[TML] New 3d computer simulation design

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 12/1/07 3:23 PM, Timothy Little wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 29, 2007 at 10:17:07PM -0500, Jerry W Barrington wrote:
>> I think the big issue though is, if it's so easy to get to the edge
>> of explored space, why *is* it the edge.  How can we have almost no
>> info on systems right next door to major inhabited worlds?
> 
> Purely out-of-game reasons, nothing more.  It takes time to create
> worlds, and there isn't enough time to do it for many of them.  Even
> more so if you want to publish the results.

It takes almost no time to generate bare systems, especially if your random
generator just does the physical stuff.

> Another reason (out of game) is to provide frontiers so that the
> players can feel like their characters are heading into the unknown,
> boldly going where no man has gone before.  ("Man" in the sense of
> Humaniti, that is.  Obviously the inhabitants of these worlds were
> there already)

There will always a be a frontier.  There will be an edge of surveyed but
not settled systems, then the unsurveyed stuff beyond that.  But having the
unsurveyed right next to the settled worlds doesn't make sense to me.

I'm not real fond of these out of game reasons.  That's why I want something
like the Great Game to flesh that stuff out.

> The TNE setting did at least provide a decent in-game reason: the
> knowledge was lost, and much of what was retained had become obsolete.
> 
> 
> My Traveller universe goes some way toward explaining the frontiers.
> In every jump "hex" there are typically hundreds of stars, with
> usually at most one worth settling - and sometimes pretty marginally
> just to have a jump stopover at that.  Completely surveying whole new
> hexes is very expensive, and keeping them updated even more so.  In
> this Traveller universe, someone could settle a system and quite
> likely nobody would notice for some time.  Such a settlement wouldn't
> last without substantial support, though.  A failing and desperate
> settlement might even resort to piracy.

If you have hundreds of stars per hex:
    A. Your hex size is probably way too big.  Your hex is equivalent to 5 +
Traveller subsectors.  You've effectively multiplied Traveller's jump range
by 20+ (but with weird issues where 2 stars just across the hex-line, and 2
at opposite sides of adjacent hexes, are each J1 apart).
    B. There should never be an empty hex: *somewhere* in there should be a
place to refuel (water world, gas giant, etc.).  And it would be worth a
little investment to find one and shorten 3 J1's to go around to 2 J1's to
go straight.

Besides, you have to survey to find the useful planet anyway.  On average,
you'll have to survey over half of those stars to do so.  All of them, if
there's *no* useful planet.

And why would the empire ignore all those stars?  That's just asking for
somebody to set up their own empire intermingled with yours.  Some sort of
patrol to at least pop in and see if anybody has set up shop seems
appropriate.  It's not much of an empire if it doesn't know what's going on
in 99+% of it's territory!