Jumping into empty hexes: some thoughts.

[EDG]

You might want to check the velocity of that rock at turnover. I think the universe might have a problem with it.

Oh you're kidding, it's not past lightspeed by then is it?!!

EDIT: Doh! Yes it is! By lots! :shock:

Even at 0.1g acceleration it's at 0.585c (175,661 km/s) at turnover point.

At 0.01g it's at 0.185c (55,548.9 km/s) at turnover point and takes 35.2 years to get to the target point.

And at 0.001g it's at 0.058c (17,566.1 km/s) at turnover and takes 111.4 years to get there.


Note that 17,566 km/s is still Very Fast Indeed. Earth by comparison is travelling around the sun with an orbital velocity of about 30 km/s.

 

[AKAramis]

Ok, I'm trying to wrap my mind around something?

Where in all the Cannon is it stated that a mass is needed at the end point of the jump to plot it? Heck, where in the cannon is what is required at the end point of a jump?

I mean, don't give me GT:IW because, as EDG has stated... GT is an ATU and it's never been clarified where the GT time line split from the OTU time line, so IW has no bearing on the question.

Thanks in advance.

In The Traveller Adventure (CT), it is made clear that there is no difference between jumping to a hex without a system and one with a system, other than the lack of fuel available at the end point.

In several late-era MT items, mention is made of the rift-crossing route, and the fuel depots maintained for that purpose in deep space.

TNE's Regency Sourcebook also references "Calibration Points" which are maintained in deep space along key mid-points.

 

[far-trader]

You might want to check the velocity of that rock at turnover. I think the universe might have a problem with it.

Oh you're kidding, it's not past lightspeed by then is it?!!

Well, to get 3.26 light years in about 3.5 years, including the full stop by the end, yeah I think so

I think the 0.1G might be just under lightspeed at the fastest.

 

[AKAramis]

You might want to check the velocity of that rock at turnover. I think the universe might have a problem with it.

Oh you're kidding, it's not past lightspeed by then is it?!!

544,379,234.112m/s, if not accounting for dilation, about 1.81C...

C=299,792,458m/s in vacuum according to Rowlett's Dictionary of Units.

 

[EDG]

In The Traveller Adventure (CT), it is made clear that there is no difference between jumping to a hex without a system and one with a system, other than the lack of fuel available at the end point.

In several late-era MT items, mention is made of the rift-crossing route, and the fuel depots maintained for that purpose in deep space.

TNE's Regency Sourcebook also references "Calibration Points" which are maintained in deep space along key mid-points.

Again, none of that is invalidated in any way by anything that GT:IW says on the subject. In all those cases, knowledge of how to make deep space jumps has been available for over a thousand years.

There is no contradiction here at all.

 

[AKAramis]

In The Traveller Adventure (CT), it is made clear that there is no difference between jumping to a hex without a system and one with a system, other than the lack of fuel available at the end point.

In several late-era MT items, mention is made of the rift-crossing route, and the fuel depots maintained for that purpose in deep space.

TNE's Regency Sourcebook also references "Calibration Points" which are maintained in deep space along key mid-points.

Again, none of that is invalidated in any way by anything that GT:IW says on the subject. In all those cases, knowledge of how to make deep space jumps has been available for over a thousand years.

There is no contradiction here at all.

Except that nothing prior to GTIW has ever made any requirement other than NOT being too deep in a gravity well requisite for jump entry nor exit.

 

[EDG]

Well I've edited one of my posts above to show how fast it'd have to be going...

Still, it shows that if a race is going to try this, they need to (a) get lucky and find a nice solid asteroid that can survive the journey, (b) be able to fit it with drives and systems that can accelerate and decelerate it constantly for at least a century at 0.001g, and (c) be very patient while they wait til it gets there.

All of which makes it very unlikely that anyone would do this, unless they were particularly long-minded. It might actually just be easier to spend the time looking for a brown dwarf or rogue planet in the hex, because if it's there you're probably going to find it within a century...

 

[EDG]

Except that nothing prior to GTIW has ever made any requirement other than NOT being too deep in a gravity well requisite for jump entry nor exit.

Nothing prior to GT:IW was set in that period.

