UWP Traveller Tracker

Slow progress, but at least I am now loading the support files. I've expanded the ship class a little, and added at least the lookup to load a sector file.  Not processing it yet...Also the selector for the version (T5, Classic, Mongoose - I have those rule sets).

Traveller Game for Jan 1

We'll probably be playing Sunday, January 1st. Welcoming the new year in with Traveller. This round may curtail some combat, so I need to research that a bit more to see how we want to play it. T5 and abstract range bands, or use BITS Close Combat, or Snapshot....

No matter which way, I'll need character tokens and something to place them on, even if it is just abstract (although I do have my ancient hex mat, just need to get some erasable markers).  I'll probably use Lego minfigs. As I must have a few hundred by now, and enough of the same ones to take sides, that will probably work. I did search for some paper minis which may be an option later on.

And hopefully I'll have time to work on the Traveller tracker a bit more this weekend. I'd like to be able to load in the support files at least, and expand a bit on the various classes.

In the meantime, here's Cyan:

Traveller 3: Tracking our Travellers

I've vaguely resurrected the 7 year old Traveller tracking software. I've got basic functionality in the Win32 version, but I am now re-writing it for UWP - Universal Windows Platform.  Most of the logic will just move over, although I am replacing all the XML with JSON and serializing things - way too much work the older way.

I've got a very basic (and ugly) start going. It can now save off & reload my ship data. Not much shows up on the screen shot below, but getting asynchronous I/O working was (as always) harder than expected. I also have the data binding in place, and that seems to work.

So, many steps to go, but the plan is:

1. Expand out the various classes (ship, world, etc)
2. update the regex to handle the new SEC file format (that should be interesting)
3. verify that I can use the TravellerMap APIs (the win32 version used an older version of IE and that was not working; swapped it out for a 3rd party Chrome engine and it worked, but the AP has changed a little since I last used it 7 years ago...)
4. and several more things I've not really thought of

I plan on probably redoing everything that was in the old version, and that let you use, for trade at least, Classic, Mongoose and T5 trade rules/world trade codes.

And I plan on actually getting this into the Windows store - something published is always a good thing to add to my resume! 

And the code is available on GitHub - see my COliver988 account if curious.

Cyan Propoganda Poster

Just trying to think like a xenophobic dictator...

Off to Cyan

Well, despite having a small book of potential adventures, the adventurers are off to Cyan.  As this is an Amber Zone world with a Prison, I small something adventuresome to occur.  I believe I have the deck plans for something that could be a prison transport....

Dr. Boris gets a gun

Using the UWP Gunmaker program I generated the following gun. Then looked around for some SF revolvers.  I should have saved off where I got this image from...

Oai-ko thanks

After helping with the saving of his son, Oia-ko, the ahriy (pride) leader, celebrates with a lavish meal at the Saealin Geki Plantation, and gives a more formal letter of gratitude, as well as a replacement air/raft for the one the dustspice pirates (yes, we can have pirates) took.  The air/raft is from the local Scout base, and is an upgrade from what they had previously.

After the meal, Oia-ko extends an invitation for a hunt: there is a herd of hoioye that are grazing and destroying some prime geki bushes a few hundred kilometers from the plantation.

(Air/raft from Moon Toad Publishing - Pukharra Fast Scout)

Session 4 - on to Romar

Travis goes a-shopping. Unable to purchase normal cargo quantities measured in the dTons, Travis scours the down port for various items he hopes to sell for profit at Romar. After a pleasant evening with the Marquis Juliette Sung Ottowald of Mercactor on her yacht the Bonnie, the crew returns to Le Suroit for what was to be a peaceful evening.

In the morning, one of the two air/rafts was discovered AWOL, checked out by our young and apparently brash Quentin. Not long after the discovery, an Imperial Marine captain contacts the ship, with Quentin in custody. They retrieve the scientist, who is now no longer allowed on Trane. Travis shops and picks up items that may be more valuable at their next port of call, Romar. Among the items are several barrels of water - there is an Artesian Water bar on Romar where imported water goes for high prices, according to the Marquis.

