Nexus Linkage Device?

[MasterGwydion]

The customization rules have tightened a bit, since their first iteration.

You default to the base technological level machinery that you want to improve, or deprove.

You're not forced to purchase the improved machinery, since the presumption appears to be that all variants are available.

True, you are not forced to use the customization rules, but every "real world" transportation thing that I can find says that the most important concern in shipping freight is fuel cost and one of the most important concerns when buying a new semi-tractor, is fuel efficiency. So, while you may be technically correct that their use is not required, it seems that all newly purchased ships would be as fuel efficient as possible because that is the main thing that shipping companies look at when buying new vehicles for their fleet.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I have every starport that can repair ships have parts from TL9 up to TL15, at least the ports connected to the trade lanes.

Anything 2 TLs lower can be fabricated with ease so making lower TL parts is pretty simple, in fact, the best way to make a TL-12 Jump Drive is with a TL-14 fabricator. It can build an install-ready 10-ton TL-12 J-1 drive in less than a day. From raw materials to finished product.

If you go to the speculative goods table there are plenty of freight items that could be jump drive parts. A sufficiently large lot size may indicate a complete jump drive, maneuver drive or power plant.

Except that jump drives cost 1.5MCr per ton. Nothing on the spec trade chart is even close to 1.5 mil per ton.

When you go to the starport to commission the ship to be built the starport puts the order in for the drives it needs if they are not in stock, considering the time it takes to build the ship the tranport time for the components is trivial.

Which means that most have stock? Things are that are stealable, as well as things you will likely have to pay an inventory tax on, as well as paying for it to be stored in the most expensive storage facility on the planet, the starport. Also, if they have to import the drive, then there would be a shipping cost added on to the book price (or subtracted from it if it was made locally), which means that, that is not the default way that they are built.

My logic does not say that at all, I'm not sure how you interpret it that way. The megacorporations are the major shippers, the trade tables are for the boxes left at the warehouse...

You said "only available to megacorporations not to PC-scale players". So, I did not "interpret that. You stated it clearly and cleanly.

In which case it is canonical that shipyards can import parts from other worlds - give me a moment and I will find the exact quote.

I am guessing that you can ship anything from and to anywhere, because that is how shipping stuff works, Which now takes us to the default. Is the price in the book for imported equipment or locally produced equipment?

I take it you are being a little tongue in cheek here - I am infamous for being a curmudgeonly old grognard that wants previous canon taken into account at all times

I am.

The issue is not what they write, it is the way the little bits conflict, contradict, or have consequences that are just not thought out.

For example I nearly tore up the latest issue of Riftbreaker when it got to the lase page - the comic's author is promoting the erroneous fanon that a gravity well is needed for jump

That's because the author messed up, or the editor messed up, or the playtesters messed up. No one actually used those rules and then came to the correct conclusion that you have arrived at, there should be a TL cap on a manufacturing plant based on the TL of the plant.

No need, as time goes by the errors in the SOM stack up, again because of the usual factors.

Not quality control, their product is very good, it is just that too many of their authors do not know the old canon as well as they think they do, while other authors just make up new rules and subsystems on a whim without adequate editorial and playtesting oversight.

Quality control is not only if Mongoose turns out a good product or not. That product has to work in concert with their other products. If it does not do that, then they have a quality control problem, such as the inability of Mongoose writers to create ships using the actual ship creation rules and Mongoose not catching that during editing and proofreading.

And hopefully will continue to do so for many years to come

Even if (the collective) we spend a lot of time critiquing...

Agreed!

 

[Sigtrygg]

Anything 2 TLs lower can be fabricated with ease so making lower TL parts is pretty simple, in fact, the best way to make a TL-12 Jump Drive is with a TL-14 fabricator. It can build an install-ready 10-ton TL-12 J-1 drive in less than a day. From raw materials to finished product.