...except for Imperium, that is. And guess what Imperium says?

Hyperspace jump involves movement directly between stellar hexes at faster-than- light speeds. Jumps are possible only along the routes printed on the map; each jump route is a green line connecting two stellar hexes. "

...

A jump must be from a stellar hex to a stellar hex. may not begin or end on a portion of a jump route lying between the ends.

(emphasis mine)

So if anything, that is a canonical source (by Marc Miller, no less, so you must approve of it) that says that during the IW you had to actually jump between two masses and that empty hex jumps were impossible.

It specifies stars, but it's not a stretch to extend that to mean "astronomical masses".


And in fact, later on in the History of the Imperium booklet it also says this about the Terran jump drive:

Initially, it was used only within the solar system: Since the range of a jump-1 drive was insufficient to reach the nearest stars, it was used only for intrasystem jumps.

The implication there is that the Terrans actually invented J2 to get out of Sol! Which contradicts everything said about it elsewhere (but shockingly would actually make the most sense...).

Oh, and the Terrans apparently invented J1 in 2090AD according to that as well... so between this, Supplement 10 and the Alien Module 6 we have no less than three different dates for the discovery of J1 by the Terrans!


Either way, I think if anything your case that empty hex jumps have always been allowed just collapsed. Marc Miller seems to think otherwise.


As a point of interest, it also says:

Sublight Movement: Sublight movement involves interstellar cruising at speeds approaching 80 to 90% of the speed of light. In game terms, this is a movement of one hex per game turn, executed during the owning player's First Movement Phase

That seemed to be the only way to move to hexes (1 hex = 0.5 pc) not occupied by stars (and not on jump routes). And it still didn't allow you to jump to those hexes or build anything there that you could jump to. Though it's patently daft because even if you were travelling at 90% of the speed of light it'd still take you years to cross a hex and not be in any position to do much at the end of the journey.

 

[captainjack23]

Thanks EDG I was gonna tackle the math but really didn't feel like it

I'd have gone with 0.1g at the most but while that will save some on fuel(?) and machinery it's probably not much. And how long would that be if I can impose on your fresher calculating ability? Just mildly curious really, not dying of it by any stretch or I'd force my brain awake to do it

About the rock : It's 38 MdT displacement. BIG, but the 3I routinely builds megaton sized ships & larger space structures. Mass, as we know in Traveller, including GTIW, is irrelevent. gravitics, y'know. So jthose numbers are big....way big, but how big in terms of credits and an interstellar empire ?

From GTIW, that mass could be moved at .1G by 19393 (rounded) thrusters which cost 19393 Mcr. and need (call it) 387851 spaces of power, costing 581777 Mcr...call it 610000Mcr. That is a lot. However, it is only 20 30kton battleships of which the vilanii have hundreds; or 1.5 Tigress class superdreadnaughts (453K Mcr) of which the 3Im has several squadrons...
So, yes, that is a high price for casual use, but to save a world from distruction, or to eliminate the greatest threat an empire has ever know ? You figure it out.

And all it just costs MONEY and production, no new tech, no research nothing. Build thrusters and strap em on. Take ten years. One of the lengthy peaces would work nicely -as with the leadup to the third war. For the vilani, you could reduce the time needed simply by not worrying about slowing it down. It'll be there long enough to launch a fleet and a support train, and if you want to be a real dick, you can aim it at the star in question -you'll likely(almost certainly) miss, but what the hell ? You might hit ....and Its not like you want to live there if you're going to be nuking the planet......and maybe you'll catch the terran or vilanii fleet returning.......

Also, for peaceful uses....., amortize it over 100 years (remeber, its the vilanii) and just the 1100 worlds on the Vilani main (thats the lowball -they actually had somewhere between that and 11000 by the time they discovered J2)....and it's about 6Mcr/year per planet to build one. That is nothing on this scale. A ships lifeboat costs more.

EDIT: I just caught up on the speed issue. .1 is the way to go. And you don't need to push it constantly....get it up to about .5c coast, THEN decel.

Time to position = 2x .1g constant to .5c or 0, + coast time. I'm guessing easily less tha 5 years here. Remember, final destination is 1/2 parsec out (middle of hex)

BTW that's a fairly well documented description of how a ship deals with sublight interstellar travel (due to a misjump), and is in fact below the rated capacities for thrusters.

