FTL Communication?

[Solomani666]

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IMTU

I have a TL16 race that has a network of secret FTL stations scattered throughout their empire and part of their enemies empire also. Many of the stations are in empty hexes.

The network works with split particles, AKA spooky physics at a distance.

In order to establish a link between two points, one half of the split particle must be at each point, and since the link is permanently severed by jump space, particle halves not created at their destination must be transported by sub-light.

The stations will receive and monitor all transmissions, but only transmit via meson and tight beam laser. The messages are then routed through the network via the FTL connections.

The empire in question has gone through great lengths to keep the network a secret from their enemies, disguising it as some form of tachyon communication system. They have even gone as far as creating an entirely false communication system complete with communication stations with strange antennas that occasionally give off exotic particles etc.

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[Meanderer]

Going back to the beginning, I thought this was too funny to ignore:

If I understand traveller correctly FTL travel works through creating a "warp bubble" around the ship. What happens if one creates a bubble and sends radio through instead of a ship?

Well, if everything goes well, one week later the radio emerges in the destination system and starts broadcasting its message. This is called a jump torpedo - a jump drive mounted on a radio.

I have no problems with jump torpedo technology. It has such limited application and is so limited in capabilities that they are rarely used. This is how I envisioned them working:

First, the 100 ton limit is the lower limit for a safe jump bubble to contain and shield people safely in jump space. Going smaller will lead to potentially unstable jump bubbles and greater risk of problems from the annoying and expensive: "Hey, my stateroom disappeared!" to the scary "Hey, Bob's stateroom disappeared! Where's Bob?".

A purely robotic is less risky. Sensitive components can be shielded. Maybe transporting of people can only be in specially shielded low berths (maybe 2 tons per berth).

But getting down to a really small size goes beyond risk. You can get a jump bubble that will hold together long enough to get into jumpspace, but after that offers insufficient protection to save the missile. All that is saved is the small robot brain and radio. The jump drive is DOA.

The torpedo is essentially payload plus jump drive. It is small (about 1 ton in size) because it doesn't need to carry fuel. It needs to be connected by an umbilical cable/hose from its host ship which must have a jump capable power plant. It takes 20 tons of fuel to charge up the capacitors of a jump torpedo while the ship's computer plots the route and programs the settings into the jump drive for it to navigate to its destination. The Torpedo is then ejected away where it drifts out of the 100 diameter range of the ship that launched it. (the launching ship usually moves away from the torpedo. The torpedo can be programmed with any delay up to an hour (it must jump soon to discharge its Zuchai capacitors.
Plotting the course requires an astrogation role at -3 to plot and program this course. The torpedo then jumps (Jump 5 for a TL 14 torpedo, Jump 6 for a TL 15 one).

So, why hasn't this replaced x-boats? Well, the X-boat is much more capable and cost effective. It costs maybe Cr 500,000 for a jump torpedo and another Cr 500 k for the support connections, dedicated computer control, and launch equipment.

Sounds cheap compared to a MCr 70 x-boat which must be crewed. But assuming $3,000 per jump in salary for its pilot/astrogator, 26 jumps per year and a 40 year life, that is 1,040 jumps over its life. We're in the range of around Cr 75,000 per jump for capital cost and the crew salary. And this is for a 100 ton ship that carries extensive communications equipment and data banks for messages. A jump torpedo can't handle the traffic an x-boat can - and the x-boat does it cheaper.

And the Jump Torpedo remains an expensive novelty.

 

[Condottiere]

1. The obvious usage for a jump torpedo is military.

2. Reconnaissance ship jumps into a star system in stealth mode, takes a good look around, and then dispatches it's reports via jump torpedo, without risking exposure by trying to tank up at a gas giant.

3. The fleet commander at the other end of that transition knows the situation as it was one week ago, and can take a calculated risk, possibly refined through the arrival of other reports by other units sneaking around in nearby systems sending back jump torpedoes, if he should risk jumping into that system with his task force.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Another type would be telepathy. Suppose you have two telepaths, lets say identical twins that can communicate telepathically with each other over interstellar distances, what would that mean for the OTU if two such individuals were found?

 

[rust]

1. The obvious usage for a jump torpedo is military.

In my settings remote backwater colonies which do not own starships
and are rarely visited by starships keep jump torpedoes as a means to
call for help in the case of major problems which require offworld re-
sources.

 

[sideranautae]

In MTU there is material that is 100% non-elastic. This is made into a very fine but incredibility strong thread. This is strung between star systems and made taught. You can then tug on it and do a sort of Morse code... Instant FLT comm!

 

[Meanderer]

1. The obvious usage for a jump torpedo is military.

2. Reconnaissance ship jumps into a star system in stealth mode, takes a good look around, and then dispatches it's reports via jump torpedo, without risking exposure by trying to tank up at a gas giant.

