2300AD Order of Publication and Management

Traveller: 2300/ 2300/ 2300 AD went through a few changes, and tracking when they occurred can give information. I realised that ISBN's are sequential, and gave us a publication order (see table below). In four cases (in italics below) the publication date is known by the dates on the retained copies at GDW. Challenge magazines etc. give more information. Some dates are approximate, and may be a few months out, but publication order is correct.

Incidently, I have only just realised that the February-March 1990 issue of Challenge was never published. The following issue notes Tim Brown leaving (he moved to TSR) and a major shift in management. 

During the run of 2300 AD, it had four logos (see appendix), but only two trademarks - Traveller: 2300 for the 1st edition and 2300 AD for the second. It had two major line managers, who roughly track with the original and the revision. When launched in late 1986, Tim B. Brown was the line manager, and he remained the line manager for about a year. Lester W. Smith took over during the publication of Mission Arcturus, and rules revisions started to be disseminated in books and Challenge articles, resulting in the new 2300 AD. I should note that Smith was still an undergraduate student at the time.

During Tim Smith's tenure they put out three adventure modules; Energy Curve (December 1986), Kafer Dawn (March 1987) and Beanstalk (May 1987), and was the sole writer of Traveller: 2300 articles for Challenge. Lester Smith has been interviewed about how he came to write Beanstalk and ended up line manager on the back of it. Nyotekundu SB was started during his tenure and finished during Smiths. Star Cruiser and Ships of the French Arm were published in August 1987, towards the end of Brown's tenure. Notably, SotFA has a lower ISBN and so precedes Star Cruiser, but I suspect they were published simulataneously. One more Tim Brown managed project would later come out, and the Tim Brown commissioned Pentapod adventure "Having Seen the Sky" would never appear, but it is useful to get the intention of the writers for the Pentapods.

The Colonial Atlas was not managed by either Tim Brown or Lester Smith. It was a Digest Publications Group authored book and had no strong oversight. Hence it has massive inconsistencies and ignores world generation rules etc. in places. It was, however, put out by GDW themselves. Lester Smith did his best to retcon away some of the mistakes they made, but bloody canon wars occurred on mailing lists etc. over this. I suspect it was published as no 2300 AD work had come out in a long time whilst the revision was being written. It only just preceded the new boxed set.

With the new boxed set out in the summer of 1998 there are many books in quick succession. The Kafer SB and Invasion are near simultaneous, and probably explains why the internal Kafer politics in the two books don't quite line up. Invasion was probably written first, as the adverts for Invasion featured the Traveller:2300 branding.

Bayern is hot on its' heels, but was probably started as a Tim Brown era module which had been delayed (since Tim Brown wrote the original Bayern writeups). It had 2300 AD trademarks, but the internal text and rules were Traveller:2300. Tim Brown is listed as the manager for it, and William Connors was a DGP man. I suspect there may have been a push to bring DGP in to write some stuff, and Bayern and the Colonial Atlas were the result.  

It was quickly followed by the Ground Vehicle Guide (delayed considerably, it had been advertised as forthcoming for six months) and the Equipment Guide. We then have nothing for about six months.

In February 1989, the Earth/Cybertech Sourcebook comes out. This was rather disjointed, and the Earth part was started as a projected series of Challenge articles which would cover Earth, although only the overview and the North America articles came out. I suspect that although Lester Smith is listed as the main writer, he wrote the Cyberpunk bit of the book (24 pages of 96), and the Earth sections were written by the listed coauthors. We know the North American sections were written by Tim Brown. I also suspect that some parts of the Earth had not been written up, notably Europe - France, Britain and Germany all needed at least what Australia and Japan got (4 pages each). In my opinion there should have been a 96 page Earth book, and a separate Cybertech book of at least 48 pages which ideally would be partnered with Deathwatch Program.

In March 1989, Ranger is released, and there would be nothing more for over a year. A release schedule from mid-1989 said Deathwatch Program was stated to be a book of four small cyberpunk adventures (a la Kafer Dawn) and was due in February 1990, with Rotten to the Core due in September 1990. There appears to have been a bit of a crisis at GDW in early 1990, and Deathwatch Program wasn't released until the summer, and was not the four adventures described. It was the last book Lester Smith managed. Smith appears to have had problems juggling writing his MA, Dark Conspiracy and 2300 AD during this period. Who wouldn't?

