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T5SS: Travellermap.com Update

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Domain of Regina?
Domain of Rhylanor?

Any other votes? Domain of Porozlo? :rofl:

There have been 3 attempts, I'm aware of, to officially justify star data. And numerous attempts to address 3D aspects; DGP, Hunter and 2014. Not including GT and MgT spins.

There comes a time where a few "key" canon worlds get data fixes or we throw out canon. It's not worth the spin to discuss depots, fleets, capitals, commerce routes, and anything else if the data is irrational and all the old canon is gone.
 
Domain of Regina?
Domain of Rhylanor?

Any other votes? Domain of Porozlo? :rofl:

There have been 3 attempts, I'm aware of, to officially justify star data. And numerous attempts to address 3D aspects; DGP, Hunter and 2014. Not including GT and MgT spins.

There comes a time where a few "key" canon worlds get data fixes or we throw out canon. It's not worth the spin to discuss depots, fleets, capitals, commerce routes, and anything else if the data is irrational and all the old canon is gone.

:oo:I'm wondering if the "new" paradigm is "STFU, spend your money, and be grateful".
 
Domain of Regina?
Domain of Rhylanor?

Any other votes? Domain of Porozlo? :rofl:
I don't get this at all.

There have been 3 attempts, I'm aware of, to officially justify star data. And numerous attempts to address 3D aspects; DGP, Hunter and 2014. Not including GT and MgT spins.

There comes a time where a few "key" canon worlds get data fixes or we throw out canon. It's not worth the spin to discuss depots, fleets, capitals, commerce routes, and anything else if the data is irrational and all the old canon is gone.
I don't think that's quite fair. Don is doing a tremendous lot of work trying to come up with a definitive set of UWPs. And I can appreciate and approve of the reluctance to change anything that doesn't absolutely require changing. It's just that we all have different opinions about what does and what does not absolutely require changing.

Now, my definition of what should be changed includes anything that I can't explain and Don can't explain1 and Marc Miller can't explain1 and nobody else can explain1. And I'm afraid that I've been exposed to the I'm-sure-there's-a-way-to-explain-it "explanation" often enough to have lost patience with it. No offense intended, Don.

1 To my satisfaction.


Hans
 
Question about X-starports

Hello
Looking on the map i.e. http://travellermap.com/?x=-99.188&y=69.975&scale=147.03125
I can not find starports of quality level X any more. Reading the T5 rules on page 432 there should be worlds with no starport marked with a starport level X.

I could not find an explanation in this discussion so I would like to ask for a hint or a link. In my opinion many backwater worlds with starport level X were like unsettled or mysterious islands in this ocean of space the players search for adventure.

They are an important part and add a nice taste of the unknown to this beautiful background. Upgrading them to starport type E means there are no hints of white space any more. In every system is a beacon, a field to land explored and marked on a map already. Everywhere you can see that somebody was there before.

Deleting the starports of type X is a little bit like melting untouched snow that humans love to walk on, to leave marks. Please give me an idea for what price this nice wilderness is given up.

Greetings
Martin
 
X now consistently means "unknown". By definition, any T5SS surveyed world has a known status and at least E.

I think it's kind of the point of the T5SS to provide a basic data set that fills in the holes; individual refs should be encouraged to conceal and/or change the information, as is done in adventures such as Leviathan.
 
Question about X-starports

Hello
Thank you for your answer. You wrote

X now consistently means "unknown". By definition, any T5SS surveyed world has a known status and at least E.

I would like to ask where I can find this consistent terminology elsewhere. Is x for unknown world or unknown starport type? Is there any reference in a book or is this in a stage of development? Did the Survey teams leave beacons? Is page 432 in T5 obsolete?

Best greetings
Martin
 
:oo:I'm wondering if the "new" paradigm is "STFU, spend your money, and be grateful".

I don't know about that, I'm trying a bit of humor not intended to be harsh on any individual. Really, it's a matter of asking the big questions first and not last. What is the end goal? What does the 3I really look like? How does the Navy function? If we don't set baselines there will always be unrealistic situations. Modern Earth comparison don't always work.

I think every iteration of a re-build has been bias in some fashion (not suggested as negative). Simply, explained Marc wants an interesting environment not bland, boring with cute robots. Everyone has their own take on what that means and works it into their TU. If we don't alter basic world stats for the new rule sets then we accidentally change things that matter (basic canon). There must be a baseline that supports basic canon. If one large item changes by accident (Deneb as a functional capital, Corridor Depot as a military threat to the Vargr and Zho, etc.) then dozens of products loose validity.
 
X now consistently means "unknown". By definition, any T5SS surveyed world has a known status and at least E.

