Solomani Rim

[chrisr]

Larsen,
I think that this can also be one of the more helpful results of a 'flawed' game mechanic. It allows the referee to think of reasons for the world in question having that particular UWP.
eg. perhaps the local population are monks that shun outside communication and the starport is completely independent or perhaps the world is a nature reserve/ tourist resort and the small population represents the only permanent sentient life...park rangers! The starport being necessary for the huge number of tourists coming to visit, along with lots of holiday reps,cooks,medical staff, police, fire........oh well, perhaps not!

 

[chrisr]

Larsen,
I think that this can also be one of the more helpful results of a 'flawed' game mechanic. It allows the referee to think of reasons for the world in question having that particular UWP.
eg. perhaps the local population are monks that shun outside communication and the starport is completely independent or perhaps the world is a nature reserve/ tourist resort and the small population represents the only permanent sentient life...park rangers! The starport being necessary for the huge number of tourists coming to visit, along with lots of holiday reps,cooks,medical staff, police, fire........oh well, perhaps not!

 

[kaladorn]

Possibilities seem to include:

1) The starport being heavily automated.
2) The starport being run and administered by external population, thus not counted in UWP.
3) The starport being run by some sort of underclass minor race that for some odd reason IISS didn't rate as the primary race, hence don't show up in UWP.

Now, it seems to me if you have a large pop at the starport and a low pop on the world, the starport may be self-sufficient in that people living there actually harvest any required resources from the world in question or alternately all resources are shipped in there.

Is this ludicrous? Depends on how much interstellar trade you believe there is. It might or might not be.

Then we come to the bigger 'why?' issue. That is a tougher one. Reasons for building a big starport at a nowhere place:

1) Military or Bureaucratic Needs
2) It is in a key location for trade or communication (ie it might be a shortcut from A to B, even though it has little to offer A or B directly itself)

I'm in agreement that not all canonical placement of bases, xboat routes, tech levels, populations, etc. make sense (the tech 3 world with a corrosive atmosphere.... and a population).

 

[kaladorn]

Possibilities seem to include:

1) The starport being heavily automated.
2) The starport being run and administered by external population, thus not counted in UWP.
3) The starport being run by some sort of underclass minor race that for some odd reason IISS didn't rate as the primary race, hence don't show up in UWP.

Now, it seems to me if you have a large pop at the starport and a low pop on the world, the starport may be self-sufficient in that people living there actually harvest any required resources from the world in question or alternately all resources are shipped in there.

Is this ludicrous? Depends on how much interstellar trade you believe there is. It might or might not be.

Then we come to the bigger 'why?' issue. That is a tougher one. Reasons for building a big starport at a nowhere place:

1) Military or Bureaucratic Needs
2) It is in a key location for trade or communication (ie it might be a shortcut from A to B, even though it has little to offer A or B directly itself)

I'm in agreement that not all canonical placement of bases, xboat routes, tech levels, populations, etc. make sense (the tech 3 world with a corrosive atmosphere.... and a population).

 

[shield]

A few of these anomolies can be explained by haveing the port / base effectively being run from off world with a population of transients / contract workers. You can even get around the supporting infrastructure by shipping everything in. The permenant population is then those ex-workers who have decided to settle or those long term workers who have been there for 20 years and that according to the survey rules are now permentant inhabitants (just like naturalisation of immigrents, after so long government agencies assume you are a native).

A good reason for a type A port / base etc with a low permentent population is that environmental lawss have forced heavy industry off certain worlds and they have built the factories somewhere else, they ship inn resources and workers and ship out finished goods. this will require a damn good port. I see this as especially true for Megacorp operations - easier to put a factory on a minor system than cope with the laws and rules of a major inhabited planet.

But off course this will only account for a few of the strangeness.

Cheers
Richard

 

[shield]

A few of these anomolies can be explained by haveing the port / base effectively being run from off world with a population of transients / contract workers. You can even get around the supporting infrastructure by shipping everything in. The permenant population is then those ex-workers who have decided to settle or those long term workers who have been there for 20 years and that according to the survey rules are now permentant inhabitants (just like naturalisation of immigrents, after so long government agencies assume you are a native).

