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Errata - that difficult subject

>> Nuts! I have that too around here, and keep forgetting to add it. <<

Heh.

Just to clarify, I found two documents:

General factual corrections & typo fixes:
hiwgdocs/1104.txt

Revised vehicle & starship designs:
hiwgdocs/1703_v3.txt

All thanks to a decent search function in my text editor of choice ;)

All this MT fixing has got me in the frame of mind for working on some correct (as far as we can tell) MT ship design software to polish published designs. I've got a few ideas about how it could be written in such a way to make further system tweaks easy to incorporate and recalculate designs on.
 
Notepad++
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

It's free, and has perhaps too many features (Being designed for programmers), but the search feature lets you look for terms across all open documents, where it will conjure up a browseable list of all the matches including the text of the line where they are found. Double-clicking on a search result will switch to the referred document and focus on the line where the term is found (well, you need to scroll down a bit usually) - without closing the search results (so it's great for following threads in TML posts, for instance).

Using that, in conjunction with a simple 'find files with this word in them' Windows search, I stumbled upon a series of oddly placed index files around the HIWG CD that led me to those two documents above.

None of this is wildly innovative, but it is certainly more user friendly that most other search methods I know of.
 
I'm a vi guy myself (too much UNIX use, so I use it for windows too). And I'd run into both docs before, but had dropped them. Even worse, much of the first one is speculative. I'll post a draft...
 
Yeah, I figured HIWG had a bit of clout, but not the final word on material.

Still, there's the whole 'every-vehicle in every book is probably a little broken now' problem (Not to mention the ones that were broken to begin with). And we can't come to a consensus on what is and isn't broken until we have a definitive design sequence.

Looking at the discussion, it does seem we are wandering further and further into the realm of addenda and speculation...

I suspect many of us have either started or are even contemplating editing copies of the MT sourcebooks to incorporate the errata (I've certainly entertained the idea, having had a bit of graphic design experience).

Perhaps someone could raise the topic of creating more correct PDFs of MT with Marc?

I guess the easiest course would be to fix them for private use and then pass the files to Marc for consideration, then petition for a private playtest review to check everything.

Ideally one would be able to rework some of the text for clarification and reorganize the material - of course that's basically stepping out of the realm of errata and into a new edition.

It wouldn't suprise me if there are copyright issues to do with creating a new edition of MT using the original text & art though.

Anyway, one can dream.
 
Yes, I have contemplated putting together a " fixed " MT players manual and maybe Imperial Enc. myself - if only to give to the players - instead of " here is the PM, and here is the pages of errata/addenda ".

I presume however that IP issues would rule out a formal refit though. It's a shame - it would be a great opportunity also to put in some better artwork ! There's a few nasties in the PM ( especially towards the back that I would love to omit )

Re: Starship construction software - would be invaluable - ship design in MT has long been a personal bugbear - even after I got the errata. TBH I generally just design in High Guard 2 and go with that. But if there was a program/spreadsheet that worked - this would be a Godsend. I wouldn't mind contributing in the form of testing - but I don't know anything about writing the software.

Regards

R.
 
Reg - on your atmospheres issue -- what page 17? Page 17 of PM is Reenlistment and Mustering Out, and Page 17 of RM is Subsector Grids....

So what page 17 are you referring to?
 
Dom,

Apologies - I should have been more precise - I was referring to page 17 of the Errata PDF - where the atmospheres are listed.

Apologies again.

RR.
 
I have moved a bit past the contemplating stage. I am about 80 percent done with the Referee's Manual (I have to finish the charts without throwing my laptop across the room.).

I incorporated all of Don's material along with anything else I have found to be useful. (One Small Step for Pregavitic vehicles, Wood and Wind, Steel and Steam (early tech supplement, Wet Navy etc). I also yanked all of the Rebellion specific stuff from the Referee's Manual and I plan to put it in the Rebellion Sourcebook or the Imperial Encyclopedia where it belongs.

Now that we have a corrected version of "A MegaTraveller Starship Design Example" - another fantasic job by Don btw- rewriting Fighting Ships Of the Shattered Imperium becomes much easier, I hope. I have started on the BB-11 and I think all of those ships can be fixed.

My major problem at the moment is that I did this in Microsoft Word & I have started hitting the limits of what it can do (I.e. it doesn't like it when I made the charts via nested tables. It also gets real balky now that the document is over 4 megs.)

So now I have pulled out my copy of Adobe InDesign & I'm attempting to learn it with this project.
 
Reg:

First, it's Don, not Dom.


Second, the table on page 34 is simply a guide for the Referee for designing animals, and ignores tainted atmospheres at this point. It's to match the homeworld atmospheres chart.
 
> MT refit:
Another real kicker is not having access to DGP material (I didn't realize how much GT missed out on Aslan & Vargr until I recently acquired the DGP Alien books!).

MT (for me) has both the best and the worst art (Ref's Companion I'm looking at you
). I for the most part prefer the visual design of MT to all other versions.

> Design software:
My crazy (Ok, I am a programmer, so not so crazy) idea is to build generic design software that can read a series of script that describe any given Traveller system.

Basically, all of the Traveller starship, vehicle, armor and weapon design systems revolve around selecting quantities of components, tracking certain totals, adhering to requirements and then deriving performance stats at the end - so one could design a human-readable notation for representing each system and its components that the software could interpret.

