Hans,
I'm still failing to get the point across, aren't I?
We're not talking about "fluff" or "chrome" or "descriptions". We're talking about a fundamental idea that the designer kept in mind while fashioning the wargame's rules. Remember when we tried to explain to drh how themes and settings come together to create rules? The same process was at work here.
Compare and contrast the following three descriptions and their expression in rules. As the Muppets on Sesame Street are so fond of singing One of these things is not like the other...
You can see how Imperium andDark Nebula's rules were fashioned from the Alderson Drive concept and how those rules are different from rules fashioned from the jump drive concept. Changing their labels doesn't change their basic nature.
You can put a pig in a prom dress but that doesn't magically make it Homecoming Queen.
The identity of Conn's girl isn't a basic part of the short story. In the novel however, Conn's girl is a hostage of the air pirates and, will wonders never cease, she's a different woman from the short story. She changed because her role in the story changed, from the "Girl Conn left behind" to the "Girl that Conn rescued".
Unlike Conn's girl, jump drive has always been a fundamental part of the Traveller story. And yet that fundamental part is not fundamentally part of either Imperium or Dark Nebula.
Another FTL drive is a fundamental part of those games, another FTL drive whose attributes are explicitly expressed in the rules of both games. Simply changing the labels assigned to the those rules does not change their basic nature. You cannot move at FTL speeds off Imperium's tramlines because that is impossible for Alderson Drive vessels and not because such movement models logistical, operational, or computational concerns.
That's very close to the solution I suggested for GT:ISW. While Zeigler's RoF history is fundamentally flawed, I realized there was no chance of re-writing it for ISW. Rather than compound the error by roping mass requirements and suggesting they had a canonical basis due to an optional rule from a barely canonical wargame, I suggesting that MT's Squadron Jump Synchronization rules be invoked instead.
Rather than saying deep space jumps were impossible with a mass to aim at, I thought limiting the military utility of such jumps would do less violence to canon. Having groups of starships unable to synch their jump exit times when jumping out of a deep space hex would proclude all but the most desperate operations as it would invite a dfeat in detail. Single ships belonging to traders, scouts, and spies could still cross the gaps while squadrons and fleets could not.
You've got the map. Plot the fastest jump2 only route and then plot the fastest jump2 with an occasional three parsec DSJ route and see which makes more sense.
I see Chris has come up with another whopper; his allegedly canonical 60 parsec exploration radius for the Vilani. Ask him for the chapter and verse for that and then shoot him down with the multiple references from Vilani & Vargr stating the Vilani had explored the whole of the region of the future Ziru Sirka before developing jump2.
He's dodging your Vargr and Jump5 Rift route questions too. Do you really think the Vargr used STL to cross gaps their drives allegedly couldn't handle? Or that the Aslan surveyed the Rift Route with STL? Or that they used deep space objects to cross the Rift with smaller jumps but that route has been forgotten and/or is no longer used? Isn't the control of the jump5 Rift route the basis of power for one of the 29? And yet no clan uses the old smaller than jump5 route to avoid their monopoly?
Sure thing, Chris. Pull the other one.
Regards,
Bill
