The Early Days of Jump.

[Tysis]

Of course it goes out, do otherwise would be inefficient.
mega:

Few people believe this story, but it is actually true. A long time ago my family was visting my grandparents. One of my sisters was opening and closing the refrigerator door really fast. She wanted to see if the light really went out when the door was close.

I was a bit stunned.

 

[rancke]

I'm getting behind in my responses to some of the threads I'm currently involved in. Sorry about the delay.

As you wisely and continually point out: Canon has To make Sense.

So I do. But I usually point it out when I'm talking about background features that are internally inconsistent. An internally inconsistent statement doesn't make sense, period. Canon conflicts simply means that we have two statements that can't both be true at the same time. That doesn't mean that either of them are bad in and of themselves.

DGP's artless and ill advised conflation of a hull grid vaguely mentioned in JTAS #24 into glowing, lanthanum-doped lines arranged in differing schemes by different major races neither makes sense or solves problems. Indeed, it creates many problems where originally there were no real problems to solve.

I agree that if it doesn't make sense, it's bad. But I don't think you've gotten around to telling me what it is about it that doesn't make sense.

The only weapons that roll on the Interior Explosion table are those that either 1) bypass the hull like mesons or B) access the IE table via rolls on the Surface Explosion and/or Radiation Damage tables. So you either skip the hull (as with mesons) or damage the hull in such a way that you "access" internal components.

Surface Explosion Damage table result 6, for example, damages your maneuver drive without damaging the hull enough to register. In fact, none of the results on the HG damage tables even mentions the hull itself. If the rules doesn't take the hull itself into account, how can you complain that it doesn't take something that's embedded in the hull into account.

But let's stipulate for the sake of argument that jump grids and the various combat systems show discrepancies. That doesn't say anything about the idea of jump grids in itself. What actually wrong with jump grids that means we should prefer retconning them away instead of amending the combat rules?

Why don't you have to buy grids when you build riders then? And, if grids are needed when a rider is carried outside, why can any vessel carry any rider as long as the carrying capacity is there?

Do you explicitly pay for jump grids in the first place? If you don't, you can't know that you're paying for the carrier and not the riders. If you do, you are actually paying for grids on the riders in the case of dispersed structures (Where you pretend to pay for, e.g., a 300,000 T hull when you're actually only paying for a 160,000 T hull and seven 20,000 T riders). And in the case of non-dispersed structures, you don't need to put grids on the riders, because they're riding inside the carrier.

But let's stipulate for the sake of argument that jump grids and the ship-building rules show discrepancies. That doesn't say anything about the idea of jump grids in itself. What actually wrong with jump grids that means we should prefer retconning them away instead of amending the ship-building rules?

Jump grids are a bad idea.

Then it shouldn't be any problem to articulate just what is actively bad about them.


Hans

 

[Whipsnade]

Im not an engieenr, I just play one in a game. And I have fun

Matrix,

Because I am an OLD POOP and not as automatically "Net Savvy" as I should be, I often forget to employ as many emoticons as I should. I blithely type away with a smile on my lips something which I honestly mean to of good humor, only to find it coming across as stilted and terse.

Believe me, if you had heard and seen me speak my response to your post, you would have caught a very different tone than the one my text-only response presents.

I'm very glad you have fun playing and I'd like to suggest that, in order to have fun, you don't need blueprints. Starships and spacecraft in Traveller manage waste heat in some manner and that manner should remain "beneath the resolution" of the game lest "Adventures in the Far Future' become "Adventures in Wholly Speculative and Nonsensical Engineering in the Far Future"!


Have fun!
Bill

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Professor Thornwood looks up.

Really?

Matrix,
...I'm very glad you have fun playing and I'd like to suggest that, in order to have fun, you don't need blueprints.

Ah, another hand out hater. Of course you need blueprints, how else do you know where your cabin is? And where the all important Ship's Locker is and the head and the...well, you get the idea, I live for blueprints and handouts and all that Gouda.

Starships and spacecraft in Traveller manage waste heat in some manner and that manner should remain "beneath the resolution" of the game lest "Adventures in the Far Future' become "Adventures in Wholly Speculative and Nonsensical Engineering in the Far Future"!

