Interstellar Communications in Traveller

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

Four tiers:

Tier 1 Radiating out from the Imperial Capital to Sector Capitals. Run by the Empire

Tier 2 Radiating out from Sector Capitals to Sub Sector Capitals. Run by the Sector government

Optional routes to neighbouring Sectors.

Tier 3 Radiating out from Sub Sector Capitals to "important worlds in the Sub Sector. Run by the Sub Sector government.

Optional routes to neighbouring Sub Sectors even in other Sectors if seen useful by the Sub Sector government.

Tier 4 Local routes between worlds with trade they consider important enough to have regular communications. Run by the local worlds taking part.

Such routes can cross Sub Sector borders even to other Sectors.

The higher the Tier the faster the ships with Tier 4 often being just freighters carrying mail and Tier 2 and 3 may be no better in frontier areas.

 

[MongooseChris]

According to Singularity, there are almost ready for prime time Hop 1 prototypes, but they aren’t quite there yet. Soon, but not yet.

Including hints at all the damage that would be done to the Traveller narrative. With jump drive, all those interesting little "nothing" worlds become important because more than likely, you don't have a ship that can skip them. With hop drive, you jump over large swathes of "inconsequential" interstellar territory. You could argue that it just changes the narrative, and doesn't destroy it, but it'd be very different.

I like the idea of running a campaign with instantaneous interstellar communication, too, again greatly changing the typical Traveller "age of sail" narrative, but it could be a fun experiment.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The communication routes in Traveller have an intersecting back story.

In the original 77 CT rules you generated communication/trade lanes from a world using a provided table.

The folks at GDW decided to rebrand these trade lanes as xboat routes for their Third Imperium setting.

Canon states that when the xboat system was constructed it was "built on top" of the existing major trade routes, this is the reason is is not uniformly jump 4, hence lacks efficiency.

Imperial beiracrats likely tried many times to remap the xboat routes to a jump 4 mainline hub and spoke model, you only need jump 2 couriers to carry the news from the nearest hub world to make sure everyone has the latest out of date news...

JTAS TAS News mentions the 1105 Imperial plan to construct a jump 6 xboat network, again as hub and spoke, but this also has lots of planets that would now be bypassed up in arms. Plus frontier sectors like the Spinward Marches were not so keen on closer ties with the core worlds...

If the jump 6 xboat network were to be constructed then you would have an interesting setting where worlds that were previously on the communication routes/trade lanes, are now considered jump over worlds...

 

[WHULorigan]

Including hints at all the damage that would be done to the Traveller narrative. With jump drive, all those interesting little "nothing" worlds become important because more than likely, you don't have a ship that can skip them. With hop drive, you jump over large swathes of "inconsequential" interstellar territory. You could argue that it just changes the narrative, and doesn't destroy it, but it'd be very different.

It also means you end up with lots of places for the antagonists to "hide" (or for your protagonists to "hide-out", if necessary) or have their secret base, as nobody is monitoring all of those little nothing systems very closely. "They could be anywhere . . .".

I like the idea of running a campaign with instantaneous interstellar communication, too, again greatly changing the typical Traveller "age of sail" narrative, but it could be a fun experiment.

I rather like the way Larry Niven's Known Space Universe did it (which was taken up in the old Ringworld RPG by Chaosium back in the day), which meshes well with the general feel of Charted Space as well:

"Hyperwave" suffered from the same Hyperspace Singularity cut-off as hyperdrive engines did when approaching a normal-space gravity well (in fact they were a little more sensitive). Hyperdrive and Hyperwave did not propagate within the cut-off radius/singularity (which was based loosely on mass/gravitational potential) which for the Terra system was a radius of about the orbit of Pluto (or ~ 5.5 light-hours). Outside the radius Hyperwave was a virtually instantaneous ansible.