 

[EDG]

From GTIW, that mass could be moved at .1G by 19393 (rounded) thrusters which cost 19393 Mcr. and need (call it) 387851 spaces of power, costing 581777 Mcr...call it 610000Mcr. That is a lot. However, it is only 20 30kton battleships of which the vilanii have hundreds;

...and how about the wages and living costs of everyone employed to build those that need to be paid for (which Traveller conveniently forgets about, it seems)? And these most likely aren't going to be standard ship thrusters, they're industrial sized monsters designed to fit on a planetoid hundreds of metres across (and not stress it in all the wrong places).

And how are you going to collect all the money from all those worlds that are paying for it? And why would anyone on the far side of the Vilani Main be willing to pay for a big rock going into interstellar space two sectors away? Not to mention the time it'll take for the message of "pay more tax!" to get from one side of the Main to the other...

I think the reality is going to be a LOT more expensive than that. And it's really a mega-engineering project, only really viable if a huge entity (i.e. interstellar government or megacorp) pays for it and has the vision to complete it. And if a better Jump drive isn't invented in the meantime to just skip the gap...

All of which again shows that you're not going to want to do this very often...

 

[captainjack23]

But... let's see how hard it would be to tow a big rock into the middle of an empty hex anyway.

<snip>

... and you're getting something that will require a lot of time, effort, and expense to pull off. So while it won't take forever to get to its destination, it doesn't really look to me like it'll be something that can be done on a frequent basis.

So we're back to having rare, limited and controlled access to empty hexes, which works out just fine.

EDG,

I don't want to join in the personal attacks, and am not doing so, so read this as an editorial comment, that there is something in your arguments presentation which I hope you can clear up. I'll admit that this may be because I didn't follow your post closely enough, and with the added factor that this is a lousy medium to express technical information. Plus, I'm from adiffernt school of science. So bear with me.

That said, one of the frustrations here is that it seems to me that you're willing to define something as easy and useful, Impossible and epically hard and yet doable from post to post, as the situation requires it. Thats fine for Simple chin wag stuff, but the problem is, it seems to happen with the empirical stuff that I rely on you to know about.

I mention your much earlier contention that brown dwarfs are everywhere, and then theyre so hard to find as to be impossible. Ever. Then when I point out that that makes problems for the early vilani, they are hard to find but doable in small numbers -4 or five. then, nearly twenty work . Then you propose hauling rocks, I comment on the consequences, you post that its actually too hard for casual use.

Then you proposed the asteroid tow - I thought that was insanely difficult...but heck, lets play with that. Now it looks like you and FT are suggesting that it is in the insanely difficult to impossible category. The same with the dark body jump points.

Without attacking you, I have to say I find it hard to know what exactly you are proposing on these matters. Or what your call is on if dark bodies or a towed asteroid as regards possibility. Which makes it hard to discuss the issue.

So, a little help here ?

And Paranoid gamer, please don't chime in on this post, okay ? Not taking sides, just want some resolution.

 

[captainjack23]

From GTIW, that mass could be moved at .1G by 19393 (rounded) thrusters which cost 19393 Mcr. and need (call it) 387851 spaces of power, costing 581777 Mcr...call it 610000Mcr. That is a lot. However, it is only 20 30kton battleships of which the vilanii have hundreds;

...and how about the wages and living costs of everyone employed to build those that need to be paid for (which Traveller conveniently forgets about, it seems)? And these most likely aren't going to be standard ship thrusters, they're industrial sized monsters designed to fit on a planetoid hundreds of metres across (and not stress it in all the wrong places).

And how are you going to collect all the money from all those worlds that are paying for it? And why would anyone on the far side of the Vilani Main be willing to pay for a big rock going into interstellar space two sectors away? Not to mention the time it'll take for the message of "pay more tax!" to get from one side of the Main to the other...

I think the reality is going to be a LOT more expensive than that. And it's really a mega-engineering project, only really viable if a huge entity (i.e. interstellar government or megacorp) pays for it and has the vision to complete it. And if a better Jump drive isn't invented in the meantime to just skip the gap...