Which then raises another thorny problem - why does it take so long to build a TL12 ship if a TL14 fabricator can spit out all the parts in a few days...
A s stuff like this is introduced without it being thought through it has unintended consequences.

Except that jump drives cost 1.5MCr per ton. Nothing on the spec trade chart is even close to 1.5 mil per ton.

That's the point of sale price, you can get a hefty discount for shipping a thousand units all over the subsector...

Which means that most have stock? Things are that are stealable, as well as things you will likely have to pay an inventory tax on, as well as paying for it to be stored in the most expensive storage facility on the planet, the starport.

Imperial trade rules apply. No inventory tax. The starport has an infinite storage capacity - the high port...

Also, if they have to import the drive, then there would be a shipping cost added on to the book price (or subtracted from it if it was made locally), which means that, that is not the default way that they are built.

Already included, the cost listed is the price you pay, you don't think a megacorporation doesn't make a profit, or every middle man...

You said "only available to megacorporations not to PC-scale players". So, I did not "interpret that. You stated it clearly and cleanly.

If you could see my body language when I wrote it you would understand, it is often the case that discussions like this are taken too liiterally because they are... literal.

I am guessing that you can ship anything from and to anywhere, because that is how shipping stuff works, Which now takes us to the default. Is the price in the book for imported equipment or locally produced equipment?

The construction costs are what you pay the starport for the finished ship. They make a profit assembling it. The parts manufacturers make a profit manufacturing the parts. The economics are not granular enough for those costs to be itemised.

I am.

You see, we do understand each other some times

Quality control is not only if Mongoose turns out a good product or not. That product has to work in concert with their other products. If it does not do that, then they have a quality control problem, such as the inability of Mongoose writers to create ships using the actual ship creation rules and Mongoose not catching that during editing and proofreading.

I am not convinced every Mongoose author knows the rules as well as some referees and players out there for the simple reason that the referees and players... play them. They play them to destruction to coin a phrase. Also I am not convinced every author has the latest iteration of the rules and every scenario, supplement and rulebook memorised to the degree needed to not make mistakes, ommissions, contradictions, repetitions, and just plain errors.
Which is where the editorial team should step in. But that requires the editorial team to know the rules backwards, to be able to use High Guard, Vehicles, Robots, World Builders handbook without error, to know which supplements., adventures, campaigns have hidden supplementary rules...

The SOM uses the wrong definition of the displacement ton for pities sake, how did that make it to print?

Agreed!

 

[MasterGwydion]

Which then raises another thorny problem - why does it take so long to build a TL12 ship if a TL14 fabricator can spit out all the parts in a few days...
A s stuff like this is introduced without it being thought through it has unintended consequences.

That's the point of sale price, you can get a hefty discount for shipping a thousand units all over the subsector...

Imperial trade rules apply. No inventory tax. The starport has an infinite storage capacity - the high port...

Ummm... The highport is usually the most expensive real estate in a star system. So, you can say, no inventory tax, but that won't pay your rent on the warehouse space, especially if it is in the highport.

Already included, the cost listed is the price you pay, you don't think a megacorporation doesn't make a profit, or every middle man...

If you could see my body language when I wrote it you would understand, it is often the case that discussions like this are taken too liiterally because they are... literal.

The construction costs are what you pay the starport for the finished ship. They make a profit assembling it. The parts manufacturers make a profit manufacturing the parts. The economics are not granular enough for those costs to be itemised.

See? Now you have pointed out another problem. If I build My own jump drive, it will cost 10%-90% of the list price, but if the list price includes transportation costs, assembly costs, as well as the material costs, then what is the new number that I need to use as the base for finding the new price?

You see, we do understand each other some times

I am not convinced every Mongoose author knows the rules as well as some referees and players out there for the simple reason that the referees and players... play them. They play them to destruction to coin a phrase. Also I am not convinced every author has the latest iteration of the rules and every scenario, supplement and rulebook memorised to the degree needed to not make mistakes, ommissions, contradictions, repetitions, and just plain errors.
Which is where the editorial team should step in. But that requires the editorial team to know the rules backwards, to be able to use High Guard, Vehicles, Robots, World Builders handbook without error, to know which supplements., adventures, campaigns have hidden supplementary rules...

