was a D in a system with breathable atmosphere, I
will take this as another failure, but since I'm not yet convinced that we
have to expunge all giants, because at the very least we can accept that
some worlds have lost their original life and have been colonized since
then, I will hold of on awarding myself a double failure at this point.

However, Heya is a Rich world, so the current single failure counts double.

8. Keng, as with Heya, did the change D to V as standard tainted
(semi-breathable) atmosphere, but then swapped the luminosity classes.
That also got you two habitable zones instead of just one (the bumped V
had none). You also call this a mistake, same comments as Heya above.

Same as Heya above, single failure, possible double failure, pending
further discussion.

One thing that I assume you have not done with the binaries/triples is
work out their orbits to see what the real impact is because of the time
required. You are presumably aware that depending on how the rolls work
out you can be prevented from using the habitable zones. Based on some of
your remarks above (mostly about Heya and Keng) it appears that you may
have made some assumptions, or placed them by fiat. However, the problem
with this is that Traveller provides no means to store these
configurations in the UWP data, so even though you work out the system
configuration in a satisfactory way, someone else may not, and you can't
tell him what yours was anyway. The vast majority of UWPs have probably
not been processed all the way through, and another piece of evidence for
this is that there are so few quad star systems in the 3I data.

In any case I am skeptical of the ability of multiple star systems to
create worlds that are stable enough for life to develop. Complex patterns
of heating and cooling and tidal forces on the worlds themselves and their
orbits create a lot more variables that work against a world getting the
chance to develop life. So a lot of the work that we spend on "fixing
stars" can be squandered in a multiple star system where you can't get the
orbits to work out.

So, out of 32 worlds in the subsector, I've scored 13 failures against
myself, so a 40.6% failure rate. That's not weighted against total
possible number of failures against the pre-TNE data, but I'm not trying
to wheedle my way to a more presentable score anyway, so I doubt I will
take the time. But the point is that, assuming Regina is representative, I
have a better understanding of what "not far enough" means, so I guess I
can live with that.

What do you think of my report card, Dad?

> To illustrate what I am talking about with the stellar data, let me show
you
> what I did with the Regina subsector. Do note that, while this is taken
from
> my 1248 work, there are no spoilers here, as I have stripped out
everything
> but the hex location, world name, and stellar data. No spoilers here.
>
> The data is below, but let me highlight what was done for the changes:
>
> - Any star that was size "D" either becomes just "D" or is moved to
"V", depending on the atmosphere present. So, Alell, Whanga, Regina, Feri,
> Beck's World, and Moughas all get their white dwarf promoted, and Pixie
and
> enope get their white dwarf outright listed.
>
> - Stars too big (e.g. Menorb) or too cold (Uakye) get their star
shifted to something more sustainable. In the case of Menorb, its star was
> swapped with the nearby Yres so that the Red Giant star didn't totally
disappear, but both worlds end up with more reasonable stars for their
environment.
>
> - Heya and Keng were done a little more creatively, and the stars
were
> swapped so that the giants would be retained, but the other star could
actually host the home world. This is an example of a mistake I made, as I
> really should have wiped out the Giants, and at the least, the "good"
star
> should have been listed first (as it is the home star of the listed
world),
> not second. Even so, the attempt was to give the relatively nice world a
compatible star, but not completely eliminate the Giant that was
originally
> listed.
>
> - As a side note, the Regina subsector was host to two of those
seven
> duplicate names: Kinorb and Inthe.
>
>
>
> This is just an example of what DED and I are talking about when we say
RSB
> "did go far enough". However, just to stress this to ridiculous
extremes,
> this is not really a criticism or complaint. You were the only one who
ever
> even really tried to fix that stuff. That it wasn't an unmitigated
success
> is irrelevant; you tried. We both recognize that effort and salute it.
>
>
>
> Mike West
>
>
>
>
>
> Anyway, here is the data. Note that the "new" is shown first, and the
"old"
> is shown second. Anything with only one entry wasn't changed.
>
> 1705 Efate K4V
>
> 1706 Alell M7V M7V <- M7V M7D
>
> 1802 Yres M5 II <- G5V
>
> 1803 Menorb G5V <- M5 II
>
> 1805 Uakye K9V <- M9V
>
> 1806 Whanga A1V M1V <- A1V M1D
>
> 1807 Knorbes G3V
>
> 1808 Forboldn G0V
>
> 1809 Ruie G5V
>
> 1810 Jenghe M0V
>
> 1903 Pixie M0V D <- M0V M1D
>
> 1904 Boughene K7V
>
> 1909 Hefry K6 II M6V
>
> 1910 Regina F7V M6V M8V <- F7V M6V M8D
>
> 2005 Feri G4V M3V <- G4V M3D
>
> 2007 Roup F9V
>
> 2106 Pscias K5V
>
> 2110 Yori F1V
>
> 2201 Dentus M2V
>
> 2202 Kinorb-1 G7V
>
> 2204 Beck's W M0V M2V <- M0V M2D
>
> 2205 Enope K6V D <- K6V M5D
>
> 2207 Wochiers F0V
>
> 2303 Yorbund M3V
>
> 2306 Shionthy M4V
>
> 2308 Algine G9V
>
> 2309 Yurst K9V
>
> 2402 Heya M8 III K6V <- K6 III M8D
>
> 2405 Keng M9 III G5V <- G5 III M9D
>
> 2406 Moughas K9V M9V <- K9V M9D
>
> 2408 Rethe G7V
>
> 2410 Inthe-2 F8V
>
>

