Astrogation needs help

[Vormaerin]

I'm spinning this out of the Jump thread. It seems to me that Astrogation is a skill that needs some serious work. It is simultaneously essential in the current rules for any group with a ship, but it basically doesn't do anything. As far as I am aware, the only example of using it is as the helping skill in the Engineer's task chain to jump. And that's trivially easy unless you are trying to really rush things.

So it is pretty much the worst of all possible skill designs: A limited use skill that has almost no exciting applications and when it is used, it is basically just to open the door for someone else to do something.

In previous editions, it was optional until you got to ships over 200 tons, but that is no longer the case.

Does anyone have good advice on making Astrogation an interesting skill? It is easy enough to adopt the CT rule and not make it mandatory to have. It is not like many players have a space opera fantasy of being a ship's navigator (unlike pilot or engineer). But if there is a way to make it fun and interesting, that would be better, imho.

 

[Nelphine]

Give different difficulties based on where in the system you want to come out.

If you are going from an A or B, to an A or B, on the officially accepted approaches, then difficulty by the book.
Going to or from a C gives a (cumulative) +1.
Going to or from a D or E gives a cumulative +2.
Going to or from another world on a predictable approach, gives another +2. (If the other world actually has a high class starport, and sees plenty of interstellar travel, treat it as the higher starport class instead.)
Going to or from an unusual (outside the 3000 km 'normal' 100D approach point) gives another +1, which can be increased further to decrease chance of detection.

Create/use a full system of detection for jumping ships for this to integrate to.

Create/use a full system of jump routes, that can be purchased or obtained in the black market that allow routes that normally have a high difficulty, to be treated as if they are a normal A class route.



With this, astrogators are basically optional if you're travelling on main lines. But if you want to go to the outback, do exploration of unknown worlds, or do any stealth, astrogation becomes important.

 

[Condottiere]

1. Let's say it's a mandatory skill when you graduate from a starship academy.

2. Astrogation skill is cultivated by naval staff officers assigned as chief astrogation officers, useful for mass transitions.

3. Also I'd say deep space exploration expeditions.

4. Think of it as five dimensional astronomy and navigation.

 

[Vormaerin]

With this, astrogators are basically optional if you're travelling on main lines. But if you want to go to the outback, do exploration of unknown worlds, or do any stealth, astrogation becomes important.

This, I think, should be the design goal. I don't know that I would pick the particular parameters you did, but the core concept makes a lot of sense.

 

[Geir]

For the World Builder's Handbook I added an extra task required for jumps into empty space, an instantaneous Astrogation check rolled after the Engineer's roll to determine the accuracy of arrival in deep space (p. 223). DMs get negative if aiming for lower mass or empty regions in that hex. If you go by the m-drives don't work nearly-at-all in deep space (which is not just in T5, but in Deepnight and even Behind the Claw) then missing the target by even a bit can get you in trouble. So that adds some benefit to having the skill.

Another place to use Astrogation is in optimising routes within a system. Not a big deal if you just aim, turn-around halfway and decelerate to the destination, but if you're short on fuel or time, a good effect of an Astrogation check could shorten the transit time by some amount - more of an issue with reaction drives and other lower tech (*cough* Pioneer) scenarios.

 

[alex_greene]

Astrogation must take into account planetary movements within the stellar systems of origin and destination, as well as stellar drift between the origin and destination systems - since you are not seeing the systems as they are presented on the map, as such; you are seeing them as they were X x 3.26 years ago. A Jump-2 destination is visible from the origin world's sky as it was 6.52 years ago.
Even if you just came from that system, intending to Jump right back to it, you've still got to take into account stellar movements between the systems for the time period you've been at the present system.
So it's a matter of instinct and plotting big vectors, and getting accurate planetary data from your astrogation library, and doing the math in your head.
My characters are happy to stick to being Pursers and Stewards.

 

[Vormaerin]

Shortening in system transit times is certainly a useful application, but I'm not sure how exactly that works in the fiction. Presumably they would be doing something more than drawing a straighter line.

