Thoughts regarding Traveller

1) Measuring displacement of Traveller ships: Joe Troche said:
> I think the people at GDW used liquid hydrogen (the fuel) to

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/