Distraction: reviewing De Agricultura for a Kids Fantasy TRPG

 I maintain a copy of De Agricultura for sharing. I've updated it and used Askyourpdf to help me review it since I've forgotten everything I learned about it. The only thing I remember is that it's better than Harn Manor, and it probably was the basis of Harn Manor and proof that Taylorism existed much earlier, that Medes and City-states of Mesopotamia in 3000 BCE had already developed these metrics much earlier. 

The starting place for the TRPG is a manor in a frontier territory. Very typical fantasy but with some twists - as a kids TRPG, there are some PG elements like an order of secular social workers that administer these lands - professional bureaucrats who typically offer their competence in return for honoring their social work. Their social work is primarily charity and helping people get back on their feet. Imagine Mohists, Franciscans,  and Buddhists (as a Philosophy and secular - allowing people to have relations and national loyalties). The people who adhere to the Philosophy and identify with it call themselves Anastasian - the order is called Phoenix Dawn (I know its a common order name). Luminaries are the administrators and they maintain many Estates for various Nobles - even competing or nobles. They tend to stay out of politics - unlike the church which requires faith and blind obedience. So the order tries not to be political, and is imperfect (corruption and manipulation exists, as well as abuse of power). Of course - any charitable organization will have their True Believers and their internal Inquisitors (called Auditors). 

As a kid-friendly TRPG - I was reading old TRPG adventures, and it all began with the Murder-Hobo activity - reviewing the old adventures - I realized, wait a minute - there is historical text in what the training for soldiering and operations. Guard Duty, Hunting and Retrieval Tasks, and Exploration and Survival Tasks (traveling to A to B with a map and directions) are already very challenging tasks that don't involve murder-and-looting, and its going to be educational if kids learn some basics knowledge. 

One fo the things I want a TRPG for kids to do is to see the world more as an Adventure. Traveling, Trying new things, and learning they can work with the uncertainty of an RNG of life would be ideal if they play a TRPG. Like any TRPGer dad this is my Nth Attempt to get my kids to play TRPGs. 

So I'm avoiding the huge difference in Social Status for Starting characters - as well as the complexities of such dynamics. all the starting characters are Wards of the order, or one of the many migrating families that have moved to the Manor to help transform the fields, and a bit of background fluff - like those who identify as Anastasians have a duty to expand frontiers - giving to their eldest children enough resources to cultivate a new land - which the order will double and provide servants. Of course its imperfect - some people chose to leave being Anastasians in order to keep their kids from leaving . 

The players will definitely start in a very idealized and exceptional place - and then discover the other Lands and other conditions. making the players acclimate in one area and then learning to acclimate in other areas. As a frontier town, they will be introduced in other cultures and areas. This is one of many side distracting projects - because i was short of money to afford getting my kids the Pathfinder 2e remastered begginer box because of the many expenses that came up: they broke their ipad for school, a friends medical emergency, and my many projects. So reflexively I DIYed it - and anyway I will make the book launch as part of my Mneme Variant Combat rules book - because it will use a majority of the rules of that book to simplify combat and stream line it.  

So there will be just Stat Allocation, a 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 and 5 stat will be assigned. I will simplify the background as they are all wards of the order. Then as for career, they start with the 0 level skills of the career. This is their first term - they basically mustered out already at 16-ish. In the manor there are Mentors who determine the 6 skills at 0 level. Their first Adventure is travel through the Fort into their neighbor's territory, doing a trade escort mission. I wonder what the kids will think of the "Labor Tax" they have to work on projects around the manor for 40 days a year? (this is a very important topic in Philippine history and that of many of the colonized people around the world). 

Back to Basics - BroCode and GPT4o

 What's hard about learning is the time to practice and use it and to use it regularly. My regular job doesn't let me remember my other skills - I'm a former artist, and life and work don't let me practice. The BroCode is one of the best tutorials - straight to the point and very fast. combined with AI its possible to learn this quickly... but still not enough with the free time I have during the week. 

One of the design decisions is that all the rolls will be visible, so it's easy to follow the book and easy to troubleshoot if outcomes are not correctly produced.  

