Hyperspace navigation

Steeltiger

Mongoose
Hi,

I was just wondering how hyperspace navigation works if you don't follow the hyperspace beacons. I mean, how does an explorer class vessel explore uncharted space? If you want to find new systems, you can't always follow the "hyperspace road". And what about all those systems that have no jumpgate?

Ok, if you have multiple 360 degree beacons, like todays airtraffic naviagion systems, you could measure your position according to the beacons you receive. But, as i understand it, the hyperspce route beacons have a very tight beam to maximise the signal strength. So how do you chart/explore new space without having to build jumpgates every x light years? Not talking about how to re-find a starsystem with no jumpgate.

Any ideas?
 
Steeltiger said:
I was just wondering how hyperspace navigation works if you don't follow the hyperspace beacons. I mean, how does an explorer class vessel explore uncharted space? If you want to find new systems, you can't always follow the "hyperspace road". And what about all those systems that have no jumpgate?

As I understand it, you need a lot of luck and good sensors.

Basically, you head out in a direction off beacon that you think corresponds to where a real space system lies, and look for the local shifts in Hyperspace that indicate you're coming up on a large mass (ie the star) in real space, you then open a jump point to see if you're right.

If you're right, you drop a beacon that pointed to where you came from (ish) and try and link that to either an existing beacon or a new one, at that point you establish a jump route.

Of course, it might not be safe...

Or you might have hit hyperspace "terrain" unexpectedly which meant you never reached your destination and are now lost...

Or got humped to death by the jelly fish... (see Crusade...)

Or...
 
frobisher said:
As I understand it, you need a lot of luck and good sensors.

Basically, you head out in a direction off beacon that you think corresponds to where a real space system lies, and look for the local shifts in Hyperspace that indicate you're coming up on a large mass (ie the star) in real space, you then open a jump point to see if you're right.

If you're right, you drop a beacon that pointed to where you came from (ish) and try and link that to either an existing beacon or a new one, at that point you establish a jump route.

I have to agree with the need for some extremely good sensors. However, I don't think it's down to relying on as much luck as you think. The handful of Explorer vessels have been operating for years, and to my knowledge not one has been lost recently.

My guess would be that it takes some powerful and specifically focussed sensors. Specifically they would be geared to studying the various eddies and currents in hyperspace. Kinda like the way that some sea captains learned about the 'gulf streams.' By observing something floating next to them and seeing which way they drifted. The Explorer vessels aren't throwing pieces of wood out of their airlocks though. By studying the way that the currentys, eddies, and whirlpools push and pull on the ship itself they can essentially draw a map of hyperspace based on this. Mind you this map will be a bit inaccurate and incomplete as no young race even tries to claim they know exactly how hyperspace functions. Combine this with the ability to get readings from the jumpgate network and you can begin to compare the hyperspace readings to the positions of jumpgates and then compare this to realspace positions.

At least that's the way I am presenting it to my players. It seems plausible based on what I have seen in the show and what little time I have had to read the sourcebooks.
 
Dag'Nabbit said:
I have to agree with the need for some extremely good sensors. However, I don't think it's down to relying on as much luck as you think. The handful of Explorer vessels have been operating for years, and to my knowledge not one has been lost recently.

But they probably lost a lot of the Oracle scouts which were used in this capacity before the Explorers. The sensors in the Explorer are a lot better and so they can avoid a lot of the worst bits before it's too late, and also the Explorer is probably better able to weather those bad bits. But the Oracles have been on the go for over half a century doing the bulk of the exploration, the explorers only the last seven or eight.

According to the Wars of the Centauri Republic supplement (and a few other AoG products as well I think) the region of hyperspace around Earth is very treacherous which is why the jump gate net work didn't expand into it until the Centauri were forced to start looking there due to attrition of their colonies by rebellion and the like elsewhere. Consequently, the EA managed to expand very rapidly in this "empty" region of space, and grab a few Centauri outposts that were abandoned due to bugetary cuts and the like as well.
 
