What does Engineering look like? Freelance Traveller 04 Sep 2014 22:28 UTC
(Side note: I suspect that something got jammed up at the Freelance Traveller mail server; the 'missing' messages came back to me in one swell foop. Only it wasn't so swell that they didn't come in "on time". Seems to be OK now, though.) In "classical" Traveller (i.e., the Third Imperium and 'compatible' settings), ships are allocated engineering space, and on deck plans the various 'drives' are roughed in as very irregular shapes. However, with the sort of miniaturization of electronic components that we can do even today, about the only thing that causes irregular shape is _mechanical_ connection or interfacing. If controls are electronic, they can be managed by a touch-screen arrangement, much like on /Star Trek: The Next Generation/ or /Deep Space Nine/ or /Voyager/. So, if I walk in to Engineering on e.g., an Empress Marava or a Beowulf, what am I going to see? Will I see grey, blue, white, purple, etc., boxes with consoles attached? Or will I see something that looks like steampunk updated to the 1970s? Or will I see something like Engineering on one or another of the Star Trek franchises? (Ulterior motive: At some point, I want to build a Traveller starship interior using The Sims 2, and then do a "photo tour" for Freelance Traveller. I can fake up a bridge easily enough (there are Star Trek consoles of all sorts downloadable as add-ons), and living areas are essentially trivial, but Engineering is a potential problem.) -- Jeff Zeitlin, Editor Freelance Traveller The Electronic Fan-Supported Traveller® Fanzine and Resource xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com http://www.freelancetraveller.com http://freelancetraveller.downport.com/ ®Traveller is a registered trademark of Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2014. Use of the trademark in this notice and in the referenced materials is not intended to infringe or devalue the trademark. Freelance Traveller extends its thanks to the following enterprises for hosting services: CyberNET Web Hosting (http://www.cyberwebhosting.net) The Traveller Downport (http://www.downport.com)