Was the Rebellion as a setting sustainable?

[kilemall]

In a meta sense (out-of-universe) they already are. What Marc does with them is up to him -- and that too, whatever it happens to be, will be a manipulation of the "reality" of the OTU.

This sort of thing has already happened in-universe. Book 5 literally changed the OTU's laws of physics! Inexplicably (from within the game universe) Jump Drives became smaller (and some civilizations who had mastered Jump-6 could no longer even comprehend Jump-4*) while Maneuver Drives became huge, and the largest conceivable starships were suddenly dwarfed by fleets of enormous vessels that apparently had been there all along without anyone noticing. Out-of-universe, it was simply an addition of a re-balanced and expanded rule set to enable battles between massive interstellar fleets because it'd be an interesting game. In-universe, it was a fundamental change in the way the universe functioned.



* LBB2, J-6 was available at TL-12 (Comp Mod/6 was the constraint); HG, J-3 was the maximum for TL-12 (constrained by the TL requirement for J-Drive rating).

Hmm, may have missed my multiple postings on the IMTU explanation, so I'll recap.

CT and HG drives live quite happily together without reference to some sort of reality displacement, because they are different engineering disciplines and goals, not a physics change.

CT drives are an TL ISO-type standard, plug-compatible drives that are cross-TL, durable rugged simple designs proven over hundreds or thousands of years. Any TL that is interstellar can make them with the right facilities and industrial capability, without necessarily being able to have invented/designed them if they were isolated. EXACTLY what an ongoing civilian shipment/passenger transport needs over the long haul.

Think for RL example standard diesel engines that are used in locomotives AND tugs AND coastals AND trawlers AND land-based power generators.

HG drives on the other hand are high performance custom drives, one-offs, big transports/liners servicing high value dedicated routes, and warships. They require support at or near their TL as they are NOT standardized parts (an extrapolation off TCS).

Think RL nuclear carrier/submarine, or container/tanker ships with multi-story power plants.

 

[mike wightman]

You are missing the fundamental difference - and I don't mean this this is an OTU not an IMTU thread

In CT a TL9 culture is aware of jump 6 - in fact in original LBB2 where you didn't have the computer restriction you could build a TL9 jump 6 ship.

In the HG paradigm jump 6 isn't discovered until TL15.

Yes you can reconcile LBB2 drives to exist in a HG universe (many of us have done so), but the underlying tech paradigm is different.

Then there is the other major paradigm shift.

GDW took the metagame decision that the reactionless drive has never existed in the 3I setting - all ships now use HEPlaR, even new build state of the art TL16 Regency stuff as well as TL15 Imperial ships that have survived to the TNE. This can and has been retconned since, despite the designers and owners of the OTU at the time making this choice.

Interesting aside - the folks at GDW came very close to retconning the T2300 stutterwarp into the 3I setting in place of the jump drive, but they abandoned the idea (interview with Frank Chadwick).

 

[G. Kashkanun Anderson]

You are missing the fundamental difference - and this is an OTU not an IMTU thread.
In CT a TL9 culture is aware of jump 6 - in fact in original LBB2 where you didn't have the computer restriction you could build a TL9 jump 6 ship.

You could build them, but they were rather limited, in that TL-9 J6 vessels were only allowed for vessels 200 tons or less (1977 edition) or 100 tons (1981 edition). The 1981 addition also allowed 200 ton J4 starships at TL-9, as well as 400 ton J2 starships.

An interesting retcon might be that Book 2 starships use the hydrogen bubble technique, whereas High Guard starships show what you can do with a jump grid. One might even use that as an explanation as to why Book 2 ships don't come with a Jump Governor -- hydrogen bubble jumps just don't work that way. Also (perhaps), jump grid technology allows for the eventual development deep space jumps, whereas that is simply impossible for hydrogen bubble starships.