Have fun!
Bill

It appears that someone didn't read the Syllabus for this Class.
*shakes head*
Tsk, tsk.
mega:

 

[Whipsnade]

I agree that if it doesn't make sense, it's bad. But I don't think you've gotten around to telling me what it is about it that doesn't make sense.

Hans,

Simply put: Damage to the grid doesn't damage the jump drive. Surface hits only damage the the jump drive when the cause an internal explosion.

DGP in SSOM waxes lyrically about how the grid operates. The grid is presented as an intregral part of jump itself. Computers energize and de-energize discrete sections the grid in rapid succession in order to 1) access jump space and B) "kick" the ship into the proper "tumble" for it's journey through jump space.

DGP also explicitly states in it's descriptions that this "activation timing" of the grid is so complex that only extremely sophisiticated computers can do it (roughly analogous to our current fly-by-wire aviation) and that, in order to use higher jump numbers, not only are more energy and fuel required but more sophisticated computers are required to activate the hull grid in an increasingly complex manner.

(Despite the vitally important job the jump grid allegedly performs, DGP ups the "kewl" factor even further by explicitly stating that each major race uses different grid patterns. On the one hand, they forcefully describe how important the proper activation of the grid sections is to jump and on the other hand they completely ignore the logical inference behind their own description; that there would be more efficient grid patterns for any given jump and sticking that to racial grid patterns would prevent this efficiency.)

Yet, despite how vitally important the hull grid now is in the MT/DGP description of jump, surface hits on a starship do not effect that vessel's jump drive unless those hits also cause an internal explosion.

Surface Explosion Damage table result 6, for example, damages your maneuver drive without damaging the hull enough to register.

Maneuver drives in YTU do not penetrate tha hull? The maneuver drive has no hull mounted components?

In fact, none of the results on the HG damage tables even mentions the hull itself.

That's because all those things that are part of the hull or are on the outside surface of the vessel have their own damage rolls.

If the rules doesn't take the hull itself into account, how can you complain that it doesn't take something that's embedded in the hull into account.

Turrets are "embedded" in the hull, portions of bays are "embedded" in the hull, portions of spinal mounts are "embedded" in the hull, fuel is "embedded" in the hull, portions of maneuver drives are embedded in the hull, and all can be damaged by surface hits. Conversely, DGP's hull grid - which is so vitally important to a vessel's ability to jump - is also embedded in the hull but cannot be damaged by surface hits.

Go figure.

Then it shouldn't be any problem to articulate just what is actively bad about them.

I already have. They're a "kewl" idea which wasn't logically developed, much like the Alien Incursions. In order to keep the DGP-style hull grid, we'll have to change basic game mechanics across all versions in order to accomodate what was only descriptive color text in a single version.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[matrix cypher]

Matrix,

Because I am an OLD POOP and not as automatically "Net Savvy" as I should be, I often forget to employ as many emoticons as I should. I blithely type away with a smile on my lips something which I honestly mean to of good humor, only to find it coming across as stilted and terse.

Believe me, if you had heard and seen me speak my response to your post, you would have caught a very different tone than the one my text-only response presents.

I'm very glad you have fun playing and I'd like to suggest that, in order to have fun, you don't need blueprints. Starships and spacecraft in Traveller manage waste heat in some manner and that manner should remain "beneath the resolution" of the game lest "Adventures in the Far Future' become "Adventures in Wholly Speculative and Nonsensical Engineering in the Far Future"!


Have fun!
Bill

LOL no problems, no worries. Heh I like to at least have deck plans, design level blue prints would be cool but generally not worth the time invested.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

*bolts upright and points*

LOL no problems, no worries. Heh I like to at least have deck plans, design level blue prints would be cool but generally not worth the time invested.

HERETIC, SECURITY, SEIZE THAT BEING!
mega:

 

[Hal]

Sometimes it can be fun trying to imagine the backstory behind events as portrayed within the Traveller Universe. Imagine if you will some of the potential for a GM willing to invest the time and effort into detailing the history of what happened in his Traveller Universe prior to the current events portrayed for his players. For example, if you look at the CT rules for jump mishaps, you quickly note that if certain conditions are true, mishaps may occur. Specifically, they are:

Fuel purity
Distance from massive object (usually planet, but could be sun etc) at ranges of 10 diameters or less
Distance from massive object at ranges of under 100 diameters, but greater than 10 diameters.