I think it's kind of the point of the T5SS to provide a basic data set that fills in the holes; individual refs should be encouraged to conceal and/or change the information, as is done in adventures such as Leviathan.

Wait, there aren't x-ports any more??

Okay, so that I'm sure I understand: Traveller Map is now about T5, and T5 has revised some of the worlds to deal with some of the more puzzling discrepancies - except for some of the oddities we get, "It is what it is," because if we try to change too much then we might as well throw out canon - except that we've scrapped all the x-ports, changed the depots but don't want to change too much, revised worlds to be consistent with rules, and now there's apparently a problem with page 432 except that I have no idea what's on page 432 and...

Does anyone else here feel like their head is spinning?

I applaud the urge to make things better. I applaud the urge to show restraint in that effort, lest we go overboard or find ourselves alienating players who may not agree on a need for change. I recognize that the decisionmakers can't react to each and every oddbit a player stumbles across over several thousand systems, especially when many of those decisionmakers are holding down other jobs that pay the bills while doing their best to serve our needs in their spare time. However, I'm sensing a certain - irritation - creeping in on all sides.

Let me be clear that I value all the hard work people are putting in on the Traveller Map and other efforts to advance the game. I think we all recognize that hard work, and when we of the community pipe in with our own two cents or our questions, it is not to criticize but to support, to feel that in some very small way we are helping, if by nothing else then by offering a little food for thought. Despite our occasionally emphatic tones, I don't think there's anyone here that thinks you have to make this or that change or the game is just ruined. We just would like to voice our opinions and ask our questions, and not feel like we've done something wrong in doing that.
 
X now consistently means "unknown". By definition, any T5SS surveyed world has a known status and at least E.

I think it's kind of the point of the T5SS to provide a basic data set that fills in the holes; individual refs should be encouraged to conceal and/or change the information, as is done in adventures such as Leviathan.

With respect to the X-ports, many of us come off the Classic CT model, where X had a known status as well: it meant no starport, nothing, nada, not so much as a cleared spot where you could be sure you weren't about to find your landing legs collapsing into an underground cave - in fact, there might well be someone there actively trying to keep you from landing. That apparently is no longer the case.

Those nice red rings should still tell us where your landing might just be opposed, and the E designation is close enough to the old X = Nada to serve. The new format does allow better ability to capture such oddities as Victoria and Shionthy, which are presented as having some sort of interstellar traffic and yet have clear zones where you are not supposed to go. However, I would have enjoyed a bit more discussion about the thinking that went behind the decision to change - and what is on page 432?
 
Well said, Carlobrand.

I think we're all on the same side here too.

I think the X port modification has some interesting positive effects giving more control to the ref.
 
I don't know about that, I'm trying a bit of humor not intended to be harsh on any individual. Really, it's a matter of asking the big questions first and not last. What is the end goal? What does the 3I really look like? How does the Navy function? If we don't set baselines there will always be unrealistic situations. Modern Earth comparison don't always work.

I think every iteration of a re-build has been bias in some fashion (not suggested as negative). Simply, explained Marc wants an interesting environment not bland, boring with cute robots. Everyone has their own take on what that means and works it into their TU. If we don't alter basic world stats for the new rule sets then we accidentally change things that matter (basic canon). There must be a baseline that supports basic canon. If one large item changes by accident (Deneb as a functional capital, Corridor Depot as a military threat to the Vargr and Zho, etc.) then dozens of products loose validity.

I'm just frustrated and undoubtedly not expressing it well.

From my stance, it's TPTB who continually alter the setting with nearly every new publication. I want verisimilitude and feel a continuation of setting is better than constant change.

Add in that with the advent of the "strong central" 3I that much prior setting went out the airlock without a vac suit. Toss in every IN ship, EVER, worked up is either impossible under TPTB rules, or just ridiculous in it's design for military action under, again, TPTB rules. And TPTB both wrote the rules, then pompty ignored them. (HG2/Fighting Ships)

Hence the constant arguments of "setting vs rules". The truth is both the setting, and the rules, are in constant flux. Neither ever really supports the other.

IF, and I say IF, Marc would release CT for further development, many here on CotI could, and I believe would, take up where CT left off, revise a few things that need it, and go with a consistent setting. At that point I believe LBBs would be well written and happily be purchased by many, and profitably, for both FFE and the various writers.

My thought would be a "board" who would vet new works for verisimilitude and canon. I can think of 6 or 8 right now who I believe would be both interested in the project, and capable.

As it stands, one must wonder with T5 and Mongoose, which is going to go the distance and just what canon is going to be a retcon, and what will stick around.

Is it not a fair question to ask just who is in charge and where Traveller is really going? Marc or Matt or are both going to "do their own thing" whatever it might be?

