[TML] New 3d computer simulation design

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 12/3/07 11:08 AM, Timothy Little wrote:

> 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.

As mentioned further on, the bare systems are the fuel for he Great Game.
:)

Programs already exist.  StarGen would work wonderfully with only the
addition of moons.  In fact, all that would *need* publish for most stars
would be the program and the seed number.  That's less than we have for most
Traveller worlds.

And I think the bulk of the Imperium is excessive anyway.

>> 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.

Well, you *did* say they are refueling points.  As a player, I would
consider that pretty important.