Astrogation needs help

Okay. So you figure out the best course from Earth to Jupiter. Exactly what effect does that have? What's a reasonable adjustment to the time produced by the time travelled formula? Or what other effect does "the best course" have over a less best course?

It's true that JTAS 3 does add the 'analyze a jump flash' task for Astrogation. That's a little more likely to be interesting than holding the engineer's slide rule :P I can see that being useful in some campaigns.
 
Okay. So you figure out the best course from Earth to Jupiter. Exactly what effect does that have?
In current space travel the gravity of certain planets and stars are used to accelerate a space vessel, especially deep space probes. As a possible effect this may save fuel. So "best" course may not always mean fastest.
 
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.
That's sort of true(64 bit floats have 16 digits of precision), but also libraries that enable math on arbitrary sized integers have existed since at least the 80s. This is a more complicated option, but you're still looking at modern computers that can do this operation many thousands of times a second,
 
In current space travel the gravity of certain planets and stars are used to accelerate a space vessel, especially deep space probes. As a possible effect this may save fuel. So "best" course may not always mean fastest.
Or you might be wanting to from one planet to another before a rival spacecraft that otherwise has the same Thrust...
 
That's sort of true(64 bit floats have 16 digits of precision), but also libraries that enable math on arbitrary sized integers have existed since at least the 80s. This is a more complicated option, but you're still looking at modern computers that can do this operation many thousands of times a second,
Nonetheless, human brains are still better at that job than any computer, which is why Astrogation is a skill which resists automation.
 
Nonetheless, human brains are still better at that job than any computer, which is why Astrogation is a skill which resists automation.
Tbh I don't think I can agree with this, it's a really unbelievable justification, especially when the computers in question are all at least a hundred years beyond what exists today. You're welcome to stick with it but it seems to me even more magical than the like "the computer presents the sophont with a few options and they somehow vibe out how to avoid a missjump" justification
 
Tbh I don't think I can agree with this, it's a really unbelievable justification, especially when the computers in question are all at least a hundred years beyond what exists today. You're welcome to stick with it but it seems to me even more magical than the like "the computer presents the sophont with a few options and they somehow vibe out how to avoid a missjump" justification
It doesn't matter what you believe. Humans still beat machinery every day, because the humans program the machines, and there is only so much data a computer's register can process at any one time before it goes to scientific notation and you lose vital data.
 
Or you might be wanting to from one planet to another before a rival spacecraft that otherwise has the same Thrust...
Yeah, that was the use case I was thinking. But there's no mechanics supporting this or any idea of how much impact astrogation should have. The general topic of interplanetary travel is pretty sparsely covered in Traveller. I suspect most people would be extrapolating from the combat maneuvering and use Pilot or Engineer in the absence of any guidance to the contrary to try to resolve a space race.
 
In current space travel the gravity of certain planets and stars are used to accelerate a space vessel, especially deep space probes. As a possible effect this may save fuel. So "best" course may not always mean fastest.
My issue with this is two fold. One, maneuver drives effectively don't use fuel. So that option will be more relevant in 2300 or Pioneer. I'm not a 2300 expert, but I don't recall seeing anything about astrogation affecting the number of burns you need.

The other part, doing gravity slingshots, is dependent on there being something to slingshot. And I don't think very many people actually have an orrery for their systems to know that. So your astrogation skill test would essentially be defining facts in a sense. That's not necessarily a big deal, but we come back to the lack of any mechanical support for how this astrogation test works.
 
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.
Think of it as “Prompt Engineering” for JumpGPT. If you don’t phrase the question right, you end up with the wrong answer.

As a former pilot, there are huge differences between the actual flying (Pilot) and plotting a course (Navigation/Astrogation).

I see Astrogation as a necessary skill when you are not in an area covered by astrogational aids (beacons, buoys, Space GPS, etc). If you want to follow the published jump routes, no Astrogator needed, but you are following someone else’s path (and it may/will not be efficient).

If you are cutting a new course, then you need one. Are travelling through jump anomalies? You might want a skilled Astrogator.

I actually really liked the CT rules for jump plotting and the use of the Generate program. I also liked the market created by selling jump tapes and plots.
 
Yeah, I started this topic because I want good use cases for Astrogation in adventures. There are some modifiers in various products to make the astrogation test for helping the engineer more difficult if there's a nebula or empty space or whatever. But it is still "Just" a help test and a fairly rare application except in exploration intensive campaigns.

Astrogators in the current rules are required for any starship. But there's almost never a reason for them to do anything important or exciting. Misjumps are pretty catastrophic (and its the engineer's test that actually determines that, with a bonus or malus from the astrogator).

There's some interesting ideas in this thread for in system navigation (the original CT use of the skill) that could be fun to use in adventures, but there's no mechanics for such uses. And non starships don't even carry navigators. The Astrogation skill description does list "plotting a course to a target world using a gas giant as a gravity slingshot" being a Hard test. But if there is anywhere that says what making that test does, I missed it (entirely possible).
 
