Jump torps - why not?
- Thread starter EDG
- Start date
Gruffty the Hiver
Banded Mongoose
Indeed and some joined other, newer boards.atpollard said:
It was but it went off-topic about p.5 somewhere. I think the conclusion was that if you like the idea of J-torps in YTU, use them, if not, don't. Simple really
far-trader
Mongoose
atpollard said:
A lot? Two or three as I recall. But I guess that is a lot to some :?
atpollard said:
There's no escaping topic drift
far-trader said:There's no escaping topic drift
Yep, it has something to do with plate tectonics and continental drift ...
But we could return on topic with a proposal for "manned" jump torpe-
does, each with a low berth embedded in a drop capsule, as a device
for "marooning" unwelcome crew members, or unwelcome officers in
the case of a mutiny - or perhaps unwelcome or "blind" passengers.
Just put the guy you want to get rid of into the low berth, robot-jump
him to a planet inhabited by people you seriously dislike, and drop him
there, for them to deal with.
Now, where is the e-mail address of that Imperial patent office ... 8)
far-trader
Mongoose
rust said:far-trader said:There's no escaping topic drift
Yep, it has something to do with plate tectonics and continental drift ...
But we could return on topic with a proposal for "manned" jump torpe-
does...
I like it. Of course Gruffty (I think it's we have talked about it before) will want to me hunt up my Jump Battle Dress then
(similar idea, Standard BD suit, jump drive and fuel backpack, and a dose of Fast to make the trip bearable, with a vector plotted before jump to put you on the target, nothing like sneaking in a platoon of BD Marines to soften things up on the ground ahead of the attack fleet).
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
rust said:far-trader said:There's no escaping topic drift
Yep, it has something to do with plate tectonics and continental drift ...
But we could return on topic with a proposal for "manned" jump torpe-
does...
So, it seemed like the basic questions being asked were:
1.Are they possible,
2. If not, why not
3. and if they are, what are the effects o the OTU in specific, and traveller in general.
Sound right ?
I doubt that discussions of canon will help the matter, as they are both explicitly canon and Non canon at the same time. Besides....the question is not do they exist , but should they exist or, more specifically, what would the OTU be like if they did.
If we can keep to the thought experiment part of the discussion, it could be quite....informative and inspiring, to quote another post on another board...
captainjack23 said:
The effects on the setting would probably depend on whether they are
a common, well-established and affordable technology, which might ha-
ve serious consequences especially for the OTU, or whether they are
very rare, experimental and extremely expensive (as in my setting),
which would probably have almost no consequences for the OTU or any
other setting - but would provide a nice adventure device.
captainjack23 said:
Pretty much. I was largely wondering why there was such a big kerfuffle about them given that they don't really change that much (and I can't really say that I've seen anything mentioned in this thread that would result in particularly massive changes to the OTU setting).
Some people have claimed that every starship would be automated, but I don't see that. Robots can do a lot of tasks today but we don't live in an entirely automated society, after all. I can see X-Boats being automated (I find the crew requirement there to to be particularly dumb aspect of the setting) and perhaps exploratory drones too, but there's still plenty of reason for sentient beings to be crewing ships.
The main problem I think with jump-capable small craft (e.g. fighters) is the fact that Traveller claims that their M-drives can operate effectively indefinitely without refuelling (and are in fact no different to larger ships in that respect). Add a fuel limitation and that goes away.
Klaus Kipling
Mongoose
If we had robot cars I reckon the roads would be much safer, but I can't see any motorist going for that.
It could be possible a sub 100dTon hull is incapable of transporting living cargo. The jump bubble is too small and weird wibbly-wobbly jump effects ensure any passengers won't survive. Only a partially shielded datacore can make it through and then transmit. Maybe the hull can degrade in jump-space, making them one shot devices. Jump is a total hand-wave. The only key things that need to be remembered is one week in jump and 10% of volume in L-hyd per parsec. We can embellish to our hearts content and hardly touch the setting as written.
It could be possible a sub 100dTon hull is incapable of transporting living cargo. The jump bubble is too small and weird wibbly-wobbly jump effects ensure any passengers won't survive. Only a partially shielded datacore can make it through and then transmit. Maybe the hull can degrade in jump-space, making them one shot devices. Jump is a total hand-wave. The only key things that need to be remembered is one week in jump and 10% of volume in L-hyd per parsec. We can embellish to our hearts content and hardly touch the setting as written.
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
Klaus Kipling said:If we had robot cars I reckon the roads would be much safer, but I can't see any motorist going for that.