Bidding farewell to Trane, they pilot the lab ship beyond the 100D limit as Travis creates the jump route.  With a flash, they enter jump spaces, lights dimming in the traditional Vilani manner.  The week in jump space goes quietly - Boris has some time to study physics this week, whereas Travis does not manage to successfully study his astrogation texts. We're assuming avarice thoughts occupied his mind this week.

Coming out of jump, they approach Romar. Romar is within the jump shadow of the primary star, so the trip to Romar in normal space takes most of a day.  Upon approaching the planet, there is the equivalent of an amber alert: a troop of Aslan scouts (Tyeyo Aueeah This is the Aslan Explorer Scouts) are missing! While the clan has ground vehicles searching, the addition of flying craft would greatly aid in the search.  Loading one of the air/rafts into the pinnace, the group flies down to 

Arlyehyas to coordinate with the clan.  Quite fortuitously (rolling box cars) Travis spots a couple of shotgun wielding Aslan in a ravine, near the geki bush plantation.  Holding position in the pinnace, he radios back to the command center and Dr Boris.  The air/raft arrives shortly after that, as does the ground vehicles from the clan. They have the clan leader who attempts to parley with what is an illegal dustspice processing camp that the Tyeyo Aueeah managed to run into on their hike. 

Initial parley did not go well as the clan leader got wounded by a shotgun.  Realizing that they had nowhere to go, the dustspice pirates made a deal: the air/raft for the Aslan children.  A quick decision was made, and Dr Boris relinquished the air/raft to the six well armed Aslan.  The children were reunited with their pride and families, and that's where we left off.

Current game

We did not play last weekend - there is always a lot to do in real life.

I'm hoping we'll get together after Thanksgiving this coming up weekend, finish up on Trane and make the jump to Romar.

Here's the link to the current WIP for the Romar guide. Pretty sure Romar is intended as Dune-lite, between the desert world and dustspice...  Romar Guide

Romar - climate map

It's a chilly world.

And after this weekend's Boy Scout backpacker, I'm working on Aslan Scouts. And a lost patrol that our heroes may have to do search & rescue on (fortunately our troop did not get lost despite me being directionally challenged!)

Romar

Romar is next on the flight plan. According to the Wiki (and Behind the Claw, and Mongoose Spinward Marches), Dustspice is harvested there. And there is a large population of Aslan.

So I am starting on the guide next.  A desert world, yet there is a 5% covering of very briny lakes where the geki plant thrives, which is where the dustspice comes from.

I believe I have far too much fun detailing the worlds, and most of the details never actually come into play.

Session 3, wrap up

The Lysani Labs representative made it clear to call the starport and prep for the incoming scientists and crew. Loading them onto the shuttle took a couple of trips, and then, patients in the cargo area, Travis flew gently back to Trane where emergency vehicles were ready to take the survivors to Casphan's hospital.  Getting cleaned up, the crew also went to the hospital via a port grav vehicle, and got checked out to verify there were no ill effects from their experiences other than several bruises.

While there, the lab representative finally arrived from the island where the primary lab was located. Giving profuse thanks, our heroes got a financial reward.  They duly shared the reward amongst the crew, giving more shares for those who went to the Death Ship.

Released from the hospital, they plan to spend a few days enjoying the sites, and perhaps a bit of shopping with their cred sticks filled up.  They were visited with the Imperial Knight in Residence, Sir Craig (another Craig, not me. Really...) who also thanked them for their efforts in halting questionable research in Imperial space.  Who is also keeping an eye on these visitors.

---

So we'll do a bit of site seeing and shopping on the planet while the ship gets restocked and refueled. I've got a few equipment catalogs that they can peruse to see what sort of toys they want to get.  There is an Ancient site on the planet, well guarded, but Quentin (NPC archeologist on board Le Suroit) may really try to visit despite that.  And I'm expecting the Marquis they met on Glisten to show up in her yacht. She may or may not be headed to the same destination as our adventurers.

Then I'll get started on the next planet and detail that out far beyond what they will probably do. While T5 has the MOARN concept (Map Only As Really Needed I think)  the planet detail stuff is my fun thing to do.

