Miscellaneous Fixes for Traveller

This repair bay contains a number of fixes for Traveller, as suggested by players.

Fixing the MegaTraveller Starship Operator's Manual Deck Plans:

Unknown: "The blueprints for the type A free trader in DGP's Starship Operator's Handbook [sic] have about 750 deck squares, so it is indeed almost twice as large as it should be."
Peter Newman: "As mentioned by several folks already, the easy fix is to treat the grid on that plan as if it were a 1.0 m grid instead of a 1.5 m grid, and apply the TNE deckplan standard of one 2.0 m square (or four 1.0m squares) per ton. The deckplan magically becomes the right size."
Douglas E. Berry: "And <plug> it immediately become perfect for At Close Quarters! </plug>
(Wed, 29 Dec 1999)

The Mainworld Population Question:

Charles E. Gannon:: Notfurnuthin, but... when I was working as GDW's Megatraveller editor (ish 40+?-ish50+?--I think!), I was only one in a long line of "canon-checkers" on the system who assumed that MW Pop-1 = max pop of any secondary world. There wasn't always full accord over the advisability/reality of such a rule, but the assumption ran thusly:

• Mainworld occupies the Habitable Zone
  – therefore, if there was a greenworld in the system it was likely (but not SURE) to be mainworld. (Dense atmospheres, slow rotation rates, low albedo can take a world one band out from the hab zone and produce a greenworld, but the combo is unlikely. Of course then you get into captured planets in fractional orbits and all hell is out for noon recess in terms of predictable algorithmic results).
• Mainworld is most populous and has at least (or is that greatest?) TL in system
  – rationale: if pop, tech, and f&f (flora and fauna) are all in a sort of "forced" superiority in one world (either in terms of their realization or high probability), then it will indeed "feel" like the system's mainworld. It will have better environment, better faciltiies, more diverse components; you get the picture. It will, per force, make everything else look like a backwater by comparison.

I'm sure you all knew, or hypothesized the logic. I'm just saying that, from my contact with the FT staffers/creators at GDW and DGP, the pop/mainworld issue was pretty well canonized according to the equation in Scouts. MT--who knows why it was left out? So many things were (I could tell you stories...). I'd also suggest checking WBH; that was where a lot of world gen oversights were corrected.
(Sat, 25 Mar 2001)