On Sun, 23 Aug 2020 00:04:32 -0400, xxxxxx@gmail.com wrote to Freelance
Traveller:
>Question:
>Jeff, is the choice to go to numerics for Spaceports and retain alphabetics
>for Starports a conscious choice to give an immediate queue to what on is
>dealing with? Or was there another reason to change Spaceport codes to
>numerics?
That depends on how you want to define 'spaceport' rather than 'starport'.
You'll note that the numeric codes are for what I called "secondary
starports". I would consider the difference between "starport" and
"spaceport" to be that a "starport" can handle interstellar traffic
directly; a "spaceport" only handles in-system traffic. The difference
between the "primary" starport and a "secondary" starport would generally
be the traffic levels.
>I'd looked at your stuff on Starports before and found it interesting, but
>I didn't give it the depth of focus to really see how it would look over a
>diverse array of systems one might want to model.
>
>The requirement to have ship repair and ship building (and that jump ship
>building only happens at an A type starport) is kind of senseless since it
>is unlikely that any emergent culture might want to build their own jump
>ships but don't have an A class facility... so they just 'Ah, until we can
>afford the A class port, we can't build any local ships folks... SPA rules.
>Sorry.'?
I happen to agree, and were I designing the UWP from scratch, I would
separate out "port" from "yards" - and I would separate out "repair yards"
from "construction yards". However, for this particular thread, I stayed
with the standard, which includes a yard, because that's how it was written
and kept since 1977.
>> (This should probably be read in association with my article "Extending the
>> UWP: Starports", Freelance Traveller, May 2013rp, and
>> http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/rules/expuwp/starports.html)
A general note, since a couple of people asked off-list...
If I give an issue reference for an article on Freelance Traveller's
website, and it ends in "rp" as the above, it means that the article itself
predated Freelance Traveller _magazine_, but was reprinted (rp=RePrint)
from the website in the indicated issue. If an article appears first in the
magazine, but is reprinted in a later issue for whatever reason, I'll try
to give both dates, e.g., "May 2011, September 2015rp". In this case, "rp"
still means reprint, but from the issue that is noted without the "rp".
®Traveller is a registered trademark of
Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2020. Use of
the trademark in this notice and in the
referenced materials is not intended to
infringe or devalue the trademark.
--
Jeff Zeitlin, Editor
Freelance Traveller
The Electronic Fan-Supported Traveller® Resource
xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com
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