A good reason for a type A port / base etc with a low permentent population is that environmental lawss have forced heavy industry off certain worlds and they have built the factories somewhere else, they ship inn resources and workers and ship out finished goods. this will require a damn good port. I see this as especially true for Megacorp operations - easier to put a factory on a minor system than cope with the laws and rules of a major inhabited planet.

But off course this will only account for a few of the strangeness.

Cheers
Richard

 

[kaladorn]

Can I not have pop UWPs for other planets in a system that are larger than that of the primary planet? <made primary for some odd bureaucratic reasoning?>

If so, perhaps that could also (in a few cases) serve as an explanation.

Perhaps as the last poster said, the planet has a pile of orbital factories, maybe nearly entirely automated, but maybe shipping out a *lot* of product.

 

[kaladorn]

Can I not have pop UWPs for other planets in a system that are larger than that of the primary planet? <made primary for some odd bureaucratic reasoning?>

If so, perhaps that could also (in a few cases) serve as an explanation.

Perhaps as the last poster said, the planet has a pile of orbital factories, maybe nearly entirely automated, but maybe shipping out a *lot* of product.

 

[Whipsnade]

kaladorn wrote:

"If so, perhaps that could also (in a few cases) serve as an explanation."


Tom,

You and RichardP hit the nail squarely. You can come up with an explanation for Fulacin, but then you need a different one for Pixie, a different one for Tenalphi, a different one for... well, you get the idea.

Sooner or later you find yourself recycling your excuses or getting more and more implausible and the whole process breaks down. You can put a band-aid on this bit and bubblegum on that bit, then use baling wire over here and duct tape over there, but eventually it's just better to actually fix the machine.

Evil Dr. Ganymede; who just so happens to hold a Phd. in astrophysics, has been wrestling with canonical system descriptions for months now. There are some systems that simply cannot be explained as described and the Evil Astro Doc can be quoted as saying he can't blame them ALL on the Ancients.

A fundamental problem with Our Olde Game is that the Traveller RPG *system* was never truly held separate from the Traveller Third Imperium *setting*. The system came first, but the setting followed very quickly, and the two grew up together - sometimes physically entwined within the same book. Tech levels are a good example of this.

Using tech levels strictly as explained in LLBs 2 and 6 cannot work in the 3I setting. The Imperium supports, hell - it demands, free trade among its members. There can be no Bronze Age worlds ignorant of gunpowder and steam engines yet still hosting off-world starships at their port.

Yes, there can and will be worlds of 57th Amish, neo-luddites, low tech sociological experiments, and the like within the Third Imperium, but can those handwaves explain *every* Imperial world with a TL below 8? Of course they cannot, so Tech Level means one thing in the Traveller RPG system and another thing in the Traveller 3I setting. In a non-3I setting, tech level could well be used precisely as described in LLB 2 and 6.

In a very real manner, Traveller and Third Imperium have the same relationship that GURPS:Basic and GURPS:WW2 do or that d20 and D20 Modern do. Traveller, G:Basic, and d20 are pure RPG systems while the 3I, G:WW2, and D20 Modern modify their respective RPG systems to create specific settings. The confusion comes about because Traveller and the 3I have been so closely intertwined since their near-simultaneous creation.

Those Traveller ur-documents, the Three Original LBBs, specifically state that the GM can use the RPG system presented to create a variety of settings. No setting is presented in The Three and no mention of the 3I can be found until LBB:4 Mercenary.

We all agree that Traveller requires tweaking to play the Third Imperium, just as GURPS needs to be tweaked to play G:Time Travel. The nature of those tweaks is what all these conversations are about.


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[Whipsnade]

kaladorn wrote:

"If so, perhaps that could also (in a few cases) serve as an explanation."


Tom,

You and RichardP hit the nail squarely. You can come up with an explanation for Fulacin, but then you need a different one for Pixie, a different one for Tenalphi, a different one for... well, you get the idea.

Sooner or later you find yourself recycling your excuses or getting more and more implausible and the whole process breaks down. You can put a band-aid on this bit and bubblegum on that bit, then use baling wire over here and duct tape over there, but eventually it's just better to actually fix the machine.

Evil Dr. Ganymede; who just so happens to hold a Phd. in astrophysics, has been wrestling with canonical system descriptions for months now. There are some systems that simply cannot be explained as described and the Evil Astro Doc can be quoted as saying he can't blame them ALL on the Ancients.

A fundamental problem with Our Olde Game is that the Traveller RPG *system* was never truly held separate from the Traveller Third Imperium *setting*. The system came first, but the setting followed very quickly, and the two grew up together - sometimes physically entwined within the same book. Tech levels are a good example of this.

Using tech levels strictly as explained in LLBs 2 and 6 cannot work in the 3I setting. The Imperium supports, hell - it demands, free trade among its members. There can be no Bronze Age worlds ignorant of gunpowder and steam engines yet still hosting off-world starships at their port.

Yes, there can and will be worlds of 57th Amish, neo-luddites, low tech sociological experiments, and the like within the Third Imperium, but can those handwaves explain *every* Imperial world with a TL below 8? Of course they cannot, so Tech Level means one thing in the Traveller RPG system and another thing in the Traveller 3I setting. In a non-3I setting, tech level could well be used precisely as described in LLB 2 and 6.

In a very real manner, Traveller and Third Imperium have the same relationship that GURPS:Basic and GURPS:WW2 do or that d20 and D20 Modern do. Traveller, G:Basic, and d20 are pure RPG systems while the 3I, G:WW2, and D20 Modern modify their respective RPG systems to create specific settings. The confusion comes about because Traveller and the 3I have been so closely intertwined since their near-simultaneous creation.

Those Traveller ur-documents, the Three Original LBBs, specifically state that the GM can use the RPG system presented to create a variety of settings. No setting is presented in The Three and no mention of the 3I can be found until LBB:4 Mercenary.

We all agree that Traveller requires tweaking to play the Third Imperium, just as GURPS needs to be tweaked to play G:Time Travel. The nature of those tweaks is what all these conversations are about.


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by far-trader:
CT Book 2 for example is quite clear that Starship yards only exist at Class A starports while Class B starports only support Spaceship yards, for ALL civilian, corporate AND military orders (my emphasis).

Book 5 specifically mentions that a world can build ships for its own navy even if it does not have a Class A starport. I don't remember Book 2 stating categorically that military ships could only be built at Class A starports (TCS OTOH do say that). But this means that we have canon conflict, which means that interpretation is needed to resolve it. My interpretation is that starport class only apply to civilian use and that military construction facilities can exist on worlds without Class A starports (always provided there is sufficient population and tech level to support it). And I do feel that its more plausible that the Scouts should chose to deny a Class A rating to a world where the services of its shipyards are not available to strangers than that a world with many millions of people and a Stellar+ tech level shouldn't be able to build a ship if its government decided to do so.

...Maintenance is available at any Class A or B starport, which would seem to mean it requires a shipyard, and again no mention of TL.

I take the lack of any mention of TL and the fact that you can get a starship maintained at a Class B starport to mean that it does not need a shipyard, just a stock of spare parts and a bunch of skilled mechanics. Which is available at all Class A and B starports, because if it isn't available, the Scouts don't give it a Class A or B rating.

(Note that this means that I see no reason why annual overhauls should not be available at some Class C starport (Namely the ones with lots of traffic but no shipyards)).

Like I said though it probably depends on the rules generation used, and of course the individual GM's house rules and detailing. Like LEW said the whole TCS 'rules' is officially no longer valid for the RPG set. It was always meant I think to be an attempt to make a Traveller type Wargame.

Until someone sees fit to provide us with alternate official rules on this subject, I'm still going to regard TCS as the best evidence available. That's not to say that I don't think the TCS rules are a simplified model of the 'real' Traveller Universe. But with all due respect to Mark Miller, I do think that we ought to be able to assume that the 'real' Traveller Universe is reflected in the TCS rules to the same degree that, say, the real universe is reflected in a good strategic WWII game. Anything else is a terrible waste of a perfectly good game supplement.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by far-trader:
CT Book 2 for example is quite clear that Starship yards only exist at Class A starports while Class B starports only support Spaceship yards, for ALL civilian, corporate AND military orders (my emphasis).