Trane, A Guide

Current WIP:  Trane

Session 2, Part1 and Session 3

Our intrepid adventures starting exploring the lab ship, a sister ship to their own. The lights were smashed or working, and the suits were cumbersome.   They found blood-stained floors, the blown up auxiliary lab, and the piles of bedding and tables. Eventually they found one of the scientists on board, Vanessa. With their lights shining, she went beserk due to the combat drugs in her system.  A brief scuffle ensued, but with four against one, they managed to subdue her, and with a tangle net found in the main lab, she was secured.  Immediately afterward they found the walk in freezer, complete with 16 partially eaten bodies hanging up.   Quentin, one of the NPCs, recognizing a former work mate, managed to throw up, but at least not in his helmet.  He stood watch over the scientist, while cleaning up, while the remaining party continued exploring.

Footsteps were heard running to the nearby cargo bay.  Catching the site of feet running up the curvature of the ship, they rushed after the receding boots to find the iris hatch closing behind them.  Cautiously opening the hatch, they call out to the other side, and speak with a somewhat paranoid, tattered crew member.  They subdue him and bring back to the stateroom with the scientist.

With significantly increased caution, they continued to explore the ship, now knowing there were two other survivors who may react badly.  With the dimmed or broken lights, Travis returned to the bridge to see about establishing the emergency lighting. Unfortunately, he ran into Mario, the surviving engineer. Reflexively he shined his lights at the other man, and triggered the beserk reaction. Clubbing the engineer only slowed him down again, and with a couple enhanced punches Travis was out cold. Fortunately, Franklin and Boris were running up the corridor, and with stunner blaster managed to knock out the engineer.  Witht he aid of science fiction smelling salts and the good doctors ministrations, Travis was back on his feet albeitly a tad fuzzy in the head. More tangleweb, and they dragged Mario to be with Vanessa, both getting blindfolded and locked into a stateroom with Quentin, mostly recovered, standing guard.  Returning to the bridge, Travis, having previously checking the security cameras (which were broken) checked the audio.  They heard noises in the second drive pod.  Deciding they needed to rescue the remaining crew, they started traversing back through the ship.  A quick check up the stalk to see if anyone was in the ship's pinnace, and they were outside the drive pod.  The lower deck was empty.  Knowing there was another crew member, the navigator on the upper deck, Travis climbed the ladder and gingerly opened the hatch.  A brief conversation, and the remaining crew member jumps down the hatch, missing Travis but landing a punch on Boris.  Franklin shoots the man with his stunner, but does not knock him out.  Another punch on Boris, and our good doctor is out for the count.  Another stun shot almost takes out the beserk navigator, who manages to take out Franklin who was still a bit dazed from the last encounter.  A good pipe to the rear of the head from Travis manages to finally get the crewman knocked out.

All four of the drugged crew were then locked up in the stateroom as our adventurers, bruised and battered, make contact with Trane below.

Session 2, part 1

210-1104, Glisten, Spinward Marches.

The night before jumping, Dr. Duk-Lyle takes the crew to Banfi Starport to dine and the fabulous restaurant.  This was fine dining to fill up before a week of ship's food.  The restaurant was a fine establishment, with a slowly rotating floor surrounded by aquariums.  In fact, seafood was the speciality, and one could choose items from those same aquariums.  The food was exquisite. Towards the end of the meal, the party noticed some minor altercation between a couple at a nearby table.  Not particularly raucous or loud, there was, nonetheless, a fair amount of arm waving. Ferdinando recognized the two as being the Marquis Juliette Sung Ottowald of Mertcator, and Baron Brigham Fernlucky of New Rome. Both had been in the diplomatic core years before, although neither were currently in public office.

Fernlucky, a foppish younger man, stormed off in a fit of pique, but the Marquis approached the group.  A brief round of introductions, some very expensive chocolate deserts, and she left, with the hopes that they may meet again at Trane, the groups next port of call.

The group travelled back to the ship for a good nights sleep.

211-1104 -> 218-1104, in jump between Glisten and Trane

Travis, using his journeyman astrogation, plotted the jump, and with the traditional dimming of the lights, Le Suroit made a successful transition to jump space. The week passed relatively smoothly. There was a minor incident of interesting smells wafting from the main lab, and the minor calamity of running out of coffee.  Travis was studious in his studies to improve his astrographic skills, whereas Dr. Boris Duk-Lyle was constantly interrupted in his attempt to pursue his physics studies. Being the captain of the ship had a few responsibilities and more paperwork than expected.