When I'm in a Watsonian mood, ships require human astrogators because all the known mathematical models for jumpspace are numerically unstable, so the faster your computer is the sooner it gets to the point where it's just redigesting meaningless numbers.

When I'm in a Doylean mood, ships require astrogators because that's the kind of universe I want to play in.
 
It doesn't matter what you believe. Humans still beat machinery every day, because the humans program the machines, and there is only so much data a computer's register can process at any one time before it goes to scientific notation and you lose vital data.
This last part simply is not true, it's entirely possible to do 128b calculations on a 64b chip, or a 32b chip or 1024b on a 16b chip. You can just break the calculations into components and recombine them, as I said, libraries that do this have existed since at least the 1980s, additionally, computers do not magically convert between different data types. Also 64b computers are the modern standard, but there exist systems that operate on much wider data. and there's nothing particularly stopping a computer a hundred years from now from being 256b, which is, if you were wondering, enough precision to measure parsec distances in planck lengths, by 20 orders of magnitude
 
This last part simply is not true, it's entirely possible to do 128b calculations on a 64b chip, or a 32b chip or 1024b on a 16b chip. You can just break the calculations into components and recombine them, as I said, libraries that do this have existed since at least the 1980s, additionally, computers do not magically convert between different data types. Also 64b computers are the modern standard, but there exist systems that operate on much wider data.
I once worked out how far the planet Earth had travelled along its orbit, and along Sol's path in the galaxy, in exactly 29 Earth years.
On paper.
I'd have failed catastrophically if I hadn't taken into account how many leap years there had been in those 29 years.
I got a C in maths class. I wonder how much better my calculations would have been had I got an A.
 
When I'm in a Watsonian mood, ships require human astrogators because all the known mathematical models for jumpspace are numerically unstable, so the faster your computer is the sooner it gets to the point where it's just redigesting meaningless numbers.

When I'm in a Doylean mood, ships require astrogators because that's the kind of universe I want to play in.
Yes, but what does the astrogator do in actual gameplay that is fun or interesting enough to make a player want that role? Vs it just being a checkbox "someone has to have astrogation so we can play, who wants to tack it onto their character?" :P
 
Yes, but what does the astrogator do in actual gameplay that is fun or interesting enough to make a player want that role? Is it just being a checkbox "someone has to have astrogation so we can play, who wants to tack it onto their character?" :p
As compared to Gun Combat and Melee Combat?
I have characters who are Stewards and Pursers. Their core skills are Carousing, Steward, Admin, Diplomat, Persuade. Boring skills, if your predilection is shooting people.
Your Astrogator could double dip as a Steward during the flight if the ship has passengers.
 
I once worked out how far the planet Earth had travelled along its orbit, and along Sol's path in the galaxy, in exactly 29 Earth years.
On paper.
I'd have failed catastrophically if I hadn't taken into account how many leap years there had been in those 29 years.
I got a C in maths class. I wonder how much better my calculations would have been had I got an A.
Ok? I believe you, but I'm not really sure how relevant this is to be honest. Like, I dunno I think it's hard for me to explain to people who have no experience with low level programming just how much better at math a computer is than them I guess. Like, I suppose if you have to solve the n body problem for both systems every time you jump this is complicated by there not existing a general solution, but I think that in that case the most likely solution is that a lot of research would be thrown into finding specific solutions for each n up to a reasonable threshold(say 18 or something) that covers most of the systems in the galaxy and run in a computer. I don't think I would expect basically any kind of human to be able to solve the 4 body problem by hand within 1d6 * 10min, especially considering it's probably not the only component of the jump calculations

Although, considering the 20% jump window this whole process is probably not very precise.
 
Ok? I believe you, but I'm not really sure how relevant this is to be honest. Like, I dunno I think it's hard for me to explain to people who have no experience with low level programming just how much better at math a computer is than them I guess. Like, I suppose if you have to solve the n body problem for both systems every time you jump this is complicated by there not existing a general solution, but I think that in that case the most likely solution is that a lot of research would be thrown into finding specific solutions for each n up to a reasonable threshold(say 18 or something) that covers most of the systems in the galaxy and run in a computer. I don't think I would expect basically any kind of human to be able to solve the 4 body problem by hand within 1d6 * 10min, especially considering it's probably not the only component of the jump calculations

Although, considering the 20% jump window this whole process is probably not very precise.
Hence the need for a person to do the number crunching. Even our guesses are better than a computer's facts, due to GIGO.
 
1. You're dealing with constantly moving targets.

2. You're moving.

3. Your destination is moving.

3. The galaxy is moving

4. The universe is moving.

5. Possibly, jumpspace is moving.
 
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