Are rift stations able to exist?

[phavoc]

Sorry, had to laugh, since DSMS seem to be retconned to account for the 1000D retcon.
That's okay, TNE got rid of m-drive entirely, and that's the one thing I actually liked about it... G-hours. Drastically altered in-system travel assumptions and made micro-jumps more practical.

Yeah, that's been an ongoing problem. TNE kind of had a minimal reason for changes, though tracking G-hours gets to be too much spreadsheets in space.

It's kind of like how the Honor Harrington universe has Traveller-like drives, and it's all great in text. But when they tried to game it out in 3D it just went to crap due to the complexity. Gaming means simplification and I'm all for that. I just prefer that the simplification remain consistent. And consistency across the decades/publishers has been a tad lacking here.

 

[paltrysum]

With high technology, it should be relatively easy to find rogue planets and other objects in empty hexes, but Traveller supposes that they aren’t much utilized, so there has to be a reason for that. Maybe its just tradition and a cultural affinity for planets with stars. Perhaps jump drives need a stellar gravity well nearby to serve as a ‘lighthouse’ in the darkness. (I don’t recall whether Geir wrote about that in the WBH.)

As for deep-space stations, people (and their governments) don't always make rational decisions when appointing expensive projects. Maybe it’s political. ‘We have to have these stations here so they don’t.’

In the case of the Islands subsectors, there is concern that they might do something rash that spills over into the Imperium, so stations, even costly ones, might be deemed worth the expense.

 

[Vormaerin]

Yeah, we know there are far more stars and planets than Charted Space shows. IMC, I just say that Jump Space is not actually equally permeable across the cosmos. The places on the map are the ones where it is easy to go. Other stars and objects are very hard to practically impossible to astrogate to, so they are functionally ignored.

 

[MonsterX]

Yeah, we know there are far more stars and planets than Charted Space shows. IMC, I just say that Jump Space is not actually equally permeable across the cosmos. The places on the map are the ones where it is easy to go. Other stars and objects are very hard to practically impossible to astrogate to, so they are functionally ignored.

THAT would be inventing a whole new principle, with huge implications. Not sure I'd want to open that can of worms.

 

[MasterGwydion]

THAT would be inventing a whole new principle, with huge implications. Not sure I'd want to open that can of worms.

Huge can of worms! DO NOT OPEN! lol

 

[Geir]

Perhaps jump drives need a stellar gravity well nearby to serve as a ‘lighthouse’ in the darkness. (I don’t recall whether Geir wrote about that in the WBH.)

Huge can of worms! DO NOT OPEN! lol

I did not open the can of worms, but I may have touched it inappropriately.

"Some jump-space theorists believe this is an effect from the paucity of neutrino emissions from ‘stars’ not fusing hydrogen but regardless of cause, such jumps are inherently riskier." -WBH p.223

 

[Vormaerin]

THAT would be inventing a whole new principle, with huge implications. Not sure I'd want to open that can of worms.

Sure. The current implication is that 2/3 of the stars in the galaxy went away sometime between now and the 57th century

There's about 90 star systems (and something over 100 stars) with 6 parsecs of Earth that we currently know about. There's 32 star systems in that same radius in Traveller.

 

[Vormaerin]

I did not open the can of worms, but I may have touched it inappropriately.

"Some jump-space theorists believe this is an effect from the paucity of neutrino emissions from ‘stars’ not fusing hydrogen but regardless of cause, such jumps are inherently riskier." -WBH p.223

And there's all that stuff about jump space shoals and other "geography" that made it easier or harder to pass through Jump space.

 

[MonsterX]

Sure. The current implication is that 2/3 of the stars in the galaxy went away sometime between now and the 57th century

There's about 90 star systems (and something over 100 stars) with 6 parsecs of Earth that we currently know about. There's 32 star systems in that same radius in Traveller.

Yes, and we all pretend that space is flat, because it is easier.

 

[OriginalCaruso]

If only we had desktop PCs 50 years ago then 3D maps would have been all the rage… The X series does a pretty good job of depicting space though

I don’t see any reason to stick to canon. It’s all well and good having a backdrop to OTU but frankly I could not care less - I don’t have the enthusiasm to get enthusiastic about the backdrop. And neither can my players be bothered either. They just want to adventure, explore and have fun

So empty sectors can contain whatever I can steal from others or dream up myself - just so long as the players enjoy the game

 

[MonsterX]

If only we had desktop PCs 50 years ago then 3D maps would have been all the rage… The X series does a pretty good job of depicting space though

I don’t see any reason to stick to canon. It’s all well and good having a backdrop to OTU but frankly I could not care less - I don’t have the enthusiasm to get enthusiastic about the backdrop. And neither can my players be bothered either. They just want to adventure, explore and have fun

So empty sectors can contain whatever I can steal from others or dream up myself - just so long as the players enjoy the game

That's all fine and well, if you're writing your own setting. Or I guess you can go with 2300. But if you want to rely on the massive resources that are available, it all builds on that flat Chartered Space map. It all fits together as long as we don't examine the flawed assumptions. 3D would be great in many respects, though of course it makes impossible those lovely paper maps we all love to nerd out over. But I could get used to 3D images. The advantage and also the disadvantage is that 3D creates a different geography - astrography - so that there are possibly many more places to go within a shorter distance, which would be great if we were starting from zero. But all the politics, history, economic calculations, communication routes - these all fit together like a real history and it would no longer make sense in a context where the polities are all floating in a 3D space.

 

[OriginalCaruso]

I'm not advocating for a 3D universe, simply suggesting we have a 2D universe (which I love BTW) because that was what was possible at the time