Icosahedron
SOC-14 1K
What's the prize?
Our Star Prize is a trip to...
Hobby for the rich
- Thread starter rancke
- Start date
Our Star Prize is a trip to...
I agree that many TAS members would be into collecting world visits. But they will be constrained by the six passages per year limit. The record-holder is going to be an extreme example of these universetrotters.
For simplicity I just mentioned visits in my OP. The actual activity that I had in mind (known as 'globetrotting' in the parlance of the Classic Era) is circumnavigating each world using only surface transportation (defined as vehicles or vessels that do not at any time lose contact with the surface (just jumping a few decimeters into the air and coming straight down doesn't count)), which is going to reduce the number of worlds per year even for the most dedicated globetrotter (To about ten per year on the average for the truly dedicated globetrotter? Less for the more casual ones.) It's actually the number of years someone really fanatic about it would keep up something like that that is my main area of uncertainty.
You're overlooking something that practically everyone (including the game writers) overlook, namely the longevity of pureblooded Vilani (and the miracles of TL15 medical technology. Those age tables seem to consider TL7 medicine the last word in life-extension, which IMO is one of the really big flaws of the Traveller setting. But that's by the way.)
Anyway, I think the record-holder will most probably be a pureblood Vilani.
That would give something like a ballpark figure of 6.5 trips (worlds/systems) per year (1 every 8 weeks) x36 years of travel (age 38 to 74) for a total of 234 trips (worlds/systems). Nice number
Of course then you start to get into the "How can I do better... "Sell that High Pass for Cr9,000, buy a Mid Pass for Cr8,000, save Cr1,000 every 8 weeks and you earn an extra Mid Pass every 64 weeks for an additional 29 trips (worlds/systems) over the 36 years. Total 263 trips.
Or assume passages are ticket vouchers and that ticket costs are related to distance. Sell your High Passages to people who plan to use them for jump-4 (or better) passages and buy jump-1 passages with them. You should be able to get three (four if you're lucky) jump-1 tickets out of each TAS high passage.
So, there are probably a lot of people who have visited hundreds of worlds but the record is probably going to be something short of a thousand.
In fact I propose that there is an open TAS contest/challenge along the lines of the old club bet of going around the world in 80 days.
aragraph: TAS:
A special recognition awaits the first member who visits 1000 different systems. Are you up for it? Many have tried, a few have gotten close, but no one has claimed it yet.
Systems visited while serving as a member of the Imperial Forces do not count.
Why wouldn't they count? As long as said serving member was already a TAS member at the time, of course. Which would be rare but probably not unheard of. (Someone like that would be able to build up a nice stash of high passages while he was prevented from using them by the exigencies of his service -- far more than vanilla character generation would be able to hand out ).
Side issue: So what would be the record for worlds visited (just visited; no globetrotting required) in the TAS?
Hans
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far-trader
SOC-14 10K
I relabled my "age table" as a "mileage table" after Indiana Jones commented "It's not the years, it's the miles." I figure it's not actually aging that you're saving against but the harsh life of Imperial Service in space. Call it premature aging. I figure nice safe world based lives are very long lived, especially at higher TLs.
Probably.
I had decided for MTU (while typing the previous post as the idea occurred to me) that the current record was an oh-so-close 936 visits. Which was just a number grabbed from the 36 years x 26 visits a year. It wouldn't actually break down to 2 weeks per, some would be quicker, some longer. I do agree it has to be a little more than stamping the Traveller's passport equivalent. Not sure I'd require a circumnavigation, thought that is an interesting idea. Small worlds go quicker
I might sit down and work out a theoretical... if I find myself extremely bored with lots of time to waste
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Star Prize. I think I like that. A trip... :rofl: Just what the weary Traveller needs after visiting 1000 systems
I think maybe something like a posh plush retirement home. Maybe the penthouse suite of the TAS lodge of the member's choice, for life, with all the amenities.
Not sure I'd require a circumnavigation, thought that is an interesting idea. Small worlds go quicker
...and if you visit an asteroid belt...
BruceEdwinMorrow
SOC-11
Icosahedron
SOC-14 1K
Star Prize. I think I like that. A trip... :rofl: Just what the weary Traveller needs after visiting 1000 systems
Glad somebody's awake.
"Modern orchid hunting is not without its dangers. Tom Hart Dyke, a plant hunter who follows the tradition of the Victorian and Edwardian orchid hunters, was held in 2000 by kidnappers thought to be FARC guerillas in the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia, while hunting for rare orchids, a plant for which he has a particular passion. He and his travel companion, Paul Winder, were held captive for nine months, and threatened with death. Hart Dyke kept his morale up by creating a design for a garden containing plants collected on his trips, laid out in the shape of a world map, the plants being positioned according to the respective continents of their origin."
Pity the guerillas that attack the average Traveller out Orchid hunting.
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
Well, the Traveller isn't the one orchid hunting. That's the strangely rugged, yet very effete fop over there rooting in the dirt. We're just the guys hired to drive him around. Who happen to be waaaaaay overly interested in things that go boom (or sizzle or flash or whatnot) in really dramatic fashion. Yeah, those guys. Those bandages the hunter is wearing? Radiation burns. No, no, no... he was standing a little too close to the last guy that tried to interrupt his hunting when Johnny over there splashed him with his plasma rifle. Nah, he's good with it - them's the risks of orchid hunting, he says!
Yes, because you don't have to go anywhere to find orchids. No travel involved. They, like safari animals, just pop up all over the place. Why there's a white rhino in my hotel room right now.
Yes, because you don't have to go anywhere to find orchids. No travel involved. They, like safari animals, just pop up all over the place. Why there's a white rhino in my hotel room right now.
No, that's not why it's a different hobby than the ones this thread is about :nonono:. It's because the hobbies this thread is about are different and the travel they entail is different. Orchid-hunting may involve travel, even interstellar travel (like travelling a number of parsecs to a world with lots of different orchinds and then spending years travelling through its wildernesses), but it would not be the same travel patterns :nonono:.
Hans
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
snarky snark snark
Besides, it was a smoothly executed thread hijack, and in-line with player hijack of a campaign, so I give it a B for that.
It says "Hobby for the rich", so nyah
Besides, it was a smoothly executed thread hijack, and in-line with player hijack of a campaign, so I give it a B for that.
It says "Hobby for the rich", so nyah
You evidently didn't follow Bruce's original link[*]. Orchid hunting was a hard and brutal business[**], so actually a complete non sequitur.
[*] As indeed I did not myself at first 
, or I would not have referred to it as a hobby.
[**] And I'm not saying it isn't a good inspiration for adventure; I'm just saying it's not what this thread is about.
, or I would not have referred to it as a hobby. [**] And I'm not saying it isn't a good inspiration for adventure; I'm just saying it's not what this thread is about.
Hans
Oooh, I didn't know we had that: >>:nonono:<<
Oh, look, there's a whole bunch of new stuff!
Gee, I feel like an idiot sometimes.I think Hans has it right. I can see a botanical aficionado going to every possible world for its rarest specimen, but there are quite a few dead worlds he'll never bother with. Same for a big game hunter: no game, no go. Someone dedicated to going places just to collect the passport stamp - or whatever - is going to make an effort to go places that other folk would overlook. It's the jet-setter version of the rare stamp.
