Auto-Astrogators... not that bad?

[MasterGwydion]

As far as I am aware, as it stands right now, you could come out of jumpspace 100D from the target planet, but on the completely opposite side of the planet or you could come out of jumpspace 100D from the planet directly above the Highport. Referee fiat, I guess.

 

[Condottiere]

I picked a trinary star system as a hub, which should make jump approaches interesting.

Aren't the majority of systems binary stars?

 

[Terry Mixon]

As far as I am aware, as it stands right now, you could come out of jumpspace 100D from the target planet, but on the completely opposite side of the planet or you could come out of jumpspace 100D from the planet directly above the Highport. Referee fiat, I guess.

The companion has it being a bit closer than that.

 

[rinku]

A lot of that derives from the DGP SOM tables, too (not identical, but it's a spiritual successor).

And I'd point out that any unexpected time variance is going to be important if the ship is trying to get to something orbiting a world, like a station.

So, I think the question of "why Jump tenders?" is probably settled now. Odds of arriving at the right spot of the station's orbit are not guaranteed by any means. Although you'd think X-Boats are launched with much more accurate plots than average if the station or tender resources are used to do the calculation and the boat jumps as soon as those are ready.

 

[Condottiere]

That can't have been a surprise.

Acceleration factor/zero is pretty much plot driven.

There is no consistency, even between spacecraft and spacestation design sequences, in the same book.

It seems that canonically, factor/zero acceleration hovers around a thousandths of standard Terran gravity.

 

[rinku]

Just to loop back to my original post about robot astrogators...

I just realised that the MGT rule of either you can't have them (Core book), or (per Robot Handbook) that they get a -4 to plot the jump in the Charted Space setting could be viewed as something imposed upon them, rather than an inherent limitation. Especially if you don't want a spiritual or mystical explanation for that rule, but still want to use it.

That is... the Imperium and the other major powers are cautious about giving robots and computers free ability to take ships where they want. Locking them out from that vital function may have been decided as the best way to contain a mad starship or a rogue robot crew. Kinunir shows the issue is not moot, even without Virus. It could be one of the things in the Shudusham Concords, which after all came about because a Robot was made to perform a terror attack. Can you really rely on a damn toaster not to deliberately misjump? Of course not!

 

[Sigtrygg]

Or you rule zero it and kick it back to where it belongs...

or you apply the setting where you can have robotic xboats and robot pilots/navigators