Hop Drive

[locarno24]

"It's just a red box with 'stop' and 'start' buttons on it...."

 

[Anonymous]

"It's just a red box with 'stop' and 'start' buttons on it...."

Does the stop button do anything once you're in warp?

We are orbiting - following the geodesic in curved spacetime - the curvature that was communicated with us eight minutes ago,

Have you seen this>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJhgZBn-LHg

The video doesn't cover this subject at all.

The posted answer doesn't explain where that curvature points to: the current, or the old position, or something else?

Anyway the answer is "something else". There's a lead term in the equations which cancels the propagation delay, but I don't fully understand where the lead comes from and what that intuitively looks like. AnotherDilbert might.

 

[WingedCat]

Thanks for the update information WingedCat, I will await this JTAS Steppehauler issue (humm... $25 dollars to read an article, maybe there will be a snippet at wiki about it)

You are welcome. As to the wiki snippet: maybe, but for published material the wiki tries not to duplicate rules content. So e.g. if I were to wikify the Steppehauler, I would leave off some of the rules detail I'm putting on the Alphabet of Ships ship pages. The Steppehauler's wiki page certainly wouldn't have Mongoose's rules for hop drives.

from what WingedCat stated, and my understanding he/she is a writer for MGT2ed:

He, and I suppose I technically qualify as one now. (The Tvastar in the recently published JTAS #3 was by my hand.)

I have learned long ago not to support "kickstarters". So I will wait until it drops for a good discount on drivetrurpg and get the updated PDF to read the article mentioned since $25 usd per book is a bit high for my wallet atm since theirs at least five books.

Your call. Last I heard, the Steppehauler article (including hop drive rules) is planned for issue #6.

Since T5, "Agent of the Imperum"and MGT2ed have changed the "classic" known timeline of OTU "Canonically", would love to see the updated timeline maybe they will be in their new "Third Imperium" series.

You want to be on the lookout for the Galaxiad, which lays out a canon history through around 1900. I don't know when that's coming out, though.

Short of that, the wiki has the best consolidated Traveller timeline that I know of.

 

[Condottiere]

1. Do hop drives exit exactly 32.6 light years from the point of transition?

2. Astrogation is like battleship gunnery, without radar: the ship's moving, the turrets are moving, the air is moving, the water is moving, and the target is moving; difference, you're not getting shot at in the meantime.

3. Disappearance of gravity well: remove the bowling ball from the trampoline.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

1. Do hop drives exit exactly 32.6 light years from the point of transition?

Hop drives can't make jumps of less than 10 Pc, but is still kicked out of jump by a gravity field (T5.09, p336).

With a max range of 10 Pc and a min range of 10 Pc, it will always jump 10 Pc, unless otherwise constrained, yes.

 

[Condottiere]

Let me rephrase that.

Outside of accidentally or deliberately hitting a intervening gravity well, is a hop exactly 32.6 light years, or can it be adjusted , and to what degree of discretion?

 

[Reynard]

Interesting. That means for a hop to be useful you also need a jump drive and an extra week to pin point a destination. I assume TL 17 makes other systems more efficient to cover the engineering and fuel though costs will be greater considering the Primitive and Advanced Spacecraft rules. Since none of the rare TL 17 worlds in the Imperium have hinted at developing the HOP (openly), I'm not waiting a few centuries for the rest of the Imperium to catch up and make them commercially available.

One thing that even prototype HOP would be useful for is great leaps through and past the three coreward empires for scouting and colonization expansion. Surprise!

 

[Anonymous]

Let me rephrase that.

Outside of accidentally or deliberately hitting a intervening gravity well, is a hop exactly 32.6 light years, or can it be adjusted , and to what degree of discretion?

It's 10 hexes on the map, not 9 and not 11, unless you really want to get the dividers and ruler out. You may need a regular j-drive too.

edit:

 

[Condottiere]

1. Speaking of which, with a twenty percent fuel tank and two weeks I can hop anywhere within ten parsecs, assuming the distance is fixed.

2. A monojump isn't exactly 3.26 light years, the question is, disregarding microjumps, how much further or less is discretionary, and does that scale to monohops?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

It's 10 hexes on the map, not 9 and not 11, unless you really want to get the dividers and ruler out.

Yes, one Pc should presumably be interpreted as 1 hex, so I agree we can Hop to any system exactly 10 hexes away.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

1. Speaking of which, with a twenty percent fuel tank and two weeks I can hop anywhere within ten parsecs, assuming the distance is fixed.

