Moving past the 3rd Imperium

[far-trader]

...I would think that it would take a lot longer to fire up the jump drives again.

I was wondering just how (general thoughts) people would know jump drive works again?

Best I could come up with off the top of my head was something along the lines of an accidental tourist. Some pre-trouble ship full of Relics is discovered, awakened, and they freak and run away. Naturally, for them (the Relics) they don't know Jumping shouldn't work, so they Jump, and it works, much to the surprise, shock and awe of those who found them. Then the rush is on to re-engineer Jump drive tech. Meanwhile...

...in another system a week later the sudden appearance of that same old ship Jumping in does likewise for another world. And so on from there.

 

[Whipsnade]

speaking as someone who was inside FASA and experienced the way the Battletech universe moved forward, there is a lot more work than one might think.

CT,

I don't think anyone is suggesting that the OTU future be locked into a tightly scripted story like Battletech was. First, as you point, that would require a lot of work and a lot on control and, second, the OTU has never controlled like that anyway.

An earlier poster here likened OTU history to a series of "checkpoints" and I think that's an excellent analogy. To me OTU resembles a rally race: You can drive however and wherever you want between "checkpoints" just as long as you hit those checkpoints at the appointed time/place. Thus the 5th Frontier War will kick off in 1107 in the Marches, but that shouldn't effect you at all if you're elsewhere in time and space.

(and by advance, I do NOT mean the drivel from SJGames TNS)

I don't know what strictures LKW and the other SJGames TNS writers work under or have worked under but, yes, after starting with great promise and teasing us with several incidents the "plot" of GT's alternate Traveller universe is barely worth following even for me a Traveller fanatic.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Whipsnade]

Hm, given only a century of recovery from such a huge event - maybe more like 1000 CE, or even earlier.

John,

I was thinking more of the standing on the eve of an Age of Exploration, hence 1500 CE.

You would, on the other hand, see some very fully-developed star systems, with real development across the system and not a population planted on it's collective butt on the mainworld.

Exactly.

And not every inhabited system will include a shirtsleeve world, despite my example. Some systems will hang onto enough technology to survive in belts, on moons, etc.

In any case, vastly better potential to craft a rational setting, instead of one reliant on sectors generated by random sysgen 30+ years ago.

Dialing back the nonsensical populations and limiting the number of inhabited non-shirtsleeve worlds to explained exceptions cannot help but help, right?


Regards,
Bill

 

[Brian Smaller]

I moved right past the Third Imperium into a completely different Traveller Universe. One of my own making.

 

[Whipsnade]

I was wondering just how (general thoughts) people would know jump drive works again?

Dan,

First, the ability to safely jump slowly erodes and eventually becomes a total inability to jump. As the Wave mounts and all sorts of other nastiness occurs viz psionic events, misjumps become more and more common until jumps are only made in desperation. Finally, jump drives don't even work at all. Or implode, meltdown, whatever.

I'd think some systems would still attempt occasional in-system jumps as a way of "testing the waters". Others would begin research projects to produce new jump drives which work in the new jump environment. Still others will attempt a jump every so often as some adventurer, corporation, charlatan, or other whatever decides to give jump drive one more try just in case the horse finally learned to sing.

Eventually a day will occur thousands of times in thousands of systems across Charted Space in which that jump drive does work and the news will scream:

POOL'S OPEN!!!.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Whipsnade]

I moved right past the Third Imperium into a completely different Traveller Universe. One of my own making.

Brian,

Read Post #55.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Blue Ghost]

Bill, the one thing that's always somewhat bothered me about computer "super entities" is the advantage of going low tech as a means to stifle, strangle and eliminate a virus infected starship, boat, grav vehicle, loader, skateboard, whatever. It always seemed to me that relying on molecular sized circuitry would logically allow such entities to propagate, but a savvy starship captain and/or engineer, with a little know how, would rip out that super BIs computer running his scout, and swap it out with a Commodore 64. Replace everything networked, and swap out those "do it all" molecule circuit bundles for an old fashioned circuit board with resistors and capacitors you pinch between your fingers. Have your Vic 20, or Atari Expandable System (remember those?) or equivalent run some rudimentary navigational software. Heck, and old Bell and Howell Apple clone could do some pretty rapid calculations.

Maybe tear out all those super fancy fibre optics networking the ship, and replace each data node with an old hand held Texas Instrument or Casio hand calculator, linked through some copper wiring; think late 70's technology here. To me it seems like the computer hand-crank equivalent of getting things running again, and laughing in Virus's face.

And note, this comment isn't aimed at your proposed 1500 milieu, but just the notion of omnipotent computer viruses as a whole. It seems to me that multiple competing viruses might form a "schizophrenic" mind, and therefore not really be able to wreak the havoc mentioned in the OTU canon. Or, if they did, then they would, as you suggest, move on.