3. The fleet commander at the other end of that transition knows the situation as it was one week ago, and can take a calculated risk, possibly refined through the arrival of other reports by other units sneaking around in nearby systems sending back jump torpedoes, if he should risk jumping into that system with his task force.

Yes. But there is a downside that the torpedo I proposed requires about 20 tons of fuel to charge it up. I wanted to keep them limited in use. The 20 ton requirement could be lowered, which would help a smaller vessel manage this. For even a 400 ton reconnaissance ship, that 20 tons might be needed for its own jump out.

Other limitations are that the robot memory of the torpedo is limited. It can hold a lot of data from our perspective, but complete star system intell?

I thought a lot of reconnaissance would be done with ships like the 400 ton courier described in the classic supplement on the Imperium's fighting ships. Or the asteroid covert ops vessel from the Solomani supplement.

The ship can gather and hold lots of data. Sure it could analyze the data and filter it down to something useful for a torpedo but the Fleet Admiral's staff have even better computers and want to see the raw data. And the reconnaissance ship has to jump back to the fleet sometime anyway.

 

[Meanderer]

If they are made easier to use, with less fuel requirement - it opens up more possibilities.

It comes down to preference and how mainstream the technology should be. If you want it rare and unusual there has to be reasons why it is so rarely used.

Maybe all the torpedo can handle is 1 GB of data. Some video, and a transcript of the ship's officers logs. Great for a distress call. Too expensive for letters home.

But if a larger capacity fits (maybe a more expensive torpedo) and less of a fuel issue... it will be better suited for what you describe. Such as in an asteroid listening post. The post has a 100 ton x-boat, cold sleep berths, lots of fuel and passive sensors, and an array of jump torpedoes to send back reports. When the listening post appears compromised they can torch the place and jump out in the x-boat. But until then they just send reports back by torpedo. At MCr 5 or so, these torpedoes would be beyond the scope of players to generally use but during a war the cost in torpedoes is small compared to the value of the intell.

Thanks for the suggestion. It's fun to play with the ideas.

 

[AndrewW]

In MTU there is material that is 10% non-elastic. This is made into a very fine but incredibility strong thread. This is strung between star systems and made taught. You can then tug on it and do a sort of Morse code... Instant FLT comm!

What happens if you put styrofoam cups or tin cans on either end?

Could see that being easy for a ship to run into...

 

[sideranautae]

In MTU there is material that is 100% non-elastic. This is made into a very fine but incredibility strong thread. This is strung between star systems and made taught. You can then tug on it and do a sort of Morse code... Instant FLT comm!

What happens if you put styrofoam cups or tin cans on either end?

R&D is working on that now. Still waiting for the results...

Could see that being easy for a ship to run into...

We put little blinking lights on it out to the Ort cloud. I hate when one of the lights burns out though. All the lights go out and ya have to figure out which ONE bulb burned out.

 

[Meanderer]

Really can't add anything to that. Too perfectly funny. :lol:

 

[sideranautae]

Other limitations are that the robot memory of the torpedo is limited. It can hold a lot of data from our perspective, but complete star system intell?

Why not? It could be done with the thumb drive (~ 1/2 cubic inch) sitting next to my computer. Why couldn't it be done at several TL's higher?

 

[Meanderer]

We are dealing with conditions that pretty much melt the jump drive on the torpedo or otherwise render it destroyed (expensive single-use items).

So yes, you could put a TL 15 flash drive you bought at the local Comp-U-Mart in that jump torpedo with an awesome amount of memory and have none of it actually survive the jump because it wasn't shielded enough.

It establishes an argument preventing jump capable fighters and limiting small craft with jump drives that the more you go below the 100 ton safe jump mass the greater amount of shielding you need. The more hardened the payload is the less shielding you need. People are not hardened so a 10 ton fighter might require 25 tons of shielding meaning you need to produce a jump drive and fuel capable of transporting 35 tons in order to get a 10 ton fighter to its destination (and we're assuming the fighter contains sufficient life support to get the pilot there).
The Jump Drive would need to be within the shielded mass if it is going to survive the trip so a 4 ton jump drive may mean that 45 tons of shielding is needed. So we are up to 60 tons. If this is a jump 2 ship then you end up with an expensive 75 ton ship to jump a 10 ton fighter to its destination.

The smaller the payload the greater ratio of shielding to payload is required. The closer to 100 tons payload the less shielding required up to zero shielding at 100 tons.

For the jump torpedo, the shielding requirement for such an extremely small device is handled by making the electronics in the payload as hardened as possible as well as very small. I figure the payload on the jump torpedo may still be around 98% shielding.

Hey, part of the point is that a distress signal sent by jump torpedo will have incomplete information and there are excuses for some of the data being fried in transit so PCs travelling to investigate what happened will have incomplete information to act on. GM prerogative.