So within a star system, a communique had to be encoded via some conventional communication relay mechanism (EM-radio, gravity-ripple, etc.) and sent via normal light-speed to a relay station at the edge of the system beyond the cut-off radius, then encoded for hyperwave transmission and sent, which could be immediately picked up by any/all other hyperwave relay stations across Known Space. Those stations would then have to identify those packets securely encoded for them specifically and retransmit them via conventional lightspeed comms inbound to in-system destination receivers, and retransmit hyperwave signals blocked by intervening hyperwave singularities (by interstellar agreement).

Of course, ships and bases operating outside the cut-off radius could receive messages directly if they had a hyperwave transceiver on board, and ships in hyperspace could likewise transmit and receive hyperwave.

 

[MarcusIII]

I did a search on this subject and see some people are using some alternate solutions in their games. But I would like to comply with the general idea that ships in jump bubbles are not able to communicate with the 'outside' universe, and that interstellar communications via quantum entanglement or other such theoretic means simply doesn't exist in the Traveller universe. Thus, communications are limited to carrying data aboard ships that traverse charted space via jumps.

With this thought in mind.... it makes sense to me that the various Empires in charted space would be very keen to master a communications network that allows for the fastest possible communications. I would think they would have established a reliable network of static routes with the fastest ships (most parsecs per jump). In addition they would also have a more dynamic and casual network of data flow where any ship moving from one system to the next is also carrying a data 'package' to be dumped and updated at each system they stop at.

My question is... what ships are capable of the farthest jumps, but small enough that they could reasonably be considered 'dedicated' to just carrying data packets between systems. For instance... an Imperial Battleship could jump 4 parsecs in a week... making it capable of moving that data faster & farther than many other ships. But using a battleship as a 'mail carrier' isn't practical if other ships exist that could make that same jump without moving an entire battleship.

So if you were setting up such a dedicated data network using fast jump ships in your Traveller universe, which ships would you use for this? Keep in mind, I'm looking for more of a dedicated military (high priority) network, in addition to the casual flow of data that happens as ship naturally move around.

Here is what I use in MTU

Thread '[Cepheus Deluxe] 100 ton J6 Intel messenger'

Dec 29, 2025

Using a standard 100 Ton hull that is used for many other ships including couriers, traders, freighters, yachts & asteroid prospectors, this Intelligence ship garners no special notice wherever it goes. Having a crew of 1 it could carry another person in its single Low berth. It has about 1 1/2 tons of cargo space.

• MarcusIII
• Replies: 1
• Forum: Traveller

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• 

 

[WHULorigan]

Here is what I use in MTU

Thread '[Cepheus Deluxe] 100 ton J6 Intel messenger'

Dec 29, 2025

Using a standard 100 Ton hull that is used for many other ships including couriers, traders, freighters, yachts & asteroid prospectors, this Intelligence ship garners no special notice wherever it goes. Having a crew of 1 it could carry another person in its single Low berth. It has about 1 1/2 tons of cargo space.

• MarcusIII
• Replies: 1
• Forum: Traveller

• 
• 

Of course, the caption should read:

"Using the most familiar hull in space, it brings no notice to itself wherever it goes . . . until it starts to maneuver . . . " ​

 

[MarcusIII]

Of course, the caption should read:

"Using the most familiar hull in space, it brings no notice to itself wherever it goes . . . until it starts to maneuver . . . " ​

Which doesn't matter for the purposes of his question. But, yes it would draw attention for the wary spies around.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Including hints at all the damage that would be done to the Traveller narrative. With jump drive, all those interesting little "nothing" worlds become important because more than likely, you don't have a ship that can skip them. With hop drive, you jump over large swathes of "inconsequential" interstellar territory. You could argue that it just changes the narrative, and doesn't destroy it, but it'd be very different.

I like the idea of running a campaign with instantaneous interstellar communication, too, again greatly changing the typical Traveller "age of sail" narrative, but it could be a fun experiment.

Like many things post-Singularity, it will be a time of upheaval. The flip side of this is a previously inconsequential world that is now going to be a trade and communications hub. Lots of change and fodder for adventure there.