Rotten to the Core wasn't as originally advertised either. It was supposed to be "the rocking adventures of the Soho Kid..." (Challenge issue 40) and appears to have been another Lester W. Smith project. However, it came out on time, but was instead a sourcebook for Libreville (35 pages) with an short adventure tacked on (22 pages) and the black market rule from Challenge reproduced (6 pages). Julia Martin was listed as both author and manager. She was not a writer, and it is her sole main writer credit. I suspect having advertised the forthcoming adventure, and needing to hit a deadline, GDW tasked her (an associate editor) and Loren Wiseman worked feverishly to generate the content, although I would like to be corrected if I am wrong. It was the last GDW 2300 AD product.

 

Appendix: The Four Logos

The original Traveller: 2300 logo was dropped and the 2300 was zoomed in on. The trademark was still Traveller: 2300. For the revision, a 2300 AD trademark was taken. In the final cyberpunk books, a gold box was placed around the new logo.

 

Tirane: Making it Scientifically Accurate

 Tirane

There are three major problems with Tirane, which is also called Tirene in some early Challenge articles. Essentially, Loren K. Wiseman didn't read the previously established facts about Tirane, and didn't follow the worldbuilding rules. Not following the worldbuilding rules was quite common in the Colonial Atlas, and Tirane was not the worst offender - Kie-Yuma, Nous Voila and King were far worse.

However, post-Colonial Atlas Loren's article was slowly retconned in official books, and, for example, it was confirmed by the time of the Earth/Cybertech SB that neither America nor Australia had a colony on Tirane, but this is ignored by some. However, Tirane is so messed up it has caused controversy as long as I can remember.

Orbit and Temperature

Firstly, it is disputed which orbit Tirane is even in. In the original 1986 boxed set, it is stated that Tirane is the 4th planet in the system (PG, 16), but the CA made it the first of three planets orbiting AC A. Confusion arises in the 2nd edition, when both contradictory facts are presented a few pages apart. Which is it then? It's the fourth planet, because the 2300 Resource places Tirane in an orbit at 1.05 AU, which is beyond the possible scope of the first orbit and consistent with the 4th.

To be clear, system creation rules rolled a d10 for the first orbit, resulting in 0.1 to 0.9 AU or no planets (if a 10 was rolled, it was rerolled the first time and a second 10 ended system generation with no planets). Subsequent orbits were generated by a multiplier generated from another table. The rules were sketchy about whether you rolled once and populated the system, or kept rolling. Scientifically, the former is correct.

Reconstructing putative rolls to get the lowest error gives a roll of 4 (0.3 AU) for the first orbit, and a multiplier of 1.5. Since AC B prevents stable orbits greater than ca. 3.7 AU, there are seven stable orbits, thus:

 

There are not necessarily planets in orbits 5-7, but 1-3 are filled with something, even if only belts. However, the lack of belt mining indicates no belts. Perhaps it is best thought that all the planets beyond Tirane broke up, and the chaotic structure of the system has swept it clean, with significant bombardment per the CA writeup/ 

A distance of 1.05 AU means Tirane gets 138% of the sunlight of Earth, since Alpha Centauri A has a luminosity of 1.5 Sols. This means Tirane is hot. Really hot. The optimal "Earth like" distance for Tirane is around 1.23 AU. At 1.05 AU, Tirane is still in the life zone, but is in the "inner life zone." The average planetary temperature will be 4 degrees C assuming Earth-ish albedo etc., or about 25 degrees C warmer than Earth. This means Tirane is a "polar planet" with an uninhabitable equator, but reasonably habitable poles. The equator is literally a scorched desert, devoid of life. Where the boundaries of habitability are depend very much on the insolation and the axial tilt of the planet.

Sadly, we don't even know the size of Tirane.

Tirane's Size, Density etc.

Assuming the gravity was read off the colony table in the 2nd ed. (as the CA doesn't give a value), Tirane has a 1.01 G surface gravity (but only 0.9 G in the 1st edition. See Nyotekundu SB, page 71). Assuming it was made using the GDW world generation system, and read off the tables, it likely makes a 1.01 G Tirane a 16,000 km diameter, density 0.8 world, which gives it a mass of 1.61 Earths and a MMWR of 5 with a pressure of 0.978 atm.

