Here is another example of how seemingly obvious ideas make me want to re-design Traveller.
Many have heard of Niven and Pournelle's "Thor" system -- tungsten rods the size of telephone poles in orbit, just waiting for a U.S. launch code to send them down on evildoers. Sometimes the proposal is called "Rods From God."
Viewed in that light, it sounds like a high-tech weapon, one that the U.S. could use to maintain unilateral supremacy over Earth.
Walter Jon Williams had a very depressing take on this. He wrote (in Hardwired) of the Rock War. The Rock War was very cheap and efficient. Just go to the Asteroid Belt, tugboat some big rocks over to orbit, and drop them on cities you don't like.
It makes nuclear terrorism look easily preventable by comparison.
Terrorists might use very efficient means to get a planetoid on a collision course with a planet. Given a planetoid large enough, one could break it down for fuel, but still have enough mass left to cause an extinction-level event. Even if it gets fragmented, the fragments could cause problems.
In a Traveller universe, of course, a daring party of adventurers would be rushed to intercept it and turn the engines around so that it narrowly missed the planet. That would work the first time.
But there are so many opportunities to turn asteroid mining ops into terrorist opportunities that the mind boggles.
Somewhere in the Books (I think Book 0 but I can't find the reference) Marc Miller says something like, "Don't let the players do implausible things. In the real world, commandos couldn't storm the USS Nimitz from a tramp steamer, defeat the Marines on board, and capture a hostage."
Well, the crew of the USS Cole wasn't boarded, but they took some considerable damage from a bomb in an inflatable boat. The guys who did it probably had no training to speak of.
The initial design of Traveller failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam, IMHO. (I am *not* an expert on military affairs of any kind.) The scary problems of the current GWOT make me think that my old campaign designs for Traveller couldn't fly against a half-way realistic depiction of terrorism (i.e. 4th generation irregular warfare by motivated ideologues).
Another weakness of Classic Traveller games is that they are vulnerable to suicide tactics. Since characters don't progress by experience points, any player who decides to use suicide bombing isn't losing out on experience points racked up over a long series of games. He can roll up a new character in a short time. This isn't usually a factor in normal games, but in the context of GWOT, it makes me wonder whether the Imperium in Traveller would be greatly threatened by suicidal terrorists.
In general, I guess I'm just speculating in the absence of definitive knowledge. I could be totally wrong. Asteroids might make lousy terror weapons and the Imperium might be great against terrorists.
Many have heard of Niven and Pournelle's "Thor" system -- tungsten rods the size of telephone poles in orbit, just waiting for a U.S. launch code to send them down on evildoers. Sometimes the proposal is called "Rods From God."
Viewed in that light, it sounds like a high-tech weapon, one that the U.S. could use to maintain unilateral supremacy over Earth.
Walter Jon Williams had a very depressing take on this. He wrote (in Hardwired) of the Rock War. The Rock War was very cheap and efficient. Just go to the Asteroid Belt, tugboat some big rocks over to orbit, and drop them on cities you don't like.
It makes nuclear terrorism look easily preventable by comparison.
Terrorists might use very efficient means to get a planetoid on a collision course with a planet. Given a planetoid large enough, one could break it down for fuel, but still have enough mass left to cause an extinction-level event. Even if it gets fragmented, the fragments could cause problems.
In a Traveller universe, of course, a daring party of adventurers would be rushed to intercept it and turn the engines around so that it narrowly missed the planet. That would work the first time.
But there are so many opportunities to turn asteroid mining ops into terrorist opportunities that the mind boggles.
Somewhere in the Books (I think Book 0 but I can't find the reference) Marc Miller says something like, "Don't let the players do implausible things. In the real world, commandos couldn't storm the USS Nimitz from a tramp steamer, defeat the Marines on board, and capture a hostage."
Well, the crew of the USS Cole wasn't boarded, but they took some considerable damage from a bomb in an inflatable boat. The guys who did it probably had no training to speak of.
The initial design of Traveller failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam, IMHO. (I am *not* an expert on military affairs of any kind.) The scary problems of the current GWOT make me think that my old campaign designs for Traveller couldn't fly against a half-way realistic depiction of terrorism (i.e. 4th generation irregular warfare by motivated ideologues).
Another weakness of Classic Traveller games is that they are vulnerable to suicide tactics. Since characters don't progress by experience points, any player who decides to use suicide bombing isn't losing out on experience points racked up over a long series of games. He can roll up a new character in a short time. This isn't usually a factor in normal games, but in the context of GWOT, it makes me wonder whether the Imperium in Traveller would be greatly threatened by suicidal terrorists.
In general, I guess I'm just speculating in the absence of definitive knowledge. I could be totally wrong. Asteroids might make lousy terror weapons and the Imperium might be great against terrorists.
