Jump torps - why not?

[EDG]

* IF you're crazy enough to expect to make misjumps. OK, so the LBB1-3 OTU does seem to expect Free-Traders to be stupid enough to routinely risk misjumps. There's no excuse post LBB5 for that to be. Heck I don't even allow it under LBB1-3. You lose your license and ship if you try anything so stupid without a really solid reason. What is the Mongoose take on misjumps? Do they happen only if you take stupid risks? Or are they a chance even when operating safely?

In the Traveller corebook, it looks like you'll only make a misjump if you roll 0 or less on the Jump roll. And the only way that would happen is if you're using unrefined fuel or have a damaged jump drive or are within the 100D limit when you jump (and having Engineering-3 or more will mean that you'd never have to worry if you use unrefined fuel).

 

[far-trader]

Thank you very much EDG.

So, basically always safe the way it was in CT.

...(and having Engineering-3 or more will mean that you'd never have to worry if you use unrefined fuel).

And that is a very interesting addition. Gonna have to snag that for future use

 

[EDG]

The reason is that you get a bonus equal to your Engineering skill to the Jump roll. Since unrefined fuel/damaged drive means you have a DM-2 to the roll (for each situation), and to properly misjump you need to roll less than 0 on 2d6, that means that if you have Engineering 3 or more you can never roll a 0. (you get a -8 to the roll for being anywhere within 100D of a body)

I can see that bonus working if the drive is damaged (you managed to hold it together long enough for it to jump) but I don't think it makes much sense for avoiding the unrefined fuel penalty - you can't just magically remove the contaminants by being a good engineer. Maybe you manage to bash the drive into working despite a whole load of red lights and warnings showing up because of the unrefined fuel?

 

[far-trader]

...you can't just magically remove the contaminants by being a good engineer. Maybe you manage to bash the drive into working despite a whole load of red lights and warnings showing up because of the unrefined fuel?

I was thinking more like the drive is running out of specs, dangerously so at points, but expert monitoring and quick intervention manages to keep it all in the green. Not so much hitting it with a big multi-spanner as managing various spikes and drops by finessing the capacitor inputs throughout the powering up cycle.

 

[captainjack23]

...you can't just magically remove the contaminants by being a good engineer. Maybe you manage to bash the drive into working despite a whole load of red lights and warnings showing up because of the unrefined fuel?

I was thinking more like the drive is running out of specs, dangerously so at points, but expert monitoring and quick intervention manages to keep it all in the green. Not so much hitting it with a big multi-spanner as managing various spikes and drops by finessing the capacitor inputs throughout the powering up cycle.

Like the difference between an automated server admin package & the classic beardy ponytail sandal wearing always logged in admin......

Alternately, rather than a big spanner, perhaps it's all the cheap Vargr Whiskey he pours in the Gizmostatic Technocondenser that dissolves the contaminants......

Which actually works for the professional admin, too.....

 

[GhostWolf69]

I've read this back and forth for a while now and I have decided what I will do in my game.

No Jump Torps.

Even if I do appreciate some of the cool plot hooks etc. that could potentially be used if they were allowed, I personally have to agree with the people who think it sets a strange precedence for things to come. It simply raises to many other questions that bundled together does not really fall within what I would classify as "Traveller Spirit".

/wolf

 

[Sir Brad]

Book 8 Robots explained why the Imperium wouldn't allow it, it has a lot to do with Vilani Pre-History, a AI uprising towards the end of the Rule of Man and an other one just after TL-12 was recovered by the Third Imperium. few people trust AIs that are too smart and fewer people like them.

to calculate a Jump (not just run a Jump program) requires a intellect that is considered dangerous for a non-Biological, and Illegal (in the same way Psionics is Illegal).

 

[Sir Brad]

true Syphont AI's (Eletronic people, but not Smart Eletronic people) are TL-14+, but "Dumb AI's" can be built from about TL-10, "Semi-Smart AI's" from about TL-12, Smart Syphont AI's come in at TL-16.

But the Imperium dosen't like folks to build them.

 

[StephenT]

Even if I do appreciate some of the cool plot hooks etc. that could potentially be used if they were allowed, I personally have to agree with the people who think it sets a strange precedence for things to come.

I agree. I also think that there are no plot hooks which jump torps can offer, that can't also be set up some other way.

A mysterious message comes in from an uncharted star system? Either by radio, as someone said earlier, or a Scout/Courier jumps into the system broadcasting a distress signal, and all the crew on board are dead.

A voyage of exploration might need to send for help? So design your exploratory cruisers with a spacedock capable of holding a 100-ton craft, and carry a Scout/Courier on board for emergencies. (This may, of course, be the same one that appears in scenario 1 above...)

You've spotted the Zhodani fleet massing in orbit one jump from Regina, and need to warn the Duke? Well which is more exciting:
"I send off a message torpedo." "Ok, roll 8+ for it to reach its destination successfully, add your astrogation skill as a modifier." "I roll 11!" "Congratulations, you just averted the Fifth Frontier War."
or:
Having the player characters fight their way past the Zho patrols, desperately fix the battle damage to their jump drive, jump to Regina, struggle through layers of bureaucratic underlings to speak to someone in authority (all the time worrying that the Zhodani might already be on their way), and finally convince him/her that their message is genuine and not a hoax, and the Imperial Navy must be mobilised?

 

[rust]

I agree. I also think that there are no plot hooks which jump torps can offer, that can't also be set up some other way.

Not quite. All your proposals, except the radio message (which takes
3+ years to reach the next system ...), require a ship and a crew.

Now, my setting's remote colonies cannot afford to have a ship and
crew on permanent standby, but they can afford to buy one or two
message drones, which they can sell later on, once they can afford
said ship and crew.

To me, it is just a matter of what makes sense within my setting, and
message drones do make sense there.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

A voyage of exploration might need to send for help? So design your exploratory cruisers with a spacedock capable of holding a 100-ton craft, and carry a Scout/Courier on board for emergencies. (This may, of course, be the same one that appears in scenario 1 above...)

A 100dTon and 27Mcr is quite a lot for emergency contingency. If a scout cruiser did carry a Type-S, it would be for regular use. Still, doesn't stop it being used in an emergency. But if I was that scout cruiser commander, i'd still want half a dozen message drones, just in case.

You've spotted the Zhodani fleet massing in orbit one jump from Regina, and need to warn the Duke? Well which is more exciting:
"I send off a message torpedo." "Ok, roll 8+ for it to reach its destination successfully, add your astrogation skill as a modifier." "I roll 11!" "Congratulations, you just averted the Fifth Frontier War."
or:
Having the player characters fight their way past the Zho patrols, desperately fix the battle damage to their jump drive, jump to Regina, struggle through layers of bureaucratic underlings to speak to someone in authority (all the time worrying that the Zhodani might already be on their way), and finally convince him/her that their message is genuine and not a hoax, and the Imperial Navy must be mobilised?

That's one good adventure hook. Another is to send a message drone and then engage in a guerilla attacks or sabotage against the Zhodani fleet in system.

As for being used as near C planet busters, well, as I've said, message drones wouldn't need to be able to calculate their own jumps, so that AI thing is not really a telling crit, but even without AI, or jump torpedoes, near C attacks are just as feasible.

Get a decent sized asteroid, turn it into a jump capable vessel, with a crew. Include a hangar bay for a Gazelle type craft. Whip the 'stroid vessel up to a near c speed, on the right vector to his the target planet. Calculate jump, and jump into the system. Spend a week chilling out. Once in the target system, abandon the asteroid in the Gazelle and jump back home. So even without jump torpedoes, this issue is still there.

However, it's an unlikely scenario, for one reason. The jump has to be spot on. Ie: there can be no deviation in the vector at all - the vessel has to on target when it emerges from jump, as at near C, there's no chance at all it can use it's engine to go back on target - it won't have enough fuel or time. There are so many things that can go wrong, and absolutely no margin of error whatsoever, that it's even more hairbrained than the Japanese fire balloons of WW2.

Fair enough that folk do not want to message drones in their games, but I'm going to keep them in my OTU game as I can see occasional utility in them. No one has convinced me that they 'break' the spirit of the OTU in any way, and I can't see that they raise any other issues like too good automation or non-canon war tactics.

I do think they are worth discussing, rather than dismissing, which I think was the original question the thread was asking.

 

[EDG]

As I pointed out on the near-c rocks thread, I think the real problem is that you have effectively infinte fuel if you have reactionless drives and a power plant.

I think you'd mostly solve the problem with "fighters jumping in with nukes" if the fighters and the missiles had only a limited amount of fuel to burn (though to be honest that's not really a problem, unless you somehow consider it a problem that any ship of any size can jump in with nukes). Whether it's a small craft or a big one doesn't really make a difference here.

 

[Pagan priest]

Here's a thought: what if the 100dTon limit is not so much a limit based on the physics of building a J-drive, (since after all, jump torps are canon) but of the limits on being able to properly shield the passengers and crew from the effects of jump space. That 100 ton scout is perfectly safe, but strapping jump drives aboard that 95 ton shuttle is begging to have your brains flow out your ears...