If 0.9 G surface gravity were used (economically advantagous) then from the tables a 19,000 km diameter, density = 0.6 world fits, but MMWR drops to 4, and so the planet would be a failed core. This could not be colonised.

The two moons given in the CA are "a small ice ball" (Esa) and a distant rocky moonlet. The first problem is that "ice balls" can only exist in the outer system (by the world creation rules). The heat of the star would have caused the moon to loose all volatiles. Instead let's assume it is an icy cored body. Since Esa is defined to be a small moon, it will not produce significant tides, nor vulcanism. This has some interesting effects, but mountains will be rare, and the lack of vulcanism, combined with the low density, will make Tirane relatively mineral poor.

 However, it is notable that Britain and France did exploit mineral production on Tirane, and so there are certainly some lodes. It's just that there will be far fewer mineral deposits on Tirane. However, in the writeup in the CA Tirane has been under heavy bombardment from the asteroids in the system, and the Azanian colony is a mining operation based at one of the Craters (like the British world of Crater). Clearly a lot of metallic asteroids fell on the planet and this probably gives us the raison d'être for the colony. The planet is pockmarked with asteroid craters, and in many of these there will be significant metal resources. These will be mostly in the equitorial desert, creating an interesting society.

The Colonies and History

The Tirane article messed up several colony names, and even identities. It also made every single colony except the French one independent. Later works have retconned them back.

Most notably, the Australian colony of New Canberra was retconned back out of existence in the Earth/Cybertech SB. The history now is that Australia planted a colony in the Japanese claim, and, after negotiation, they gained mineral rights but, as of 2300, New Canberra no longer exists. In all likelyhood, the Australian plantation was absorbed by the Japanese colony. This was, however simply stating both sets of facts - the historical ones from the CA, and the current colony list in the boxed set.

Similarly, the Argentinian colony was confirmed to still exist in the E/CS, and there is no American colony. The British colony is restated to be Wellon, and the ex-German one Garten in the boxed set, but then the names New Albion and Freihaven are later given. The boxed set said (after the CA) that the American colony was "nearly extinct."

The colonial population is nonsensical, since it would require the plantation of hundreds of millions of humans on Tirane > 100 years prior to reach 1.05 billion. The generally recognised fix is to divide populations by 10. This still requires massive emigration on a scale not seen on other worlds.

The "core" status relates to the average resident having the basic amenities of Earth like indoor toilets. In other colonies, the major cities will be something like a city on Earth, and are classified as "core." The core world status of Tirane simply indicates the majority live with flushing toilets etc. See Beanstalk for the development of BCV-4, only a few decades younger and the richest colony planet. It has a mix of high-tech cities (counted as "core"), but outside toilets and no sewers in places (counted as "frontier).

Given what we have determined about the physical nature of Tirane, it is likely the major population centres are in the northern and southern temperate zones (i.e. average temperature from 0 to 20 degrees c). The temperatures are approximately as follows.

We can make Dave Malesevich's map work. We just need to adjust things slightly.

 

Making Dave Malesevich's Map Work

The map of Tirane in Mongoose 2k3 is a modified version of the map drawn by Dave Malesevich, which in turn are modifications of the map drawn by Dan Schirren in 1996. I was one of the people suggesting modifications. Colin further modified it for 2320, stating in December 2004:

The new color map of Tirane is posted to the files section. It has

semi-official status until OK'd by Hunter at QLI. Then it becomes the

real deal for 2320.

It's pretty close to the Tirane project maps, save that it adds

another island near Tirania that is home to Santa Maria, and Enfer is

not empty, but the location of New Albion, the second British colony

on Tirane.

Thus, it has no canon status, and Dave M owns the copyright.

Per LKW's writeup, there are seven continents mentioned in the CA. Incidently, one of my contributions to the DM map was to point out that DS's map had too many continents. There was then an argument about deleting the continent of Enfer (named by me) and it simply got downsized.

So, taking the geography of Dave M.'s map, the approximate temperature zones are:

There is are two large uninhabitable islands, one of which is New Albion. The north of the ESA continent and the north of Amatersau, and the south of Santa Maria (replacing the non-existent Tirania) are pretty uninhabitable, being way into the death zone.