Now, what happens when you roll a 16+ on 2d6? The pertinent modifiers for a misjump mishap are +1, +5, and +10. With a roll of a +1 only, the ship at worst, can only misjump some 3% of the time. With a roll of a +5, the ship MAY be destroyed 8% of the time, or misjump some 33% of the time. A ship that jumps from within 10 planetary diameters will succeed roughly 3% of the time, misjump some 25% of the time, or be destroyed some 72% of the time.

This means then, when a ship is "Destroyed", that the GM has to decide "how" is it destroyed. Does the ship blow up even before it can enter into jump space? Does it enter into jump space, and then NEVER returns into normal space? Does it exit from jump space as debris? The rules as best as I can tell/remember, don't say much about this topic at all. As GM, I just rule that in keeping with the fact that a jump mishap includes the prospect of traversing a distance some 36 parsecs in length, that a "Destroyed" mishap is for all intents and purposes - one where the ship enters into a higher transit state (ie higher jump distance mode) than 36 parsecs, and is unable to return to normal space - EVER. From the perspective of the Traveller Universe - that ship was destroyed, never to be seen again.

So - how did the first jump drive work? Somehow, I get the intense feeling that based on the rules as written for CT, that the first working model of a jump drive was PURPOSEFULLY built - that it required a working theory on how it works, and that engineering personnel cobbled up something that they thought would work. If the first 100 prototypes failed to work as expected, each "new model" was modified in the hopes that it would be the prototype that worked. So, what can go wrong with a jump-space transit? For starters, what happens if the duration was too long (Misjump) that lasts 6 weeks? Did that prototype ship have a dead fusion powerplant (as those plants only usually have 4 weeks operational fuel)? What if when using the ship's jump drive, it induces jumpspace sickness? What if it induces madness over a period of use? What if while in jump space, your body fails to age?

There are so many different things that could go wrong with the first prototype jump drives that one has to try to imagine what those early days must have been like for the science experimenters.

Why do I figure that jump drives had to be purpose built? Think about it. Can you use a computer navigation program rated at say, Jump-1 to calculate a jump-4 jump course? Nope. If you attempted to use less fuel than is required - can your ship enter into jump space? No one has ever thought "Hmmm, if you make a 4 parsec jump, but only have fuel for a 3.5 parsec jump - what happens? Does the jump bubble collapse after only 5 days duration and the ship exits into normal space as a dead hull?"

All in all, a GM could be really nasty and run a campaign set on Earth JUST before jump drives are invented. The player characters can be those lofty ivy league researchers or some garage mechanic tinker who happens to discover a field effect that destroys his garage (and him with it) but leads some university to discover what he was working on before he died/disappeared. They in turn spend TWO generations of human life trying to refine the math to describe the event that occurred with the destroyed garage.

So - how would YOU roleplay those first exciting years when mankind finally discovers the Jump drive? How would you the GM handle it for your players as they play the characters involved in such events? We all blithely accept that the creation of the jump drive was pivotal in humanity's future - yet, we all fail to grasp just how exciting R&D would have had to have been in bringing it into existence.

Now for the biggie. Background information on the history of the Interstellar wars between the First Imperium and Mankind hint at the fact that Mankind made a breakthrough development with regards to Jump-3 capabilities. What was required for that to happen? Was it mathematics? Was it programming techniques to create those pesky "black box" software that will generate a 3-parsec navigational plot? Was it some way to manufacture tighter tolerances in the field generation control systems that initiate the "field" surrounding a ship as it enters into a higher state jump universe?

Ah well, I digress too much. For my Traveller Universes for however long I might ever live to run one before I die...

The holy grail of Jump Drive research is this:

How to induce a controlled misjump such that one can navigate to any distance using only 10% of the hull's displacement in fuel AND be able to keep the jump duration to 1 week AND be able to control where one exits from the jump. If you can do it naturally and by accident, then it proves it can be done. The devil is in the details and no one has YET to discover how it can be done. I would imagine every single planetary government is investing in that kind of research - for its implications are:

Stronger and smaller ships that can outperform the best that the Imperium has to offer.
Cheaper ships as a consequence of the first
Cheaper Jump Drive units - since you only need a jump drive capable of Jump-1 to do it.