 

[Baron Sidur Haski]

In a non OTU setting, we used Jump Pod message things, but the GM had it so the unreliability was due to some unquantifiable (we all thought it was latent psionics or something) in Jump Calculations. They could be done by a machine, but there was some "nuance" missing from using an Astrogator that made the Jumps work well (without a negative DM)

I remember we only had two, as they were expensive as hell, and only one ever made it to where we sent it.

 

[rust]

You still have the problems of robot freighters, robot couriers, robot warships, robot bomb-missiles...

Unless your setting is the canonical OTU, I do not see these as problems.

Besides, the Vampire ships of TNE came very close to being robot war-
ships, including freighters and couriers acting like warships, and some
of them which crashed into cities in fact were robot bomb-missiles in all
but name.

Since Virus obviously was within the Imperial technical capability, and
since Virus needed no TL 15 megacomputers to control entire ships (it in-
fected ships of lower tech levels, too), I do not think that the introduction
of experimental robotic jump ships would really break the OTU canon.

 

[aspqrz]

You still have the problems of robot freighters, robot couriers, robot warships, robot bomb-missiles...

Um. I'm sure we've all heard the old joke ...

Passengers sitting in their seats in a 747 (or <fill in the blank> aircraft type) hear the following announcement ...

"<Fill in the Blank> Airlines would like to welcome you to our first ever robotically commanded flight. We have spared no expense in ensuring that the latest technology has been used and that nothing can possibly go wrong ... go wrong ... go wrong ... go wrong"

So much for Robot couriers/freighters/warships.

As for robot missiles, well, hey, what do you think Cruise Missiles are?

You *could* argue that ICBMs aren't "robot" since they are simply targetted robotically at launch, I guess, but Cruise Missiles are definitely "robotic" ... and to claim that the Imperial Army (or Marines, or Navy) wouldn't have the equivalent is, frankly, downright unbelievable.

Robot *Jump* Torps. Or any sort of Jump Torp, well, yeah, since they're possibly against Canon. Possibly not.

For insystem work, robot drones from the Belt carrying metals to refineries further in-system, yeah, I could see that ... but for anything more complex, sorry, no, I don't see it as likely.

And, therefore, not a problem simply because someone wants Jump Torps. In this particular respect I think Canon is stupid :shock:

YMMV and, since you don't play in MTU and I don't play in YTU, what's the problem?

Phil

 

[pasuuli]

Out of curiosity, people tend to bring up the J-Torps in Leviathan; is the ship in Annic Nova (with its share of canon-distorting quirks) just generally dismissed?

Easier to handwave away: the collector is special. It collects Handwavium from the solar wind and converts it to energy.

I don't mind sub-100t jumpcraft being stable at TL16 or so, and being iffy at lower TLs.

Not requiring a navigator (or pilot or astrogator) does tend to cut down the crew size of a trader -- especially since costs must be cut at all costs. Though, you can get the same effect by buying robots for those tasks. Well sort of, except robots probably have personalities...

ANYHOW, if they're cheap enough, then you could simply build a "misjump network" out of J-Torps (a lot of them) and get close to Jump-36 information transfer speeds. They don't have to be reliable at all... and what do you suppose J36 communication would be worth to the Imperium?

 

[simonh]

Since Virus obviously was within the Imperial technical capability, and since Virus needed no TL 15 megacomputers to control entire ships (it in- fected ships of lower tech levels, too), I do not think that the introduction of experimental robotic jump ships would really break the OTU canon.

The story with Virus isn't a simple as that. As I undersdtand it, Virus was only possible because they discovered a silicon based life form that supposedly infected the semiconductors and effectively upgraded the hardware by a few tech levels. I'm guessing that imperial compuetrs use programmable hardware that allowed Virus to replicate itself remotely, or maybe is used software-only payloads to take over remote systems enough to facilitate physical access.

Simon Hibbs

 

[rust]

True, but whatever they used, they were able to do it at TL 15.

The silicon-based lifeform could just as well have been discovered at
another time by another species, who could have used the discovery for
less destructive purposes. So, the technology itself is possible within OTU
canon.

 

[EDG]

"<Fill in the Blank> Airlines would like to welcome you to our first ever robotically commanded flight. We have spared no expense in ensuring that the latest technology has been used and that nothing can possibly go wrong ... go wrong ... go wrong ... go wrong"

So much for Robot couriers/freighters/warships.

You say that as if humans can't screw up catastrophically either.