Steeltiger said:
I was just wondering how hyperspace navigation works if you don't follow the hyperspace beacons. I mean, how does an explorer class vessel explore uncharted space? If you want to find new systems, you can't always follow the "hyperspace road". And what about all those systems that have no jumpgate?
OK, let's have the derivate of lots of thoughts and discussions I had on this... most likely hyperspace exploration works like this though:

The Explorer ship has Really good sensors, to detect hyperspace eddies and tides, and measure them so it can compensate as good as possible and get the best impression of where it's going.
It will also use short hyperspace hops, going back to realspace for course corrections every few lightyears (because hyperspace isn't just a dimension with a different "scale" then ours, it also has "folds" within itself that vary this scale from route to route - so you can never know if the mile you just flew in hyperspace corresponds to one light year or two in real space. And hyperspace isn't static, it has currents and eddies like a three-dimensional body of water; and if you lack a point of reference -like a beacon route- you can never even know how far and in which direction the hyperspace "waves" blew you off your desired course, unless you have Really good sensors - better then just about every younger race we've seen so far).
Eventually it'll arrive at it's destination system, and immidiately set up a beacon, and a jumpgate if neccessary. Once it has done that, the danger of really getting lost is over.

frobisher said:
As I understand it, you need a lot of luck and good sensors.
You need good sensors, and a lot of patience. Luck can substitute for tha latter if you're in a hurry (and desperate), but noone even remotely sane would risk an expensive, jump-drive equipped ship by counting on pure luck (after all, the chances to succeed, or even get back if you do get lost are lower then winning the grand EA lottery!).
So, if you know what you're doing, don't rush your job (and have gotten past the tech period where things broke down with alarming regularity), you don't need luck to survive as an exploration crew (big desasters at exactly the wrong time like with the "Cortez" excepted of course... and as long as you don't try to "explore" a vorlon-claimed system or something similar by mistake).

frobisher said:
...and look for the local shifts in Hyperspace that indicate you're coming up on a large mass (ie the star) in real space, you then open a jump point to see if you're right.
Actually no - most races can't get Anything in matters of sensor reading from hyperspace. Not even detect a sun or planet without hyperspace beacon (or other signals sent especially into hyperspace).
Some high-tech races evidently can (Streib, all ancients), but even the minbari don't have that sort of tech yet. So as mentioned above, it's a lot more complicated. Not really difficult, once you get to a certain level, but time consuming - you can't just stay in hyperspace for the trip, you need to make it in "mini-steps", jumping back for course calculations every few lightyears. Nothing for impatient player characters I fear...

BUT - the explorer ships are usually to valuable in their job (jump route exploration) to do in-depth exploration of the systems they discover (and "link" to the beacon network). That job goes (depending on who bought the license from earthforce exploration command) to more or less independent explorers, like Catherine Sakai in her "Skydancer", or to IPX teams like the "Icarus" crew (depending on what the quick scan of the explorer showed - simply geological analysis for mining is one thing, alien artifacts another).

Steeltiger said:
Ok, if you have multiple 360 degree beacons, like todays airtraffic naviagion systems, you could measure your position according to the beacons you receive. But, as i understand it, the hyperspce route beacons have a very tight beam to maximise the signal strength.
Think of it like this:
Every JG has one or several "beacon routes", directional signal connections with another gate. As long as you stay on this "signal highway" you have no problem, if you move off it far enough you loost contact with it and won't be able to find it again in the chaos of Hyperspace (thus the Starfury "bread crumbs" in "A distant Star" and "Thirdspace" - they couldn't see the beacon route anymore, but they could see the 'furies that "led" back to it).
Every JG also has a short-ranged omnidirectional beacon, one that can be used to determine your general position in relation to that jump gate (for example, if you want to use your own jump engine to jump out, say, near the Neptune orbit instead of by the Jumpgate circling Io).
You can't maintain lock on a beacon unless you're either near a beacon route or close enough to the beacon's origin.

Note that some of the older races don't need beacons - all ancients and even the Technomages can navigate hyperspace away from the beacon routes, and "TDitCoS" (which is written by JMS's wife and by his words as canon as any B5 episode) mentions that the gates originally didn't Have becaons before the current younger races added them some 7000 years before out time - clearly the race who established the beacon network didn't need them.
 
Thanks ShadowScout for these enlightening comments on hyperspace exploration. As usual, I bow before your bottomless well of knowledge. :)

I never gave much thought to the subject, merely thinking that you had to map the real space before attempting any jump in the hyperspace "above" this area. Now I am informed, thanks to all the posters.
 
ShadowScout said:
frobisher said:
...and look for the local shifts in Hyperspace that indicate you're coming up on a large mass (ie the star) in real space, you then open a jump point to see if you're right.
Actually no - most races can't get Anything in matters of sensor reading from hyperspace. Not even detect a sun or planet without hyperspace beacon (or other signals sent especially into hyperspace). Some high-tech races evidently can (Streib, all ancients), but even the minbari don't have that sort of tech yet.
I'd dispute this. What the Streib can do is detect ships and the like from Hyperspace. Now that is very fine discrimination. I'd also reckon they could adequately operate off beacon (which most younger races cannot).

