I just downloaded 3.2

[Garyius2003]

I just downloaded 3.2 yesterday. I have had a chance to read the changes to character creation and it seems better.

I am going to roll up some characters tonight and see how it works now.

What are other posters getting from the latest version?

 

[Garyius2003]

The "point" system is still broken

I decided for a career navy man, 50 points for five terms.

I spent 17 points on characteristics, giving him

696995

I purchased rank 5, 10 points

That raised the soc to 10

I then bought him six rolls on the benefit/cash table, at +1 for his capt

I took the rest of the points and bought skills:

Pilot 2; Astro 1; Gun Cbt 1; Comp 1

Off the charts he had Blade-1, leadership-1, and Tatics-1

Then his basic skills are: Vacc-0, zero G-0; Gunnery-0, and Mech-0...

plus background skills: Admin-0; advocate-0; Space science-0; and medic-0

Then he took anagathics, I rolled a 4 for a total of 20,000 credits in return for not aging.

Then I rolled 55 k for cash (minus 20k=35k), and TAS and three sets of 2 shares (total of 6, he can get a loan on a free trader himself)

That is for 5 terms.

Take the same guy, add an extra term (+10 points), and buy two more rolls and add an extra level to pilot (pilot-3). He still doesn't age but his starting cash is now 25,000. However, he now also has: +1 int; and [rolled TAS again, rerolled +2 soc], he now is a Baron.

Same stats, retirement pay, Baron, and some great skills.

The point system makes power characters.

 

[Echo]

The random method can also give you some pretty powered up characters. The key thing is to take a risk and keep going with terms, until your really happy with it. Of course this can lead to some quite old characters, but with the various technologies and drugs around this isn't necessarily such a problem.

It is, however, worth noting that younger, less skilled characters do develop new skills and abilities a lot faster than older, more skilled ones - once the actual game commences.

 

[Garyius2003]

Ship Shares also screwy-- still.

If they meant 1/500 for the montly payment, and not .02% (.0002), then buying a new free trader with 10 ship shares requires monthly payments of 62,000 on top of monthly expenses.

The operations costs are between 50,000 and 60,000, not including monthly pay.

They did make passage costs change depending on distance. They DID NOT make cargo rates change based on distance jumped. Dumb.

Only if the Far Trader makes two jumps per month full and averages over J-1 can it make payments, operating costs, and salary.

Oh, and 500 payments are 41.7 years (not 40), and....the bank will loan on a ship and not want interest?

 

[rust]

I have been playing a rather detailed and "realistic" simulation of a frontier co-
lony for the last couple of months.
The colony's economy worked quite well both with my homebrew rules and the
GURPS Traveller rules.
Now I tested how my colony and the region's traders would do under the con-
ditions of Mongoose's playtest document rules.
As a result of those rules the traders would all have gone broke, and the co-
lonists would have become isolated, and then would have starved. A well-
balanced and perfectly stable colonial economy and trade would not have
survived more than six months of "MGT rule" ...
There is much I like about Mongoose's Traveller, but some parts of it really
are less than convincing ...

 

[Garyius2003]

Now change the payments to .33% per month, at 40 years, then I might believe it.

With the cargo rates being based on per jump, not distance, and the Imperium providing a low cost J-4 message system...

The Imperium will not be an empire of millions of ships, it will have huge slow J-1 ships carefully routed years ahead of time running only full up.

 

[Klaus]

I think starship pricing is one of the things that is being looked at for the final product. There was a lot of discussion on the Mongosse boards about this.

The maths are a bit out, is all. It's nice they've culled some shibboleths (ie, payment per jump not parsec), but still needs work.