The Colonies of Tirane

The colonial populations are untenable, and the generally agreed fix is to knock off a zero (the same for Nibelungen). In order of initial settlement, the seven colonies of Tirane are: 

Provence Nouveau (French, 23.9 million) is the original Human colony landed on the southern shore of the ESA continent. It covers about 140,000 sq. km of inhabited area in the temperate to near desert zones (i.e. the size of the state of New York) and lays claim to about 220,000 sq. km of death zone land, upto the Tiranian Alpes (excluding Tundukubwa), which are the site of many mining camps.

Garten (French affiliate, ex-German, 19.5 million) is a satellite of the original ESA settlement allotted to Germany. It consists of the trans-Alpine region of the continent but in practice almost the entire population lives in the 50,000 sq. km fertile Limite River delta region. The Limite River provides an excellent artery to service mining encampments to the north. The whole colony, including the mining region, is about the size of Indiana. Due to French support, Garten was able to avoid occupation by Germany and has declared independence.

Tundukubwa (Azanian, 6.8 million) is the third colony on the ESA continent and is essentially a city-state built to service mining operations in a particularly rich asteroidal crater. It claims about 10,000 sq km 

Wellon (British dominion, 21.2 million) was founded separately from the other ESA colonies, with Britain investing in opening up the northern hemisphere by settling in the New Albion Islands. The main population centres are on the northern islands which only have an area of about 30,000 sq. km and the largest of them, Wellon Island (ca. 20,000 sq. km, capital = Knightsbridge), is about the size of Massachusetts. Further south is the island of New Highlands (ca. 10,000 sq. km) which is well into the desert zone, but cooled by sea currents into being merely tropical and is settled by a few million. Further south the islands of New Scotland (40,000 sq. km) and New Albion (130,000 sq. km) host only mining operations. Wellon is now, like Britain's largest colony of Alicia on Beowulf, a self-governing dominion within the British Empire, and the Imperial Parliament only controls external defence (i.e. there is no Wellon space force), trade (retaining control of the primary orbital port) and foreign relations.

Santa Maria (9.8 million Argentines and 1.8 million Mexicans) is one of the larger colonies, as they got "second pick" after ESA. It is based around Santa Maria bay, and in total is about 150,000 sq. km (about the size of California), although only half of this is habitable, with the rest being mines in the death zone.

Provinca do Brasil (Brazilian, 10.2 million) was claimed by Brazil, but not actively settled until the 2210's (see SotFA, 56). It consists of an island of ca. 70,000 sq. km and a few smaller islands in the southern habitable zone (about the size of Missouri). 

Amaterasu (Japanese, 11.9 million) was the final habitable area on Tirane to be claimed, and the Japanese thus settled it in 2184. The mountainous island of Enfer (ca. 80,000 sq. km, with only about 10,000 sq. km of habitable land) was thus settled, and tantalum was struck. Shortly afterwards the Australians tried to claim it citing a paper claim despite no actual colonisation. Thus resulted in the "1.5th interstellar war" which was quickly settled by negotiation. The Australians renounced their claim in return for a share of the tantalum. This tested the limits of the Melbourne Accords, creating the precedent that no-one could attempt to settle a colony in a reasonable claim, and confirming that actual settlement was need to claim territory (which was the whole point of the accords). There remain some descendents of the Australian settlers in Amatersau.

Additionally, America attempted to settle the unclaimed continent of Tirania in the death zone, but the colonists simply could not survive in such conditions, and the attempt was abandoned. 

A couple of small points follow. 

"Grandseasons"

The change in insolation due to Toliman (AC B) is only about 0.25 degrees C. The borders of the zones shift slightly, but there simply isn't enough insolation to have a major effect. The effect of the grandseasons is thus very mild.

Stutterwarp

All the "early stutterwarp lacked range" was retconned away by the Stutterwarp rewrite under Lester W. Smith. Stutterwaps have always had a 7.7 ly range.

Conclusion

This is really where I was going a quarter of a century ago when the Tirane SB list was started. LKW made some major errors both scientifically, and checking basic facts like what orbit Tirane was in, and what the colonies were. This corrects all that. I know it won't be for everyone.

Could you see on Aurore?

Introduction

Aurore is an interesting planet with some odd orbital dynamics etc. It receives most of its' heat from the brown dwarf it orbits, but essentially no visible light. Tithonus looks like a dull, cherry red stretched disk in the sky, but radiates so little visible light that it is practically none.

Visible light comes from Muphred, a yellow subgiant 6.5 AU away. However, that light is weak compared to Earth. The orbital period around Tithonus creates a 61 standard hour day.