It could be possible a sub 100dTon hull is incapable of transporting living cargo. The jump bubble is too small and weird wibbly-wobbly jump effects ensure any passengers won't survive. Only a partially shielded datacore can make it through and then transmit. Maybe the hull can degrade in jump-space, making them one shot devices. Jump is a total hand-wave. The only key things that need to be remembered is one week in jump and 10% of volume in L-hyd per parsec. We can embellish to our hearts content and hardly touch the setting as written.
One handwave I always liked was that the minimum size of an object in jumpspace is the 100dt jump bubble.*
Of course, one could then, I suppose, blow a 100 dton sized jump bubble around anything.
More thinking needed.
* the idea in MTU is that in order to stay in jumpspace, one must become a particle analogue, such as, say, a Meson or Boson in our universe- and thus the ship/bubble has to essentially mimic the qualities of the local version, which includes both size and density....the physics of jumpspace impose a quantum random decay, etc. so when the particle does or would decay, you pop into the normal universe. Different jump numbers are dues to different variable in the particle impersonated - examples would be spin (left right), charge (+,-,0)**, etc. or any 3x2 set of conditions.
**Yes, I know sub atmoics on;t hold charge per se. Its a metaphoric thingie, much as quarks dont have an actual flavor..
captainjack23 said:
Captain, here you have lost me ... :shock:
I think that I do perhaps understand what you mean, but I am not sure.
If it is something like (extremely simplified) "You have to simulate the
properties of a fish to travel in the water" and "(Jump) Speed is determi-
ned by the type of fish you simulate", I think I got it.
If it is something else, I would need a translation ...
far-trader said:
When 10 people seem to do all of the posting and 3 people quit, it looks like a lot.
If you would care to perform an analysis of the percentage of active posters (perhaps weighted based on their frequency of posts), then we could quantify this discussion.
Or as a 'plan B', we can just say 'atpollard is wrong'.
I can live with that, too.
EDG said:
Let's stir two 'flamebait' topics together and look at a possible implication of sub 100 ton jump craft.
It is possible in Travellere to accelerate a ship to some fraction of C (say 0.2C for this particular example), enter jumpspace, exit jumpspace by participating out at the 100 diameter limit, and smash into the planet. For the sake of 'peace on the board' let us assume that for the same reason that 'conservation of momentum' does not apply to MDs, that 'kinetic energy' does not apply in this case - there will be a very short time to intercept the ship before it crashes, but no 'extinction event'. For a dreadnaught and its crew of thousands, this would be an insane tactic.
What about a 3 dTon jump torpedo with an AM warhead?
What about a micro-jump within the same system?
Is that a reasonable extrapolation of Jump-Torpedo technology?
Is that desirable for the OTU? or YTU?
atpollard said:
I would not call it "desirable", but that is exactly what happened in my
setting:
Some terrorists stole an experimental hyperspace drone, put a fusion
warhead on it, and sent it to "take part" in a jubilee festival with hun-
dreds of interstellar VIP guests.
In the end, two characters died when they intercepted the drone with
their shuttle at the last possible moment, and the guests mistook the
explosion for some weird fireworks for the jubilee.
It was an excellent adventure, with speed, tension and drama, and the
players (even those of the killed characters) really liked it.
And this is what is important, I think. Everything else is secondary.
Regarding planet-killing asteroids and ships jumping at close to c.
IMHO yes these are all perfectly possible in Traveller. Even if you find reasons to exclude the most obvious possibilities, given the capabilities of Traveller starships and the facts of basic physics, wiping out a planet is perfectly possible in Traveller.
So why doesn't it happen? To my mind it's the same reason we haven't actually had a nuclear war on earth. Retaliation is easy enough that nobody would be prepared to escalate to that level. Even for smaller political or even terrorist groups, that level of destruction would simply make them pariahs. After all even terrorists have goals that are ultimately political, and beyond a certain level of atrocity it becomes counter-productive.
Given the extensiveness of OTU history perhaps incidents of this kind of atrocity have still happened, but as in the real world they are probably rare enough that the setting as a whole carries on.
Simon Hibbs
IMHO yes these are all perfectly possible in Traveller. Even if you find reasons to exclude the most obvious possibilities, given the capabilities of Traveller starships and the facts of basic physics, wiping out a planet is perfectly possible in Traveller.
So why doesn't it happen? To my mind it's the same reason we haven't actually had a nuclear war on earth. Retaliation is easy enough that nobody would be prepared to escalate to that level. Even for smaller political or even terrorist groups, that level of destruction would simply make them pariahs. After all even terrorists have goals that are ultimately political, and beyond a certain level of atrocity it becomes counter-productive.
