A medley of missiles
- Thread starter locarno24
- Start date
Predicting flares works great for anyone IN the system... but for anyone coming in, it's probably a bit late...
(flash! Lollipop jumps into system.
Captain - "Better contact the nearest traffic sat and get the navigational and hazards download"
Naviagtor - "Captain, have you been tanning lately?"
Communications - "Uh-oh! System Traffic Control says a major stellar outburst is predicted, and all ships are cautioned to remain in a protected area. Umm, lessse, take the nine away.. carry the two... Hmm, I think this alert started two days ago..."
Captain - "No, Mr. Smarty pants navigator. Go fiddle with your knobs and lay in a course to the highport"
(flash! Lollipop jumps into system.
Captain - "Better contact the nearest traffic sat and get the navigational and hazards download"
Naviagtor - "Captain, have you been tanning lately?"
Communications - "Uh-oh! System Traffic Control says a major stellar outburst is predicted, and all ships are cautioned to remain in a protected area. Umm, lessse, take the nine away.. carry the two... Hmm, I think this alert started two days ago..."
Captain - "No, Mr. Smarty pants navigator. Go fiddle with your knobs and lay in a course to the highport"
DFW said:
No, in this case I think it shows an assumption that settled worlds both have flare prediction down to a fine art and that when jumping in to a known system you have a target planet that can shield you. Putting the planet between you and the star in respect of your jump-exit point would be standard astrogational practice.
Out in an unexplored system you don't have the data to perform such neat jumps, and no news net to warn you.
If flares can be predicted even 2 weeks in advance, the normal navigational news will get to most ports in time. Heck, even *today* we are able to roughly predict solar maximums and minimums.
Unusual or unpredicted events can be left to Referee's discretion, of course. (i.e. the random encounter charts don't have an entry for Major Flare, just like they don't have an entry for Invading Zhodani Batron)
Why do you equate the variable arrival time with jump inaccuracy? I can't see anything in the rules, or from the description of how jump travel works to support that. If you make your jump roll, you arrive where you plotted to. The time spent in jump space is by definition unrelated to the distance travelled.
If you failed your jump roll (as per the rules) you don't emerge where you plotted. If you fail it REALLY badly, you misjump.
DFW, why don't you think a planet would provide protection at 100D? I agree this is somewhat variable depending on orbital distance and stellar diameter, but *any* mass between the ship and the flare is going to help. In addition, it's not the entire solar disc that the planet has to shelter you from, just the flare itself.
Also, the magnetosphere of a planet (if it has one) will often extend well outside 100D and will have some protective value against the charged particles.
If you failed your jump roll (as per the rules) you don't emerge where you plotted. If you fail it REALLY badly, you misjump.
DFW, why don't you think a planet would provide protection at 100D? I agree this is somewhat variable depending on orbital distance and stellar diameter, but *any* mass between the ship and the flare is going to help. In addition, it's not the entire solar disc that the planet has to shelter you from, just the flare itself.
Also, the magnetosphere of a planet (if it has one) will often extend well outside 100D and will have some protective value against the charged particles.
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
rinku said:
Its that cannon stuff sneaking in again, jump not only taking longer but coming out short of target or off course and requiring longer in real space to get there. Its mentioned a number of times in novels and some scearios and earlier stuff but if you want a quote it may take me weeks to find, I remember them being in existance but not exactly where.
As an aside protecting ships against the effect is more than just a matter of hull alloys and composites. Active magnetic shielding is being played with both in the UK and US now and with a honking great fusion reactor on your ship you should be able to put out a big charged field. Not enough to rival a world but combined with the hull shielding enough to stand off a flare perhaps.
It depends on your Universe, if you feel that ships are not protected then main worlds may have flare screens at the common jump points. A 100,000 ton ship that has station keeping and is basicly a huge great heavily shielded umbrela.
Personaly I think that aside from weapons ships wll be protected against all but the most massive radiation events. Otherwise you have to start changing too much around to deal with it. Still for a non OTU it can lead to all sorts of interesting changes if you have to hide from flares and cannot skim hi radiation gas giants.