When I think of Virus for some reason the Simpon's Halloween Y2K episode comes to mind (darn... no Youtube clip to link up).

More ramblings... don't mind me... move along, move along.

Marc; I bought your guy's old Starport Module #1 Hotel floor plans and booklet. What other Starport modules did you guys have brewing back then? Do you recall?

 

[Whipsnade]

BG,

I think that, the less we look at the details of what Virus is/was and what it was allegedly able to do, the better we'll be. Suffice it to say that by 1500 Virus has moved on. There are a few non-standard examples around, but Virus has left the building.

As for "dumbing down" our tech to prevent Virus from finding a home or fertile soil, that idea is a non-starter IM experienced O. Using something mentioned in suggestions, a Commodore 64 wouldn't be able to run your cellphone. A certain amount of processing power is always required for any function and, considering the near miraculous functions described in canon, that using that amount of processing power is cannot be avoided.

Those processing requirements are why the color text in TNE that had RC crews chanting color-number-letter codes at each other in order to "link" their Virus-proof computers were so laughable. When I first read them, I slammed the book down and walk away in search of a stiff drink.


Regards,
Bill

 

[FreeTrav]

<sigh> Bill, you DO have a habit of doing this stuff...

Your Wounded Colossus outline sketch of an alternate (Virus-free) continuation of the MT timeline was great. This is AT LEAST as good.

I'd love to see both this and WoCo developed further. Please, sharpen your keyboard, and inundate us with development. I can see either of these as forming the core of a theme issue of Freelance Traveller - or maybe an opportunity for a new fansupp.

 

[flykiller]

life of me, can't understand why anyone would find the circa 1100 imperium limiting and would want to move on to something else. could spend a lifetime in the spinward marches alone and not exhaust the gaming possibilities.

bill, great work and great post (as usual), but ... just don't see the point.

 

[scrabble]

I would not be interested in any future of the OTU that essentially removed Virus. And I would presume this putative 1500 though experiment is ignoring 1248 as well. This would be a mistake, I think. The 1248 material was excellent in my opinion, and far superior in quality to anything published in the past decade or so. As far as I am concerned, any future setting for the OTU should start with 1248 and move on from that.

I do not believe that Virus should just magically disappear or "transcend to a higher plane" and be out of the picture. I would think that while the more hostile strains would die out (or be hunted down), the tamer Virus strains would be integrated into human society, and AI and human society would move on together. That said the Lords of Thunder would most likely still be a problem for a while after 1248.

The Empress Wave, if I recall, has already entered Known Space in 1248 and is passing through it, and its effects are reasonably well known. IIRC it has effects on psionics and does serve to render jump unstable for a short while, but it does not have the overall effect that Whipsnade describes. By 1500 it may have passed beyond the rimward edge of Known Space.

 

[aramis]

Anything WITH virus is a no-sale for a much larger crowd, Scrabble.

For better or worse, it really started the frequency of ATU's, because quite a few people absolutely rejected it. So much so that the Then-dominant TML was split into the TML and XBML lists, TML for TNE, and XBML for those of us wishing to avoid virus and/or the TNE rules.

It snaps my disbelief suspenders too hard; I can only reconcile it as psionic in nature.

Which brings another way to wipe it out... Acknowledge that it was a hybrid psionic/technological phenomenon, and the known effects of the aegis of the Empress wave drive psionicists mad, so if the EW blows up psionics, and rolls across the virus... it packs up and flees the wave for deep space... or goes suicidal as the brunt of that wave disrupts it badly.

 

[Whipsnade]

bill, great work and great post (as usual), but ... just don't see the point.

Fly,

It's hard to explain.

I'll give it a try though.

As you point out, the temporal depth and physical breadth of the OTU does provide more room to play than anyone could ever hope to use...

... but it used to be even larger.

At one time the OTU had all that depth and breadth plus a future. After GDW retired and TNE ceased publication, the OTU no longer had that future.

A mathematics analogy may be useful here. As you already know, there are different kinds of infinity. They're all infinite, but some a more infinite than others. There's an infinite amount of numbers between zero and one and then there's an infinite amount of numbers. Both are infinite, yet one "fits" inside the other.

It's the same with the OTU. It's essentially infinite as it stands now, but it used to be even more infinite when it still had a future.

Saying the OTU is big enough without a future is like saying you can eat everything in the garden except those apples or that you can open every door in the castle except the one at the top of the tower. It's the fact that the OTU no longer had a future that made me want a future for the OTU even more.

Silly, I know, but also rather human.


Regards,
Bill

 

[jappel]

The incomparable one in trench coat and boater wrote:

I was thinking more of the standing on the eve of an Age of Exploration, hence 1500 CE.

OK, I'll buy that. There's places out beyond the horizon (or at least the local Kuiper belt) that you think are out there, maybe even know are out there from old records. You just can't get there. And then one day, they're suddenly in reach. Not easily, not cheaply, but it's possible. Not a bad model.

