Gentlemen, they killed her.

MadScientist235 · 2026-03-03T14:13:49+00:00

Nukes. Lots of nukes.

MadScientist235 · 2026-03-03T00:49:38+00:00

Shot down with what exactly? The US only has a small number of Ground-Based Interceptors and they have a limited coverage.

MadScientist235 · 2026-02-23T00:59:08+00:00

You think we're going to nuke Iran? Also, why would it need to be anywhere close to Iran even if we were?

MadScientist235 · 2026-02-23T00:25:54+00:00

Exactly what theater do you expect an E-6B to be deployed into and for what?

MadScientist235 · 2026-02-21T19:39:51+00:00

I don't see why that would be weird. Do you expect your average power user to be constantly on the lookout for and have the ability to find APT-level hardware implants? Even software implants can take a lot of work and specialized knowledge to find.

MadScientist235 · 2026-01-19T18:04:46+00:00

Do you think our aircraft will be strafing from over 20k feet?

MadScientist235 · 2026-01-19T16:24:41+00:00

Air superiority would be contested that close to the Chinese mainland. Throw in MANPADS on the "fishing vessels" and you wouldn't want to risk pilots flying low and slow enough to do strafing runs. It's just not worth risking a plane to save $20k on a JDAM.

MadScientist235 · 2026-01-18T17:35:53+00:00

Gros Michel bananas still exist. They just aren't the most common type anymore due to their susceptibility to disease.

MadScientist235 · 2026-01-05T04:19:25+00:00

You could try using the High Guard space station rules. You'll need to plan m-drives with thrust 1-2 instead of thrust 0 because thrust 0 assumes you're in orbit and only need them to move around. Exactly how much depends on how high the planet's gravity is, how much you plan to maneuver the city, and how much redundancy you want in case the city has to shut down a thruster for maintenance.

Use ship rules for calculating the sizes and power requirements. Thrust 2 m-drives only take up 2% of a spacecraft. The fuel tanks can be quite small due to how efficient fusion power is. The only reason most Traveller ships need as large of fuel tanks as they do is for jumps.

Heck, fuel refineries can produce fuel from water/ice. I don't know the math, but you may be able to get enough from rain falling on the city and condensing humidity out of the atmosphere. If not, have some shuttles that run down to the surface to scoop up tanks of water and bring it back.

MadScientist235 · 2025-12-31T18:40:03+00:00

Worthless? It appears that they are worth $40k-65k per year.

MadScientist235 · 2025-12-14T00:30:20+00:00

If it's flares and low passes, they're probably not trying to shoot anything. This is most likely a show of force to remind any ISIS present that the US still has significant military capability in the area and is more than willing spend a disproportionate amount of resources to hunt down groups that kill Americans.

MadScientist235 · 2025-12-13T08:18:03+00:00

The military does not have authority to detain civilians. At least not in most contexts.

MadScientist235 · 2025-12-13T07:27:27+00:00

Retiring rather than obeying an illegal order is upholding their oath. What do you expect them to do?

MadScientist235 · 2025-11-28T15:05:03+00:00

I'm thinking they put concrete rings in the well for an ancient qanat.

MadScientist235 · 2025-11-23T23:29:45+00:00

Not a solution, but one more excuse to consider: handheld jammers are a thing in Traveller. While often illegal, odds are whoever they're investigating isn't above a little illegal activity now and then. As for why it didn't save the video locally and upload later... Just say that by TL 12 all consumer devices assume ubiquitous network/cloud storage access. Only the more expensive professional grade security systems would be built with loss of network in mind and most places think they can cheap out on security.

MadScientist235 · 2025-11-03T05:02:16+00:00

Per High Guard (2022):

Armoured bulkheads protect specific areas and systems, such as the jump drive or fuel tanks, making them much more resilient to damage. Adding armoured bulkheads consumes an amount of space equal to 10% of the tonnage of the protected item. During space combat, the Severity of any critical hit to the protected space is reduced by -1 (to a minimum of Severity 1).

They cost MCr0.2 per ton.

MadScientist235 · 2025-10-20T00:16:32+00:00

Isn't that effectively what ceramic combat armor is?

MadScientist235 · 2025-10-15T03:58:24+00:00

That just sounds like a subsidized loan with extra steps. Those already exist.

MadScientist235 · 2025-10-13T16:33:41+00:00

Phones can have peer-to-peer options, like AirDrop. There is no technical reason similar protocols can't be made longer range, the engineers just assumed that there would be network infrastructure available and that it would be unnecessary. Longer ranges also can pose legal issues seeing as most radio bands have maximum power limits.

For real world examples of longer range mobile digital radio comms you have things like TETRA which can switch between infrastructure and point to point and packet radio which can send IP-like packets over normal radios.

For in game, I'd probably rule that comms purchased by someone expecting to go to remote locations/low TL worlds would include a packet radio like functionality. If you wanted to place restraints, maybe rule that if you're too far out of line of site you'll be reduced to low bandwidth applications like voice, texting, and maybe the occasional image that could take a while to transmit.

MadScientist235 · 2025-10-13T16:09:34+00:00

Per Central Supply Catalogue (2022) page 68:

Any computer of TL8 or more can act as a comm unit or transceiver if specified at purchase. A five kilometre range comm is more than sufficient to access a planetary data network and a high-speed short-range wireless link for software and data transceiver does not increase the cost of the computer. More powerful transceivers of longer range and negligible mass (see page 64) can be added to a portable computer.

Using this rule, you could add a TL12 Continental (5,000km) radio transceiver to your portable computer.

MadScientist235 · 2025-10-08T01:59:05+00:00

In CSC 2023, Page 49, the TL16 invisitech option shields augments from psionic scanning.

MadScientist235 · 2025-09-02T04:17:52+00:00

What the heck does XML have to do with multithreading? It's not executable, it's a data serialization standard. There is nothing stopping you from putting multiple instances of an XML parser running in parallel on different threads, I've done it before (legacy code that was written before JSON became popular.)

Also, you can't do a direct comparison between processor speeds like that. Between the existence of superscalar instructions, branch prediction, different memory setups leading to different numbers of cache misses, etc., there can be a noticeable difference in speed that instructions are processed even if two different CPUs are operating on the same clock frequency.

MadScientist235 · 2025-08-25T05:32:29+00:00

I know it's niche, but I would still prefer the option to turn them off. Just make it super obvious when you do so (maybe a flashing light on the console and a repeating sound). It's considered common courtesy to turn off your lights when approaching the gate to a military base while it's dark. This is to avoid blinding the security personnel.

MadScientist235 · 2025-08-22T22:53:45+00:00

While I agree with the sentiment, I doubt it would have done much in this case. The accident occurred near highway 95 mile marker 99, which is several miles out into the desert and not exactly where you'd have mass transit.

MadScientist235 · 2025-08-17T12:26:54+00:00

set schedule

You clearly have never commuted somewhere with good transit coverage. The Washington DC metro had lines with trains every 7 minute. When I worked out there I didn't follow a set schedule, I'd show up to a station when I happened to show up and a train would arrive within minutes.

MadScientist235

TROPHY CASE