Way back when SPI was publishing the 'Strategy & Tactics' mag, they also published a sci-fi mag titled 'Ares'. (The ad went like this; "In 1980 there will be ARES!")
Before they they did that though they would sometimes cover sci-fi in their flagship mag & that's where I read a review of the "new version" (HighGuard v2) of CT LBB5.
At the end the author wrote a caveat that sticks with me to this day.
He maintained that the enormous energy required to move *anything* across interstellar distance would forever make significant commerce impossible, no matter how cheap energy ever became, cuz' it would always be enormously cheaper to set up facilities, esp with the increased automation already foreseeable, at the destination.
Of course I had no interest in that sort of heresy! ;-)
From: Greg Nokes <xxxxxx@nokes.name>
To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
Sent: Thursday, January 3, 2019 6:56 PM
Subject: Re: [TML] J3
I’d love for some non-economic reason for a small ship/CT77 universe. But at the scale of the imperium I’m not sure it really makes sense.
Even if you hand-wave jump drive as the limiter it makes attacking impossible, as I will just build a huge station or monitor, and your small ship attack force will die a quick death.
So convince me! :)
Sent from my iPhone
The Trav 'era' that is used is, IMO, a critical factor.
The original, CT, era started off with fairly small ships, both commercial & military.
Yes, and no. One needs to look at the maritime model a little closer. i.e. a 1000dt cargo ship is pretty big in a lot of historical shipping sizes. Thus the range of sizes available in Book two allows for some interesting correlations.
Right now I am flipping through Coaling Stations of the early steamship era. With that model and the number of little podunk little places that existed just as a place to take on fuel and maybe a few incidentals starts to look like the traveller map. Couple that with GT:World Trade numbers one starts to get a rough gradient map to draw trade routes along. And from there Traffic numbers can be generated. Though honestly Going back to CT'77 Trade route table has a lot of traction as well, but the numbers to modify encounters takes more work.
--
Evyn
-----
The Traveller Mailing List
Archives at
http://archives.simplelists.com/tmlReport problems to xxxxxx@simplelists.com
To unsubscribe from this list please go to
http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=EwREIRgLK8vaUEhNlnoNdSGKwnjoID8a