I was limiting my thinking to intra-European travel, between the host of dukedoms, baronies, and petty principalities, and the time when most people were concerned with basic subsistence, never traveling more than a few miles from their homes, with occasional pockets of wilderness between some of the pockets of "civilization".

 

[Lycanorukke]

An interesting idea the "Trav:1500"

How would you envisage 'The beginning' so to speak?

The 'prime setting world' just starting to send out it's first few refurbished jump ships? The world already has a formed a small "local jump" cluster and is now pushing out with a vengance? Any chance for the PC's to have a ship of their own would need to be option 2, but if they are part of the World gov they could work with option 1.

And when they push out would it be creeping along carefully because the stories and the mapping data from the past has huge chunks of 'Here be space dragons' marked on them, or blasting out with a vengance to grab everything which isn't nailed down in a gold rush scenario? With jump drive working again - demand for Lanthanum would skyrocket and you would have a very Wild west scenario with "boom planets" and the like, especially if the local worlds resources are depleted after a long history.

And it would be interesting to have a sublight polity - the old ramships putting back and forth between star systems. You could also stuff PC's in low berth, pop them on a ramship and send them off to the "brave new world".

 

[Whipsnade]

There's places out beyond the horizon (or at least the local Kuiper belt) that you think are out there, maybe even know are out there from old records. You just can't get there. And then one day, they're suddenly in reach. Not easily, not cheaply, but it's possible.

John,

Very nicely put.

I was limiting my thinking to intra-European travel, between the host of dukedoms, baronies, and petty principalities, and the time when most people were concerned with basic subsistence, never traveling more than a few miles from their homes, with occasional pockets of wilderness between some of the pockets of "civilization".

That's a good model too. In fact, the situation I'm vaguely describing is somewhere between the two.

We when think "Age of Exploration" we unconsciously think of closely situated polities, i.e. Europe, sending expeditions into the unknown, i.e. the rest of the world. The M:1500 situation, however, is more like the "intra-European" situation you mentioned with widely spaced polities beginning to explore the "wilderness" between them.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Whipsnade]

How would you envisage 'The beginning' so to speak?

Lycanorukke,

With thousands of worlds, there are thousands of beginnings. That's one of the nicer parts of my recent bout of foolishness.

There are the situations you wrote of, there are the fleeing relics Dan wrote of, there are the worlds constantly testing the waters I wrote of, and there are thousands of others.


Regards,
Bill

 

[scrabble]

Anything WITH virus is a no-sale for a much larger crowd, Scrabble.

So we are starting this with an anti-Virus bias already? I am aware that some people here rage at the mere mention of it, but if we are to investigate the future of the OTU then it strikes me as being very disingenuous to conveniently remove the parts that some do not like.

Like it or not, Virus is canon. Whether you agree with how it works or not, it still happened in the OTU. I would argue that Virus "transcending to a higher plane of being" just for the sake of getting it out of the way is far more ridiculous a concept than Virus itself, and also runs contrary to everything we know about Virus to begin with. And I think that removing Virus from the picture is not really moving the OTU forward at all, but merely results in yet another dull ATU where the author pretends that Virus never happened. The authors of 1248 at least had the courage to face Virus head on and deal with the consequences of its existence.

 

[robject]

Virus "transcending to a higher plane of being" just for the sake of getting it out of the way is far more ridiculous a concept than Virus itself, and also runs contrary to everything we know about Virus to begin with.

As much as I might dislike Virus, waving it away via transcendence IS ridiculous. To some degree the results have to be lived with. So what happens when a Virus "settles down"?

 

[Blue Ghost]

BG,

I think that, the less we look at the details of what Virus is/was and what it was allegedly able to do, the better we'll be. Suffice it to say that by 1500 Virus has moved on. There are a few non-standard examples around, but Virus has left the building.

As for "dumbing down" our tech to prevent Virus from finding a home or fertile soil, that idea is a non-starter IM experienced O. Using something mentioned in suggestions, a Commodore 64 wouldn't be able to run your cellphone. A certain amount of processing power is always required for any function and, considering the near miraculous functions described in canon, that using that amount of processing power is cannot be avoided.

Those processing requirements are why the color text in TNE that had RC crews chanting color-number-letter codes at each other in order to "link" their Virus-proof computers were so laughable. When I first read them, I slammed the book down and walk away in search of a stiff drink.


Regards,
Bill

Heh, so I guess what you're saying is stopping by at the local highport Radio Shack wouldn't help

"Skipper! My terminal's errupted in maniacal laughter!"
"Right, grab some soldier, a soldering iron and slide in that old 2600 cartridge with Tank Pong! Where's my joystick! I'll keep this thing occupied while you patch in a junior electronics' telegraph kit! Now move it!"