I would probably go with a spreadsheet-like interface - it'd be easy to learn and it would alleviate the need for custom forms for each part of the design system.

The scripts representing each design system would of course fall under Far Future copyright terms (they're a representation of Traveller material), but the software itself would be a separate entity and could be distributed free for others to modify.

With the kinds of tool and languages available today, this idea is actually quite feasible.
 
Whew, 53 pages.


Just a couple of questions under the problems section:

'Merchant characters cannot get Sensor Ops skill'

Should that be Merchant 'Free Traders' can't get Sensor Ops (which is only availiable on Special Duty->Helm, and they can't get special duty...right?).
As far as I can tell, basic Merchants have heaps of opportunities to get it (via cascades) and advanced much less so - having said that, I've never used the advanced rules.

'EMS passive array is missing Tl20 info'..'remove TL13?'

For what it's worth, FF&S drops the 13 to make the two types match TL for TL, numbers are a little different in FF&S though, but look derived from MT.

'Type X particle accelerator is missing'

Hmm, there's no one correct obvious solution to this, so I might as well make it up. Here's my 0.05Cr from poring over the numbers on RM pg. 71 & RM pg. 100:

X 17 350000 25000 7000 1000 25

'How to apply damage from tranq rounds in combat'

The Chemical Rounds rules (PM pg 94.) seem clear enough... is there something else that needs definition?
 
On the Merchant/Sensor Ops, yes, that's poorly worded, mostly due to bad cut-n-paste on my part.

On the EMS Passive Array dropping the TL13, I hadn't checked that in FF&S, since people keep telling me to not infer from it. However, that's enough of an annoying problem to warrant the change.

About your proposed X PA: things just don't work out with the rest of the table. This is a case where I wish I knew how they drew up this table in the first place (and I suspect it's just random guesses for numbers on their part, but my brain really wants to think there's a formula here).

On tranq -- it was a question I was asked and I hadn't researched it yet


And what you've pointed out appears to remove the question, which is great. Although the rules don't seem to differentiate between Virushi tranq rounds and human rounds, and I suspect a tranq designed to take a Virushi down might kill a poor human (and do more penetration). Still, there's enough there for the referee to do the work necessary.
 
Originally posted by DonM:

About your proposed X PA: things just don't work out with the rest of the table. This is a case where I wish I knew how they drew up this table in the first place (and I suspect it's just random guesses for numbers on their part, but my brain really wants to think there's a formula here).
Click to expand...
Yeah, fair enough. I didn't use the most scientific method, my guess was based on what happens to a PA at the same tech level when it goes up in attacking factor, looking at the 3 versions of TL 13,14 & 15 models - my numbers are from an eyeball estimate, not a rigorous method. I'll work something out on a spreadsheet and present a more reasoned case :D

I did find one thing in my most recent epic manual errata-ing session:

The errata for the TL 15 G-Carrier (v2.09 pg 39) has the tail end of the air/raft errata accidentally transposed onto it instead.
Using the Lopec class G-Carrier from 101 Vehicles - tweaks to the errata are actually quite small, since the vehicles are similar:

Cargo=27kl, Fuel=13kl.
(and use the original G-Carrier description)

And now, some cosmetic quibbles - maybe not in the scope of this errata:

I have 3rd Printing PM & 2nd Printing RM (thank goodness!) from my purchase of the MT boxed set - and the included errata sheet has two Imperium maps that were omitted from the inside back and front cover of the RM: 'Domains of the Imperium' and 'The Rule of Man'. I can scan and send if you don't have them.

Also, a 'clarification'?:

The Player's Guide to MegaTraveller
http://www.farfuture.net/MTGuide.pdf
has, what appears to be illustrations intended for the Rebellion sourcebook of the faction leaders.

Here's what I did:
- stuck a copy of Strephon onto pg. 51 of RS.
- stuck a copy of Norris onto pg. 56.
- stuck a copy of Duke Craig onto pg. 65 (Which still has the wrong symbol in the background, should be Daibei(pg 64.), not Antares.)
- wrote the title of each illustration to match the Player's Guide. Poor old Yaskoydray doesn't have a spot in the RS, so I stuck him in the Ancients section of the IE (pg.48).

And, an unresolved problem - how to fix the fleet numbers on pg. 26 of RS? The errata points out the problem, but doesn't offer a clear solution.
 
Originally posted by Harry Bryan:

Now that we have a corrected version of "A MegaTraveller Starship Design Example" - another fantasic job by Don btw- rewriting Fighting Ships Of the Shattered Imperium becomes much easier, I hope. I have started on the BB-11 and I think all of those ships can be fixed.
Click to expand...
Is fixing FSOTSI mostly a case of rebuilding the designs so they are legal per the rules? Or is it a more deep-seated problem?
 
The errata from 101 vehicles is a "contribution", since I stupidly sold my copy years ago.

FSoSI is a more deep-seated problem. The book is, literally, garbage.
 
In several places, I've read about an "unofficial" rule of 12kl of controls per crew member being the limit -- but it's NOT official anywhere. Does anyone know the facts behind that?
 
Dear Folks -

Originally posted by DonM:
The errata from 101 vehicles is a "contribution", since I stupidly sold my copy years ago.

FSoSI is a more deep-seated problem. The book is, literally, garbage.
Click to expand...
Nice pics, tho'. ;)

And Jesse rendered one of the ships in 3D, so it can't be all bad.

Give me a yell if you need anything from 101 Vehicles.
 
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