Mongoose's New IP: Traveller is BACK

[Jack of Shadows]

Well,

This will capture my attention only if they bring Traveller into the 21st Century. My biggest beef is that no edition has tried to increase the tech base from the 1970's sci-fi paradigms it was conceived under. Half of the tech is already inferior under today's technology. I love the idea of Traveller's steam tramping across the stars but starships run by computers the size of a storage room with less processing power than my cellphone just don't cut it.

What I'd really like to see is a Traveller which is influenced by writers like David Weber, Richard Morgan and Peter Hamilton. Not writers like Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, and Robert Heinlein (not that these guys aren't great writers).

The only system that seems to have latched onto the 21st century writers is Transhuman Space. Unfortunately it's GURPS which is an engine I'm not all that fond of.

Wow, that turned into a bit of a rant. Sorry about that.

Jack

 

[Ed_Laprade]

This is based on Classic Traveller? Bah! Who (besides Pogre and Painandgreed) wants a system where you roll up your character, only to have him die just before you get to play him? And yeah, I remember that complaint about Traveller computers... from the mid 80s!

 

[Particle_Man]

Well,

This will capture my attention only if they bring Traveller into the 21st Century. My biggest beef is that no edition has tried to increase the tech base from the 1970's sci-fi paradigms it was conceived under. Half of the tech is already inferior under today's technology. I love the idea of Traveller's steam tramping across the stars but starships run by computers the size of a storage room with less processing power than my cellphone just don't cut it.

Wouldn't that just require a change in numbers, or adding some nonsense measurement unit, like "Terawumps"? Maybe hyperdrive takes so very much processing power that you need to use that much space just for computer processing?

 

[coyote6]

I love the idea of Traveller's steam tramping across the stars but starships run by computers the size of a storage room with less processing power than my cellphone just don't cut it.

IIRC, GURPS Traveller used the standard GURPS computer rules (edit: minus AI & the like), which meant, while perhaps not terrifically ultra-tech, the computers were better than room-sized cell phone processors.

 

[Psion]

I love the idea of Traveller's steam tramping across the stars but starships run by computers the size of a storage room with less processing power than my cellphone just don't cut it.

I've always considered that take terribly naive. What you think of a computer probably has little correlation to what would be required of computing systems on a ship.

In my day job, I work on a specialized system that goes on sea ships has less computing power than the PC you are probably working on right now if your system was made in the last 3 years. But it has numerous specialized peripheral boards to interpret data and interface with other system which make it quite a bit bigger than my laptop or desktop. I suspect that a starship computer would be composed of numerous such specialized systems, many of which cannot be reasonably combined or subjected to Moore's law. If you think you can run a starship with your cell phone, I suspect you have another thing coming.

 

[rgard]

If you think you can run a starship with your cell phone, I suspect you have another thing coming.

Sig worthy!

 

[Jack of Shadows]

I've always considered that take terribly naive. What you think of a computer probably has little correlation to what would be required of computing systems on a ship.

In my day job, I work on a specialized system that goes on sea ships has less computing power than the PC you are probably working on right now if your system was made in the last 3 years. But it has numerous specialized peripheral boards to interpret data and interface with other system which make it quite a bit bigger than my laptop or desktop. I suspect that a starship computer would be composed of numerous such specialized systems, many of which cannot be reasonably combined or subjected to Moore's law. If you think you can run a starship with your cell phone, I suspect you have another thing coming.

Sorry,

Folks are mis-understanding my post. Wasn't complaining about the size of the computer but rather the processing power said computers had. The details in the rules gave real world measurements which are VASTLY behind the curve of conventional computing. Would a FTL processor be large, hell yes. Would I need to worry about how much space my word processor takes up on it's storage device, not bloody likely.

Jack

 

[Jack of Shadows]

If you think you can run a starship with your cell phone, I suspect you have another thing coming.

My cell phone has universal roaming. (Sorry, couldn't resist)

Jack

 

[Flynn]

This is based on Classic Traveller? Bah! Who (besides Pogre and Painandgreed) wants a system where you roll up your character, only to have him die just before you get to play him? And yeah, I remember that complaint about Traveller computers... from the mid 80s!

Me! I want it! Pick me! Oooo, ooo, ooo, I wanna play!

Keep On Travellin',
Flynn

 

[SWBaxter]

Folks are mis-understanding my post. Wasn't complaining about the size of the computer but rather the processing power said computers had. The details in the rules gave real world measurements which are VASTLY behind the curve of conventional computing.

No such details are given for starship computers (I've got Book 2 open in front of me right now to check), all space requirements for programs are abstract. There's no mention of a hand computer's capacity in the equipment list, either. There may have been a throwaway line in one of the adventures or other supplements, but not in the basic rules. While it's not unreasonable to assume that Marc Miller failed to predict the growth in computing power - he's hardly alone in that respect - Traveller shipboard computers mostly do things that are hard to compare to real-world computing capacities, so IMHO it's not a big deal that their sizes are pretty arbitrary.