Hmm, traffic volumes…
I had worked on encounter charts that reflected how ships actually had to travel, then started wondering how many ships (and what types) are in port…
I still need to come up with some kind of table to define what ships are in port (for reference, I fundamentally use CT 1977).
I’ve decided now though that the encounter roll will just be off the standard table and doesn’t implicate any sort of travel volume, just the potential for an interesting encounter. The next step will be to define “interesting”.
There is a part of me that would love to work up traffic volumes across my mapped region, but I’m really not sure how well that works out. I’m not sure the Traveller method of producing a setting (random star ports, random space lanes) provides for any sort of realistic trade patterns.
Hmm, I just thought of something… Recently I read the story of a Pan Am Clipper that travelled West from the Pacific theatre at the start of WWII. That story would be an excellent view of what Traveller star ship travel might be like from a logistics stand point. Sure, they didn’t trade along the way or anything, but you could get an idea of what travel with a J-1 or J-2 ship that has to put in at some pretty rinky-dink star ports could be like.
Frank
From: xxxxxx@simplelists.com [mailto:xxxxxx@simplelists.com] On Behalf Of Evyn MacDude
Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2018 6:44 PM
To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
Subject: Re: [TML] J3
On Fri, Dec 28, 2018 at 10:30 PM Frank Filz <xxxxxx@mindspring.com> wrote: