Jump torps - why not?

[rust]

So, do you suppose the original tax documentation was originally written in Linear A and has just been translated from language to language by whatever equiv of babelfish existed ?

As far as I know, they use the Phaistos Disc as the base for their termi-
nology, and change it each time a new translation attempt is published.
They seem to use it for their computer software, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaistos_Disc

 

[Majestic7]

Well, I'd argue that before the discovery of the Advanced Jumpspace Theorum (we really need to come up with a name for the inventor of that, incidentally., Since it was during the Solomani-Aslan border wars, lets be non-chauvinist and assume she was a Fteirle' mathematician...)(The status of her footwear is a separate debate.) it would go like this:

Well you see, I was talking about it being literally impossible - no way to do it, zip, none, nada - not just it being insanely hard to carry out correctly. See the difference? Heh, only thing I can think of as an explanation is what I mentioned earlier - if you don't hit a star system when you should, the jump bubble bursts and its hello strange new universe ("Tentacles? Tentacles!"). However, this kind of explanation requires the whole mass thing stuff as a base I suppose. Anyway, I think simply naming jumps to empty hexes impossible is pretty dull, especially since doing the things people believe to be impossible is well established part of space exploration adventuring.

 

[thrash]

Unfortunately, this is wrong. It is explicit in Gurps Traveller, nowhere else; and as you know (GTIW status aside), the rule is that nothing in GURPS may be used to prove the CT/MT/T4/TNE body of work wrong.

It is explicit in GURPS Traveller because I wrote to Marc Miller and asked him for a ruling -- do intervening bodies cause precipitation or not? His answer was that it does:

Meanwhile the important elements of what you ask are this...

1. A ship IS precipitated out of jump when it crosses the 100D line from any object (which is greater than that of the ship).

" Restrictions. Jump cannot take place within 100 diameters of body (star, gas giant, world, planetoid, or even another ship) larger than itself.
If a plotted course intersects a 100 diameter sphere around any object larger than the ship, the ship is "precipitated out" of jump space.
In System Jumps. It is possible to jump within a star system: The jump still takes a week (168 hours or so). In some cases, the jump is more efficient than using maneuver drive."

2. SO, if you plot a jump in a straight line from here to there, and between here and there there happens to be an object of sufficient size, then you aren't going to go all the way. You'll precipitate out of jump when you hit the 100D limit.

3. It is based on D rather than mass. Take that as an article of faith. We are talking about an object with some appreciable densitry however, so most gas clouds don't apply. If essence, the object must be a star or a world or a solid object ratehr than a nebula or comet tail.

4. Sometimes there is an uncharted or unexpected thing in the way (big ship, planetoid, whatever. That would make you precipitate out. BTW, this implies that there is a one-to-one mapping between jump space and real space.

Mr. Miller may have contradicted himself since then (28 December 1998), but at the time it was as canon as canon can be.

 

[captainjack23]

It is explicit in GURPS Traveller because I wrote to Marc Miller and asked him for a ruling -- do intervening bodies cause precipitation or not? His answer was that it does:

Meanwhile the important elements of what you ask are this...

1. A ship IS precipitated out of jump when it crosses the 100D line from any object (which is greater than that of the ship).

" Restrictions. Jump cannot take place within 100 diameters of body (star, gas giant, world, planetoid, or even another ship) larger than itself.
If a plotted course intersects a 100 diameter sphere around any object larger than the ship, the ship is "precipitated out" of jump space.
In System Jumps. It is possible to jump within a star system: The jump still takes a week (168 hours or so). In some cases, the jump is more efficient than using maneuver drive."

2. SO, if you plot a jump in a straight line from here to there, and between here and there there happens to be an object of sufficient size, then you aren't going to go all the way. You'll precipitate out of jump when you hit the 100D limit.

3. It is based on D rather than mass. Take that as an article of faith. We are talking about an object with some appreciable densitry however, so most gas clouds don't apply. If essence, the object must be a star or a world or a solid object ratehr than a nebula or comet tail.

4. Sometimes there is an uncharted or unexpected thing in the way (big ship, planetoid, whatever. That would make you precipitate out. BTW, this implies that there is a one-to-one mapping between jump space and real space.