BTW, NASA uses computers on spacecraft that are less capable than what we can buy over the counter. Spacecraft computers lag behind commercially available computers because the brand new quad-core you bought for your home doesn't have to survive transit through the Van Allen radiation belt. Likewise, Traveller shipboard computers and avionics are built to survive normal conditions which include the protection a significant mass (100 tons or more) offers in jump-space. Taking them through environments they weren't designed for would definitely void the warranty.

 

[sideranautae]

So yes, you could put a TL 15 flash drive you bought at the local Comp-U-Mart in that jump torpedo with an awesome amount of memory and have none of it actually survive the jump because it wasn't shielded enough.

Shielded from what EXACTLY?

Or just use IBM's atomic scale memory. 12 atoms to the bit.

In other words, there is no limit to the data that can be sent by the torp. Unless the GM is in a railroading mood... :lol:

 

[Meanderer]

Of course anyone having to design and pay for all that shielding in an effort to jump a fighter to some destination realizes he has to have a 75 ton ship parked somewhere while he flies his 10 ton "ship's boat" off to adventure and correctly reaches the conclusion that it is better to double up having a 100 ton ship that carries two 10 ton fighters.

But that's the point. Going with a less than optimal (less than 100 ton) starship means going through a lot more expense and hassle. It would only be done for "starships" that are not intended to make more than one jump. Transmitting data is more likely than cargo because data is going to be more compact.

 

[Meanderer]

Shielded from what EXACTLY?

Well, from the physics of jump space.

The first official volume to talk about jump space was MegaTraveller (Starship Operations Manual) which described a misjump involving a hole being torn in the hull of the ship (jumpspace intruded on the hull) with a crew member being sucked out into jumpspace as well as a second lost crewmember who came too close to the jump field while investigating the loss of the first crewmember.

I drew on this IMTU to explain why jump torpedos and jump capable small craft are not common. The jump field/bubble is not just to allow matter to enter jump space but also to maintain the matter intact.

For jump torpedos IMTU the jump field gradually collapses enroute causing the outer shell of the torpedo to vanish. The physical effect on much of what remains is not pretty. What hasn''t melted and boiled away may be fried or altered by intense electromagnetic fields.

From a 1 ton torpedo you en dup with a cracked open shielded shell smaller than a fist with a radio and memory. The radio may be more of a simple beacon to guide others to this "black box recorder" built to survive the heat and electromagnetic fields.

Jumpspace is not our universe. It doesn't have our physics. How can we exist there? The answer is through artificial means that force our physics on jumpspace temporarily in a small localized area - big enough and for long enough to get the starship to its destination, hopefully undamaged.

 

[Meanderer]

It all comes down to some fudged techno-babble rule or explanation anyway. Going from standard drives (the drives with letter ratings) to the % size based on drive rating from the original High Guard book (Classic Traveller) you will end up with someone asking why they can't put a jump drive on the ship's launch. If you can have computer controlled jumps can't you still use a computer instead of a bridge for this? So if Jump 2 is 3% of the ship's size for any size of starship, why can't you put a 0.6 ton jump drive on a 20 ton launch?

GM Can answer (pick one of these):
1. why not. go for it (changes the universe to allow fighter craft with jump drives whose pilots use fast drug to survive on minimal life support for the one week in jump.
2. hell no. Minimum starship size is 100 tons. Can't jump if you are less.
3. it is possible but inefficient because: (can't use fractions for the drive, require fuel based on a larger tonnage, require some bridge size, require shielding - which was most of my explanation, or whatever else the GM wants to specify for his Traveller universe.

I didn't want to just say no to this as I thought the idea had potential (and I had the Leviathan adventure with its described jump torpedoes) but I also wanted the system of manned express boats to make sense .

I also had TL factors in the manufacture of small jump vessels. The adventure rated the Leviathan cruisers at TL 13 but that doesn't mean the special jump torpedoes carried along weren't something more advanced (TL 15 say). The ships were stated as having been built at Glisten, Spinward Marches so TL 15 equipment would have been available during construction.

 

[sideranautae]

Anyways, back on topic. Maybe using something developed out of Birgit Dopfer's experiment if it pans out. Then FTL Comm would be a reality.

 

[Reynard]

It's called 'The other science fiction universe that has nothing to do with Traveller'. They constantly make them into games but seem to not last long. Makes me wonder.

 

[atpollard]

It's called 'The other science fiction universe that has nothing to do with Traveller'. They constantly make them into games but seem to not last long. Makes me wonder.

Yeah, what he said.

... the more the "universe" is just like home, only bigger, the less really interesting it is ... If I wanted to adventure in 21st century Earth only with starships, then I would play 2300 or something similar. It is the very "different" assumptions of Traveller compared to Star Trek, Star Wars or watching the news that keeps drawing me to The Third Imperium.