Given the extensiveness of OTU history perhaps incidents of this kind of atrocity have still happened, but as in the real world they are probably rare enough that the setting as a whole carries on.
Simon Hibbs
simonh said:
What if the reason a nuclear war hasn't happened on Earth is because it'd screw up the aggressors too? But give them the option of not being there when it happened, and they might be more willing to wipe everyone out...
Maybe the same logic applies to a group of terrorists in the Kuiper Belt. Maybe they won't have a problem flinging an asteroid (even at normal speeds) at the inhabited planet closer to the star - they're not the ones who'll be caught up in the suffering after all.
That said, I guess modern terrorists don't get caught up directly in the suffering of the bombings they do on Earth. They do however usually suffer from retaliations... maybe being out in the Kuiper Belt is like being in the mountains of Pakistan... everyone knows you're out there but can't hope to find you.
As Simon pointed out, even terrorists usually have political goals. And
they usually need at least some political and especially financial sup-
port to survive. More than a few terrorist groups ceased to exist sim-
ply because they no longer had any supporters (think of Germany's
RAF, for example, and similar developments in Northern Ireland and
Spain).
So, genocide might well be a very bad strategy for terrorists. In my
opinion, "planet killer weapons" would be more likely to be used in
"total wars", but there could well be an interstellar treaty to enforce
a ban on the use of such weapons, making it extremely rare and a
self-destroying strategy.
they usually need at least some political and especially financial sup-
port to survive. More than a few terrorist groups ceased to exist sim-
ply because they no longer had any supporters (think of Germany's
RAF, for example, and similar developments in Northern Ireland and
Spain).
So, genocide might well be a very bad strategy for terrorists. In my
opinion, "planet killer weapons" would be more likely to be used in
"total wars", but there could well be an interstellar treaty to enforce
a ban on the use of such weapons, making it extremely rare and a
self-destroying strategy.
Pagan priest
Mongoose
Given that jumps don't always put you exactly where you planned, I'd say that the tactic would fail more often than it would succeed. At any C-fractional speed, you would cover the 100 diameter distance very quickly, and with a huge vector in whatever direction you happen to be pointing. Really hard to change a vector that big. It is too late at night for me to actually work out the math, but I suspect that even a 1 degree deviation in initial heading at a C-fractional speed would be too much to overcome before passing right past the target. Using the T20 book, I see the possibility that a ship could come out of jump space "... anywhere out to 400 diameters or more." and that a perfect jump, landing right on the 100 diameter limit with a small vector toward the planet after exactly 168 hours in jump space only happens about 5% of the time.atpollard said:
So, how many of these increadibly expensive jump missiles will you throw away before you finally manage to strike a part of the planet that likely has no signficant strategic value at all? It is a lot more viable to jump into the outer system, or even farther out than that, and accelerate from there.
I think that "realistically" jump torps would be pretty much useless as weapons. Their only real value would be in carrying replaceable things on those occasions when you don't want the expense of sending an entire ship.
BenGunn said:
And planets being moving targets, 'when' you come out of jump makes a huge difference to the 'where' relative to the target.
The earth has a diameter of about 12,000 km and orbital velocity of 2.6 million km/day so it moves about 300 times it's diameter in a 36hr period. So if I've got my figures right a planet-killer torpedo would only have about a 1/300 chance of scoring a hit, assuming pin-point navigation*.
Actualy that's wrong though, you'd send the torpedo to pop out of jump on the planet's orbital track, traveling in a retrograde direction, so the planet's lateral movement relative to the torpedo's course would be minimised. Hmm, tricky problem.
Still, personaly I believe that jump calculations aren't that precise about where you come out anyway, if only to make this tactice unreliable.
Simon
*P.S. Someone please check those numbers?
BenGunn said:
That's actually the subject of some debate - I think there are some vague implications in canon that you can deliberately come out at any distance further than 100D, but it is clear that you automatically precipitate out of jump space if you attempt to arrive within the 100D limit of a body. And if you cross the 100D limit of a body on the way to somewhere else then that will automatically precipitate you out too.
However, I don't think exactly how far from the 100D limit that one can deliberately arrive at a system has been made explicitly and unambiguously clear in CT/MT/TNE.
Personally I think that you need a mass (something with a 100D limit anyway) at the destination to precipitate you out of jumpspace. I don't think the implication has ever been that the jump drive needs to actively tear a hole out of jumpspace (or expend energy) to re-enter normal space, and it'd take much less energy to just let nature pull you out at the 100D limit. But I guess that'd be what I'd say for MTU.