Going further, the implication would be that Vilani jump technology (as well as Ancient/Geonee jump tech) used jump grids, since they were capable of building huge starships (above 5,000 tons). The Solomani initially devised a bulky, 'fuel hungry' (according to GURPS-IW) jump drive based on hydrogen bubble technology, but abandoned it once they encountered the 'superior' Vilani jump drives, thus never realizing its full range potential. Research on that avenue was abandoned, perhaps for millenia, left alone to the realm of crank theorists and cosmic scam artists.

 

[kilemall]

You are missing the fundamental difference - and I don't mean this this is an OTU not an IMTU thread

In CT a TL9 culture is aware of jump 6 - in fact in original LBB2 where you didn't have the computer restriction you could build a TL9 jump 6 ship.

In the HG paradigm jump 6 isn't discovered until TL15.

Yes you can reconcile LBB2 drives to exist in a HG universe (many of us have done so), but the underlying tech paradigm is different.

Then there is the other major paradigm shift.

GDW took the metagame decision that the reactionless drive has never existed in the 3I setting - all ships now use HEPlaR, even new build state of the art TL16 Regency stuff as well as TL15 Imperial ships that have survived to the TNE. This can and has been retconned since, despite the designers and owners of the OTU at the time making this choice.

Interesting aside - the folks at GDW came very close to retconning the T2300 stutterwarp into the 3I setting in place of the jump drive, but they abandoned the idea (interview with Frank Chadwick).

I don't miss it, didn't miss it when HG originally came out.

I make it betterer.

Stutterwarp is a tasty engineering FTL option, but IMO goes against the Traveller source material rayguns and rockets ethos, as does reactionless drives.

Grav 1000D limits puts a LOT of the universe out of play.

But I can definitely see something like the Aliens universe fitting as well or better into the T2300 paradigms.

 

[mike wightman]

I don't miss it, didn't miss it when HG originally came out.

It was always odd that the revised CT of 81 stuck with an updated letter drive paradigm rather than adopt the HG way of doing things, which is what happened with the great MT revision - although by trying to integrate with Striker they broke it IMHO.

I make it betterer.

Something we all try to do

Stutterwarp is a tasty engineering FTL option, but IMO goes against the Traveller source material rayguns and rockets ethos, as does reactionless drives.

One of the reasons I still prefer an 'inertia reduction' field plus fusion rocket or HEPlaR explanation for the m-drive IMTU.
True gravitic reactionless drives are way beyond TL15 IMTU.

Grav 1000D limits puts a LOT of the universe out of play.

Another 'law of unintended consequence' decision that leads to more canon conflict.

But I can definitely see something like the Aliens universe fitting as well or better into the T2300 paradigms.

Yup, I can see that too.

Which brings me back to Hard Times - it also reflects the gritty-ness you see in the Alien franchise plus some of the more modern sci-fi.

I think I may revisit Hard Times in the near future.

 

[Grav_Moped]

You could build them, but they were rather limited, in that TL-9 J6 vessels were only allowed for vessels 200 tons or less (1977 edition) or 100 tons (1981 edition). The 1981 addition also allowed 200 ton J4 starships at TL-9, as well as 400 ton J2 starships.

Under the 1981 edition of LBB2, the smallest J-6 ship possible is 400 Td, and even then it's essentially an overgrown XBoat (1 week powerplant fuel, 1G maneuver drive, 1Td cargo but that really ought to be fuel too). Smaller hulls just don't have enough room for the necessary components -- it's essentially the constant-size requirements (Bridge @ 20Td, PP fuel at 10Td per PN rather than a % of total Td per PN) that preclude J-6 in smaller hulls.

This 400Td 6Boat uses JD-M, MD-B, PP-M; except for the MD, these are TL 12, as is the Mod/6 computer. The crew size is 6: Pilot, Navigator, Medic, 3 Engineers, all double-occupancy.

Coincidentally, it's also basically the only J-6 ship possible until TL 15 when Size V drives become available, according to the TL table in LBB3 (p. 15).