 

[Vormaerin]

So it's a matter of instinct and plotting big vectors, and getting accurate planetary data from your astrogation library, and doing the math in your head.
My characters are happy to stick to being Pursers and Stewards.

For me, it is more of a question of why is the computer not doing all this math? Doing big math like that is what computers do well.

 

[Ol'Weedy]

Shortening in system transit times is certainly a useful application, but I'm not sure how exactly that works in the fiction. Presumably they would be doing something more than drawing a straighter line.

Think a sling shot course around a gravity well to add velocity, keeping your ship shadowed by an object to avoid sensor detection, simulating the trajectory of an asteroid, so your un-powered ship can drift by the bad guys unseen...that sort of stuff.

 

[alex_greene]

For me, it is more of a question of why is the computer not doing all this math? Doing big math like that is what computers do well.

Bandwidth. Sometimes, the numbers are just too great, and you need someone who can compute a vector from three 45-digit numbers and directions in three dimensions.

 

[Vormaerin]

Think a sling shot course around a gravity well to add velocity, keeping your ship shadowed by an object to avoid sensor detection, simulating the trajectory of an asteroid, so your un-powered ship can drift by the bad guys unseen...that sort of stuff.

So I suppose it would be one of those "The die roll decides if that stuff exists to be used" situations. Leastwise, I don't have that much detail on the space in my systems

 

[paltrysum]

Does anyone have good advice on making Astrogation an interesting skill? It is easy enough to adopt the CT rule and not make it mandatory to have. It is not like many players have a space opera fantasy of being a ship's navigator (unlike pilot or engineer). But if there is a way to make it fun and interesting, that would be better, imho.

It does lack a bit, doesn't it. I tried to beef it up a bit in High Guard 2022.

 

[Garran]

Astrogation is likely to be the go-to for plotting positions and movements of anything in a system as well as plotting between-system stuff. It's somewhat niche, but if you're dealing with a primarily in-system story where keeping track of significant objects matters, you'll want it.

While not Traveller-based, a good video game example of this sort of thing comes from ΔV: Rings of Saturn, where your Astrogator's skill determines how long you're able to keep track of where all of the significant objects/anomalies (stations, moonlets, derelicts, etc) that you've encountered are, since they're moving about in the rings between dives.

 

[wingsday]

Bandwidth. Sometimes, the numbers are just too great, and you need someone who can compute a vector from three 45-digit numbers and directions in three dimensions.

Modern 64 bit computers can already do this, many thousand times a second, and the simple vector math tools are standard in the included basic math libraries.

 

[Condottiere]

In theory, you could offshore the calculations to the starport's cloud.

 

[alex_greene]

Modern 64 bit computers can already do this, many thousand times a second, and the simple vector math tools are standard in the included basic math libraries.

There comes a point where your calculations suddenly switch to scientific notation, and the number cuts off after about four decimal places.
Human minds can calculate every single digit. Hundreds of them, if need be. Some of them take minutes to do the calculations.
Check out a woman, the late Shakuntala Devi. She pioneered a form of mathematics called Vedic mathematics, fifty years ago. She could calculate the fifth root of a 125-digit number in thirty seconds.
Watch the movie Hidden Figures, which showed how the Apollo missions' courses and course corrections were calculated by human women.
Humans can beat calculating machines any time, because humans have a flexible bandwidth. Computers don't.
This is why Astrogation is one skill which is never automated by any spacefaring polity.

 

[Sigtrygg]

In CT Navigation was the skill that allowed you to carry computer cassettes from storage to rack and press the run button - without tripping over.
Now in MgT we have the Astrogation skill which appears to be carrying notes between pilot and engineer, holding the engineer's slide rule and making them both coffee, without tripping and dropping anything.
Progress

 

[alex_greene]

An astrogator's note to her Captain, explaining how she computed that last course.

 

[alex_greene]

Point being, an astrogator would be able to work out a course in their head, using the Galactic ecliptic as the horizon. "Taking into account seven years of stellar drift" is probably their most oft-heard phrase. That's how they even end their jokes.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Keep in mind that Astrogation is not just used for making jumps - it is the space equivalent of Navigation, so is also used to make best courses between worlds and figuring out where other ships are likely to be heading...