Mr. Miller may have contradicted himself since then (28 December 1998), but at the time it was as canon as canon can be.

well...damn ! That is cool. Thanks for passing it along.

 

[StephenT]

Well you see, I was talking about it being literally impossible - no way to do it, zip, none, nada - not just it being insanely hard to carry out correctly. See the difference?

Before 'Interstellar Wars' came out, I'd actually assumed that this was true for the jump drive invented by the Vilani. Their theory of jumpspace was flawed, and the only way they knew how to exit from jump was to "run up against a gravity well". The same flawed theory also helped explain why they never invented better than Jump-2 in several thousand years. It was the Terrans who eventually invented an improved drive that didn't need a gravity well to jump at.

My theory also explained why nobody uses near-c rocks to attack planets in the Imperium. See, in the early days when they only had J-1, the Vilani occasionally strapped thrusters to a planetoid and sent it out into deep space to act as a jump 'bridge'. However, when they invented J-2, the Imperial government wanted to exploit their monopoly of that to control society, by restricting travel to officially approved ships. That wasn't possible if subject races could use planets as bridges over rifts... so the Imperial psychohistorians put in hand a completely successful long-term project to make the idea of fitting engines to a rock and accelerating it to high speed utterly unthinkable for any Imperial citizen. This conditioning is still in effect today (the Solomani absorbed it from their Vilani subjects during the Second Imperium).

However, in GT:IW they went with the idea that deep-space jumps in ancient times were just really, really, really hard rather than physically impossible.

 

[GamerDude]

However, in GT:IW they went with the idea that deep-space jumps in ancient times were just really, really, really hard rather than physically impossible.

Well the big ruckus is that 'non-system' hexes were impossible to jump into (I hate the term 'empty' since space isn't truly 'empty').

But, where does the idea really come from as far as Traveller goes? Two board games, which for the purpose of being a board game restricted travel to along routes printed on the board.

Think about this: Known space has been 'mapped' and everything has been placed in a coordinate system. The ship's computer has the map in it's database, and based on the current location (planet, astrographic readings, or whatever) it can calculate the jump to the coordinates you want to end up at. Shooting for a gravity well/singularity helps you come out of jump-space, but at the end of the jump you come out no matter what-a significant mass only 'forces' you out.

To take a more direct route to a system that is outside the range of a single jump for your ship means carrying enough fuel for all the jumps you need to make to get where you are going. Not as efficient as traveling along a route from system-to-system so you can minimize what fuel you need to carry/maximize your cargo capacity, but it can be done.

What cha think?

 

[StephenT]

Well the big ruckus is that 'non-system' hexes were impossible to jump into (I hate the term 'empty' since space isn't truly 'empty').

But, where does the idea really come from as far as Traveller goes? Two board games, which for the purpose of being a board game restricted travel to along routes printed on the board.

Actually, it was also implicit in the original rules as well. That was certainly how I and my gaming group understood it. Books 1-3 of Traveller talk about jumping from world to world, and never once mention the possibility of jumping to 'empty hexes'. In fact, they say explicitly that certain worlds will be inaccessible to ships with a lower-rated jump drive.

Imperium wasn't just "a board game". It was the source on which the GDW in-house campaign, that became the OTU, was founded.

The original rules also said that a jump uses up all the fuel in the ship's tanks, regardless of distance travelled. That was actually changed in later printings, when the idea that each parsec jumped only consumed 10% of the ship's volume in fuel was introduced. This was because of an item of technology called a jump governor, that restricted the fuel usage, and in early versions of the rules you had to pay for a jump governor as an add-on to your drives.

Mind you, the rules didn't specifically say deep space jumps were impossible either. And so, about 3-4 years after they were first published GDW came up with the concept of collapsible fuel tanks, and wrote 'The Traveller Adventure' where they were an important plot point.

Thus changing the rules of their own universe and creating a canon conflict that lives on to this very day... :twisted:

 

[far-trader]

Actually...

Precisely. QFT (but it's just above so I'll save the pixels).

 

[rje]

So, do you suppose the original tax documentation was originally written in Linear A and has just been translated from language to language by whatever equiv of babelfish existed ?

As far as I know, they use the Phaistos Disc as the base for their termi-
nology, and change it each time a new translation attempt is published.
They seem to use it for their computer software, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaistos_Disc

Minoan nerds...