T5 Second Survey
T5 Second Survey is a project that is conducting an ongoing overhaul and clean up of the world and stellar data published primarily in the 1980s and 90s for the Official Traveller Universe (OTU).
This is a meta-story article about game design. For the in-universe article by the same name, please see the Second Survey article.
The data has gone through three primary iterations over several time periods:
Description
This project has several goals:
- Update the astrographic data to the current Traveller 5th edition rules, including the new extensions.
- Address several shortcomings in the generation of the data in previous versions, including stellar data and UWPs.
- Produce a consistent and known set of data for current and future Traveller publishers. All of the Mongoose Traveller books published since 2009 have used this data.
T5 Second Survey adjustments
In order to make the collection of legacy astrographic data more consistent, the project took the approach of overwriting the the previous data if the new changes made sense. The T5SS adjustments to the previous versions of data includes:
- Fixing stellar data to match the current understanding of stars. Specific changes would be:
- Replace the dwarf (D) class stars with M class stars
- Reduce the size of some giant stars (OBAF) to more reasonable sizes (GK)
- Fix the M class stars to a minimum of M4 if the world is habitable
- World generation changes include
- Increase the size of worlds with thin or better atmospheres to match the physics that small worlds can't hold atmospheres.
- Adjust the TLs of all worlds in the Imperium to be a maximum of 15.
- Adjust the TLs and populations of worlds in several sectors to ensure each sector economy falls in a specific range of values.
- Trade code changes would include
- Fix the trade codes to match the rules in the T5 Core Rules
- Add the sophont codes to worlds where they are known
- Add the O: (owned worlds) or Mr notation to worlds that are Gov 6
History of Sector Design for the OTU
Astrographic Data has grown and changed many times over the history of Traveller:
# | Year/s | Design System | Remarks |
---|---|---|---|
1. | 1977 to 1978 | Legacy Astrographic Data (No official maps) |
Traveller started life as an RPG game without a setting or designated star charts.
|
2. | 1979 to 1983 | Legacy Astrographic Data (Pre-Sector) |
The first Traveller star charts were designed as simple dot maps.
|
3. | 1984 to 1994 | Sunbane (AOTI / MT / Dot Map) |
As computer programs grew more sophisticated, better data was created including the well-known Sunbane data set.
|
4. | 1992 to 2004 | Sunbane (Galactic Datasets) |
Sunbane was eventually included as a date set for the early Galactic design software, which could create entire sectors in Galactic File Format.
|
5. | 1998 to Present | T5 Second Survey (Heaven & Earth) |
H&E largely superseded Galactic although many still use that venerable software. |
6. | 2007 to Present | T5 Second Survey (T5SS Updated Datasets) |
T5SS was created as an update to the previous data sets including the most common one, the Sunbane set.
|
History
With the publication of the playtest version of the Traveller 5th edition core rule book (2008), Don McKinney, Robert Eaglestone, along with Marc Miller engaged in a project to collect and update the known astrographic data.
The early work was done by Rob with Dan "Far Trader" Burns, gathering details, supplying and filling in gaps, then Don (with the help of Andrew Ford and Roger Howe, aka "the Australian Specialists") picked up and continued working on the sectors within the Imperium, which was then reviewed by Marc and used for the rewards for the T5 Kickstarter.
Since 2009, most Mongoose Traveller OTU books have been produced using the data from this project.
As of April 2013, this project has all of the sectors with at least two Imperial worlds largely second-draft completed (some details, for example, owning worlds for some captive governments remain undetermined, and smoothing out inconsistencies in the stellar data).
Additionally, Ziafrplians Sector and Gvurrdon Sector have been done as part of the effort to supply baseline data for Mongoose Traveller projects.
Traveller Map serves as the publication source along with and interactive user interface. The T5 Second Survey begins publication to Traveller Map in 2014.
References and contributors
- Traveller Wiki Editorial Team
- Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis) and Master of Sophontology Maksim-Smelchak of the Ministry of Science