Book 5 specifically mentions that a world can build ships for its own navy even if it does not have a Class A starport. I don't remember Book 2 stating categorically that military ships could only be built at Class A starports (TCS OTOH do say that). But this means that we have canon conflict, which means that interpretation is needed to resolve it. My interpretation is that starport class only apply to civilian use and that military construction facilities can exist on worlds without Class A starports (always provided there is sufficient population and tech level to support it). And I do feel that its more plausible that the Scouts should chose to deny a Class A rating to a world where the services of its shipyards are not available to strangers than that a world with many millions of people and a Stellar+ tech level shouldn't be able to build a ship if its government decided to do so.

...Maintenance is available at any Class A or B starport, which would seem to mean it requires a shipyard, and again no mention of TL.

I take the lack of any mention of TL and the fact that you can get a starship maintained at a Class B starport to mean that it does not need a shipyard, just a stock of spare parts and a bunch of skilled mechanics. Which is available at all Class A and B starports, because if it isn't available, the Scouts don't give it a Class A or B rating.

(Note that this means that I see no reason why annual overhauls should not be available at some Class C starport (Namely the ones with lots of traffic but no shipyards)).

Like I said though it probably depends on the rules generation used, and of course the individual GM's house rules and detailing. Like LEW said the whole TCS 'rules' is officially no longer valid for the RPG set. It was always meant I think to be an attempt to make a Traveller type Wargame.

Until someone sees fit to provide us with alternate official rules on this subject, I'm still going to regard TCS as the best evidence available. That's not to say that I don't think the TCS rules are a simplified model of the 'real' Traveller Universe. But with all due respect to Mark Miller, I do think that we ought to be able to assume that the 'real' Traveller Universe is reflected in the TCS rules to the same degree that, say, the real universe is reflected in a good strategic WWII game. Anything else is a terrible waste of a perfectly good game supplement.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Don't forget though, most of our info regarding who can build what and what level of population is needed for a given building rate comes from TCS. It seems the information in TCS is no longer quite anonical'.

well then, is anything?</font>[/QUOTE]That's the beauty of it. Since no alternate rules have been provided, we're free to keep using the TCS rules if we like.

it's funny TCS should be deprecated. its tax rate is too low and its shipyard capacity is too high.

Them's fighting words, stranger. If I deduce the tax rate based on the information in TCS (which only covers the portion that goes to the navy and gives a flat rate that IMO has to be one of those simplifications-for-the-sake-of-gamability), I get a figure close enough to 10% for my purposes.

Shipyard capacity too high? Tell me how you figure that.

...in spite of this, when TCS rules are applied to the Spinward Marches (where half the taxpaying imperial population does not live on a planet with any meaningful shipyard capacity)

Again, this depends on various interpretations. IMO TCS tax rates apply to pocket empires surrounded by potentially hostile pocket empires, which is why their tax rates are as high as they are. The Imperium can make do with a much lower tax rate.

As for shipyard capacity, in TCS a ruler can leave his capacity unused for months, use all of it at a moment's notice and then leave it unused for further months. When you think about it that's a damn odd way to run a shipyard. But if you assume that TCS 'shipyard capacity' is actually emergency shipyard capacity, it all makes much more sense. I think that the shipyards usually are busy buliding replacement warships and replacement civilian ships and performing maintenance and building spare parts to sell to starports without shipyards so they can perform maintenance too. When a rush job (such as a damaged warship) shows up, the shipyard can cancel vacations, hire temporary workers, and work overtime in order to repair this ship. But of course there is a limit to how much they can expand. That's TCS shipyard capacity.

(Of course, this interpretation means that when a TCS ruler begins building new ships, his shipyard capacity really ought to expand by a fraction of the new tonnage under construction after a while; that there is no rule to this effect would be a simplification of the rules for ease of play).

it becomes apparent that the full naval budget allocation is very much greater than can possibly be spent in the available shipyards.

I'd like to see your figures.

[

Above the level of an RPG, Traveller will always have inconsistencies and logic holes big enough to pass a squadron of happy fun balls.

Oh, there are plenty of inconsistencies at the RPG level too. But I don't think that's any reason not to try to reduce the number and enormity of inconsistencies as much as we possibly can.

fixing them would require a perfect understanding of politics, economics, technology, and human nature, not to mention space aliens and the future

I disagree. All it takes to fix any single one of them is a sense of logic (Although sometimes the fix will have to be: Yes, we know this is self-contradictory, but fixing it would ruin more than it'd solve).

