Post
Every once in a while I ponder making a website that would manage the Fifth Frontier War. Or any large Traveller conflict.
The trickiest part is the propagation of information. I’d need to track what info each fleet knows about and how old it is.
Not that I should be starting projects for hypothetical games.
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Say a courier ship is sending a message to a distant fleet. The courier would also have an intel file timestamped from when in departed, saying fleet R-5 was in 1910 Regina. Every new system it jumped to it would pick up intel for ships in the system it passes. By the time it reached fleet L-2 in 2124 Lunion, that info might be 6 weeks old. But that’s the best info the Lunion admiral has to go on.
Enemy fleet info would be less detailed, just qty and tonnage.
Lots to ponder.
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@deinol
One of the things I love about the Traveller universe is the relatively slow rate of communication.
Especially as it make wargaming at scale such a tricky proposition. So many things that would normally be considered tactical or operational at most suddenly become strategic in detail - simply because of the difficulty in predicting the disposition of the opposing forces.
Even more than the age of sail, mass fleet operations feature missed opportunities more than encounters. In particular I can see frequent path crossings as forces attempt to intercept, only to end up swapping locations.
For the high command it would be like watching a video game played using RFC1149.
@deinol Fleet L-2 will also have it's recon elements, so they will meet somewhere in the middle for timeliness of information.
हिति , in Nepāl Bhāṣā, is the word for a shared community water tap. Even in modern Newar cities, these ancient structures still pour out fresh mountain water piped through ancient underground filters and conduits. They are a place to wash, to talk, to drink, to meet the locals: a nourishing, refreshing social-ecological place.