Though Hams has adopted it, I believe it was Marc who coined it:

"It also has to make sense."

Isn't it about time it did?
 
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I'm just frustrated and undoubtedly not expressing it well.
... I want verisimilitude and feel a continuation of setting is better than constant change.

Add in that with the advent of the "strong central" 3I ...
Hence the constant arguments of "setting vs rules". ... IF, Marc would release CT for further development, many here on CotI could, and I believe would, take up where CT left off, revise a few things that need it, and go with a consistent setting. ...
My thought would be a "board" who would vet new works for verisimilitude and canon. I can think of 6 or 8 right now who I believe would be both interested in the project, and capable.
...
Is it not a fair question to ask just who is in charge and where Traveller is really going? Marc or Matt or are both going to "do their own thing" whatever it might be?

"It also has to make sense."

Isn't about time it did?

I feel your pain. For over two years I have been assisting, I thought, in a constructive improvement to Traveller.

There is a good reason many build up their own background and build their own universe, client states, etc. After all, Known Space is pretty broken.
Having a ready-made universe is a convenience and simplifies refing. The amount of time put into netcon would've built an entire domain. We really don't need a committee. We need basic "do/don't" rules for what changes can be suggested.

Some changes being taken are dramatic. Lowering TL, starport type should be a big "no no". Raising pop, Starport, TL, or even Gov't types are flexible "one off" items. I think the X starport change works fine. But it is different, i agree.

Also, I have no problem with minor changes to borders. Border Worlds, IMTU, was a brief historic entity gobbled up by SW. SW needs to be big enough to be annoying, but downplaying it as a backwater interstellar community is boring. However, if we took a poll would anyone say "I use Border Worlds"?
 
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X now consistently means "unknown". By definition, any T5SS surveyed world has a known status and at least E.
That seems to me to reduce the usefulness of the starport class a bit. Only a tiny bit, but still...

With that definition there aren't going to be an Class X starports in Charted Space (by definition). And as soon as the PCs visit a world with a Class X starport, it automatically changes to a Class E. You also lose the difference between 'a flat bit of bedrock with a beacon' and 'nothing at all'.

IMTU I have long made use of the question mark for unknown parts of an UWP. Many interdicted worlds have 'X-NNN???-?'1 (Because my Scouts don't reveal social details about protected worlds).

1 Where 'N' are digits indicating size, atmosphere, and hydrography.

A completely unknown world would simply have ?-??????-?, but it's been many centuries since there have been any of those witin range of the Imperium.

I don't see any point in this change. I don't see any great harm either, but I do see some small harm.


Hans
 
That seems to me to reduce the usefulness of the starport class a bit. Only a tiny bit, but still...

With that definition there aren't going to be an Class X starports in Charted Space (by definition). And as soon as the PCs visit a world with a Class X starport, it automatically changes to a Class E. You also lose the difference between 'a flat bit of bedrock with a beacon' and 'nothing at all'.
[snip]
I don't see any point in this change. I don't see any great harm either, but I do see some small harm.


Hans
I see a significant loss in that change -

Under the old system - port code X means there's no particular place on world anyone is expecting a ship to land. Port code E (Marked spot of bedrock and/or beacon in a field or lake) is a place people expect to see ships land; if you go there, people will tend to notice.

Under the new system, X could be anything from E to A, but there's no telling whether an E is "No port" or "no facilities at the nominal port".
 
I see a significant loss in that change -

Under the old system - port code X means there's no particular place on world anyone is expecting a ship to land. Port code E (Marked spot of bedrock and/or beacon in a field or lake) is a place people expect to see ships land; if you go there, people will tend to notice.

Under the new system, X could be anything from E to A, but there's no telling whether an E is "No port" or "no facilities at the nominal port".
We agree that there is a loss, even if we disagree on how great it is. IMO the difference between the frontier starport and no starport at all will be covered by the red zone classification in most cases. But great or small, it's unnecessary, there's no corresponding gain that couldn't be equally well served by the use of a question mark.


Hans
 
There were several reasons for getting rid of the old meaning of an X starport, and compatibility with the meaning of X everywhere else in the T5 ruleset was probably the last reason for the change.

The first reason was that X often did have a real value, but you had to interpret the world description to try and figure out what it might be. For example, worlds that were quarantined but High Tech -- certainly should have a better starport. There were other reasons as well, the confusion with "no starport", for example.

E effectively means "find your own place to land" or "the last guy here put a beacon" up, but even that was often NOT the case on reading the world descriptions.

Yes, it's an errata, and yes, we really need an update.

And I believe that EVERY old X kept it's red zone. If you find one that didn't, that would need a fix.
 
Just was sent an excellent question...

So what do I think would need a fix?