Mike--

Quick reassessment of previous, re: filling an atmosphere with oxygen.

Top-level observation, my 22-year old goal of ensuring hab zones are
present is clearly inadequate.

I always knew I hated this process of grafting randomly generated stars
onto existing UWPs, and the more I dig into it, the more I hate it. It's
not only putting the cart before the horse, it's putting the cart about a
mile in front of the horse on the other side of a river.

Changes to below are, at this point

1. I am persuaded we want to get rid of the giant around the thin,
breathable atmo world. The Gooky one can get along with whatever it's got,
it's in a habitable zone, the atmosphere isn't breathable anyway.

One more fail.

7. Since it's a double and the V is presumably the primary and the giant
the secondary, either manageably (pre helium flash) or at a distance, it
doesn't croak the dense breathable atmosphere, I still think that's
do-able, but I may need you to re-explain why you thought you made the
error. Was it just order of stars (primary/secondary)? No big deal, give
yourself a pass.

8. Same as 7, same discussion. Standard tainted. We don't know what the
taint is, so we can think of it as an atmosphere still trying to get
oxygenated, or a million other things, like over-active volcanism. Still
think we can make this one work. Since the giant does not HAVE to force
the system to fail, I don't think we HAVE to get rid of it.

Now at 14 fails, grades dropped to 43.75% fails. Poop.

