How does a traveller keep in touch?

[Epicenter]

I'm not sure if you're looking for the "canon" answer to this or not.

The canon answer is that it's done by the honor system like it was done in the Age of Sail.

Something I think a lot of Traveller players (and writers) forget is how much the Traveller universe really depends on the "gentlemanly" (honorable) character of people like nobles and starship captains. A lot of Traveller is based on this trust.

In the case of letters you absolutely have to send if you're in the boonies without an offworld mail service (a Postal Union or whatever): You find a reputable captain who is heading to the port in question you want to send your mail. You talk to someone on the ship, preferably the captain (though someone else you trust would work, probably an officer, such as a ship's surgeon or something but not just some crewmember). You give the person your letter and give them a honorarium for his or her trouble. The honorarium was like Cr150 (~$490 2013 US dollars) which is for the trouble. The captain would, upon arrival, make a social call on the party you intend to send the letter to and deliver it by hand. Obviously you probably don't want to send something you don't want someone else reading.

Non-canon: I would imagine for long trips of many jumps and so on, the trick would be to pay the captain to take your letter to a starport with regular mail traffic and the captain would probably write his or her own letter, put your letter into an envelope with the captain's own "cover letter" ("Dear Madam, it's my honor to make my introduction to you, enclosed is a letter from your husband on Catandar's World that he entrusted to me on 210-1049...") and pops into a mailbox. If there isn't anything like that, the captain probably goes to the local captain's club in the highport or downport and finds another captain he or she thinks is reputable who is heading towards the destination, pays that captain a honorarium to carry the letter so and so on. Obviously if you're sending a letter like this, you already know how much it's going to cost for the captain to pass the letter along so you'd increase your honorarium accordingly.

 

[F33D]

The captain would, upon arrival, make a social call on the party you intend to send the letter to and deliver it by hand. Obviously you probably don't want to send something you don't want someone else reading.
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In a high tech society he'd dump it to the planetary email system upon arrival & the sender would probably use the recipients public key to encrypt. The "Age of sail" meme isn't literal after all...

 

[locarno24]

Although Epicenter's way would be relevant (potentially) for packages - i.e. if you're delivering more than just text/picture/datafile/whatever.

 

[alex_greene]

I think this is one of those cases where you have to choose whether to stick with Traveller's original retro scifi setting or introduce more modern technological developments. Clearly in a high tech space faring society extrapolated from present day technology there would be a sophisticated network solution for interstellar communication, making efficient use of the links provided by jump traffic. In seventies scifi however I suspect something closer to a mailbag with actual letters would have been envisaged.

The late James H Schmitz actually predicted email with attachments in his future stories of The Hub: when a character said she would deliver him a document, the recipient logged on to his desktop computer and there it was.

 

[Infojunky]

Ok, I can imagine where all of the solutions list or speculated on here are in use somewhere.

I can see several parallel networks both official, corporate and informal, nominally separate but interfacing frequently. Both physical and electronic.

Look back at earlier days of the internet infrastructure, especially BBS networks like Fido-Net and the like.

Couple all of that with Subsidized Liners and Traders (including my previously mentioned Mail Boats) and the Xboat routes and the Scouts courier service.

All I am saying here is that there doesn't have to be a single system in place, in fact it makes more sense if there are several.

My ad-hock merchant/civil system of trading electronic mail on the fly, mostly serving working spacers, there is probably and "official" similar system serving the armed services, and well the Scouts. Though I can see the Scouts being tapped into the Merchants system as well unofficially (we won't go into the Scouts Intelligence collection section here).

 

[Batgirl III]

The American colonies began as scatter coastal settlements surrounded by nearly impenetrible wilds. 1673 CE marks the beginning of "regular" mail delivery between New York and Boston; lone horsemen carried letters along desolate trails and the few lonely roads, using handaxes to make a slash on trees along the trail, marking the way for those who would follow them, quite literally being the "trailblazers" along routes that would, one day, be twelve-lane interstate highways.

The British government, however, needed much more reliable mail service throughout the American colonies for official communications from the crown to colonial governors, between governors, and military coordination. William and Mary granted a royal patent to Thomas Neale to operate a colonial postal system in 1692 CE. With the spirit of a true Traveller NPC, Neale never left England! Neale appointed New Jersey governor Andrew Hamilton as his deputy. Hamilton, in turn, appointed postmasters in every British colony. The postmasters, of course, continued to roll things down hill, and hired the actual postmen.

By 1693 CE, the "Internal Colonial Postal Union" began weekly service between Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Williamsburg, Virginia. It established post offices, hammer outed fixed postal rates with colonial assemblies, and made the mail a service colonial Americans could to expect to happen reliably. It did not, however, make any money. The colonial population was spread thin across five-hundred-plus miles of coastline and up to a hundred-odd miles inland. A long-distance postal service just wasn't viable. The new British intercolonial post lost money on its fixed route, to get anything somewhere off piste you hired a private ship and or a post riders to carry your letters for personal profit.

Well into the late 18th century, mail to the North American colonies would be left at public gathering spots such as taverns and inns, as there were no post office buildings to receive the correspondence. The urban gentry, such as it was, could reasonably expect their post to be delivered to their door... or send a servant to the public house to fetch it/meet a ship in port.