What is impossible is to fix everything. But I don't see that as an excuse not to fix the things that can be fixed


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Don't forget though, most of our info regarding who can build what and what level of population is needed for a given building rate comes from TCS. It seems the information in TCS is no longer quite anonical'.

well then, is anything?</font>[/QUOTE]That's the beauty of it. Since no alternate rules have been provided, we're free to keep using the TCS rules if we like.

it's funny TCS should be deprecated. its tax rate is too low and its shipyard capacity is too high.

Them's fighting words, stranger. If I deduce the tax rate based on the information in TCS (which only covers the portion that goes to the navy and gives a flat rate that IMO has to be one of those simplifications-for-the-sake-of-gamability), I get a figure close enough to 10% for my purposes.

Shipyard capacity too high? Tell me how you figure that.

...in spite of this, when TCS rules are applied to the Spinward Marches (where half the taxpaying imperial population does not live on a planet with any meaningful shipyard capacity)

Again, this depends on various interpretations. IMO TCS tax rates apply to pocket empires surrounded by potentially hostile pocket empires, which is why their tax rates are as high as they are. The Imperium can make do with a much lower tax rate.

As for shipyard capacity, in TCS a ruler can leave his capacity unused for months, use all of it at a moment's notice and then leave it unused for further months. When you think about it that's a damn odd way to run a shipyard. But if you assume that TCS 'shipyard capacity' is actually emergency shipyard capacity, it all makes much more sense. I think that the shipyards usually are busy buliding replacement warships and replacement civilian ships and performing maintenance and building spare parts to sell to starports without shipyards so they can perform maintenance too. When a rush job (such as a damaged warship) shows up, the shipyard can cancel vacations, hire temporary workers, and work overtime in order to repair this ship. But of course there is a limit to how much they can expand. That's TCS shipyard capacity.

(Of course, this interpretation means that when a TCS ruler begins building new ships, his shipyard capacity really ought to expand by a fraction of the new tonnage under construction after a while; that there is no rule to this effect would be a simplification of the rules for ease of play).

it becomes apparent that the full naval budget allocation is very much greater than can possibly be spent in the available shipyards.

I'd like to see your figures.

[

Above the level of an RPG, Traveller will always have inconsistencies and logic holes big enough to pass a squadron of happy fun balls.

Oh, there are plenty of inconsistencies at the RPG level too. But I don't think that's any reason not to try to reduce the number and enormity of inconsistencies as much as we possibly can.

fixing them would require a perfect understanding of politics, economics, technology, and human nature, not to mention space aliens and the future

I disagree. All it takes to fix any single one of them is a sense of logic (Although sometimes the fix will have to be: Yes, we know this is self-contradictory, but fixing it would ruin more than it'd solve).

What is impossible is to fix everything. But I don't see that as an excuse not to fix the things that can be fixed


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Read Mr. Rancke-Madsen's post again. The civilian starport rating listed for a system has no relationship at all to the purely military building capacity that system may have

I could accept that with no problem (though I don't), but I would insist that population and tech level do have such a relationship. Traveller shipyards cannot be plopped down in the middle of a wilderness and just function on their own. Presumably they require a resource infrastructure and an educated population. no people or resources, then no yard.</font>[/QUOTE]Oh, I couldn't agree more. After all, I'm one of the strongest proponents of the "Reduce Pixie's starport class to E and up Tenalphi's population level to 8" school of UWP interpretation. I wouldn't allow Rorise to maintain a 50,000 T monitor, even if they got it as a gift, unless I could come up with some specific explanation of how they could afford it, much less allow a low-population world to build starships no matter whet its starport class.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Read Mr. Rancke-Madsen's post again. The civilian starport rating listed for a system has no relationship at all to the purely military building capacity that system may have

I could accept that with no problem (though I don't), but I would insist that population and tech level do have such a relationship. Traveller shipyards cannot be plopped down in the middle of a wilderness and just function on their own. Presumably they require a resource infrastructure and an educated population. no people or resources, then no yard.</font>[/QUOTE]Oh, I couldn't agree more. After all, I'm one of the strongest proponents of the "Reduce Pixie's starport class to E and up Tenalphi's population level to 8" school of UWP interpretation. I wouldn't allow Rorise to maintain a 50,000 T monitor, even if they got it as a gift, unless I could come up with some specific explanation of how they could afford it, much less allow a low-population world to build starships no matter whet its starport class.