> Mike--
>
> Just finishing up the questions here because I said I would.
>
> I just realized that Regina is in the TNE book so I can see the UWPs and
> observe directly what you did in detail.
>
> I am going to be comparing your process to the thoughts that I have laid
> out over the past couple days so that I can translate your apples into my
> oranges. This is NOT to criticize your approach at all, but having thought
> through this before (22 years ago) to come up with a solution, I just have
> to approach this in a way that allows me to make sense of it. So again, as
> you've said to me several times lately, please don't take this as
> criticism or argument. I'm just trying to think it through by own lights.
> If being the idiot who tried to do this the first time grants me any
> benefits, maybe this is it. :-)
>
> As I said in an earlier e-mail, my first test is presence of hab zone or
> not.
>
> 1. You swapped Yres and Menorb not so much because you HAD to (both
> already had hab zones) but because assigning an Earthlike star to Menorb
> is nicer because it was a Hi-Pop world with a thin breathable atmosphere,
> and since Yres had an insidious atmosphere and fluid oceans it seemed like
> less of a waste to put an oddball bright giant star there, which probably
> started life around a B1 or B2 V.
>
> Again, please do not take this as criticism, but as both did have hab
> zones, I think of this as cosmetic, not required. However, given the
> desire you expressed in previous e-mails to permit as much as possible the
> ability for worlds to develop indigenous life, you moved the shorter-lived
> star away from the more hospitable world. While I might not have felt
> compelled to do that, I can understand why you did. (But, just for the
> sake of discussion, it might also be possible for life to form in gooey
> Yres with its previous V star, so maybe it's a coin toss.) In general,
> since there are bright giants in the galaxy, there ought to be some in
> Traveller, and just because they've croaked whoever used to live there,
> there is still a habitable zone for humans to colonize in, and that makes
> sense in the game. (Now if I'm reminded that Menorb has distinctive
> indigenous life that I'm overlooking I may have to penalize myself.)
>
> 2. For Uakye M9 V has no hab zone (discussed previously, dangit), so you
> bumped it up to K9. You could have bumped it up as low as M4, but once
> you're bumping, it's a matter of taste, and since its Atm is vacuum (very
> thin) K9 was fine. And actually in a form of (possibly superstitious)
> conservatism, Geo would often change M9s to K9s to only change one digit,
> as anything between K5 and M4 was a distinction without a difference
> anyway, so I thought that was fine, so you did what we would have done.
>
> But actually I believe that when we tried this back in 1992-93 we figured
> that worlds like this weren't that much more hospitable than airless rocks
> (0.1-0.42 atm) as they would require permanent "domed" habitats to allow
> survival anyway, so the presence/absence of stellar heat was not that big
> an issue. I might have said this didn't make the cut. If this were in the
> Wilds, these people would have died. For me this also is cosmetic,
> atmosphere not breathable without assistance, so not required.
>
> 3. Already discussed Alell, no hab zone, but still no hab zone, and as it
> is a Rich world, is Bad.
>
> Definite screw-up on my part, as it is a Rich world and requires extra
> attention. Call it a double failure.
>
> 4. Alell, Whanga, Feri, Beck's World, Moughas, D companion changed to V as
> had breathable atmosphere
>
> As I've written previously, on some level we figured that having a hab
> zone was the first priority, and these already did. And a degenerate means
> that it's maybe already made a mess like a planetary nebula, so could
> interfere with the indigenous life in the system, IF it is a close
> companion. On the other hand, if it is a far companion or a really small
> star to begin with (no red giant, goes straight to the left of the main
> sequence without making a mess), it might not interfere, and allow
> reasonable variation in the game under some circumstances.
>
> For a quick, safe rule of thumb, I concur with turning Ds into Vs for
> planets with atmospheres. To allow for the interesting variation that
> Traveller might want to admit, maybe not always. But for the sake of not
> quibbling, I'll take a full hit on five worlds, Five failures (separate
> failure for Alell).
>
> 5. Pixie, Enope, XX D companion changed to D as no atmosphere, so having a
> degenerate is okay
>
> While this is a semantic difference with no game effect, the point is to
> use the language correctly, so two more failures.
>
> 6. Regina, D changed to V as had breathable atmosphere. However, Regina is
> a special case, its system was described in detail in several Traveller
> products with its named stars Lusor, its D companion Speck, and Darida
> with a separate, so I left it as is, but should have changed Speck from M8
> D to D.
>
> While I deliberately made the decision to preserve the defined, named
> ("Speck") degenerate in Traveller's oldest defined world, I did fail to
> make the semantic change, so another failure.
>
> 7. Heya, did the change D to V as dense breathable atmosphere, but then
> swapped the luminosity classes. That got you two habitable zones instead
> of just one (the bumped V had none). Based on your remark below about a
> "home" star, I'm wondering if you roughed out the orbits to see how the
> star orbits and hab zones interacted. However, you describe this as a
> mistake to have kept the giant, and I don't understand this. The K III
> would have previously been, say a G V, and while it would have fried its
> original habitable zone, it has pushed this habitable zone outwards. For
> smallish stars (including Sol) this new period could last a few billion
> years, long enough for life to evolve again before the helium flash, and a
> similar period after helium flash. But more to the point, depending on how
> the binary system is configured, the red giant behavior may not interfere
> with worlds in the habitable zone of the existing V star, so does not
> necessarily impair its ability to continue developing life. Moreover, it
> does not at all prevent colonizing humans in the past 8000 years from
> living there. Since giant stars do exist, we don't want to exclude them
> from the Traveller universe, so these stars could easily be in the length
> period before or after the helium flash(es).
>
> Since the first issue was a D in a system with breathable atmosphere, I
> will take this as another failure, but since I'm not yet convinced that we
> have to expunge all giants, because at the very least we can accept that
> some worlds have lost their original life and have been colonized since
> then, I will hold of on awarding myself a double failure at this point.
>
> However, Heya is a Rich world, so the current single failure counts
> double.
>
> 8. Keng, as with Heya, did the change D to V as standard tainted
> (semi-breathable) atmosphere, but then swapped the luminosity classes.
> That also got you two habitable zones instead of just one (the bumped V
> had none). You also call this a mistake, same comments as Heya above.
>
> Same as Heya above, single failure, possible double failure, pending
> further discussion.
>
> One thing that I assume you have not done with the binaries/triples is
> work out their orbits to see what the real impact is because of the time
> required. You are presumably aware that depending on how the rolls work
> out you can be prevented from using the habitable zones. Based on some of
> your remarks above (mostly about Heya and Keng) it appears that you may
> have made some assumptions, or placed them by fiat. However, the problem
> with this is that Traveller provides no means to store these
> configurations in the UWP data, so even though you work out the system
> configuration in a satisfactory way, someone else may not, and you can't
> tell him what yours was anyway. The vast majority of UWPs have probably
> not been processed all the way through, and another piece of evidence for
> this is that there are so few quad star systems in the 3I data.
>
> In any case I am skeptical of the ability of multiple star systems to
> create worlds that are stable enough for life to develop. Complex patterns
> of heating and cooling and tidal forces on the worlds themselves and their
> orbits create a lot more variables that work against a world getting the
> chance to develop life. So a lot of the work that we spend on "fixing
> stars" can be squandered in a multiple star system where you can't get the
> orbits to work out.
>
> So, out of 32 worlds in the subsector, I've scored 13 failures against
> myself, so a 40.6% failure rate. That's not weighted against total
> possible number of failures against the pre-TNE data, but I'm not trying
> to wheedle my way to a more presentable score anyway, so I doubt I will
> take the time. But the point is that, assuming Regina is representative, I
> have a better understanding of what "not far enough" means, so I guess I
> can live with that.
>
> What do you think of my report card, Dad?
>
>> To illustrate what I am talking about with the stellar data, let me show
> you
>> what I did with the Regina subsector. Do note that, while this is taken
> from
>> my 1248 work, there are no spoilers here, as I have stripped out
> everything
>> but the hex location, world name, and stellar data. No spoilers here.
>>
>> The data is below, but let me highlight what was done for the changes:
>>
>> - Any star that was size "D" either becomes just "D" or is moved to
> "V", depending on the atmosphere present. So, Alell, Whanga, Regina, Feri,
>> Beck's World, and Moughas all get their white dwarf promoted, and Pixie
> and
>> enope get their white dwarf outright listed.
>>
>> - Stars too big (e.g. Menorb) or too cold (Uakye) get their star
> shifted to something more sustainable. In the case of Menorb, its star was
>> swapped with the nearby Yres so that the Red Giant star didn't totally
> disappear, but both worlds end up with more reasonable stars for their
> environment.
>>
>> - Heya and Keng were done a little more creatively, and the stars
> were
>> swapped so that the giants would be retained, but the other star could
> actually host the home world. This is an example of a mistake I made, as I
>> really should have wiped out the Giants, and at the least, the "good"
> star
>> should have been listed first (as it is the home star of the listed
> world),
>> not second. Even so, the attempt was to give the relatively nice world a
> compatible star, but not completely eliminate the Giant that was
> originally
>> listed.
>>
>> - As a side note, the Regina subsector was host to two of those
> seven
>> duplicate names: Kinorb and Inthe.
>>
>>
>>
>> This is just an example of what DED and I are talking about when we say
> RSB
>> "did go far enough". However, just to stress this to ridiculous
> extremes,
>> this is not really a criticism or complaint. You were the only one who
> ever
>> even really tried to fix that stuff. That it wasn't an unmitigated
> success
>> is irrelevant; you tried. We both recognize that effort and salute it.
>>
>>
>>
>> Mike West
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Anyway, here is the data. Note that the "new" is shown first, and the
> "old"
>> is shown second. Anything with only one entry wasn't changed.
>>
>> 1705 Efate K4V
>>
>> 1706 Alell M7V M7V <- M7V M7D
>>
>> 1802 Yres M5 II <- G5V
>>
>> 1803 Menorb G5V <- M5 II
>>
>> 1805 Uakye K9V <- M9V
>>
>> 1806 Whanga A1V M1V <- A1V M1D
>>
>> 1807 Knorbes G3V
>>
>> 1808 Forboldn G0V
>>
>> 1809 Ruie G5V
>>
>> 1810 Jenghe M0V
>>
>> 1903 Pixie M0V D <- M0V M1D
>>
>> 1904 Boughene K7V
>>
>> 1909 Hefry K6 II M6V
>>
>> 1910 Regina F7V M6V M8V <- F7V M6V M8D
>>
>> 2005 Feri G4V M3V <- G4V M3D
>>
>> 2007 Roup F9V
>>
>> 2106 Pscias K5V
>>
>> 2110 Yori F1V
>>
>> 2201 Dentus M2V
>>
>> 2202 Kinorb-1 G7V
>>
>> 2204 Beck's W M0V M2V <- M0V M2D
>>
>> 2205 Enope K6V D <- K6V M5D
>>
>> 2207 Wochiers F0V
>>
>> 2303 Yorbund M3V
>>
>> 2306 Shionthy M4V
>>
>> 2308 Algine G9V
>>
>> 2309 Yurst K9V
>>
>> 2402 Heya M8 III K6V <- K6 III M8D
>>
>> 2405 Keng M9 III G5V <- G5 III M9D
>>
>> 2406 Moughas K9V M9V <- K9V M9D
>>
>> 2408 Rethe G7V
>>
>> 2410 Inthe-2 F8V
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>