The SOM uses the wrong definition of the displacement ton for pities sake, how did that make it to print?

Yeah. How does this not already exist? How does a company keep putting out products with rules or settings that they don't know and never bothered to learn? Does no one actually proofread these texts and ask themselves if what they just read violates or contradicts what has previously been published by Mongoose before they are published? Or if what they tried to create with whatever new rule or McGuffin they created already exist in the game and therefore doesn't need a new rule or new McGuffin that does the exact or the almost exact same thing.

I used to have a job where I had to write a lot of reports. Part of that job was assuring the accuracy of the numbers and the accuracy of the building plan. I would proofread it first and correct it as needed and then pass it off to Me secretary and she would compare it to the building plans and the previously filed reports and point out any inconsistencies in my report. That way, when I actually send the report, it is accurate. If I worked for a company like Mongoose, as a professional, I would be embarrassed to turn in a final piece for publication that has as many errors as some of what We have seen from Mongoose. The more complicated the system, the more important is the need for quality control and Traveller, both ruleset and settings are fairly complicated affairs.

 

[Garran]

For example I nearly tore up the latest issue of Riftbreaker when it got to the lase page - the comic's author is promoting the erroneous fanon that a gravity well is needed for jump

I'll grant that I didn't realize that that idea existed as fanon, but I read that line as him brushing off her concern as, "I haven't done this but I've jumped to targets smaller than a planet before."

And in fairness, a career scout/courier probably isn't going to have jumped to anywhere that completely lacked a gravity well very often because what's the point? There's nothing there to see and no one to deliver to. (Mind you, you'd still be in the galactic gravity well unless you'd taken a very long voyage indeed...)

 

[Condottiere]

1. Manufacturing appears to be mostly abstract.

2. You don't want to run out of gas, in the middle of nowhere.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I'll grant that I didn't realize that that idea existed as fanon,

It crops up from time to time.

but I read that line as him brushing off her concern as, "I haven't done this but I've jumped to targets smaller than a planet before."

Me too, I was making a bit of a rant...

And in fairness, a career scout/courier probably isn't going to have jumped to anywhere that completely lacked a gravity well very often because what's the point?

Are you claiming that characters in setting may not know everything there is to know about jump travel despite years of service...

I agree

There's nothing there to see and no one to deliver to. (Mind you, you'd still be in the galactic gravity well unless you'd taken a very long voyage indeed...)

If the galaxy is considered to be a single body then it would have a rather large 100D limit

I should really come up with a way of indicating a tongue in cheek comment...
just doesn't cut it, hmm may do the trick...

 

[rinku]

To be fair... it's not a wild idea that a gravity well at destination is required to make any sort of *accurate* jump.

That is, the 100D precipitation effect gives you a target to aim at. If you miss, you still emerge from jump roughly where you aimed, but it could be quite a way from the planet.

 

[Sigtrygg]

To be fair... it's not a wild idea that a gravity well at destination is required to make any sort of *accurate* jump.

Canon is very clear on this, you do not need a gravity well to aim at - setting and game rules. It keep appearing as fanon, and has made it to optional rule status.

 

[boggo2300]

To be fair... it's not a wild idea that a gravity well at destination is required to make any sort of *accurate* jump.

That is, the 100D precipitation effect gives you a target to aim at. If you miss, you still emerge from jump roughly where you aimed, but it could be quite a way from the planet.

except you can jump to deep space... just leaving again is a problem without extra fuel

 

[Condottiere]

Accuracy would depend on how exactly astrogation is calculated.

 

[Sigtrygg]

However it is calculated we are told that jump is accurate to within a few thousand km...

 

[Condottiere]

Having a bright light house probably helps.

Not so sure about exoplanets.

