Operational Level Gaming

[kilemall]

Funny, but the compositions being noted are mostly methane and ammonia... with some gravel, rock, and ice... and it's canonical that the icy ones can be used for refueling. KBO's are mostly comets. Lots of ices - Water, Ammonia, Methane.

Hence, unrefined vs. refined.

Carbon buildup on your jump drive, ewwww.

 

[kilemall]

Re: maneuver, I am planning on defining what I am calling Mayday Guard, an HG maneuver game on Mayday move mechanics, and then a Big Drama fiddly individual ship version.

Mayday does come with a rule that explains how to use HG with it, essentially short range is 5 hex range and long range from 6-15 hexes and resolution is by HG modifier firing.

Each hex is a light-second, so that makes for one heck of a range increase from the CT 2 LS detect/3 LS engage ranges and serious probability drops beyond 500,000 km.

Also, the time scale is seriously different, given at 300 minutes, should really be 500 minutes.

 

[Ulsyus]

Does anyone ever use anything vaguely like the ghost of a shadow of the idea of orbital mechanics when considering how task forces, squadrons or fleet elements would manoeuvre within a system, or is that too much a stretch for most gamers?

 

[Spartan159]

Does anyone ever use anything vaguely like the ghost of a shadow of the idea of orbital mechanics when considering how task forces, squadrons or fleet elements would manoeuvre within a system, or is that too much a stretch for most gamers?

I... am guilty of having not even thought about it until this post even though Aramis had touched on it with his Niven quote. :toast:

 

[JFGarber]

I appreciate the level of verisimilitude that would bring to the table, but am not interested in doing the work. I've noodled around with vector based systems, and for the sake of enjoyment have always come back to either a hex-based system where ships go "swoosh" through the aether, or I do something very abstract with a range band system.

 

[kilemall]

Does anyone ever use anything vaguely like the ghost of a shadow of the idea of orbital mechanics when considering how task forces, squadrons or fleet elements would manoeuvre within a system, or is that too much a stretch for most gamers?

They could always buy this-

http://www.adastragames.com/products/objects-in-motion-orbital-mechanics-for-writers

Triplanetary always drove me batty with the 'planets frozen in time' board.

Trouble is maintaining consistent info on planetary positions per system for even a subsector. Ain't casual effort for minimal play value payoff. The sort of thing you drill down to when it's important to the story or the battle, and largely ignore otherwise.

 

[kilemall]

It's always been a part that's lacking, modeling the economy. Gross Planetary Product, trade volumes, etc.

On the one hand, we have difficulty imagining interstellar trade at all. At least I do.

Most of our trade is based on one of three broad components: resources, labor, intellectual property. Resources, as in raw materials: ore, oil, agriculture. Labor, where items are manufactured and traded solely because of the cost of production, not because they can't be made someplace else. Intellectual property, basically things that are a competitive advantage and not traded. Things that could be made "anywhere" if they "only knew how" or "were allowed to make them" due to IP laws (patents, copyright, etc.).

With the scope of a typical, mature planet, it's hard to imagine the increased costs of trade are worth it save for the most exotic of items vs something that can be done locally. With an automated workforce, do we really envision "3rd world" star systems in the future that are able to export labor? We could import more "Rare Earth" elements, but how much of that do we really need? How much grain and meat do we need to import vs grow locally?

Clearly, trade happens. But I don't think trade is cheaper or more efficient than local production. Not in the long term. Of course there are edge cases, heavily industrialized and populated world, from which, for whatever reason, populations don't emigrate. Where it's better to pave over yet more land and import agriculture. It's even to imagine that on a small scale (Manhattan Island for example), it's just difficult for me to grasp it at a planetary scale.

For we also have another issue, here on Earth we have instantaneous communication. I can pick up the phone or send an email and have something sent from China tomorrow, and have it here tomorrow. Communication tied with travel will be a hinderance. it won't stop trade, of course, but it certainly will provide a preference to operate locally vs importing something. Gives a motivation for industry to host locally.

