In system travel times

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

My gaming was with a bunch of military guys who worked in engineering. We LIKED the number crunching and pushed each other for reality. Larry Niven was one of our favorite authors, so that set the tone for many of our games.

Had things like CSI and Bones and NCIS etc be on the air back then, we probably would have played those kinds of games.

I do the number crunching because I am interested in getting it right. For a long time, I assumed a 1 month cycle: 1 week out, 1 week jump, 1 week in, 1 week on planet - rinse and repeat.

One day, someone challenged me and we sat down and did the math and realized that the travel time was only 6 hours (ish) at 1g and that we should have been allowing 2 jumps per month, not one.

In that case we had the numbers to back us up. When the PCs started designing their own ship, they crunched the numbers to optimize cost and performance on their M-Drive. They figured that anything over 3Gs was only good in a fight, but that 3Gs gave them an edge in fast cargoes.

LOTS of people don't like to play that way, and I respect that, I really do. My kids and I play Traveller (with me as referee) and THEY don't like the crunching (one is an EMT, the other is interested in Music). They could care less, but I like to get it right for ME.

 

[kristof65]

@BenGunn:
I've looked at 2300, interesting concept, but not what I'm looking for here. I've already made my assumptions on how the FTL works, and that has a significant impact on the interstellar "geography" and politics. At this point, I'm tweaking the numbers so that things match what my setting assumes.

Well, a lot of the basic rule book stuff is based on a "2 new solar systems per month" timescale, with a week in jump, and a week between jumps which is *mostly* starport/planet based. If you were to deviate much from this sort of scale, some of the economic and political assumptions made would need reviewing to see if there was an impact.

Yep. In this case, I have a general idea what the economic and political impacts are supposed to be, I'm playing with the numbers to get things close to my initial asumptions, then I'll go back and really tweak things.

At this rate, unless the hyperlane moves relative to the *mainworld*, there's going to be *significant* variability in journey times depending on where in their orbit the mainworlds are. If the hyperlane is 1 AU from both origin and destination, the journey distance could be anything from 2 AU (if they're both at closest approach) to 6AU (if they're both orbiting at 1 AU and at farthest distance from the lane). Assuming the lane is in the plane of the ecliptic... [Sing everybody! "The lane in space is main-ly in the pla-ane" - Ed]

The other thing that this will impact is spaceship design. A fast M-drive becomes more desirable since a M-5 ship spends half the time futzing about in N-space that a M-1 does, and takes up proportionately less extra tonnage compared with a doubling of the J-drive rating.

Yep. For the most part, these lanes will pass by most systems above, below or at an angle to the plane of the ecliptic. The variability in distance is an important part of the geo-politics of the setting.

As for m-drives - most ships will have a m-5 or 6, because the FTL drive uses much less space and fuel - which will typically be made up for with increased power plants and m-drives.

The setting has pockets of worlds where interstellar travell is a matter of hours, and other sytems that take weeks between them. Interstellar political entities will tend to center on those pockets of fast communicating worlds.