Time to hit the sack I think - as I feel like I'm babbling.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

*grins*

So Hal, first off, kudos and an extra credit for you for keeping on topic...*looks around class and grins*

Second, do you want the TA's spot?

Lastly, I am enjoying this highly and I hope you all are as well, even you wargamers. *grins again and goes back to check everyone's work so far*
mega:

 

[BlackBat242]

What if when using the ship's jump drive, it induces jumpspace sickness? What if it induces madness over a period of use? What if while in jump space, your body fails to age?

Frontier of the Dark by A. BERTRAM CHANDLER
The Werewolf effect. The Mannschenn Drive was the gateway to the stars, but it had one unfortunate side effect: traveling faster than light, mankind reverted to the bestial form of his own legendary nightmare, the Lycanthropic horror that the full moon once called forth from the soul's depths, now no longer howling at the moon but soaring far beyond it..


Or:

McLendons Syndrome ( Not all Vampires are black Haired & Sinister & Not all Shipboard Murders are quite what They Seem ! ) by Robert Frezza

"Ken MacKay is an ensign on a decrepit space frieghter called the Rustam's Slipper. She's shorthanded, so the skipper takes on a new crewmember called Caterina Lindquist

Caterina is beautiful and smart, but suffers from a rare disease now classified as "McLendon's Syndrome" - the symptoms of which include very pale alabaster colored skin, inability to tolerate direct sunlight, etc - yes, most of the disadvantages associated in medieval times with vampires. And the abilities as well.

Then a series of highly suspicious events start occurring, including murder. Some crew members are convinced that Caterina must be behind them - but Ken is not so sure."

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

*coughs*

Really sir, I think you want Speculative Jump Horrors 204, sorry. There down three doors to the right and down the long corridor where no can here you scream....i mean call for help....ummm....yeah, down the hall.
mega:

OOC: Funny, I just got done watching Event Horizion.....

 

[Straybow]

Traveller canon is rather like a religion. Which is why I'm glad I knew of nothing beyond the 3 LBB set.

I'd be more interested in the early days of cheap, efficient, fusion power with no waste heat problems and 1G+ reactionless thrust. No more $10k/lb to get to orbit. Anywhere in the solar system within a week!

The early days of jump are when it takes a gigantic ship, 80% of ship's displacement for fuel, and in return gives an unsettlingly low probability of being alive and in one piece at the other end of the jump.

Or maybe "early days" means when they ironed out the wrinkles and got down to the canonical 10% fuel for J-1 and 13+ to misjump. OK, jump to Alpha C and find out somebody's already there, and not too friendly towards alien visitors. They have a massive empire full of people and weapons beyond your tech. Or if you're the first kid on the block with the new toy you can have fun exploring all the empty worlds.

Hmmmm, I guess that takes care of the trade model problems.

 

[Straybow]

The holy grail of Jump Drive research is this:

How to induce a controlled misjump such that one can navigate to any distance using only 10% of the hull's displacement in fuel AND be able to keep the jump duration to 1 week AND be able to control where one exits from the jump. If you can do it naturally and by accident, then it proves it can be done. The devil is in the details and no one has YET to discover how it can be done. I would imagine every single planetary government is investing in that kind of research - for its implications are:

Stronger and smaller ships that can outperform the best that the Imperium has to offer.
Cheaper ships as a consequence of the first
Cheaper Jump Drive units - since you only need a jump drive capable of Jump-1 to do it.

Perhaps the only way to safely jump is to have your control parameters so far away from the conditions that would allow a 36 parsec jump that you end up going only 1 parsec for each ~10% displacement fuel required by the size of engines and hull. Misjump is where the parameters don't allow for a neat, singular solution and the result is never controllable.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Hmmm, interesting and of course Canon is a Religion, in fact it is one of the few I still practice.

I am interested in all the parts of the early days of Jump Technologies, which of course does have some tie-in with cheap and efficient fusion, but how much is it related or just lucky for Travellers?

And for the Ziru Sirka, well as IIRC it was Barnard's Star that the Solomani discovered their Vilani cousins, but I have to visit the stacks...

Still glad to have more folks in the Class, makes for more CrImps in the Budget Requests.
mega:

OOC: Just watched the second to last episode of BSG last night, there is a great scene in which I could see a IISS MoS in their Type-S waiting for the Jump Flare and then figuring out if it's friendly. It rocked, one of the better scenes in a really cool show. And I was right, the Cylons didn't lie, the humans surely didn't like what they found....