However, a star or planet doesn't require fine discrimination.

Unless we take "Endgame", where they were trying to get Marcus' Whitestar close to the Martian surface without actually being in it.

Now normally this situation is avoided by opening the jump point well away from a planet... which indicates that this level of discrimination is possible from hyperspace for the younger races (see the G'quon arriving over Z'Ha'Dum as well, though slightly less valid as an example as it's way closer to the system jump gate which would be usable as a reference).

ShadowScout said:
So as mentioned above, it's a lot more complicated. Not really difficult, once you get to a certain level, but time consuming - you can't just stay in hyperspace for the trip, you need to make it in "mini-steps", jumping back for course calculations every few lightyears. Nothing for impatient player characters I fear...

I'd agree with that whole heartedly though.
 
It is my understanding that the younger races can establish a beacon in a remote area and other ships use it to guide them.

Case in point, is the Centauri during the War of Retribution.
 
I'd dispute this.
Well, you can.
I don't.
There is no indication whatsoever that Any younger race except the Streib can "see" into normal space. In every case we see them jump out over a planet, they had a jumpgate there with a beacon signal to guide them. It even seems that some planets have beacons (Sheridan's order to set course to the earth beacon from mars - he didn't say anything about simply the planet, he mentioned a beacon route and even number IIRC -can't check since my videos are still in moving boxes, and S-4 isn't out on DVD yet-).

In fact, if it were that easy to detect a sun or planet from hyperspace, there'd be faar less danger of getting lost. The Cortez could've just jumped to normal space once they got their little accident under dontrol, gotten their bearings, pointed their ship at the nearest star their stellar charts noted as jump-gate equipped, and gone through hyperspace until they arrived (remember, at the point B5 went looking for them they had repaired everything, but drifted off the beacon - that was their entire problem. If what you assume is right, they could have saved themselves, if I am right, things stand as we saw them in the show. Guess why I came to my conclusions :wink: )

However, is might be possible that such sensor advances are just beyond reach of the older younger races - the streib didn't seem that high-techy after all. So maybe the WhiteStar or the Excalibur CAN locate stars or even planets from hyperspace (hey, the exy could see within a death cloud, I'd cut her sensors some slack if I was GM...). But certainly noone below that tech level can! Everyone else needs at least one beacon signal operating within the target system to gauge their position (like an jumpgate on the other side of the sun or a flyer baiting a trap in an asteroid field or whatever)

It is my understanding that the younger races can establish a beacon in a remote area and other ships use it to guide them.
Sure.
If they have a ship in place to establish the beacon.
Like a Centauri Dargan that travels deep into narn backyard space disguised as innocent freighter.
But most of the time the problem is first getting a ship to the end-point of your new beacon route.
 
Off-beacon navigation would have to be easier, otherwise destroying or dismantling jump gates becomes a viable defensive strategy. Presumably, jump gate beacons have limited range, otherwise beacons could be pointed to an enemies homeworld and the core of an empire could be destroyed with a pre-emptive strike. In the Human-Minbari war, EarthForce could have destroyed or dismantled 2 layers of jump lanes, cutting Human controlled space from Minbari controlled space. This may be extremely unpopular but it is better to be unpopular than not to exist at all.

Presumably, Minbari warships can easily navigate without beacons. EarthForce did not destroy or dismantle jump gates, even as a delaying tactic, because it would have minimal effect and they didn't want to act like pariahs.

Off-beacon navigation also have to be short range, otherwise the Minbari would have used their superior navy and wiped out Earth in the first strike. We can assume off-beacon travel requires good sensors and a skilled navigator constantly reading sensor data.

Since fleet interception in hyperspace is very rare, this begs the question: why didn't the Minbari navy follow the beacons to Earth and bomb it into blackened glass? Minbari warships can't have short fuel range, otherwise the Trigadi wouldn't have survived for so long as a renegade ship. Being forced to jump into normal space, into waiting interception forces, after each jump explains the Minbari slow conquest, but why would a drop into normal space be necessary?
 
warmachine said:
Off-beacon navigation would have to be easier, otherwise destroying or dismantling jump gates becomes a viable defensive strategy.