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
rinku said:
Oddly the flare itself provides some protection
The Coronal Mass Ejection throws of masive magnetic surges that drive down the levels of cosmic radiation across very large areas. Monitors on the ISS show clear drops in cosmic radiation durring flares. I think this was called the forbush effect but my memory may be going (old age
)Edit. Yep named after a 1940s scientist called Forbush.
True, however ...rinku said:
:?
... the planet is a moving object, and the flare is a moving object.
It is not really difficult to imagine a situation where the flare has already
moved beyond the planet's orbit and the planet has meanwhile moved
between the system's star and the flare - and a ship leaving jump space
at a position where the planet covers the star would still jump right into
the flare.
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
DFW said:
Speaking as a Merchant. That visualisation just hurts my Brain...... :shock:
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
DFW said:
Erm not so sure about this new model of merchant, well the extra eye in the back of the head is great, the third arm will come in very handy but i'm just not sure about the tentacles :shock:
<various responses>
Maybe I'm not making my thoughts clear; the lee of a planet and/or its magnetosphere is a very large thing, not a small target.
@DFW: You didn't answer my question about why 100D is too far away for the planet to provide any protection.
@Captain Jonah: Re time in jumpspace vs distance travelled... the time taken is a variable but similar amount regardless of 1 parsec, 3 parsecs, 6 parsecs or 100 AU. The time taken is NOT related to how well the jump task was performed under MGT (148+6d6 hours), or MegaTraveller/TNE (6-8 days). (OT didn't have rules for variable jump time; it was always 7 days). Only in the case of a failure on the jump roll does the ship arrive anywhere other than at the 100D limit.
@rust: Yup. Both the flare and the planet are moving objects, as are the origin and destination systems and the ship itself, and in fact *every* object, photon or particle. Traveller fudges this issue; to be fully realistic you'd need to know the relative motion of every system and planet at all times. When this has been mentioned in the past, the explanation is usually that one of the functions of the Jump drive is to match vectors with the destination planet. You could also rule that during that week in J-space, the ship uses maneuver to line this up.
Maybe I'm not making my thoughts clear; the lee of a planet and/or its magnetosphere is a very large thing, not a small target.
@DFW: You didn't answer my question about why 100D is too far away for the planet to provide any protection.
@Captain Jonah: Re time in jumpspace vs distance travelled... the time taken is a variable but similar amount regardless of 1 parsec, 3 parsecs, 6 parsecs or 100 AU. The time taken is NOT related to how well the jump task was performed under MGT (148+6d6 hours), or MegaTraveller/TNE (6-8 days). (OT didn't have rules for variable jump time; it was always 7 days). Only in the case of a failure on the jump roll does the ship arrive anywhere other than at the 100D limit.
@rust: Yup. Both the flare and the planet are moving objects, as are the origin and destination systems and the ship itself, and in fact *every* object, photon or particle. Traveller fudges this issue; to be fully realistic you'd need to know the relative motion of every system and planet at all times. When this has been mentioned in the past, the explanation is usually that one of the functions of the Jump drive is to match vectors with the destination planet. You could also rule that during that week in J-space, the ship uses maneuver to line this up.
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
rinku said:
Earths Magnetosphere is commonly considered to be bullet shaped with the point being just past the earth on the sunward side. It extends 70,000 km give or take depending on solar winds and other conditions towards the sun from the earth (5 diameters)
It extends either side of the earth in a cylinder some 95,000 km each side (7-8 diameters.
It tails away from the sun in the same rough cylinder to past the 1,200,000 point which is the jump limit (100 diameters).
The tail provides plenty of protection at the 100D jump limit but as it is effectively earths shadow it doesn't make that much more of a protected area.
The tail points directly away from the sun/solar wind and so will always be the shadow behind the planet. A cylinder 15 diameters across is not a large area on interstellar distances and it is entirely possible to miss it on jumping in.
Re jump error. MonT Main Rule Book page 141.