Getting mail into the hands of someone mobile like a ship captain, especially if you didn't know when and where they'd come into port, was difficult but not impossible. Oftentimes, the most expedient means was to send multiple copies of a letter to multiple ports. If you knew Captain Ralcolm Meynolds and the Tranquility was due to call on Boston in Novemember, you sent your letter to an agent in Boston. If you needed to get a message to Capt. San Holo and the Centennial Pidgeon but only knew he was heading somewhere in the tobaco colonies, you sent a letter to Charleston, Williamsburg, etc.

This is probably a decent model for communication in the Spinward Marches and other frontiers in Traveller. Settled planets along a main will have semi-regular internal colonial mail... probably with hefty government subsides to keep it out of the red, sort of a local xboat. Getting a message to someone like a tramp freighter, scout ship, or any of the other "space hobo" professions your PCs get involved it will probably be along the "shotgun" model: your Contact sends a message to multiple ports and hopes you get it in time.

 

[pasuuli]

I imagine there are as many solutions as there are [planetary governments] x [ship makes] x [ship models]. Although, I bet those divide out into only a handful of fundamental [and playable!] characteristics. Suggestions?

1. Transacted by:
A. The transponder systems of smallcraft, spacecraft, and starships.
B. The ship's comm system.
C. The ship's computer.
D. Specialized devices present in non-civilian electronics packages.

2. Transacted:
A. when keyed.
B. or, upon system entry when set on "full auto".
C. or, when queried using a proper key from external source(s).

As for a JumpMail Protocol (JMP?), I suspect the standard "timeout" is 45 days, rather than 45 seconds Or, rather, it's not connection-based, but more packet-based, like some monstrous and slow variety of UDP.

...which seems exactly the way Xboats transmit their payloads, in a burst of broadcast traffic, as soon as they enter a system. As opposed to tightbeam, which could use a type of challenge and acknowledge connection-based protocol... although even in that case there must be a myriad of ways to talk across a distance.

Finally, I LOVE the idea that starship captains carry physical mail on their person -- for a small fee, of course. That's been a Traveller trope from the beginning. "Sir Ligussak? I have a message for you..."

 

[Nathan Brazil]

There are a clue as to how the communication and other things work in Campaign 1: Secrets of the Ancients:

"The characters’ names and the identity of the Star Hunter were transmitted to Alell’s starport and there they were entered into a database of wanted criminals. Copies of this database are automatically sent to all other starports and Imperial vessels. Bank accounts that are definitively connected to persons on this list are also frozen, although this can take several days."

Starports keep a criminal database! Makes sense since starports are outright Imperial Territory (The exception to the "space between the stars"). Also sounds like your "FBI Most Wanted" found in post offices, police stations, government type buildings. (Don't know if there are similar displays in other countries). Also the issues of cooperation between governments, extradition, etc.

"There is no known method of delivering messages faster than the speed of light, except via jump-capable ships. The Imperium has a network of couriers, the X-boats, which bring messages between key worlds at high speed. Other ships, ranging from official mail-boats to passenger liners to tramps, carry messages to worlds off the X-boat network. The warrant for the characters’ arrest propagates unevenly out from Alell, arriving at different planets at different times."

Here it sounds like "mail" is sent out thru any means possible. I think the question is how secret is the "mail" and who do you trust it with. Perhaps the whole system is "black box" and automated...

 

[Reynard]

Compared to many scifi concepts of near instantaneous communication systems, Traveller really focuses on the Age of Sail in which communication is at the speed of the fastest Jump drive available while confounded by a universe with diverse technology levels and not always ideal travel conditions especially when it come to fuel. A few well developed worlds MAY be in stable communication while less developed worlds do the best they can. Many are akin to boondock villages who have big celebrations when an unsubsidised frieghter brings news and mail in. And remember, not all world have technologies for electronic deliveries. People have to actually write a letter!

Even A starport world aren't gaurenteed an Xboat route if distance to other suitable worlds is too great or fuel is difficult to obtain. If you follow the 3 Jump rule for standard Xboat route, assuming the region has at least one well off world with Tech C, large arreas of a sector can be very much out of the way and, at best, rely on dedicated mailboats or your 'trustworthy' player merchants making regular circuits in a local cluster. No matter what, mail wil be slow and long in coming.

Depending on your campaign, players may have a homebase, a world they frequent after their adventures. Real easy to have personal communications waiting. For the group on the run all the time... you chose your lifestyle. Even pirates and other neerdowells of old can arrange a 'safe' port of call for messages to wait for them. That should be standard practice.

Best thing, use the system as it is and make the players create means of communication if it is that important to them.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Not that the Third Imperium ever sees it, but as far as alternate methods, again from Campaign 1:

Time Period: –305,000
Ancient Technology Level: 19–21 at the core; 18–19 at the fringe systems
• The Empire has grown too large for the current centralized government to manage; even the establishment of a super-fast jump relay grid (comparable to the X-Boat network, but composed of millions of jump-capable microdrones) has failed to stem the tide.
• To compensate, Yaskoydray is rumoured to be working on a revolutionary new communications system.

Which is:

This ship is vastly more advanced than other Droyne ships the characters have travelled on. Among other innovations, it has a prototype ansible – a faster-than-light communication system. This ansible works on a higher level of jumpspace than the one accessible using conventional jump drives, allowing messages to be transmitted over tens of parsecs instantaneously.

On other topics, this means in the wonky physics of the OTU that something smaller than 100dTons can jump around TL 19-21 and that FTL communication is possible at TL 21-22 or so. The next description of the Ancients Empire states every system is at least TL 23 (*shudder*) and every system has the network. Add those to your OTU Tech Trees... :mrgreen: