Astrogation needs help

[wingsday]

Hence the need for a person to do the number crunching. Even our guesses are better than a computer's facts, due to GIGO.

I think I have to return to this

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

Like if there's a human doing any math at all about this it's probably straightforward for an advanced spacefaring civilization to automate that, and I can't really imagine why they wouldn't, especially if they expect to hit this 35min mark. But if all that matters is some human writes some numbers down on some paper and types some different numbers into a console then go for it I guess

 

[alex_greene]

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.

That's why you need a person to work out those relative movements against the background of a single point or plane of reference - usually, the galactic plane, or the local solar ecliptic. Plus tidal wobble caused by the movement of natural satellites.
And take into account seven years of stellar drift, plus the distance moved in the time it takes for the ship to reach 100D, then Jump, and spend one week in Jumpspace.
And whether or not the destination will be on this side of its orbit, as compared to being on the far side of its primary star at the time of the course calculation.
But you'll still do better than a computer, because there will still only be a few digits you can enter into the system before it goes into scientific notation, and you'll need every single digit you can calculate.

 

[CordwainerFish]

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?"

All Broker skill seems to do is put a DM onto trading rolls, but one of the players in my game really, really gets off on being the ship's broker.

 

[Condottiere]

That's why you need a person to work out those relative movements against the background of a single point or plane of reference - usually, the galactic plane, or the local solar ecliptic. Plus tidal wobble caused by the movement of natural satellites.
And take into account seven years of stellar drift, plus the distance moved in the time it takes for the ship to reach 100D, then Jump, and spend one week in Jumpspace.
And whether or not the destination will be on this side of its orbit, as compared to being on the far side of its primary star at the time of the course calculation.
But you'll still do better than a computer, because there will still only be a few digits you can enter into the system before it goes into scientific notation, and you'll need every single digit you can calculate.

Within chartered space, time lag could be as little as three weeks, as starports constantly update astrogation charts from arriving starships.

 

[alex_greene]

Within chartered space, time lag could be as little as three weeks, as starports constantly update astrogation charts from arriving starships.

Within Charted Space, yes. Out on the border, you're on your own.
Not only that: you're actually generating fresh course data for others to use. Your "Hic Sunt Dracones" is somebody else's library data, if your ship is visiting a star system nobody's been to before.

 

[Condottiere]

And that's where my contention that deep space exploration expeditions need experienced astrogators.

 

[alex_greene]

And that's where my contention that deep space exploration expeditions need experienced astrogators.

You'll get no argument from me. Astrogators, people, are the pathbreakers and pioneers.
The Captain can tell you to take the second star to the right, and straight on till morning, and the Pilot might turn the steering wheel, but it's the Astrogator who plots that course.

 

[AndrewW]

Now somebody just needs to invent the jump drive and we can test if a computer or human does better at the calculations needed.

 

[Vormaerin]

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.

Who said anything about combat? Social skills are amongst the most readily used skills in the game. Certainly more often than gun combat. Pilot and Engineering have clear tasks that regularly come up during adventures. Observation skills like Recon and Investigate are commonly used.

Having the Astrogator role be required, but always rolled into someone else with an actual interesting job is unsatisfactory.

 

[wingsday]

because there will still only be a few digits you can enter into the system before it goes into scientific notation, and you'll need every single digit you can calculate.

Can you explain this? Like, I've tried to explain that you can create a program that measures parsec distances in planck lengths, that doesn't use floats and runs on your phone *today*, also why do you need so much precision if youre just throwing it away at the end? I do not understand this beyond just like, technobabble.

 

[AndrewW]

Who said anything about combat? Social skills are amongst the most readily used skills in the game. Certainly more often than gun combat. Pilot and Engineering have clear tasks that regularly come up during adventures. Observation skills like Recon and Investigate are commonly used.

Pilot and Engineer don't come up much if you aren't in a ship.

 

[wingsday]

Like don't get me wrong, I like scifi without computers quite a lot, Babel17 is probably one of my favorites of all time but that's just not the situation in traveller

 

[Condottiere]

ASTROGATION GUILD

Member in good standing.

 

[alex_greene]

Can you explain this? Like, I've tried to explain that you can create a program that measures parsec distances in planck lengths, that doesn't use floats and runs on your phone *today*, also why do you need so much precision if you're just throwing it away at the end? I do not understand this beyond just like, technobabble.

We're back to Bandwidth.
Organic people are not constrained by Bandwidth or Processing. At some point, a computer program is automatically going to turn some figure like 857635465886736453 into 8.576 × 10^17 .. and continue to calculate figures based on the scientific notation.
A person will have to work with the whole number, but they will be able to calculate coordinates down to the Planck length because they don't have the constraints of being able to work out a maximum of X digits at a time.
And the more powerful the astrogation program, the more Bandwidth is is going to consume to achieve the same effect.
And here's the fun part. Once you do get into decimal figures, your computer is invariably going to start throwing up errors because it gets really difficult to convert fractional figures right of the point from binary to decimal, and vice versa.

