Recent content by Marchand

I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the more I think about it, the more I think you've raised a useful parallel. Japan is a very homogeneous society. All these slightly odd traveller types running around in heavily-armed spaceships are going to be much more like [my image of] Somalia as a...

The interesting question seems to arise over low-worth settlements (so no motivation / capacity to invest in defences), particularly on less-than-garden worlds, where a heavily armed small ship might damage life support. I don't imagine a lot of dome worlds around precisely because of the...

Nope - just trying to figure out what this thread has to do with spaceships, as opposed to aerial phenomena for which vastly more plausible explanations can be found...

So aliens are supposed to have crossed the gulf of space, just to buzz some hick town in the middle of nowhere? Right... Just because you want something to be true, doesn't make it so.

What does this have to do with Traveller?

Hmm.. 154 views and no replies! Guess that means "no". Ah well, back to CT: Solomani Rim...

I always preferred the Solomani Rim to the Spinward Marches. Probably because I don't like psionics or Vargr in my game, which knocks out two of the big features of the Marches. I was surprised to see a Darrians book scheduled for release before a Solomani book, but a moment's thought suggested...

Have 'em all wake up from low berths, with an alarm pinging.

There is a free homebrew Dune conversion for d20 at Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/9663350/Dune-RPG-d20 I've only skimmed it, but it looks high-quality. I don't speak d20, so no idea if it stacks up as a game, but tons of material in there. This guy mentions a GURPS conversion and another...

Hard SF and Transhumanist because I'm not interested in fantasy or modern. "Steampunk", I class with fantasy. Never seen the point at all, right back to when I read Gibson and Sterling's "Difference Engine" in the early 90s. Cyberpunk shades into transhumanism - not clear to me that two...

er, what Treebore said basically.

1) Well, Imperial patrol ships for sure. Anyway, the Spitzer space telescope is TL8. Even "basic civilian" sensors are TL9, as advanced beyond our current-day tech as the Spitzer is advanced beyond, say, a sophisticated optical telescope of the 1950s. And the military would presumably routinely...

The asteroid belt is certainly a huge volume and the kuiper belt is even vaster. But that's irrelevant because there is no need to search each and every rock physically. Space is cold and dark, but ships are hot. According to wikipedia, Ceres, the biggest asteroid, has a mean temp of 167K =...

That's half-right. Real 3D space is big. The 11,000 star systems of the Imperium are not. It is too easy for the Imperium to police 11,000 systems by leaving sensor buoys, with regular Navy/Scout Service visits to pick up the data, and far too hard to conceal the movement of spacecraft against...

1) In the 2D OTU, I tend to agree that hidden pirate bases are a wee bit unrealistic. Space is big, but also cold and dark. Anything using power is too easily detectable. In a setting as constrained as the 3I, it's too easy to seed every system with a sensor buoy. That's 11,000 systems, IIRC...