Thoughts regarding Traveller

1) Measuring displacement of Traveller ships:
Joe Troche said:
> I think the people at GDW used liquid hydrogen (the fuel) to 
> calculate mass displacement.	100 tons of liquid H2 is 1400 cu/m. 

GDW did use a "displacement ton" of hydrogen as the unit of
displacement.  I 
seem to recall that someone on one of the Travelkler lists said the
exact 
conversion is 14.8 m^3/ton H2, so the conversion would be closer to 15
to 1.

2) FYI, the new version of Traveller (nicknamed 'T4') is due to be
released at 
GenCon.  There is a special, limited-edition, signed (I think),
hardcover 
mail-order only edition available as well -- see
http:www.imperiumgames.com 
for details.

I don't know if I am the only person on both this list and the Traveller

lists, but it has been very interesting on the Traveller lists for the
past 
six weeks or so.  Don Perrin, the guy responsible for the ship
construction 
rules for T4, announced on the list what the plan was -- basically, High

Guard. A few people (including myself) were upset with this.  It was
pointed 
out that the problem isn't that Traveller has had three different ship 
construction rules over the years (Traveller _Book 2_, _High Guard_, and

_Fire, Fusion and Steel_ [FF&S]), but that the rules are incompatible
with 
each other. What was really needed was a simple system derived from a
more 
complex system -- that way, you could throw together a design in five
minutes 
(which may not be optimized, but would represent using off-the-shelf 
components), or if you wanted to be a gearhead you could sit down and
tweak it 
for five hours.

The response was "If you can pull it together by such and such a date,
we'll 
use it."  Over the course of the next two weeks two different designers
came 
up with two systems, both derived from a slightly-modified FF&S.  One
system 
is roughly equivalent in complexity to High Guard, the other Traveller
Book 2. 
The GDW-beta list (where the main design conversation took place) was
getting 
a hundred messages a day as drafts of the different systems were posted,

tweaked and critiqued.	 [The Net is cool.]

In the end, Imperium Games (T4's publisher) is going to use _both_
systems.  
The simpler system is going into the main T4 rulebook, the more complex
system 
is going into the _Starships_ supplement (due out in the fall). 
Sometime 
after that Imperium plans to issue a new version of FF&S.

An early design goal was that any subsystem designed at a higher level
can be 
plugged into a lower level.  So, if you wanted to, you could design a
ship 
using the basic rules except for the weapons system.  You can design the

weapons system in the next most complex rules, except for the actualy
weapon 
itself (e.g., a meson gun) which you could design in the FF&S rules. 
Pretty 
neat, huh?

FWIW, if anyone wants to try out converting ships designed in the T4
systems 
to Full Thrust, the new systems are detailed at:

http://www.usa.net/~goldendj/Traveller/Traveller.html
http://www.usa.net/~goldendj/Traveller/Admiralty/FFSLight/FFSLight.html
http://www.qrc.com/~wildstar/gdw-beta/
http://www.qrc.com/~wildstar/qsds/

Christopher Weuve  [caw@intercon.com]
Through sheer random chance, my employer may 
someday agree with something I say.