Table of Contents
Welcome to James Kemp's Wiki
This is a collaborative web platform that allows people to edit1) the web pages to provide additional content for some of the stories I have written and the roleplaying games that I am involved in, whether as a player or GM.
There are several namespaces operating slightly different wiki subjects. These are, in no particular order:
- Skyss - Story Background - a fantasy novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2016.
- Perfects - background for the near future story and some police roleplaying that I ran in that universe
- Theocracy of Daprav - A D&D campaign that I ran with Glasgow University Games Society around 2002-3.
- Jim Wallman's Universe - a roleplaying by e-mail campaign that I play in, this is an unofficial wiki and none of it is canon unless Jim says it is.
- Interstellar Freelance Unlimited - subset of the Universe pages covering the activities of a mercenary company that we are currently roleplaying every Full Moon.
- Earth Imperium pages. These cover the activities of the Government of the Solar republic (aka Earth Empire) in Jim's Humanity Will Prevail campaign, including the Earth Imperium News Items.
- Free Worlds Alliance - covering the activities of another emerging polity in the Humanity Will Prevail campaign. Mostly contributed by Eric Moroney.
- Universe Background - page collecting the various bits of background info that have come up in various e-mail discussions for the campaigns set in Jim Wallman's Universe.
- Master map of the Universe (6Mb PDF, as at 3212).
- Delta Green - some roleplaying campaigns about horror and conspiracy. The main one was set in Berlin in 1953.
- Free games rules - a collection of free rules for wargames and other sorts of face to face games that I have designed or run.
- Wargames rules - I'm not just a player of games, I also do rules for them from time to time as well as one-off games. A primary outlet for this is through Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group.
- Other free rules - at the moment just those for the 1689 (Orange or Lemon? and Bonnie Dundee, respectively about the debates in the Scots Parliament and then the military campaign of Viscount Dundee during 1689) and The Other Side of the COIN (about what makes people become insurgents). All games that I have have produced for Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group.
- Background for a near future universe where I have written some fiction and also run some roleplaying games in.
Comments and complaints to me at webmaster@full-moon.info please.
James Kemp
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| this page is a game resource for Jim Wallman's Humanity Will Prevail play by e-mail game. None of the material on this domain is canon unless Jim says so. |
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Economics of Megadon Ranching
I thought I would work back from the street price of meat. I reckon that going by the cost of living standards on most worlds a kilo of megadon meat is probably about 1 credit (on the base assumption that even the poor are reasonably well off by today's standards). I'd guess that the farmer probably only sees about 30% of the market value after the slaughterhouse, meat processing, transport and retail people have had their cuts.
From http://www.peacefulpastures.com/beefbulk.html it looks like a 1,000lb cow ends up as about 500lbs of meat. Processing is about 20% of the cost of the meat from the farmer.
Looking at sauropods as the basis for megadons these can grow up to 80 tons, although it would take some time for them to get that large, possibly up to 60 years. I'd guess that most of the megadon meat would be from immature animals that were perhaps 4-5 years old and up to around 20 tons in weight. Not all of this animal weight would generate meat, but each animal could easily generate 10 tonnes of meat at 0.3 credits per kilo (300 credits per tonne) for the rancher (approx 3,000 credits per animal). The market value of this meat would be around 10,000 credits per animal.
For most of the four years required to produce the 10 tonnes of meat there is probably little or no input required from ranchers. There are no real predators that affect the big sauropods. There would be an intensive nursery phase where the eggs were hatched and the newly hatched megadons (about the size of a cat) were grown to the point where there were no real dangers from the environment (probably after a year they would be close to the size of an elephant). I'd guess this would be done in a fully enclosed space that could probably see dozens of animals reared simultaneously.
In the final stages of the growth space there will be a need to herd the megadons in to the slaughter area. This is probably co-located with the nursery area since you'd want to keep that pretty secure as well. The easiest/best way to transport the megadons from the ranch to market is probably as large chunks of meat post slaughter.
My reckoning is that to turn a decent profit you'd need to be able to slaughter a megadons per rancher every one or two octants. Or in other words your herd would need to have about 30 megadons (from hatching to slaughter) per employee to be economically viable if all you did was ranching. As I said in practice I think you could probably manage a lot more than this.
The other thing that would be necessary is a lot of land. An animal that will grow to twenty tonnes in four years probably needs to consume 200+ tonnes of plant biomass to get there. (A 500kg beef cow needs 0.12 hectares, so a 20 tonne megadon should need about 40 times that, which works out at about 20 megadons per square kilometre).
The minimum size viable megadon ranch is probably of the order of a square kilometre nursery area for newly hatched megadons with a number of further km square managed areas. Basically you need 1 square kilometre per employee as a minimum, you could probably manage a lot more than that, especially if you were using unmanaged country outside your fenced area for the largest megadons.
The other part which I haven't covered is that you would have at least two types of megadon ranch, probably three2). These might well all be part of the same physical establishment, especially on the poorer or less economically active planets.