 

[Vormaerin]

Pilot and Engineer don't come up much if you aren't in a ship.

No skill comes up much if you avoid the situations that require it. My characters avoid combat like the plague, even though several of them have good combat skills. But pilot and engineer have clear, useful applications if you are on a ship that are easy to make into interesting situations. And it is easy for players to grok what they can do with the skill.

Astrogation does not have that feature, as written. There's no mechanics for plotting better courses, whether to save fuel or time or whatever. There's a test to help the engineer not destroy the ship during travel. With various modifiers in assorted books. And there's a test in a JTAS article for tracking space ships that you saw make a jump.

The suggestion for using it to plot better courses is cool. But there is no mechanics for how that works that I am aware of. Having those would be pretty cool. Making various kinds of jumps harder does make the skill more necessary, but I am not sure it makes it more fun as a skill to have.

I am not particularly concerned about "realism" arguments about the requirements of our woo-woo drive. Skill divisions in games are arbitrary. I am interested in what makes the game more fun. What can we have Astrogation skill do that makes a player go "Ooh, I want that skill. Look at these cool things I can do with it." "Roll this skill or you die on the way to the adventure" is not that.

If there's nothing fun to do with Astrogation, might as well write the rules to let the pilot do it, because the job of astrogator is going to be rolled into someone else's portfolio anyway.

Maybe instead of Pilot cascading by size of ship, just make Pilot and Astrogator two different specialties of "get the ship where we want to be" skill.

 

[wingsday]

We're back to Bandwidth.
Organic people are not constrained by Bandwidth or Processing. At some point, a computer program is automatically going to turn some figure like 857635465886736453 into 8.576 × 10^17 .. and continue to calculate figures based on the scientific notation.

Like, not every programing language is dynamically typed? Iirc NASA code standards exclude dynamic typing actually. Like this scenario just isn't real if the people who wrote the program decide that it isn't.

A person will have to work with the whole number, but they will be able to calculate coordinates down to the Planck length because they don't have the constraints of being able to work out a maximum of X digits at a time.
And the more powerful the astrogation program, the more Bandwidth is is going to consume to achieve the same effect.
And here's the fun part. Once you do get into decimal figures, your computer is invariably going to start throwing up errors because it gets really difficult to convert fractional figures right of the point from binary to decimal, and vice versa.

This is true of floats, but not really of fixed point and integer math(what I'm talking about here), in that case a number is a number and there are different ways of expressing it (base 10 and base 2 in this case) but they both refer to the same value

 

[WHULorigan]

If there's nothing fun to do with Astrogation, might as well write the rules to let the pilot do it, because the job of astrogator is going to be rolled into someone else's portfolio anyway.

Maybe instead of Pilot cascading by size of ship, just make Pilot and Astrogator two different specialties of "get the ship where we want to be" skill.

It seems to me that Pilot has more to do with maneuvering a ship in atmosphere, close quarters maneuvering (e.g. manual docking, et al), and combat maneuvering and dodging. Astrogation has more to do with the actual calculated plot of getting from point A to point B along a predetermined computed trajectory influenced by gravitational fields, as well as the ability to create a jump-plot based on said fields.

 

[Vormaerin]

It seems to me that Pilot has more to do with maneuvering a ship in atmosphere, close quarters maneuvering (e.g. manual docking, et al), and combat maneuvering and dodging. Astrogation has more to do with the actual calculated plot of getting from point A to point B along a predetermined computed trajectory influenced by gravitational fields, as well as the ability to create a jump-plot based on said fields.

Yes, there is no doubt that IRL, flying the plane and calculating the flight path are two different skills. The question is whether there is enough for the astrogation skill to actually do to make it fun to have in the game. And whether you want situations where you might have a pilot who can't actually calculate the flight plan.

 

[alex_greene]

Yes, there is no doubt that IRL, flying the plane and calculating the flight path are two different skills. The question is whether there is enough for the astrogation skill to actually do to make it fun to have in the game. And whether you want situations where you might have a pilot who can't actually calculate the flight plan.

Of course there is.
In Maven, a short story, the titular character worked out the range to an anomalous object, along with its apparent size, by checking the parallax between the object, the GMC, and the LMC. All she did was take a look at the thing through the portside and starboardside viewports.
They did not want to risk pinging the thing with radar, in case the alien object reacted to it as a hostile attack. They did not want to be Vejured out of existence.

 

[Condottiere]

Piloting is an active, potentially continuous, skill.