If a world UWP changed in an odd way: the old TL was legal, but we changed it (some worlds did get TLs changed, but rare; Regina is an example). Size problems are generally deliberate (some people liked size 2 worlds with Dense atmospheres!). We did check every UWP for "legality"; that means that the ATM and HYD were compared to SIZ, and to keep trade codes from changing, we changed the SIZ. We compared GOV to POP, and LAW to GOV, and then verified TLs.

In some sectors where the data was odd, we implemented fixes. This generally meant boosting some worlds to make the Imperium overall more in line with Marc's vision. Yes, people used to throw together a random generator and create UWPs, and bam, there was a sector. But this meant that they certainly didn't match up well with the Marches or Solomani Rim. There's a reason why the Solomani Rim is different from other sectors. If you look at populations, there are more people in 1105 now.

Now, if you're looking at old raw UWPs and they don't match up, that's not an error. But if you've got a published adventure with a system description that doesn't match up, THAT I want to know about.

And fixing the W values is on the list, but near the bottom. It does need to be done though.
 
I was also asked, what's next?

Marc asked for Aslan sectors next; that's in progress. After that, the Julian sectors are likely. The old 'land grab' sectors spinward of the Marches are after that, except for Foreven, which is off-limits. Any licensee requests would come before those efforts (aka, Mongoose books); I can't reveal what those are, but there are some T5SS development sectors. We MIGHT build a T5 Foreven blank, so it fits in with the rest.

At that point, I suspect we'll start working on the rules for moving the data back and forth to other datasets. The old T5SS Marches data on COTI has the draft data for M1065, M1115, M1202 and M1248. Not to mention actually moving forward, as per the T5 timeline.

The T5SS isn't a small or short project. It was envisioned as a path for FFE giving solid OTU data to all licensees and trying to make a shot at internal consistency. And I knew at the start that it would involve several pairs of flame-resistant underwear.

IF you find problems and want my attention, I've given my e-mail out before: don.mckinney@gmail.com. Marc's is marc@farfuture.net. We're not hiding, and we're not making changes in secret. The whole point of giving the data to travellermap.com was so they would be public.
 
Q: What is T5 Page 432 ?

Hello

Q: What is T5 Page 432 ?
A: On page 432 there are the basic worldgeneration tables, where
you can read that there are starports type X in T5 rules.

STAR PORTS ON THE MAINWORLD
2D | Type | Quality | Yards |
2..4 | A | Excellent | can build Starships |
5..6 | B | Good | can build Spacecraft |
7..8 | C | Routine | No |
9 | D | Poor | |
10..11 | E | Frontier | |
12 | X | None | No |

But that does not mean that in T5SS are starports type X automatically.

I admit that I would really appreachiate if there will be starports type X left.
Do not clean up to much - do not forget to spare the wilderness.
Perhaps outside the imperium they should be left untouched.

Greetings
MCutter
-------------------------------------------

CT Worlds in the Spinwardmarches with starport type X

NAME xxyy PSAHPGL T
Grant 1607 X664100 0
Pscias 2106 X355423 1
Shionthy 2306 X000742 8
Algine 2308 X766977 4
Corfu 2602 X895674 8
Zykoca 3004 X994542 6
Lewis 3107 X427402 D
Zeta 2 0919 X6B0000 0
Asgard 1519 X3437C7 2
Victoria 1817 X697772 2
Ylaven 1916 X587552 4
Sonthert 1918 X6266AB 3
Gerome 2818 X573000 0
457-973 3019 X372215 4
Huderu 3114 X575000 0
494-908 0625 X893000 0
Torment 0721 X233231 4
Penkwar 2128 X978310 1
Gorram 2322 X554220 0
Nirton 1332 X600000 0
Zephyr 3138 X89556A 3
 
I greatly appreciate all of the hard work that is being put into this very worthwhile project, but I think the effort is being hurt by a lack of a clear mission statement from FFE or description of guiding principles. Or heck, even a decent explanation of what the T5SS even is. The very name is confusing. ("I thought the Second Survey was published in 1065? Why is the data listed as 1105?")

What little I know I have picked up, piece by piece, by hanging around here, the wiki, and the Traveller Map site. As an experiment, imagine you are walking into this thread completely cold, having been out of Traveller for 5 years. Google "T5 Second Survey." On my first page of results there's a useful blurb on Joshua's blog, and some helpful background on the wiki, and then there's not much else. There's a lot of important information from Don here in various threads, but you'd have to do a lot of reading to string them all together.

So we have all of this new data being rolled out for public review, but without a detailed explanation of why things are being changed it's hard for the public to know what is a helpful comment and what is just rehashing old and painful discussions. I suspect this creates a lot of frustration for people on both sides of the comments.
 
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