 

[rancke]

Bill, I keep asking you what's inherently wrong with jump grids and you keep telling me that they're incompatible with the combat system. That's not an inherent flaw.

Simply put: Damage to the grid doesn't damage the jump drive. Surface hits only damage the the jump drive when the cause an internal explosion.

a) You'll have to elucidate. How do you know that damage to the grid doesn't damage the jump drive? There are no 'damage to the grid' results on any combat result tables that I know of (But note that there are no 'damage to the surface of the hull' results on any combat result tables that I know of).

b) That isn't an inherent flaw in the concept of jump grids. It's a contradiction between two different bits of canon. Why isn't it the combat tables that are horribly wrong?

(Despite the vitally important job the jump grid allegedly performs, DGP ups the "kewl" factor even further by explicitly stating that each major race uses different grid patterns. On the one hand, they forcefully describe how important the proper activation of the grid sections is to jump and on the other hand they completely ignore the logical inference behind their own description; that there would be more efficient grid patterns for any given jump and sticking that to racial grid patterns would prevent this efficiency.)

Now, that would be an inherent flaw in the concept (though the concept in question isn't the jump grid itself, it's different cultures having different grid patterns). But why shouldn't different patterns be roughly comparable in efficiency? It's not a given, of course, but neither is it a given that they wouldn't be.

Yet, despite how vitally important the hull grid now is in the MT/DGP description of jump, surface hits on a starship do not effect that vessel's jump drive unless those hits also cause an internal explosion.

Discrepancy, not inherent flaw.

Maneuver drives in YTU do not penetrate the hull? The maneuver drive has no hull mounted components?

No, the combat result "Maneuver-n" results in the maneuver drive being reduced a factor n and no explicit damage to the hull. Is that because the weapon miraculously passed through the hull without damaging it or because the combat result table is too coarse to include collateral damage?

That's because all those things that are part of the hull or are on the outside surface of the vessel have their own damage rolls.

Exactly my point. The combat result tables are too simple to account for more than one effect at a time, and not a single one of the results are about the hull plates themselves! The closest you come to it is having turrets neatly cauterized with no collateral damage. None of the canonical combat results would scratch a hypothetical jump grid anyway, because not a single one of them as much as scratches a hull plate. Not explicitly. Even the "Hull" result in Book 2 combat is actually "Ship decompressed".

Turrets are "embedded" in the hull, portions of bays are "embedded" in the hull, portions of spinal mounts are "embedded" in the hull, fuel is "embedded" in the hull, portions of maneuver drives are embedded in the hull, and all can be damaged by surface hits. Conversely, DGP's hull grid - which is so vitally important to a vessel's ability to jump - is also embedded in the hull but cannot be damaged by surface hits.

Not so. Turret and bay hits don't decompress the ship, hence they don't penetrate the hull. Fuel tanks are inside the hull, maneuver drives are inside the hull, jump drives are located next to maneuver drives but unlike maneuver drives can be hit by a surface hit only through the 'critical' and 'interior explosion' results.

I already have. They're a "kewl" idea which wasn't logically developed, much like the Alien Incursions. In order to keep the DGP-style hull grid, we'll have to change basic game mechanics across all versions in order to accommodate what was only descriptive color text in a single version.

OK, let me try once more:

"Jump grids are incompatible with previously published material" would be a great argument during a playtest for not introducing them in the first place. But that ship has sailed. They have been introduced. That doesn't require use to go back and change basic game mechanics across the board, for the simple reason that doing so would require a time machine, but it might make it a good idea to change combat resolution in future versions.

So my question, once more, is: What is it about jump grids that is so inherently bad and makes it a better idea to resolve any conflict by removing them rather than make a few adjustments to the combat tables?



Hans

 

[aramis]

Not being the correct Bill (Well, I haven't gone by Bill since about 1990)...

Canon comes in 4 basic parts: Narrative in the Rulebooks, Textual Rules in the Rulebooks, Suplementary materials (as in periodicals, webstuff, 3rd party canonicals, and interviews), and Rulebooks Illustrations.

Jumpgrids originate in suplementary materials (JTAS).
They move to 3rd party canonicals in MT, and Illustrations as well.
They disappear in TNE.