And, in our case, how far gravity wells can be detected.

 

[rinku]

Yeah, I wasn't saying that you NEED a gravity well at destination, just that having one might make the jump more accurate. Especially from the point of view of overshooting.

It's the difference between lobbing a ball onto a ground target and lobbing a ball into a large funnel sited above the target.

Deep space jumps that aren't trying to jump to some deep space site don't really care if they arrive even a few AU out of plot. The second jump to a star or planet DOES have a gravity well to aim at.

Using the ground target analogy, you can't reach the target in one toss but it doesn't matter exactly where the ball ends up, as long as it ends up close enough to make the shot on the second throw.

 

[Sigtrygg]

How does that help with the light house four years away? You need to know about "the now", not what was happening 4 years ago.

A digression.

When the Terrans invented jump drive they used point to point solutions of the jump equations, with point A and point B being complete solutions to both the jump equation and general relativity. This requires the relative positions of A now and where B will be at the end of the jump.

The requirement was for astronomers and computer scientists to go back through every data point, launch new observation telescopes, and construct the most accurate model of the solar system, with the ability to precisely model the future position of every large body of interest for the next century. A dedicated department was established to continue collecting data so "the model" could be further improved over time.

Initially used for insystem jumps, the jump scientists and engineers were certin that the jump engine could traverse much longer real universe distances, the difficulty was in mapping the point B.

Observatories were constructed in the far Kuiper Belt to gather data on the Oort cloud that would allow a jump ship to range to a light month.

World governments were competing to be the first to jump to a star system near sol, the candidates were Barnard's Star, the Centauri trinary, and Luhman. ESA and China concentrated on the nearest, the Centauri, the US had two teams, one joining in the race to Centauri, the other had data from secret NASA archives of objects in the Oort cloud that may pave the path to Barnard's star.

The technique was simple, build an observatory, map objects within range until "the model" could be undated to produce a safe jump plot, then jump to the next body to construct the next observatory.

It was confirmed that Sol's Oort cloud reached out for almost a parsec, the actual distance also proved to be the limit of a single jump. A jump ship could return to the inner solar system from the outer Oort cloud, but no attempt to link jump drives or provide more power increased the range beyond this 1 parsec.

The Centauri race proved to be hard going, the trinary nature of the Centauri system made its oort cloud a new definition of chaos, months would pass as "the model" slowly pieced together enough data to risk a jump. The Chinese mission that attempted this leap was never heard from again. Work continued to refine "the model"

The US route to Barnard proved much easier to map, the secret endeavour progresses at pace until the far observatory was built. The observatory detected communication signals from Barnard. The signals were very weak, likely to be insystem communication leaking to interstellar space, but they did give the US government pause for thought. For months the signals were recorded, AI was set the task of decoding any information contained therein. The language and signal protocols were cracked and had no indication of hostility.

The decision was taken to send several jump ships, one to make contact with the signal source, the second to act as a safeguard, and the third to remain in the far out system of Barnard's Star.

The Vilani mining station was surprised to say the least when two alien jump ships appeared in their sky unannounced, even more confusing was they could speak to them through translation machines (were these machines banned by the Ziru Sirka...)

The US then had to construct a cover story, and the myth of StarLeaper One was born. The rest, as they say, is the history written by the victors...

 

[rinku]

That bit of lore is talking about VERY early J-Drive development, without a mature example to go by.

The sort of data they were gathering is readily available, except for unexplored areas. The tech they were using to crunch the numbers was ancient by later standards.

But an interesting digression, nonetheless.

 

[Condottiere]

After a couple of millenia, most stellar objects would have been located in the local region.

You know where you are, and there are likely databases with the future locations of these stellar objects, outside of one going supernova.

You can probably include most large objects orbitting them.

In that sense, the computer database will tell you the exact distance from entrance to exit, for a specific time, and include deviance depending on a variance in jump time/space.

Now, when it's UnCharted Space, that's when the astrogator earns the big bux.