Jump!: Roll 2d6 and add the following DMs. If the result is 0 or less, the ship misjumps (see below). If the result is 8+ the Jump is accurate. Any other result is an inaccurate Jump (which is only a minor setback):
+ the Effect of the divert power Engineer check
–2 per Jump drive hit
–2 for using Unrefi ned fuel
–8 if still within the hundred-diameter limit
A Jump carries the vessel a number of parsecs equal to the Jump number. Jumps of less than one parsec (less than three light years, or one hex) are possible, and count as Jump–1 for the purposes of astrogation and fuel expenditure. Regardless of how far the ship Jumps, it always stays in Jump Space for roughly one week (148+6d6 hours).
When the ship exits Jump space after an accurate Jump, it tends to arrive close to the target world, but outside or on the verge of the hundred-diameter limit. Inaccurate Jumps just dump the ship somewhere in the inner system, requiring a long space flight.
Its the astrogators job to plot a jump, its the engineer (jump)s job to activate the jump drive and get you to riughly where the astrogator plots you. After that however even with a skilled jump engineer 30% +/- of all jumps will be inacurate and as such will drop you somewhere in the system, thats a bit hit and miss if your life depends on hitting a very small safe zone in the shadow of a worlds magnetosphere durring a flare period.
Personaly I'd want flare proof ships, one in three jumps landing outside the safe zone, thats not odds i'd bet my ship, cargo or life on.
As a side note the astrogation effect should add to the jump number in terms of acurate jumps, makes no sense that the master navigator's jump plot has no effect on where they arrive other than somewhere in the system.
@Captain Jonah: We appear to be agreement then. An accurate jump roll puts you where you want to go. An inaccurate one does not. Exacly where an inaccurate jump lands you is up to the Referee, which includes what hazards you may face. By all means, cook your players with a major solar flare they can't avoid.
Yeah, I'd agree that I'd want a ship as rad-proof as possible too. I never said otherwise. Heck, I'M the one who suggested increasing rad protection by armour value!
As to the astrogation roll point - it's really outside the discussion so far, but I tend to agree it should affect the final roll. Probably the easiest way of doing so is to make it a skill chain to the divert power roll and not allow rerolls if the nav roll fails. I'd want to check what the net game effect was on this before using it, though - might increase the number of misjumps to an unacceptably high level, or conversely make jumps so safe as be boring.
Yeah, I'd agree that I'd want a ship as rad-proof as possible too. I never said otherwise. Heck, I'M the one who suggested increasing rad protection by armour value!
As to the astrogation roll point - it's really outside the discussion so far, but I tend to agree it should affect the final roll. Probably the easiest way of doing so is to make it a skill chain to the divert power roll and not allow rerolls if the nav roll fails. I'd want to check what the net game effect was on this before using it, though - might increase the number of misjumps to an unacceptably high level, or conversely make jumps so safe as be boring.
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
Roll Astrogation as is, if you fail then roll again. If you make the roll add the effect to the jump roll unless you are outside of the jump parameters I.E. inside the jump radius etc as no navigator is going to spend an hour plotting a jump inside 100D.
So if safe add the astro effect, if inside 100D do not add the astro effect and do count the -8 for inside 100D. Makes safe jumps with better astorgators more accurate which should be the case with a good navigator else why bother with one.
Not rerolling the nav role makes jump 4+ a bit risky with is not supported by cannon/rules etc.
Where we disagree is that armour is needed to survive solar flare type events since just about every civilian ship above the "adventure ships" (scout, Free Trader, Far Trader) has no armour and would be toast if it jumped into a rad storm unless they are all basicly immune to non weapon rads.
So if safe add the astro effect, if inside 100D do not add the astro effect and do count the -8 for inside 100D. Makes safe jumps with better astorgators more accurate which should be the case with a good navigator else why bother with one.
Not rerolling the nav role makes jump 4+ a bit risky with is not supported by cannon/rules etc.
Where we disagree is that armour is needed to survive solar flare type events since just about every civilian ship above the "adventure ships" (scout, Free Trader, Far Trader) has no armour and would be toast if it jumped into a rad storm unless they are all basicly immune to non weapon rads.
