Persistence Pays off

[BlindGuy]

Hi All,

Anyone who's read my previous threads on this board might recall that I've had trouble accessing information from Traveller publications. Specifically, the tables and charts seem to pose access challenges, and the maps are incomprehensible. I've found a quite nice solution for the first problem, at least.

On a whim this morning I was searching for a program which I could use to convert a Traveller PDF into another format. I found one which seems to do this successfully, and in the process renders the tables much more readable than they were before, even fairly complex ones such as involved in ship design. It is one version of the Wondershare PDF Editor, and quite expensive. However, I'm willing to pay more money than most to get game products in a format I can understand.

I say 98% of the tables in my Mongoose Traveller core book are now readable. T5 has even yielded to the program somewhat, though less so, and i'm still trying to figure out exactly what I'm reading there.

The one area of MGT which seems a little problematical is the ship design sheet for common spacecraft. I almost understand what that's supposed to look like, but not quite.

Anyhow, I just wanted to share the exaltation today.

Best,
Zack.

 

[aramis]

Congrats!

 

[saundby]

I'm glad you're getting some traction on this. I can't imagine how tough it must be to sort some of this out. I have a hard enough time getting thing to print properly, never mind trying to make sense of idiosyncratic table structures.

 

[BlindGuy]

Butchering

Hi All,

I'm not afraid to make changes to the file in order to create a better reading experience. I think I figured out how the ship design sheet fits together. As presented it read rather horribly, so I came up with this. Apologies for the tabs, they make the screen reader pause appropriately.
Also, I'm not looking forward to doing this for all the other standard designs…

Spoiler:

SCOUT, TYPE S
Hull 2
Structure 2
Tons Price (Cr.)
Hull
100 tons, Streamlined n/a 2,200,000
Armour
Crystaliron, 4 points 5 400,000
Jump Drive A, Jump 2 10 10,000,000
Manoeuvre Drive A, Thrust 2 2 4,000,000
Power Plant A 4 8,000,000
Bridge 10 500,000
Computer
Model 1/bis Rating 5 (10 for Jump Control) n/a 45,000
Electronics
Military Sensors, +0 DM 2 1,000,000
Weapons
Hardpoint #1, Double Turret (empty) 1 500,000
Fuel
34 tons, One Jump–2 and fourteen weeks of operation 34 n/a
Cargo
8 tons 8 n/a
4 Staterooms 16 2,000,000
Extras
10 Probe Drones 2 1,000,000
Fuel Scoop n/a n/a
2 Fuel Processors 2 100,000
Air/raft 4 600,000
Ship’s Locker n/a n/a
Software
Jump Control/2 n/a 200,000
Manoeuvre/0 n/a n/a
Library/0 n/a n/a

Maintenance Cost (monthly) 2,754
Life Support Cost (monthly) 8,000
Total Tonnage and Cost 100 27,540,500

Is that about right?

Best,
Zack.

 

[JBHemlock]

Congrats!

As far as your ship block goes, with the caveat that I play MegaTraveller instead of Mongoose, it looks very reasonable to me.

I've been having similar problems with getting reasonable ship designs for MegaTraveller - it's got a very complex and oddball ship design system. I ended up putting together a spreadsheet to take all of the stuff into account. Mine doesn't generate a finished block of text for the ship, but it seems like a logical next step.

I've heard that Mongoose has much simpler ship design rules, so it might be pretty simple to create a spreadsheet that lets you just plug in the ship components and spit out a finished block of text formatted for your screen reader.

 

[HiverLord]

Congrats!
And an extra thanks to everyone for helping him out! (Not enough of that willing assistance out there, IMHO.)

Your ship design looks just about perfect, from what I can tell through memory (I don't have the books in front of me right now.)

 

[BlindGuy]

Next Steps

Thanks, guys. All the help and positive feedback is really appreciated.

So this morning i've begun the process of marking up and regularizing the text. There are some places—many, actually, where things read out of order. Sidebars, boxes, etc don't help. The manuscript did most of this stuff already, but i want a copy of the official rules, with errata and so on.

I'm at about page 10. The Career Summary table looks like it'll be a pain in the neck to fix, because I'm not sure how its layout mapped during the conversion to Word. I spent ten to fifteen minutes getting junk out of it, and now it's blessedly alone.

I don't intend this to come off as grousing in any way. It's just mind-numbingly tedious, and I have a deep respect for my friend whom I've paid good money to do this kind of thing for other books. I guess if you want something done right…

At any rate, I'm sure I'll have more questions soon. Thanks again, all.