They never appear in the core rulebooks. They also never appear in the rules supplementals from GDW. Only in the supplementary materials and rulebook illustrations.

Now, grids are implied in TNE's Reg.SB, due to being able to read a jumping ship's course as they jump. However, it's a weak link.

Further, by Marc's article appearing in JTAS, it has acquired Canonical status to many, BUT NOT ALL. Just as Loren's "All marines wear Battledress" article is oft considered outside of canon, so is Marc's jumpspace article. Pretty much, anything in JTAS could be safely ignored and still be "Playing Traveller in the OTU". Much the same as the DGP materials to non MT players.

But ALL the rules are consistent: JDrives have little presence on the Hull. (Only one ruleset even mentions hull damage in space combat: TNE.)

So... The "less effort fix" is Hull Grids don't exist, as the combat system works well enough "at the speed of Drama" (even if it is otherwise unrealistic).

 

[Whipsnade]

But that ship has sailed. They have been introduced.

Hans,

Aramis pretty much posted my answer before I could.

You say the ship has sailed and that is true. The ship has sailed and SANK however.

Hull grids belong to MT only and third party MT material to boot. Among GDW rules, a "hull grid" is mentioned in CT but it doesn't work like the 3rd party MT grid while TNE is essentially moot on the subject, an observer watchs your jump entry fro information and not your hull grid. Lookng at all the other rules, there are no grids in T4. no grids in GT, no grids in T20, no grids in MGT, and there will be no grids in T5.

Aside from an admittedly canonical 3rd party MT supplement and a selection of old, new, and reused illustrations, jump grids DO NOT APPEAR in any of the other various Traveller rules sets. That's what is wrong with them. They're an outlier, a "one-off", an aberration.

Look at it this way: do you seriously suggest that we should pay them any more attention than we do jump torpedos? Jump torpedos appear in both a canonical, 3rd party authored, CT adventure and in the Missiles supplement giving them the same "level" of canonical as MT's hull grids. Yet, we ignore jump torpedos don't we? Why aren't hull grids treated in the same fashion?

You're arguing for their inclusion beyond the limited confines of SSOM and MT. You want to put them places where they don't already exist. You want a change. That means it's up to you to explain why hull grids are worth the retcon they'll require.

So, let me flip your question: Why are hull grids worth that retcon? Aside from being "kewl" that is.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

*Professor Thornwood reenters the room*

Really, Class, I could hear you all down the hall, settle down! Please!

Now, to answer some burning questions.....

Here in this Room, Jump Grids are Canonical...now to the proofs.

1) I love the SOM and I do at times pick up JTAS, and when HIM Speaks on a Subject, we give HIM, His Due...

2) To the Subject of Combat Damage and J-Drive hits....hands please, how many of you have even read a Starship Jump Drive for Beginners? *counts hands* OK...next question, how many of you have seen one...all of it? *looks around* OK.

Now, let's do some quick review...

a) Jump Drives propel Starship through the Barrier between Normal (N) Space and Jump (J) Space.

b) Jump Drives have been observed in various media activating a Jump Grid as part of the Sequence to Transit or Precipitate into J-Space.

c) J-Drives can be damaged in combat, but most hits don't seem to damage the hull and seem only to fail on internal explosions.

d) So J-Drive connects to J-Grid...how?

e) Might this connection have something to do with the combat results seen in most space battles?

f) Awaiting responses.
mega:

 

[aramis]

Magnus:

Sorry, but HG doesn't have surface hits on JDrive. TNE can, but it's rare (and not enough surface area to represent a grid, IIRC).

 

[Ishmael]

" Jump Drive: Starships move across interstellar distances using jump drives. Jump drives are themselves a special high yield power plant linked to an integral net in the craft's hull for initiating and maintaining the jump field......."
Megatraveller Referee's Manual, page 58

Thus it is canon, whether one chooses to use it or not.
It is stated in a primary OTU source and not just in 3rd party MT supplement
Everything else is just opinion.


inferences based on combat tables, etc are moot
using the same methods, I can argue that, by a canon source, there are no sensor antennae in MT as surface explosions don't degrade sensors or communications.

I guess OTU is like a chinese buffet where we pick and choose what we like and ignore the rest.... Arguing about what other people put on their plate is kind of silly.