Quote from: Phillip;859399I'm curious where you get Stoppard credited with the screenplay or script.

Script doctors seldom get screen credit, but here's Stoppard talking about working on Revenge of the Sith:

QuoteSCRIPT DOCTORING FOR GEORGE LUCAS

This is your first time working with Ewan McGregor, right? That's a trick question: Didn't you work uncredited on George Lucas's Revenge of the Sith?
Which one was that?

The third of the recent prequels.
I did talk to George about one of the episodes. It must have been ten years ago. Actually, it was Steven. Steven Spielberg asked me to read a script and do a kind of dialogue polish. I did a bit, but I wouldn't want to usurp the writer's claim on the movie. [Laughs] Polish is such a strange word for what one does. I interfered with George's script in a mild way.

"Interfered." That's a very Ortonian way of putting it. Ortonian or Etonian, I can't decide which.
[Chuckles] Well, you know, it's slightly misunderstood. It's not structured like you've got this job to do. It's more like spending time with friends and giving a hand. I didn't even know Ewan was in the film.

He played the Alec Guinness role. A younger version of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Oh. I wonder if he got to say anything I wrote. I must ask him.

He also did a "polish" on the third Indiana Jones movie.

To come back to the original question:

What I like about Traveller is that it is broad and focused at the same time. For example take the Vargr. You can use them as pirates, as an enemy in war time, as an ally, as a mysterious other race you don't understand, as mercenaries in your team or you can play an all out Vargr party. I you do the last you can use them as soldiers, pirates, spies, merchants, explorers etc. Whatever you choose the game will support you.

What I don't like about it is the enormous scale, the endless hexcrawls, the gigantic fleets and all that stuff that is just more of the same. Less is more to me.

Quote from: estar;859411Actually you don't have to roll each time just the first time. Because you know how long windows appear you just keep track of in-game afterwards. However the point of a roll is to eliminate trying to figure where each planet is when the players arrive in the system. It not an important point as most in-system travel involves one or two destination outside of the main world.

Yes. The main thing I was thinking was it would be overly random to just roll randomly each time the question comes up, for the same situation. Though I can see that it would be possible, for a system with multiple interesting locations and groups using them for different purposes over years, for it to be very relevant for people to know and plan based on the known future changing travel conditions between the planets.

QuoteYes there is however they are not a in a form easily usable during a RPG session. For example Orbiter Space Simulator has a Interplanetary Travel MDF that will give you a time in the future where you can initiate your hohmann transfer.

Kerbal has even a niftier function window that will display a delta-vee map based on your craft's capabilties. However it also focused on hohmann transfers.

My personal recommendation for a person serious about getting this right for a RPG campaign is to get Kerbal Space Program and practice orbital manuevuers and interplanetary transfer for a couple of session and you will develop a sense of how it all hangs to together. Learn the basic formulas of orbital math to get a sense of how long things take and that pretty much all you need to rule on the fly.

Cool. Thanks!

QuoteFor myself I was deep into add-on development for the Orbiter Space Simulator for several years and created a complete simulation of the Mercury Space Capsule and worked some on the Gemini Space Capsule. I also helped the guys doing the Apollo Capsule.

http://www.ibiblio.org/mscorbit/

I have done hundreds of of maneuvers for my own enjoyment and in playtesting my add-ons. In general I can summarize the experience as figuring out the exact numbers is very hard, learning how things generally work is not, but it is not intuitive and there is a learning curve to master the details.

As for why I never wrote up anything because while I am good at creating hardware simulation, I always relied on more savvy people for the formulas. I know enough to do a writeup for hohmann transfers and windows but not enough for brachistrone trajectories involving constant Gs. I have built simulations of Traveller craft and flown them enough to learn that it is not point and shoot. You have still plot out a trajectory and you still only have limited windows in which to do them. Of course it is way better than kick and burn rockets. But again it is also not just point and burn either.

For example if you are trying to fly a Free Trader with 1G thrust or a Scout Ship with 2G thrust from the surface of the Earth to orbit you still have to following an ascent path.

If you can lift straight up to say 150 miles and starting thrusting. But you have to do it just right and maintain your altitude. I can fly by hand a ascent path by using a table of values called a pitch program. It tell me what angle my pitch needs to be at at what time to go into orbit.

The fly straight up and then thrust method not only requires automated control, it also take longer than following ascent path. Because too much of your thrust is devoting to pointing down to maintaining your altitude.

The more Gs your drive can put out as acceleration the easier it gets and the less time it takes but it never goes away. And at the higher Gs atmospheric heating becomes a factor. We are talking temperatures and plasma heating reaching level found at the surface of the sun. And there is the brute force beating of the atmosphere slamming into your craft.

Anyway my view is that playing RPGs is more about the experience in being someone else in another time and place than the numbers. So as long as you get the experience right, then the referee has done his job.

Very cool. Thanks for elaborating and sharing those things! I remember playing Omnitrend's Universe back in the 80's, and finding it very cool that the better drive systems you managed to install, the less time-consuming gradual spiralling in you had to do to get into a useful orbit of larger planets. That game seemed to have pretty credible formulas, but it would just ask you for the destination and then plot the course for you, generally using the same strategy, though when you had a powerful enough engine and/or light enough gravity well, the ship wouldn't need to circle a planet (or not as many times).