Another design decision is using a static web app is that it will run on your phone, tablet, and desktop. The problem is storage - it cannot store the worlds you produced since browsers can only hold things temporarily. It's possible to export it as a CSV but not import that CSV - I'm still researching a workaround - where it can probably export the HTML. What's important is that world builders can copy and paste the tables easily into their documents or wiki. 

 

Adding more complexity, adding more and more columns. 

Imagine this massive spreadsheet is going to be made to fit a static web app. 

Learning to do HTML and CSS with GPT4o

 So, I'm slowly learning to build a static website. This way it can run on the desktop, phone, tablet, etc...

I am using GPT4o, which is the best, and I tried Gemini Pro, and it kinda sucks... and never can I verify they actually process 1M tokens or all these Multi-Modal claims. Note that GPT4 is 20usd/mo while Gemini is 35usd/mo and I could already use GPT4o - I tried the desktop app but I cant get it to work they only released it in Mac... 

I got it this far. I just learning HTML and CSS first. 

The JS comes later as I have to create checks like - 
Must be Inhabited? 
allow for Habitats or World focus? Note that Habitats are the default way star systems can be colonized with high populations - Habitable worlds (requiring less Habitat Infrastructure) are just the bonus.

I learned how tables are made... and more about CSS. 

There are "Dials" in the Star generation where the user may want a particular star. 

Then there are the ultra-rare displaced Worlds. 

Thank you April and May 2024 Sales!

Thankyou for those who bought - a rare event despite the active campaigning and advertising!  

Added Radius - 

Worlds now have a RADIUS. in an ideal scenario we can give examples (using Vlookup) as to how does it compare to the radius of planets in our solar system and those exoplanets discovered - that will require a lot of manpower - when I get an assistant (WIGAA)  

Dwarf worlds, terrestrial worlds

Gas Giants have Radius.

Radius for Gas Giants is tricky because of the Special and exceedingly rare Type III, IV, and V. The V is the kind that consumed the inner planets to become super dense—giants that have become super dense but not dense enough to start a fusion reaction. Mathematical models—like the simulations on https://universesandbox.com/—model that after >90 Jupiter's worth of mass, fusion occurs, and a brown dwarf emerges. 

This reminds me of playing Star Control II late at night, exploring and losing ships only to reload from save. 

I'll try to continuously improve it - as my real-life work improves, I can have some income to help with additional writing and research. Your contribution all help - it allows me to hire to make a more powerful tool. When I hire - I have to pay both for the work output and the time for the training and ability to follow the science of the staff. Its so funny when - someone like me is giving a lecture of Planetary physics and Ship engineering. 

At the rate of the Advances of AI - I was just trying to get Darling to work to run Chatgpt4o App on Debian - the ability to have an AI work with you side by side as I share a screen will really not just accelerate the Web Apps - but I'm more ambitious about making GODOT apps for the game. 
1) A ship generator with my CC-BY-SA blender assets  

2) A 3D Space Combat MAP tool - a Tool that segments space - so that GMs can run 3D turn based space combat. 
3) A 3D  Space Travel Map Tool - it will do all the calculations and accommodate all the orbital speeds. This way logistics puzzles can be easier to present to players. 

Progress Report - Mneme Rockets - barometric pressure formula

So Chatgpt and Wolfram alpha is helping me with the calculations -
I learned that the barometric pressure formula is what is used to determine at what height is a target atmosphere - in the case of Earth's Satelite Atmosphere its 3.4E-16 atm (or 16 zeroes after the decimal place before 34). As you can see - Strangely Mars's atmosphere is more stable over a height according to the spreadsheet - which I tried to verify step by step. 

Anyway, impact to user: 
1) At what height is "Low Orbit" - based on the lowest point a Satelite can Orbit without experiencing atmospheric drag. Getting to this point is where there is no "Delta-V" penalty because fo atmosphere. 

2) From low Orbit, we get High Orbit. And Orbit are the many interesting places of a world. Jupiters Orbits - because of how massive has hundreds of moons. It can hold thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of MegaTon Habitats. 

So now you know Orbits of  World - not only does the Players have to Travel around the worlds they visit but the Orbits of these worlds. This is where their ship will be getting a lot of use. Jupiter and Saturn as an example could have - between them millions of places to visit - with populations of small countries - and Confederations and Federations as big as our Countries. 