218-1104, Trane, Spinward Marches

Travis' jump was successful, and there were near the destination plot points.  After getting cleared with Trane Starport, they approached and made orbit. There were a few other vessels in orbit, mostly traders of various sorts. Ferdinando took down the cargo in the ship's pinnance, and the starport sent up a refueling shuttle to start the refueling process.

One of the ships was another lab ship, leased by Lysani Laboratories. Quentin, one of the scientists on board, had worked for that company years before.  The donwport representative had worked previously with Quentin, and asked for a favor: the ship had not been communicating for the last few days.  Would the crew of Le Suroit be so kind as to visit and check up on them?  Shuttle service at the class C port was limited, and merchants seemed to have priority over a research vessel.

After agreeing, Dr Duk-Lyle, Travis, Quentin and Franklin successfully loaded one of their air/rafts into the pinnance, and took the hour trip over to the other lab ship.  Boris managed not to get sick - he does not have vacc suit nor zero-G.  It was similar to the scene in 2010 when Lithgow was hyperventilating.  Travis clumped along the hull, peering into the ports, and noticed light fixtures had been smashed.  After contacting the downport manager, and getting the access codes, they first attempted to get into the lab via one of the air/raft bays.  Sadly, that bay still had the air/raft clamped inside, and despite 2 tries, Travis, having the smallest vacc suit, could not get past.  Regrouping, they next went to the main lab's cargo port.  That was a successful entry, and the excursion into the new lab started.

Notes

Being close to Halloween, I decided to run Death Station.  And I managed to use the BITS 101 Rendezvous for the restaurant.

So far everyone seems to be having fun - it was 6 before I realized it, and we had to stop the play before completing that particular segment. I was hoping to have some sound affects to make the station a bit more eerie but could not find the web site in time.

Also, so far they have not done any research using the ship's computer, and they left the pinnance just hanging out there, next to an orbiting, rotating ship.  I'll be rolling to see how far off it managed to drift.

Accountants in Space. Or not.

Traveller does have a reputation of being Accounts in Space...as this is a new game, i'm bypassing that part of things in the following manner (this is important as the players have their own ship, and those are expensive to maintain)  But once the Selshor mystery has been solved, then they will have to start looking for ways to keep up the ship.

As for the financial state of things, in character:

The scientists are getting paid either by GLIPS or the Scouts, so for the next few months that is not a financial concern.  The ship supplies (life support, maintenance, etc) will either be handled via the Scout bases on the way, or via the to-be-determined ship's vault that has a stash of credits in it.  Dr Duk-Lyle is the only one with access to the vault, and it does carry significant cash reserves as well as credit sticks.  The crew (Ferdinando, Franklin) are also currently salaried by the Scouts and GLIPS, again for a few months (not sure yet when the contracts will expire, and then you will either offer them a job or find new crew).

Le Suroit

The Lab Ship, your standard 400 ton lab ship, is named Le Suroit.  Part of the supplies in the ship include several lab coats and light cloth jackets.  On the lab coats, the ship  patch is on the left breast, on the jackets on the left shoulder.  The patches are the same except for the border: crew jackets have a red outline and science has blue.

Going through the staterooms, starting next to the bridge.

9 is Travis' room, as he is the pilot and expected to be available.

10 is currently empty; normally the navigator's room.

11 is Dr Duk-Lyle, taking the normal medic's stateroom, as well as being close to the bridge.

12 is Ferdinando's stateroom. On inspection, he has two duty coveralls with the appropriate patches, several sets of formal wear, a few sets of what he calls informal wear yet is expensive and hand tailored.  Also hanging up is his Navy dress blues in a protective bag.

38 is Franklin's stateroom.  His Naval uniform is hanging up as well, but not in a protective bag.  He has a couple of the standard issue ship coveralls, work out clothes, well worn comfortable casual clothes. He also has cloth armor without the ship's insignia, and on closer inspection you can see that it is smart fabric as well, allowing for limited chameleon-like attributes.  He also has a small locked arms case with small body pistol, and hanging on the wall is a rapier.  A case of beer is also sitting in the bottom of his closet.

26 is Purity Truth's stateroom.  Her room is extremely neat, with few personal items.  Her clothing is functional and bland.