In general in RPGs I'd agree, but sometimes RPGs can get into strategy and planning, and as I've said, I can easily imagine scenarios where I'd want not necessarily lots of numbers and math, but at least a schedule of what the future situation is going to be like in terms of relative difficulty getting between different planets in the system, and it'd be nice if that could be consistent and make sense in terms of orbital distance and periods.

Would that be the same as SPI's Universe?  I've been wanting to have another look at it but the only download I can find is a nasty Trojan horse.

With my games I've tried to do orbital mechanics through vector addition using two concentric rings to represent the orbital positions.  It's a bit boardgamey but I always feel that just lining up the appropriate vectors and laying down a ruler is easier than a bunch of math.

Quote from: David Johansen;859541Would that be the same as SPI's Universe?  I've been wanting to have another look at it but the only download I can find is a nasty Trojan horse.
...

No, Omnitrend's Universe was an awesome (for 1984) computer RPG made for 1984 computers (I played on Atari 8-bits, as opposed to Apple II or MS-DOS). It came with an awesome manual in a padded 3-ring binder, and used 4 floppy disks plus a saved game disk. Here's a contemporary review and grainy manual picture: http://www.cyberroach.com/analog/an20/universe.htm

Here's a nostalgic more recent review that points out it was a kind of predecessor to Elite in being a game where you run a spaceship and can go about doing what you like: https://extralives.wordpress.com/2012/07/22/from-the-pages-of-the-past-ads-of-yesteryear-omnitrends-universe/

Quote from: Skarg;859409I understand that calculating actual travel times in a solar system is quite complex.

And there are these things called computers that would to all the math.

I can think of absolutely no fucking reason to do complex mathematical calculations in a SF game.  Just tell me how long it will take me to reach Alderaan from Naboo.  And if the imaginary number you pull out of your ass isn't "accurate" for an imaginary propulsion system in an imaginary universe, imagine I don't fucking care.

Sure, but Traveller doesn't exactly come from that tradition.  There has always been a subgroup of science fiction fans who are physics junkies.  And while you might not think it's fun, other people love doing it.  Personally my skill with math and physics  caps out a little below that.  I love the idea, but lack the capacity.

Traveller's never quite been there either.  It's had various attempts but they often butt up against the sheer size of space.  In my experience, getting your free trader from the gas giant to the main world almost always works out to be a matter of months rather than days even with one gee constant acceleration.  Never mind that most systems are a series of under developed and unlivable rocks.

I've often been tempted to try using Triplanetary's movement system with the big solar system hex map from Starfire New Empires.  And the planetary movement rules found there.  Of course, in Starfire you've got lots of motivation to develop every rock you can stick a base on as the resources generated within a star system are largely protected from attack by the warp point / choke point.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;859553And there are these things called computers that would to all the math.

I can think of absolutely no fucking reason to do complex mathematical calculations in a SF game.  Just tell me how long it will take me to reach Alderaan from Naboo.  And if the imaginary number you pull out of your ass isn't "accurate" for an imaginary propulsion system in an imaginary universe, imagine I don't fucking care.

So, you are a highly educated man whose opinion gamers should respect because you gamed with Gygax and Arneson, but you are afraid of math.

Got it.

But let's keep in mind that the only sfrpgs where the navigator breaks out the slide rule are the ones based on sf from around 1930.  In any others, the computer crunches the numbers.

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. "

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;859640"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. "

6G acceleration for a month is fast. Really fast. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly fast it is ... It shrinks those distances right down to a manageable level.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;859553And there are these things called computers that would to all the math.

I can think of absolutely no fucking reason to do complex mathematical calculations in a SF game.  Just tell me how long it will take me to reach Alderaan from Naboo.  And if the imaginary number you pull out of your ass isn't "accurate" for an imaginary propulsion system in an imaginary universe, imagine I don't fucking care.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;859640"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. "

OK, we got it. You are a highly educated twat who thinks his opinion should be respected, but math scares you.

Well, guess what, there are a significant number of Traveller players who:

Quote from: jeff37923;859725OK, we got it. You are a highly educated twat who thinks his opinion should be respected, but math scares you.

Nice try, but nope.

If starships exist, I promise you that navigation timing will not be done by guys with calculators.

It's bogus for exactly the same reason the old Fletcher Pratt naval wargames rules were bogus.  Warships have rangefinders and fire control directors; the captain needing to guess range to the enemy is total bullshit because the ship has equipment on board that does that.  Just like a starship will have equipment on board that does that.

"Math" or "science" has nothing to do with it.  The game is making you do by hand shit that would not be done by hand.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;859728Nice try, but nope.

If starships exist, I promise you that navigation timing will not be done by guys with calculators.

It's bogus for exactly the same reason the old Fletcher Pratt naval wargames rules were bogus.  Warships have rangefinders and fire control directors; the captain needing to guess range to the enemy is total bullshit because the ship has equipment on board that does that.  Just like a starship will have equipment on board that does that.

"Math" or "science" has nothing to do with it.  The game is making you do by hand shit that would not be done by hand.

So the simple algebraic equation of "Travel Time equals two times the square root of Distance divided by Acceleration" is too much for your aged brain to handle, and I am supposed to respect your opinion why?

Maybe you should stick to lying about writing a book describing yourself as one of the original disciples of Gygax and Arneson. You know, the vaporware one that you have been talking about for a couple of years now.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;859728"Math" or "science" has nothing to do with it.  The game is making you do by hand shit that would not be done by hand.

Dick Seaton would like a word with you on that exact point. Hold on a moment while he puts down his slide rule.