Anders Sandberg wrote:
>You mean 2300AD? Loved it, the only game where you really needed the
>cube root on the calculator. Ah, I can still point out where the
>gaming group went on a starlit sky. Spent several years with my
>friends exploring it. Unfortunately it is out of print.
Yeah, that's the one. Got the name mixed up w/ Twilight 2000, another game of theirs. Both very good.
>> I'd heard that Zeta2 Reticuli was a close binary, which ruled out
earthlike
>> planets. In my scenario I had the planet be the moon of a brown dwarf a
la
>> *Alien*, which made for a really neat environment/ecology since the
planet
>> (moon) was tidally-locked...
>
>It might be a close binary, I haven't checked, ought to do it. I
>thought it is a rather distant binary with Zeta1 Reticuli.
My understanding is that Zeta2 has a close, dim M companion. I think the most recent version of Gliese's Near Star Catalog mentions this as a note. I was deep into this stuff a while back; I compiled my own excessively detailed version of the Gliese near star catalog with XYZ coordinates and distances to all known stars w/in 50 ly. Was working on merging this with the much larger PARALLAX catalog, but never got around to finishing it. I also have very detailed info on nearby binary systems and so forth if you're interested.
My 2300/Cyberpunk campaign revolved around a quasi-statist organization
called the Interstellar Trade Authority, a sort of super-GATT created by
Terran megacorps to manage the world economy. (The ITA was actually based
loosely on the Terran Trade Authority described in a fantastic series of
books by Stewart Cowley; see
http://www.geocities.com/~banksp/Rec/TTABooks/TTABooks.html) The characters
started off as agents of the ITA, but after spending too much time in the
perimeter colonies came to see the ITA's darker side and rejected the
organization (and not without a fight).
Steven