That is a tatic . . . They destroyed a jump gate to keep theieves away from one dead system. They turned off the jumpgates at Io during the earth minbari war. And everyone was getting pissed off at the rogue centauri that where destroying jump gates. By destroying there jumpgates they where cutting themselves off from the rest of the universe.

or do i remember wrong?

PsyJack
 
Presumably, Minbari warships can easily navigate without beacons. EarthForce did not destroy or dismantle jump gates, even as a delaying tactic, because it would have minimal effect and they didn't want to act like pariahs.
Wrong.
According to AoG fluff, the EA DID destroy jump gates - that was what made the minbari take so long to reach earth; they had to re-discover the routes (otherwise they'd have just rolled over the whole EA fleet in a few months, desrtoyed earth and be done with it, instead of taking the years JMS gave the war in his time frame).

But - this is a desperation tactic, only done when one side sees no other way. As long as the sides are somewhat similar in strength, they would prefer to keep the routes open, for counter-attacks and reconquest of their territory.

And in any case, most times all it does is give the defender more time - if he could have found the routes in the first place, any decently advanced attacker can do so too given time.
 
warmachine said:
Since fleet interception in hyperspace is very rare...

One thing here I remember is that Bad Things tend to happen to all parties involved in a fight inside of hyperspace. Might be because any sort of significant damage could have catastrophic affects on a ship, or simply that the use of high energy weapons blinds sensors so much in hyperspace that it causes ships to lose track of any sort of lock they may have had on a jump gate. Heck, the whirls and eddies of hyperspace may very well cause the energy to be pulled along with the currents of hyperspace.

Anyone seen a fight actually take place in hyperspace?

My point, basicly, was that combat in hyperspace was not a result of a lack of opportunity becuase you couldn't find the enemy. Otherwise, you would see people immediately jumping into hyperspace to follow and engage a recently departed foe.
 
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhh!!!!! :x

I forgot to login again! Geeze, it's a good thing my head is attached.
 
ShadowScout said:
There is no indication whatsoever that Any younger race except the Streib can "see" into normal space. In every case we see them jump out over a planet, they had a jumpgate there with a beacon signal to guide them.

Except Mars of course... No jumpgate there ;)

You don't need to see into normal space BTW, you only need feel the effects of Normal Space on hyperspace.

The very fact they could communicate with their ground team in real space from hyperspace, to coordinate Marcus' precision jump should tell you something...

ShadowScout said:
In fact, if it were that easy to detect a sun or planet from hyperspace, there'd be faar less danger of getting lost.

If you're right over a planet (relatively speaking), yes, you shouldn't get lost. If said star system is two - three (real space) parsecs away then you'd almost certainly not see any appreciable influence of the mass of the star system. So unless you're really close (say the effective distance of the Earth to the Moon translated to local hyperspace) you'll not "see" an Earth sized planet.

ShadowScout said:
The Cortez could've just jumped to normal space once they got their little accident under dontrol, gotten their bearings, pointed their ship at the nearest star their stellar charts noted as jump-gate equipped, and gone through hyperspace until they arrived (remember, at the point B5 went looking for them they had repaired everything, but drifted off the beacon - that was their entire problem. If what you assume is right, they could have saved themselves, if I am right, things stand as we saw them in the show. Guess why I came to my conclusions :wink: )

Of course, if their jump engine was rendered inoperable (pending repairs that could only be done in real space) the plot of "A Distant Star" actually works.

They're off beacon unable to drop into real space, therefore have no idea of where they are, their only hope is to find a beacon again...

If they had operable jump drive, they'd have been fine - they weren't so they clearly didn't.

ShadowScout said:
However, is might be possible that such sensor advances are just beyond reach of the older younger races - the streib didn't seem that high-techy after all.

Again I'd disagree - the ships certainly looked organic (even if the AoG rules didn't portray them as such), as did the basis for much of the interior of the ship.
 
I figure I'd add a quick note on the Streib. If memory serves, according to the Technomage trilogy they were servents of the Shadows and thus would have access to technology not available to the younger races.
And, again relying on my memory here, when the White Star jumped over Mars, it was rewceiving a signal from the surface otherwise it would not have been able to jump properly without probably crashing into the surface.
The Minbari do have much more accurate jump engines than other races as seen in the Black Star's attack in In the Beginning, but it was never established whether they could see into normal spoacer or that flyer sent a signal to it.
 