All of which again shows that you're not going to want to do this very often...

All of which seems to actually agree with my point that a huge entity (i.e. interstellar government or megacorp) pays for it and has the vision to complete it.

And once is all it takes to win the war.

As to the costs for the jump points ? , the price for the parts is based on the time and money required to produce them so, no problem. To find the rock ? 1 year mission by a mining ship.
To build it .....Okay, double the cost from the parts. It still is chicken feed. It's not a panama canal or moonshot. The cost per planet is less than a 20 ton ships boat. The industrial effort is huge, and requires a shipyard to be built at the site, but now you've got a ship yard, and an easy J1 route. It is exactly the kind of long term investment and project that governments, particularly ones with a view of a timespan longer than the Egyptians had.

And the costs are only estimated on the Vilanii main chipping in. And getting them is called taxes. Do they not have them in Canada ?

So, it isn't impossible OR ruinous.

besides. It was your idea. If you think its too expensive to even be built once, I'm fine with that.


Now. How did the Vilanii get to the Genoee, and yet be unable to drygulch the terrans ?

 

[EDG]

Without attacking you, I have to say I find it hard to know what exactly you are proposing on these matters. Or what your call is on if dark bodies or a towed asteroid as regards possibility. Which makes it hard to discuss the issue.

I thought I've been pretty consistent here... that said my ideas are evolving a bit as we go.

Your point seemed to be that deep space jumps should be easy to do anywhere. My point is that they're not - they're actually very difficult to do, but they are still possible.

Substellar bodies most likely exist in every empty hex. But they're very hard to find. It's a matter of making a concerted effort, taking enough time, and having enough blind luck to find one. Thus, substellar jump points are rare, limited and controlled, and not ubiquitous.

I originally thought that the rock towing would be possible to do reasonably often, but as it turns out it proves to be a very expensive, time consuming endeavour so maybe not. Again, not something to be done on a whim at every empty hex, and again something that is going to be rare, limited in use, and highly controlled.

From a game design perspective the goal is to have something that isn't being done all the time everywhere, but rather that can be slotted in where convenient (i.e. when we need to cross a gap). We need something that is (guess what) rare, limited, and controlled, and both substellar bodies and towed asteroids fit the bill. In fact, substellar bodies are arguably a better option because they're there to be found (and require much less effort than the towed asteroids), but only if you look hard enough and get lucky. And it can be argued that the Vilani (or whoever) happened to get lucky in the 10-20 (or 30 or whatever) hexes in all of the thousands of empty hexes of the First Imperium where we need them to get to the various homeworlds.

I don't actually think the issue really is whether or not these jumps are possible or not though - I think the real stumbling block is that if these substellar bodies and/or towed planetoids exist and are used as jump points, then why aren't they marked on any maps? And for that we can claim that they're all top secret or something, but to be honest even this part of the issue is a bit of an annoyance to me. I would rather that the ones that are needed during peacetime to access entire new mains from the Vilani one would at least be marked as "Calibration Point" type things on a map - the ones in the middle of a warzone though can be kept quiet at least.

Is that clearer?

 

[EDG]

besides. It was your idea. If you think its too expensive to even be built once, I'm fine with that.

Maybe not for the Vilani, but I'd imagine a much smaller state like the Geonee or the Suerrat or the Dishaan might have trouble...

Now. How did the Vilanii get to the Genoee, and yet be unable to drygulch the terrans ?

That's easy. The early Vilani were known to be imaginative explorers, and so could figure out ways to bridge the gaps. By the time they found the Terrans several millennia later they'd stagnated into using their fixed jump tapes and pretty much lacked the cultural capacity to think outside the box. And they hadn't had any need to even try to do a deep space jump for millennia either.

 

[captainjack23]

Except that nothing prior to GTIW has ever made any requirement other than NOT being too deep in a gravity well requisite for jump entry nor exit.

Well, actually, nothing before GTIW (or since) has worried about Mass or Gravity. It's all about diameter. Nothing more (gravitics, y'know..... :roll: );

So, yes, adding mass/gravity is new. Which I didn't want to get into here, but unfortunately, it is a valid point. It was invented for the book, to make the period of the IW work like it should.....and it does, but it breaks other things. my contention is that the IW can work fine, without a kludgy addition of grav based effects.