The economy is built around making more space elevators and growing and expanding. 

Delays because of some family emergencies. Congrats to my brother Joben for the birth of his baby girl. 

Radius, Escape Velocity, and Basic Orbital Mechanics

 Because I had the foresight to make Mneme World Generator FIRST, it was much easier to create the basic material for R-Drives.

Those who bought Mneme World Generator will be able to access this sheet and the "Upgrades," where it will now produce the detailed Mass, Density, and Radius. There are many different ways to get the other values. 

I have only scant feedback for World Generator. Feel free to comment on how I can improve and detail it. When I get a writing assistant, I can detail it even more—not just a communications student—I might just get an Engineering student since they will be able to follow a lot of the concepts here.  

Anyway, Gas Worlds (gas Giants) follow the Density averages (they overlap with other types, a Type I and a Type II can have equal or Type I can have a higher density - its just works with a higher average the higher the Type) of the different types of Gas Worlds. So from density, we get Radius, and from the Radius, we can now get Gravity. 

We will cover some VERY BASIC orbital mechanics - and the referees will be able to do the math in their heads - as you can see - you will have the Low and High Orbit of every gravity well. Its just Burn to decelerate or accelerate, then burn to get back to our target orbit. Nicco will make art to make it easier to follow. 

I have to cover this first - I will also make it people have a spreadsheet that can encode the details and all these details will be filled up - even if you don't have Mneme World Generator but want to do models of the kinds of trips you would take. 

I discovered NASA has a 3d model of every Exo-planet in https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/ 

https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/corot-20-b/ is the DENSEST found Gas world - which is puts it denser than earth at 14 tons/m^3. Earth is 5 tons/M^3 as the densest objects in Sol and Jupiter is just  1.3 tons/m^3.   its about 10x denser than Jupiter makes it particularly amazing. 

Some exo planets don't have Mass - so my sample data is not as good as it can be. 

Other than my open-source advocacy work, I am making hard-sci-fi more accessible so that some gamers can run scenarios like their favorite hard-sci-fi with some concessions. If people have to stop you from going over technical details and you have to be mindful of that, then you will probably appreciate the product and the ability to customize it. 

Been doing this since 2021... I guess a significant gain would be by 2031. Especially when I can afford writing assistants to help and when I can hire someone who can make static websites for World Generator and Ship Designer (will use Mneme). 

Mongoose Traveller requests - I have to give away any MGT2e conversions because of the licensing in MGT2e. remember its not Open Gaming License - if anything will be made it will be through Mongoose Publishing (who do a great job BTW, I just want something different and that's a niche that will not affect them). 

Those new to Mneme World Generator

it tries its best to be true to the science and core concepts. It begins with the Star Generation, and the star determines how much mass is orbiting it. Of course there is an upper limit as a more massive star will eat up all the objects around it and only disks will surround it. But from the mass - the odds of dwarf worlds, terrestrial worlds (like Earth, Venus, mercury, and Mars), and Gas and Ice Giants. Now, Gas giants are particular - as on rare occasions, protuberances of passing galaxies can destabilize their orbit that will, resulting in it sliding towards the inner system - and consuming the other planets - hence the much rarer types like III, IV, and V gas worlds. 

Gen 2 Editable PPT Deckplans - Each component is now an ICON.

 This is our GEN-2 Editable PPT Deckplans - 

A radical change, but its familiar depending on our perspective.

While I'm making rules that give CE Rockets and comparable theoretical performance - which limits the delta-V budget to around cap at around 7-10kms, barely enough to escape earth orbit by itself - without the help of Boosters, Sky hooks, and catching a ride on Deep Space Ships that tender. 

Operations have to be overhauled... but that's not a bad thing. I wrote for GURPS, I write procedures as the Management Representative for our ISO, and I implement IT systems - getting many processes to work together and finding out where they run into problems is my whole thing. I am an example of how a System Designer can find work loving the arcane art of Game Systems and Worldbuilding. 

The image of a deep space ship (DSS),with ion thrusters producing 10s of N of thrust per metric ton. Moving megaton ships (our largest container vessels are half a megaton) - decelerating and accelerating for days. Like the ship that rescued The Martian. 

Orbiters are your 100-400DT ships the PCs use Sky hooks, Multi-Stage Boosters, and Inertia banks to slow down to re-enter and launch. Note that a space shuttle orbiter is a 30DT ship. The PC's ships is 10x bigger than the space shuttle. Of course, they are using Air-breathing boosters that switch into Rockets - and a Skyhook swoops in and picks them up to bring them to Low Orbit - where they begin using their fuel. 

The fundamental changes - that orbiters can only use batteries - fuel cells they have fuel occupying 40-60% of their mass is their fuel.  They may not have JUMP capabilities, at least up to the TL9. They have to rely on deep spaceships. 

DDS is needed to travel in interplanetary space with Ion Drives. The high stakes rolls of being able to catch the DSS with the least amount of fuel energy, and damage. The Rolls of Re-entry, where you can damage your ship and complications as you re-enter the atmosphere, plus the logistics planning to acquire boosters or launch vehicle services and sky hook costs 

Only DSS have the fission (and in military and larger ships, fusion power plants). These have 100+ MW power plants to help charge the orbiters and fire their ion thrusters. These have huge accelerator coils and huge planes of Radiation. PCs have to plan which Star system they are going to —it's just the same—it's just that they are jumping with other ships. 

Worlds are a blend of solar punk and cyberpunk - conflicting world views and the middle way. Millions of habitats orbiting gas giants, and the largest Habitat - giving security and citizenship. Giant spinning space elevators plunging to extract and forge materials. 

The time scale is just the jarring thing. Months disappearing - pretty much the experience of most of those of us 40s and up - months passing us by with tons of obligations. Our Pathfinder game is on hiatus because of our GM's family obligations for months- it doesn't bother us because we have so much to do. That's pretty jarring with Anagathics, hibernating sleep, and alternating crew.  PCs wake up to a change of status quo -- how different is it from traveling to different countries? The only "home" is the ship and the crew for decades. 

For when I teach students operating costs - and what are the risks of the requirement of each item. It pretty much gives the PCs the options of what costs they prioritize - and determines what problems they are planning to entertain. Example: If they choose to avoid paying taxes - they believe the benefit outweighs the risks dealing with the government - if they plan to keep salaries low, avoid maintenance, de-prioritize security etc... My experience as someone whose family biz deals with a lot of Gov't projects - and the kind of personalities that conspire to pass the cost to the next sucker (the reason behind my strong Open source and Transparency focused business, why people get CC-BY-SA when they buy our products).

A quick backstory and outline

 

This not only took a while, but you can tell from the extensive comments  it was so hard. and I forgot how the script works - good thing there was AI to help add additional context to the comments I already placed. Imagine If there was AI years ago - I'd be done by now. 

Mneme Rockets and Non-Gravitic Rules

1. Rockets and Non-Gravitic Rules Outline

   1. Why 

   1. Relativistic Bombardment. 

   2. Planetary Perturbation

   2. Impact: 

   1. Extended Travel time. 

   1. Examples  

   2. Adjustments: 

   2. Not enough Fuel. Not enough fuel to escape an earth like gravity. 

   1. Specialized Crafts 

   1. Launch Vehicles

   1. Two-Stage-To-Orbit (TSTO)

   2. Single-Stage-Orbit

   2. Orbiters 

   2. Skyhooks and Interia Banks. based on the Boeing Hypersonic Airplane Space Tether Orbital Launch System mechanics.

   3. Space Elevators.

   4. Jovian forges or Titan Hammers.

   3. Challenges converting another SFTRPG’s mechanics into Rockets. 

   3.  Mechanics 

   1. Saturn-V baseline. 

   1. Why Saturn-V as compared to the space shuttle. 

   1. Compared to the Falcon-Heavy, Space Shuttle Launcher, Soyuz Rocket 

   2. what is significance? 