Aurore is tidally locked. It's rotation period around it's axis and it's rotation period around Tithonus are the same. However, there is a slight axial tilt (given as 1 degree) and thus Aurore librates. It sort of wobbles, and I will ignore some minor effects of this.

To compare, on Earth: 

• Strong direct sunlight at equator: 100,000 lux
• Overcast day: 400 lux
• Moonlit night: 1 lux
• Moonless night 0.002 lux

There are three sources of light on Aurore. 

1. Direct Illumination from Tithonus 

Tithonus gives an insolation of 78% of Sol (assuming emissivity = 1)*, but it is almost all infrared. For Sol, a little over half the light is in the visible spectrum (52-55%), but for Tithonus only ca. 0.01% of the light is in the visible spectrum, almost all a dull red. Tithonus gives 0.016% of the visible light of Sol. This gives a light level of about 16 lux, assuming no clouds etc. standing at the hot pole of Aurore.

However, neither colony is at the hot pole.

Aurore and Tanstaafl are in the twilight region of the hot face. They'll be getting in the region of 2 mLux of red light. This is about the same as a moonless night.

Novoa Kiev is over the terminator, and cannot see Tithonus. If there is airglow, it might be the same illumination level as an overcast moonless night (< 2 ulux), but without airglow it is pitch black.

However, Human eyes would be using rods at this light level, and rods essentially do not respond to red light. In both settlement regions, Humans would be functionally blind at night. Completely blind. 

2. Direct Illumination from Muphred 

Muphred is the other major light source, being a bright yellow star 5.85 AU (+/- 0.22 AU) away. It averages 19% of Sol's insolation, but ranges from ca. 17.6 to 20.5% depending on the time of the year. Rubis can be ignored as it is so weak.

A little more of Muphred's light is visible as it is a hotter star than Sol. Say 60% is visible (which I didn't calculate). Say Muphred gives 20% of the visible light of Sol in daylight. At midday you'd get about 20 kLux without clouds, or a typical overcast day. With clouds the light would be dim, but cones would still function. It would like being in a dimly lit room.

Around dawn and dusk it would be closer to a moonlit night.

3. Reflected Light off Tithonus from Muphred

The last night source worth considering is reflected light from Muphred off Tithonus. The albedo of a brown dwarf is ca. 0.1, and so about 10% of the light that strikes Tithonus will be reflected back. This is similar to the moon (0.12 at full moon). Tithonus is 74 times the diameter of the moon and thus reflects ca. 5,500 times more light. However, Aurore orbits 2.42 times the distance of the moon. Very roughly, reflected light will be ca. 12.5 greater than Earth's moonlight. It will be yellow-white light.

The upshot is that reflected light will be quite strong during conjunction (when Aurore is between Muphred and Tithonus, which is midnight with repect to Muphred), maybe giving ca. 10 lux of illumination at the hot pole. This would be on the order of twilight on a clear day. However, the colonies aren't at the hot pole. Novoa Kiev would never see this, being on the dark side of the terminator. Aurore and Tanstaafl would get about 1 lux of white light around "midnight," being equivalent to a full moon.

The Auroran Day-Light Cycle

GDW's Aurore has a 61 hour day.** Since the colonies are tide-locked, and on different sides of the terminator, the effects are different. Auroran midday is taken as Aurore being in opposition with respect to Muphred, and midnight as conjunction. The Aurore SB (page 37) gives the normal pattern of an Auroran day, noting that a local hour is 60 minutes and 51 seconds long, and so they work 60 local hours per day.  

In Novoa Kiev it is basically pitch black for 30 h at a stretch. NK is over the terminator and so they don't get much light from Tithonus either. Passive night-vision simply does not work in NK, and active illumination or thermals are needed to operate at night. 

In Aurore and Tithonus, there is still some near infra-red and so Kafers can see perfectly well and PNG's will work. Reflected starlight becomes significant towards midnight, and the night is more like a Terran moonlit light rather than pitch black. Operating at night is more like on Earth.

So, could you see? Yes, but not that well during the daytime. At night, Novoa Kiev is pitch black, whereas on the other side of the planet they get a little moonshine.

 

* Emissivity is probably closer to 0.5, but 1 is the assumption used. Both work but shifts the habitable band of Aurore slightly.

** Colin Dunn has changed this in his universe to 9.5 days. We ignore it as a clear error-of-fact.