And, EDG, I'm surprised at the contention that there is no data from prior to the IW period - is that the point ? There is REAMS of info on the subject in library data, histories, journal articles, race books (GDW and DGP) adventures, you name it. Are you sure you're familiar enough with classic traveller (and MT...Blegh) to be taking this position ?

 

[EDG]

And, EDG, I'm surprised at the contention that there is no data from prior to the IW period - is that the point ? There is REAMS of info on the subject in library data, histories, journal articles, race books (GDW and DGP) adventures, you name it. Are you sure you're familiar enough with classic traveller (and MT...Blegh) to be taking this position ?

Read what I said again. I said nothing had been set in the IW era, not that there was no data on it. Though what canonical data existed on it from CT has been rather scant and vague (and not particularly clarifying) on the matter (and I've quote a fair bit of it, so I know what it is).

GT:IW filled in a hell of a lot of details of the era, and doesn't appear to contradict anything said before about the period (barring the odd date, which it seems even CT was confused about). And I've demonstrated several times that the addition of "mass-limited jumps" in the IW era doesn't affect anything set in other published eras - the problem had been solved by those eras and ships could do deep space jumps. DSJ's weren't possible back then... but they are now - see how simple that is?

It seems very short-sighted to just ignore or dismiss all that useful info because of a slavish interpretation of what Marc has said about GT. Fact is, what he said applied to GT when it was set in the 3I, and he's not said anything about GT:IW (which is set way before the divergence point between the OTU and the GT timeline). Until such time as he does - or unless he said "everything that SJG ever publishes in the future about Traveller is to be considered "non-authoritative" - there's simply no valid reason to consider the GT:IW material as an "alternate universe".

 

[captainjack23]

besides. It was your idea. If you think its too expensive to even be built once, I'm fine with that.

Maybe not for the Vilani, but I'd imagine a much smaller state like the Geonee or the Suerrat or the Dishaan might have trouble...

Which ISNT who we were discussing. So then the vilanii could build them as needed ?

 

[captainjack23]

Now. How did the Vilanii get to the Genoee, and yet be unable to drygulch the terrans ?

That's easy. The early Vilani were known to be imaginative explorers, and so could figure out ways to bridge the gaps. By the time they found the Terrans several millennia later they'd stagnated into using their fixed jump tapes and pretty much lacked the cultural capacity to think outside the box. [/quote]

You're going to need to work harder to justify that as an easy throw away answer. I think you are mistaking conservativeness and stasis for stupidity.

Lots of cultures have been static and conservative for long periods of time, and not be idiots. Read about the Byzantines, or more properly, the roman empire. It lasted a while, and looks quite static from todays veiwpoint. And conservative from any viewpoint. They held together an empire that subjugated dozens of races over thousands of parsecs. And, while they blocked new technology, they were hell on wheels for improving existing systems and designs. This all from GTIW, BTW.

And even if they are hidebound for the most part, read the account of the third war for an example of a create out of the box thinker; who at worst could have looked up the fact that dark or artificial jump points existed...and probably found the plans and schematics and cost and labor estimates all filed in triplicate...it is the vilanii way to keep records; and we know they relied on databased expert systems for everything -so one always has access to lots more than could be learned personally in one lifetime.

 

[captainjack23]

And they hadn't had any need to even try to do a deep space jump for millennia either.

Actually that is unsupported by GTIW. They hadn't looked for a new one in centuries, and by the IW period they only rarely used them. Very different. [pg 171 -text box.]

 

[captainjack23]

I mean, don't give me GT:IW because, as EDG has stated... GT is an ATU and it's never been clarified where the GT time line split from the OTU time line, so IW has no bearing on the question.

It has been clarified, by Loren Wiseman on the SJG boards (roughly. He's hinted at the date but not actually specified it). GT is officially an ATU after Dulinor gets blown up in his shuttle (and thus the Assassination never happens). But Loren has hinted that the actual divergence point is a few decades before that, but still in the late 1000s. Before that, the history is the same.

Either way, despite what Aramis said, GT:IW has not been declared to be an "alternate universe" by anyone.

Linky link please ?