27 is Quentin's stateroom. He has various archeological studies scattered about, his clothing, while clean, is somewhat shabby and wrinkled.

29 is Tricia Odonnel's stateroom. She has the usual array of clothing, everything is neatly in it's place. On her desk is the safety manual for Le Suroit, looking well worn. 

30 is currently empty, a standard stateroom with a bunk bed, small desk, and personal fresher.

31 has apparently been converted to a gym: a compact exercise machine takes up most of the space.

Post Game Session 1, part 2

Dr Boris Duk-Lyle has promoted Sir Ferdinando Depallia as second in command, and tasked him with assembling the dossiers of his fellow crew.

Meanwhile, Le Suroit is on-loading additional scientific gear, as well as some Scout cargo.

Lab Ship Notebook

Some metagaming info:  John has mentioned that we may get one more player, so there is plenty of room for more people before we leave at the next session.

Game Session 1

The first gaming session was a bit slow in some ways as we started to explore the characters, and get a feel for what everyone wanted to do.  There are 2 players, and each managed to roll up a character with a ship.  Rather than taking one away, my initial plan for play with a single player borrowed from an adventure I've read about.

Travis, recently mustered out from the Scouts, and Dr. Duk-Lyle, recently retiring from his career at various scientific and medical institutions but most recently from GLIPS (Glisten Institute of Planetary Studies) met in the office of the Scout Director. Alongside was the vice president of GLIPS, with an offer for them both.

GLIPS was to give a lab ship, Le Suroit,  to Dr. Duk-Lak for his years of service and for research.  There were two conditions involved in this: first was the standard contract for returning to Glisten every 18 months to upload any data and research done by the ships crew and scientists. The second was to venture to Selshor, a Red Zone world outside Imperial space, the recover the Katydid, a Scout ship that was lost there.  The official Scout version is that the ship crashed. This contrasts with the story of one of the Scout crew who returned to Glisten believing sabotage was to blame.  The Katydid crashed just six months ago.  Travis will take the Scout as Detached Duty as soon as he can get the ship.

Both accepted the job, and were introduced to Le Suroit, a standard 400 dTon Lab ship. After meeting the crew and the scientists who had also recently boarded, Travis and Franklin headed to Glisten City, to visit the Blue Turtle, a bar Franklin seemed to go to often.  A few drinks later and he was starting to be belligerent to the Naval personnel there; fortunately Travis managed to parley the situation down, and pilot the shuttle back to the lab ship.  In the meantime, Boris was doing any research on the crew and scientists to see if there was going to be any character conflicts or issues he needed to be aware of

Le Suroit:

Travis (John's character) is the lead pilot / astrogator, Dr Duk-Lyle (Thomas' character) is the medic and has basic command over the vessel. There are 2 additional crew members and three scientists on board.

Franklin is the ships gunner, mechanic, security and back up pilot. An ex-Naval officer with a grudge against the Imperial Navy, and cannot apparently hold on to his liquor. A short, young man of 34, he has a relaxed attitude and talks to everyone.

Ferdindando Depallia is a former Naval officer as well, who transferred into the world of diplomacy.  Having a Vilani background as well as coming from noble parents, he is the primary engineer on hand. He has an upper class accent, is always polite, and dresses impeccably. He is also very fond of tradition.

Quenten "IQ" Sotherby is the youngest scientist on board. Seemingly reclusive as he spends a lot of time on his data pad, he can be quite passionate when you get on the subject of archeology.  He entered school after 4 years as a field researcher, he tended to party a bit too much in college.  He did graduate, then joined the Scouts in the Survey branch, and is part of the mission to Selshor.

Purity Truth is the only woman on board, and an Aslan as well. She was the primary investigator at Travis' accident, but is also a scientist, dealing mostly with physics and planetology. She is aloof, has  a low tolerance for light banter, and seems somewhat clumsy.

Dr Francine Occa is the lead planetologist of the science group, and is the Scout to have returned from Selshor.  She went to the Imperial University at Glisten but there was a scandal about a prank gone horribly wrong. She graduated and did 8 years of field research before getting stranded.  She returned, and joined the Scouts, and three years later she crashed on Selshor in the Katydid.

I'll be generating the public NPC dossiers at some point.

