[TML] New 3d computer simulation design

[Timothy Little]

On Sun, Dec 02, 2007 at 05:38:46AM -0500, Jerry W Barrington wrote:
> It takes almost no time to generate bare systems, especially if your
> random generator just does the physical stuff.

Bare systems aren't interesting for gameplay.  Even so, it takes time
and some skills to write the programs to generate and effectively
present even bare systems on a map for your players.

It takes vastly more time (and not negligible expense) to arrange for
those tens of thousands of systems to be published as a canonical work
for Traveller players as a whole.


> 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.

Well you did ask why.  The reasons why are out of game reasons.

There's certainly nothing preventing you from generating as much
detail as you like for as many of Traveller's tens of thousands of
worlds as you like and for sectors around.


> If you have hundreds of stars per hex:
>     A. Your hex size is probably way too big.

They're standard Traveller 1-parsec hexes in cross-section.  It's just
that they're on the order of a few thousand parsecs long.  Remember
the storyline I mentioned about the Ancients shattering jumpspace?
That's the structure they were breaking.


>     B. There should never be an empty hex: *somewhere* in there
> should be a place to refuel (water world, gas giant, etc.).

That's right, there are no empty hexes in that sense IMTU.  There is
always somewhere to refuel, if you have the appropriate wilderness
refuelling equipment.

I also doubt that there are any truly empty hexes even without stars.
Interstellar space probably contains at least hundreds of billions of
ejected bodies larger than a kilometre across per cubic parsec, mostly
composed of hydrogen compounds.  Finding them would be a little
trickier, but they're there.


> 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.

Absolutely.  That's a very expensive process, which is why you don't
have to go very far from settled worlds to find systems that haven't
been surveyed in detail.


> And why would the empire ignore all those stars?  That's just asking
> for somebody to set up their own empire intermingled with yours.

They're not completely ignored, just irrelevant for the most part.
Yes, the ones in and near inhabited hexes are resurveyed infrequently.
That's a large part of what the Scout Service does.  Just because
their existence is known doesn't mean that they're important enough to
appear on every map.

They certainly aren't important enough to publish on maps you give to
the players.


- Tim