Hans

 

[flykiller]

Then we come to the bigger 'why?' issue. That is a tougher one. Reasons for building a big starport at a nowhere place:

1) Military or Bureaucratic Needs
2) It is in a key location for trade or communication (ie it might be a shortcut from A to B, even though it has little to offer A or B directly itself)

don't forget politics. did you know that hawaii has an officially designated interstate highway system?

 

[flykiller]

Then we come to the bigger 'why?' issue. That is a tougher one. Reasons for building a big starport at a nowhere place:

1) Military or Bureaucratic Needs
2) It is in a key location for trade or communication (ie it might be a shortcut from A to B, even though it has little to offer A or B directly itself)

don't forget politics. did you know that hawaii has an officially designated interstate highway system?

 

[flykiller]

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Shipyard capacity too high? Tell me how you figure that.

I don't have the figures anymore so this is off the top of my head, but I looked up various websites detailing worldwide ship construction and involved personnel and found that the ratio was about (if I recall correctly) 2000 population per ton of oceangoing civilian and military ship construction. This level of ship construction is resulting in a glut of shipping worldwide, but TCS proposes a rate of space-going construction double this, in spite of the presumption that space ships should be more difficult and resource-intensive to construct than ocean-going container ships.

it becomes apparent that the full naval budget allocation is very much greater than can possibly be spent in the available shipyards.

I'd like to see your figures.</font>

98 billion imperials, x 500Cr each, x 10 years, equals 490,000,000MCr total for initial fleet. class A and B yards at tech 9+ on planets of population 9+ support 59,000,000 tons of construction capacity. saying that starport class ratings do not reflect military construction is a nice try, but implementing this does not significantly alter the total shipyard capacity since most 9+ pop 9+ tech worlds have class A yards anyway. in the highguard 2 fleet I drew up the average cost of military shipping is less than .8MCr per ton. using .8MCr per ton, this means that the imperial naval budget can purchase 490,000,000MCr / .8MCr per ton or 612,500,000 tons of military shipping. this represents over ten times the available shipyard capacity. depending on the average hull size, this means that every single shipyard, working at double the capacity we see in modern shipyards, will have to work at full capacity for anywhere from twenty to forty years to build that fleet - this assumes no civilian construction.

I'd like to write more, but there's a lightning storm going on and I'd better shut down now.

 

[flykiller]

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Shipyard capacity too high? Tell me how you figure that.

I don't have the figures anymore so this is off the top of my head, but I looked up various websites detailing worldwide ship construction and involved personnel and found that the ratio was about (if I recall correctly) 2000 population per ton of oceangoing civilian and military ship construction. This level of ship construction is resulting in a glut of shipping worldwide, but TCS proposes a rate of space-going construction double this, in spite of the presumption that space ships should be more difficult and resource-intensive to construct than ocean-going container ships.

it becomes apparent that the full naval budget allocation is very much greater than can possibly be spent in the available shipyards.

I'd like to see your figures.</font>

98 billion imperials, x 500Cr each, x 10 years, equals 490,000,000MCr total for initial fleet. class A and B yards at tech 9+ on planets of population 9+ support 59,000,000 tons of construction capacity. saying that starport class ratings do not reflect military construction is a nice try, but implementing this does not significantly alter the total shipyard capacity since most 9+ pop 9+ tech worlds have class A yards anyway. in the highguard 2 fleet I drew up the average cost of military shipping is less than .8MCr per ton. using .8MCr per ton, this means that the imperial naval budget can purchase 490,000,000MCr / .8MCr per ton or 612,500,000 tons of military shipping. this represents over ten times the available shipyard capacity. depending on the average hull size, this means that every single shipyard, working at double the capacity we see in modern shipyards, will have to work at full capacity for anywhere from twenty to forty years to build that fleet - this assumes no civilian construction.

I'd like to write more, but there's a lightning storm going on and I'd better shut down now.