   2. TL 6 / MNTL 7 mechanics.  

   2. Quick R-Drives for Cepheus Engine and SFTRPGs. 

   1. Chemical Rockets (TL 6)

   2. Reusable Rockets (TL 6.5)

   3. Turbo-Rockets (TL 7)

   4. Nuclear Thermal Rockets (TL7)

   5. Fusion Thermal Rockets (TL 8)

   6. Nuclear Pulse Engines (AKA ORION ENGINES) (TL 8)

   3. Mneme Jump Drives. 

   4. Basic Operating Procedures

   1. Accelerating 

   2. Occupational Safety and Health Basics. 

   1. Operations 

   1. Acceleration

   2. FreeFall

   3. Magnetic Boots

   4. Handholds and Lanyards 

   2. 0G Accommodations and Extended 0G 

   4. MNEME SHIP DESIGN

   1. Included is the early draft of the Mneme Ship Design Rules - 

   2. A spreadsheet: with All the Ships in CE made in MNEME Ship design rules. All the ships in Mneme Space Combat are to have rocket stats.  The ability to build ships quickly.

   3. JPG of the default deck plans - keeping the PPT editable Deck plans stay in Mneme Space combat.

   5. Future Books and Products: 

   1. Habitats—Nicco and I will create the 3D tools, Editable PPT deck plans, and Spreadsheets that will make building really big habitats (Kilo DT to Mega DT scale; plus the "economic rating" so they don't exist in a vacuum) fast and modular. Someone can use it to build detailed Spin Gravity habitats of publish their own Habitat - all the tools to do all the math and calculation and Images (3D) and editable PPT files - so they can sell their own CE products in DTRPG (our products are CC-BY-SA)

   2. An Add on to Mneme Space Combat - will add the rockets book and spreadsheet as free part of Mneme Space Combat and Encounter Generator.

   s.

IFS function Review - Building the MGT2E ship generator.

Milestone - I've been working on an MGT2E, on and off for so long.  Good thing there is AI to talk to and ask questions to. It wouldn't have been feasible to squeeze it into my schedule and all my responsibilities without an AI to help me think about the formulas and what I had to do. Also it helped me learn a lot of things - making me time to build this. 

Not only do I have to get the logic correct, 
I have to leave a trail for me because I will have a project that will make more forget everything.

I don't need to explain to someone the limits of the AI, and how its supposed to be used. 

 

This was my previous technique

Also Learning to use VSCODE came in handy as VBASIC is typically used to help formulate a Function

I will make a MUCH better space and space station generator and referees can easily share and produce new ships that is more likely to have correct math and details!!! 

Since I don't have the manpower/hours for it, I wont put ALL of the MGT2E rules. Just enough for TL9. 

UPDATE: ROCKETS and NON-GRAVITICS

The temporary title of the books is rockets and non-gravitics.

As the title suggests, it's about rocket engines and their impact on your Traveller and Cepheus Engine game. The effort I allocate to convince anyone to migrate to Non-Gravitics (and increase the audience of the book) is going to like 5% 95% is making Non-Gravitics easy.

Like Mneme World Generator, I will make tools - spreadsheets and, if I get a student interested in the project given my budget, a static web page that uses Javascript (that generates a CSV of the ship stats that allows uploading and downloading that will serve as its persistent memory). 

So, I'm busy making a Mongoose Traveller 2E Ship Generator spreadsheet. If you bought Mneme Space Combat - you will notice CE SHIP Creation spreadsheet is acting as my "LIVE" lab where I'm making the MGT2E ship builder tools. This means the buyers of Mneme Space Combat will have access to it and the MGT2E ship builder (which uses a Google appscript).  

I will convert all the Ships in MGT2E into TL9 using the spreadsheet; the ships will have: Non-Gravitic Hulls, R-Drives, Heat shielding (if they are meant to Airbrake), and Delta-V Calculations. 

My differentiation - I talk to science and make sure people can follow by testing and simplifying what can be simplified. Pretty much my experience as someone who teaches students and makes tutorials online. 

Its a holiday right now in the Philippines, LABOR DAY.   Got Cloudflared to work - so that people who set up their ERP only need to spend 10usd/year so that its accessible in a public IP address. After exercise and my obligations - I get to do more work: Mneme Projects. 

HEAT shielding is just too expensive at 100,000cr per DTON. probably 1000Cr per DTON would be more reasonable.

A TL8 non-gravitic Far Trader needs 20M of heat shielding at 100,000Cr per DT.

This is from the perspective of using the Apolo budget and converting it to 2020 USD and assuming inflation will make 1,000usd = 1 Cr.

Saturn V is about a 600DT Launch Vehicle.