As far as things go with the Minbari, it's a combination of the two. In both examples they had signals to lock onto but since the Minbari are more advanced than any other younger race (without outside help) the sensors and jump engines are much more precise on Minbari ships. That's why the Minbari were able to hit the Earth fleet with the jump vortex in ItB and why the White Star was able to jump into the Martian atmosphere. You couldn't consider jumps like either one of those with any other ships short of First One vessels.
 
babakganoosh said:
And, again relying on my memory here, when the White Star jumped over Mars, it was rewceiving a signal from the surface otherwise it would not have been able to jump properly without probably crashing into the surface.

What they had was an accurate set of coordinates (provided by Garibaldi and the resistance) for the jump point, not a signal as such.
 
frobisher said:
Except Mars of course... No jumpgate there
Actually not so - the Sol system HAS a jumpgate with beacon to gauge your position from. You only need one per star system after all...

frobisher said:
If you're right over a planet (relatively speaking), yes, you shouldn't get lost. If said star system is two - three (real space) parsecs away then you'd almost certainly not see any appreciable influence of the mass of the star system. So unless you're really close (say the effective distance of the Earth to the Moon translated to local hyperspace) you'll not "see" an Earth sized planet.
Well, if it was That easy, there ought to be a lot more exploration results showing up in B5. But even after centuries, the expansionistic centauri have what, a handful of worlds? So where are all those planets in between?

frobisher said:
If they had operable jump drive, they'd have been fine - they weren't so they clearly didn't.
Oh, now you're trying circular logic!?! :wink:
That statement only works if one assumes you are right, and everyone else is wrong. If you aren't right, then the fact that they weren't fine says nothing about the state of their jump engine, because it could also have been caused by the way hyperspace navigation works in my theory.

And to add one more thing... whoever said that their jump engine was ever damaged in the first place?? We know their navigation system was damaged, throwing then off course. We know some panels on their bridge blew up. And we knew by the time the Starfuries found them, they had repaired that, could maneuver and communicate, but had drifted too far off the beacon to find it.
But unless they had a massive "damage all systems" failure, why should their jump engine be damaged only because they have an explosion on board? On a ship that size, it would seem very illogical to have any accident that would disable several systems beyond repair - the only way several systems could be affected easily would be by a bridge explosion that leaves the systems intact, but damages the controls, and That should be easy to repais in comparison, because you don't need to take your ship apart to replace a blasted console or two...
But I'll watch that one again tomorrow, just to be sure...

frobisher said:
Again I'd disagree - the ships certainly looked organic (even if the AoG rules didn't portray them as such), as did the basis for much of the interior of the ship.
Maybe.
But they didn't show a lot of ability when the Aggie came calling. So I'd say they couldn't have been That far beyond the Minbari... better in sensor tech, but worse in all the other fields - at least in effect even though much of it did look a bit organic (however, on second look the really important stuff didn't - the mind-control implant didn't seem organic, the ship hatches didn't seem organic and the ship corridors didn't seem organic, only the exmaination table...
And if the Exy's shiny new sensors can pick up stuff hidden in a Shadow Deathcloud I could be convinced it might be able to see at least a planet-sized thing from hyperspace (we know from the unfilmed scripts it had to re-enter normal space to look for ship sized stuff) - maybe. Maybe not, but maybe. It'd make sense considering it's mission...

babakganoosh said:
but it was never established whether they could see into normal spoacer or that flyer sent a signal to it.
Not entirely, but it'd seem logical. If they did it on Mars, why not do exactly the same in ItB - especially when they needed to have an observer in normal space for that trick.
If they could see into normal space, they wouldn't have to bother with that flyer - just jump out of nowhere in the middle of the earthies and start blasting without even the slightest warning. And they'd have used that as standard tactic throughout the war. They didn't, in either case, so they most likely couldn't, no matter what other theories say.
 
ShadowScout said:
Wrong.
According to AoG fluff, the EA DID destroy jump gates - that was what made the minbari take so long to reach earth; they had to re-discover the routes (otherwise they'd have just rolled over the whole EA fleet in a few months, desrtoyed earth and be done with it, instead of taking the years JMS gave the war in his time frame).

This is reasonable but begs the question: what happened to the colonies defeated early in the war. Without jump gates and viable off-beacon navigation, supply of such colonies would be impossible and most would have starved to death. This is also reasonable to assume but deaths of so many colonies would traumatise humanity as a star spanning culture. It would be hard to convince enough people to repopulate the outer colonies within 10 years. Earth Alliance would also be a lot more hostile to the Minbari Federation.
 
Back
Top