MTU - My Traveller Universe

The basics of My Traveller Universe

Pretty much a vanilla clone of the OTU (Original Traveller Universe).

Start date is 1104, a year before the 5th Frontier War, so giving us some play time before anything major happens.

The Imperium is a vast feudal system, mostly harmless, neither good nor bad. Among the 11,000 worlds it controls, some are good, some are evil.  It is still a feudal style system, run by the nobles.  While a few are elevated to nobility for various deeds, most of the actual ruling nobles are hereditary. There are a lot of bureaus and groups in the government, some highly competent, some not so much. Pretty much reflecting our world.

Technology is as per Classic Travaller mostly: the shotguns in space is still a good description. Energy weapons are available at higher tech levels, with varying degrees of power requirements.  There are no force fields, tractor beams, light sabers - this is not Star Trek or Star Wars. Psionics are possible, but I keep with the Imperium's distrust of those with mind powers.  I also use Classic rules for those, so they are not particularly useful.

Everything is still speed of jump: a jump can cover 1-6 parsecs per week.  Larger jumps require larger amounts of fuel: 10% of ship volume per parsec.  So high-jump craft don't have as much space.  Communication between systems is via ships carrying the messages.  The X-Boat route is of more historical than current relevance: while still used, there are enough other ships moving about that sometimes it may be faster via private courier.

I run a small ship universe.  There are big ships out there, but they are not as common. Ships are still expensive, but there are a lot.  I'm leaning towards GURPS Traders for ship traffic - even if they are expensive, they do last a long time. Ships are tough.

Computers and communications are more up to date than Classic - going with Mongoose or T5 rules probably. True Artificial Intelligence starts emerging at TL 14 or so, but until then it is more a very good simulation. Robots are not particularly common or uncommon - not nearly as common as Star Wars, but more of a background sort of thing.  Think of Roombas.

I'm not a gearhead, so I won't be detailing a lot of the ships, vehicles and things out.  While I do like Classic High Guard for ship designs, things will work at the speed of plot for the most part.

Within the Imperium, the credit rules. I've basically a tamper-proof Imperial credit card so that transactions are easier to deal with. Outside the Imperium, credits may or may not be accepted, and cash is king there.  More likely it will be trading goods or services to get things purchased.  So try and plan ahead: you may not be able to eat on the next world unless you bring along cold, hard cash.  Gems, rare metals may not be worth anything either, so some initial research may be needed.

As for languages, most systems speak Anglic. A few die-hards still speak Vilani. Universal translators do exist, and get better at higher tech levels. But only for known languages: a completely unknown language will take time to learn even with machine intelligence. 

Standard aliens (Aslan, Vargr, Droyne, Hivers, K'Kree) are all there, along with a multitude of minor races. This is mostly a human-centric universe, at least in the Imperium.  But strange new worlds are out there.

I'll be using mostly Mongoose 2e rules, with a smattering of T5 things in there.

Refereeing a new game

Looks like I managed to drag John into a game of Traveller. We're using the Mongoose 2e version for character generation, and he survived 1 1/2 terms of being a Scout until a severe injury forced him out of the service. However, he managed to ace his mustering out roll and has a Scout ship on loan.

I'm placing the mustering out at Glisten (link) which is close to the edge of Imperial space.  He will be exploring strange new worlds.

All links to the game I'll try and stick a label (current game) so that if I actually use this blog, any players can keep up.  This will only be public info, so no referee only info.

Here is John's character (which has not yet been named: John

Here is a draft of the ship papers: ISS Scout Ship

And sometime soon I'll generate a brief synopsis of MTU.

Wow. Just realized that this blog, although mostly empty and unread, is almost 10 years old. I've gone through quite a lot in the last ten years, but not enough gaming sadly.

So now I am also a Duke, out of the Solomani Rim. Langelos, to be precise.  So lets take a look at this world I have some domain over.

A4249A6-F

Starport A - we have a magnificent starport, with all the facilities one could wish for. Being TL F, we can produce any starship currently available in the Imperium.

Size 4 - 6,400 km planet, about the size of Mars.  The natural gravity is about 1/3 Imperial normal. Most populated areas have grav plating turned on to help maintain normal strength and growth. However, large indoor parks and recreation areas often do not have this, allowing for interesting sports.

Atmosphere 2 - very thin and tainted. You will need a respirator and a filter to leave the domes and arcologies.  You will last your endurance in minutes outside without these devices, taking a point of endurance per minute.

Hydrographics 4 - 35-45% liquid oceans. What with the atmosphere, I am leaning towards more ice-covered oceans.  Or perhaps a much earlier Mars-like world.

Population 9 - Billions and billions of people. A large labor force for the starport!

Government A - charismatic dictator.  Don't look at me - I'm just the Duke, I don't actually rule the planet. I am known to make suggestions on occasion though.

Law Level 6 - personal firearms are not allowed. most drugs are illegal.

Tech Level F - cream of the crop for technology. That helps with the soaring arcologies, massive bio-domes, and deep water cities that house our billions of residents.

In addition, there is a Naval base out near the gas giant. They have quite the fueling station there as well as a few smaller posts throughout the system.  Some are left over from the old Rim War, and have mere skeleton staffs to maintain the systems.

Travel codes are:

Hi - High Population
Ht - High Technology
In - Industrial

Baron of Ipkur

When I got my BBB (Big Black Book for Traveller 5) it came with some credit card sized Patents of Nobility. One of those was as a baron for Ipkur, in the Remnants Sector of Dagudashaag Sector. This is next to the Core Sector, so well within Imperial borders.

And all I can say is thanks Marc Miller & TravellerMap!

Ipkur: C564543-9

Looking at the world details, we have the following (based on Mongoose Traveller version 1; I'll eventually update to include T5 and probably Mongoose Traveller Edition 2):

Starport C: Routine. Small shipyard, so it can create small craft (shuttles and the like), and do repair work.

Size 5: 5000 kilometers or so in diameter. A bit larger than Mars.  Gravity will be lower unless there is a really heavy core or something.

Atmosphere 6: standard atmosphere, just like Earth basically.

Hydrographics 4: about 40% water.

Population 5: 100,000-999,000 sophonts.

Government 4: Representative Democracy. Ruling functions are performed by elected representatives.

Law Level 3: Heavy weapons, combat drugs, intrusion programs, starships can only land at starports or other designated areas.

Tech Level 9: Pre-stellar. Safe and affordable intra-solar transportation available, grav technology beginning. 

And there is at least 1 gas giant on the map.

So, a relatively low tech level, pastoral planet. A whole half G.

Trade Classificaitons
Ht	High Technology
Ag	Agricultural
Ni	Non-Industrial

So, what to make of this world? Perhaps it is a retirement-centric world, where old military officers go to live a peaceful retirement. So while the general tech level is 9 according to the Traveller Map, yet C according to the interactive atlas (Ipkur) .  I'm going with a mix: the medical facilities are C, we have grav ambulances and emergency vehicles, yet most people prefer wheeled electric and hydrogen powered vehicles.

A large percentage of the population is older, and retired. There is also a large percentage of younger, service-based who are primarily involved in the support of the retirees.

And there is a write up in the Traveller Wiki. I need to look over the sources.  Traveller Wiki Ipkur

Looking back, this blog will be 10 years old this year. Not a lot of articles added, but still, a decade.

I am still hoping to start a local game; I'm going to have to start posting the IMTU assumptions, library entries, etc. Still need to decide even where to start: OTU or roll my own.  So many decisions!

Some progress

Some progress has been made for the UWP. Found out that a tab framework does not exist per se, but the pivot does. Same thing mostly, just caters to a smaller screen. Also finally figured out how to databind the flyout so now double-clicking the summary gives more detail on the ship. Obviously I need a random name generator for the crew, but this is version 0.0.0.2 or so....

So slow...

So the universal program is basically working, just ugly.  Now I am thinking of taking that back end and making an Azure web site from that. While in theory that should be relatively quick, I am slow to get started.

I've also recently purchased RPGSuite's Traveller character generator.  A lot of good things in there, but I am disappointed in the end result. You get some PNGs that are not printer friendly, and the entire history of the character's generation, including career choices, life events, is nowhere to be found.  In theory they leave a JSON file out there, in reality I've not found it.  We are having a conversation about this, and they are planning on better end results. I consider this really a beta at this point - only useful until you actually finish.

And happy 2016!