- Meat farms hatch eggs and grow them to what is considered the best size for slaughter (probably determined when the rate of growth slows to maximise the amount of meat in the shortest time). The meat farms would have all their megadons the same age (or possibly they would have several 'herds' that had a number of animals the same age depending on the size of the farm.
- Breeder farms would have a number of much larger megadons (in the 50-80 tonne range) that laid eggs for supplying to the meat farms. These megadons might live up to 100 years and are unlikely to be eaten at the end of their life.
- 'Grandparent' farms breed the animals that the breeder farms use, there would be comparatively few of these and they would sell live, but immature, megadons to the breeder farms .
Anyway given that the ranches have lots of megadons and that the individual animals could be worth 3,000 credits each wholesale it looks like a reasonable picking for some rustling, possibly on a semi-industrial scale.
see also Megadon Ranching.
Background
It is late spring 1953 and Berlin is still in the process of reconstruction, although these days it can afford to occassionally stop and enjoy itself. It's just as well because if it couldn't then the Golden Gate would be very much out of business.
The Story
Starting from the beginning (almost) and possibly including some things that not everyone knows about (so if so please play as if you don't know about it unless told by one of the characters that does). narrative
The story centres on “The Golden Gate” an upmarket club which caters to every need. The drinking den plays music and is host to a number of working women who are more than willing. The club sits in the middle of Berlin close to the Potsdammerplatz and the sector boundaries between the British and Soviet sectors. The area surrounding the club has been subject to the RAF's urban redevelopment and has yet to be re-built.
In the recent past there have been some murders, discoveries in the basement including some tunnels. There has also been an aura of mystery around one of the new girls.
The Cast
Staff of the Golden Gate
- (Dr) George Ratcliffe - general manager (PC)
- John Millen - head of security (PC)
- Gustav Horts - barman (PC)
- Betty Bethlehem - chief entertainer
- Ute Dietrich - a new girl
Regular Visitors to the Golden Gate
- Marian Nevodski - freelance journalist/photographer (PC)
- pfc Jeb S. Washington - GI driver (PC)
Other Protagonists
Session Calendar
You can see the dates that we intend to play sessions on the calendar page.
Staff engaged for Lakshmi tender
- need to list new staff IFU HR System
<php> set the necessary connection variables include (“/var/www/html/IFU/sqlconnect.php”); 20 connect to MySQL server and select the IFU database include (“/var/www/html/IFU/sqlconnect2.php”);
$db = mysql_select_db('full-moon_info_-_IFU',$connection);
$query = 'SELECT * FROM Employees where active=“YES” ORDER by EmplID'; $result = mysql_query($query);
36 the first bit of the table that we want to do once echo “<table width=90% cellpadding=1>”; echo “<tr>\n <td><b>EmplID\n <td><b>Name\n <td><b>Skill\n <td><b>Type\n <td><b>Status\n </tr>\n”; 46 a while loop to put all the data in a row at a time (pg 184)
while ($employees=mysql_fetch_array($result,MYSQL_ASSOC))
{
extract($employees);
echo "<tr> \n
<td>$EmplID</td> \n
<td>$FirstName $Surname</td> \n
<td>$MainSkill</td> \n
<td>$EmplType</td> \n
<td>$Status</td> \n
</tr> \n";
}
58 finally close off the html table
echo “</table>\n”;
</php>
back
Recruitment
This is some PHP code for automatically working out the recruitment rules on Jim's IFU pages.
<php> echo “<form action=/doku.php/universe/ifu/applicants.php method=get>”; echo '<table width = 80% cellpadding = 1>
<tr>
<td align=left colspan = 4><h3>Advertising Selection</h3>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>method</b>
<td>
<select name="ad">
<option selected value="0">Choose one</option>
<option value="1">Cheap planetnet (15cr/10days)</option>
<option value="2">Specialist Journal (50cr/10days)</option>
<option value="4">National media (250cr/10days)</option>
</select>
<td>
<td><b>Location</b>
<td>
<select name="loc">
<option selected value="0">Choose one</option>
<option value="1">Just Settled/Subsistence</option>
<option value="2">Very Poor/Poor</option>
<option value="4">Below - Above Average - Planetside</option>
<option value="6">Below - Above Average - Orbital</option>
<option value="8">Rich or Very Rich - Planetside </option>
<option value="12">Rich or Very Rich - Orbital </option>
<option value="16">Colonial Capital - Planetside </option>
<option value="24">Colonial Capital - Orbital</option>
<option value="32">Homeworld - Planetside </option>
<option value="48">Homeworld - Orbital </option>
</select>
<td><b>Duration</b>
<td>
<select name="time">
<option selected value="0">Choose one</option>
<option value="10">10 days </option>
<option value="20">20 days </option>
<option value="30">30 days </option>
</select>
</tr>
</table> <input type=submit value=“recruit”>
</form>'; </php>