So, it's just difficult (for me) to get a real handle on how much trade will happen between worlds. Mind, I also have a problem with why the TL hasn't spread more uniformly. I would think, especially in a Pocket Empire scenario, normalization of TL would be a priority.

We tend to treat planets as countries, and I just don't think that's the right way to do it. The resources of countries are certainly limited (e.g. Japan and fossil fuels), but that's because of artificial borders. But at a planetary scale, that's just not the case. Arguably not all planets had Dinosaurs to convert in to fossil fuels, but by a similar point, by the time we're populating the stars, we'll be beyond fossil fuels.

It would be very interesting to see "Sim-Sector". To come up with models of import and export, modeling demand, seeing economic growth, figuring out GPP. I know how the universe looks when I play 4X games like MOO 2. Garden worlds exporting food, ship building worlds with lots of industry, a few isolated research worlds.

But it would be neat to see a more complicated model than the 2 party model in GT:FT. To try and see how much trade organically develops. See what the real volumes are.

Hmm, outside the scope of the OP to get into this in depth, but I don't buy the 'low trade' model at all. Low perhaps as percentage of labor value utilized, but potentially higher value and a higher proportion of the economy.

There are desirable luxuries that 'those people at Planet X do right', industrial specialty items, unique lower tech items that are useful and just too darn cheap at exchange rates to pass up, hard currency earned from such to bring in high tech luxuries or industrial equipment/training to build up TL, etc.

One of the things people forget about trade in the near past when just-in-time container shipping was not the norm, was that it was cheaper to ship at a time or in bulk when rates were lower, then warehouse the material and profits would still be made even with 'shrinkage'. So a fair amount of that interstellar shipping is going to be bulk nodal movements to support a supply chain against future local subsector needs. Then they will be shipping out in Free Trader parcels as customers order items.

Then there is the scaling issue, especially for those billions of population planets.

Let's say it's traditional to exchange fruitcakes during Holiday, fruitcakes 'travel' well.

You have a billion people, 10% of whom order 'foreign' fruitcakes as an exotica, treat and/or way to curry favor rather then use the usual local fruitcakes.

Let's say 100 fruitcakes plus packaging and refrigeration per Traveller ton, 100,000,000 fruitcakes therefore generate 100,000 tons of shipping.

10 Cr per parsec per fruitcake passed onto the consumer means it won't be coming from Capitol, but something 3 jumps off might work for our SOC-climbing fruitcake buyers.

That's 100 Free Traders gainfully employed for at least a month for one big planet on a non-essential.

I'm being kindly here of course, easily could be multiples of 100,000 tons given say 3-5 fruitcakes given per year per high-end import customer.

 

[mike wightman]

Does anyone ever use anything vaguely like the ghost of a shadow of the idea of orbital mechanics when considering how task forces, squadrons or fleet elements would manoeuvre within a system, or is that too much a stretch for most gamers?

Traveller ships move too fast to worry too much about orbital mechanics.
Limit the maneuver drive to fractions of a g, and require reaction mass to be dumped out of the back and thus limiting the number of g-turns of thrust and you would, maybe, have to start considering Hohmann transfer orbits or using the interplanetary transport network.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network

 

[aramis]

Does anyone ever use anything vaguely like the ghost of a shadow of the idea of orbital mechanics when considering how task forces, squadrons or fleet elements would manoeuvre within a system, or is that too much a stretch for most gamers?

I do. But then, I seldom play Traveller anymore.

Traveller ships move too fast to worry too much about orbital mechanics.

Key word: much.

Limit the maneuver drive to fractions of a g, and require reaction mass to be dumped out of the back and thus limiting the number of g-turns of thrust and you would, maybe, have to start considering Hohmann transfer orbits or using the interplanetary transport network.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network

Hohman transfer orbits (HTO) can be used even by high G ships.

And HTOs are pretty useful in TNE.