Theoretically yes, but we can suffer accidental blockage (T5.09 p341), leaving us in interstellar space with no fuel. The chance is almost 50% in T5, making it impractical to rely on this.

2. A monojump isn't exactly 3.26 light years, the question is, disregarding microjumps, how much further or less is discretionary, and does that scale to monohops?

This is deliberately unclear, presumably to make it easy with hexes on the starmaps. The geometry is fudged, if we defined it exactly the geometry would not work.

Jump-1 is practically 0-1 hexes or 0 to about 5 ly.
Hop-1 is exactly 10 hexes, let's call it 10±0.5 Pc.
Jump Drive is explicitly more flexible than Hop drive.

We can target the gravity well of a closer object, but we must still calculate it as a 10 Pc Hop which means we will most likely fail the astrogation roll in T5 and end up many Pc away.

 

[Anonymous]

I prefer to believe the hop drive is fuelled by fermented hop plants.

It's available in .00033 kl fuel cell cans for smaller engines, and for vehicles in .120 kl "kegs".

 

[Old School]

I could see Hop drive bringing the battlerider concept back into play, but with jump capable ships as riders. A massive battle tender with a hop drive, which gives the Navy rapid response capability. For the riders, maybe jump 2 or 3 instead of the current fleet jump 4 standard, so the riders can be significantly more armed and armored than current Jump-4 cruisers, but still get where they need to be once the tender gets them close.

 

[phavoc]

Being able to jump 10 parsecs behind a border world means it's nigh impossible to have a 'border' of the regular concept. It would completely change the concepts of the border as well as where nodal fleets are located, even the X-boat network. Nearly doubling the speed of transit of messages means the time to get to the furthest reaches of the Imperium is roughly cut in half (40% technically).

Fortunately a TL-18 requirement makes it very unlikely that it would be part of most Traveller campaigns, at least set in the more classic setting.

I just realized that T5 is playing a joke on us... A hop, skip and a jump drive...

 

[Reynard]

Just noticed that, eh?

 

[Linwood]

Waiting for the sprint and dash maneuver drives....

 

[Reynard]

Waiting for the canter drive, when you need to get there but are cool about it.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[Baldo]

I just realized that T5 is playing a joke on us... A hop, skip and a jump drive...

Traveller RPG Memes

Please add this to the archive, I'm always seeking for a good laugh :lol: ...

 

[WingedCat]

Interesting. That means for a hop to be useful you also need a jump drive and an extra week to pin point a destination.

Or, always plot to intercept a gravity well when you're going less than 10 parsecs.

I assume TL 17 makes other systems more efficient to cover the engineering and fuel though costs will be greater considering the Primitive and Advanced Spacecraft rules.

Not so much. Though the example given is specifically a TL 16 prototype, made using those rules. In theory one could even make these at TL 15, though they would be extremely expensive (not to mention double tonnage).

Since none of the rare TL 17 worlds in the Imperium have hinted at developing the HOP (openly), I'm not waiting a few centuries for the rest of the Imperium to catch up and make them commercially available.

There are a few possibilities for an adventuring party to get ahold of one, though they tend to result in unique ships within the Imperium.

One thing that even prototype HOP would be useful for is great leaps through and past the three coreward empires for scouting and colonization expansion. Surprise!

In fact, this is exactly what the example ship does (to support colonization), though in a different part of Charted Space.

I prefer to believe the hop drive is fuelled by fermented hop plants.

It's available in .00033 kl fuel cell cans for smaller engines, and for vehicles in .120 kl "kegs".

With biospheres to generate their own fuel? Not OTU, but you could generate a fun little setting from that alteration.

Being able to jump 10 parsecs behind a border world means it's nigh impossible to have a 'border' of the regular concept. It would completely change the concepts of the border as well as where nodal fleets are located, even the X-boat network. Nearly doubling the speed of transit of messages means the time to get to the furthest reaches of the Imperium is roughly cut in half (40% technically).

Fortunately a TL-18 requirement makes it very unlikely that it would be part of most Traveller campaigns, at least set in the more classic setting.

Indeed. By the time the tech reaches former Imperial space, the setting has changed quite a bit.

I just realized that T5 is playing a joke on us... A hop, skip and a jump drive...

Indeed. Jump, Hop, Skip, Leap, Bound, and Vault, in that order. (And theoretically higher, but the minimum TLs approach or surpass the end of the TL scale. But then, a Skip-1 is clearing multiple sectors at a time, so the kinds of adventures one gets up to with that change.)